Note (Back) — Chapter XV

326. The Problem of a Permanent Government.—Pending a diplomatic adjustment, the Assembly was disposed to defer the establishment of a permanent governmental system. But the problem could not long be kept in the background. There were several possible solutions. A party of Legitimists, i.e., adherents of the old Bourbon monarchy, was resolved upon the establishment of a kingdom under the Count of Chambord, grandson of the Charles X. who had been deposed at the revolution of 1830. Similarly, a party of Orleanists was insistent upon a restoration of the house of Orleans, overthrown in 1848, in the person of the Count of Paris, a grandson of the citizen-king Louis Philippe. A smaller group of those who, despite the discredit which the house of Bonaparte had suffered in the war, remained loyal to the Napoleonic tradition, was committed to a revival of the prostrate empire of the captive Napoleon III. Finally, in Paris and some portions of the outlying country there was uncompromising demand for the definite establishment of a republic.[451] In the Assembly the monarchists outnumbered the republicans five to two, and, although the members had been chosen primarily for their opinions relative to peace rather than to constitutional forms, the proportion throughout the nation was probably about the same. The republican outlook, however, was vastly improved by the fact that the monarchists, having nothing in common save opposition to republicanism, were hopelessly disagreed among themselves.[452]