the
energy of her Government and financiers. In March 1873, the arrangements
for the payment of the last instalment were made, and in the autumn of
that year the last German troops left Verdun and Belfort. For his great
services in bending all the powers of France to this great financial
feat, Thiers was universally acclaimed as the Liberator of the
Territory.

Yet that very same period saw him overthrown. To read this riddle
aright, we must review the outlines of French internal politics. We have
already referred to the causes that sent up a monarchical majority to
the National Assembly, the schisms that weakened the action of that
majority, and the peculiar position held by M. Thiers, an Orleanist in
theory, but the chief magistrate of the French Republic. No more
paradoxical situation has ever existed; and its oddity was enhanced by
the usually clear-cut logicality of French political thought. Now, after
the war and the Commune, the outlook was dim, even to the keenest sight.
One thing alone was clear, the duty of all citizens to defer raising any
burning question until law, order, and the national finances were
re-established. It was the perception of this truth that led to the
provisional truce between the parties known as the Compact of Bordeaux.
Flagrantly broken by the "Reds" of Paris in the spring of 1871, that
agreement seemed doomed. The Republic itself was in danger of perishing
as it did after the socialistic extravagances of the Revolution of 1848.
But Thiers at once disappointed the monarchists by stoutly declaring
that he would not abet the overthrow of the Republic: "We found the
Republic established, as a fact of which we are not the authors; but I
will not destroy the form of government which I am now using to restore
order. . . . When all is settled, the country will have the liberty to
choose as it pleases in what concerns its future destinies[67]."
Skilfully pointing the factions to the future as offering a final reward
for their virtuous self-restraint, this masterly tactician gained time
in which to heal the worst wounds dealt by the war.

[Footnote 67: Speech of March 27, 1871.]

But it was amidst unending difficulties. The Monarchists, eager to
emphasise the political reaction set in motion by the extravagances of
the Paris Commune, wished to rid themselves at the earliest possible
time of this self-confident little bourgeois who seemed to stand alone
between them and the realisation of the