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Napoleon III
Increasing demands for political reform were exacerbated by an economic crisis that had
been growing since 1845, and when a street demonstration turned into a rebellion in
February 1848, Louis Philippe abdicated.
(Louis-Philippe I, 6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was
known as the July Monarchy. He was the last king to rule France, although Napoleon III, styled as an
emperor, would serve as its last monarch.)
The Second Republic was declared, but the unity of February was soon split by class conflicts,
and the government crushed a workers' rising in June. In December 1848 Louis Napoleon, a
nephew of Napoleon I, was elected president. In 1851 he carried out a coup d'état (violent
seizure) and seized supreme power; in 1852 he re-established the empire and proclaimed
himself emperor as Napoleon III.
In 1854 France allied with Britain, Turkey, and Sardinia in the Crimean War.
(The Crimean War (October 1853[13][14]–February 1856) was fought between the Russian Empire on one side
and an alliance of the British Empire, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other.
The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over
territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. Most of the conflict took place on the Crimean Peninsula, but
there were smaller campaigns in western Turkey, the Baltic Sea, the Pacific Ocean and the White Sea. The
war has gone by different names. In Russia it is also known as the "Oriental War" (Russian: Восточная
война, Vostochnaya Voina), and in Britain at the time it was sometimes known as the "Russian War".)
In 1856 the Treaty of Paris ended the war, and declared the Danube free and the Black Sea
closed to warships but nevertheless neutral. Turkey was to carry out various reforms, but
the most important result was the prestige that it gave Napoleon.
In 1859 Napoleon went to war in alliance with Sardinia–Piedmont to free northeast Italy
from Austrian occupation.
(Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,399 km2 and a population of about 4.4 million.
The capital is Turin. The main local language (referred to as dialect) is Piedmontese. The name Piemonte is a
contraction of the Italian "ai piedi del monte", meaning "at the foot of the mountain". )
Having defeated the Austrians at Solferino, he withdrew from the alliance and made peace,
leaving the question of Italian unification to be settled later by Camillo di Cavour and
Giuseppe Garibaldi. His reward was the addition of Nice and Savoy to France in 1860. The
Prussian–Austrian war of 1866 was viewed at first with an air of calm by Napoleon, but the
victory of Prussia and the knowledge that German unity was a probability of the near future
filled him with dismay. France was again isolated in Europe.
(The Battle of Solferino, (referred to in Italian as the Battle of Solferino and San Martino), 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 (together known as the Franco-Sardinian Alliance) against the Austrian Army under
Emperor Franz Joseph I; it was the last major battle in world history where all the involved armies were
under the personal command of their monarchs. Over 200,000 soldiers fought in this important battle, the
largest since the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. There were about 100,000 Austrian troops and a combined total of
118,600 French and allied Piedmontese troops. After this battle, the Austrian Emperor refrained from further
direct command of the army. The battle is especially notable for being witnessed by the Swiss Jean-Henri
Dunant. Horrified by the suffering of wounded soldiers left on the battlefield, Dunant set about a process
that led to the Geneva Conventions and the establishment of the International Red Cross.)
(Seven Weeks' War also called AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR (1866), war between Prussia on the one side and
Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and certain minor German states on the other. It ended in a Prussian
victory, which meant the exclusion of Austria from Germany. The issue was decided in Bohemia, where the
principal Prussian armies met the main Austrian forces and the Saxon army, most decisively at the Battle of
Königgrätz. A Prussian detachment, known as the army of the Main, meanwhile dealt with the forces of
Bavaria and other German states that had sided with Austria. Simultaneously, a campaign was fought in
Venetia between the Austrian army of the south and the Italians, who had made an alliance with Prussia.)
The succession question in Spain brought conflict with Prussia, whose chancellor, Otto von
Bismarck, put forward a candidate of the house of Hohenzollern (the ruling dynasty of
Prussia). Although the candidate was speedily withdrawn, Bismarck used the affair to
provoke French and German opinion. Napoleon declared war in 1870, and the FrancoPrussian War began. The French were unprepared, and their armies were surrounded at
Metz and Sedan (see Metz, Battle of, Sedan, Battle of), where Napoleon was taken prisoner.
