French Restoration

Through the Collapse of the Third Republic

Following the ouster of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, the Allies restored the Bourbon Dynasty to the French throne.

The ensuing period is called, in French, la Restauration, characterized by a sharp conservative reaction and the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic church as a power in French politics. Louis XVIII, brother of the deposed Louis XVI ruled from 1814-1824 and was succeeded by his brother Charles X, in 1824.

The issues raised by the Revolution were not settled, and when Charles X attempted to bring the state closer to that of the Ancien R�gime, the people of Paris rose up in the July Revolution of 1830.

Charles X was forced to flee and Louis Philippe ascended the throne, and ruled, not as "King of France" but as "King of the French," an evocative difference among contemporaries.

Most historians treat the resulting July Monarchy, 1830 - 1848, as a separate period in French history.

Louis Philippe was himself ousted with the Revolutions of 1848. The Second Republic was formed after the election of Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as President (1848-1852), who subsequently had himself declared Emperor Napoleon III of the Second Empire, from 1852-1871.

Domestic Affairs

From 1852 to 1871 France was ruled by Emperor Louis Napoleon III. Much of the era saw great prosperity and economic growth.

Under the influence of the Saint Simonians, early French socialists and businessmen instituted great credit establishments and vast public works were entered upon: the Credit Foncier de France, the Credit mobilier and the conversion of the railways into six great companies between 1852 and 1857.

The rage for speculation was increased by the inflow of Californian and Australian gold, and consumption was facilitated by a general fall in prices between 1856 and 1860, due to an economic revolution which was soon to overthrow the tariff wall, as it had done already in England.

Thus, French activity flourished between 1852 and 1857, and was merely temporarily checked by the crisis of 1857.

Paris was transformed by Baron Haussmann, taking on its modern character. The Exposition Universelle (1855) was its culminating point.

The great enthusiasm of the romantic period was over; philosophy became sceptical and literature merely entertainment. The festivities of the court at Compi�gne set the fashion for the bourgeoisie, satisfied with this energetic government which kept such good guard over their bank balances.

The working class had never forgotten the loi (law) Le Chapelier of 1791, which by forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placed them at the mercy of their employers.

Neither had they forgotten how the limited suffrage had conferred upon capital a political monopoly which had put it out of reach of the law, nor how each time they had left their position of rigid isolation in order to save the Charter or universal suffrage, the triumphant bourgeoisie had re-paid them at the last with neglect.

The silence of public opinion under the Empire and the prosperous state of business had completed the separation of the labour party from the political parties. The visit of an elected and paid labour delegation to the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave the emperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with that party, and these relations were, to his mind, all the more profitable, since the labour party, by refusing to associate their social and industrial claims with the political ambitions of the bourgeoisie, maintained a neutral attitude between the parties, and could, if necessary, divide them, while by its keen criticism of society, it aroused the conservative instincts of the bourgeoisie and consequently checked their enthusiasm for liberty.

A law of May 23, 1863, gave the workmen the right, as in England, to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another law, of May 25, 1864, gave them the right to enforce better conditions of labour by organising strikes.

Still further, the emperor permitted the workmen to imitate their employers by establishing unions for the permanent protection of their interests. And finally, when the working-class, with the characteristic French tendency to insist on the universal application of a theory, wished to substitute the narrow utilitarianism of the English trade unions with the ideas common to the wage-earning classes of the whole world, they put no obstacles in the way of their leader Tolain's plan for founding an International Association of Workers (Soci�t� Internationale des Travailleurs).

At the same time, he encouraged the provision made by employers for thrift and relief and for improving the condition of the working classes.

Foreign Affairs

The Crimean War

Napoleon III's foreign policy was based on, "L'Empire, c'est la paix". So long as his power was not yet established, Napoleon III made special efforts to reassure European opinion, which had been made uneasy by his previous protestations against the treaties of 1815.

The Crimean War, in which, supported by England and the king of Sardinia, he upheld against Russia the policy of the integrity of the Turkish empire, a policy traditional in France since the days of Francis I, won him the adherence both of the old parties and the Liberals.

And this war was the prototype of all the rest. It was entered upon with no clearly defined military purpose, and continued in a hesitating way. This was the cause, after the victory of the allies at the Battle of Alma (September 14, 1854), of the long and costly siege of Sebastopol (September 8, 1855).

