Léon Gambetta
Encyclopedia
Léon Gambetta was a French statesman prominent after the Franco-Prussian War
.
, and in 1857 went to Paris to study law. His southern temperament gave him great influence among the students of the Quarter Latin, and he was soon known as an inveterate enemy of the imperial government.
, did not make much of an impression until, on 17 November 1868, he was selected to defend the journalist Delescluze
, prosecuted for having promoted a monument to the representative Baudin, who was killed while resisting the coup d'état of 1851
. Gambetta seized his opportunity and attacked both the coup d'état and the government with a vigour which made him immediately famous.
In May 1869, he was elected to the Assembly, both by a district in Paris and another in Marseille
, defeating Hippolyte Carnot
for the former constituency and Adolphe Thiers
and Ferdinand de Lesseps
for the latter. He chose to sit for Marseille, and lost no opportunity of attacking the Empire in the Assembly. At first opposed to the war with Germany, he did not, like some of his colleagues, refuse to vote for funds for the army, but took a patriotic line and accepted that the war had been forced on France. When the news of the disaster at Sedan
reached Paris, Gambetta called for strong measures. He proclaimed the deposition of the emperor at the corps législatif, and the establishment of a republic at the Hôtel de Ville. He was one of the first members of the new Government of National Defense
, becoming Minister of the Interior
. He advised his colleagues to leave Paris and run the government from some provincial city.
This advice was rejected because of fear of another revolution in Paris, and a delegation to organize resistance in the provinces was despatched to Tours
, but when this was seen to be ineffective, Gambetta himself (7 October) left Paris in a hot air balloon
– the "Armand-Barbès" – and upon arriving at Tours took control as minister of the interior and of war. Aided by Freycinet, a young officer of engineers, as his assistant secretary of war, he displayed prodigious energy and intelligence. He quickly organized an army, which might have relieved Paris if Metz
had held out, but Bazaine
's surrender brought the army of the Prussian crown prince into the field, and success was impossible. After the French defeat near Orléans
early in December the seat of government was transferred to Bordeaux
.
Early in his political career, Gambetta was influenced by Le Programme de Belleville, the seventeen statutes that defined the radical program in French politics throughout the Third Republic
. This made him the leading defender of the lower classes in the Corps Législatif
. On (17 January) (1870), he spoke out against naming a new Imperial Lord Privy Seal, putting him into direct conflict with the regime's de facto prime minister, Emile Ollivier
. (see Reinach, J., Discours et Playdories de Léon Gambetta, I.102 – 113) His powerful oratory caused a complete breakdown of order in the Corps. The Monarchist Right continually tried to interrupt his speech, only to have Gambetta's supporters on the Left attack them. The disagreement reached a high point when M. le Président Schneider asked him to bring his supporters back into order. Gambetta responded, thundering "l'indignation exclut le calme!"(Reinach, Discours et Playdories, I.112)
Gambetta had hoped for a republican majority in the general elections on 8 February 1871. These hopes vanished when the conservatives and Monarchists won nearly 2/3 of the six hundred Assembly seats. He had won elections in eight different départements, but the ultimate victor was the Orléanist Adolphe Thiers
, winner of twenty-three elections. Thiers's conservative and bourgeois intentions clashed with the growing expectations of political power by the lower classes. Hoping to continue his policy of "guerre à outrance" against the Prussian invaders, he tried in vain to rally the Assembly to the war cause. However, Thiers' peace treaty on 1 March 1871 ended the conflict. Gambetta, disgusted with the Assembly's unwillingness to fight resigned and quit France for San Sebastián
in Spain.
While in San Sebastián
, Gambetta walked the beaches daily, the warm sea winds of early spring doing little to refresh his mind. Meanwhile the Paris Commune
had taken control of the city. Despite his earlier career, Gambetta voiced his opposition to the Commune in a letter to Antonin Proust
, his former secretary while Minister of the Interior, in which he referred to the Commune as "les horribles aventures dans lesquelles s’engage ce qui reste de cette malheureuse France".
