Towards 2 P.M. a delegation of fifty persons asked admission, of whom the spokesman submitted a demand that the government should resign and be replaced as follows:

The electors will be convoked in three days' time to name a Commune in Paris which will be composed of eighty citizens, among them the members of the future Cabinet, who will be responsible to the Commune as it in its turn will be to the French people. The powers of the Commune will expire when the hostile army shall have evacuated the soil of France and a regular Constituent Assembly shall have been named.

The members of the government retired to consult. But the tumult outside had been increasing. Shots were fired, no one knows whence. The door of the room in which the members were sitting around a table was forced, the crowd swarmed in, the leaders jumped upon the table, and one of them, the notorious Flourens, addressed the crowd in a squeaking voice, declaring the government deposed, naming a new one, and calling for space, that they might have room to deliberate. Meantime the members of the government retained their seats, Favre impassible, Simon sketching disdainfully upon some paper before him, and Trochu quietly regarding the guns pointed at him. All steadily refused to resign or to sign an order for the election of the Commune. Presently a battalion of the better part of the National Guard came cleaving the crowd like a wedge and carried off General Trochu, behind whom Émanuel Arago, Ferry, and Pelletan cleared themselves a passage, though Favre, Simon, and three others were still held back by the crowd. The members thus set free, following up the preparations of Picard, who had got out of the building at an early stage, proceeded to organize relief. A battalion of mobiles from Finisterre entered the Hôtel de Ville through a subterranean passage known to but few; another force of the party of order

entered from the outside, and the insurgents, finding themselves between two fires, quickly dispersed. At three o'clock in the morning Favre, who had eaten nothing but a piece of coarse bread and a slice of half-cooked horse given him by one of his captors, was released, but before seeking the needed repose visited the governor to concert the necessary measures for preserving order, and appointed a meeting for seven in the morning.1

Thus far the Government of National Defence, with scruples which would not have troubled Danton or Robespierre, had suffered from the vice of its origin. It was wholly self-constituted, and therefore timid in exercising its authority. It determined now to imitate the Second Empire in one respect by taking a plébiscite. On the 1st of November appeared a proclamation asking for a popular vote. The government, it said, owes to itself to ask of the citizens whether or not it retains their confidence. If universal suffrage pronounces against the government as actually constituted, within twenty-four hours the people will be called upon to provide a substitute. If it declares, on the contrary, that power shall remain in the same hands, the men who now hold it will continue to hold it with this new confirmation. But that

1 Mr. T. J. Bowles, correspondent of the Morning Post, in his "Defence of Paris," thus describes the scene :

"An accepted government with all the signs and appurtenances of authority is suddenly replaced at its own council board by a few individuals without striking a blow in self-defence, then these same individuals are ousted in their turn without striking a blow and finally they embrace all round. Surely this passes the wildest bounds of the burlesque."

The events of the Commune were to show how perilously near it was to the tragic. And yet these conditions point out how even the latter might have been dealt with by firm and cool resolution. The same old trouble had reappeared, the want of any settled and stable public opinion, the absence of mutual confidence in the community, the failure of selfassertion on the part of honest and lawful government in behalf of the great majority against the violence of the few. The weakness of executive power is the most difficult of all the problems with which popular government has yet to deal.

no one may be deceived as to the meaning of the vote to be taken, they declare in advance that the uprising of October 31 must be the last of the siege; that they will no longer allow any obstacle to come from within. That the government should pass its time in arguing and defending itself when it is time to act without ceasing against the enemy, that the National Guard and the army should exhaust themselves amid cold and fatigue in the streets when they ought to be on the ramparts, is a crime against the nation and against common sense. It cannot be reproduced.

The voting was conducted in perfect liberty and profound calm. Mr. Bowles, in his "Defence of Paris," remarks upon the difference from the noise and turmoil of an English election. Nothing was to be seen except individuals quietly approaching the polling booths, depositing their ballots, and going away again. The result was overwhelmingly on behalf of the government, 557,996 votes against 62,638. The significance of these votes can hardly be overestimated. The question was plainly put, and the answer was emphatic. It seems as if it might have been strong enough not only to prevent disorder during the siege but the subsequent deeds of the Commune. A popular government, however, which will act with stern despotism on behalf of the great mass of the people, is apparently a desideratum yet to be attained.

