Gambetta and the Foundation of the Third Republic
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"- ^i-c (;a.mbk'I'J'a '^^ GAMBETTA AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC .BY HAROLD STANNARD M.A, WITH PORTRAIT AND MAP METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C, LONDON DC .8 G,3SS First Published in ig2i 7^ CONTENTS PART I—THE EMPIRE PAGB I. Parentage—Home Life—Education . i II. Early Paris Days 9 III. The Young Republican 19 IV. L'Affaire Baudin 27 V. From Empire to Republic 34 PART H—THE WAR VI. The Government of National Defence . 44 VII. Administrative Difficulties—The Tours Delegation 49 VIII. Gambetta the Governor of France 61 IX. Gambetta the Minister . 70 X. Gambetta the Maker of Armies XI. The Winter Campaign XII. Gambetta the Dictator . PART III—THE REPUBLIC XIII. The Constitutional Issue 117 XIV. First Steps towards Republican Union 129 XV. The Breach with Thiers . 139 XVI. The Monarchist Adventure 148 XVII. The Constitution of 1875 155 vi GAMBETTA XVIII. Gambetta's Tactics J XIX. The Constitution Tested 173 XX. The Parliamentary Republic i8< PART IV—EPILOGUE XXI. Gambetta's Policies at Home and Abroad . 20( XXII. Romance 221 " " XXIII. Le Grand Ministere 228 XXIV. France and Gambetta . 246 APPENDICES Appendix I 251 Appendix II 258 Index 261 — NoTB. ^The Frontispiece is reproduced from a photograph by Etienne Carj at et Cie, Paris. GAMBETTA GAMBETTA AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC PART I—THE EMPIRE I PARENTAGE—HOME LIFE-^EDUCATION the year 1818 Baptista Gambetta, a Genoese of the INvillage of Celle-Ligure, near Savona, resolved to leave his native coast and settle in the interior of France. He came of a race of seamen who for generations had traded across the Gulf of Lyons with cargoes of macaroni, oil, and pottery. But the loss of a brother in a storm had filled him with disgust of the sea, and though he was minded to return home in later hfe and to die with the sound of her waves in his ears, he determined to give his sons the chance of lives beyond the range of her caprices. His choice fell on Cahors, a famous old town lying about a bend of the river Lot, some seventy miles north of Toulouse. The place had lost much of the ancient prosperity along with which it had acquired, as a line in Dante reminds us, its harsh mediaeval reputation for usury, but was still a flourishing market centre, and Baptista Gambetta must have had frequent business relations with it. Thither he transferred himself with his family—^three boys, of whom the youngest, Joseph, was only four years old—and on the edge of the market square opened a shop, the Bazar G^nois, for the sale of groceries and pottery which he had formerly handled as freight. The family tradition sent the boy Joseph to sea. When ten years old he sailed as cabin boy on a French ship bound for Valparaiso. In addition to her visible manifest the vessel 2 GAMBETTA had in her cargo no small part of the future history of Europe, for Garibaldi was one of her officers and she carried as a passenger a young Italian priest, the Abb^ Mastai, later to be called Pius IX. But the world then knew nothing of names afterwards to be so famous, and, had the ship been lost with all hands in rounding Cape Horn, would never havt guessed that the course of its destinies had been changed by the wreck. As a matter of fact the voyage was uneventful. The cabin boy returned safe and sound, but with no love of travel. His experiences gave a savour to his conversation h\ later years—he was as good a talker as was to be expected o! the father of such a son—but he never again expressed any wish to abandon his easy-going course of life in rural France In due course he took over his share of his father's business, and in 1837, being then twenty-three, married Marie Magdaleim Orazie Messabie, a chemist's daughter. The couple made theii home over the shop, and there, on 2 April, 1838, a son w\a bom to them, L^on Michel. His second name, which he nevci ' used in later life, was given him in comphment to his paternri uncle, but the first, which the child's career was to prove sue! a happy inspiration, appears to have been freely chosen by his parents. A boy and a girl make an ideal family according to French bourgeois views, and the Gambettas' happiness was rounded off by the subsequent birth of their daughter Benedetta. His marriage definitely committed Joseph Gambetta to France, but neither when it took place nor in later years did he apply for naturalization papers. Accordingly his son, born on French soil of ItaHan parents, had his choice of citizenship, and opted for France in the year he came