France in the nineteenth century
Encyclopedia
The History of France from 1789 to 1914 (the long 19th century
) extends from the French Revolution
to World War I and includes:
and the city of Nice
(first during the First Empire, and then definitively in 1860) and some small papal (like Avignon
) and foreign possessions. France's territorial limits were greatly extended during the Empire through Napoléon Bonaparte's military conquests and re-organization of Europe, but these were reversed by the Vienna Congress. With the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870, France lost her provinces of Alsace
and portions of Lorraine
to Germany (see Alsace-Lorraine
); these lost provinces would only be regained at the end of World War I.
In 1830, France invaded Algeria
, and in 1848 this north African country was fully integrated into France as a département. The late nineteenth century saw France embark on a massive program of overseas imperialism — including French Indochina
(modern day Cambodia
, Vietnam
and Laos
) and Africa (the Scramble for Africa
brought France most of North-West and Central Africa) — which brought it in direct competition with British interests.
Until 1850, population growth was mainly in the countryside, but a period of massive urbanization
began under the Second Empire. Unlike in England, industrialization was a late phenomenon in France. The Napoleonic wars
had hindered early industrialization and France's economy in the 1830s (limited iron industry, under-developed coal supplies, a massive rural population) had not developed sufficiently to support an industrial expansion of any scope. French rail transport
only began hesitantly in the 1830s, and would not truly develop until the 1840s. By the revolution of 1848, a growing industrial workforce began to participate actively in French politics, but their hopes were largely betrayed by the policies of the Second Empire. The loss of the important coal, steel and glass production regions of Alsace and Lorraine would cause further problems. The industrial worker population increased from 23% in 1870 to 39% in 1914. Nevertheless, France remained a rather rural country in the early 1900s with 40% of the population still farmers in 1914. While exhibiting a similar urbanization rate as the U.S. (50% of the population in the U.S. was engaged in agriculture in the early 1900s), the urbanization rate of France was still well behind the one of the UK (80% urbanization rate in the early 1900s).
In the 19th century, France was a country of immigration for peoples and political refugees from Eastern Europe (Germany, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ashkenazi Jews
) and from the Mediterranean (Italy, Spanish Sephardic Jews and North-African Mizrahi Jews
).
France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution. In 1872, there were an estimated 86,000 Jews living in France (by 1945 this would increase to 300,000), many of whom integrated (or attempted to integrate) into French society, although the Dreyfus affair
would reveal anti-semitism in certain classes of French society (see History of the Jews in France
).
With the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, 5000 French refugees from these regions emigrated to Algeria
in the 1870s and 1880s, as did too other Europeans (Spain, Malta) seeking opportunity. In 1889, non-French Europeans in Algeria were granted French citizenship (Arabs would however only win political rights in 1947).
Unlike other European countries, France did not experience a strong population growth in the mid and late 19th century and first half of the 20th century (see Demographics of France
). This would be compounded by the massive French losses of World War I — roughly estimated at 1.4 million French dead including civilians (see World War I casualties
) (or nearly 10% of the active adult male population) and four times as many wounded (see World War I Aftermath).
) and other inhabitants spoke Breton
, Catalan
, Basque
, Dutch
(West Flemish
), Franco-provençal
, Alsatian
and Corsican
. In the north of France, regional dialects of the various langues d'oïl
continued to be spoken in rural communities. France would only become a linguistically unified country by the end of the 19th century, and in particular through the educational policies of Jules Ferry
during the French Third Republic
. From an illiteracy rate of 33% among peasants in 1870, by 1914 almost all French could read and understand the national language, although 50% continued to understand or speak a regional language of France (in today's France, only an estimated 10% still understand a regional language
).
has put it) from a "country of peasants into a nation of Frenchmen".(Weber, E., 1979.) By 1914, most French could read French and regional languages had been greatly suppressed; the role of the Catholic Church in public life had been radically altered; a sense of national identity and glory was actively taught. The anti-clericalism of the Third Republic profoundly changed French religious habits: in one case study for the city of Limoges
comparing the years 1899 with 1914, it was found that baptisms decreased from 98% to 60%, and civil marriages before a town official increased from 14% to 60%. Yet, the eradication of regionalisms and the anti-clerical nature of the Third Republic would create a backlash in the second half of the century.
(1774–1792) saw a temporary revival of French fortunes, but the over-ambitious projects and military campaigns of the 18th century had produced chronic financial problems. Deteriorating economic conditions, popular resentment against the complicated system of privileges granted the nobility and clerics, and a lack of alternate avenues for change were among the principal causes for convoking the Estates-General
which convened in Versailles
in 1789. On May 28, 1789 the Abbé Sieyès
moved that the Third Estate proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so, and then voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly
, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People".
Louis XVI shut the Salle des États where the Assembly met. The Assembly moved their deliberations to the king's tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath
(June 20, 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a constitution
. A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did forty-seven members of the nobility. By June 27 the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles. On July 9 the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly
.
On July 11, 1789 King Louis, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles, as well as his wife, Marie Antoinette
, and brother, the Comte d'Artois
, banished the reformist minister Necker
and completely reconstructed the ministry. Much of Paris, presuming this to be the start of a royal coup, moved into open rebellion. Some of the military joined the mob; others remained neutral. On July 14, 1789, after four hours of combat, the insurgents seized the Bastille
fortress, killing the governor and several of his guards. The king and his military supporters backed down, at least for the time being. After this violence, nobles started to flee the country as émigré
s, some of whom began plotting civil war within the kingdom and agitating for a European coalition against France. Insurrection and the spirit of popular sovereignty
spread throughout France. In rural areas, many went beyond this: some burned title-deeds and no small number of châteaux
, as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as "la Grande Peur" (the Great Fear).
On August 4, 1789, the National Assembly abolished feudalism
, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithe
s gathered by the First Estate. In the course of a few hours, nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies, and cities lost their special privileges. The revolution also brought about a massive shifting of powers from the Roman Catholic Church
to the State. Legislation enacted in 1790 abolished the Church's authority to levy a tax
on crops known as the "dîme
", cancelled special privileges for the clergy, and confiscated Church property: under the Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest landowner in the country. Further legislation abolished monastic vows. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy
, passed on July 12, 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the State and required that they take an oath of loyalty to the constitution. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy
also made the Catholic Church an arm of the secular state.
Looking to the United States Declaration of Independence
for a model, on August 26, 1789 the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
. Like the U.S. Declaration, it comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution
with legal effect. The Assembly replaced the historic provinces
with eighty-three départements, uniformly administered and approximately equal to one another in extent and population; it also abolished the symbolic paraphernalia of the Ancien Régime — armorial bearings, liveries, etc. — which further alienated the more conservative nobles, and added to the ranks of the émigré
s.
Louis XVI opposed the course of the revolution and on the night of June 20, 1791 the royal family fled the Tuileries. However, the king was recognised at Varennes in the Meuse
late on June 21 and he and his family were brought back to Paris under guard. With most of the Assembly still favouring a constitutional monarchy
rather than a republic
, the various groupings reached a compromise which left Louis XVI little more than a figurehead: he had perforce to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to de facto abdication.
Meanwhile, a renewed threat from abroad arose: Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
, Frederick William II of Prussia
, and the king's brother Charles-Phillipe, comte d'Artois
issued the Declaration of Pilnitz which considered the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his total liberty and the dissolution of the Assembly, and promised an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions. The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with Austria and its allies. France declared war on Austria (April 20, 1792) and Prussia
joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The French Revolutionary Wars
had begun.
On August 10, 1792
in France the King Louis XVI
was arrested. After the first great victory of the French revolutionary troops at the battle of Valmy
on September 20, 1792 the First Republic
was proclaimed the day after on September 21. By the end of the year, the French had overrun the Austrian Netherlands, threatening the Dutch Republic to the north, and also penetrated east of the Rhine, briefly occupying the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main.
January 17, 1793 saw the king condemned to death for "conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety" by a weak majority in Convention. On January 21, he was beheaded. This action led to Britain and the Netherlands declaring war on France.
The first half of 1793 went badly, with the French armies being driven out of Germany and the Austrian Netherlands. In this situation, prices rose and the sans-culottes
(poor labourers and radical Jacobins) rioted; counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary coup
, backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian sans-culottes. An alliance of Jacobin and sans-culottes elements thus became the effective centre of the new government. Policy became considerably more radical. The government instituted the "levy-en-masse", where all able-bodied men 18 and older were liable for military service. This allowed France to field much larger armies than its enemies, and soon the tide of war was reversed.
The Committee of Public Safety
came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre
, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror
(1793–1794). At least 1200 people met their deaths under the guillotine
— or otherwise — after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities. In October, the queen was beheaded, further antagonizing Austria. In 1794 Robespierre had ultra-radicals and moderate Jacobins executed; in consequence, however, his own popular support eroded markedly. Georges Danton
was beheaded for arguing that there were too many beheadings. There were attempts to do away with organized religion in France entirely and replace it with a Festival of Reason. The primary leader of this movement, Jacques Hebert
, held such a festival in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with an actress playing the Goddess of Reason. But Robespierre was unmoved by Hebert and had him and all his followers beheaded. On July 27, 1794 the French people revolted against the excesses of the Reign of Terror in what became known as the Thermidorian Reaction
. It resulted in moderate Convention members deposing Robespierre and several other leading members of the Committee of Public Safety. All of them were beheaded without trial. With that, the extreme, radical phase of the Revolution ended. The Convention approved the new "Constitution of the Year III" on August 17, 1795; a plebiscite ratified it in September; and it took effect on September 26, 1795.
The new constitution installed the Directoire
and created the first bicameral legislature in French history. It was markedly more conservative, dominated by the bourgeoise, and sought to restore order and exclude the sans-culottes and other members of the lower classes from political life. By 1795, the French had once again conquered the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine, annexing them directly into France. The Dutch Republic and Spain were both defeated and made into French satellites. At sea however, the French navy proved no match for the British, and was badly beaten off the coast of Ireland in June 1794.
In 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte was given command of an army that was to invade Italy. The Austrian and Sardinian forces were defeated by the young general, they capitulated, and he negotiated the Treaty of Campo Formio without the input of the Directory. The French annexation of the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine was recognized, as were the satellite republics they created in northern Italy. The War of the First Coalition came to an end.
Military campaigns continued in 1798, with invasions of Switzerland, Naples, and the Papal States taking place and republics being established in those countries. Napoleon also convinced the Directory to approve an expedition to Egypt, with the purpose of cutting off Britain's supply route to India. He got approval for this, and set off in May 1798 for Egypt with 40,000 men. But the expedition foundered when the British fleet of Horatio Nelson caught and destroyed most of the French ships in the Battle of the Nile
. The army was left with no way to get home, and now facing the hostility of the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon himself escaped back to France, where he led the coup de etat of November 1799, making himself First Consul (his hapless troops remained in Egypt until they surrendered to a British expedition in 1801 and were repatriated to France).
By that point, the War of the Second Coalition
was in progress. The French suffered a string of defeats in 1799, seeing their satellite republics in Italy overthrown and an invasion of Germany beaten back. Attempts by the allies on Switzerland and the Netherlands failed however, and once Napoleon returned to France, he began turning the tide on them. In 1801, the Peace of Lunéville ended hostilities with Austria and Russia, and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain.
(or the Napoleonic Empire) (1804–1814) was marked by the French domination and reorganization of continental Europe (the Napoleonic Wars
) and by the final codification of the republican legal system (the Napoleonic Code
). The Empire gradually became more authoritarian in nature, with freedom of the press and assembly being severely restricted. Religious freedom survived under the condition that Christianity and Judaism, the two officially recognized faiths, not be attacked, and that atheism not be expressed in public. Napoleon also recreated the nobility, but neither they nor his court had the elegance or historical connections of the old monarchy. Despite the growing administrative despotism of his regime, the emperor was still seen by the rest of Europe as the embodiment of the Revolution.
By 1804, Britain alone stood outside French control and was an important force in encouraging and financing resistance to France. In 1805, Napoleon massed an army of 200,000 men in Bolougne for the purpose of invading the British Isles, but never was able to find the right conditions to embark, and thus abandoned his plans. Three weeks later, the French and Spanish fleets were destroyed by the British at Trafalgar. Afterwards, Napoleon, unable to defeat Britain militarily, tried to bring it down through economic warfare. He inaugurated the Continental System, in which all of France's allies and satellites would join in refusing to trade with the British.
