Here, again, Thiers had the ground cleared before him by a great overturn, like that which enabled Bonaparte in his day to remodel France, and the builders of Modern Prussia--Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg--to build up their State from its ruins.

In particular, the inefficiency of the National Guards and of the Garde Mobile made it easy to reconstruct the French Army on the system of universal conscription in a regular army, the efficiency of which Prussia had so startlingly displayed in the campaigns of Koeniggraetz (Sadowa) and Sedan.

Thiers, however, had no belief in a short service system with its result of a huge force of imperfectly trained troops: he clung to the old professional army; and when that was shown to be inadequate to the needs of the new age, he pleaded that the period of compulsory service should be, not three, but five years.

On the Assembly demurring to the expense and vital strain for the people which this implied, he declared with passionate emphasis that he would resign unless the five years were voted.

They were voted (June 10, 1872).