That would be a wrong assumption. After the Second Empire fell, a return to the Bourbon monarchy was considered the way forward. The problem was that the idiot next in line was too inflexible with regards to flag designs, so the Third Republic was set up with a largely ceremonial president with an extremely long term (7 years), with the hope that when that term is up, the idiot would have died, and the next in line would be the liberal Phillipe d'Orléans, compte de Paris. But by the time the term was up, the composition of parliament and the general attitude had changed, so the shaky, unstable, supposedly temporary Third Republic survived.

Henri, compte de Chambord (the inflexible idiot, proud descendant of a line of either inflexible or too flexible idiots), is thus considered as the French Washington - without him the Republic wouldn't have been possible.

> That would be a wrong assumption. After the Second Empire fell, a return to the Bourbon monarchy was considered the way forward. The problem was that the idiot next in line was too inflexible with regards to flag designs, so the Third Republic was set up with a largely ceremonial president with an extremely long term (7 years)

No, that’s only Tiers and the other idiots of the French right who had already dishonoured France during the the semaine sanglante and was only elected by the part of France which wasn’t occupied by Prussia. The left was republican but the commune had temporary weakened it. There was no way a return to monarchy would have hold. The population wasn’t really in favour of it which is why the third kept going.

Their disagreement amongst the right went much further than the flag anyway. No one agreed about who should rule and under which constitution.