Then, with some of her most dearly prized historic treasures in ashes, and monuments gone, Paris, scarred and defaced, had quiet at last; and the organization of the third republic proceeded.
The uncertain nature of the republican sentiment existing throughout France at this critical moment is indicated by the character of the Assembly elected by the people.

More than two-thirds of the members chosen by France to organize her new republic were _monarchists_! The name monarchist at that time comprehended three distinct parties, each with a powerful following, namely: The LEGITIMISTS, acting in the interest of the direct Bourbon line, represented by the _Count of Chambord_, the grandson of Charles X., called by his party _Henry V_.
The ORLEANISTS, the party desiring the restoration of a limited monarchy, in the person of the _Count of Paris_, grandson of Louis Philippe.
The BONAPARTISTS, whose candidate, after the death of the Emperor Louis Napoleon in 1873, was the young _Prince Imperial_, son of Napoleon III.
[Napoleon II., the Duke of Reichstadt, had died in 1832.] M.Thiers had not an easy task in harmonizing these various despotic types with each other, nor in harmonizing them all collectively with the republic of which he was chief.

He abandoned the attempt in 1873, and Marshal MacMahon, a more pronounced monarchist than he, succeeded to the office of president, with the Duc de Broglie at the head of a reactionary ministry.

It began to look as if there might be a restoration under some one of the three types mentioned.

The Count of Paris generously offered to relinquish his claim in favor of the Count of Chambord (Henry V.), if he would accept the principles of a constitutional monarchy, which that uncompromising Bourbon absolutely refused to do.
In the meantime republican sentiment in France was not dead, nor sleeping.