FRANCE

The French Revolution (1789–1799) effectively challenged monarchical absolutism on behalf of popular sovereignty in France and in Europe. The destruction of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic would have long-term consequences in European political life. And so would the continued centralization of the French state, as well as the popular violence that accompanied the French Revolution.

origins of the revolution

The Revolution should be seen in the context of hard economic times in the decades that preceded it. High prices, compounded by periodic harvest failures (notably those of 1775, but also 1787 and 1788), and low wages brought considerable hard-ship, while reducing the taxes that reached the coffers of the state. This meant that nobles received less in payments (including seignorial dues) and other obligations from the peasants who worked their land, making it more difficult for some to continue to "live nobly." Some of them put the squeeze on their peasants, the so-called seignorial reaction that generated considerable anger, indeed resistance, among the rural poor in parts of France. Nobles hired collectors and enforcers, and enforced with increasing care remaining rights of justice over the peasants, including the seignorial courts used to enforce noble rights over forests, lakes, and streams.

The social lines dividing nobles from bourgeois had become considerably less clear in the late eighteenth century. The French monarchy was locked in a deep financial crisis. Assistance to the American colonies rebelling against Great Britain had compounded the financial plight of the monarchy. King Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792) sold noble titles to raise cash, ennobling about 2,500 families during the fifteen years that preceded 1789. Long-entrenched noble families saw the newcomers as crass parvenus. At the same time, commoners resented the exoneration of nobles from taxes. The king created more offices in order to sell them to anyone who would buy them—there were about fifty thousand offices in France at the time of the Revolution. This eroded public confidence in the monarchy as it swam in an enormous pool of debt.

France remained a society of overlapping and often confusing layers of privilege, rights, traditions, and jurisdictions. Enlightenment discourse emphasizing freedom in the face of entrenched economic, social, and political privilege helped mobilize opposition to the policies of the king and to many existing privileges. The language of the philosophes emphasized equality before the law, and distinguished between absolute and despotic rule, while appealing to the tribunal of public opinion.

Yet virtually no one envisioned an alternate regime to monarchy. Queen Marie-Antoinette (1755–1793), the daughter of the Habsburg queen Maria Theresa, was vilified for being an outsider, but also because her notorious infidelities further increased the image of Louis XVI as powerless in the grip of an imposing female, thus weakening the French throne.

Assembly of Notables

What was the king to do? The parlements (the sovereign law courts) were suspicious of any reforms and wanted to avoid any increase in the tax on land. Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, controller general of finance, asked Louis XVI to convoke an Assembly of Notables, which would be made up of representatives selected from the three estates (clergy, nobles, and everybody else—the Third Estate). This would allow the monarchy to avoid the troublesome parlements. The king would propose reforms, imposing a land tax that would strike nobles as well as everyone else. More than this, Calonne, denouncing "the dominance of custom," proposed a reorganization of the entire financial system. In particular he wanted to reorganize the system of tax collection, which was both notoriously inefficient (particularly compared to the system in Britain) and counterproductive (collectors retained a good part of the taxes they collected). However, the Assembly of Notables (1787) rejected the proposed reform, defending the exemption of nobles and clergy from most taxation. Nobles convinced the king to dismiss Calonne in April 1788. But when his successor, étienne-Charles de Loménie de Brienne, asked the parlements to register, and in doing so approve, several royal edicts aimed at reform, namely a new tax on land and a stamp tax, the Parlement of Paris refused to do so. This plunged the monarchy into crisis.

Not all members of the Assembly of Notables opposed reform and refused all new taxes. But they wanted to guarantee their privileges. They wanted Louis to convoke the Estates-General, which had not met since 1614. This put the king in a difficult position. He needed to reduce the privileges of the nobles, but did not want to risk accusations of tyranny by doing so without their approval. But if he exchanged new taxes for acquiescing to the demands of the First and Second Estates (the clergy and the nobility), he risked compromising his absolute authority, implicitly suggesting that he was subject to the approval of the nobility, if not the nation.

Louis sought compromise, withdrawing the new taxes in exchange for maintaining the tax on income (the vingtiéme), which had been assessed in the 1750s to finance the Seven Years War (1756–1763). Loménie de Brienne made clear that the crown would have to pay its debts with paper money, however. Louis ordered that new loan edicts be registered without regard to the parlements' response. To an objection from his cousin, the duc d'Orléans, the king replied, "That is of no importance to me … it is legal because I will it."

Louis then suspended the parlements, creating new courts to replace them and a new plenary court that would register royal edicts. The "revolt of the nobles" spread against what the nobles considered to be the abuse of the rights and privileges of the nobles by the monarchy, which they accused of acting despotically. Resistance followed, first from the Assembly of the Clergy, which was to decide on its annual gift to the monarchy, and then from ordinary people, who rioted in several cities. The king announced on 5 July 1788 that he would convoke the Estates-General on 1 May 1789, assuming that it would agree to new taxes.

Estates-General

But would the Estates-General vote by estate, which would give an advantage to the First and Second Estates, or by head, which would give an advantage to the Third Estate? The Parlement of Paris, which had been reinstated, supported the king's insistence that voting be by estate. But calls could be heard from political writers who saluted the Third Estate as representing the "nation"—a significant term that had come to be used with increasing frequency during previous crises in the 1770s, namely the attempts of the administrator and economist Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) to liberalize the economy. The "nation" thus potentially represented an alternate, not complementary, form of allegiance, particularly as the king appeared to be behaving despotically. A "Patriot" party emerged, a coalition of bourgeois and liberal nobles who wanted change. It included the marquis Marie Joseph Paul de Lafayette (1757–1834). And in January 1789, Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyés reflected this shift in public opinion with his "What Is the Third Estate?" He contrasted the "nation" against royal absolutism and noble prerogatives, demanding a prominent role for the Third Estate in French political life.

Before the Estates-General was to convene, the king asked local electoral assemblies and the first two estates to draw up lists of grievances, which the Estates-General would discuss. These cahiers de doléances criticized royal absolutism and the seigneurs, asked for a fairer tax structure, and, among other things, called for the establishment of a new representative body. While they never actually reached the king, they reflected a growing public awareness of the dimensions of the crisis.

When the Estates-General first met on 5 May 1789 (nearly one thousand strong, 578 of whom were in the Third Estate) the question of voting had not yet been decided. The deputies of the Third Estate, already irritated when the king kept them waiting, and furious when it became apparent that voting would be by Estate, met on 17 June and declared themselves the "National Assembly," representing national sovereignty, an authority parallel, if not superior, to that of the king. When the First Estate voted to join the Third, the Third Estate found itself on 20 June locked out of its meeting hall. Moved to a nearby tennis court, the Third Estate voted not to leave "until the constitution of the kingdom is established and consolidated on solid foundations." Louis then proclaimed the Third Estate's deliberations null and void. But he announced some reforms, including the periodic convocation of the Estates-General, the abolition of the taille (the tax on land that weighed heavily on the peasants) and the corvée (labor tax), and to eliminate the troublesome varied tolls and tariffs that struck the transport of goods. Henceforth, the Third Estate would indeed vote by head, but only when the matter at hand did not concern "the ancient and constitutional rights of the third orders." Five days later, after threatening to dissolve the Estates-General by force, Louis reversed himself and ordered the first two estates to join the third.

revolution of 1789

In the meantime, in Paris, where food shortages and high prices were causing considerable discontent, rumor had the king, under the advice of his most reactionary noble advisors, planning to dissolve the National Assembly by armed force. Demonstrators attacked the customs barriers at the gates of Paris, tearing down toll booths. On the morning of 14 July, thousands of people stormed into the Invalides (a veterans hospital) to seize weapons, and then headed toward the Bastille, an imposing fortress on the eastern edge of Paris, believing guns and powder to be stored there, as well as political prisoners. The Bastille had emerged as a symbol of royal despotism, as some of its prisoners had been sent there by virtue of lettres de cachet, orders signed by the king or on his behalf. The crowd forced the surrender of the Bastille. The king recognized a newly elected municipal government of "the Commune of Paris," as well as a national guard commanded by Lafayette. On 17 July he came to Paris from Versailles, putting on an emblem of three colors, red and blue for the city of Paris, and white for the Bourbons. The tricolor would become the flag of the French Revolution.