The Third Republic from 1871 to World War I
The empire in France fell, and the ‘government of national defence’ (whose most notable
member was Léon Gambetta) tried to oppose the Germans. In 1871, after a lengthy siege,
Paris capitulated and peace was signed. A huge war indemnity (compensation) was demanded,
and Alsace and east Lorraine ceded to the newly unified Germany. The revolutionary Paris
Commune was declared when the conservative government of Thiers, based in Versailles,
attempted to disarm the city, but it was violently repressed after two months. For the next
two years Thiers ruled France, and succeeded in establishing order and restoring the
finances. Much quarrelling ensued, however, over the constitution that France ought to
adopt, and Thiers was pushed from a conservative position to a republican one, and was
then driven from power in 1873. He was succeeded by the army commander Marshal
MacMahon.
(A republican form of government is a type of government in which the citizens of a country have an active
role in the affairs of the government, and the government is not headed by a hereditary ruler such as a king)
Although usually dated from 1870, the constitution of the Third Republic was not established
until January 1875. MacMahon was considered too conservative in sympathy and too
autocratic (holding power exclusively) in method, and in 1879 he was succeeded as president by
Jules Grévy. After this victory the republicans split into divergent groups, notably the
Opportunists led by Gambetta, and the radicals, whose chief representative was Georges
Clemenceau. In opposition the monarchists, Bonapartists, and clericals (church party)
formed a right-wing coalition, and exploited the ambition of Gen Georges Boulanger to
overthrow the republic. However, Boulanger fled in 1889, fearing arrest on charges of
conspiracy against the state. Grévy resigned in 1887, and was replaced by Sadi Carnot. The
moderate republicans hoped for the support of the Catholics, but government prestige was
weakened by the scandal connected with the bankruptcy of the Panama Canal Company in
1892. Meanwhile socialism was becoming an organized force in France, one of its principal
leaders being Jean Jaurès. In 1894 Carnot was assassinated.
(Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de Mac-Mahon, 1st Duc de Magenta, Marshal of France (13 July 1808 - 17
October 1893) was a French general and politician. 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.)
A wave of anti-Jewish feeling surged over France during the Dreyfus Affair of 1894–1906,
which polarized French society and threatened the stability of the republic. Royalists, the
army, and the Roman Catholic Church were ranged against the falsely imprisoned officer
Alfred Dreyfus, while he was fervently defended by republicans and the left. The
government of René Waldeck-Rousseau settled the affair by asking Emile Loubet (who had
succeed the anti-Dreyfusard Félix Faure as president) to grant Dreyfus a pardon in 1899 (he
was completely cleared in 1906). The moderate anticlerical republicanism of WaldeckRousseau was exaggerated by his successor Emile Combes, whose government brought
about the complete separation of church and state in 1905.
(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. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military
secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was sent to the penal colony at Devil's Island in French
Guiana and placed in solitary confinement.
Two years later, in 1896, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin
Esterhazy as the real culprit. However, high-ranking military officials suppressed this new evidence and
Esterhazy was unanimously acquitted after the second day of his trial in military court. Instead of being
exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus was further accused by the Army on the basis of false documents fabricated by a
French counter-intelligence officer, Hubert-Joseph Henry, seeking to re-confirm Dreyfus's conviction, and
uncritically accepted by Henry's superiors.[1]
Word of the military court's framing of Alfred Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread largely
due to a vehement public protestation in a Paris newspaper by writer Émile Zola, in January, 1898. The case
had to be re-opened and Alfred Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again. The intense
political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the
Dreyfusards[2]) and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Edouard Drumont (the
director and publisher of the anti-semitic newspaper La Libre Parole) and Hubert-Joseph Henry.
Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. Dreyfus was
exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army in 1906. He later served during the whole of World
War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.)
Another important aspect of pre-1914 French politics was the growth of syndicalism,
especially within the Confédération Générale du Travail (the French trade-union
organization), formed in 1895. Clemenceau was faced with extreme labour troubles in his
ministry of 1906–09, as was his successor in 1909–11, the former socialist Aristide Briand.
(Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and
state socialism which uses federations of collectivized trade unions. For adherents, labor
unions are the potential means of both overcoming economic aristocracy and running
society fairly in the interest of the majority, through union democracy. Industry in a
syndicalist system would be run through co-operative confederations and mutual aid. Local
syndicates would communicate with other syndicates through the Bourse du Travail (labor
exchange) which would manage and transfer commodities.)
Foreign policy before World War I
French foreign policy to this date had been one of colonial expansion, which in Tunisia
provoked a dispute with Italy (1881–83); in the Congo, Egypt, and Sudan with Britain
(especially the Fashoda Incident in 1898), and in Morocco with Germany in 1905 and 1911.