Gambetta's stance has been explained by reference to his status as a republican lawyer, who fought from the bar instead of the barricade and also to his father having been a grocer in Marseille
. As a small-scale producer during the decades of the Second Industrial Revolution
in France, Joseph Gambetta had chain groceries taking business away from his establishment. This added a measure of resentment to the "petit bourgeois" identity. This resentment was not only directed at bourgeois industrial capitalism, but also at the worker, who was now proclaimed as the backbone of the French economy, stripping the title from the small, independent shopkeeper. This resentment may have been passed down from father to son, and manifested itself in an unwillingness to support the lower-class Communards usurpation of what rightfully belonged to the "petit bourgeoisie."
Gambetta returned to the political stage and won on three separate ballots. On 5 November 1871 he established a journal, La Republique française, which soon became the most influential in France. His orations at public meetings were more effective than those delivered in the Assembly, especially the one at Bordeaux
. His turn towards moderate republicanism first became apparent in Firminy
, a small coal-mining town along the Loire
River. There, he boldly proclaimed the radical republic he once supported to be "avoided as a plague" (se tenir éloignés comme de la peste) (Discours, III.5). From there, he went to Grenoble
. On 26 September 1872, he proclaimed the future of the Republic to be in the hands of "a new social level" (une couche sociale nouvelle) (Discours, III.101), ostensibly the petite bourgeoisie
to whom his father belonged.
When Adolphe Thiers
resigned in May 1873, and a Royalist, Marshal MacMahon
, was placed at the head of the government, Gambetta urged his friends to a moderate course. By his tact, parliamentary dexterity and eloquence, he was instrumental in voting in the French Constitutional Laws of 1875
in February 1875. He gave this policy the appropriate name of "opportunism," and became one of the leader of the "Opportunist Republicans
". On 4 May 1877, he denounced "clericalism" as the enemy. During the 16 May 1877 crisis
, Gambetta, in a speech at Lille
on 15 August called on President MacMahon se soumettre ou se démettre, to submit to parliament's majority or to resign. Gambetta then campaigned to rouse the republican party throughout France, which culminated in a speech at Romans (18 September 1878) formulating its programme. MacMahon, unwilling to resign or to provoke civil war, had no choice but to dismiss his advisers and form a moderate republican ministry under the premiership of Dufaure.
When the downfall of the Dufaure cabinet brought about MacMahon's resignation, Gambetta declined to become a candidate for the presidency, but supported Jules Grévy
; nor did he attempt to form a ministry, but accepted the office of president of the chamber of deputies in January 1879. This position did not prevent his occasionally descending from the presidential chair to make speeches, one of which, advocating an amnesty to the communards, was especially memorable. Although he directed the policy of the various ministries from behind the scenes, he evidently thought that the time was not ripe for asserting openly his direction of the policy of the Republic, and seemed inclined to observe a neutral attitude as far as possible. However, events hurried him on, and early in 1881 he headed off a movement for restoring scrutin de liste, or the system by which deputies are returned by the entire department which they represent, so that each elector votes for several representatives at once, in place of scrutin d'arrondissement, the system of small constituencies, giving one member to each district and one vote to each elector. A bill to re-establish scrutin de liste was passed by the Assembly on 19 May 1881, but rejected by the Senate on 19 June.
This personal rebuff could not alter the fact that his name was on the lips of voters at the election. His supporters won a large majority, and Jules Ferry
's cabinet quickly resigned. Gambetta was unwillingly asked by Grévy on 24 November 1881 to form a ministry, known as Le Grand Ministère. Many suspected him of desiring a dictatorship; unjust attacks were directed against him from all sides, and his cabinet fell on 26 January 1882, after only sixty-six days. Had he remained in office, he would have cultivated the British alliance and cooperated with Britain in Egypt; and when the succeeding Freycinet
government shrank from that enterprise only to see it undertaken with signal success by Britain alone, Gambetta's foresight was quickly justified.