In many parts of rural France the news from Paris brought expectations of reform and perhaps even better times. In some places peasants attacked the châteaus of seigneurs and burned title deeds and lists of obligations they owed. The peasant rebellions helped bring about "the Great Fear," sparked by rumors of an aristocratic "famine plot" to starve out the poor, or burn them out, with the help of brigands. National guard units formed in an atmosphere of panic that spread rapidly through large parts of France. Gradually, the establishment of new town governments helped restore order. But the rural violence and the Great Fear led the National Assembly on the night of 4 August to abolish formally the "feudal regime," including seignorial rights, although the sanctity of property was maintained and compensation promised. Thus the National Assembly renounced privilege, which had been arguably the fundamental organizational principle of the ancien régime. Other privileges held by certain provinces and cities were also soon abolished.

These remarkable events had destroyed French absolutism. On 26 August, the Assembly then promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which would serve as a preamble to a Constitution. Article 1 proclaimed that "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights." They would be equal before the law and no one could be persecuted for religious beliefs. The Declaration placed sovereignty in the nation, although social distinctions would remain.

Louis XVI, who remained at Versailles, rejected the decrees of 4 August as well as the Assembly's offer on 11 September of a "suspending," or delaying veto over legislation. Popular anger in Paris mounted, as ordinary people were convinced that he remained in the clutches of conservative, aristocratic advisors (which was indeed the case). "Patriots" increasingly demanded that the king reside in Paris. And on 5 October, when women from modest neighborhoods near the Bastille found the market poorly provisioned, they began a march to Versailles that eventually brought together about ten thousand people. The next morning, when a crowd tried to force its way into the royal palace, the guards shot someone dead, and the crowd then killed two guards. Louis announced that he accepted the August decrees of the Assembly and agreed to go to Paris with his family.

The National Assembly, which had moved its deliberations to Paris, now proclaimed Louis "king of the French," instead of "king of France," implying that he now embodied the sovereignty of the people. Some frightened nobles began to leave France, including the king's brother Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois (later Charles X), soon followed by about twenty thousand émigrés. In November the Assembly declared the property of the church "national property" and put about 10 percent of church lands up for sale at auctions; the land was purchased by urban bourgeois and wealthy peasants. The Assembly then made the remaining church lands the collateral for paper money called assignats. In February 1790 the Assembly abolished religious orders and on 12 July passed the Civil Constitution of the French Clergy, creating a national church and making the clergy dependent on salaries paid by the state. Soon all priests had to swear an oath of loyalty to the Revolution. More than half of priests refused to do so, and the Assembly decreed that these "nonjuring" clergy would be forbidden from administering the sacraments. This divided France regionally (with the clergy of the west and Alsace, in particular, refusing the oath), but also split many parishes. The Assembly also rationalized the administrative structure of France by eliminating the old provinces (thus undercutting some noble influence) and creating départements, named after prominent geographic characteristics, particularly the names of rivers.

From monarchy to republic

The Constitution of 1791 substituted a constitutional monarchy for the absolute rule of the king. The king would retain only a suspending veto, but would continue to dictate foreign policy and command the army, even if acts of war required the Assembly's approval. Although all citizens were to be equal before the law, the Assembly differentiated between "active citizens," who paid the equivalent of three days wages in direct taxes, and "passive citizens," the very poor. The National Assembly granted citizenship and civil rights to Protestants and Jews (1790); ended the monopoly of the guilds over the production and distribution of goods; and in 1791 passed the Le Chapelier Law, forbidding workmen from joining together to refuse work to a master, a victory for free trade. The Assembly also established proceedings for obtaining a divorce, established civil marriage, ended primogeniture, and abolished slavery in France, but not in the colonies. It ignored the calls of Olympe de Gouges (1745–1793) for equal rights for women.

Opposition to the Revolution had already begun in parts of the south and west of the country, as well as in Alsace. In Paris, political clubs began to play a greater role in mobilizing popular opinion for the Revolution, pushing it to the left. The Jacobin Club and the Cordeliers Club brought together radicals, including the artisans and other ordinary people, the "sans-culottes" who believed in the Revolution. The Jacobins soon had many clubs in the provinces. Increasingly fearful for his future and wishing to reverse the Revolution itself, Louis XVI decided to flee Paris. In June 1791 he and his family left the Tuileries, Paris, in disguise in the middle of the night, but were recognized in the eastern town of Varennes, not too far from the Belgian border, and returned to Paris. This increased calls for his destitution and the creation of a republic. The king's formal acceptance of the constitutional limits of his reign on 14 September could not stem ever increasing popular support for a republic, including within the newly elected National Assembly, where the radicals of the "left," so called because of the location of their seats in the assembly, dominated.

In the Assembly, the faction that became known as the "Girondins" (several of whom were from the département of the Gironde, of which Bordeaux was the capital), called for a revolutionary war to free Europe from the tyranny of monarchs and nobles. In April 1792 France declared war on Austria. The war, coming at a time of higher prices in Paris and fears that émigrés were organizing a campaign against the Revolution, brought early defeats on the northern frontier. In June, a crowd pushed its way into the Tuileries, calling for the destitution of the king. On 11 July the Assembly declared the nation to be "in danger." Austria and Prussia issued the Brunswick Manifesto, warning the French that they faced harsh punishment if the royal family were harmed. The neighborhood "sections" of Paris demanded that the king be deposed. A radical committee took over the city council. On 10 August sans-culottes invaded the Tuileries, killing six hundred of the Swiss Guards and servants. The Assembly declared the end to the monarchy. However, military defeats accentuated the panic in Paris, leading to the massacre of prisoners in September. Yet, on 20 September 1792, the army of conscripts defeated the Prussian and Austrian armies at Valmy, near Châlon-sur-Marne. The next day (although news of the battle was not yet known), the Assembly proclaimed the French Republic. French troops pushed across the Rhine, and the National Convention (as the Assembly was now called) declared the annexation of Savoy and of the town of Nice. The king went on trial for treason, accused of conspiring with the Revolution's enemies. Louis XVI was tried and guillotined in January 1793.

the first republic

Full-scale counterrevolution within France began in the west in March 1793. The Vendée, as the insurgency is called after the département of the same name, was waged by peasants who still respected nobles and clergy and resisted conscription. Facing foreign armies and internal civil war (not only in the west, but now also including "federalist" revolts in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, and Caen against Jacobin authority centralized in Paris), France lapsed into the Terror.