Intervention in Italy

Count Walewsk (son of Napoleon I and Maria Walewski), minister for foreign affairs for Napoleon III, gave a sudden and unexpected extension of scope to the deliberations of the Congress of Paris (1856) by inviting the plenipotentiaries to consider the questions of Greece, Rome, Naples, etc. Cavour and Piedmont immediately benefited by it, for thanks to Napoleon III, they were able to lay the Italian question before an assembly of diplomatic Europe, and before Napoleon in particular.

France and its Emperor were emboldened by the success in Crimea and turned towards Italy, where public sentiment in France had long opposed the Austrian domination.

The emperor was divided between the empress Eug�nie, who, as a Spaniard and a devout Catholic, was hostile to anything which might threaten the papacy, and Prince Napoleon, who, as brother-in-law of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, favoured the cause of Piedmont. He hoped to conciliate both sides by setting up an Italian federation, intending to reserve the presidency of it to Pope Pius IX as a mark of respect to the moral authority of the Church.

Moreover, the very difficulty of the undertaking appealed to the emperor, elated by his recent success in the Crimea. At the secret meeting between Napoleon and Count Cavour (July 20, 1858) the eventual armed intervention of France, demanded by Orsini before he mounted the scaffold, was promised.

Austria's issued ultimatum demanding the immediate cessation of Piedmont's preparations for war precipitated the Italian expedition.

On May 3, 1859, Napoleon declared his intention of making Italy "free from the Alps to the Adriatic." Two months later after the victories of Montebello, Magenta and Solferino, France and Austria signed the Peace of Villafranca on July 9, 1859.

Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon III, who in turn ceded it to Victor Emmanuel. Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes, and the Romagna to the pope, now president of an Italian federation.

France received Savoy from Piedmont. The conflict and the resulting near unification of Italy had given great offence to the Catholics, to whose support the establishment of the Empire was largely due.

Franco-Prussian Rivalry

A new rivalry was quickly developing with quickly rising Prussia. After 1865, the temporary agreement which had united Austria and Prussia for the purpose of administering the conquered duchies gave way to a silent antipathy.

Although the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was not unexpected, its rapid termination and outcome came as a severe shock to France. Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his throne and new influence for France by an intervention at the proper moment between combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted. His calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the Battle of Sadowa (Koniggratz) on July 4, 1866.

The Treaty of Prague put an end to the secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollern for the hegemony of Germany, which had been France's opportunity; and Prussia could afford to humour the just claims of Napoleon by establishing between her North German Confederation and the South German states the illusory frontier of the Main.

The belated efforts of the French emperor to obtain "compensation" on the left bank of the Rhine at the expense of the South German states, made matters worse. France realised with an angry surprise that on her eastern frontier had arisen a military power by which her influence, if not her existence, was threatened; that in the name of the principle of nationality unwilling populations had been brought under the sway of a dynasty by tradition militant and aggressive, by tradition the enemy of France; that this new and threatening power had destroyed French influence in Italy, which owed the acquisition of Venetia to a Prussian alliance and to Prussian arms; and that all this had been due to Napoleon, outwitted and outmanoeuvred at every turn, since his first interview with Otto von Bismarck at Biarritz in October 1865.

The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire. In Mexico, the greatest idea of the reign ended in a humiliating withdrawal before the ultimatum of the United States, while Italy, relying on her new alliance with Prussia and already forgetful of her promises, was mobilising the revolutionary forces to complete her unity by conquering Rome.

When the imperial diplomacy made a belated attempt to obtain from the victorious Bismarck those territorial compensations on the Rhine, in Belgium and in Luxembourg, which it ought to have been possible to exact from him earlier at Biarritz, Benedetti added to the mistake of asking at the wrong time the humiliation of obtaining nothing.

Even in Japan, the Bakufu government, which Napoleon had supported by sending a military mission, finally lost to Japanese Imperial forces in the Boshin War, leading to the Meiji restoration.

The Universal Exhibition (1867) was marked by Berezowski's attack on Tsar Alexander II of Russia, and its success was clouded by the tragic fate of the unhappy emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Thiers exclaimed, "There are no blunders left for us to make".

France drifted in the direction of war with Prussia. Count Beust unsuccessfully revived, on behalf of the Austrian government, the project abandoned by Napoleon since 1866 of a settlement on the basis of the status quo with reciprocal disarmament. Napoleon refused, on hearing from Colonel Stoffel, his military attach� at Berlin, that Prussia would not agree to disarmament; but he was more anxious than he was willing to show.