Portugal, an ally of Britain, was the only European country that openly refused to join. After the Treaties of Tilsit
of July 1807, the French launched an invasion through Spain to close this hole in the Continental System. British troops arrived in Portugal, compelling the French to withdraw. A renewed invasion the following year brought the British back, and at that point, Napoleon decided to depose the Spanish king Charles IV
and place his brother Joseph
on the throne. This caused the people of Spain to rise up in a patriotic revolt, beginning the Peninsular War
. The British could now gain a foothold on the Continent, and the war tied down considerable French resources, contributing to Napoleon's eventual defeat.
Napoleon was at the height of his power in 1810-1812, with most of the European countries either his allies, satellites, or annexed directly into France. After the defeat of Austria in the War of the Fifth Coalition
, Europe was at peace for 2-1/2 years except for the conflict in Spain. The emperor was given an archduchess to marry by the Austrians, and she gave birth to his long-awaited son in 1811.
Ultimately, the Continental System failed. Its effect on Great Britain and on British trade is uncertain, but the embargo is thought to have been more harmful on the continental European states. Russia in particular chafed under the embargo, and in 1812, that country reopened trade with Britain, provoking Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The disaster of that campaign caused all the subjugated peoples of Europe to rise up against French domination. In 1813, Napoleon was forced to conscript boys under the age of 18 and less able-bodied men who had been passed up for military service in previous years. The quality of his troops deteriorated sharply and war weariness at home increased. The allies could also put far more men in the field than he could. Throughout 1813, the French were forced back and by early 1814, the British were occupying Gascony. The allied troops reached Paris in March, and Napoleon abdicated as emperor. Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, was installed as king and France was granted a quite generous peace settlement, being restored to its 1792 boundaries and having to pay no war indemnity.
After eleven months of exile on the island of Elba
in the Mediterranean, Napoleon escaped and returned to France, where he was greeted with huge enthusiasm. Louis XVIII fled Paris, but the one thing that would have given the emperor mass support, a return to the revolutionary extremism of 1793-1794, was out of the question. Enthusiasm quickly waned, and as the allies (then discussing the fate of Europe in Vienna) refused to negotiate with him, he had no choice but to fight. At Waterloo
, Napoleon was completely defeated by the British and Prussians, and abdicated once again. This time, he was exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he remained until his death from stomach cancer
in 1821.
, a more harsh peace treaty was imposed on France, returning it to its 1789 boundaries and requiring a war indemnity. Allied troops were to remain in the country until it was paid. There were large-scale purges of Bonapartists from the government and military, and a brief "White Terror" in the south of France claimed 300 victims.
Despite the return of the House of Bourbon to power, France was much changed from the era of the Ancien Régime. The egalitarianism and liberalism of the revolutionaries remained an important force and the autocracy and hierarchy of the earlier era could not be fully restored. The economic changes, which had been underway long before the revolution, had been further enhanced during the years of turmoil and were firmly entrenched by 1815. These changes had seen power shift from the noble landowners to the urban merchants. The administrative reforms of Napoleon, such as the Napoleonic Code
and efficient bureaucracy, also remained in place. These changes produced a unified central government that was fiscally sound and had much control over all areas of French life, a sharp difference from the situation the Bourbons had faced before the Revolution.
In 1823, France intervened in Spain, where a civil war had deposed its king Ferdinand VII. The British objected to this, as it brought back memories of the still recent Peninsular War. However, the French troops marched into Spain, retook Madrid from the rebels, and left almost as quickly as they came. Despite worries to the contrary, France showed no sign of returning to an aggressive foreign policy and was admitted to the Concert of Europe
in 1818.
Louis XVIII
, for the most part, accepted that much had changed. However, he was pushed on his right by the Ultra-royalists, led by the comte de Villèle, who condemned the Doctrinaires
' attempt to reconcile the Revolution with the monarchy through a constitutional monarchy
. Instead, the Chambre introuvable
elected in 1815 banished all Conventionnels
who had voted Louis XVI's death and passed several reactionary
laws. Louis XVIII was forced to dissolve this Chamber, dominated by the Ultras, in 1816, fearing a popular uprising. The liberals thus governed until the 1820 assassination of the duc de Berry
the nephew of the king and known supporter of the Ultras, which brought Villèle's ultras back to power (vote of the Anti-Sacrilege Act
in 1825, and of the loi sur le milliard des émigrés, Act on the émigrés' billions). Louis died in September 1824 and was succeeded by his brother.
Charles X of France
took a far more conservative line. He attempted to rule as an absolute monarch and reassert the power of the Catholic Church in France. Acts of sacrilege in churches became punishable by death, and freedom of the press was severely restricted. Finally, he tried to compensate the families of the nobles who had had their property destroyed during the Revolution. In 1830 the discontent caused by these changes and Charles X's authoritarian nomination of the Ultra prince de Polignac
as minister culminated in an uprising in the streets of Paris, known as the 1830 July Revolution
(or, in French, "Les trois Glorieuses" - The three Glorious days - of 27, 28 and July 29). Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, a member of the Orléans
branch of the family, and son of Philippe Égalité who had voted the death of his cousin Louis XVI, ascended the throne. Louis-Philippe ruled, not as "King of France" but as "King of the French" (an evocative difference for contemporaries). It was made clear that his right to rule came from the people and was not divinely granted. He also revived the Tricolor as the flag of France, in place of the white Bourbon flag that had been used since 1815, an important distinction because the Tricolour was the symbol of the revolution.
(1830–1848) is generally seen as a period during which the haute bourgeoisie
was dominant, and marked the shift from the counter-revolutionaries Legitimists to the Orleanist
s, who were willing to make some compromises with the changes brought by the 1789 Revolution
. Louis-Philippe was crowned "King of the French
," instead of "King of France": this marked his acceptance of popular sovereignty
, which replaced the Ancien Régime 's divine right
. Louis-Philippe clearly understood his base of power: the wealthy bourgeoisie had carried him aloft during the July Revolution
through their work in the Parliament, and throughout his reign, he kept their interests in mind.
Louis-Philippe, who had flirted with liberalism
in his youth, rejected much of the pomp and circumstance of the Bourbons
and surrounded himself with merchants and bankers. The July Monarchy, however, remained a time of turmoil. A large group of Legitimists on the right
demanded the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne. On the left, Republicanism
and, later Socialism
, remained a powerful force. Late in his reign Louis-Philippe became increasingly rigid and dogmatic and his President of the Council, François Guizot
, had become deeply unpopular, but Louis-Philippe refused to remove him. The situation gradually escalated until the Revolutions of 1848 saw the fall of the monarchy and the creation of the Second Republic.
However, during the first several years of his regime, Louis-Philippe appeared to move his government toward legitimate, broad-based reform. The government found its source of legitimacy within the Charter of 1830
, written by reform-minded members of Chamber of Deputies
upon a platform of religious equality, the empowerment of the citizenry through the reestablishment of the National Guard
, electoral reform, the reformation of the peerage system, and the lessening of royal authority. And indeed, Louis-Phillipe and his ministers adhered to policies that seemed to promote the central tenets of the constitution. However, the majority of these policies were veiled attempts to shore up the power and influence of the government and the bourgeoisie, rather than legitimate attempts to promote equality and empowerment for a broad constituency of the French population. Thus, though the July Monarchy seemed to move toward reform, this movement was largely illusory.
During the years of the July Monarchy, enfranchisement roughly doubled, from 94,000 under Charles X to more than 200,000 by 1848 . However, this represented only roughly one percent of population, and as the requirements for voting were tax-based, only the wealthiest gained the privilege. By implication, the enlarged enfranchisement tended to favor the wealthy merchant bourgeoisie more than any other group. Beyond simply increasing their presence within the Chamber of Deputies
, this electoral enlargement provided the bourgeoisie the means by which to challenge the nobility in legislative matters. Thus, while appearing to honor his pledge to increase suffrage, Louis-Philippe acted primarily to empower his supporters and increase his hold over the French Parliament. The inclusion of only the wealthiest also tended to undermine any possibility of the growth of a radical faction in Parliament, effectively serving socially conservative ends.
The reformed Charter of 1830 limited the power of the King – stripping him of his ability to propose and decree legislation, as well as limiting his executive authority. However, the King of the French still believed in a version of monarchy that held the king as much more than a figurehead for an elected Parliament, and as such, he was quite active in politics. One of the first acts of Louis-Philippe in constructing his cabinet was to appoint the rather conservative Casimir Perier
as the premier of that body. Perier, a banker, was instrumental in shutting down many of the Republican secret societies and labor unions that had formed during the early years of the regime. In addition, he oversaw the dismemberment of the National Guard after it proved too supportive of radical ideologies. He performed all of these actions, of course, with royal approval. He was once quoted as saying that the source of French misery was the belief that there had been a revolution. "No Monsieur," he said to another minister, "there has not been a revolution: there is simply a change at the head of state."
Further expressions of this conservative trend came under the supervision of Perier and the then Minister of the Interior, François Guizot
. The regime acknowledged early on that radicalism
and republicanism threatened it, undermining its laissez-faire policies. Thus, the Monarchy declared the very term republican illegal in 1834. Guizot shut down republican clubs and disbanded republican publications. Republicans within the cabinet, like the banker Dupont, were all but excluded by Perier and his conservative clique. Distrusting the sole National Guard, Louis-Philippe increased the size of the army
and reformed it in order to ensure its loyalty to the government.
Though two factions always persisted in the cabinet, split between liberal conservatives like Guizot (le parti de la Résistance, the Party of Resistance) and liberal reformers like the aforementioned journalist Adolphe Thiers
(le parti du Mouvement, the Party of Movement), the latter never gained prominence. After Perier came count Molé, another conservative. After Molé came Thiers, a reformer later sacked by Louis-Philippe after attempting to pursue an aggressive foreign policy. After Thiers came the conservative Guizot. In particular, the Guizot administration was marked by increasingly authoritarian crackdowns on republicanism and dissent, and an increasingly pro-business laissez-faire policy. This policy included protective tariff
s that defended the status quo and enriched French businessmen. Guizot's government granted railway and mining contracts to the bourgeois supporters of the government, and even contributing some of the start-up costs. As workers under these policies had no legal right to assemble, unionize, or petition the government for increased pay or decreased hours, the July Monarchy under Perier, Molé, and Guizot generally proved detrimental to the lower classes. In fact, Guizot's advice to those who were disenfranchised by the tax-based electoral requirements was a simple "enrichissez-vous" – enrich yourself. The king himself was not very popular either by the middle of the 1840s, and due to his appearance was widely referred to as the "crowned pear". There was a considerable hero-worship of Napoleon during this era, and in 1841 his body was taken from Saint Helena and given a magnificent reburial in France.
Louis-Philippe conducted a pacifistic foreign policy. Shortly after he assumed power in 1830, Belgium revolted against Dutch rule and proclaimed its independence. The king rejected the idea of intervention there or any military activities outside France's borders. The only exception to this was a war in Algeria
which had been started by Charles X a few weeks before his overthrow on the pretext of suppressing pirates in the Mediterranean. Louis-Philippe's government decided to continue the conquest of that country, which took over a decade. By 1848, Algeria had been declared an integral part of France.
and Prussia
, and in the Italian States of Milan
, Venice
, Turin
and Rome. Economic downturns and bad harvests during the 1840s contributed to growing discontent.
In February 1848, the French government banned the holding of the Campagne des banquets
, fundraising dinners by activists where critics of the regime would meet (as public demonstrations and strikes were forbidden). As a result, protests and riots broke out in the streets of Paris. An angry mob converged on the royal palace, after which the hapless king abdicated and fled to England. The Second Republic was then proclaimed.
The revolution in France had brought together classes of wildly different interests: the bourgeoisie desired electoral reforms (a democratic republic), socialist leaders (like Louis Blanc
, Pierre Joseph Proudhon
and the radical Auguste Blanqui) asked for a "right to work" and the creation of national workshops (a social welfare republic) and for France to liberate the oppressed peoples of Europe (Poles and Italians), while moderates (like the aristocrat Alphonse de Lamartine
) sought a middle ground. Tensions between groups escalated, and in June 1848, a working class insurrection in Paris cost the lives of 1500 workers and eliminated once and for all the dream of a social welfare constitution.
. Finally, in 1852 he had himself declared Emperor Napoléon III of the Second Empire
.
from 1852 to 1870. The regime was authoritarian in nature during its early years, curbing most freedom of the press and assembly. The era saw great industrialization, urbanization (including the massive rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann
) and economic growth, but Napoleon III's foreign policies would be catastrophic.