The Terror

The Convention turned authority over to the Committee of Public Safety, whose most prominent members included Maximilien Robes-pierre and Louis-Antoine-Léon de Saint-Just. After expelling the Girondins in June, the Committee restricted civil rights (notably through the Law of Suspects in September 1793) and began guillotining those considered enemies of the Revolution. Ultimately, well more than ten thousand people perished in the Terror, the majority in regions affected by warfare against the Revolution. The Committee of Public Safety struck against its enemies on the left, notably the enragés who demanded even stricter measures, as well as moderates who wanted the Terror reined in. The Jacobins abolished the old calendar of twelve months, initiating a revolutionary calendar based on cycles of ten days. Radical revolutionaries launched an ambitious campaign of "dechristianization" against symbols of the church. Robespierre sought (without much success) to initiate and popularize a secularized "Cult of the Supreme Being," to replace the church as the embodiment of moral authority.

The Directory

Moderates (potentially those next in line to be executed) plotted against Robes-pierre and his colleagues, arresting him on the night of 9 Thermidor—under the revolutionary calendar (27 July 1794). He and Saint-Just were

tried in haste and quickly guillotined. The victors of "Thermidor" dismantled the Paris Commune, reducing the authority of the Committee of Public Safety. They proclaimed a new constitution, two assemblies, and an executive authority of five directors. The subsequent period is known as "the Directory." People of property benefited from the "Thermidorian Reaction." The number of those eligible to vote was reduced. The poor suffered hard economic times, particularly the awful winter of 1795, as the wars against the Revolution's enemies went on. That spring, troops put down two demonstrations in Paris. The Directory nipped in the bud an insurrection organized by François-Noël "Gracchus" Babeuf, who espoused a society of equals, and confronted continued mobilization by Royalists who wanted a monarchical restoration. The Directory simply annulled an election in 1797, because it would have brought to the Council of Five Hundred (one of the representative bodies) a considerable number of Royalists. A coup d'état on 4 September 1797 cast aside two of the directors.

The Consulat

In 1799 Abbé Sieyés, one of the directors, began to plot another coup in order to put an end to a troubled, rather chaotic period. He turned to the young Napoleon Bonaparte, whose military victories in Italy had made him the talk of Paris. Following the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799), the victorious plotters established a new government, the Consulat, with three consuls, including Napoleon, replacing the five directors. A new constitution was quickly promulgated, approved by 99 percent of voters in a plebiscite. The Consulat provided political stability, with Napoleon as first consul (he named the other two). He began to ruthlessly suppress potential opposition, and made peace with the Catholic Church, signing a Concordat in 1801 with the papacy. Protestants and Jews would receive the protection of the state.

In 1802 Napoleon took the title "consul for life," which another plebiscite approved overwhelmingly. He used a conspiracy allegedly organized against him by Royalists to strike out at them, and then moved to establish himself as emperor, snatching the crown from Pope Pius VII (r. 1829–1830) to crown himself during the ceremony on 2 December 1804.

first empire

Napoleon I (r. 1804–1814/15), who could never live with peace, lured Britain into another war. In 1805 Britain, Austria, and Russia formed a coalition (the third) against France. The French navy suffered a disastrous defeat at Trafalgar in October of that year, but did better on land, defeating the Austrians at Ulm and the Russians at Austerlitz. A year later, Napoleon's troops defeated the Prussians at Jena, occupying Berlin, and then the Russians again at the Battle of Friedland in June 1807, a defeat that led to the Treaty of Tilsit the next month. Britain alone was left to challenge Napoleon's empire, particularly after another Austrian defeat at Wagram two years later.

When he was not waging war on Europe, Napoleon established some of the most essential foundations of modern France. He honed the centralization of the state bureaucracy, making the prefects (the chief administrative authorities in each département) even more important, while the senate, legislative body, and tribunate, institutions that had come with the Consulat, were left with only ceremonial functions. The council of state's influence was reduced. Napoleon established the Bank of France in 1800 and organized education into regional academies. The Napoleonic Code (1804) he considered the centerpiece of the empire. More than two thousand articles long, it proclaimed the equality of all people in France before the law (although women were less free than men) and the freedom of religion, and reaffirmed the ban on associations of workers or employers. With the army and the bureaucracy standing as the two pillars of the empire, Napoleon created a new hierarchy, topped by an elite of "notables" whose status came from their service to the state. And he created innumerable titles and decorations, including the Legion of Honor (1802).

However, the tide began to turn against Napoleon, as French rule brought resistance in many countries. The "Continental System," essentially a blockade that aimed at strangling the British economy by cutting off its trade with the continent, failed, despite the War of 1812, which pitted Britain against the United States. Rebellion in Spain turned into the Peninsular War (1808–1814), with guerrilla attacks on French troops taking their toll. The "Spanish ulcer" cost Napoleon dearly. Military reforms in Prussia and Austria led to stronger armies to challenge Napoleon. The emperor's decision to invade Russia in 1812 proved to be catastrophic. The "Grand Army," half of which consisted of conscripts from conquered countries, found the devastating Russian winter arguably its biggest enemy. The bitter cold and Russian forces killed off the bulk of the largest army that had ever marched; only some forty thousand of six hundred thousand ever returned to France.

The Russian debacle encouraged the other powers, and French victories in 1813 only fore-stalled Napoleon's almost inevitable defeat in 1814, as Prussian and Austrian armies marched into Paris. Napoleon abdicated, going into exile on the island of Elba. The comte de Paris assumed the throne as King Louis XVIII (r. 1814–1815, 1815–1824), claiming that he was in the seventeenth year of his reign, which he dated from the death of his nephew, the son of Louis XVI (1785–1795), in a Paris prison in 1795. The new king signed a constitutional "Charter," against the wishes of most nobles, which served to recognize that much had changed since 1789. The Restoration would have a Chamber of Deputies, to be elected on the basis of a very restricted electoral franchise that gave the vote essentially to wealthy landowners.

Then the seemingly impossible happened. Napoleon escaped Elba and returned to France, marching to Paris from the south of France, as Louis XVIII left the country. But this Napoleonic adventure lasted but one hundred days, as the allies gathered their forces, defeating Napoleon's hurriedly organized army at Waterloo in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) on 16 June 1815. This time the exile would be permanent, to the tiny island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, a thousand miles from any mainland. The great adventure was over.

restoration

The election of the first parliament of the regime, to be known as the Chambre introuvable, took place in an atmosphere of political terror in August 1815. Some 50,900 electors selected 402 deputies. Of these 78 percent were clearly very conservative and among them 52 percent were ancien régime nobles. Of the others, most were not opposed to the regime, but only to the demands of its more extreme adherents, the so-called ultras. Louis XVIII was unwilling to risk the politically divisive measures demanded by the ultras. He dissolved the Chamber in September 1816 and, partly through the use of government influence, was able to secure the election of a far more moderate majority. Among its achievements was to be the electoral law of 1817, which by means of a three hundred franc tax qualification restricted the electorate to one hundred thousand, primarily made up of landowners. The requirement that candidates for election should be at least forty years old and pay one thousand francs in direct taxation, ensured that only around 1,650 were eligible. The government also purged ultras from the administration and allowed the return of political exiles. Reconciliation could go only so far however. In 1820 the assassination of Louis XVIII's nephew the duc de Berri, the heir to the throne and the last in the direct line of Bourbons until the posthumous birth of his son, precipitated a major crisis. Together with the uncovering of Bonapartist plots in the army it appeared to justify exceptional repression, including detention without trial for three months, tighter censorship, and yet more restrictive electoral legislation.