On 31 December 1882, at his house in Ville d'Avray, near Sèvres
, he died from intestine or stomach cancer. Even if he was wounded a month earlier from an accidental revolver discharge, the injury had not been life threatening. Five artists, Jules Bastien-Lepage
, a realist painter, Antonin Proust
, defensor of the vanguard who Gambetta had named Minister of Beaux-Arts, Léon Bonnat
, an academic painter, Alexandre Falguière
, who did his mortuary mask, and his personal photographer Étienne Carjat
all sat at his death-bed, making five widely different representations of him which were each published by the press the following day. His public funeral on 6 January 1883 evoked one of the most overwhelming displays of national sentiment ever witnessed.
Gambetta rendered France three inestimable services: by preserving her self-respect through the gallantry of the resistance he organized during the German War, by his tact in persuading extreme partisans to accept a moderate Republic, and by his energy in overcoming the usurpation attempted by the advisers of Marshal MacMahon. His death at forty-four cut short a career which had given promise of still greater things, for he had real statesmanship in his conceptions of the future of his country, and he had an eloquence which would have been potent in the education of his supporters.
The romance of his life was his connection with Léonie Leon, the full details of which were not known to the public till her death in 1906. She was the daughter of a French artillery officer. Gambetta fell in love with her in 1871. She became his mistress, and the liaison lasted until he died. Gambetta constantly urged her to marry him during this period, but she always refused, fearing to compromise his career; she remained, however, his confidante and intimate adviser in all his political plans. It seems she had just consented to become his wife, and the date of the marriage had been fixed, when the accident which caused his death occurred in her presence. Contradictory accounts of this fatal episode exist, but it was certainly accidental, and not suicide. Her influence on Gambetta was absorbing, both as lover and as politician, and the correspondence which has been published shows how much he depended upon her.
However, some of her later recollections are untrustworthy. For example, she claimed that an actual interview took place in 1878 between Gambetta and Bismarck. That Gambetta after 1875 felt strongly that the relations between France and Germany might he improved, and that he made it his object, by travelling incognito, to become better acquainted with Germany and the adjoining states, may be accepted, but M. Laur appears to have exaggerated the extent to which any actual negotiations took place. On the other hand, the increased knowledge of Gambetta's attitude towards European politics which later information has supplied confirms the view that in him France lost prematurely a master mind, whom she could ill spare. In April 1905 a monument by Dalou
to his memory at Bordeaux was unveiled by President Loubet
.
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...
.
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 in an accident, and it eventually had to be removed. Despite this handicap, he distinguished himself at school in CahorsCahors
Cahors is the capital of the Lot department in south-western France.Its site is dramatic being contained on three sides within an udder shaped twist in the river Lot known as a 'presqu'île' or peninsula...
, and in 1857 went to Paris to study law. His southern temperament gave him great influence among the students of the Quarter Latin, and he was soon known as an inveterate enemy of the imperial government.
Career
He was called to the bar in 1859, but, although contributing to a Liberal review, edited by Challemel-LacourPaul-Armand Challemel-Lacour
Paul-Armand Challemel-Lacour was a French statesman.-Biography:He was born in Avranches in the Manche département of northwestern France. After passing through the École Normale Supérieure he became professor of philosophy successively at Pau and at Limoges...
, did not make much of an impression until, on 17 November 1868, he was selected to defend the journalist Delescluze
Louis Charles Delescluze
Louis Charles Delescluze was a French journalist.He was born at Dreux, Eure-et-Loir. Having studied law in Paris, he early developed a strong democratic bent, and played a part in the July revolution of 1830...
, prosecuted for having promoted a monument to the representative Baudin, who was killed while resisting the coup d'état of 1851
French coup of 1851
The French coup d'état on 2 December 1851, staged by Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte , ended in the successful dissolution of the French National Assembly, as well as the subsequent re-establishment of the French Empire the next year...
. Gambetta seized his opportunity and attacked both the coup d'état and the government with a vigour which made him immediately famous.
