604 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October policy open to it — ' recul jusqu'aux anciennes frontieres, maintien du territoire defini par la Constitution, conquetes volontairement bornees jusqu'aux limites naturelles [the Rhine, Alps, and Pyrenees], expansion indefinie et imperialisme revolutionnaire par la propagande a main armee '. M. Pariset would have been a whole-hearted supporter of the third policy, and the tenor of his second volume is that every misfortune which befell France was due to the adoption of the last programme by Bonaparte. Throughout the account of his political and military domination, M. Pariset is obviously striving to be fair to a character naturally antipathetic. Two quotations illustrate his point of view : ' Si la guerre est un art qui vaut par lui-meme, la manoeuvre de Bassano est digne de l'admiration des militaires.' * Bonaparte se representait la paix comme un moyen et non comme un but/ This second dictum may be compared with the cause recently assigned for Napoleon's ultimate failure by his last and greatest disciple in the military art, Marshal Foch : ' II oublia que la guerre n'est pas le but supreme, car au-dessus d'elle il y a la paix.' During the Consulate and the Empire the foundations of contemporary France, and indeed of contemporary Europe, were laid. M. Pariset describes the political, economic, and social reconstruction in considerable detail and with admirable clarity. His two volumes are a notable contribu- tion to modern history. The general reader will read them with enjoy- ment and the student cannot afford to do without them. M. A. Pickford. The fourth and fifth volumes, which are contributed by M. S. Charlety, together with the sixth and seventh by M. Charles Seignobos, give on the whole an admirable account of French history from the First Restoration to the foundation of the Third Republic. In accordance with the general plan of the work, an important part is allotted to the development of political ideas, and to the religious, social, and economic life of the period. M. Charlety in particular devotes one long chapter in each of his volumes to a detailed examination of economic conditions under the Restoration and the July monarchy. He fully confirms the conclusions at which Dr. Clapham has recently arrived, as to the conservatism of French industrial life, and further expresses the opinion that there was a real depression in the condition of both the agricultural and town labourer during this period. He follows the general view, however, in regarding the revolution of 1848 as essentially the revolt of the bourgeoisie against Louis-Philippe and Guizot, whose attempt to transform the July monarchy into a narrow and quasi-legitimist con- servatism seemed so near complete success. He considers the working classes to have been thoroughly disheartened and cowed by their defeat at Lyons and Paris in 1834. The religious revival, without which the course and the sequel of the revolution cannot be properly understood, meets with full and interesting treatment. One of the most valuable features of these volumes is the detailed examination of the distribution of political parties in 1820, 1850, and 1870. Two things in particular are striking in this survey : the large areas which always give their support to the de facto government, as being the best guarantee of the preservation