The accession, in September 1824, of Charles X (r. 1824–1830), signified the effective end of efforts to broaden the base of support for the regime. The new king had a conception of his rights hardly compatible with constitutional monarchy. Initially, a ministry led by Joseph Villéle and an ultra-dominated Chamber, elected in the aftermath of the assassination crisis, supported the king. Three-fifths of the deputies were nobles and one-half former émigrés. This majority was to be characterized by bitter divisions, however, between the proponents of an aristocratic and clerical monarchy and constitutional monarchists. The compensation of former émigres whose land had been confiscated during the Revolution, was described by liberals as a fine on the nation imposed by a self-seeking noble majority. Concern about the regime's intentions was increased by its close alliance with a church intent on restoring "moral order."

The government continued to manipulate the electoral system, reducing the number of voters from one hundred thousand to eighty-nine thousand between 1817 and 1827. Together with the preferential treatment of nobles within the army and administration, and the pressure for restitution exerted by parish priests on purchasers of former church property, government policies created an increasingly widespread belief that a return to the ancien régime was planned. The regime's critics were essentially liberals committed to constitutional monarchy, including lawyers or merchants or displaced members of the former imperial service élite and army officers retired prematurely on half-pay.

Liberal successes in the 1827 elections persuaded the king to replace Villéle with the more liberal Jean-Baptiste-Sylvére Gay, vicomte de Martignac, a move that seemed only to stimulate further opposition. In August 1829 he appointed his old friend the comte Auguste-Jules-Armand-Marie de Polignac, a religious mystic, to head a ministry, a move that was widely taken to symbolize defeat, national humiliation, and the White Terror of 1815. The liberal association Aide-toi le ciel t'aidera (Heaven helps those who help themselves), originally formed to encourage the registration of voters, called for a nationwide refusal to pay taxes, led by moderate and legalistic figures such as François Guizot. Poor harvests, high food prices, unemployment, and misery added to the sense of crisis. Two successive elections in 1830 returned majorities hostile to the government. In the second, and in spite of government pressure, 270 liberals were returned and only 145 government supporters. Charles X invoked the emergency decree powers he possessed under the terms of the Charter and in July introduced ordinances that tightened censorship, dissolved the newly elected Chamber before it even met, revised election procedures to increase administrative influence, and reduced the electorate to its wealthiest quarter, made up of twenty-three thousand mainly noble landowners. This brought the crisis to a head.

Revolution of 1830

The liberals gave the signal for resistance with a poster calling for protest. The call to defend "liberty" mobilized a disparate coalition drawn from the middle and working classes of the capital city. Around midday on 27 July, the first clash occurred between demonstrators and gendarmerie units attempting to disperse crowds. In the afternoon, exasperated troops seem to have fired without orders. This was followed by the construction of barricades and bitter street fighting. The armed crowds, which had taken over the streets, frightened the liberals, as did the shouts of "Vive Napoléon II" and "Vive la République." Therefore once again they vested Lafayette, the aging hero of 1789, with command of a National Guard and established a municipal commission to restore order. On 30 July they offered the throne to the duc d'Orléans, a prince with a liberal reputation, on condition that he agree to respect the principles of constitutional monarchy. The following day, the new king Louis-Philippe (r. 1830–1848) appointed a government and convened a meeting of the Chamber of Deputies. On 8 August the Chamber voted in favor of a revision of the constitution that significantly altered the balance of power between king and parliament. A substantial purge of the administration, together with the withdrawal of many nobles from public life, confirmed the defeat of aristocratic reaction.

the july monarchy

Most liberals were satisfied. The new electoral law, which brought the tax qualification for voting down from three hundred francs to two hundred, significantly reduced the weight of nobles within the electorate while enfranchising mainly landowners (about 56 percent of voters in 1846), officials (about 8 percent), professionals (about 10 percent), and businessmen (about 26 percent). They would consistently provide the regime with solid parliamentary support. The vast majority of

lower-middle-class, peasant, and worker citizens remained unenfranchised, although growing prosperity would enlarge the electorate gradually from 166,000 to 241,000 by 1846. The 1831 municipal election law gave the vote to some three million. In the aftermath of revolution, however, "liberté" had diverse meanings, freely discussed at meetings and in newspapers. In Paris, workers took to the streets to demand the trial of Charles X's ministers, higher wages, a shorter working day, and the banning of employment-threatening machinery. They assumed that a regime that they had created should recognize the basic human right to a living wage, but received little sympathy from a government committed to "the freedom of industry." The brief seizure of control over the city of Lyon by armed silk workers in November 1831 and their slogan "Live working or die fighting!" caused a great stir. Small groups of middle-class republicans began to look outside the narrow electorate for support, and attempted to politicize discontented workers through organizations such as the "Society for the Rights of Man." This agitation would, however, largely be terminated by a law banning political meetings—introduced in April 1834, following a second insurrection by Lyonnais silkworkers—and by increasingly brutal repression. In an effort to safeguard "social order" in the longer term, a major law on primary education (1833) required each commune to have a school (although this would not be the case for some time in parts of rural France), sought to "moralize" the lower orders through religious instruction, to encourage the use of French in place of regional languages, and to enhance the sense of national identity.

The political peace of the following years was due to firm government, but additionally to support from the narrow electorate for a regime that through parliament allowed them to represent their own particular interests. Louis-Philippe made full use of his powers and insisted that ministers sympathize with his objectives; opposition both within and out-side parliament was weak and divided. It ranged from the supporters of another Bourbon restoration, the legitimists on the right, to the republicans on the left. However, its most numerous and vocal critics were drawn from the ranks of the so-called dynastic opposition, made up of politicians excluded from office who sought to improve their prospects by enlarging the electorate, not in order to enfranchise the masses, but to secure the wider representation of the property-owning middle classes.

Certainly, the position of the regime was not as secure as it appeared. Its foreign policy appeared to be subservient to British interests. It also suffered from continuous opposition criticism of electoral corruption and the use of patronage to control deputies, and especially from the severe economic crisis beginning in 1845–1846, which shattered the image of prosperity it had assiduously cultivated. The "banquet" campaign, its form a means of circumventing the laws against political meetings, was initiated by members of the dynastic opposition. However, these moderates, who wanted a modest expansion of the electoral franchise, rapidly lost the initiative to republicans such as Alexandre-Auguste Ledru-Rollin, who at Lille in November 1847 demanded manhood suffrage and (unspecified) reforms to end the people's suffering.

Revolution of 1848

The campaign was planned to culminate in a mass banquet in Paris. Afraid of disorder, the government banned this gathering, a move that was accepted with relief by liberal and moderate republican politicians. More radical figures called for protest however. On 22 February 1848 crowds of students and workers gathered on the Place de la Concorde, and sporadic violence occurred as the police attempted to disperse them. On the following day elements of the solidly middle-class National Guard rejected orders from a government that seemed to represent the interests solely of the upper classes. This seems to have persuaded the king and his advisors of the wisdom of reform. The intransigent Guizot was replaced with the more liberal Louis-Mathieu Molé. However, a murderous fusillade, fired at around 10 p.m. without orders, by nervous troops guarding the foreign ministry, led an enraged population to construct hundreds of barricades in the narrow streets of the old city. Louis-Philippe was encouraged to abdicate, and members of the dynastic opposition vainly attempted to establish a regency for his grandson. At the same time, republican leaders at the offices of the newspapers National and Réforme were beginning to realize that a more radical outcome was possible. In the late afternoon, a provisional government made up of well-known republican politicians and journalists was proclaimed by the crowds at the Hôtel-de-Ville.

the second republic

The members of this provisional government were divided socially, personally, and politically. A majority of moderates, led by the aristocratic poet and historian Alphonse-Marie-Louis de Prat de Lamartine, saw their role as essentially one of preserving order and administrative continuity until the election of a constituent assembly. Nevertheless, the sense of expectancy in Paris forced them to recognize manhood suffrage—it being widely assumed that women lacked the intellectual capacity to make political judgements; the "right to work"; democratization of the National Guard; and freedom of the press and of assembly.