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
, defeating Hippolyte Carnot
Hippolyte Carnot
Lazare Hippolyte Carnot was a French statesman.- Early life :Lazare was the younger brother of the founder of thermodynamics Sadi Carnot and second son of the revolutionary politician Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot, who also served in the government of Napoleon. He was born at Saint-Omer,...
for the former constituency and 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...
and Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand Marie, Vicomte de Lesseps, GCSI was the French developer of the Suez Canal, which joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas in 1869, and substantially reduced sailing distances and times between the West and the East.He attempted to repeat this success with an effort to build a sea-level...
for the latter. He chose to sit for Marseille, and lost no opportunity of attacking the Empire in the Assembly. At first opposed to the war with Germany, he did not, like some of his colleagues, refuse to vote for funds for the army, but took a patriotic line and accepted that the war had been forced on France. When the news of the disaster at Sedan
Battle of Sedan
The Battle of Sedan was fought during the Franco-Prussian War on 1 September 1870. It resulted in the capture of Emperor Napoleon III and large numbers of his troops and for all intents and purposes decided the war in favour of Prussia and its allies, though fighting continued under a new French...
reached Paris, Gambetta called for strong measures. He proclaimed the deposition of the emperor at the corps législatif, and the establishment of a republic at the Hôtel de Ville. He was one of the first members of the new Government of National Defense
Government of National Defense
Le Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale, or The Government of National Defence, was the first Government of the Third Republic of France from September 4, 1870, to February 13, 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, formed after the Emperor Louis Napoleon III was captured by the Prussian army. The...
, becoming Minister of the Interior
Minister of the Interior (France)
The Minister of the Interior in France is one of the most important governmental cabinet positions, responsible for the following:* The general interior security of the country, with respect to criminal acts or natural catastrophes...
. He advised his colleagues to leave Paris and run the government from some provincial city.
This advice was rejected because of fear of another revolution in Paris, and a delegation to organize resistance in the provinces was despatched to Tours
Tours
Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...
, but when this was seen to be ineffective, Gambetta himself (7 October) left Paris in a hot air balloon
Hot air balloon
The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology. It is in a class of aircraft known as balloon aircraft. On November 21, 1783, in Paris, France, the first untethered manned flight was made by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air...
– the "Armand-Barbès" – and upon arriving at Tours took control as minister of the interior and of war. Aided by Freycinet, a young officer of engineers, as his assistant secretary of war, he displayed prodigious energy and intelligence. He quickly organized an army, which might have relieved Paris if Metz
Metz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...
had held out, but Bazaine
François Achille Bazaine
François Achille Bazaine was a French General and from 1864, a Marshal of France, who surrendered the last organized French army to the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian war. He was the first Marshal who had started as a legionnaire and like the great Marshals of the First Empire, he had risen...
's surrender brought the army of the Prussian crown prince into the field, and success was impossible. After the French defeat near Orléans
Orléans
-Prehistory and Roman:Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the Carnutes tribe where the Druids held their annual assembly. It was conquered and destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then rebuilt under the Roman Empire...
early in December the seat of government was transferred to Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
.
Early in his political career, Gambetta was influenced by Le Programme de Belleville, the seventeen statutes that defined the radical program in French politics throughout the 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...
. This made him the leading defender of the lower classes in the Corps Législatif
Corps législatif
The Corps législatif was a part of the French legislature during the French Revolution and beyond. It is also the generic French term used to refer to any legislative body.-History:The Constitution of the Year I foresaw the need for a corps législatif...
. On (17 January) (1870), he spoke out against naming a new Imperial Lord Privy Seal, putting him into direct conflict with the regime's de facto prime minister, Emile Ollivier
Émile Ollivier
Olivier Émile Ollivier was a French statesman. Although a republican, he served as a cabinet minister under Emperor Napoleon III and led the process of turning his regime into a "liberal Empire".-Early life and career:Émile Ollivier was born in Marseille...
. (see Reinach, J., Discours et Playdories de Léon Gambetta, I.102 – 113) His powerful oratory caused a complete breakdown of order in the Corps. The Monarchist Right continually tried to interrupt his speech, only to have Gambetta's supporters on the Left attack them. The disagreement reached a high point when M. le Président Schneider asked him to bring his supporters back into order. Gambetta responded, thundering "l'indignation exclut le calme!"(Reinach, Discours et Playdories, I.112)
Self-Exile to San Sebastián
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...