In 1852, Napoleon declared that "L'Empire, c'est la paix" (The empire is peace), but it was hardly fitting for a Bonaparte to continue the foreign policy of Louis-Philippe. Only a few months after becoming president in 1848, he sent French troops to break up a short-lived republic in Rome, remaining there until 1870. The overseas empire expanded, and France made gains in Indo-China, West and central Africa, and the South Seas. This was helped by the opening of large central banks in Paris to finance overseas expeditions. The Suez Canal
was opened by the Empress Eugénie in 1869 and was the achievement of a Frenchman. Yet still, Napoleon III's France lagged behind Britain in colonial affairs, and his determination to upstage British control of India and American influence in Mexico resulted in a fiasco.
In 1854, the emperor allied with Britain and the Ottoman Empire against Russia in the Crimean War
. Afterwards, Napoleon intervened in the questions of Italian independence. He declared his intention of making Italy "free from the Alps
to the Adriatic", and fought a war
with Austria in 1859 over this matter. With the victories of Montebello
, Magenta
and Solferino
France and Austria signed the Peace of Villafranca
in 1859, as the emperor worried that a longer war might cause the other powers, particularly Prussia, to intervene. 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. In exchange for France's military assistance against Austria, Piedmont ceded its provinces of Nice
and Savoy
to France in March 1860. Napoleon then turned his hand to meddling in the Western Hemisphere. He gave support to the Confederacy during the American Civil War
, until Abraham Lincoln
announced the Emancipation Proclamation
in the autumn of 1862. As this made it impossible to support the South without also supporting slavery, the emperor backed off. However, he was conducting a simultaneous venture in Mexico, which had refused to pay interest on loans taken from France, Britain, and Spain. As a result, those three countries sent a joint expedition to the city of Veracruz
in January 1862, but the British and Spanish quickly withdrew after realizing the extent of Napoleon's plans. French troops occupied Mexico City
in June 1863 and established a puppet government headed by the Austrian archduke Maximilian, who was declared Emperor of Mexico. Although this sort of thing was forbidden by the Monroe Doctrine
, Napoleon reasoned that the United States was far too distracted with the Civil War to do anything about it. The French were never able to suppress the forces of the ousted Mexican president Benito Juárez
, and then in the spring of 1865, the Civil War ended. The United States, which had an army of a million battle-hardened troops, demanded that the French withdraw or prepare for war. They quickly did so, but Maximilian tried to hold onto power. He was captured and shot by the Mexicans in 1867.
Public opinion was becoming a major force as people began to tire of oppressive authoritarianism in the 1860s. Napoleon III, who had expressed some rather woolly liberal ideas prior to his coronation, began to relax censorship, laws on public meetings, and the right to strike. As a result, radicalism grew among industrial workers. Discontent with the Second Empire spread rapidly, as the economy began to experience a downturn. The golden days of the 1850s were over. Napoleon's reckless foreign policy was inciting criticism. To placate the Liberals, in 1870 Napoleon proposed the establishment of a fully parliamentary legislative regime, which won massive support. The French emperor never had the chance to implement this, however - by the end of the year, the Second Empire had ignominiously collapsed.
Napoleon's distraction with Mexico prevented him from intervening in the Second Schleswig War in 1864 and the Seven Weeks War in 1866. Both of those conflicts saw Prussia establish itself as the dominant power in Germany. Afterwards, tensions between France and Prussia grew, especially in 1868 when the latter tried to place a Hohenzollern prince on the Spanish throne, which was left vacant by a revolution there.
The Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck
provoked Napoleon into declaring war on Prussia in July 1870. The French troops were swiftly defeated in the following weeks, and on September 1, the main army, which the emperor himself was with, was trapped at Sedan and forced to surrender. A republic was quickly proclaimed in Paris, but the war was far from over. As it was clear that Prussia would expect territorial concessions, the provisional government vowed to continue resistance. The Prussians laid siege to Paris, and new armies mustered by France failed to alter this situation. The French capital began experiencing severe food shortages, to the extent where even the animals in the zoo were eaten. As the city was being bombarded by Prussian siege guns in January 1871, King William of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Shortly afterwards, Paris surrendered. The subsequent peace treaty was harsh. France ceded Alsace and Lorraine to Germany and had to pay an indemnity of 5 billion francs. German troops were to remain in the country until it was paid off. Meanwhile, the fallen Napoleon III went into exile in England where he died in 1873.
(which was violently repressed by Adolphe Thiers) — and two provinces (Alsace-Lorraine
) annexed to Germany. Feelings of national guilt and a desire for vengeance ("revanchism
") would be major preoccupations of the French throughout the next half century.
The Third Republic
was established on September 4, 1870, following the defeat of Napoleon III during the 1870 war against Prussia
. However, the constitutional laws of the new republic were established only in February 1875, after the crushing of the revolutionary Paris Commune
by Adolphe Thiers.
The Commune started with the uprising of the Parisian population following the siege of Paris in September 1870, and was in place from March 18, 1871 to May 28, 1871. Adolphe Thiers angered the people of Paris by allowing the Prussians a parade in Paris on February 17, 1871, and on March 18 in an attempt to strengthen his government's position and decrease the power of the National Guard, he ordered the French regular troops to remove the cannon which had been moved to Montmartre
, a move opposed by the leadership of the National Guard. Many French soldiers agreed with the National Guard, refused to obey the order, and fell in with the Guard in the uprising. Seeing that he had lost control, Thiers ordered the regular forces, police, administrators and specialists to go to Versailles
and fled the city followed by all those that obeyed.
The Commune used the socialist
red flag
rather than the moderate republican
tricolore (during the Second Republic
in 1848, radicals supporting a socialist alternative government to the moderate republican Second Republic already raised a red flag). In only three months, the Commune voted many social measures, including:
Projected legislation also separated the Church from the state
, made all Church property state property, and excluded religion from schools. During the uprising, the churches were only allowed to continue their religious activity if they kept their doors open to public political meetings during the evenings. This made the churches, along with the streets and the cafés, the chief participatory political centres of the Commune. Other projected legislation dealt with educational reforms which would make further education and technical training freely available to all. The Vendôme Column, seen as a symbol of Napoleon's imperialism
and of chauvinism
, was taken down. Some women organized the first traces of a feminist movement
. Thus, Nathanie Le Mel, a religious workwoman, and Elisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian aristocrat, created the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés ("Women Union for the Defense of Paris and Care to the Injured") on April 11, 1871. Considering that their struggle against patriarchy
could only be followed in the frame of a global struggle against capitalism
, the association revendicated gender equality, wages' equality, right of divorce for women, right to laïque
instruction (non-clerical) and for professional formation for girls. They also demanded suppression of the distinction between married women and concubins, between legitimate and natural children, the abolition of prostitution
— they obtained the closing of the maisons de tolérance (legal unofficial brothel
s). The Women Union also participated in several municipal commissions and organized cooperative workshops.
Taking advantage of his retreat from Paris and of Baron Haussmann
's urban modeling of the capital
during the Second Empire — construction of wide boulevards
linking the train stations and therefore the soldiers coming from the countryside to the capital — Adolphe Thiers led the harsh repression of the Communards
. On May 27, 1871, when the last barricade
, in the rue Ramponeau in Belleville
, fell, Marshal MacMahon issued a proclamation: "To the inhabitants of Paris. The French army has come to save you. Paris is freed! At 4 o'clock our soldiers took the last insurgent position. Today the fight is over. Order, work and security will be reborn."
in the Père Lachaise cemetery, while thousands of others were marched to Versailles
for trials. The number killed during La Semaine Sanglante (The Bloody Week) can never be established for certain but the best estimates are 30,000 dead, many more wounded, and perhaps as many as 50,000 later executed or imprisoned; 7,000 were exiled to New Caledonia
. Thousands of them fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, "stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left." For the imprisoned there was a general amnesty in 1880. Paris remained under martial law for five years.
Beside this defeat, the Republican
movement also had to confront the counterrevolutionaries who rejected the legacy of the 1789 Revolution. Both the Legitimist and the Orleanist
royalists rejected republicanism, which they saw as an extension of modernity
and atheism
, breaking with France's traditions. This lasted until at least the May 16, 1877 crisis, which finally led to the resignation of royalist Marshal MacMahon in January 1879. The death of Henri, comte de Chambord
in 1883, who, as the grandson of Charles X, had refused to abandon the fleur-de-lys and the white flag
, thus jeopardizing the alliance between Legitimists and Orleanists, convinced many of the remaining Orleanists to rally themselves to the Republic, as Adolphe Thiers
had already done. The vast majority of the Legitimists abandoned the political arena or became marginalised, at least until Pétain
's Vichy regime. Some of them founded Action Française
in 1898, during the Dreyfus affair
, which became an influent movement through-out the 1930s, in particular among the intellectuals of Paris' Quartier Latin. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII
's encyclical Rerum Novarum
was incorrectly seen to have legitimised the Social Catholic
movement, which in France could be traced back to Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais
' efforts under the July Monarchy. Pope St Pius X later condemned these movements of Catholics for democracy and Socialism in Nostre Charge Apostolique against the Le Síllon movement.
") and bonapartists
scrambled for power. The period from 1879–1899 saw power come into the hands of moderate republicans and former "radicals" (around Léon Gambetta
); these were called the "Opportunists
" (Républicains opportunistes). The newly found Republican control on the Republic allowed the vote of the 1881 and 1882 Jules Ferry laws
on a free, mandatory and laic
public education
.
The moderates however became deeply divided over the Dreyfus affair
, and this allowed the Radicals to eventually gain power from 1899 until the Great War. During this period, crises like the potential "Boulangist" coup d'état (see Georges Boulanger
) in 1889, showed the fragility of the republic. The Radicals' policies on education (suppression of local languages, compulsory education), mandatory military service, and control of the working classes eliminated internal dissent and regionalisms, while their participation in the Scramble for Africa
and in the acquiring of overseas possessions (such as French Indochina
) created myths of French greatness. Both of these processes transformed a country of regionalisms into a modern nation state.
In 1880, Jules Guesde
and Paul Lafargue
, Marx
's son-in-law, created the French Workers' Party
(Parti ouvrier français, or POF), the first Marxist party in France. Two years later, Paul Brousse
's possibilistes split. A controversy arose in the French socialist movement and in the Second International
concerning "socialist participation in a bourgeois government", a theme which was triggered by independent socialist Alexandre Millerand
's participation to Radical-Socialist
Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet at the turn of the century, which also included the marquis de Galliffet, best known for his role as repressor of the 1871 Commune. While Jules Guesde was opposed to this participation, which he saw as a trick, Jean Jaurès
defended it, making him one of the first social-democrat. Guesde's POF united itself in 1902 with the Parti socialiste de France, and finally in 1905 all socialist tendencies, including Jaurès' Parti socialiste français, unified into the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière
(SFIO), the "French section of the Second International
", itself formed in 1889 after the split between anarcho-syndicalists
and Marxist socialists which led to the dissolving of the First International (founded in London in 1864).
In an effort to isolate Germany, France went to great pains to woo Russia and the United Kingdom to its side, first by means of the Franco-Russian Alliance
of 1894, then the 1904 Entente Cordiale
with the U.K, and finally, with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente
in 1907 this became the Triple Entente
, which eventually led Russia and the UK to enter World War I as Allies
.
Distrust of Germany, faith in the army and native French anti-semitism
combined to make the Dreyfus affair
(the unjust trial and condemnation of a Jewish military officer for treason) a political scandal of the utmost gravity. The nation was divided between "dreyfusards" and "anti-dreyfusards" and far-right Catholic agitators inflamed the situation even when proofs of Dreyfus' innocence came to light. The writer Émile Zola
published an impassioned editorial on the injustice, and was himself condemned by the government for libel. Once Dreyfus was finally pardoned, the progressive legislature enacted the 1905 laws on laïcité
which created a complete separation of church and state
and stripped churches of most of their property rights.
The period and the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century is often termed the belle époque
. Although associated with cultural innovations and popular amusements (cabaret, cancan, the cinema, new art forms such as Impressionism
and Art Nouveau
), France was nevertheless a nation divided internally on notions of religion, class, regionalisms and money, and on the international front France came repeatedly to the brink of war with the other imperial powers, including Great Britain (the Fashoda Incident
). The human and financial costs of World War I would be catastrophic for the French.
The long 19th century
The long nineteenth century, defined by Eric Hobsbawm , a British Marxist historian and author, refers to the period between the years 1789 and 1914...
) extends from the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
to World War I and includes:
- French RevolutionFrench RevolutionThe French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
(1789–1792) - French First RepublicFrench First RepublicThe French First Republic was founded on 22 September 1792, by the newly established National Convention. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First French Empire in 1804 under Napoleon I...
