Government of National Defence, 1870.
The Third Republic may be said to date from the revolution of the 4th of
September 1870, when the republican deputies of Paris at the hôtel de
ville constituted a provisional government under the presidency of
General Trochu, military governor of the capital. The Empire had fallen,
and the emperor was a prisoner in Germany. As, however, since the great
Revolution régimes in France have been only passing expedients, not
inextricably associated with the destinies of the people, but bound to
disappear when accounted responsible for national disaster, the
surrender of Louis Napoleon's sword to William of Prussia did not disarm
the country. Hostilities were therefore continued. The provisional
government had to assume the part of a Committee of National Defence,
and while insurrection was threatening in Paris, it had, in the face of
the invading Germans, to send a delegation to Tours to maintain the
relations of France with the outside world. Paris was invested, and for
five months endured siege, bombardment and famine. Before the end of
October the capitulation of Metz, by the treason of Marshal Bazaine,
deprived France of the last relic of its regular army. With indomitable
courage the garrison of Paris made useless sorties, while an army of
irregular troops vainly essayed to resist the invader, who had reached
the valley of the Loire. The acting Government of National Defence, thus
driven from Tours, took refuge at Bordeaux, where it awaited the
capitulation of Paris, which took place on the 29th of January 1871. The
same day the preliminaries of peace were signed at Versailles, which,
confirmed by the treaty of Frankfort of the 10th of May, transferred
from France to Germany the whole of Alsace, excepting Belfort, and a
large portion of Lorraine, including Metz, with a money indemnity of two
hundred millions sterling.
Foundation of the Third Republic, 1871.
On the 13th of February 1871 the National Assembly, elected after the
capitulation of Paris, met at Bordeaux and assumed the powers hitherto
exercised by the Government of National Defence. Since the meeting of
the states-general in 1789 no representative body in France had ever
contained so many men of distinction. Elected to conclude a peace, the
great majority of its members were monarchists, Gambetta, the rising
hope of the republicans, having discredited his party in the eyes of the
weary population by his efforts to carry on the war. The Assembly might
thus have there and then restored the monarchy had not the monarchists
been divided among themselves as royalist supporters of the comte de
Chambord, grandson of Charles X., and as Orleanists favouring the claims
of the comte de Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe. The majority being
unable to unite on the essential point of the choice of a sovereign,
decided to allow the Republic, declared on the morrow of Sedan, to
liquidate the disastrous situation. Consequently, on the 17th of
February the National Assembly elected Thiers as "Chief of the Executive
Power of the French Republic," the abolition of the Empire being
formally voted a fortnight later. The old minister of Louis Philippe,
who had led the opposition to the Empire, and had been the chief
opponent of the war, was further marked out for the position conferred
on him by his election to the Assembly in twenty-six departments in
recognition of his tour through Europe after the first defeats,
undertaken in the patriotic hope of obtaining the intervention of the
Powers on behalf of France. Thiers composed a ministry, and announced
that the first duty of the government before examining constitutional
questions, would be to reorganize the forces of the nation in order to
provide for the enormous war indemnity which had to be paid to Germany
before the territory could be liberated from the presence of the
invader. The tacit acceptance of this arrangement by all parties was
known as the "_pacte de Bordeaux_." Apart from the pressure of patriotic
considerations, it pleased the republican minority to have the
government of France officially proclaimed a Republic, while the
monarchists thought that pending their choice Of a monarch it might
popularize their cause not to have it associated with the imposition of
the burden of war taxation. From this fortuitous and informal
transaction, accepted by a monarchical Assembly, sprang the Third
Republic, the most durable régime established in France since the
ancient monarchy disappeared in 1792.
The Commune.