Great enthusiasm was expressed in the host of new newspapers, political clubs, and workers' associations for what appeared to be the dawning of a new era. The establishment of the Luxembourg Commission—composed of representatives of government, employers, and workers—to inquire into

working conditions reinforced the belief that major changes were imminent. "National Workshops" were established in Paris and most other urban centers to provide immediate relief for the unemployed. The creation of producers' cooperatives to replace capitalist exploitation was eagerly anticipated. Mass demonstrations were organized to maintain pressure on the government. In practice the main concern of ministers was to reestablish business confidence, which required the preservation of public order and avoidance of "socialistic" measures. The introduction of a 45 percent supplement to the land tax to pay for the National Workshops largely destroyed support for the new regime among the rural population.

For conservatives the prospect of a "universal" vote on Easter Day 1848 was a nightmare, the likely first step toward a thoroughgoing social revolution. In practice, however, in the absence of organized parties, the selection of candidates, especially in rural constituencies, remained dependent on the activities of politically experienced notables. Faced with a plethora of candidates, many voters turned to those whose wealth, education, or functions gave them status, including the clergy. Republicans had little time to counter this. A large majority of the successful candidates were to be former monarchists, even if, reflecting a continuing crisis of confidence, they adopted the republican label. Indeed when they met as a Constituent Assembly they elected an executive commission made up of the more moderate members of the previous provisional government.

The election results inevitably caused great dis-satisfaction among radicals. A major demonstration in Paris on 15 May culminated in the chaotic invasion of the Assembly's meeting place and a call for the establishment of a committee of public safety and the levying of a wealth tax to finance the creation of producers' cooperatives. On 22 June the closure of the National Workshops was announced. The next day, barricades again went up throughout the poor eastern quartiers of the city. A substantial number of men and women (perhaps twenty to thirty thousand) were willing to risk their lives in the struggle for "justice." The forces of "order" included National Guards from the wealthier western quartiers, but about one-fifth of them were workers. Moreover, the mobile guards recruited from young, unemployed workers, together with the regular army, became in the eyes of the propertied classes the "saviors of civilization." The war minister General Jean-Baptiste Cavaignac concentrated his forces and smashed the insurrection in three days of vicious street fighting. Contemporaries saw this conflict as one between bourgeois and peuple, as a form of class struggle. Subsequently, political activity was severely restricted. The new constitution promulgated on 4 November 1848 provided for the election of a president with strong executive authority. The successful candidate on 10 December was Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, with 74 percent of the vote, compared with Cavaignac's 19 percent. The emperor's nephew was able to take advantage of the messianic cult of the great leader created by the outpouring of books, pamphlets, lithographs, and objects of devotion over the previous thirty years.

Bonaparte's appointment of a ministry made up mainly of figures associated with the Orléanist monarchy seemed to confirm his commitment to the so-called party of order. Its members aware of their growing political isolation, the Constituent Assembly voted its own dissolution on 29 January. In the elections that followed on 13 May a clear right-left division emerged between a reactionary conservatism and a radical republicanism with the center, the moderate republicans, squeezed in between. The démocrate-socialiste or Montagnard movement, which might be seen as the first attempt to create a modern national party, incorporated both democrats and socialists determined to defend the republic and work for social reform. In May some two hundred Montagnards were elected, and although this compared badly with the five hundred conservatives the latter were alarmed by such an unexpected radical success. In spite of constant repression, in some areas démocrate-socialiste organization and propaganda in the form of newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, engravings, and songs, managed to survive. It promised that the establishment of a République démocratique et sociale would secure cheap credit to satisfy peasant land hunger, free and secular education, a guaranteed right to work, and state support for the establishment of producer and consumer cooperatives. These measures were to be financed by taxation of the "rich" and nationalization of the railways, canals, mines, and insurance companies.

In response, a new electoral law introduced stricter residential qualifications, removing around one-third of the poorest voters from the rolls, and ever more intense action was directed at left-wing newspapers and organizations, driving many of them underground. In an effort to safeguard the future, another law on primary education (loi Falloux) in 1850 reinforced the religious and socially conservative message delivered in the schools. As the 1852 legislative and presidential elections came closer, rumors of socialist plots abounded. Although the constitution debarred him from a second term of office, Bonaparte was determined not to hand over power with what he believed to be his historical mission, the regeneration of France, unachieved.

As head of the executive branch, Bonaparte was well placed to mount a coup d'état on 2 December 1851. Although directed against both the monarchist groups represented in the National Assembly and the radical republicans, the fact that only the latter offered resistance gave it an essentially anti-republican character. In Paris and other cities only very limited conflict occurred, thanks to preventative arrests and obvious military preparedness. Few workers were willing to defend the rights of monarchist deputies against a president who promised to restore "universal" suffrage. However, in some nine hundred communities, mainly in the southeast, around one hundred thousand men were mobilized by clandestine secret societies that had begun to spring up, particularly in the south, in 1850 and 1851, organizations to defend the République démocratique et sociale. The columns of troops that moved into the countryside easily crushed these movements. A settling of accounts with the Left followed, with more than twenty-six thousand arrests. Conservatives gave thanks to God for their deliverance. On 20 December a plebiscite was held to sanction the extension of the prince-president's authority. The result was predictable: 7,500,000 voted "yes," 640,000 "no," and 1,500,000 abstained, with opposition concentrated in the major cities. For the second time, supported by the army, a Bonaparte had destroyed a republic. Following another carefully orchestrated campaign, a second plebiscite (on 21–22 November 1852) approved the reestablishment of the hereditary empire.

the second empire

The intentions of the new emperor, Napoleon III (r. 1852–1871) were clear: to establish a strong and stable executive power capable of promoting economic and social modernization. The tradition of ministerial responsibility to parliament gradually built up since 1814 was effectively annulled, and the Corps législatif rendered largely quiescent. In the first decade political repression and close cooperation with reactionary and clerical forces characterized the regime. Elections were carefully managed. The new regime remained inescapably dependent on the aristocratic and grands bourgeois servants of previous governments. The majority of ministers were conservative former Orléanists. There were remarkably few genuine Bonapartists, despite the fact that Napoleon III appears to have assumed that the notables would rally to his government.

Political stability, accompanied by economic prosperity, certainly enhanced the regime's status. Substantial investment in the transport infrastructure and in the construction of a "modern" capital city provided a major stimulus to the economy. Much of the rural population on whose electoral support he depended saw Napoleon as "their emperor" offering protection both against a restoration of the ancien régime and revolutionary chaos. The regime brought benefits in the shape of railways and roads, and offered subsidies for the construction of churches and schools. Many workers were also attracted by the Napoleonic legend and the emperor's show of sympathy for the poor. Thus the Second Empire enjoyed a broader consensus of support than had its predecessors. Election results suggest that this reached its peak in 1857. Subsequently, with order apparently restored, notables would press for the reestablishment of a parliamentary system. The growing number of critics therefore ranged from those who had initially welcomed the coup but no longer saw any need for authoritarian rule, to republicans, the victims of the coup who entirely rejected the empire.

