Presidents of France: 3. Patrice de Mac-Mahon (1873-1879)

Mac-Mahon  was born in Sully in 1808 in the department Saône-et-Loire. He was descended from the old Irish Catholic aristocracy associated with County Clare.  The confiscation of lands from the time of Cromwell and then the support of James II against William III of England led to exile in France, their naturalization in 1749.  His grandfather was named Marquis de MacMahon by Louis XV.  The politics of the family was Catholic and royalist.  One of a very prolific clan, he was the 16th child of 17 in his father's family.  

MacMahon was educated at the Lycee Louis le Grand and at the Academy of St. Cyr, secondary school and military academy respectively.  He graduated in 1827.   As a soldier he served in Algeria, he was wounded in the assault on Constantine, was promoted to commander in the Foreign Legion, and became a Divisional General in 1852.  He also served with distinction in the Crimean War.  While serving in the Second War of Italian Independence which pitted the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Austrian Empire, he won a decisive battle at Magenta, and in gratitude Napoleon III created him the first duke of Magenta. 

Before the Franco-Prussian war he served as Governor-General of Algeria.  He returned when war broke out in 1870 and he served with Napoleon in this ill-fated campaign.  The encirclement of the army at Sedan, led to Napoleon III and Mac-Mahon being taken prisoner.  Released by the Prussian Army in the peace in 1871 he resumed his military service, leading troops in the assault of the Paris Commune which led to 6000 to 7500 deaths and many summary executions.  

In 1873 he was elected President of France, succeeding Adolphe Thiers.  He was staunchly monarchist and was supported by the conservative wing of the National Assembly.  He was a "Legitimist" a party of monarchists who favored the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, last seen in 1830, but was forced to countenance the republicans in his midst and sometimes in his government. 

Since the Franco-Prussian War there was a French garrison in Rome protecting the pope from the depredations of the Italian nationalists, who had succeeded in erasing all but the last vestiges of the Papal States.  When in 1877 two bishops of the Catholic church in France asked MacMahon to help resolve the issue, the republicans, it provoked an outroar and backlash by the republicans.  MacMahon allegedly started to make moves to restore the Bourbon monarchy under the

Le Compte de Chambord

Compte de Chambord, the grandson of Charles X.  In the elections of 1877 a left-republican majority was returned in the national assembly putting and end to such ideas and after another leftist victory in the Senatorial elections in 1879 MacMahon resigned.  He died in 1893 and was afforded full military honors and buried in Les Invalides in Paris.