(1792–1804) - First French EmpireFirst French EmpireThe First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...
under Napoleon (1804–1814) - Restoration under Louis XVIIILouis XVIII of FranceLouis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
and Charles XCharles X of FranceCharles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
(1814–1830) - July MonarchyJuly MonarchyThe July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
under Louis Philippe d'Orléans (1830–1848) - Second RepublicFrench Second RepublicThe French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte which initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité...
(1848–1852) - Second Empire under Napoleon III (1852–1871)
- first decades of the Third RepublicFrench Third RepublicThe French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
(1871–1940)
Geography
At the time of the French Revolution, France had expanded to nearly her modern territorial limits. The nineteenth century would complete the process by the annexation of the Duchy of SavoySavoy
Savoy is a region of France. It comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Monaco and the Mediterranean coast in the south....
and the city of Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
(first during the First Empire, and then definitively in 1860) and some small papal (like Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...
) and foreign possessions. France's territorial limits were greatly extended during the Empire through Napoléon Bonaparte's military conquests and re-organization of Europe, but these were reversed by the Vienna Congress. With the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
of 1870, France lost her provinces of Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
and portions of Lorraine
Lorraine (province)
The Duchy of Upper Lorraine was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany. The main cities were Metz, Verdun, and the historic capital Nancy....
to Germany (see Alsace-Lorraine
Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...
); these lost provinces would only be regained at the end of World War I.
In 1830, France invaded Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
, and in 1848 this north African country was fully integrated into France as a département. The late nineteenth century saw France embark on a massive program of overseas imperialism — including French Indochina
French Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
(modern day Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
and Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
) and Africa (the Scramble for Africa
Scramble for Africa
The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914...
brought France most of North-West and Central Africa) — which brought it in direct competition with British interests.
Demographics
Between 1795 and 1866, metropolitan France (that is, without overseas or colonial possessions) was the second most populous country of Europe, behind Russia, and the fourth most populous country in the world (behind China, India, and Russia); between 1866 and 1911, metropolitan France was the third most populous country of Europe, behind Russia and Germany. Unlike other European countries, France did not experience a strong population growth from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. The French population in 1789 is estimated at roughly 28 million; by 1850, it was 36 million and in 1880 it was around 39 million.Until 1850, population growth was mainly in the countryside, but a period of massive urbanization
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
began under the Second Empire. Unlike in England, industrialization was a late phenomenon in France. The Napoleonic wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
had hindered early industrialization and France's economy in the 1830s (limited iron industry, under-developed coal supplies, a massive rural population) had not developed sufficiently to support an industrial expansion of any scope. French rail transport
History of rail transport in France
The history of rail transport in France dates from the first French railway in 1832 to present-day enterprises such as the AGV.-Beginnings:During the 19th century, railway construction began in France with short mineral lines...
only began hesitantly in the 1830s, and would not truly develop until the 1840s. By the revolution of 1848, a growing industrial workforce began to participate actively in French politics, but their hopes were largely betrayed by the policies of the Second Empire. The loss of the important coal, steel and glass production regions of Alsace and Lorraine would cause further problems. The industrial worker population increased from 23% in 1870 to 39% in 1914. Nevertheless, France remained a rather rural country in the early 1900s with 40% of the population still farmers in 1914. While exhibiting a similar urbanization rate as the U.S. (50% of the population in the U.S. was engaged in agriculture in the early 1900s), the urbanization rate of France was still well behind the one of the UK (80% urbanization rate in the early 1900s).
In the 19th century, France was a country of immigration for peoples and political refugees from Eastern Europe (Germany, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
) and from the Mediterranean (Italy, Spanish Sephardic Jews and North-African Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahiyim, , also referred to as Adot HaMizrach are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus...
).
France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution. In 1872, there were an estimated 86,000 Jews living in France (by 1945 this would increase to 300,000), many of whom integrated (or attempted to integrate) into French society, although the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
would reveal anti-semitism in certain classes of French society (see History of the Jews in France
History of the Jews in France
The history of the Jews of France dates back over 2,000 years. In the early Middle Ages, France was a center of Jewish learning, but persecution increased as the Middle Ages wore on...
).
With the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, 5000 French refugees from these regions emigrated to Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
in the 1870s and 1880s, as did too other Europeans (Spain, Malta) seeking opportunity. In 1889, non-French Europeans in Algeria were granted French citizenship (Arabs would however only win political rights in 1947).
Unlike other European countries, France did not experience a strong population growth in the mid and late 19th century and first half of the 20th century (see Demographics of France
Demographics of France
This article is about the demographic features of the population of France, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects....
). This would be compounded by the massive French losses of World War I — roughly estimated at 1.4 million French dead including civilians (see World War I casualties
World War I casualties
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I were over 35 million. There were over 15 million deaths and 20 million wounded ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history....
) (or nearly 10% of the active adult male population) and four times as many wounded (see World War I Aftermath).
Language
Linguistically, France was a patchwork. In 1792, perhaps 50% of the French population did not speak or understand French. The southern half of the country continued to speak one of the Occitan languages (such as ProvençalProvençal language
Provençal is a dialect of Occitan spoken by a minority of people in southern France, mostly in Provence. In the English-speaking world, "Provençal" is often used to refer to all dialects of Occitan, but it actually refers specifically to the dialect spoken in Provence."Provençal" is also the...
) and other inhabitants spoke Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
, Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
(West Flemish
West Flemish
West Flemish , , , Fransch vlaemsch in French Flemish) is a group of dialects or regional language related to Dutch spoken in parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France....
), Franco-provençal
Franco-Provençal language
Franco-Provençal , Arpitan, or Romand is a Romance language with several distinct dialects that form a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue d'Oïl and Langue d'Oc. The name Franco-Provençal was given to the language by G.I...
, Alsatian
Alsatian language
Alsatian is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a region in eastern France which has passed between French and German control many times.-Language family:...
and Corsican
Corsican language
Corsican is a Italo-Dalmatian Romance language spoken and written on the islands of Corsica and northern Sardinia . Corsican is the traditional native language of the Corsican people, and was long the vernacular language alongside the Italian, official language in Corsica until 1859, which was...
. In the north of France, regional dialects of the various langues d'oïl
Langues d'oïl
The langues d'oïl or langues d'oui , in English the Oïl or Oui languages, are a dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives spoken today in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands...
continued to be spoken in rural communities. France would only become a linguistically unified country by the end of the 19th century, and in particular through the educational policies of Jules Ferry
Jules Ferry
Jules François Camille Ferry was a French statesman and republican. He was a promoter of laicism and colonial expansion.- Early life :Born in Saint-Dié, in the Vosges département, France, he studied law, and was called to the bar at Paris in 1854, but soon went into politics, contributing to...
during the French Third Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
. From an illiteracy rate of 33% among peasants in 1870, by 1914 almost all French could read and understand the national language, although 50% continued to understand or speak a regional language of France (in today's France, only an estimated 10% still understand a regional language
Regional language
A regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area....
).
Identity
Through the educational, social and military policies of the Third Republic, by 1914 the French had been converted (as the historian Eugen WeberEugen Weber
Eugen Joseph Weber was a Romanian-born American historian with a special focus on Western Civilization and the Western Tradition....
has put it) from a "country of peasants into a nation of Frenchmen".(Weber, E., 1979.) By 1914, most French could read French and regional languages had been greatly suppressed; the role of the Catholic Church in public life had been radically altered; a sense of national identity and glory was actively taught. The anti-clericalism of the Third Republic profoundly changed French religious habits: in one case study for the city of Limoges
Limoges
Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
comparing the years 1899 with 1914, it was found that baptisms decreased from 98% to 60%, and civil marriages before a town official increased from 14% to 60%. Yet, the eradication of regionalisms and the anti-clerical nature of the Third Republic would create a backlash in the second half of the century.
French Revolution (1789–1792)
The reign of Louis XVILouis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
(1774–1792) saw a temporary revival of French fortunes, but the over-ambitious projects and military campaigns of the 18th century had produced chronic financial problems. Deteriorating economic conditions, popular resentment against the complicated system of privileges granted the nobility and clerics, and a lack of alternate avenues for change were among the principal causes for convoking the Estates-General
French States-General
In France under the Old Regime, the States-General or Estates-General , was a legislative assembly of the different classes of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates, which were called and dismissed by the king...
which convened in Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
in 1789. On May 28, 1789 the Abbé Sieyès
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès , commonly known as Abbé Sieyès, was a French Roman Catholic abbé and clergyman, one of the chief theorists of the French Revolution, French Consulate, and First French Empire...
moved that the Third Estate proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so, and then voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly
National Assembly (French Revolution)
During the French Revolution, the National Assembly , which existed from June 17 to July 9, 1789, was a transitional body between the Estates-General and the National Constituent Assembly.-Background:...
, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People".
Louis XVI shut the Salle des États where the Assembly met. The Assembly moved their deliberations to the king's tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath
Tennis Court Oath
The Tennis Court Oath was a pivotal event during the first days of the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 of the 577 members from the Third Estate who were locked out of a meeting of the Estates-General on 20 June 1789...
(June 20, 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
. A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did forty-seven members of the nobility. By June 27 the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles. On July 9 the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly
National Constituent Assembly
The National Constituent Assembly was formed from the National Assembly on 9 July 1789, during the first stages of the French Revolution. It dissolved on 30 September 1791 and was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly.-Background:...
.
On July 11, 1789 King Louis, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles, as well as his wife, Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
, and brother, the Comte d'Artois
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
, banished the reformist minister Necker
Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:...
and completely reconstructed the ministry. Much of Paris, presuming this to be the start of a royal coup, moved into open rebellion. Some of the military joined the mob; others remained neutral. On July 14, 1789, after four hours of combat, the insurgents seized the Bastille
Bastille
The Bastille was a fortress in Paris, known formally as the Bastille Saint-Antoine. It played an important role in the internal conflicts of France and for most of its history was used as a state prison by the kings of France. The Bastille was built in response to the English threat to the city of...
fortress, killing the governor and several of his guards. The king and his military supporters backed down, at least for the time being. After this violence, nobles started to flee the country as émigré
Émigré
Émigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out", but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s, some of whom began plotting civil war within the kingdom and agitating for a European coalition against France. Insurrection and the spirit of popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the political principle that the legitimacy of the state is created and sustained by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated with Republicanism and the social contract...
spread throughout France. In rural areas, many went beyond this: some burned title-deeds and no small number of châteaux
Château
A château is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally—and still most frequently—in French-speaking regions...
, as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as "la Grande Peur" (the Great Fear).
On August 4, 1789, the National Assembly abolished feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithe
Tithe
A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural products...
s gathered by the First Estate. In the course of a few hours, nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies, and cities lost their special privileges. The revolution also brought about a massive shifting of powers from the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
to the State. Legislation enacted in 1790 abolished the Church's authority to levy a tax
Tax
To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
on crops known as the "dîme
Tithe
A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural products...
", cancelled special privileges for the clergy, and confiscated Church property: under the Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest landowner in the country. Further legislation abolished monastic vows. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a law passed on 12 July 1790 during the French Revolution, that subordinated the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government....
, passed on July 12, 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the State and required that they take an oath of loyalty to the constitution. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a law passed on 12 July 1790 during the French Revolution, that subordinated the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government....
also made the Catholic Church an arm of the secular state.
Looking to the United States Declaration of Independence
United States Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
for a model, on August 26, 1789 the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid...
. Like the U.S. Declaration, it comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
with legal effect. The Assembly replaced the historic provinces
Provinces of France
The Kingdom of France was organised into provinces until March 4, 1790, when the establishment of the département system superseded provinces. The provinces of France were roughly equivalent to the historic counties of England...
with eighty-three départements, uniformly administered and approximately equal to one another in extent and population; it also abolished the symbolic paraphernalia of the Ancien Régime — armorial bearings, liveries, etc. — which further alienated the more conservative nobles, and added to the ranks of the émigré
Émigré
Émigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out", but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s.
Louis XVI opposed the course of the revolution and on the night of June 20, 1791 the royal family fled the Tuileries. However, the king was recognised at Varennes in the Meuse
Meuse
Meuse is a department in northeast France, named after the River Meuse.-History:Meuse is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
late on June 21 and he and his family were brought back to Paris under guard. With most of the Assembly still favouring a constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a constitution, whether it be a written, uncodified or blended constitution...
rather than a republic
Republic
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...
, the various groupings reached a compromise which left Louis XVI little more than a figurehead: he had perforce to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to de facto abdication.
