French Third Republic
The
French Third Republic, (in
French,
La Troisième République, sometimes written as
La IIIe République) (
1870/
75-
10 July 1940) was the governing body of
France between the
Second French Empire and the
Vichy Regime. It was a republican parliamentary democracy that was created on
September 4,
1870 following the collapse of the Empire of
Napoleon III in the
Franco-Prussian War. It survived until the invasion of France by the
German Third Reich in
1940.
One of the most surprising aspects of the Third Republic is that it was the first stable republic in France, and the first to win the support of the majority of the population, yet it was never intended to be a long-lasting republic at all.
In
1852, Napoleon III abolished the
Second French Republic to become the second
Emperor of
France, following the earlier example of his uncle
Napoleon I. However, the
Second French Empire lasted only eighteen years because of the emergence of another world power, one that was to transform the
balance of power in Europe to a very profound extent: the
German Empire.
Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck of
Prussia, who sought to bring his state to ascendancy in Germany, realized that if a unified German state was to be created, some unifying force was needed to bring this about - a nationalist war with France seemed the perfect force to bring the other German states into line with Prussia. A resulting German defeat of France would firmly establish the new Germany on the world stage within secure borders. Through clever manipulation of the
Ems Dispatch, Bismarck and French public opinion goaded France into declaring war on Prussia, beginning the
Franco-Prussian War. After Napoleon's capture by the Prussians at
Sedan, Parisian Deputies established the
Government of National Defense, governed in Paris by the President, General Louis Jules Trochu, and in the provinces by the Minsister of the Interior,
Léon Gambetta. After the French surrender in January 1871, the Government of National Defence disbanded and returned power to the National Assembly based at
Versailles. The new government under
Adolphe Thiers was overshadowed by the settlement of peace terms with Prussia and the subsequent revolution in Paris known as the
Paris Commune, which maintained a radical regime for two months until its bloody suppression by Thiers' government in May
1871. The following repression of the
communards would have disastrous consequences on the
labor movement.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the regime of Napoleon III, the clear majority of French people and the overwhelming majority of the French National Assembly wished to return to a
constitutional monarchy. There were two competing claimants to the throne, each supported by political groups. The
Legitimists supported the heirs to
Charles X, recognising as king his grandson,
Henri, Comte de Chambord, alias
Henry V. The
Orléanists supported the heirs to
Louis Philippe, recognising as king his son,
Louis-Philippe, Comte de Paris. However the two groups came to a compromise, whereby the childless Comte de Chambord would be recognised as king, with the Comte de Paris recognised as his heir. Consequently in
1871, the throne was offered to the Comte de Chambord. In
1830 Charles X had abdicated in favour of Chambord, then a child, and Louis-Philippe had been recognised as king instead. In
1871 Chambord had no wish to be a
constitutional monarch but a semi-absolutist one like his grandfather Charles X, or like the contemporary rulers of Prussia/Germany. Moreover, he refused to reign over a state that used the
Tricolore that was associated with the Revolution of
1789 and the
July Monarchy of the man who seized the throne from him in
1830, the citizen-king,
Louis Philippe,
King of the French. This became the ultimate reason the restoration never occurred. However, much as France wanted a restored monarchy, it was unwilling to surrender its popular tricolour. Instead a "temporary" republic was established, pending the death of the elderly childless Chambord and the succession of his more liberal heir, the
Comte de Paris.
 |
A map of France under the Third Republic, featuring colonies. |
In February
1875, a series of parliamentary Acts established the organic or constitutional laws of the new republic. At its apex was a
President of the Republic. A two-chamber parliament was created, along with a ministry under a prime minister (named "President of the Council") who was nominally answerable to both the President of the Republic and parliament. Throughout the 1870s, the issue of monarchy versus republic dominated public debate.
On
May 16,
1877, with public opinion swinging heavily in favour of a republic, the President of the Republic,
Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta, himself a monarchist, made one last desperate attempt to salvage the monarchical cause by dismissing the republic-minded prime minister
Jules Simon and appointing the monarchist leader the
Duc de Broglie to office. He then dissolved parliament and called a general election (October
1877). If his hope had been to halt the move towards republicanism, it backfired spectacularly, with the President being accused of having staged a
constitutional coup d'etat, known as
le seize Mai after the date on which it happened.