The context for political activity was to change. Anxious to create a constitutional regime less dependent on his own survival, by a decree of 24 November 1860 the emperor conceded to the Corps législatif the right to discuss the address from the throne at the beginning of each parliamentary session, and further agreed to nominate ministers without portfolio to explain and defend government policy. Debates could now be reproduced in full in the press. In December 1861 Napoleon responded to anxiety about the growth of the national debt and Georges-Eugéne Haussmann's unorthodox arrangements for financing the reconstruction of Paris by allowing increased parliamentary control over the budget. Throughout the decade too, although repressive legislation remained intact, much greater tolerance was displayed toward the press.

Initially, the policy of liberalization represented confidence in the stability of the regime. However, a series of measures—including an amnesty for republicans; alliance with Piedmont against Austria and in support of a "Europe of the nationalities"; a loosening of the alliance between church and state; the 1860 commercial treaty with Britain designed to force the pace of modernization; the enhanced role of parliament; and the legalization of strikes—had complex and often contradictory effects. The realization that the regime was unlikely to resort to brute force against its opponents encouraged criticism. Among the most vocal were clericals anxious about the threat posed by Italian nationalism to the papacy's temporal power and political liberals concerned about the economic dislocation that might result from "free trade." They demanded further liberalization to facilitate greater parliamentary control over government policy and to restore the influence of established social elites.

The vitality of this opposition made it clear that the regime had failed to engineer a national reconciliation. However, unlike his predecessors, Napoleon III was prepared to adapt. Further liberalization thus represented concessions to the growing pressure clearly evident in the gradual collapse of the system of official candidature; the number of opposition candidates increased, as did their success. The May 1863 elections thus saw the reconstitution of an extremely heterogeneous, but increasingly effective parliamentary opposition, which included legitimists determined to defend the interests of the church, irreconcilable Orléanist notables, and independent liberals and republicans. Although only thirty-two outright opponents were successful they combined with some of the regime's more liberal adherents to constitute a Third Party. Further concessions were made: most notably the liberties accorded in 1868 to public meetings and the press. Again, the political context was changed decisively. There was a spectacular revival of newspapers and political meetings. The circulation of Parisian newspapers, which had been around fifty thousand in 1830, rose to more than seven hundred thousand in 1869, reflecting rising literacy and falling production and distribution costs as well as the renewal of interest in politics. Moreover the campaign was marked by the emergence of Léon-Michel Gambetta as the leading figure on the left. His espousal of a program that included vague promises of social reform, was accompanied by large antiregime demonstrations in Paris. The outcome of the 1869 elections was a severe blow to the regime, with 4,438,000 votes cast for government candidates, 3,355,000 for opponents, and 2,291,000 abstentions.

Seventy-eight opposition deputies were elected, forty-nine of them liberals and twenty-nine republicans—essentially moderates determined to employ strictly legal forms of political action. Even the "radical" Gambetta was committed to "progress without revolution," afraid that, as in 1848, socialist agitation would frighten the mass of small property owners and provoke repression. In addition, however, at least ninety-eight erstwhile government supporters were liberals whose views differed little from those of opposition deputies. There was an immediate demand for a government responsible to the Corps legislative, closer parliamentary control over both ministers and the budget, and the formation of a government likely to enjoy both the confidence of the emperor and majority support in the Chamber. This culminated in the appointment on 2 January 1870 of a ministry headed by a former moderate republican, Émile Ollivier. Although liberals remained dissatisfied because of the emperor's retention of considerable personal power, most deputies were prepared to accept this as necessary for the preservation of order in a situation of growing political unrest.

The early measures of the new government reinforced this conservative support. They included the final abandonment of the system of official candidature; the dismissal of Haussmann, in order to satisfy orthodox financial interests, and of the secularist education minister Victor Duruy to pacify clericals; the announcement of an inquiry into customs legislation, which was seen as the prelude to a return to economic protectionism; and determined action against strikers in major industrial centers such as Le Creusot and republican demonstrators in Paris. Indeed for many liberals liberalization had gone far enough. There seemed to be no alternative to supporting the regime as the most effective guarantor of social order and Christian civilization, a point repeatedly made in official propaganda.

On 8 May 1870 a plebiscite was held. The electorate was asked to decide whether it "approves the liberal reforms introduced since 1860." The results were an overwhelming success for the regime: 7,350,000 voters registered their approval, 1,538,000 voted "no," and a further 1,900,000 abstained. To one senior official it represented "a new baptism of the Napoleonic dynasty." Although opposition remained strong in the cities, it generally appeared to be waning.

The empir's sudden collapse resulted from the incompetent management of foreign affairs. The Prussian triumph over Austria in 1866 had altered the European balance of power, and ever since many commentators had believed in the inevitability of war. When it came in 1870 however it was due to errors by a government under pressure from a hysterical right-wing reaction to the news of a Hohenzollern candidature for the Spanish throne. Although both the emperor and Ollivier might have accepted a simple withdrawal of this candidature, conservative deputies demanded guarantees, which—in the infamous Ems telegram—the Prussian minister-president Otto von Bismarck refused in deliberately insulting terms. Although aware that the military preparations were seriously defective, Napoleon succumbed to pressure from the empress and other authoritarian Bonapartists, hoping that victory would further consolidate the regime.

Even more republicans rallied to the national cause. The first defeats brought panic however. The emperor's response was to replace the Ollivier

government with one made up of authoritarian Bonapartists. This could not alter the fact that the army was better prepared for dealing with internal security problems than for waging a major European war. Its mobilization had been chaotic. It lacked adequate trained reserves and its maneuvers in the field suffered from a lack of effective coordination. The capitulation at Sedan of an army led by the emperor represented governmental failure on a scale sufficient to destroy the regime's legitimacy. On 4 September crowds invaded the Palais Bourbon and drove out the imperial Corps législatif. In an uncertain political situation the troops and police responsible for the assembly's security were unwilling to use their weapons. A group of Parisian deputies proclaimed the republic, and established a provisional government of national defense. In the provinces there appeared to be no immediate alternative to acceptance of the Parisian initiative.

the third republic

Once the republic had been proclaimed, its survival seemed to depend on a successful outcome to the war. The shortages of trained troops and equipment made this unlikely. Moreover, conservatives questioned the wisdom of fighting a lost war particularly because they feared that this would lead to political radicalization, just as in 1792. In this desperate situation, with Paris under siege, the government was obliged to request an armistice and in February 1871 held elections essentially on the issue of whether or not to continue the war. The discrediting of both the Bonapartist and republican advocates of war resulted in a massive majority, especially in rural areas, for the mainly monarchist notables who stood as peace candidates. However, in the capital, besieged by the Prussians from 19 September 1870 to 28 January 1871, many of the men who had been incorporated into a National Guard to defend the city felt betrayed by the government's acceptance of a "humiliating" peace.

