The ORLEANISTS, the party desiring the restoration of a limited
monarchy, in the person of the _Count of Paris_, grandson of Louis
Philippe.
The BONAPARTISTS, whose candidate, after the death of the Emperor Louis
Napoleon in 1873, was the young _Prince Imperial_, son of Napoleon III.
[Napoleon II., the Duke of Reichstadt, had died in 1832.]
M. Thiers had not an easy task in harmonizing these various despotic
types with each other, nor in harmonizing them all collectively with
the republic of which he was chief. He abandoned the attempt in 1873,
and Marshal MacMahon, a more pronounced monarchist than he, succeeded
to the office of president, with the Duc de Broglie at the head of a
reactionary ministry. It began to look as if there might be a
restoration under some one of the three types mentioned. The Count of
Paris generously offered to relinquish his claim in favor of the Count
of Chambord (Henry V.), if he would accept the principles of a
constitutional monarchy, which that uncompromising Bourbon absolutely
refused to do.
In the meantime republican sentiment in France was not dead, nor
sleeping. Calamitous experiences had made it cautious. Freedom and
anarchy had so often been mistaken for each other, it was learning to
move slowly, not by leaps and bounds as heretofore.
Gambetta, the republican leader, once so fiery, had also grown
cautious. A patriot and a statesman, he was the one man who seemed to
possess the genius required by the conditions and the time, and also
the kind of magnetism which would draw together and crystallize the
scattered elements of his party.
It was the stimulus imparted by Gambetta which made the government at
last republican in fact as well as in name; and as reactionary
sentiment increased on the surface, a republican sentiment was all the
time gathering in volume and strength below.
The death of the prince imperial, in 1879, in South Africa, was a
severe blow to the imperialists, as the Bonapartists were also called,
who were now represented by Prince Victor, the son of Prince Napoleon.
Although these rival princes occupied a large place upon the stage,
other matters had the attention of the government of France, which
moved calmly on. The establishing of a formal protectorate over
Algeria belongs to this period.
Ever since the reign of Louis XIV. the hand of France had held Algeria
with more or less success. The Grand Monarch determined to rid the
Mediterranean of the "Barbary pirates," with which it was infested, and
so they were pursued and traced to their lairs in Algiers and Tunis.
From this time on attempts were made at intervals to establish a French
control over this African colony. During the reign of Louis Philippe
the French occupation became more assured, and under the Republic a
formal protectorate was declared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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