A reconstitution of the military organisation seemed to him to be necessary. This Marshal Niel was unable to obtain either from the Bonapartist Opposition, who feared the electors, whose old patriotism had given place to a commercial spirit, or from the Republican opposition, who were unwilling to strengthen the despot.

Franco-Prussian War

The desired pretext was offered on July 3, 1870, by the candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain. To the French people it seemed that Prussia was reviving against France the traditional policy of the Habsburgs. France, having rejected for dynastic reasons the candidature of a Frenchman, the duc de Montpensier, was threatened with a German prince. Never had the emperor, now both physically and morally ill, greater need of statesmanlike advice and the support of an enlightened public opinion. He could find neither.

Olivier's Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealous for national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upon doing something great, and swept away by the force of that opinion which it had itself set free, at once accepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for it with a light heart.

In face of the decided declaration of the duc de Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, before the Legislative Body of July 6, 1870, Europe, in alarm, supported the efforts of French diplomacy and obtained the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature.

This did not suit the views either of the war party in Paris or of Bismarck, who wanted the other side to declare war. Gramont's ill-advised action in demanding from King Wilhelm I of Germany a guarantee of future conduct, gave Bismarck his opportunity, and the king's refusal was transformed into an insult by the "editing" of the Ems telegram. The chamber, in spite of the desperate efforts of Thiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to 10 in favour of the war.

France was isolated, as much through the duplicity of Napoleon as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to the diets of Munich and Stuttgart of the written text of the claims laid by Napoleon on the territories of Hesse and Bavaria had since August 22, 1866, estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed the southern states to sign the military convention with Prussia. Owing to a similar series of blunders, the rest of Europe had become hostile.

Russia, which had been Bismarck's study, both during and after the Polish insurrection of 1863, to draw closer to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the same indiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises made at Stuttgart.

The hope of gaining a revenge in the East for her defeat of 1856 while France was in difficulties made her decide on a benevolent neutrality. The disclosure of Benedetti's designs of 1867 on Belgium and Luxembourg equally ensured an unfriendly neutrality on the part of the United Kingdom.

The emperor counted on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for which he had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August 1867). Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and 1866, was not ready and asked for a delay before joining in the war; while the hesitating friendships of Italy could only be won by the evacuation of Rome.

The chassepots of Mentana, Rouher's "Never", and the hostility of the Catholic empress to any secret article which should open to Italy the gates of the Italian capital, deprived France of her last friend.

Marshal Leboeuf's armies were no more effective than Gramont's alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers of the French army, the lack of preparation for war at headquarters, the irresponsibility of the field officers, the absence of any contingency plan, and the reliance on chance, previously a successful strategy for the emperor, instead of on scientific warfare, were all apparent as early as the insignificant engagement of Saarbr�cken.

Thus the French army proceeded by disastrous stages from Weissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler, Borny, Gravelotte, Noisseyule and Saint-Privat to the siege of Metz and the slaughter at Illy.

By the capitulation of Sedan, the Empire lost its only support, the army. Paris was left unprotected and emptied of troops, with a woman at the Tuileries, a terrified Assembly at the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao, without authority, and leaders of the Opposition who fled as the catastrophe approached.

On September 4, 1870, the republican deputies of Paris at the H�tel de Ville constituted a provisional government.

The Empire had fallen, the emperor was a prisoner in Germany, and France now embarked on the era of the Third Republic.

The French Third Republic

It was a republican parliamentary democracy that was created on September 4, 1870, following the collapse of the Empire of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War. It survived until the invasion of France by the German Third Reich in 1940.

In many ways, it was an accidental and unloved republic that stumbled from crisis to crisis before its final collapse. It was never intended to be a long-term republic at all.

Napoleon III had become the second Emperor of France in 1852, following in the footsteps of his uncle Napoleon I.

However, the French Second Empire lasted only eighteen years because of the emergence of another world power, one that was to profoundly transform the balance of power in Europe - the German Empire.

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, who sought to bring his state to ascendancy in Germany, realized that if a unified German state was to be created, some unifying force was needed to bring this about - a nationalist war with France seemed the perfect force to bring the other German states into line with Prussia.

A resulting German defeat of France would firmly establish the new Germany on the world stage within secure borders.

Through clever manipulation of the Ems Dispatch, Bismarck and French public opinion goaded France into declaring war on Prussia, beginning the Franco-Prussian War.