There was also concern that the newly elected National Assembly, meeting in Bordeaux on 12 February, would destroy the republic and all hope of democratic and social reform. Certainly the nomination of a government made up of the most moderate republicans and led by Louis-Adolphe Thiers did little to calm these fears. Indeed, the crisis deepened because of the government's decision to end payment of National Guards and require the immediate payment of rents and commercial debts; measures that threatened widespread destitution. Nevertheless the revolt, which began on 18 March, was largely unpremeditated. Initially it involved popular resistance to an incompetent effort to seize National Guard cannon parked on the heights of Montmartre. Thiers ordered a withdrawal to Versailles to await reinforcements. The resulting power vacuum undoubtedly stimulated the wider insurrection he had feared.

The Commune

Two rival political authorities came into existence, with the central committee of the federation of National Guard battalions in the city and the national government at Versailles each controlling its own armed force. On 26 March, following the failure of confused negotiations, insurrection turned into revolution with the election in Paris of the Commune. Fighting between the two bodies began on 2 April. Enjoying little provincial support and isolated by a military cordon sanitaire, the Parisian movement was doomed. It was suppressed with extreme brutality by the troops of the imperial army, largely freed from German prison camps for the purpose. In fierce street fighting the army lost four hundred men. Estimates of insurgent casualties vary between ten and thirty thousand (twenty-five thousand seems to be the most accurate figure); most of them were summarily executed after surrendering. Subsequently more than thirty-eight thousand others were arrested. For moderate republican ministers, monarchist deputies, and generals this was another opportunity to settle accounts with those they accused of plotting to destroy "civilized society." On the other side of the political divide the Commune created a socialist myth of revolutionary heroism. More significantly, however, this was to be the last of the great nineteenth-century revolutions.

New regime

The precise character of the new regime remained to be settled. The elections held in February 1871 had returned an assembly, a majority of whose members (about 400 of 645) favored the establishment of some kind of monarchy. In May 1873 Thiers, whose government had crushed the Commune and secured the withdrawal of German occupying forces through payment of a five billion franc indemnity, as well as beginning to reorganize the army, was replaced by more committed Royalists, with the marshal Marie-Edme-Patrice-Maurice de MacMahon as president and the duc Jacques-Victor-Albert de Broglie as prime minister.

The obvious candidate for the throne, Charles X's grandson, Henri-Charles-Ferdinand-Marie Dieudonné d'Artois, the comte de Chambord, in exile in Austria, continued to insist on the replacement of the tricolor, "the emblem of revolution" by the white flag and fleur-de-lis of the old monarchy. His refusal to compromise was supported in the National Assembly by around one hundred legitimist deputies, but opposed by the two hundred Orléanists, uncomfortable with legitimist devotion to throne and altar. Monarchist leaders decided to wait until the death of the childless Chambord, when the succession would legitimately pass to the House of Orléans, securing the natural fusion of the warring monarchist groups. In the meantime, with the assistance of the church, they were determined to establish a regime devoted to reestablishing moral order. Increasingly, it was the defense of religion that supplied a sense of purpose to conservatives during these early years of the Third Republic.

In contrast, for many of the 150 republicans elected in 1871, together with their fundamental determination to defend the republic, anticlericalism provided a basic sense of unity. Republican spokesmen made every effort to dissociate the republic from revolution, insisting that it was the monarchists who threatened the status quo. These policies were to enjoy growing electoral success. By-elections meant that the composition of the Assembly changed quite rapidly. As early as July 1871, a further one hundred republicans were elected, indicating how peculiar the circumstances of the February elections had been. By January 1875 a conservative Catholic, Henri-Alexandre Wallon, was able to obtain sufficient support for a constitutional amendment in favor of the definitive establishment of the republic. The constitution of that year sought to avoid the mistake of 1848 by ensuring that the president was elected by parliament and denied the authority accorded by a popular vote. In the aftermath of the Commune the president was certainly granted substantial executive power, but in practice the Chamber of Deputies, increasingly dominated by republicans, would insist on its own predominance. The key role in government would be assumed by the président du conseil (prime minister) dependent on parliament. The 1876 general elections brought 340 republicans, elected especially in the east and southeast, into the Chamber of Deputies, alongside 155 monarchists, mainly from rural areas of the west and northwest. Around half of these were Bonapartists, elected mainly in the southwest and representing a revival that would end with the futile death of the prince imperial Eugene Bonaparte (1856–1879) in 1879. In these circumstances a final showdown between the increasingly confident republican deputies and the monarchist president of the republic could be postponed no longer. In May 1877, following a vote of no confidence, MacMahon dissolved the Chamber. The following October, and in spite of a return to a Bonapartist system of administrative pressure, the electorate returned 321 republican and only 208 monarchist deputies. MacMahon was obliged to invite the moderate republican Armand Dufaure to form a government. Cohabitation was to fail, however, and when in January 1879 the delegates of the communes elected a republican majority in the senate, MacMahon finally accepted that his position was untenable.

This triumphant republican victory cannot be explained in simple sociological terms. Ideological divisions cut across those of class. Certainly, it represented a defeat for a traditional social elite made up primarily of noble and non-noble landowners, but which had also come to include many wealthy business and professional men. Nevertheless a substantial portion of the economic elite had come to favor a conservative republic. So too had the much larger numbers of business and professional men with local standing and influence, in relatively close touch with a mass electorate that had attained a significant level of political consciousness and that had increasingly come to believe that its material and social aspirations would best be served by a republic.

Conservative republican rule

The resignation of MacMahon was followed by a long period of conservative republican rule, lasting until 1898. Rapidly shifting parliamentary alliances and repeated ministerial crises should not be allowed to obscure this basic reality. In the absence of a modern party organization, unity and a sense of purpose were conferred on moderate republicans by informal networks, electoral committees, and newspapers that associated the republic with indefinite progress toward liberty and material well-being. At the outset, a program designed to firmly establish a liberal-democratic political system was introduced, representing, whatever its shortcomings, a major affirmation of individual liberty. Restrictions on the press and public meetings and on the right to create associations, including trade unions, were eased (laws of 29 January, 30 June 1881, and 28 March 1884 respectively) and less repressive policies adopted toward strikes. For Jules Ferry the law of 28 March 1882 establishing free and obligatory primary education and removing religious instruction from the curriculum provided the means of securing the republic against its clerical and monarchist enemies. Additional legislation in 1886 provided for the gradual replacement of clerics by lay personnel in all public schools. Furthermore, instruction in civic responsibility, patriotism, and respect for the law, property, and the established social order was intended to reduce the revolutionary sentiment. In response to the onset of economic depression in the late 1870s, Charles-Louis Freycinet

introduced a major program to construct branch railway lines and local roads. Criticized for its cost, it proved very attractive to the host of rural and small town voters. The reintroduction of protective customs tariffs by Félix-Jules Méline between 1881 and 1892 similarly consolidated support for a republic that promised progress and well-being.

Criticism grew nevertheless. Many middle-class and conservative republicans, having ousted the traditional élites, now sought to defend their own privileged positions. Younger men such as Raymond Poincaré, Jean-Louis Barthou, and Théophile Delcassé, with fewer emotional attachments to the past, were more concerned about the rise of socialism than with continuing the struggle against the clericals. The rash of anarchist attacks in the early 1890s, which included the assassination of President Sadi Carnot, encouraged this outlook. In the event, and in spite of the electoral success of these moderate "Opportunists" in 1893, the hoped-for realignment was not to occur. The 1898 elections suggested that an alliance with the right was unacceptable to too many voters. Moreover, suspicion of the extreme right was intensified by the Dreyfus affair, and in February 1899 by Paul Dérouléde's farcical attempt to persuade soldiers to participate in a coup, as well as by the hostile crowd that in June insulted the president of the republic, émile-François Loubet, at the Auteuil races. Together with the evident moderation of many so-called Radicals, these developments promoted instead a realignment toward the center-left and in defense of the republic, which resulted in the formation of the bloc des gauches for the 1902 elections including conservative republicans such as Poincaré and René Waldeck-Rousseau, together with Radicals and even reformist socialists such as Alexandre Millerand.

