France in the 19th century : The Third Republic

The right appeared strong enough to rebuild a monarchy on the ruins of the Commune, but instead France unexpectedly established the Third Republic. The monarchists’ failure can best be explained by several factors: rival claims to the throne by the Bourbons and the Orléanists, delays that allowed opponents to gain strength, and the receding of the war issue on which the right had won at the polls in 1871.

Meanwhile, Thiers consolidated his power. He rebuilt the army and paid off reparations owed to Germany as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, after which Prussia was incorporated into the unified state of Germany. Most importantly, he inspired confidence among people in the political center. His brutal repression of the Commune convinced them that a republic would not sell out to the radical left. However, opposition to Thiers led to his resignation in 1873. He was replaced by Marshal MacMahon, an ally of the monarchists.

Two years later a new constitution was enacted that formally established the Third Republic with a two-chambered legislature, a president, and a cabinet responsible to the legislature. Few were truly satisfied with this arrangement, and a party of republican radicals initially rejected it.

But the constitution gained enough support to pass because so-called republican Opportunists such as Gambetta imagined it could be altered later to create a more unified state. At the same time, moderate monarchists thought the president would eventually be replaced by a king. As it turned out, both groups were wrong. The Third Republic lasted longer than any other French regime since 1789—a remarkable result, given that all other major European states at the time were monarchies of one sort or another. Republicans decisively won the elections of 1876, which eventually put them at loggerheads with MacMahon. The next year MacMahon called for new elections to the Chamber of Deputies, which led only to another, if lesser, republican victory. MacMahon was forced to resign, and his defeat had long-lasting consequences. Henceforth, the president became a relatively weak figure that would never again dissolve the Deputies, thereby making the legislature the chief center of power.

This outcome was disappointing to both republicans and monarchists. It also increased the difficulties of forming ministries with activist agendas, because the large number of parties made forming coalitions necessary to gain the support of the legislature. If any party in a governing coalition objected to a proposed policy, this party could easily bring down the coalition by withdrawing from it. Conservative, agrarian interests dominated in the senate and were thereby able to block reform; as a result, women and labor unions benefited little from the Third Republic. Yet the common image of the Third Republic as a stalemate regime with many brakes and a weak motor needs some correction. In the 1880s the government was strong enough to initiate a vast program to build and staff secular primary and secondary schools, which instilled patriotic republican values as a counterweight to those of the church. In the same decade, it expanded France’s colonial empire, which became the second largest European overseas empire. In the early 20th century, the Third Republic disestablished the church and led the nation through the severe trials of World War I. Perhaps most significant, it made republican democracy—still a widely distrusted form of government in 1870—acceptable to the vast majority of the French. This was achieved partly by developing nationalistic symbols with wide appeal. In 1879 the revolutionary hymn La Marseillaise was made the national anthem, and in 1880, Bastille Day, July 14, was declared a national holiday.

Thiers

Except during the World War II years from 1940 to 1945, France has remained a republican democracy. To be sure, the Third Republic was brought down in 1940 by depression and defeat. But no other post-Napoleonic regime had survived disasters of equal gravity, and most had collapsed under considerably less stress. Encarta