(1797-1877)
[Illustration: Louis Adolphe Thiers. [TN]]
Louis Adolphe Thiers, French historian, politician, and patriot, was
born at Marseilles on April 16, 1797. His father, who seems to have
belonged to a family in decayed circumstances, was a locksmith. Through
the influence of his mother, who was a Chenier, he received a good
education, first at the _Lycee_ in his native city, and subsequently
(1815) at Aix, whither he was sent to study law. At Aix he made the
acquaintance of Mignet, cultivated literature rather than the law, and
won a prize for a dissertation on Vauvenargues. Called to the bar at the
age of twenty-three, he set off for Paris in the company of Mignet. His
prospects did not seem brilliant, and his almost ludicrously squat
figure and plain face were not recommendations to Parisian society. His
industry and belief in himself were, however, unbounded, and an
introduction to Lafitte, of the _Constitutionnel_, then the leading
organ of the French liberals, gave him the chance of showing his
capacity as a public writer. His articles in the _Constitutionnel_,
chiefly on political and literary subjects, gained him the entry into
the most influential salons of the opposition. At this time he made the
acquaintance of Talleyrand, Casimir Perier, the Comte de Flahault, and
Baron Louis, the financier. Meanwhile he was rapidly--indeed too
rapidly--preparing his "Histoire de la Revolution Francaise." The first
two volumes--there were ten in all--appeared in 1823. This work,
although it has been demonstrated to be very untrustworthy and
inaccurate, more especially in its estimates of persons, gave its author
a prominent place among French politicians and men of letters. About
this time, too, the gift by his admirer, Cotta, the German publisher, of
a share in the _Constitutionnel_ raised him to comparative affluence. In
January, 1830, he, along with Armand Carrel, Mignet, and other friends,
started the _National_, and in its columns waged relentless war on the
Polignac administration. The ministry met the opposition it had provoked
by the Ordonnances of July. Among the other repressive measures that
were taken was the sending of a commissary of police to the office of
the _National_, interdicting its publication. Its conductors, with
Thiers at their head, defied the ministry, and the result was the
revolution which drove Charles X. into exile.
Thiers now entered on an active career as a politician. He was elected
deputy for the town of Aix, and was appointed secretary-general to the
minister of finance. His first appearance in the Chamber of Deputies
gave no promise of his subsequent distinction. His diminutive person,
his small face, encumbered with a pair of huge spectacles, and his whole
exterior presenting something of the ludicrous, the new deputy, full of
the impassioned eloquence of the revolutionary orators, attempted to
impart the thrilling emotions affected by Mirabeau. The attempt provoked
derision; but soon subsiding into the oratory natural to him--simple,
easy, rapid, anecdotic--he became one of the most formidable of
parliamentary speakers. Almost from the moment of his entrance into
public life he and Guizot stood forth in opposition to each other as the
champions of radicalism and conservatism, respectively. But he was a
stanch monarchist, and for a time a favorite with Louis Philippe. In
1832 he accepted the post of minister of the interior under Soult,
exchanging it subsequently for the ministry of commerce and public
affairs, and that in turn for the foreign office. He was universally
regarded as a stronger man than any of his chiefs during this period;
but his public and private actions alike were always marked by a certain
fussy quarrelsomeness which prevented him from being ever accounted a
statesman of the first rank. The spirited foreign policy, calculated
above all things to precipitate a quarrel between France and Great
Britain, of which for many years he was the chief advocate, is now
allowed to have been a great, and might have been a fatal, mistake. In
1836 he became president of the council, but in August of the same year
he resigned office, and became the leader of the opposition. In 1840 he
was again summoned to office as president of the council and foreign
minister. In a few months he was a terror to the peace of Europe. He
refused Lord Palmerston's invitation to enter into an alliance with
Britain, Austria, and Prussia for the preservation of the integrity of
the Ottoman empire, from a sympathy with the principles which dictated
the first Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria, and a desire to
accomplish by diplomacy with Mehemet Ali what Bonaparte had endeavored
to effect by force of arms--the supremacy of France in these regions. He
talked menacingly of setting aside the treaties of 1815, and of
extending the French frontier to the Rhine, and is said to have actually
spent L8,000,000 on military and naval demonstrations. Then followed the
seizure of the Society Islands, and a well-founded protest by the
British government against the ill-treatment by the French of Mr.