, winner of twenty-three elections. Thiers's conservative and bourgeois intentions clashed with the growing expectations of political power by the lower classes. Hoping to continue his policy of "guerre à outrance" against the Prussian invaders, he tried in vain to rally the Assembly to the war cause. However, Thiers' peace treaty on 1 March 1871 ended the conflict. Gambetta, disgusted with the Assembly's unwillingness to fight resigned and quit France for San Sebastián
San Sebastián
Donostia-San Sebastián is a city and municipality located in the north of Spain, in the coast of the Bay of Biscay and 20 km away from the French border. The city is the capital of Gipuzkoa, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. The municipality’s population is 186,122 , and its...
in Spain.
While in San Sebastián
San Sebastián
Donostia-San Sebastián is a city and municipality located in the north of Spain, in the coast of the Bay of Biscay and 20 km away from the French border. The city is the capital of Gipuzkoa, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. The municipality’s population is 186,122 , and its...
, Gambetta walked the beaches daily, the warm sea winds of early spring doing little to refresh his mind. Meanwhile the 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...
had taken control of the city. Despite his earlier career, Gambetta voiced his opposition to the Commune in a letter to Antonin Proust
Antonin Proust
Antonin Proust was a French journalist and politician.Antonin Proust was born at Niort, Deux-Sèvres. In 1864 he founded an anti-imperial journal, La Semaine hebdomadaire which appeared in Brussels...
, his former secretary while Minister of the Interior, in which he referred to the Commune as "les horribles aventures dans lesquelles s’engage ce qui reste de cette malheureuse France".
Gambetta's stance has been explained by reference to his status as a republican lawyer, who fought from the bar instead of the barricade and also to his father having been a grocer in Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
. As a small-scale producer during the decades of the Second Industrial Revolution
Second Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of the larger Industrial Revolution corresponding to the latter half of the 19th century until World War I...
in France, Joseph Gambetta had chain groceries taking business away from his establishment. This added a measure of resentment to the "petit bourgeois" identity. This resentment was not only directed at bourgeois industrial capitalism, but also at the worker, who was now proclaimed as the backbone of the French economy, stripping the title from the small, independent shopkeeper. This resentment may have been passed down from father to son, and manifested itself in an unwillingness to support the lower-class Communards usurpation of what rightfully belonged to the "petit bourgeoisie."
Return
On 24 June 1871, a letter was sent by Gambetta to his Parisian confidant, Dr. Édouard Fieuzal:Gambetta returned to the political stage and won on three separate ballots. On 5 November 1871 he established a journal, La Republique française, which soon became the most influential in France. His orations at public meetings were more effective than those delivered in the Assembly, especially the one at Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
. His turn towards moderate republicanism first became apparent in Firminy
Firminy
Firminy is a commune in the Loire department in central France.It lies on the Ondaine River 8 mi. S.W. of Saint-Étienne by rail.-Sights:Two historic churches from the 12th and 16th centuries are located here...
, a small coal-mining town along the Loire
Loire
Loire is an administrative department in the east-central part of France occupying the River Loire's upper reaches.-History:Loire was created in 1793 when after just 3½ years the young Rhône-et-Loire department was split into two. This was a response to counter-Revolutionary activities in Lyon...
River. There, he boldly proclaimed the radical republic he once supported to be "avoided as a plague" (se tenir éloignés comme de la peste) (Discours, III.5). From there, he went to Grenoble
Grenoble
Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...
. On 26 September 1872, he proclaimed the future of the Republic to be in the hands of "a new social level" (une couche sociale nouvelle) (Discours, III.101), ostensibly the petite bourgeoisie
Petite bourgeoisie
Petit-bourgeois or petty bourgeois is a term that originally referred to the members of the lower middle social classes in the 18th and early 19th centuries...
to whom his father belonged.
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...
resigned in May 1873, and a Royalist, Marshal MacMahon
Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta
Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de Mac-Mahon, 1st Duke of Magenta was a French general and politician with the distinction Marshal of France. He served as Chief of State of France from 1873 to 1875 and as the first president of the Third Republic, from 1875 to 1879.-Early life:Born in Sully , in the...