As M. Favre tried every means to interest the European powers on behalf of France, so Count Bismarck tried to throw on the French the blame of refusing the armistice which was the object of the negotiations with M. Thiers in October. Both Favre and Thiers demanded the "proportionate revictualling" of Paris during the armistice, that is, a supply of provisions which would place the city in the same condition at the end that it was in at the beginning. This Bismarck positively refused to grant.

The Frenchmen replied that, as their hands would be tied for offensive operations both in the city and the provinces, and as the city must sooner or later be reduced by starvation unless relief came, such an armistice would simply enable the Germans to carry on their siege operations without molestation with no guarantee of any results for France. Assuming that the French still had hopes of success and were not prepared to surrender at discretion, the argument seems conclusive.

While Paris was thus determined not to yield, the same spirit was animating the provinces. The three men who left Paris in September as delegates of the Government of National Defence - Crémieux, Glais-Bizoin, and Admiral Fourichon were, with the exception of the last, who yet declined to act in opposition to his colleagues, among its weakest members; and when Gambetta, on the 9th of October, descended from his balloon voyage nothing had been done. A German military writer1 has done justice to the tremendous energy of Gambetta and his wonderful insight into the conditions and requirements of the situation; has shown how in a few weeks he raised an army of one hundred and eighty thousand men and kept it constantly renewed, and how by his command of the sea he contrived that it should be at least as well supplied as his German opponents.2 The achievements of Gambetta may be compared with those of Danton and Carnot in the last century, but the enemy was different. The profoundest

1 Baron Colmar von der Goltz, "Gambetta and his Armies."

2 Comment! Pendant vingt ans Bonaparte a préparé ses moyens d'agressions, organizé, dépensé vingt milliards. La France a consenti a tout, elle a tout donné, hommes et argent: quinze jours ont suffi et tout a disparu. Et nous qui n'avions rien trouvé, qui n'avions eu pour moyen que les ressources improviseés par l'initiative du pays, nous resistons depuis quatre mois devant un ennemi qui multiplie ses forces, mais qui sent bien que si la résistance continue a embraser l'ame de la France c'en est fait de l'invasion. — FAVRE, “Simple Récit,” etc., Vol. II. Discours de Gambetta a Lille, 19 Janvier, 1871, quoted in the pièces justificatives.

resources of organization and science which make the difference between ancient and modern war: a corps of officers, perhaps as well selected and as carefully trained as any army ever possessed; an iron discipline which made of the troops animated machines; these were the German strength. On the side of the French, apart from a few sailors from the navy and regular troops, there were only peasants and militia; officers taken at random, some among whom, however, like General Chanzy, compelled admiration from their opponents; a dictator, who with all his energy was a civilian and not a soldier. The contest was too unequal. The only question was, as has been already intimated, whether it was hopelessly so to a degree which made it mere insane folly.

An important consideration is as to the degree of harshness and cruelty of the invading armies. No doubt men of the stamp of Bismarck and Von Moltke were exasperated at what seemed to them a wantonly continued resistance. They remembered how, after the battle of Jena in 1806, the government of Prussia had completely collapsed, and the country lay prostrate at the feet of Napoleon. They had seen their own invasion result in the surrender of Sedan with the emperor of the French and a large army, and the locking up in Metz of almost the whole remainder of the available armies of France. That a group of lawyers, without military experience or apparent resources and with no authority from anybody, should take the government into their own hands, sustain a siege in Paris, and keep up a corresponding resistance in the provinces for nearly five months seemed to them a clear violation of the laws of war, and to be visited with a just severity. Probably,

1 Prussian pretensions are enormous. They positively assume to consider as a violation of the laws of war any attempt made by Frenchmen to defend their own lives and property, and massacre without mercy and in cold blood anybody who stirs a finger against them, while they burn