For twenty years only had the Left Bank belonged to France, from 1794 to 1814. These years, however, were a period of rapid and far-reaching change. In place of the ninety-seven petty principalities four French departments had been organized and then incorporated into France, in many instances upon the petitions of the inhabitants themselves. Feudalism and ecclesiasticism had given way to democracy, the local laws had been superseded by the Code Napoléon, which survived on the Rhine till 1900. The younger generation learned French and looked toward France. The Prussians in 1814 were by no means generally welcomed. Small wonder that, when a new victory opened the way to the Rhine, the memories of a French Rhineland should suggest that the work of 1794 might be repeated and the new generation taught once more to turn to France. Small wonder that there were French who forgot, not only how quickly the French traditions had faded out after 1815, but also how the great industrial development of the nineteenth century had bound the Left Bank to the Right by bands of steel which only military force could destroy. Such force some were willing to apply, but others trusted still to the influence of the French language and the popularity and adaptability of a French occupation. They needed to ponder the prudent words of a French historian: “If it is well for public men to know a bit of history, this should be only on condition that they do not allow themselves to be dominated by their recollections of the past.”[35] He is a wise man indeed who can always distinguish between things as they are and things as he wishes them to be. In the French projects respecting the Left Bank there was of course something more than sentiment, and there was also something more than mere imperialism, whether economic or political. It was in this region that France must needs seek something of that reparation for the devastation of war which Germany seemed unable to furnish elsewhere. And it was here that France would also seek means of defence and guarantees against a new German invasion. For any particular plan more than one of these reasons might be urged, and it was not always possible to distinguish what was imperialistic by nature from what was necessary to the restoration and protection of France. It was not the least of the services performed for France by that shrewd old man, Georges Clémenceau, that he refused to be swept on by the extremists and limited his ultimate demands to the substantial results which the treaty secured.