The Germans marched down the Champs Elysées on the 1st of March 1871,
and occupied Paris for forty-eight hours. The National Assembly then
decided to remove its sittings to Versailles; but two days before its
arrival at the palace, where the king of Prussia had just been
proclaimed German emperor, an insurrection broke out in Paris. The
revolutionary element, which had been foremost in proclaiming the
Republic on the 4th of September, had shown signs of disaffection during
the siege. On the conclusion of the peace the triumphal entry of the
German troops, the threatened disbanding of the national guard by an
Assembly known to be anti-republican, and the resumption of orderly
civic existence after the agitated life of a suffering population
isolated by siege, had excited the nerves of the Parisians, always prone
to revolution. The Commune was proclaimed on the 18th of March, and
Paris was declared to be a free town, which recognized no government but
that chosen by the people within its walls, the communard theory being
that the state should consist of a federation of self-governing communes
subject to no central power. Administrative autonomy was not, however,
the real aim of the insurgent leaders. The name of the Commune had
always been a rallying sign for violent revolutionaries ever since the
Terrorists had found their last support in the municipality of Paris in
1794. In 1871 among the communard chiefs were revolutionaries of every
sect, who, disagreeing on governmental and economic principles, were
united in their vague but perpetual hostility to the existing order of
things. The regular troops of the garrison of Paris followed the
National Assembly to Versailles, where they were joined by the soldiers
of the armies of Sedan and Metz, liberated from captivity in Germany.
With this force the government of the Republic commenced the second
siege of Paris, in order to capture the city from the Commune, which had
established the parody of a government there, having taken possession of
the administrative departments and set a minister at the head of each
office. The second siege lasted six weeks under the eyes of the
victorious Germans encamped on the heights overlooking the capital. The
presence of the enemy, far from restraining the humiliating spectacle of
Frenchmen waging war on Frenchmen in the hour of national disaster,
seemed to encourage the fury of the combatants. The communards, who had
begun their reign by the murder of two generals, concluded it, when the
Versailles troops were taking the city, with the massacre of a number of
eminent citizens, including the archbishop of Paris, and with the
destruction by fire of many of the finest historical buildings,
including the palace of the Tuileries and the hôtel de ville. History
has rarely known a more unpatriotic crime than that of the insurrection
of the Commune; but the punishment inflicted on the insurgents by the
Versailles troops was so ruthless that it seemed to be a
counter-manifestation of French hatred for Frenchmen in civil
disturbance rather than a judicial penalty applied to a heinous offence.
The number of Parisians killed by French soldiers in the last week of
May 1871 was probably 20,000, though the partisans of the Commune
declared that 36,000 men and women were shot in the streets or after
summary court-martial.
Republicans and Monarchists after the war.
It is from this point that the history of the Third Republic commences.
In spite of the doubly tragic ending of the war the vitality of the
country seemed unimpaired. With ease and without murmur it supported the
new burden of taxation called for by the war indemnity and by the
reorganization of the shattered forces of France. Thiers was thus aided
in his task of liberating the territory from the presence of the enemy.
His proposal at Bordeaux to make the "_essai loyal_" of the Republic, as
the form of government which caused the least division among Frenchmen,
was discouraged by the excesses of the Commune which associated
republicanism with revolutionary disorder. Nevertheless, the monarchists
of the National Assembly received a note of warning that the country
might dispense with their services unless they displayed governmental
capacity, when in July 1871 the republican minority was largely
increased at the bye-elections. The next month, within a year of Sedan,
a provisional constitution was voted, the title of president of the
French Republic being then conferred on Thiers. The monarchists
consented to this against their will; but they had their own way when
they conferred constituent powers on the Assembly in opposition to the
republicans, who argued that it was a usurpation of the sovereignty of
the people for a body elected for another purpose to assume the power of
giving a constitution to the land without a special mandate from the
nation. The debate gave Gambetta his first opportunity of appearing as a
serious politician. The "_fou furieux_" of Tours, whom Thiers had
denounced for his efforts to prolong the hopeless war, was about to
become the chief support of the aged Orleanist statesman whose supreme
achievement was to be the foundation of the Republic.
1872: Thiers and Gambetta.