Pritchard, their consul at Tahiti. In consequence of this Thiers was
forced to resign office, and retire into private life. He now returned
to the study of French history. The first volume of his "Histoire du
Consulat et de l'Empire" appeared in 1845; it was not completed till
1860. This, the most ambitious of all Thiers's literary enterprises,
must be considered a large rather than a great work. It is a monument to
its author's industry in reading, and rises here and there to rhetorical
brilliance. But that it is inaccurate and unfair has been admitted even
by French critics. Thiers greatly overrated Napoleon, and probably to
his own hurt.
Thiers was not one of the promoters of the revolution which in 1848
drove Louis Philippe from the throne. On the contrary, he would, as
prime minister summoned at the eleventh hour, have prevented it if he
could. He accepted its consequences in the form of the Republic. He
voted for the election of Prince Louis Napoleon as its president. This
action brought him much vituperation and ridicule from former political
friends. But whatever may have been the motive that inspired it, it
certainly did not help him at the time of the coup-d'etat of 1851; he
was arrested, imprisoned in Mazas, and banished. Next year, however, he
was allowed to return from Switzerland to France. For eight years he was
occupied with his "History of the Consulate and Empire." He re-entered
the Chamber in 1863, having been elected liberal deputy for the
Department of the Seine in opposition to the imperialist candidate. Till
the fall of the Second Empire he was regarded as the ablest and most
formidable of its more moderate and parliamentary opponents. His
speeches in the years between 1863 and 1870 were filled with taunts of
the Empire on account of the loss of prestige which had marked its
history, and these must not be left out of account when blame has to be
apportioned among the authors of the war of 1870, although he opposed it
when declared by the Ollivier ministry, and predicted defeat.
The collapse of the Second Empire, however, enabled Thiers to play the
greatest of all his parts, that of "liberator of the territory." He
declined, after Sedan, to become a member of the Government of National
Defence; but he voluntarily undertook diplomatic journeys to Great
Britain, Russia, Austria, and Italy, on behalf of France--a self-imposed
mission in which he was unsuccessful, but by which he obtained the
gratitude of his countrymen. He was largely instrumental in securing for
his country that armistice which permitted the holding of a national
assembly with a view to the negotiation of a peace. Twenty
constituencies chose him as their deputy. Electing to sit for Paris, he
was made head of the provisional government. He had great difficulty in
persuading the colleagues of the Assembly, and his countrymen generally,
to agree to peace on terms that were practically dictated by Germany.
But he succeeded; peace was voted March 1, 1871. No sooner had he
accomplished this task than he was face to face with the sanguinary
madness of the Commune. But this difficulty also he set himself to
surmount with characteristic energy, and succeeded. When the seat of
government was once more removed from Versailles to Paris, Thiers was
formally elected (August 30) President of the French Republic. He held
office only till 1873, but during this brief period he was probably of
greater service to his country than at any previous time in his life. He
was mainly instrumental in securing the withdrawal of the Germans from
France and the payment of the war indemnity, and in placing both the
army and the civil service on a more satisfactory footing. But in course
of time the gratitude of the country exhausted itself, and Thiers, who
was old-fashioned in many of his opinions, and as opinionative as he was
old-fashioned, did not make any new friends. He was specially detested
by the Extreme Left, whose chief, Gambetta, he styled a _fou furieux_.
As a result, a coalition of Reactionaries and Radicals was formed
expressly, as it seemed, to harass him, and even in the beginning of
1872 he tendered his resignation. It was not accepted; and his opponents
for a time suspended their intrigues. They were revived, however, in
1873, and resolved themselves into a resolute effort to limit the powers
of the president. This Thiers stoutly resisted. He made an appeal to the
country, but this course did not increase the strength of his following.
Finally, what he interpreted as a vote of no confidence was carried (May
24) by a majority of sixteen. He resigned, and his place was taken by
Marshal MacMahon. He lived four years longer, and never ceased to take
an interest in politics. In 1877 he took an active part in bringing
about the fall of the ministry presided over by the Duc de Broglie. He
now leaned to the side of the Left, and was reconciled to Gambetta, and
he might once again have played a prominent part in politics had he not
died of apoplexy on September 3, 1877, at St. Germain en Laye. He has
not left behind him the memory either of a very great statesman, or of a
very great historian. But he was a man of indomitable courage, and his
patriotism, if narrow and marred with Chauvinism, was deep and genuine.
He was, perhaps, the most successful of the large class of
journalist-politicians that France has produced, and that he was at
least a personal power in literature was evidenced by the great
influence which he wielded in the Academy, of which he became a member
in 1834.