Presidents of France: Adolphe Thiers (Aug 1871-May 1873)

2.  Adolphe Thiers (Aug 1871-May 1873)

Adophe Thiers was the second President of France.  He was born in Marseille in 1797.  He was trained in the law at the faculty at Aix-en-Provence and educated at the Marseille lycee. 
 
At first he was known as a historian for the French Revolution though another eminent British historian of the same revolution and literary figure, Thomas Carlyle, said that Thier's voluminous history was full of inaccuracies.    He was prime minister in the governments of Louis Phillipe in 1836, 1840, and in 1848, when Louis Phillipe went into exile, and again became a leader of the French government after Louis Napoleon III was deposed after having been humiliated militarily and taken prisoner at Sedan. 

Charles X,  made himself unpopular by advocating a staunch conservative Catholic policy, recommending among other things, the death penalty for theft or harming of the consecrated host.  Thiers advocated Charles X's overthrow prior to the revolution of 1830.  He found he could work with Louis Phillippe whose Orleanist branch of the royal family was more liberal.  His father, who had initially supported the revolution of 1789, nevertheless lost his head. 

As a politician during the regime of Louis Phillippe, he helped to bring the remains of Napoleon I back from St. Helena to be interred in a place of honor at Les Invalides, the military memorial for France's war dead. 

Thiers eventually fell from favor with Louis Phillippe when he advocated supporting militarily Egypt's Mohammed Ali Pasha in his struggles against the Ottoman Empire. 

He tried to straddle the divide between the conservative Catholics on the one hand and the more atheistic or at least secular Republicans on the other side.  He helped develop the Falloux Laws of 1850-51. These were designed to establish schools in communes with more than 500 persons, to decentralize education, and place it in the control of local Catholic congregations.  This was a conservative movement aimed at decreasing the power of the Republicans and anti-clerical factions in education.

After the fall of Louis Phillippe in 1848, he was not a big fan of Napoleon III, and was said to have declared that electing Napoleon III as president of France would be a disgrace. 

Alexandre Bixio

Alexandre Bixio at least claimed to have heard him say this, which lead Thiers to challenge him to a duel in the gardens of the palace (1).  Apparently neither man was seriously hurt however.  Bixio went on to fame as an atmospheric scientist and baloonist, and Thiers as the man who crushed the Paris Commune of 1871. 

Later Napoleon III became President of France.  When he later staged his coup d'etat and made himself emperor, Thiers was imprisoned for a while, then sent into exile.  The next year he was allowed to return to France, but stayed out of politics and turned once more to his work as a historian.
In 1863 he reentered politics and served in parliament as the leader of the anti-royalist faction there.

He appeared to be of two minds about French assertions of its power abroad.  At first supporting war with Prussia he abruptly switched to being against the war and favoring negotiations to resolve the issues with Bismarck. 

Bismarck and his prisoner

Bismarck refused, the Franco Prussian war broke out and when Napoleon III was captured along with a large body of troops, he was deposed.

Thiers was elected head of the provisional government of the new republic in late February 1871 and on 1st March 1871 they signed a peace with the German Coalition which held the northern 2/3 of France.

Meanwhile on March 18th an insurrection took place in Paris.  Thiers had cannons and other military materiel and his government moved to Versailles.  A socialist city government was elected in Paris. 

This was the start of the Paris commune.   In street fighting, the insurrection quickly resulted in thousands of Parisians being arrested, killed, tried and shot, or deported to the French colonies.  The Tuileries palace, a symbol of monarchism,  burned to the ground.  The Vendome column was toppled.


After peace was restored Thiers served as president of the third republic for two more years.  He was a protectionist and republican presiding over a national assembly dominated by monarchists.  Following a motion of no confidence that passed, Thiers resigned and his resignation accepted.  They elected Marshal Patrice de MacMahon as his successor.  Thiers died 4 years later at the age of 80.



(1) The Life of Louis Adolphe Thiers by Francios J. LeGof,  GP Putnam & Sons. 1879.