The absence of disciplined parties meant that the deputy's first loyalty was to his constituents. His primary responsibility was to obtain a fair share of new roads, schools, and jobs. The boundaries between "parties" were always fluid, and ministerial instability was the inevitable result. The Radical Party had thus remained a parti des cadres based on informal groupings of professional politicians and local notables who, rather than a mass party, created autonomous power bases by dispensing patronage. Its deputies had posed as the protagonists of the petits (the ordinary folk) against the gros (the wealthy classes). They had condemned the opportunistes for their cautious religious policies and for their close links with big business. Additionally, during periods of crisis such as that precipitated by the neo-Bonapartism of General Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger, who seemed on the verge of overthrowing the republic in 1889, or when, following the first ballot in the 1895 elections, a victory for clerical conservatives seemed possible, Radicals were prepared to cooperate with more conservative republicans and to respect discipline républicaine. In similar circumstances they participated in the Waldeck-Rousseau government of défense républicaine in June 1899. Their role was thus essentially a secondary, supportive one, except when Léon-Victor-Auguste Bourgeois was able to form a government in October 1895, only to lose parliamentary support the following April as a result of his rather modest income tax proposals.

However, these limited successes did suggest that an effort to improve Radical organization might pay a handsome political dividend. As a result, something akin to a modern party electoral organization was created and contributed to the election of 233 Radical deputies in 1902, a victory that inaugurated the great period of Radical administration. This survived until 1909 with governments led successively by Émile Combes, Ferdinand Sarrien, and Georges Clemenceau. It saw the first timid efforts to introduce old-age pensions, but was above all characterized by a further assault on the church, in large part in response to the Dreyfus affair and the renewed threat to the republic from the extreme right.

The Dreyfus affair had been caused by the court-martial of a Jewish staff officer for spying. It had become a cause célèbre in 1898 when the great novelist Émile Zola challenged the verdict in an open letter to the president of the republic. The evidence against Alfred Dreyfus was dubious, but for many conservatives upholding it came to be synonymous with defending the honor of the army. Regarding themselves as the only true patriots, they were hostile toward all those "bad" French who questioned their chauvinism, and in particular socialists, trade unionists, Jews, and Radicals such as Joseph-Marie-Auguste Caillaux, who presented horrifying proposals for an income tax to finance social reform. The intellectual leaders of the extreme right, Paul Dérouléde, Maurice Barrés, and especially Charles Maurras, rejected the egalitarian values of the republic in favor of a mystical Catholicism and a glorification of violence and war. This new right created a more potent political force than conservatism had known since the 1870s, one that was fundamentally antidemocratic and antiparliamentarian in its demands for a strong executive power to overcome political and social "factionalism."

Separation of church and state

The response on the left was once again to denounce clericalism as the enemy, and to attack its roots, the Catholic schools, whose particularistic teaching was seen as a threat to national unity and republican institutions. Thus a series of measures was introduced, culminating in July 1904 in the suppression of the Catholic teaching orders and the closure of their schools, and in December 1905 in the disestablishment of the church. Official inventories of church property the next year stimulated an intense but short-lived resistance. Once the Radicals had achieved their "final" victory over the ancien régime, however, their main preoccupation became the growth of unrest both among industrial workers and peasants in wine-producing areas in the south, who between 1905 and 1907 protested about the collapse in prices induced by overproduction. Clemenceau, who as minister of the interior had already inaugurated a repressive response, became président du conseil in 1906. His coercive policy represented a fundamental commitment to the ethos and institutions of a bourgeois property-owning society and to social order.

How real was this social threat that so exercised both Radicals and more obvious conservatives? The socialists had taken some time to recover from the repression that had followed the Paris Commune. They remained ambivalent about a republic that promised social reform and then deployed troops against strikers. Nevertheless the election of a socialist deputy in Marseilles in 1881 had been followed by steady growth in support and in 1914 socialist candidates would obtain 1,413,000 votes. Conservative fears were exaggerated nonetheless. Bitter sectarian squabbling constantly weakened the socialist movement. In April 1905, the creation of a unified socialist party—the Parti socialiste unifie known as the SFIO after its idealistic subtitle Section française de l'Internationale ouvriére (French section of the Workers' International), could not resolve the many ideological and tactical differences within the movement.

Even more decisive in the realignment of internal politics than the supposed rise of socialism was the impact of deteriorating relationships with an increasingly assertive imperial Germany. International affairs took pride of place among politicians' concerns, and resulted in the nomination of the conservative republican Poincaré as head of government in January 1912 and to the presidency in May. His efforts to form a "national" government foundered on Radical hostility to the proposed presence in government of conservatives like Méline or of Catholic spokesmen. Subject to the baneful influence of intensely Germanophobic foreign ministry officials, and with support from the Right, Poincaré nevertheless continued to prepare for a war he believed to be inevitable. Abroad, this involved efforts to reinforce links with Britain and Russia, and at home measures designed to increase both the status and strength of the army and to develop a greater sense of national unity. The colonial empire, acquired as a result of the ruthless expansionism favored by an alliance of military, commercial, and missionary interests, had also become a token of the nation's great-power status as well as its civilizing mission. In case of war, its myriad peoples would compensate for the shortage of military manpower in the metropole. The conservative press and mass circulation dailies such as Le petit Parisien contributed to the creation of an increasingly chauvinistic mood. The socialists and many Radicals continued to resist this nationalistic xenophobia, which threatened to restore the right to power, and made up the minority of 204 deputies who in August 1913 opposed the extension of military service from two to three years. However, the 358 deputies who made up the majority were determined that France should make an effort to match German military strength.

The April–May 1914 elections were fought on this conscription issue as well as the question of how to finance the growing military budget. The electoral victory of the left with 342 successful candidates, including 102 socialists, many of whom had stressed the need to mobilize international working-class opposition to an imperialist war, was evidence of the strength of hostility to extended military service. In the last resort however the new government headed by the independent socialist René Viviani, but dominated by Radicals, would prove unwilling to risk weakening the army by repealing the three-year law. Significantly, during the international crisis in July 1914, on an official visit to Russia, President Poincaré did little to encourage caution. His essential concern was to ensure united action against Germany. General mobilization was ordered on 1 August, and Germany declared war two days later. The population seems to have reacted more from a sense of resigned acceptance rather than with any great enthusiasm. The critics of the republican regime both to the right and left rallied to the cause of defending the French Republic against an autocratic and aggressive German Empire. A genuine union sacrée developed, a truce from which the various political and social groups would seek to gain the maximum possible advantage.

See alsoAlgeria; Alsace-Lorraine; Boulanger Affair; Boulangism; Caribbean; Colonialism; Colonies; Counterrevolution; Dreyfus Affair; Eiffel Tower; Fashoda Affair; Fin de Siécle; Franco-Austrian War; Franco-Prussian War; French Revolution; French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars; Haiti; Imperialism; Indochina; Napoleon; Napoleonic Empire; Paris; Revolutions of 1830; Revolutions of 1848; Separation of Church and State (France, 1905).

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