Republicans returned triumphant, finally killing off the prospect of a restored French monarchy. MacMahon himself resigned on
January 28,
1879, leaving a seriously weakened presidency, so weakened indeed that not until
Charles de Gaulle eighty years later did another
President of France unilaterally dissolve parliament.
The reactionary
Legitimists thus were pushed out of power following the
May 16, 1877 crisis, and the Republic finally governed by Republicans. The
Jules Ferry laws on free, mandatory and
laic public education, voted in 1881 and 1882, were one of the first sign of this Republican control on the Republic,
anti-clericalism being a main trait of Republicans.
To mark the final end of French monarchism as a serious political force, in
1885 the
French Crown Jewels were broken up and sold. Only a few crowns, their precious gems replaced by coloured glass, were kept. In
1889 France flirted briefly with the possibility of a dictatorship or a constitutional tyranny during the
Boulanger crisis, but the republican leaders were able to avert the threat.
In
1893, following
anarchist Auguste Vaillant's bombing at the
National Assembly, killing nobody but injuring one, deputies vote the
lois scélérates which limits the 1881
freedom of the press laws. The following year, president
Sadi Carnot is stabbed to death by
Italian anarchist Caserio.
The
Radical-Socialist Party, founded in 1901 (four years before the socialist
SFIO which unified the various socialist currents), remained the most important party of the Third Republic starting at the end of the 19th century.
The
Dreyfus Affair, considered as the matrix of
intellectuals, created new political division lines, France dividing itself into a globally Catholic right-wing and a Republican left-wing headed by
Emile Zola.
Though France was clearly republican, it was not in love with its Third Republic. Governments collapsed with regularity, rarely lasting more than a couple of months, as radicals, socialists, liberals, conservatives, republicans and monarchists all fought for control. However others argue that the collapse of governments were a minor side effect of the Republic lacking strong political parties, resulting in coalitions of many parties that routinely lost and gained a few allies. Consequently the change of governments could be seen as little more than a series of ministerial reshuffles, with many individuals carrying forward from one government to the next, often in the same posts.
In
1905 the government introduced the
law on the separation of Church and State, heavily supported by
Emile Combes, who had been strictly enforcing the 1901
voluntary association law and the 1904 law on religious congregations' freedom of teaching (more than 2,500 private teaching establishments were by then closed by the state, causing bitter opposition from the Catholic and conservative population).
After
socialist and
pacifist leader
Jean Jaurès's assassination a few weeks before the beginning of
World War I, the French socialist movement, as the whole of the
Second International, abandons its
antimilitarist positions and joins the national war effort.
Georges Clemenceau would lead the government during the war, obtaining the
SFIO socialist party's support. As in other countries,
state of emergency is proclaimed and
censorship imposed.
The Third Republic survived the
First World War, having found allies to support it against Germany. Some historians argue that this was the greatest success of the regime.
Throughout its seventy-year history, the Third Republic stumbled from crisis to crisis, from collapsing governments to the appointment of a mentally ill president. It struggled through the German invasion of
World War I and the inter-war years. When the Nazi invasion occurred in
1940, the Republic was so disliked by enemies on the right - who sought a powerful bulwark against
Communism - and on the far left - where Communists initially followed their movement's international line of refusing to defend
"bourgeois" regimes - that few had the stomach to fight for its survival, even if they disapproved of German occupation of northern France and the collaborationist
Vichy regime established in the south. The republic officially ended on July 10 1940 when the parliament, except for
80 of its members gave the full powers to
Philippe Pétain.
When France was finally liberated, few called for the restoration of the Third Republic, and a Constituent Assembly was established in
1946 to draft a
constitution for a successor, established as the
Fourth Republic that December.
Adolphe Thiers, called republicanism in the 1870s "the form of government that divides
France least." France might have agreed about being a republic, but it never fully agreed with the Third Republic. France's longest lasting régime since before the
1789 revolution, the Third Republic was consigned to the history books, as unloved at the end as it had been when first created seventy years earlier. But its longevity showed that it was capable of weathering many a storm.
*
Dreyfus Affair*
May 16, 1877 crisis*
February 6, 1934 crisis*
France in Modern Times I (1792-1920)*
France in Modern Times II (1920-today)*
The Collapse of the Third Republic by William L. Shirer