The French conquest of Tunisia caused Italy to form the Triple Alliance with Germany and
Austria-Hungary in 1882, and this was countered by the Dual Entente between France and
Russia in 1894. French politicians were divided over reconciliation with Germany, advocated
by Joseph Caillaux (premier 1911–12), and rapprochement with Britain. The latter policy,
supported by Clemenceau, resulted in the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain in
1904. The Agadir Incident of 1911, which France regarded as an attempt to establish German
influence in a French sphere, nearly led to hostilities.
France in World War I
The prospect of war found France neither morally nor materially ready. With the AustroSerbian crisis and the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, war
became imminent. Russia began a partial mobilization after Austria invaded Serbia, which
prompted Germany to enact its plans for war. These depended on defeating France first,
then turning on Russia. Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August and on France on 3
August (for fuller details of the war in France, see World War I), while its violation of Belgian
neutrality prompted Britain to declare war on Germany on 4 August.
The French, who had organized their defensive line on the Lorraine frontier between
Germany and France, were not prepared for the violation of the neutrality of both Belgium
and Luxembourg. In Paris a truce was called to party politics by the union sacrée (‘sacred
union’), despite the assassination of Jaurès, and the prime minister René Viviani
reconstructed his cabinet, under the presidency of Raymond Poincaré (who was to remain as
president until 1920). Paris was soon threatened by the German advance, and on 2
September the government withdrew to Bordeaux. Gen Galliéni, the military governor, was
left in control of Paris, and by dispatching the ‘army of Paris’ to the front in taxis he
contributed to Joseph Joffre's success in the First Battle of the Marne, which lasted from 5 to
12 September (see Marne, Battles of the).
For the next four years France was entirely taken up by the war. The Germans occupied the
north and northeast of the country, where French industry was concentrated, and nearly all
the country's iron and half its coal resources were also under German control. In response
France developed its industries in the unoccupied regions with great energy. However,
internal political dissensions weakened France during the first three years of the war. In
December 1914 the French government returned to Paris. The Viviani government fell as a
result of the failure of Allied diplomacy in preventing Bulgaria from joining the Central
Powers. In October 1915 a new ministry was formed by Briand, and Galliéni succeeded
Alexandre Millerand as minister of war. The Briand cabinet was reorganized in December
1916.
The failure of the army in expelling the Germans from French territory, together with the
ever-mounting casualties, brought an element of war weariness to the population, but
throughout 1916 the struggle for Verdun became a national crusade. Joffre was removed as
commander-in-chief at the end of the year and replaced by Gen Robert Nivelle, and Gen
Lyautey became minister of war. Lyautey resigned in March 1917, both because he believed
that Nivelle's plan for a major spring offensive was a mistake and because his authoritarian
attitude clashed with the politicians'. Under a new ministry formed by Alexandre Ribot, who
succeeded Briand, Paul Painlevé was made minister of war. The Nivelle offensive was a total
failure, and was followed by widespread mutinies in the army and an upsurge in industrial
strikes.
Nivelle was replaced in May 1917 by Philippe Pétain, who helped to restore morale in the
army. In September the whole cabinet was reorganized, Painlevé becoming premier.
Agitation for peace was becoming more widespread, but was painted as defeatism by those
believing in ‘war to the end’. Accusations of defeatism brought about the fall of the Painlevé
government in November 1917. Clemenceau was invited to become premier and minister of
war, and was soon regarded as a national hero. He secured the appointment of Marshal
Foch as supreme Allied commander, and aggressively pursued the war, culminating in the
victorious Allied offensives of late 1918.
The aftermath of World War I
By the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919, France recovered Alsace and Lorraine, but failed in
its desire to fix the River Rhine as the German frontier, although the Rhineland was to be
occupied by French and Allied troops for 15 years. France was also given mandates to govern
Syria and Lebanon (formerly part of the Ottoman Empire), and parts of the former German
colonies of Togoland and Cameroon.
With the French realization that the treaty was giving them neither the security nor the
reparations on which they had counted, Clemenceau became unpopular, and in the 1919
elections he was superseded by Millerand, who formed a conservative bloc national (crossparty grouping). Moreover, Clemenceau's bid for the presidency when Poincaré retired in
1920 was defeated by Paul Deschanel. When Deschanel fell ill, Millerand was elected
president. Georges Leygues became premier for a short time, but at the beginning of 1921
he was succeeded by Briand.
The reconstruction of France was the overriding problem facing French governments, and it
was hoped to effect this by making Germany pay, as Germany had made France pay in 1871.