, was placed at the head of the government, Gambetta urged his friends to a moderate course. By his tact, parliamentary dexterity and eloquence, he was instrumental in voting in the French Constitutional Laws of 1875
French Constitutional Laws of 1875
The Constitutional Laws of 1875 are the laws passed in France by the National Assembly between February and July 1875 which established the Third French Republic.The constitution laws could be roughly divided into three laws:...
in February 1875. He gave this policy the appropriate name of "opportunism," and became one of the leader of the "Opportunist Republicans
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...
". On 4 May 1877, he denounced "clericalism" as the enemy. During the 16 May 1877 crisis
16 May 1877 crisis
The 16 May 1877 crisis was a constitutional crisis in the French Third Republic concerning the distribution of power between the President and the legislature. When the Royalist President Patrice MacMahon dismissed the Opportunist Republican Prime Minister Jules Simon, parliament on 16 May 1877...
, Gambetta, in a speech at Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
on 15 August called on President MacMahon se soumettre ou se démettre, to submit to parliament's majority or to resign. Gambetta then campaigned to rouse the republican party throughout France, which culminated in a speech at Romans (18 September 1878) formulating its programme. MacMahon, unwilling to resign or to provoke civil war, had no choice but to dismiss his advisers and form a moderate republican ministry under the premiership of Dufaure.
When the downfall of the Dufaure cabinet brought about MacMahon's resignation, Gambetta declined to become a candidate for the presidency, but supported Jules Grévy
Jules Grévy
François Paul Jules Grévy was a President of the French Third Republic and one of the leaders of the Opportunist Republicans faction. Given that his predecessors were monarchists who tried without success to restore the French monarchy, Grévy is seen as the first real republican President of...
; nor did he attempt to form a ministry, but accepted the office of president of the chamber of deputies in January 1879. This position did not prevent his occasionally descending from the presidential chair to make speeches, one of which, advocating an amnesty to the communards, was especially memorable. Although he directed the policy of the various ministries from behind the scenes, he evidently thought that the time was not ripe for asserting openly his direction of the policy of the Republic, and seemed inclined to observe a neutral attitude as far as possible. However, events hurried him on, and early in 1881 he headed off a movement for restoring scrutin de liste, or the system by which deputies are returned by the entire department which they represent, so that each elector votes for several representatives at once, in place of scrutin d'arrondissement, the system of small constituencies, giving one member to each district and one vote to each elector. A bill to re-establish scrutin de liste was passed by the Assembly on 19 May 1881, but rejected by the Senate on 19 June.
This personal rebuff could not alter the fact that his name was on the lips of voters at the election. His supporters won a large majority, and 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...
's cabinet quickly resigned. Gambetta was unwillingly asked by Grévy on 24 November 1881 to form a ministry, known as Le Grand Ministère. Many suspected him of desiring a dictatorship; unjust attacks were directed against him from all sides, and his cabinet fell on 26 January 1882, after only sixty-six days. Had he remained in office, he would have cultivated the British alliance and cooperated with Britain in Egypt; and when the succeeding Freycinet
Charles de Freycinet
Charles Louis de Saulces de Freycinet was a French statesman and Prime Minister during the Third Republic; he belonged to the Opportunist Republicans faction. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1890, the fourteen member to occupy seat the Académie française.-Early years:He...
government shrank from that enterprise only to see it undertaken with signal success by Britain alone, Gambetta's foresight was quickly justified.
On 31 December 1882, at his house in Ville d'Avray, near Sèvres
Sèvres
Sèvres is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris.The town is known for its porcelain manufacture, the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, making the famous Sèvres porcelain, as well as being the location of the International Bureau of Weights...
, he died from intestine or stomach cancer. Even if he was wounded a month earlier from an accidental revolver discharge, the injury had not been life threatening. Five artists, Jules Bastien-Lepage
Jules Bastien-Lepage
Jules Bastien-Lepage , was a French naturalist painter, a style related to the Realist movement.-Life and work:...