After Napoleon's capture by the Prussians at Sedan, General Louis Jules Trochu and the politician L�on Gambetta overthrew the Second Empire and established the "Government of National Defense" which later became the conservative Third Republic.

Its creation was overshadowed by the settlement of peace terms with Prussia and the subsequent revolution in Paris known as the Paris Commune, which maintained a radical regime for two months until its bloody suppression in May 1871.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the regime of Napoleon III, the clear majority of French people and the overwhelming majority of the French National Assembly wished to return to a constitutional monarchy.

There were two competing claimaints to the throne, each supported by political groups. The Legitimists supported the heirs to Charles X, recognising as king his grandson, Henri, Comte de Chambord, alias Henry V.

The Orl�anists supported the heirs to Louis Philippe, recognising as king his son, Louis Philippe, Comte de Paris. However the two groups came to a compromise, whereby the childless Comte de Chambord would be recognised as king, with the Comte de Paris recognised as his heir.

Consequently, in 1871, the throne was offered to the Comte de Chambord. In 1830, Charles X had abdicated in favour of Chambord, then a child, and Louis Philippe had been recognised as king instead.

In 1871, Chambord had no wish to be a constitutional monarch but a semi-absolutist one like his grandfather Charles X, or like the contemporary rulers of Prussia/Germany. Moreover - and this became the ultimate reason the restoration never occurred - he refused to reign over a state that used the Tricolore that was associated with the Revolution of 1789 and the July Monarchy of the man who seized the throne from him in 1830, the citizen-king, Louis Philippe, King of the French.

However, much as France wanted a restored monarchy, it was unwilling to surrender its popular tricolour. Instead a "temporary" republic was established, pending the death of the elderly childless Chambord and the succession of his more liberal heir, the Comte de Paris.

In February 1875, a series of parliamentary Acts established the organic or constitutional laws of the new republic. At its apex was a President of the Republic.

A two-chamber parliament was created, along with a ministry under a prime minister (named "President of the Council") who was nominally answerable to both the President of the Republic and parliament. Thoughout the 1870's, the issue of monarchy versus republic dominated public debate.

On May 16, 1877, with public opinion swinging heavily in favour of a republic, the President of the Republic, Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta, himself a monarchist, made one last desperate attempt to salvage the monarchical cause by dismissing the republic-minded prime minister and appointing a monarchist duke to office. He then dissolved parliament and called a general election (October 1877).

If his hope had been to halt the move towards republicanism, it backfired spectacularly, with the President being accused of having staged a constitutional coup d'etat, known as "le seize Mai" after the date on which it happened (May 16).

Republicans returned triumphant, finally killing off the prospect of a restored French monarchy. MacMahon himself resigned on January 28, 1879, leaving a seriously weakened presidency, so weakened indeed that not until Charles de Gaulle, eighty years later, did another President of France unilaterally dissolve parliament.

To mark the final end of French monarchism as a serious political force, in 1885 the French Crown Jewels were broken up and sold. Only a few crowns, their precious gems replaced by coloured glass, were kept. In 1889, France flirted briefly with the possibilty of a dictatorship or a constitutional tyranny during the Boulanger crisis.

Though France was clearly republican, it was not in love with its Third Republic. Governments collapsed with regularity, rarely lasting more than a couple of months, as radicals, socialists, liberals, conservatives, republicans and monarchists all fought for control.

However, others argue that the collapse of governments were a minor side effect of the Republic lacking strong political parties, resulting in coalitions of many parties that routinely lost and gained a few allies.

Consequently, the change of governments could be seen as little more than a series of ministerial reshuffles, with many individuals carrying forward from one government to the next, often in the same posts.

The Third Republic survived the First World War, having found allies to support it against Germany. Some historians argue that this was the greatest success of the regime.

Throughout its seventy-year history, the Third Republic stumbled from crisis to crisis, from collapsing governments to the appointment of a mentally ill president.

It struggled through the German invasion of World War I and the inter-war years. When the Nazi invasion occurred in 1940, the Republic was so disliked by enemies on the right - who sought a powerful bulwark against Communism - and on the far left - where Communists initially followed their movement's international line of refusing to defend "bourgeois" regimes - that few had the stomach to fight for its survival, even if they disapproved of German occupation of northern France and the collaborationist Vichy regime established in the south.

From World War II to the Present

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