Meanwhile, a renewed threat from abroad arose: Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary and Bohemia from 1790 to 1792, Archduke of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...
, Frederick William II of Prussia
Frederick William II of Prussia
Frederick William II was the King of Prussia, reigning from 1786 until his death. He was in personal union the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg and the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel.-Early life:...
, and the king's brother Charles-Phillipe, comte d'Artois
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
issued the Declaration of Pilnitz which considered the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his total liberty and the dissolution of the Assembly, and promised an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions. The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with Austria and its allies. France declared war on Austria (April 20, 1792) and Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The French Revolutionary Wars
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
had begun.
French First Republic (1792–1799)
In the Brunswick Manifesto, the Imperial and Prussian armies threatened retaliation on the French population should it resist their advance or the reinstatement of the monarchy. As a consequence, King Louis was seen as conspiring with the enemies of France.On August 10, 1792
10th of August (French Revolution)
On 10 August 1792, during the French Revolution, revolutionary Fédéré militias — with the backing of a new municipal government of Paris that came to be known as the "insurrectionary" Paris Commune and ultimately supported by the National Guard — besieged the Tuileries palace. King Louis XVI and...
in France the King Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
was arrested. After the first great victory of the French revolutionary troops at the battle of Valmy
Battle of Valmy
The Battle of Valmy was the first major victory by the army of France during the French Revolution. The action took place on 20 September 1792 as Prussian troops commanded by the Duke of Brunswick attempted to march on Paris...
on September 20, 1792 the First Republic
French First Republic
The French First Republic was founded on 22 September 1792, by the newly established National Convention. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First French Empire in 1804 under Napoleon I...
was proclaimed the day after on September 21. By the end of the year, the French had overrun the Austrian Netherlands, threatening the Dutch Republic to the north, and also penetrated east of the Rhine, briefly occupying the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main.
January 17, 1793 saw the king condemned to death for "conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety" by a weak majority in Convention. On January 21, he was beheaded. This action led to Britain and the Netherlands declaring war on France.
The first half of 1793 went badly, with the French armies being driven out of Germany and the Austrian Netherlands. In this situation, prices rose and the sans-culottes
Sans-culottes
In the French Revolution, the sans-culottes were the radical militants of the lower classes, typically urban laborers. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, they made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars...
(poor labourers and radical Jacobins) rioted; counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary coup
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
, backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian sans-culottes. An alliance of Jacobin and sans-culottes elements thus became the effective centre of the new government. Policy became considerably more radical. The government instituted the "levy-en-masse", where all able-bodied men 18 and older were liable for military service. This allowed France to field much larger armies than its enemies, and soon the tide of war was reversed.
The Committee of Public Safety
Committee of Public Safety
The Committee of Public Safety , created in April 1793 by the National Convention and then restructured in July 1793, formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror , a stage of the French Revolution...
came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with his...
, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
(1793–1794). At least 1200 people met their deaths under the guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
— or otherwise — after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities. In October, the queen was beheaded, further antagonizing Austria. In 1794 Robespierre had ultra-radicals and moderate Jacobins executed; in consequence, however, his own popular support eroded markedly. Georges Danton
Georges Danton
Georges Jacques Danton was leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed; many historians describe him as "the chief force in theoverthrow of the monarchy and the...
was beheaded for arguing that there were too many beheadings. There were attempts to do away with organized religion in France entirely and replace it with a Festival of Reason. The primary leader of this movement, Jacques Hebert
Jacques Hébert
Jacques René Hébert was a French journalist, and the founder and editor of the extreme radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne during the French Revolution...
, held such a festival in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with an actress playing the Goddess of Reason. But Robespierre was unmoved by Hebert and had him and all his followers beheaded. On July 27, 1794 the French people revolted against the excesses of the Reign of Terror in what became known as the Thermidorian Reaction
Thermidorian Reaction
The Thermidorian Reaction was a revolt in the French Revolution against the excesses of the Reign of Terror. It was triggered by a vote of the Committee of Public Safety to execute Maximilien Robespierre, Antoine Louis Léon de Saint-Just de Richebourg and several other leading members of the Terror...
. It resulted in moderate Convention members deposing Robespierre and several other leading members of the Committee of Public Safety. All of them were beheaded without trial. With that, the extreme, radical phase of the Revolution ended. The Convention approved the new "Constitution of the Year III" on August 17, 1795; a plebiscite ratified it in September; and it took effect on September 26, 1795.
The new constitution installed the Directoire
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
and created the first bicameral legislature in French history. It was markedly more conservative, dominated by the bourgeoise, and sought to restore order and exclude the sans-culottes and other members of the lower classes from political life. By 1795, the French had once again conquered the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine, annexing them directly into France. The Dutch Republic and Spain were both defeated and made into French satellites. At sea however, the French navy proved no match for the British, and was badly beaten off the coast of Ireland in June 1794.
In 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte was given command of an army that was to invade Italy. The Austrian and Sardinian forces were defeated by the young general, they capitulated, and he negotiated the Treaty of Campo Formio without the input of the Directory. The French annexation of the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine was recognized, as were the satellite republics they created in northern Italy. The War of the First Coalition came to an end.
Military campaigns continued in 1798, with invasions of Switzerland, Naples, and the Papal States taking place and republics being established in those countries. Napoleon also convinced the Directory to approve an expedition to Egypt, with the purpose of cutting off Britain's supply route to India. He got approval for this, and set off in May 1798 for Egypt with 40,000 men. But the expedition foundered when the British fleet of Horatio Nelson caught and destroyed most of the French ships in the Battle of the Nile
Battle of the Nile
The Battle of the Nile was a major naval battle fought between British and French fleets at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt from 1–3 August 1798...
. The army was left with no way to get home, and now facing the hostility of the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon himself escaped back to France, where he led the coup de etat of November 1799, making himself First Consul (his hapless troops remained in Egypt until they surrendered to a British expedition in 1801 and were repatriated to France).
By that point, the War of the Second Coalition
War of the Second Coalition
The "Second Coalition" was the second attempt by European monarchs, led by the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria and the Russian Empire, to contain or eliminate Revolutionary France. They formed a new alliance and attempted to roll back France's previous military conquests...
was in progress. The French suffered a string of defeats in 1799, seeing their satellite republics in Italy overthrown and an invasion of Germany beaten back. Attempts by the allies on Switzerland and the Netherlands failed however, and once Napoleon returned to France, he began turning the tide on them. In 1801, the Peace of Lunéville ended hostilities with Austria and Russia, and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain.
First Empire (1804–1814)
By 1802, Napoleon was named First Consul for life. His continued provocations of the British led to renewed war in 1803, and the following year he proclaimed himself emperor in a huge ceremony in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The pope was invited to the coronation, but Napoleon took the crown from him at the last minute and placed it on his own head. He attracted more power and gravitated towards imperial status, gathering support on the way for his internal rebuilding of France and its institutions. The French EmpireFirst French Empire
The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...
(or the Napoleonic Empire) (1804–1814) was marked by the French domination and reorganization of continental Europe (the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
) and by the final codification of the republican legal system (the Napoleonic Code
Napoleonic code
The Napoleonic Code — or Code Napoléon — is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified...
). The Empire gradually became more authoritarian in nature, with freedom of the press and assembly being severely restricted. Religious freedom survived under the condition that Christianity and Judaism, the two officially recognized faiths, not be attacked, and that atheism not be expressed in public. Napoleon also recreated the nobility, but neither they nor his court had the elegance or historical connections of the old monarchy. Despite the growing administrative despotism of his regime, the emperor was still seen by the rest of Europe as the embodiment of the Revolution.
By 1804, Britain alone stood outside French control and was an important force in encouraging and financing resistance to France. In 1805, Napoleon massed an army of 200,000 men in Bolougne for the purpose of invading the British Isles, but never was able to find the right conditions to embark, and thus abandoned his plans. Three weeks later, the French and Spanish fleets were destroyed by the British at Trafalgar. Afterwards, Napoleon, unable to defeat Britain militarily, tried to bring it down through economic warfare. He inaugurated the Continental System, in which all of France's allies and satellites would join in refusing to trade with the British.
Portugal, an ally of Britain, was the only European country that openly refused to join. After the Treaties of Tilsit
Treaties of Tilsit
The Treaties of Tilsit were two agreements signed by Napoleon I of France in the town of Tilsit in July, 1807 in the aftermath of his victory at Friedland. The first was signed on 7 July, between Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon I of France, when they met on a raft in the middle of the Neman...
of July 1807, the French launched an invasion through Spain to close this hole in the Continental System. British troops arrived in Portugal, compelling the French to withdraw. A renewed invasion the following year brought the British back, and at that point, Napoleon decided to depose the Spanish king Charles IV
Charles IV of Spain
Charles IV was King of Spain from 14 December 1788 until his abdication on 19 March 1808.-Early life:...
and place his brother Joseph
Joseph Bonaparte
Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte was the elder brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, who made him King of Naples and Sicily , and later King of Spain...
on the throne. This caused the people of Spain to rise up in a patriotic revolt, beginning the Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
. The British could now gain a foothold on the Continent, and the war tied down considerable French resources, contributing to Napoleon's eventual defeat.
Napoleon was at the height of his power in 1810-1812, with most of the European countries either his allies, satellites, or annexed directly into France. After the defeat of Austria in the War of the Fifth Coalition
War of the Fifth Coalition
The War of the Fifth Coalition, fought in the year 1809, pitted a coalition of the Austrian Empire and the United Kingdom against Napoleon's French Empire and Bavaria. Major engagements between France and Austria, the main participants, unfolded over much of Central Europe from April to July, with...
, Europe was at peace for 2-1/2 years except for the conflict in Spain. The emperor was given an archduchess to marry by the Austrians, and she gave birth to his long-awaited son in 1811.
Ultimately, the Continental System failed. Its effect on Great Britain and on British trade is uncertain, but the embargo is thought to have been more harmful on the continental European states. Russia in particular chafed under the embargo, and in 1812, that country reopened trade with Britain, provoking Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The disaster of that campaign caused all the subjugated peoples of Europe to rise up against French domination. In 1813, Napoleon was forced to conscript boys under the age of 18 and less able-bodied men who had been passed up for military service in previous years. The quality of his troops deteriorated sharply and war weariness at home increased. The allies could also put far more men in the field than he could. Throughout 1813, the French were forced back and by early 1814, the British were occupying Gascony. The allied troops reached Paris in March, and Napoleon abdicated as emperor. Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, was installed as king and France was granted a quite generous peace settlement, being restored to its 1792 boundaries and having to pay no war indemnity.
After eleven months of exile on the island of Elba
Elba
Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. The largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, Elba is also part of the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia...
in the Mediterranean, Napoleon escaped and returned to France, where he was greeted with huge enthusiasm. Louis XVIII fled Paris, but the one thing that would have given the emperor mass support, a return to the revolutionary extremism of 1793-1794, was out of the question. Enthusiasm quickly waned, and as the allies (then discussing the fate of Europe in Vienna) refused to negotiate with him, he had no choice but to fight. At Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, Napoleon was completely defeated by the British and Prussians, and abdicated once again. This time, he was exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he remained until his death from stomach cancer
Stomach cancer
Gastric cancer, commonly referred to as stomach cancer, can develop in any part of the stomach and may spread throughout the stomach and to other organs; particularly the esophagus, lungs, lymph nodes, and the liver...
in 1821.
Restoration (1814–1830)
Louis XVIII was restored a second time by the allies in 1815, ending more than two decades of war. He was forced to sanction at least the principles of the French Revolution and rule as a limited, constitutional monarch. After the Hundred DaysHundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
, a more harsh peace treaty was imposed on France, returning it to its 1789 boundaries and requiring a war indemnity. Allied troops were to remain in the country until it was paid. There were large-scale purges of Bonapartists from the government and military, and a brief "White Terror" in the south of France claimed 300 victims.
Despite the return of the House of Bourbon to power, France was much changed from the era of the Ancien Régime. The egalitarianism and liberalism of the revolutionaries remained an important force and the autocracy and hierarchy of the earlier era could not be fully restored. The economic changes, which had been underway long before the revolution, had been further enhanced during the years of turmoil and were firmly entrenched by 1815. These changes had seen power shift from the noble landowners to the urban merchants. The administrative reforms of Napoleon, such as the Napoleonic Code
Napoleonic code
The Napoleonic Code — or Code Napoléon — is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified...
and efficient bureaucracy, also remained in place. These changes produced a unified central government that was fiscally sound and had much control over all areas of French life, a sharp difference from the situation the Bourbons had faced before the Revolution.
