r towns, and
in all capitals of Departments, the mayors were to be appointed by the
central power. Thus the Napoleonic tradition in favour of keeping local
government under the oversight of officials nominated from Paris was to
some extent perpetuated even in an avowedly democratic measure.

Paris was to have a Municipal Council composed of eighty members elected
by manhood suffrage from each ward; but the mayors of the twenty
_arrondissements_, into which Paris is divided, were, and still are,
appointed by the State; and here again the control of the police and
other extensive powers are vested in the _Prefet_ of the Department of
the Seine, not in the mayors of the _arrondissements_ or the Municipal
Council. The Municipal or Communal Act of 1871, then, is a
compromise--on the whole a good working compromise--between the extreme
demands for local self-government and the Napoleonic tradition, now
become an instinct with most Frenchmen in favour of central control over
matters affecting public order[69].

[Footnote 69: On the strength of this instinct see Mr. Bodley's
excellent work, _France_, vol. i. pp. 32-42. etc. For the Act, see
Hanotaux _op. cit._ pp. 236-238.]

The matter of Army Reform was equally pressing. Here, again, Thiers had
the ground cleared before him by a great overturn, like that which
enabled Bonaparte in his day to remodel France, and the builders of
Modern Prussia--Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg--to build up their
State from its ruins. In particular, the inefficiency of the National
Guards and of the Garde Mobile made it easy to reconstruct the French
Army on the system of universal conscription in a regular army, the
efficiency of which Prussia had so startlingly displayed in the
campaigns of Koeniggraetz (Sadowa) and Sedan. Thiers, however, had no
belief in a short service system with its result of a huge force of
imperfectly trained troops: he clung to the old professional army; and
when that was shown to be inadequate to the needs of the new age, he
pleaded that the period of compulsory service should be, not three, but
five years. On the Assembly demurring to the expense and vital strain
for the people which this implied, he declared with passionate emphasis
that he would resign unless the five years were voted. They were voted
(June 10, 1872). At the same time, the exemptions, so numerous during
the Second Empire, were curtailed and the right of buying a substitute
was swept away. After