THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC
[Illustration: "Poor France! The Branches are broken, but the Trunk
still holds."
_By Daumier in "Charivari."_]
It is not strange that during these years American cartoonists
concerned themselves but little with matters outside of their own
country. For more than a decade after the close of the Franco-Prussian
War there were very few episodes which assumed international
importance, and still fewer in which the United States had any
personal interest. France was amply occupied in recovering from the
effects of her exhaustive struggle; United Germany was undergoing the
process of crystallizing into definite form. Europe, as a whole, had
no more energy than was needed to attend to domestic affairs and to
keeping a jealous eye upon English ambition in Egypt and Russian
aggression in the Balkan States. For some little time after the French
Commune echoes of that internecine struggle were still to be found in
the work of caricaturists, both in France and Germany. Before taking
final leave of that veteran French artist, Honore Daumier, it seems
necessary to allude briefly to a few of the cartoons of that
splendidly tragic series of his old age dealing with the France which,
having undergone the horrors of the Germanic invasion and of the
Commune, is shattered but not broken, and begins to look forward with
wistful eyes to a time when she shall have recovered her strength and
her prosperity. One of the most striking of these cartoons represents
France as a deep-rooted tree which has been bent and rent by the
passing whirlwind. "Poor France! The branches are broken, but the
trunk holds always." Simple as the design is, the artist by countless
touches of light and of shadow has given it a somber significance
which long remains in the memory. It was to Napoleon that Daumier
bitterly ascribed the misfortunes of _La Patrie_, and in these
cartoons he lost no opportunity of attacking Napoleonic legend. Stark
and dead, nailed to the Book of History is the Imperial eagle. "You
will remain outside, nailed fast on the cover, a hideous warning to
future generations of Frenchmen," is Daumier's moral. Of brighter
nature is the cartoon called "The New Year." It represents the dawning
of 1872, and portrays France sweeping away the last broken relics of
her period of disaster.
[Illustration: "You shall stay there, nailed to the Cover, a Warning
to Future Generations of Frenchmen."
_By Daumier in "Charivari."_]
In Germany, also, one finds a few tardy cartoons bearing upon Napoleon
III. Even in the _Fliegende Blaetter_, a periodical which throughout
its history has confined itself, with few exceptions, to social
satire, perennial skits upon the dignified Herr Professor, the
self-important young lieutenant, the punctilious university student,
one famous cartoon appeared late in the year 1871, entitled "The Root
of All Evil." It portrayed Napoleon III., as a gigantic, distorted
vegetable of the carrot or turnip order, his flabby features distended
into tuberous rotundity, the familiar hall-mark of his sweeping
mustache and imperial lengthened grotesquely into the semblance of a
threefold root. Still better known is a series of cartoons which ran
through half a dozen numbers of the _Fliegende Blaetter_, entitled "The
Franco-Prussian War: A Tragedy in Five Acts," in which the captions
are all clever applications of lines from Schiller's "Maid of
Orleans". As compared with the work of really great cartoonists, this
series has little to make it memorable. But as an expression of a
victorious nation's good-natured contempt, its tendency to view the
whole fierce struggle of 1870-71 as an amusing farce enacted by a
company of grotesque marionettes, it is not without significance and
interest.
[Illustration: The New Year brings New Hope for France.
_By Daumier in "Charivari."_]
[Illustration: "The Root of all Evil."
_From the "Fliegende Blaetter" in 1871._]
Almost as Germanic in sentiment and in execution as the "Maid of
Orleans" series in the _Fliegende Blaetter_ was the curious little
volume entitled "The Fight at Dame Europa's School," written and
illustrated by Thomas Nast. This skit, which was printed in New York
after the close of the War, contained thirty-three drawings which are
remarkable chiefly in that they are comparatively different from
anything else that Nast ever did and bear a striking resemblance to
the war cartoons of the German papers. The Louis Napoleon of this book
is so much like the Louis Napoleon of the _Fliegende Blaetter_ that
one is bound to feel that one was the direct inspiration of the
other. The text of the book, though nothing astonishing, serves its
purpose in elucidating the drawings. It tells of the well-ordered
educational establishment kept by Dame Europa in which the five
largest boys acted as monitors, to keep the unruly pupils in order.
These boys were Louis, William, Aleck, Joseph, and John. If a dispute
arose among any of the smaller boys, the monitors had to examine into
its cause, and, if possible, to settle it amicably. Should it be
necessary to fight the matter out, they were to see fair play, stop
the encounter when it had gone far enough, and at all times to uphold
justice, and to prevent tyranny and bullying. In this work Master
Louis and Master John were particularly prominent. There was a
tradition in the school of a terrific row in times past, when a
monitor named Nicholas attacked a very dirty little boy called
Constantine. John and Louis pitched in, and gave Nicholas such a
thrashing that he never got over it, and soon afterward left the
school. Now each of the upper boys had a little garden of his own in
which he took great pride and interest. In the center of each garden
there was an arbor, fitted up according to the taste and means of its
owner. Louis had the prettiest arbor of all, while that of John was a
mere tool-house. When the latter wished to enjoy a holiday he would
punt himself across the brook and enjoy himself in the arbor of his
friend Louis. By the side of Louis's domain was that of William, who,
though proud of his own garden, never went to work in it without
casting an envious glance on two little flower beds which now belonged
to Louis, but which ought by rights he thought to belong to him. Over
these flower beds he often talked with his favorite fag, a shrewd lad
named Mark, full of deep tricks and dodges.
[Illustration: The whole spirit of these pictures, which appeared in
the _Fliegende Blaetter_ after the Napoleonic downfall in 1871, is a
travesty on the splendid lines of Schiller in the "Maid of Orleans"
(Jungfrau von Orleans).]
[Illustration: Fig. 294. La situation politique en France. (Novembre
1873.)
Caricature de Felix Regamey, publiee dans le _Harper's Weekly_ de
New-York.]
"There is only one way to do it," said Mark. "If you want the flower
beds, you must fight Louis for them, and I believe you will lick him
all to smash; but you must fight him alone."
"How do you mean?" replied William.
"I mean, you must take care that the other monitors don't interfere in
the quarrel. If they do, they will be sure to go against you. Remember
what a grudge Joseph owes you for the licking you gave him not along
ago; and Aleck, though to be sure Louis took little Constantine's part
against him in that great bullying row, is evidently beginning to grow
jealous of your influence in the school. You see, old fellow, you have
grown so much lately, and filled out so wonderfully that you are
getting really quite formidable. Why, I recollect the time when you
were quite a little chap!"
Thereupon the astute Mark designs a plan by which William may provoke
the encounter while making Louis seem the aggressor. And so on, under
the guise of fistfight between two schoolboys, Nast tells of all the
events of the struggle of 1871; the outbreak of hostilities, the
Baptism of Fire, Sedan, the German march on Paris, the Siege, and the
different attitudes assumed by the other monitors.