In 1823, France intervened in Spain, where a civil war had deposed its king Ferdinand VII. The British objected to this, as it brought back memories of the still recent Peninsular War. However, the French troops marched into Spain, retook Madrid from the rebels, and left almost as quickly as they came. Despite worries to the contrary, France showed no sign of returning to an aggressive foreign policy and was admitted to the Concert of Europe
Concert of Europe
The Concert of Europe , also known as the Congress System after the Congress of Vienna, was the balance of power that existed in Europe from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the outbreak of World War I , albeit with major alterations after the revolutions of 1848...
in 1818.
Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
, for the most part, accepted that much had changed. However, he was pushed on his right by the Ultra-royalists, led by the comte de Villèle, who condemned the Doctrinaires
Doctrinaires
Doctrinaires was the name given during the Bourbon Restoration to the little group of French Royalists who hoped to reconcile the Monarchy with the Revolution, and power with liberty...
' attempt to reconcile the Revolution with the monarchy through a constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a constitution, whether it be a written, uncodified or blended constitution...
. Instead, the Chambre introuvable
Chambre introuvable
La Chambre introuvable was the first Chamber of Deputies elected after the Second Bourbon Restoration in 1815. It was dominated by Ultra-royalists who completely refused to accept the results of the French Revolution...
elected in 1815 banished all Conventionnels
National Convention
During the French Revolution, the National Convention or Convention, in France, comprised the constitutional and legislative assembly which sat from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795 . It held executive power in France during the first years of the French First Republic...
who had voted Louis XVI's death and passed several reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
laws. Louis XVIII was forced to dissolve this Chamber, dominated by the Ultras, in 1816, fearing a popular uprising. The liberals thus governed until the 1820 assassination of the duc de Berry
Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry
Charles Ferdinand d'Artois, Duke of Berry was the younger son of the future king, Charles X of France, and his wife, Princess Maria Theresa of Savoy....
the nephew of the king and known supporter of the Ultras, which brought Villèle's ultras back to power (vote of the Anti-Sacrilege Act
Anti-Sacrilege Act
The Anti-Sacrilege Act was a French law against blasphemy and sacrilege passed in January 1825 under King Charles X. The law was never applied and was later revoked at the beginning of the July monarchy under King Louis-Philippe.-The draft bill:In April 1824, King Louis XVIII's government, headed...
in 1825, and of the loi sur le milliard des émigrés, Act on the émigrés' billions). Louis died in September 1824 and was succeeded by his brother.
Charles X of France
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
took a far more conservative line. He attempted to rule as an absolute monarch and reassert the power of the Catholic Church in France. Acts of sacrilege in churches became punishable by death, and freedom of the press was severely restricted. Finally, he tried to compensate the families of the nobles who had had their property destroyed during the Revolution. In 1830 the discontent caused by these changes and Charles X's authoritarian nomination of the Ultra prince de Polignac
Jules, prince de Polignac
Prince Jules de Polignac, 3rd Duke of Polignac , was a French statesman. He played a part in ultra-royalist reaction after the Revolution...
as minister culminated in an uprising in the streets of Paris, known as the 1830 July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
(or, in French, "Les trois Glorieuses" - The three Glorious days - of 27, 28 and July 29). Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, a member of the Orléans
House of Orleans
Orléans is the name used by several branches of the Royal House of France, all descended in the legitimate male line from the dynasty's founder, Hugh Capet. It became a tradition during France's ancien régime for the duchy of Orléans to be granted as an appanage to a younger son of the king...
branch of the family, and son of Philippe Égalité who had voted the death of his cousin Louis XVI, ascended the throne. Louis-Philippe ruled, not as "King of France" but as "King of the French" (an evocative difference for contemporaries). It was made clear that his right to rule came from the people and was not divinely granted. He also revived the Tricolor as the flag of France, in place of the white Bourbon flag that had been used since 1815, an important distinction because the Tricolour was the symbol of the revolution.
July Monarchy (1830–1848)
The July MonarchyJuly Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
(1830–1848) is generally seen as a period during which the haute bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
was dominant, and marked the shift from the counter-revolutionaries Legitimists to the Orleanist
Orléanist
The Orléanists were a French right-wing/center-right party which arose out of the French Revolution. It governed France 1830-1848 in the "July Monarchy" of king Louis Philippe. It is generally seen as a transitional period dominated by the bourgeoisie and the conservative Orleanist doctrine in...
s, who were willing to make some compromises with the changes brought by the 1789 Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. Louis-Philippe was crowned "King of the French
Popular monarchy
Popular monarchy is a system of monarchical governance in which the monarch's title is linked with a popular mandate rather than a constitutional state. It was the norm in some places from the Middle Ages, and was occasionally used in 19th- and 20th-century Europe, often reflecting the results of...
," instead of "King of France": this marked his acceptance of popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the political principle that the legitimacy of the state is created and sustained by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated with Republicanism and the social contract...
, which replaced the Ancien Régime 's divine right
Divine Right of Kings
The divine right of kings or divine-right theory of kingship is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly from the will of God...
. Louis-Philippe clearly understood his base of power: the wealthy bourgeoisie had carried him aloft during the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
through their work in the Parliament, and throughout his reign, he kept their interests in mind.
Louis-Philippe, who had flirted with liberalism
Liberalism and radicalism in France
Liberalism and radicalism in France do not form the same type of ideology. In fact, the main line of conflict in France during the 19th century was between monarchist opponents of the Republic and supporters of the Republic...
in his youth, rejected much of the pomp and circumstance of the Bourbons
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
and surrounded himself with merchants and bankers. The July Monarchy, however, remained a time of turmoil. A large group of Legitimists on the right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
demanded the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne. On the left, Republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
and, later Socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, remained a powerful force. Late in his reign Louis-Philippe became increasingly rigid and dogmatic and his President of the Council, François Guizot
François Guizot
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, a conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, and worked to sustain a constitutional...
, had become deeply unpopular, but Louis-Philippe refused to remove him. The situation gradually escalated until the Revolutions of 1848 saw the fall of the monarchy and the creation of the Second Republic.
However, during the first several years of his regime, Louis-Philippe appeared to move his government toward legitimate, broad-based reform. The government found its source of legitimacy within the Charter of 1830
Charter of 1830
The Charter of 1830 instigated the July Monarchy in France. It was considered a compromise between constitutionalists and republicans.-History:...
, written by reform-minded members of Chamber of Deputies
Chamber of Deputies of France
Chamber of Deputies was the name given to several parliamentary bodies in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:* 1814–1848 during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, the Chamber of Deputies was the Lower chamber of the French Parliament, elected by census suffrage.*...
upon a platform of religious equality, the empowerment of the citizenry through the reestablishment of the National Guard
National Guard (France)
The National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...
, electoral reform, the reformation of the peerage system, and the lessening of royal authority. And indeed, Louis-Phillipe and his ministers adhered to policies that seemed to promote the central tenets of the constitution. However, the majority of these policies were veiled attempts to shore up the power and influence of the government and the bourgeoisie, rather than legitimate attempts to promote equality and empowerment for a broad constituency of the French population. Thus, though the July Monarchy seemed to move toward reform, this movement was largely illusory.
During the years of the July Monarchy, enfranchisement roughly doubled, from 94,000 under Charles X to more than 200,000 by 1848 . However, this represented only roughly one percent of population, and as the requirements for voting were tax-based, only the wealthiest gained the privilege. By implication, the enlarged enfranchisement tended to favor the wealthy merchant bourgeoisie more than any other group. Beyond simply increasing their presence within the Chamber of Deputies
Chamber of Deputies of France
Chamber of Deputies was the name given to several parliamentary bodies in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:* 1814–1848 during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, the Chamber of Deputies was the Lower chamber of the French Parliament, elected by census suffrage.*...
, this electoral enlargement provided the bourgeoisie the means by which to challenge the nobility in legislative matters. Thus, while appearing to honor his pledge to increase suffrage, Louis-Philippe acted primarily to empower his supporters and increase his hold over the French Parliament. The inclusion of only the wealthiest also tended to undermine any possibility of the growth of a radical faction in Parliament, effectively serving socially conservative ends.
The reformed Charter of 1830 limited the power of the King – stripping him of his ability to propose and decree legislation, as well as limiting his executive authority. However, the King of the French still believed in a version of monarchy that held the king as much more than a figurehead for an elected Parliament, and as such, he was quite active in politics. One of the first acts of Louis-Philippe in constructing his cabinet was to appoint the rather conservative Casimir Perier
Casimir Pierre Perier
Casimir Pierre Perier was a French statesman, President of the Council during the July Monarchy, when he headed the conservative Parti de la résistance .-Life:...
as the premier of that body. Perier, a banker, was instrumental in shutting down many of the Republican secret societies and labor unions that had formed during the early years of the regime. In addition, he oversaw the dismemberment of the National Guard after it proved too supportive of radical ideologies. He performed all of these actions, of course, with royal approval. He was once quoted as saying that the source of French misery was the belief that there had been a revolution. "No Monsieur," he said to another minister, "there has not been a revolution: there is simply a change at the head of state."
Further expressions of this conservative trend came under the supervision of Perier and the then Minister of the Interior, François Guizot
François Guizot
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, a conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, and worked to sustain a constitutional...
. The regime acknowledged early on that radicalism
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
and republicanism threatened it, undermining its laissez-faire policies. Thus, the Monarchy declared the very term republican illegal in 1834. Guizot shut down republican clubs and disbanded republican publications. Republicans within the cabinet, like the banker Dupont, were all but excluded by Perier and his conservative clique. Distrusting the sole National Guard, Louis-Philippe increased the size of the army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
and reformed it in order to ensure its loyalty to the government.
Though two factions always persisted in the cabinet, split between liberal conservatives like Guizot (le parti de la Résistance, the Party of Resistance) and liberal reformers like the aforementioned journalist Adolphe Thiers
Adolphe Thiers
Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...
(le parti du Mouvement, the Party of Movement), the latter never gained prominence. After Perier came count Molé, another conservative. After Molé came Thiers, a reformer later sacked by Louis-Philippe after attempting to pursue an aggressive foreign policy. After Thiers came the conservative Guizot. In particular, the Guizot administration was marked by increasingly authoritarian crackdowns on republicanism and dissent, and an increasingly pro-business laissez-faire policy. This policy included protective tariff
Tariff
A tariff may be either tax on imports or exports , or a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage ....
s that defended the status quo and enriched French businessmen. Guizot's government granted railway and mining contracts to the bourgeois supporters of the government, and even contributing some of the start-up costs. As workers under these policies had no legal right to assemble, unionize, or petition the government for increased pay or decreased hours, the July Monarchy under Perier, Molé, and Guizot generally proved detrimental to the lower classes. In fact, Guizot's advice to those who were disenfranchised by the tax-based electoral requirements was a simple "enrichissez-vous" – enrich yourself. The king himself was not very popular either by the middle of the 1840s, and due to his appearance was widely referred to as the "crowned pear". There was a considerable hero-worship of Napoleon during this era, and in 1841 his body was taken from Saint Helena and given a magnificent reburial in France.
Louis-Philippe conducted a pacifistic foreign policy. Shortly after he assumed power in 1830, Belgium revolted against Dutch rule and proclaimed its independence. The king rejected the idea of intervention there or any military activities outside France's borders. The only exception to this was a war in Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
which had been started by Charles X a few weeks before his overthrow on the pretext of suppressing pirates in the Mediterranean. Louis-Philippe's government decided to continue the conquest of that country, which took over a decade. By 1848, Algeria had been declared an integral part of France.
Revolution of 1848
The Revolution of 1848 had major consequences for all of Europe: popular democratic revolts against authoritarian regimes broke out in Austria and Hungary, in the German ConfederationGerman Confederation
The German Confederation was the loose association of Central European states created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries. It acted as a buffer between the powerful states of Austria and Prussia...
and Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
, and in the Italian States of Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
and Rome. Economic downturns and bad harvests during the 1840s contributed to growing discontent.
In February 1848, the French government banned the holding of the Campagne des banquets
Campagne des banquets
The Campagne des banquets were political meetings during the July Monarchy in France which destabilized the King of the French Louis-Philippe. The campaign officially took place from 9 July 1847 to 25 December 1847, but in fact continued until the February 1848 Revolution during which the Second...
, fundraising dinners by activists where critics of the regime would meet (as public demonstrations and strikes were forbidden). As a result, protests and riots broke out in the streets of Paris. An angry mob converged on the royal palace, after which the hapless king abdicated and fled to England. The Second Republic was then proclaimed.
