seditious cry: '_Vive la Paix!_'" The latest historian of
the war, the Commandant Rousset, who "has summed up, with more clearness
and force than any other, the political and military considerations
which explain its issue," in the opinion of the critics, defines as one
of the three principal causes of its disasters after the 4th of
September, the excessive importance attributed to the capital. The
necessity of delivering Paris paralyzed all the efforts of the armies of
the provinces, in depriving them of all liberty of action. "Enough can
never be said of the fatal incubus which weighed upon us in the shape of
the specious theory which certain pontiffs of the high strategy had
erected upon the abstract value of positions, and of entrenched camps,
nor of the amount of profit which the German army derived from the
disdain which it entertained for this theory." This inordinate
importance of the capital, as we have already seen in many instances, is
one of the most striking facts in the history of France.

[Illustration: "THE PROGRESS OF MUSIC." PLAFOND OF THE GRANDE SALLE DES
FETES IN THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE.

Painted by H. Gervex.]

The capital once more effected a change in the government, and by the
familiar methods,--on the 4th of September, 1870, the mob invaded the
Chamber and overturned the Empire. In the civil war that followed the
withdrawal of the Germans--brought about by the _Commune_ and the
_Internationale_, the former, with the pretext of restoring to the city
its legitimate rights by giving back to it the election of its municipal
officers, and the second, a socialism which was practical anarchy,
repudiating patriotism, denouncing capital as theft, aiming to overthrow
all society--it was again the capital which acted. In the private
correspondence of one of those leaders of revolt, the nihilist
Bakounine, lately published, he writes to his confidant: "What do you
think of this desperate movement of the Parisians? Whatever the result
may be, it must be confessed that they are brave enough. That strength
which we have vainly sought in Lyon and in Marseille has been found in
Paris. There is there an organization, and men determined to go to the
bitter end. It is certain that they will be beaten, but it is equally
certain that there will be henceforth no salvation for France outside
the social revolution. The French state is dead, and cannot be revived."

In the number of the _Contemporary Review_ for March,