The revolution of 1830 had been so sudden that, for a moment, we Republicans thought it was complete; the report of its arms and its cries of liberty had reverberated throughout Belgium, Italy and Poland; three nations rose and cried, "France, come to our aid!" An appeal like this France always listens to, and General La Fayette replied in the name of France. The most lively and popular sympathy had, moreover, burst forth in our towns and countrysides in favour of revolutions carried out on our own lines; partial and distant eruptions of that great volcano whose crater is in Paris, and which seems at times extinct, like Etna, but, as deceptive as Etna, is always burning! Shouts of "_Vivent l'Italie, la Belgique et la Pologne!_" filled our streets and entered everywhere through the windows and doors of royal and ministerial palaces. It was scarcely three months after the Revolution; at that period all still glowed with the sun of the Three Days, the grand voice of the people was still listened to, and the Government only had to promise through General La Fayette, as we have said above, for the nations of Belgium, Italy and Poland to be kept from perishing. And we heard the cries of joy of these foreign patriots in less than four months change to cries of distress. But what other could we expect? Let them succour Italy by sending one of the old generals, who would have shown them the way to make a new army, and Poland by diverting the Czar's plans, by inciting--an easy task for us--Turkey on one side and Persia on the other. Thus caught in a triangle of fire, we should leave Russia to contend, and we should divide between our two neighbour nations the most effective aid of our presence and of our arms. The people, true and profound of instinct, would thus feel, without being able to account for the means, the three probable results, and they would receive with shouts of joy the proclamation of the ministerial system of nonintervention, and the royal promise that the Polish nationality should not perish. Advanced as were the ministers of Louis-Philippe's kingdom, they must either go to war or forswear it: by making war, they would get into trouble with kings; by forswearing it, they would get into trouble with the people. One way only remained: to prove to the country that it had too much to do in respect of its own affairs to busy itself in meddling with those of others; it was like giving to France an internal fever, as we have already said; through being taken up with its own sufferings it would have more sympathy for those of others. A small civil war in la Vendée would help its outlook wonderfully. It was therefore necessary to send far out of that country, upon which they wished to experiment, all strong men who might compromise movements from their beginnings, and all shrewd men who might guess the real cause of those movements.