The revolution in France had brought together classes of wildly different interests: the bourgeoisie desired electoral reforms (a democratic republic), socialist leaders (like Louis Blanc
Louis Blanc
Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc was a French politician and historian. A socialist who favored reforms, he called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor....
, Pierre Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
and the radical Auguste Blanqui) asked for a "right to work" and the creation of national workshops (a social welfare republic) and for France to liberate the oppressed peoples of Europe (Poles and Italians), while moderates (like the aristocrat Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...
) sought a middle ground. Tensions between groups escalated, and in June 1848, a working class insurrection in Paris cost the lives of 1500 workers and eliminated once and for all the dream of a social welfare constitution.
Second Republic (1848–1852)
The constitution of the Second Republic which was ratified in September 1848 was extremely flawed and permitted no effective resolution between the President and the Assembly in case of dispute. In December 1848, a nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, was elected as President of the Republic, and pretexting legislative gridlock, in 1851, he staged a coup d'étatCoup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
. Finally, in 1852 he had himself declared Emperor Napoléon III of the Second Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
.
Second Empire (1852–1870)
France was ruled by Emperor Napoleon IIINapoleon III of France
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte...
from 1852 to 1870. The regime was authoritarian in nature during its early years, curbing most freedom of the press and assembly. The era saw great industrialization, urbanization (including the massive rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann
Baron Haussmann
Georges-Eugène Haussmann, commonly known as Baron Haussmann , was a French civic planner whose name is associated with the rebuilding of Paris...
) and economic growth, but Napoleon III's foreign policies would be catastrophic.
In 1852, Napoleon declared that "L'Empire, c'est la paix" (The empire is peace), but it was hardly fitting for a Bonaparte to continue the foreign policy of Louis-Philippe. Only a few months after becoming president in 1848, he sent French troops to break up a short-lived republic in Rome, remaining there until 1870. The overseas empire expanded, and France made gains in Indo-China, West and central Africa, and the South Seas. This was helped by the opening of large central banks in Paris to finance overseas expeditions. The Suez Canal
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...
was opened by the Empress Eugénie in 1869 and was the achievement of a Frenchman. Yet still, Napoleon III's France lagged behind Britain in colonial affairs, and his determination to upstage British control of India and American influence in Mexico resulted in a fiasco.
In 1854, the emperor allied with Britain and the Ottoman Empire against Russia in the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
. Afterwards, Napoleon intervened in the questions of Italian independence. He declared his intention of making Italy "free from the Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
to the Adriatic", and fought a war
Second Italian War of Independence
The Second War of Italian Independence, Franco-Austrian War, Austro-Sardinian War, or Austro-Piedmontese War , was fought by Napoleon III of France and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia against the Austrian Empire in 1859...
with Austria in 1859 over this matter. With the victories of Montebello
Montebello
Montebello is the name of several places:* Montebello Islands, Australia* Montebello, Quebec, Canada* Montebello della Battaglia, Pavia, Italy* Montebello, Rimini, Province of Rimini, Italy * Montebello Vicentino, Vicenza, Italy...
, Magenta
Battle of Magenta
The Battle of Magenta was fought on June 4, 1859 during the Second Italian War of Independence, resulting in a French-Sardinian victory under Napoleon III against the Austrians under Marshal Ferencz Gyulai....
and Solferino
Battle of Solferino
The Battle of Solferino, , was fought on June 24, 1859 and resulted in the victory of the allied French Army under Napoleon III and Sardinian Army under Victor Emmanuel II against the Austrian Army under Emperor Franz Joseph I; it was the last major battle in world...
France and Austria signed the Peace of Villafranca
Villafranca
Villafranca is a town and municipality located in the province and the autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain.-External links:*...
in 1859, as the emperor worried that a longer war might cause the other powers, particularly Prussia, to intervene. Austria ceded Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
to Napoleon III, who in turn ceded it to Victor Emmanuel; Modena
Modena
Modena is a city and comune on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....
and Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
were restored to their respective dukes, and the Romagna
Romagna
Romagna is an Italian historical region that approximately corresponds to the south-eastern portion of present-day Emilia-Romagna. Traditionally, it is limited by the Apennines to the south-west, the Adriatic to the east, and the rivers Reno and Sillaro to the north and west...
to the pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
, now president of an Italian federation. In exchange for France's military assistance against Austria, Piedmont ceded its provinces of Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
and Savoy
Savoy
Savoy is a region of France. It comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Monaco and the Mediterranean coast in the south....
to France in March 1860. Napoleon then turned his hand to meddling in the Western Hemisphere. He gave support to the Confederacy during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, until Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
announced the Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
in the autumn of 1862. As this made it impossible to support the South without also supporting slavery, the emperor backed off. However, he was conducting a simultaneous venture in Mexico, which had refused to pay interest on loans taken from France, Britain, and Spain. As a result, those three countries sent a joint expedition to the city of Veracruz
Veracruz
Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...
in January 1862, but the British and Spanish quickly withdrew after realizing the extent of Napoleon's plans. French troops occupied Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
in June 1863 and established a puppet government headed by the Austrian archduke Maximilian, who was declared Emperor of Mexico. Although this sort of thing was forbidden by the Monroe Doctrine
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention...
, Napoleon reasoned that the United States was far too distracted with the Civil War to do anything about it. The French were never able to suppress the forces of the ousted Mexican president Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez born Benito Pablo Juárez García, was a Mexican lawyer and politician of Zapotec origin from Oaxaca who served five terms as president of Mexico: 1858–1861 as interim, 1861–1865, 1865–1867, 1867–1871 and 1871–1872...
, and then in the spring of 1865, the Civil War ended. The United States, which had an army of a million battle-hardened troops, demanded that the French withdraw or prepare for war. They quickly did so, but Maximilian tried to hold onto power. He was captured and shot by the Mexicans in 1867.
Public opinion was becoming a major force as people began to tire of oppressive authoritarianism in the 1860s. Napoleon III, who had expressed some rather woolly liberal ideas prior to his coronation, began to relax censorship, laws on public meetings, and the right to strike. As a result, radicalism grew among industrial workers. Discontent with the Second Empire spread rapidly, as the economy began to experience a downturn. The golden days of the 1850s were over. Napoleon's reckless foreign policy was inciting criticism. To placate the Liberals, in 1870 Napoleon proposed the establishment of a fully parliamentary legislative regime, which won massive support. The French emperor never had the chance to implement this, however - by the end of the year, the Second Empire had ignominiously collapsed.
Napoleon's distraction with Mexico prevented him from intervening in the Second Schleswig War in 1864 and the Seven Weeks War in 1866. Both of those conflicts saw Prussia establish itself as the dominant power in Germany. Afterwards, tensions between France and Prussia grew, especially in 1868 when the latter tried to place a Hohenzollern prince on the Spanish throne, which was left vacant by a revolution there.
The Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
provoked Napoleon into declaring war on Prussia in July 1870. The French troops were swiftly defeated in the following weeks, and on September 1, the main army, which the emperor himself was with, was trapped at Sedan and forced to surrender. A republic was quickly proclaimed in Paris, but the war was far from over. As it was clear that Prussia would expect territorial concessions, the provisional government vowed to continue resistance. The Prussians laid siege to Paris, and new armies mustered by France failed to alter this situation. The French capital began experiencing severe food shortages, to the extent where even the animals in the zoo were eaten. As the city was being bombarded by Prussian siege guns in January 1871, King William of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Shortly afterwards, Paris surrendered. The subsequent peace treaty was harsh. France ceded Alsace and Lorraine to Germany and had to pay an indemnity of 5 billion francs. German troops were to remain in the country until it was paid off. Meanwhile, the fallen Napoleon III went into exile in England where he died in 1873.
Third Republic (1870–1940), until 1920
The French legislature established the Third Republic which was to last until the military defeat of 1940 (longer than any government in France since the Revolution). The birth of the republic saw France occupied by foreign troops, the capital in a popular socialist insurrection — the Paris CommuneParis Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
(which was violently repressed by Adolphe Thiers) — and two provinces (Alsace-Lorraine
Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...
) annexed to Germany. Feelings of national guilt and a desire for vengeance ("revanchism
Revanchism
Revanchism is a term used since the 1870s to describe a political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses incurred by a country, often following a war or social movement. Revanchism draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought and is often motivated by economic or...
") would be major preoccupations of the French throughout the next half century.
Paris Commune (1871)
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
was established on September 4, 1870, following the defeat of Napoleon III during the 1870 war against Prussia
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
. However, the constitutional laws of the new republic were established only in February 1875, after the crushing of the revolutionary Paris Commune
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
by Adolphe Thiers.
The Commune started with the uprising of the Parisian population following the siege of Paris in September 1870, and was in place from March 18, 1871 to May 28, 1871. Adolphe Thiers angered the people of Paris by allowing the Prussians a parade in Paris on February 17, 1871, and on March 18 in an attempt to strengthen his government's position and decrease the power of the National Guard, he ordered the French regular troops to remove the cannon which had been moved to Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
, a move opposed by the leadership of the National Guard. Many French soldiers agreed with the National Guard, refused to obey the order, and fell in with the Guard in the uprising. Seeing that he had lost control, Thiers ordered the regular forces, police, administrators and specialists to go to Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
and fled the city followed by all those that obeyed.
The Commune used the socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
red flag
Red flag
In politics, a red flag is a symbol of Socialism, or Communism, or sometimes left-wing politics in general. It has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution. Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it became a symbol of communism as a result of its...
rather than the moderate republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
tricolore (during the Second Republic
French Second Republic
The French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte which initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité...
in 1848, radicals supporting a socialist alternative government to the moderate republican Second Republic already raised a red flag). In only three months, the Commune voted many social measures, including:
- the remission of rents for the entire period of the siege (during which they had been raised considerably by many landlords)
- the abolition of night workNight WorkNight Work is the fourth book in the Kate Martinelli series by Laurie R. King. It is preceded by With Child and followed by The Art of Detection....
in the hundreds of Paris bakeriesBakeryA bakery is an establishment which produces and sells flour-based food baked in an oven such as bread, cakes, pastries and pies. Some retail bakeries are also cafés, serving coffee and tea to customers who wish to consume the baked goods on the premises.-See also:*Baker*Cake... - the abolition of the guillotineGuillotineThe guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
- the granting of pensionPensionIn general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
s to the unmarried companions of National Guards killed on active service, as well as to the children if any; the free return, by the state pawnshops, of all workmen's tools of their trade, pledged during the siege as they were concerned that skilled workers had been forced to pawn their tools during the war - the postponement of debtDebtA debt is an obligation owed by one party to a second party, the creditor; usually this refers to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value.A debt is created when a...
obligations, and abolition of interest on the debts - and, in an important departure from strictly "reformistReformismReformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
" principles, the right of employees to take over and run an enterpriseWorkers' self-managementWorker self-management is a form of workplace decision-making in which the workers themselves agree on choices instead of an owner or traditional supervisor telling workers what to do, how to do it and where to do it...
if it were deserted by its owner.
Projected legislation also separated the Church from the state
Separation of church and state
The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....
, made all Church property state property, and excluded religion from schools. During the uprising, the churches were only allowed to continue their religious activity if they kept their doors open to public political meetings during the evenings. This made the churches, along with the streets and the cafés, the chief participatory political centres of the Commune. Other projected legislation dealt with educational reforms which would make further education and technical training freely available to all. The Vendôme Column, seen as a symbol of Napoleon's imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
and of chauvinism
Chauvinism
Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It is an eponym of a possibly fictional French soldier Nicolas Chauvin who was credited with many superhuman feats in the Napoleonic wars.By extension it has come...
, was taken down. Some women organized the first traces of a feminist movement
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
. Thus, Nathanie Le Mel, a religious workwoman, and Elisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian aristocrat, created the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés ("Women Union for the Defense of Paris and Care to the Injured") on April 11, 1871. Considering that their struggle against patriarchy
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
could only be followed in the frame of a global struggle against capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, the association revendicated gender equality, wages' equality, right of divorce for women, right to laïque
Laïcité
French secularism, in French, laïcité is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of...
instruction (non-clerical) and for professional formation for girls. They also demanded suppression of the distinction between married women and concubins, between legitimate and natural children, the abolition of prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
— they obtained the closing of the maisons de tolérance (legal unofficial brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
s). The Women Union also participated in several municipal commissions and organized cooperative workshops.