of age. But in all respects save its legal nationahty the Gambettas' household was typically French, and the boy's environment throws some light on the man's thought and policy. His parents, the shopkeeper's son and the chemist's daughter, belonged by birth and temper to the middle class which first asserted its power in 1830, and became the dominant force in European life in 1848. Gambetta's origin thus placed him in general sympathy with the spirit of his time, but because he sprang from the humblest section of the middle class he had no difficulty in estabhshing intimate contact with the working folk whose mouthpiece he was one day to become. A trifling circumstance determines his parents' place in the social scale. PARENTAGE—HOME LIFE—EDUCATION 3 The French tradition forbids a woman of the humbler class to as her it wear a hat she goes about daily marketing ; and was not until after Gambetta had delivered the speech which made his name ring through France and had paid a triumphal visit to his birthplace, that his mother first assumed the bonnet in which, in her old age, she gave herself the pleasure of being photographed. Gambetta's position on the border line between two classes, maintained as it was during years when the events of the Commune had made class consciousness acute, enabled hostile critics to label him opportunist. In fact, how- ever, he was the true son of his parents, a conservative democrat, eking to enlarge but not to demolish the structure of the rrench state, an enthusiastic reformer but never a revolu- tionary. There is no record that the boy passed through a sickly infancy, but when eight years old he nearly died of peritonitis. He recovered, but his health was never re-established, and all liis work was done in defiance of physical weakness. His mag- nificent spirit enabled him at every crisis to triumph over his ailments but such are and his ; triumphs hardly won, physical condition explains the peculiar quality, at once abounding and spasmodic, of Gambetta's energies. He paid the price exacted of those who kick against the pricks of indifferent health, for he was old and worn out when the internal trouble of his boyhood finall}^ carried him off at forty-four. This early illness was thus of more far-reaching consequence than the celebrated ^ accident which befell him three years after his recovery. He was watching a cutler friend drilling a hole when the steel snapped and the pointed end, flying off, entered the child's right eye. The sight was totally destroyed, and the local doctor thought it best to leave Nature to heal the mischief as she chose. Her method was to coat the damaged eye with a thick white film, which made Gambetta look like a cyclops. Eighteen years later the evil consequences of this neglect became apparent, and the sight of the remaining eye was threatened. Gambetta, now in Paris, obtained good medical advice, in obedience to which the useless right eye was removed, ^ In some accounts the dates of the illness and ol the accident are reversed. I follow M. Gheusi who had access to the family papers. The contrary order is based on the statement made by Joseph Gambetta just after his son's death. But the old man's memory may well have played him false, especially at such a time. 4 GAMBETTA to the great inconvenience of his pocket but to the great im- provement of his personal appearance. The lad's mother, whose influence on her son's whole life was as powerful as it was unobtrusive, is alleged to have taught his letters she did herself him ; but not charge with the whole burden of his early education, for he was only four when he was sent to a school kept by the P^res du Sacre Coeur de Picpus, one of whom was eventually murdered in the Commune. The choice indicates no specific rehgious attitude on the part of the parents. It seems to have been the only infant school avail- able, and the fact that his father suppHed it with groceries secured the boy's admission at a reduced fee. After five years' attendance he was withdrawn and sent to the seminary of Mont- faucon. Here again no religious motive was at work. This school, too, was among the father's customers, and fear of losing its patronage, combined with satisfactory terms and th( fact that a larger estabhshment was better suited to a growin; lad, induced him to make the transfer. Legend, howevei which at once gets busy with a man of Gambetta's origin and character, has it that the boy threatened to destroy the sight oi his remaining eye unless he was withdrawn from priestly control It is a pretty story, but the accident occurred almost midwa\ through the boy's term at the seminary.