FRANCE. 



303 



On the day before, Leon Say had made a 

 violent attack upon the old cabinet. He 

 brought forward his interpellation, asking the 

 ministry why it had delayed ordering elections 

 for the vacant seats in the Assembly. He ac- 

 cused the Government of having postponed 

 those elections in the interest of their own 

 party, and concluded with the words : '' His- 

 tory will say of the cabinet of May 24th, that 

 it began with the corruption of the press, and 

 ended with the falsification of the elections." 

 The Government was defended by M. Beule, 

 the Minister of the Interior, and the order of 

 the day " pure and simple," which was pro- 

 posed by a member of the Right and accepted 

 by the ministry, was adopted by 364 against 

 314. 



On December 14th, the Republican party 

 obtained a great success at four supplementary 

 elections for the National Assembly, in the 

 departments of Seine-et-Oise, Finistere, and 

 Ande. All the four seats were carried by the 

 Republican candidates ; the next greatest num- 

 ber of votes were received by the Bonapartists, 

 the royalists being everywhere lowest on the 

 poll. 



Among the memorable events of the year 

 belongs the trial of Marshal Bazaine. This 

 began on October 6th, the Duke d'Anmale 

 being president of the court. On December 

 10th, the court sentenced Bazaine to degrada- 

 tion and death ; but immediately after the 

 sentence all the members of the court signed 

 the following appeal to mercy: "The court- 

 martial has just pronounced judgment, and 

 with the sanction of the Minister of War we 

 have the honor to communicate to you. As 

 jurymen our consciences alone must guide us, 

 and as judges it has been our duty to apply an 

 inexorable law. The marshal, however, re- 

 ceived the command of the army under the 

 most unfortunate circumstances, and the court 

 cannot forget that every time he was engaged 

 on the battle-field he was equal to himself. 

 Neither can the army forget the glorious ser- 

 vices rendered by the volunteers of 1831." In 

 compliance with this appeal, Marshal Mac- 

 Mahon commuted the sentence of death into 

 twenty years of seclusion. He also decided 

 that Marshal Bazaine is to bear the effects of 

 military degradation, but spares him the 

 humiliating ceremony usually attending it. 

 The sentence of the marshal will be carried 

 out on the Island of Sainte-Marguerite, op- 

 posite Cannes. 



Although the conservative majority of the 

 National Assembly did not dare to accomplish, 

 as it desired, the restoration of a monarchy in 

 the course of the year 1873, the party which 

 prefers a monarchical form of government 

 under Henry V. as King of France to any other 

 form of government, continues in the ascen- 

 dency in the National Assembly, and is eagerly 

 intent upon smoothing the way for the real- 

 ization of its projects. Though not on the 

 throne, the Count de Chambord is now re- 



garded as their legitimate king by a larger 

 number of Frenchmen than at any previous 

 period of his life. His movements during the 

 coming year will therefore be of greater im- 

 portance and command general attention.. It 

 is a noteworthy fact that the legitimacy of 

 the uncompromising standard-bearer of legit- 

 imate principles is not beyond dispute. During 

 the violent conflicts between monarchists and 

 republicans in 1873, the latter recalled the 

 fact that soon after the deliverance of his 

 mother, the Duchesse de Berry, on September 

 29, 1820, which took place seven months after 

 the death of the Duke de Berry, a protest of the 

 Duke Louis Philippe of Orlea'n?, then in Lon- 

 don, was published, in which the pregnancy of 

 the duchess was declared to be simulated and 

 the child to be spurious. The duke disowned 

 subsequently the project, but, when it was re- 

 published alter he had become King of France, 

 he did not consider it necessary to repeat his 

 disavowal. Another doubt of the legitimacy 

 of the Count de Chambord is based upon the 

 fact that his father, before his marriage with 

 the Neapolitan princess, the mother of the 

 count, lived in morganatic union with a young 

 English lady, Miss Brown, which was not rec- 

 ognized by Louis XVIII., but was never law- 

 fully dissolved. A number of republican papers 

 discussed these questions, without, however, 

 producing the least impression upon the minds 

 of the Legitimists. Although a number of let- 

 ters and manifestoes of the count have been 

 published since 1871, in which year he as- 

 sumed for the first time, in signing a proc- 

 lamation, dated from Chambord, the title of 

 King, he has never officially announced his 

 political programme. He has invariably pro- 

 fessed himself adevoted partisan of the Catholic 

 religion and the rights of the papacy, and has 

 repeatedly declared that he would not make 

 the acceptance of the throne contingent upon 

 any previous conditions ; but that, when re- 

 stored to the throne, he would be willing to 

 make reasonable concessions to public opinion. 

 The count has been married since November 

 16, 1846, to the Princess Maria Theresa, Arch- 

 duchess of Austria-Este, but the marriage has 

 remained without offspring, and with his death 

 the elder and main line of the French Bour- 

 bons is therefore likely to become extinct. 

 The heir-apparent to the throne is the chief 

 of the younger line of the French Bourbons, 

 or the house of Orleans, Louis Philippe, Count 

 de Paris.* Born on August 24, 1838, he was 

 only four years old when he lost his father, 

 Duke Ferdinand of Orleans, the eldest son of 

 King Louis Philippe. When he was ten years 

 old, the house of Orleans lost the throne by 

 the Revolution of 1848. During the civil war 

 in the United States, he served for some time 



* In view of the political importance which the events 

 in France and Spain have again given to the famous house 

 of Bourbon, we give this year a genealogical table (see 

 page 304) of this BOUBC, which shows the relationship of 

 nil the different branches, and ttfe names of all the living 

 male members. 