Taking advantage of his retreat from Paris and of Baron Haussmann
Baron Haussmann
Georges-Eugène Haussmann, commonly known as Baron Haussmann , was a French civic planner whose name is associated with the rebuilding of Paris...
's urban modeling of the capital
Haussmann's renovation of Paris
Haussmann's Renovation of Paris, or the Haussmann Plan, was a modernization program of Paris commissioned by Napoléon III and led by the Seine prefect, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870...
during the Second Empire — construction of wide boulevards
Boulevards
Boulevards is a network of city guides on the Internet established in 1994 by Boulevards New Media Inc., an early digital media pioneer. It preceded other city guide networks such as Citysearch and Microsoft's now-defunct Sidewalk.com product, which launched under a similarly metaphorical brand and...
linking the train stations and therefore the soldiers coming from the countryside to the capital — Adolphe Thiers led the harsh repression of the Communards
Communards
The Communards were members and supporters of the short-lived 1871 Paris Commune formed in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War and France's defeat....
. On May 27, 1871, when the last barricade
Barricade
Barricade, from the French barrique , is any object or structure that creates a barrier or obstacle to control, block passage or force the flow of traffic in the desired direction...
, in the rue Ramponeau in Belleville
Belleville, Paris
Belleville is a neighbourhood of Paris, France, parts of which lie in four different arrondissements. The major portion of Belleville straddles the borderline between the 20th arrondissement and the 19th along its main street, the Rue de Belleville...
, fell, Marshal MacMahon issued a proclamation: "To the inhabitants of Paris. The French army has come to save you. Paris is freed! At 4 o'clock our soldiers took the last insurgent position. Today the fight is over. Order, work and security will be reborn."
Royalist domination (1871–1879)
Thus, the Republic was born of a double defeat: before the Prussians, and of the revolutionary Commune. The repression of the commune was bloody. Hundreds were executed in front of the Communards' WallCommunards' Wall
The Communards’ Wall at the Père Lachaise cemetery is where, on May 28, 1871, one-hundred forty-seven fédérés, combatants of the Paris Commune, were shot and thrown in an open trench at the foot of the wall....
in the Père Lachaise cemetery, while thousands of others were marched to Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
for trials. The number killed during La Semaine Sanglante (The Bloody Week) can never be established for certain but the best estimates are 30,000 dead, many more wounded, and perhaps as many as 50,000 later executed or imprisoned; 7,000 were exiled to New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...
. Thousands of them fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, "stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left." For the imprisoned there was a general amnesty in 1880. Paris remained under martial law for five years.
Beside this defeat, the Republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
movement also had to confront the counterrevolutionaries who rejected the legacy of the 1789 Revolution. Both the Legitimist and the Orleanist
Orléanist
The Orléanists were a French right-wing/center-right party which arose out of the French Revolution. It governed France 1830-1848 in the "July Monarchy" of king Louis Philippe. It is generally seen as a transitional period dominated by the bourgeoisie and the conservative Orleanist doctrine in...
royalists rejected republicanism, which they saw as an extension of modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
and atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
, breaking with France's traditions. This lasted until at least the May 16, 1877 crisis, which finally led to the resignation of royalist Marshal MacMahon in January 1879. The death of Henri, comte de Chambord
Henri, comte de Chambord
Henri, comte de Chambord was disputedly King of France from 2 to 9 August 1830 as Henry V, although he was never officially proclaimed as such...
in 1883, who, as the grandson of Charles X, had refused to abandon the fleur-de-lys and the white flag
White flag
White flags have had different meanings throughout history and depending on the locale.-Flag of temporary truce in order to parley :...
, thus jeopardizing the alliance between Legitimists and Orleanists, convinced many of the remaining Orleanists to rally themselves to the Republic, as Adolphe Thiers
Adolphe Thiers
Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...
had already done. The vast majority of the Legitimists abandoned the political arena or became marginalised, at least until Pétain
Philippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
's Vichy regime. Some of them founded Action Française
Action Française
The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...
in 1898, during the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
, which became an influent movement through-out the 1930s, in particular among the intellectuals of Paris' Quartier Latin. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII , born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903...
's encyclical Rerum Novarum
Rerum Novarum
Rerum Novarum is an encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII on May 15, 1891. It was an open letter, passed to all Catholic bishops, that addressed the condition of the working classes. The encyclical is entitled: “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour”...
was incorrectly seen to have legitimised the Social Catholic
Christian socialism
Christian socialism generally refers to those on the Christian left whose politics are both Christian and socialist and who see these two philosophies as being interrelated. This category can include Liberation theology and the doctrine of the social gospel...
movement, which in France could be traced back to Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais
Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais
Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais , was a French priest, and philosophical and political writer.-Youth:Félicité de Lamennais was born at Saint-Malo on June 19, 1782, the son of a wealthy merchant...
' efforts under the July Monarchy. Pope St Pius X later condemned these movements of Catholics for democracy and Socialism in Nostre Charge Apostolique against the Le Síllon movement.
"Radicals" (1879–1914)
The initial republic was in effect led by pro-royalists, but republicans (the "RadicalsRadicalization
Radicalization is the process in which an individual changes from passiveness or activism to become more revolutionary, militant or extremist. Radicalization is often associated with youth, adversity, alienation, social exclusion, poverty, or the perception of injustice to self or others.-...
") and bonapartists
Bonapartism
Bonapartism is often defined as a political expression in the vocabulary of Marxism and Leninism, deriving from the career of Napoleon Bonaparte. Karl Marx was a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution as well as a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and Second Empire...
scrambled for power. The period from 1879–1899 saw power come into the hands of moderate republicans and former "radicals" (around Léon Gambetta
Léon Gambetta
Léon Gambetta was a French statesman prominent after the Franco-Prussian War.-Youth and education:He is said to have inherited his vigour and eloquence from his father, a Genovese grocer who had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie. At the age of fifteen, Gambetta lost the sight of his right eye...
); these were called the "Opportunists
Opportunist Republicans
The Opportunist Republicans , also known as the Moderates , were a faction of French Republicans who believed, after the proclamation of the Third Republic in 1870, that the regime could only be consolidated by successive phases...
" (Républicains opportunistes). The newly found Republican control on the Republic allowed the vote of the 1881 and 1882 Jules Ferry laws
Jules Ferry laws
The Jules Ferry Laws are a set of French Laws which established free education , then mandatory and laic education . Jules Ferry, a lawyer holding the office of Minister of Public Instruction in the 1880s, is widely credited for creating the modern Republican School...
on a free, mandatory and laic
Laïcité
French secularism, in French, laïcité is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of...
public education
Public education
State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
.
The moderates however became deeply divided over the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
, and this allowed the Radicals to eventually gain power from 1899 until the Great War. During this period, crises like the potential "Boulangist" coup d'état (see Georges Boulanger
Georges Boulanger
Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger was a French general and reactionary politician. At the apogee of his popularity in January 1889 many republicans including Georges Clemenceau feared the threat of a coup d'état by Boulanger and the establishment of a dictatorship.- Early life and career :Born...
) in 1889, showed the fragility of the republic. The Radicals' policies on education (suppression of local languages, compulsory education), mandatory military service, and control of the working classes eliminated internal dissent and regionalisms, while their participation in the Scramble for Africa
Scramble for Africa
The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914...
and in the acquiring of overseas possessions (such as French Indochina
French Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
) created myths of French greatness. Both of these processes transformed a country of regionalisms into a modern nation state.
In 1880, Jules Guesde
Jules Guesde
Jules Basile Guesde was a French socialist journalist and politician.Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Guesde and Paul Lafargue, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles...
and Paul Lafargue
Paul Lafargue
Paul Lafargue was a French revolutionary Marxist socialist journalist, literary critic, political writer and activist; he was Karl Marx's son-in-law, having married his second daughter Laura. His best known work is The Right to Be Lazy...
, Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
's son-in-law, created the French Workers' Party
French Workers' Party
The Parti Ouvrier Français was the first Marxist party in France, created in 1880 by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law...
(Parti ouvrier français, or POF), the first Marxist party in France. Two years later, Paul Brousse
Paul Brousse
Paul Brousse was a French socialist, leader of the possibilistes group. He was active in the Jura Federation, a section of the International Working Men's Association , from the northwestern part of Switzerland and the Alsace. He helped edit the Bulletin de la Fédération Jurassienne, along with...
's possibilistes split. A controversy arose in the French socialist movement and in the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
concerning "socialist participation in a bourgeois government", a theme which was triggered by independent socialist Alexandre Millerand
Alexandre Millerand
Alexandre Millerand was a French socialist politician. He was President of France from 23 September 1920 to 11 June 1924 and Prime Minister of France 20 January to 23 September 1920...
's participation to Radical-Socialist
Radical-Socialist Party (France)
The Radical Party , is a liberal and centrist political party in France. The Radicals are currently the fourth-largest party in the National Assembly, with 21 seats...
Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet at the turn of the century, which also included the marquis de Galliffet, best known for his role as repressor of the 1871 Commune. While Jules Guesde was opposed to this participation, which he saw as a trick, Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
defended it, making him one of the first social-democrat. Guesde's POF united itself in 1902 with the Parti socialiste de France, and finally in 1905 all socialist tendencies, including Jaurès' Parti socialiste français, unified into the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière
Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière
The French Section of the Workers' International , founded in 1905, was a French socialist political party, designed as the local section of the Second International...
(SFIO), the "French section of the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
", itself formed in 1889 after the split between anarcho-syndicalists
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
and Marxist socialists which led to the dissolving of the First International (founded in London in 1864).
In an effort to isolate Germany, France went to great pains to woo Russia and the United Kingdom to its side, first by means of the Franco-Russian Alliance
Franco-Russian Alliance
The Franco-Russian Alliance was a military alliance between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire that ran from 1892 to 1917. The alliance ended the diplomatic isolation of France and undermined the supremacy of the German Empire in Europe...
of 1894, then the 1904 Entente Cordiale
Entente Cordiale
The Entente Cordiale was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente Cordiale marked the end of almost a millennium of intermittent...
with the U.K, and finally, with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente
Anglo-Russian Entente
Signed on August 31, 1907, in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 brought shaky British-Russian relations to the forefront by solidifying boundaries that identified respective control in Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet...
in 1907 this became the Triple Entente
Triple Entente
The Triple Entente was the name given to the alliance among Britain, France and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907....
, which eventually led Russia and the UK to enter World War I as Allies
Allies
In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them...
.
Distrust of Germany, faith in the army and native French anti-semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
combined to make the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
(the unjust trial and condemnation of a Jewish military officer for treason) a political scandal of the utmost gravity. The nation was divided between "dreyfusards" and "anti-dreyfusards" and far-right Catholic agitators inflamed the situation even when proofs of Dreyfus' innocence came to light. The writer Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
published an impassioned editorial on the injustice, and was himself condemned by the government for libel. Once Dreyfus was finally pardoned, the progressive legislature enacted the 1905 laws on laïcité
Laïcité
French secularism, in French, laïcité is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of...
which created a complete separation of church and state
1905 French law on the separation of Church and State
The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1905. Enacted during the Third Republic, it established state secularism in France...
and stripped churches of most of their property rights.
The period and the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century is often termed the belle époque
Belle Époque
The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque was a period in European social history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic and the German Empire, it was a period characterised by optimism and new technological and medical...
. Although associated with cultural innovations and popular amusements (cabaret, cancan, the cinema, new art forms such as Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
), France was nevertheless a nation divided internally on notions of religion, class, regionalisms and money, and on the international front France came repeatedly to the brink of war with the other imperial powers, including Great Britain (the Fashoda Incident
Fashoda Incident
The Fashoda Incident was the climax of imperial territorial disputes between Britain and France in Eastern Africa. A French expedition to Fashoda on the White Nile sought to gain control of the Nile River and thereby force Britain out of Egypt. The British held firm as Britain and France were on...
). The human and financial costs of World War I would be catastrophic for the French.
Colonialism
- French colonial empiresFrench colonial empiresThe French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
- French rule in AlgeriaFrench rule in AlgeriaFrench Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
- Scramble for AfricaScramble for AfricaThe Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914...
- French IndochinaFrench IndochinaFrench Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
- French West AfricaFrench West AfricaFrench West Africa was a federation of eight French colonial territories in Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan , French Guinea , Côte d'Ivoire , Upper Volta , Dahomey and Niger...
- French GuianaFrench GuianaFrench Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...
- DjiboutiDjiboutiDjibouti , officially the Republic of Djibouti , is a country in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Eritrea in the north, Ethiopia in the west and south, and Somalia in the southeast. The remainder of the border is formed by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden at the east...
- MadagascarMadagascarThe Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...