French war casualties included nearly 1,400,000 killed and 3 million wounded. One-tenth of
the country had been laid waste. By 1922 Germany had defaulted seriously on its reparation
payments, and Poincaré, who had succeeded Briand as premier, ordered French troops in
1923 to occupy the Ruhr, the heavily industrial area of Germany to the east of the Rhine.
They remained there until 1925.
France in the 1920s
During the elections of 1924 Poincaré was defeated over the financial question. The bloc
national gave way to a cartel des gauches (coalition of the left), with Edouard Herriot at its
head. Poincaré's retirement rendered Millerand's position as president untenable; he
resigned, and was succeeded by Gaston Doumergue, who in 1931 was followed by Paul
Doumer.
Herriot played a major part in the framing of the Geneva Protocol at the League of Nations
assembly in September 1924, and although the protocol was not ratified, it led the way to
the Locarno Pact (see Locarno, Pact of), which was negotiated during 1925 by Briand, Austen
Chamberlain, and Stresemann, the foreign ministers of France, Britain, and Germany
respectively. Although the Herriot ministry brought a new spirit into international affairs, it
was forced to resign in 1926 over an acute financial crisis.
Poincaré then formed a ministry to stabilize the franc. In domestic affairs the Poincaré
cabinet withstood repeated attacks from the radical socialists, while in foreign affairs the
Kellogg–Briand Pact was concluded in 1928. The following year Poincaré secured ratification
of the Young Plan (a renegotiation of Germany's reparation payments), together with the
Churchill–Caillaux Accord with Britain and the Mellon–Berenger Accord with the USA in
respect of French debts. In July 1929 Poincaré resigned through ill health, and Briand
continued as premier of the Poincaré cabinet until defeated in October. Briand then
remained as foreign minister in the succeeding governments of André Tardieu and Pierre
Laval.
France in the 1930s
Over the next few years government succeeded government rapidly. It was a period of
political and economic instability (this was the era of the Great Depression), and marked by
various scandals suggesting a decline in standards in public life, especially the Stavisky Affair.
This scandal – which involved the flotation by the financier Alexandre Stavisky of a very large
sum in bogus bonds in the name of the municipal credit establishment of Bayonne –
revealed much political corruption. Right-wing demonstrations led to the resignation of two
successive premiers in the left-of-centre coalition. To restore political stability Doumergue
was recalled to office, with Louis Barthou as foreign minister. Barthou, however, was
assassinated together with King Alexander of Yugoslavia on the latter's visit to France in
1934, and Laval replaced him as foreign minister.
France was losing the dominant position in Europe that it had held after World War I, a
position it had buttressed by a system of alliances with the eastern European states. After
the Nazis seized power in Germany, France for long abstained from open opposition to
Germany's policy of rearmament and expansion (although, before Hitler's rise to power, it
had successfully opposed an understanding between Germany and Austria, whether in the
guise of a trade agreement or otherwise).
Internal problems preoccupied the country as the gap between left and right became more
polarized. The popular front alliance of communists, socialists, and radicals won the 1936
elections, and in the middle of a vast wave of strikes it formed a government of socialists
and radicals under the leadership of the socialist Léon Blum. The popular-front government
carried out a number of urgent social reforms, but, faced with economic difficulties and
right-wing opposition in the Senate, its authority soon declined. This process was
exacerbated by the defeat of the popular front in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, a
defeat partly due to the lack of effective help from France to counteract the aid given to the
insurgent Gen Franco by Germany and Italy.
The popular front in France lasted until 1938, when Edouard Daladier, supported by a radical
and right-wing majority, succeeded Blum. Daladier's government reversed many of the
popular front's reforms, and pursued a policy of diplomatic appeasement of Nazi Germany
combined with military rearmament. Daladier himself was a signatory in September 1938 of
the Munich Agreement, which left France's ally Czechoslovakia to the mercy of Hitler. After
this the position of France in Europe deteriorated rapidly. The Italian dictator Mussolini,
emboldened by French weakness, advanced claims to Corsica, Tunis, Nice, Savoy, and
Djibouti.
World War II and the fall of France
Nevertheless, in September 1939 France took up arms with Britain in defence of Poland
against German aggression. The French armies offered a brave resistance in the opening
stages of the German offensive on the Western Front, but a total cave-in followed in June
1940. The military collapse of France came as a thunderbolt to its British ally. Divisions
within France and the legacy of World War I undoubtedly contributed to its defeat, although
this was primarily caused by the superior tactics and offensive strategy of the German army,
which enabled it to rout an army committed to the defence of the Maginot Line. (For more
details on France and the Western Front in the war, see World War II.)
