eated
from the neighbourhood of Mezieres towards Paris on September 2 to 4.
She therefore had to count almost entirely on the Garde Mobile, the
Garde Nationale, and Francs-tireurs; but bitter experience was to show
that this raw material could not be organised in a few weeks to
withstand the trained and triumphant legions of Germany.

Nevertheless there was no thought of making peace with the invaders. The
last message of Count Palikao to the Chambers had been one of defiance
to the enemy; and the Parisian deputies, nearly all of them Republicans,
who formed the Government of National Defence, scouted all faint-hearted
proposals. Their policy took form in the famous phrase of Jules Favre,
Minister of Foreign Affairs: "We will give up neither an inch of our
territory nor a stone of our fortresses." This being so, all hope of
compromise with the Germans was vain. Favre had interviews with Bismarck
at the Chateau de Ferrieres (September 19); but his fine oratory, even
his tears, made no impression on the Iron Chancellor, who declared that
in no case would an armistice be granted, not even for the election of a
National Assembly, unless France agreed to give up Alsace and a part of
Lorraine, allowing the German troops also to hold, among other places,
Strassburg and Toul.

Obviously, a self-constituted body like the provisional Government at
Paris could not accept these terms, which most deeply concerned the
nation at large. In the existing temper of Paris and France, the mention
of such terms meant war to the knife, as Bismarck must have known. On
their side, Frenchmen could not believe that their great capital, with
its bulwarks and ring of outer forts, could be taken; while the
Germans--so it seems from the Diary of General von Blumenthal--looked
forward to its speedy capitulation. One man there was who saw the
pressing need of foreign aid. M. Thiers (whose personality will concern
us a little later) undertook to go on a mission to the chief Powers of
Europe in the hope of urging one or more of them to intervene on behalf
of France.

The details of that mission are, of course, not fully known. We can
only state here that Russia now repaid Prussia's help in crushing the
Polish rebellion of 1863 by neutrality, albeit tinged with a certain
jealousy of German success. Bismarck had been careful to dull that
feeling by suggesting that she (Russia) should take the present
opportunity of annulling the provision, made after th