While all this was going on as it were underground, the Cæsarism of the stock-exchange was also beginning to get the worst of it in the game of statecraft, until at last the results of the 104 consolidation of nationalities, which was the chief aim of the bourgeois revolt of 1848, became obvious in the revival of the old animosities between Germany and France. Bismarck, who had become the attorney-dictator of Germany, had got to know the weakness of the showy empire of Louis Napoleon, and had a well warranted confidence in that carefully elaborated machine, the Prussian army. He laid a trap for the French Cæsar, who fell into it, perhaps not blindly, but rather driven by a kind of gambler’s last hope, akin to despair.
A great race war followed, the natural and inevitable outcome of which was the hopeless defeat of the French army, led as it was by self-seekers and corrupt scoundrels of the worst kind, most of whom lacked even that lowest form of honour which makes a Dugald Dalgetty faithful to the colours under which he marches. The Second Empire was swept away. The new Republic proclaimed after the collapse of Sedan still kept up a hopeless resistance to the unbroken strength of Germany—hopeless, since the corruption of the Empire still lived on in 195 the bourgeois republic, as typified in the person of the political gamester, Gambetta. Paris was invested, and taken after a long resistance that reflected infinite credit on the general population, who bore the misery of the siege with prodigious patience and courage, but no less disgrace on those who pretended to organise its defence, but who were really far more inclined to hand over the city to the Germans than allow it to gain a victory under the auspices of the proletariat.
All this must be looked upon by Socialists as merely the prelude to the great drama of the Commune, whose aims and influence will form the subject of another chapter.
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