Daladier's administration had been followed by that of Paul Reynaud in March 1940. In the
May crisis the aged Marshal Pétain and others anxious to come to terms with Germany were
brought into the government. When Paris fell in mid-June, Reynaud discussed with the
British government the question of a separate armistice, a course of action forbidden by an
existing Franco-British agreement. In reply the British leader Winston Churchill offered
common citizenship between the two nations, emphasizing that Britain would continue the
fight whatever the cost. When this offer was refused, the British government agreed to
consider the release of France from its obligation provided the French fleet was prevented
from falling into German hands. But the danger of this last possibility was enhanced by the
resignation of Reynaud and his replacement by Pétain as premier; this led Britain to sink
much of the French fleet off North Africa (see Mers-el-Kebir).
Occupation, collaboration, and resistance
Pétain signed an armistice with Hitler on 22 June and left the Germans in occupation of the
northern part of France and of the entire Atlantic coast. Albert Lebrun, president since 1932,
resigned, and Pétain assumed the title of chief of state. The constitutional laws of 1875,
which were the basis of the Third Republic, were formally abolished in August 1940. Until
the liberation of France in 1944, Pétain's authoritarian Vichy government (named after the
town where the national assembly was based during that period) collaborated closely with
the Germans, primarily by providing economic support but also by suppressing resistance
and by organizing the deportation of over 75,000 Jews. Pierre Laval, Pétain's vice premier
from June to December 1940, was appointed premier in 1942 on Hitler's orders.
Charles de Gaulle, who had argued before the war that the French army should be
mechanized, made good his escape to Britain and formed a French National Committee in
London to continue the war effort. Assuming the title ‘leader of all Frenchmen’, he began to
organize a French army and navy in Britain (the Free French). Soon afterwards French
Equatorial Africa and the Chad region transferred their allegiance to him. The British
government, while continuing its recognition of the Vichy regime, assisted and supported de
Gaulle, although relations between the two were often uneasy.
When the Anglo-American forces landed in French North Africa in 1942, the Germans
overran Vichy France. The French warships based at Toulon then scuttled or damaged
themselves, preventing them from falling into German hands, and reasserting French
sovereignty.
Under an arrangement with the US Gen Dwight D Eisenhower, then Allied commander in
northwest Africa, the former Vichy vice premier François Darlan assumed responsibility for
the civil administration in North Africa as a temporary measure. On Christmas Eve, however,
Darlan was assassinated in Algiers and Gen Henri Giraud, who had opposed compromise
with the Germans, was appointed his successor.
The stand that de Gaulle and his colleagues had sustained since the days of capitulation in
June 1940 became, after the landings in North Africa, firmer and with wider support.
Through the efforts of Georges Catroux (the only army general to join de Gaulle in 1940) an
agreement was reached between de Gaulle and Giraud in June 1943 for the setting-up of a
French Committee of National Liberation to direct the French share in the campaign of
reconquest. The agreement also established a consultative assembly in Algiers and a unified
administration for the French colonial empire, soon wholly in the war on the Allied side
except for Indochina, which the Vichy regime had allowed the Japanese to occupy.
Liberation
The following year, 1944, saw the liberation of France after the invasion of Normandy by the
Allied forces under Eisenhower on 6 June. More forces were landed in the south of France in
August, and by early September the Allies had overrun most of France and expelled the
German armies.
When in December de Gaulle went to Moscow to sign a treaty of alliance and mutual
assistance with Stalin, the act showed how far France had advanced towards re-establishing
itself as a great power. But the path had not been an easy one; and even up to the moment
of the Allied assault on Normandy American and British recognition of the French Committee
of National Liberation was still withheld.
With the Allies firmly established in Normandy it was at once apparent that the authority of
Vichy was not acknowledged by any large section of the nation. In contrast, the resistance
movement emerged as a vigorous fighting force commanding popular support. The
movement was recognized by the Allied supreme command as a regular combatant army
and named the ‘French Forces of the Interior’, and it cooperated with considerable
effectiveness in the Allied campaign in Normandy.
The French people gave de Gaulle a fervent welcome, and in Paris, where he was popularly
acclaimed, he took firm control of affairs. On 23 October 1944 Great Britain, the USA, and
the USSR recognized de Gaulle's administration as the provisional government of the
republic.