The fact, however, that there has been no widespread revolt in Russia since the year 1863, shows that democracy has not been the chief influence tending to dissolve or suppress discontent. As we shall see in a later chapter, Russia has defied constitutionalism and ground down alien races and creeds; yet (up to the year 1904) no great rising has shaken her autocratic system to its base. This seems to prove that the immunity of the present age in regard to insurrections is due rather to the triumphs of mechanical science than to the progress of democracy. The fact is not pleasing to contemplate; but it must be faced. So also must its natural corollary: that the minority, if rendered desperate, may be driven to arm itself with new and terrible engines of destruction in order to shatter that superiority of force with which science has endowed the centralised Governments of to-day. Certain it is that desperation, perhaps brought about by a sense of helplessness in face of an armed nation, was one of the characteristics of the Paris Commune, as it was also of Nihilism in Russia. In fact the Communist effort of 1871 may be termed a belated attempt on the part of a daring minority to dominate France by seizing the machinery of government at Paris. The success of the Extremists of 1793 and 1848 in similar experiments--not to speak of the Communistic rising of Babeuf in 1797--was only temporary; but doubtless it encouraged the "Reds" of 1871 to make their mad bid for power. Now, however, the case was very different. France was no longer a lethargic mass, dominated solely by the eager brain of Paris. The whole country thrilled with political life. For the time, the provinces held the directing power, which had been necessarily removed from the capital; and--most powerful motive of all--they looked on the Parisian experiment as gross treason to _la patrie_, while she lay at the feet of the Germans. Thus, the very motives which for a space lent such prestige and power to the Communistic Jacobins of 1793 told against their imitators in 1871.