, a realist painter, Antonin Proust
Antonin Proust
Antonin Proust was a French journalist and politician.Antonin Proust was born at Niort, Deux-Sèvres. In 1864 he founded an anti-imperial journal, La Semaine hebdomadaire which appeared in Brussels...
, defensor of the vanguard who Gambetta had named Minister of Beaux-Arts, Léon Bonnat
Léon Bonnat
Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat was a French painter.He was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in Madrid, where his father owned a bookshop. While tending his father's shop, he copied engravings of works by the Old Masters, developing a passion for drawing...
, an academic painter, Alexandre Falguière
Alexandre Falguière
Jean Alexandre Joseph Falguière was a French sculptor and painter.He was born in Toulouse...
, who did his mortuary mask, and his personal photographer Étienne Carjat
Étienne Carjat
Étienne Carjat , was a French journalist, caricaturist and photographer. He co-founded the magazine, Le Diogène, and founded the review, Le Boulevard...
all sat at his death-bed, making five widely different representations of him which were each published by the press the following day. His public funeral on 6 January 1883 evoked one of the most overwhelming displays of national sentiment ever witnessed.
Gambetta rendered France three inestimable services: by preserving her self-respect through the gallantry of the resistance he organized during the German War, by his tact in persuading extreme partisans to accept a moderate Republic, and by his energy in overcoming the usurpation attempted by the advisers of Marshal MacMahon. His death at forty-four cut short a career which had given promise of still greater things, for he had real statesmanship in his conceptions of the future of his country, and he had an eloquence which would have been potent in the education of his supporters.
Personal life
However, some of her later recollections are untrustworthy. For example, she claimed that an actual interview took place in 1878 between Gambetta and Bismarck. That Gambetta after 1875 felt strongly that the relations between France and Germany might he improved, and that he made it his object, by travelling incognito, to become better acquainted with Germany and the adjoining states, may be accepted, but M. Laur appears to have exaggerated the extent to which any actual negotiations took place. On the other hand, the increased knowledge of Gambetta's attitude towards European politics which later information has supplied confirms the view that in him France lost prematurely a master mind, whom she could ill spare. In April 1905 a monument by Dalou
Jules Dalou
Aimé-Jules Dalou was a French sculptor, recognized as one of the most brilliant virtuosos of nineteenth-century France, admired for his perceptiveness, execution, and unpretentious realism.-Life:...
to his memory at Bordeaux was unveiled by President Loubet
Émile Loubet
Émile François Loubet was a French politician and the 8th President of France.-Early life:He was born the son of a peasant proprietor and mayor of Marsanne . Admitted to the Parisian bar in 1862, he took his doctorate in law the next year...
.
Gambetta's Ministry, 14 November 1881 – 26 January 1882
- Léon Gambetta – President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Jean-Baptiste Campenon – Minister of War
- Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau – Minister of the Interior
- François Allain-Targé – Minister of Finance
- Jules Cazot – Minister of Justice
- Maurice RouvierMaurice RouvierMaurice Rouvier was a French statesman.He was born in Aix-en-Provence, and spent his early career in business at Marseille. He supported Léon Gambetta's candidature there in 1867, and in 1870 he founded an anti-imperial journal, L'Egalité. Becoming secretary general of the prefecture of...
– Minister of the Colonies and of Commerce - Auguste Gougeard – Minister of Marine
- Paul BertPaul BertPaul Bert was a French zoologist, physiologist and politician. He is sometimes given the sobriquet "Father of Aviation Medicine".-Life:Bert was born at Auxerre...
– Minister of Public Instruction and Worship - Antonin ProustAntonin ProustAntonin Proust was a French journalist and politician.Antonin Proust was born at Niort, Deux-Sèvres. In 1864 he founded an anti-imperial journal, La Semaine hebdomadaire which appeared in Brussels...
– Minister of the Arts - Paul Devès – Minister of Agriculture
- David Raynal – Minister of Public Works
- Adolphe Cochery – Minister of Posts and Telegraphs