It was in 1872 that Thiers practically ranged himself with Gambetta and
the republicans. The divisions in the monarchical party made an
immediate restoration impossible. This situation induced some of the
moderate deputies, whose tendencies were Orleanist, to support the
organization of a Republic which now no longer found its chief support
in the revolutionary section of the nation, and it suited the ideas of
Thiers, whose personal ambition was not less than his undoubted
patriotism. Having become unexpectedly chief of the state at
seventy-four he had no wish to descend again to the position of a
minister of the Orleans dynasty which he had held at thirty-five. So,
while the royalists refused to admit the claims of the comte de Paris,
the old minister of Louis Philippe did his best to undermine the
popularity of the Orleans tradition, which had been great among the
Liberals under the Second Empire. He moved the Assembly to restore to
the Orleans princes the value of their property confiscated under Louis
Napoleon. This he did in the well-founded belief that the family would
discredit itself in the eyes of the nation by accepting two millions
sterling of public money at a moment when the country was burdened with
the war indemnity. The incident was characteristic of his wary policy,
as in the face of the anti-republican majority in the Assembly he could
not openly break with the Right; and when it was suggested that he was
too favourable to the maintenance of the Republic he offered his
resignation, the refusal of which he took as indicating the
indispensable nature of his services. Meanwhile Gambetta, by his popular
eloquence, had won for himself in the autumn a triumphal progress, in
the course of which he declared at Grenoble that political power had
passed into the hands of "_une couche sociale nouvelle_," and he
appealed to the new social strata to put an end to the comedy of a
Republic without republicans. When the Assembly resumed its sittings,
order having been restored in the land disturbed by war and revolution,
the financial system being reconstituted and the reorganization of the
army planned, Thiers read to the house a presidential message which
marked such a distinct movement towards the Left that Gambetta led the
applause. "The Republic exists," said the president, "it is the lawful
government of the country, and to devise anything else is to devise the
most terrible of revolutions."
Resignation of Thiers.
Marshal MacMahon president of the Republic.
The year 1873 was full of events fateful for the history of France. It
opened with the death of Napoleon III. at Chislehurst; but the disasters
amid which the Second Empire had ended were too recent for the youthful
promise of his heir to be regarded as having any connexion with the
future fortunes of France, except by the small group of Bonapartists.
Thiers remained the centre of interest. Much as the monarchists disliked
him, they at first shrank from upsetting him before they were ready with
a scheme of monarchical restoration, and while Gambetta's authority was
growing in the land. But when the Left Centre took alarm at the return
of radical deputies at numerous by-elections the reactionaries utilized
the divisions in the republican party, and for the only time in the
history of the Third Republic they gave proof of parliamentary
adroitness. The date for the evacuation of France by the German troops
had been advanced, largely owing to Thiers' successful efforts to raise
the war indemnity. The monarchical majority, therefore, thought the
moment had arrived when his services might safely be dispensed with, and
the campaign against him was ably conducted by a coalition of
Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists. The attack on Thiers was led
by the duc de Broglie, the son of another minister of Louis Philippe and
grandson of Madame de Staël. Operations began with the removal from the
chair of the Assembly of Jules Grévy, a moderate republican, who was
chosen president at Bordeaux, and the substitution of Buffet, an old
minister of the Second Republic who had rallied to the Empire. A debate
on the political tendency of the government brought Thiers himself to
the tribune to defend his policy. He maintained that a conservative
Republic was the only régime possible, seeing that the monarchists in
the Assembly could not make a choice between their three pretenders to
the throne. A resolution, however, was carried which provoked the old
statesman into tendering his resignation. This time it was not declined,
and the majority with unseemly haste elected as president of the
Republic Marshal MacMahon, duc de Magenta, an honest soldier of royalist
sympathies, who had won renown and a ducal title on the battlefields of
the Second Empire. In the eyes of Europe the curt dismissal of the aged
liberator of the territory was an act of ingratitude. Its justification
would have been the success of the majority in forming a stable
monarchical government; but the sole result of the 24th of May 1873 was
to provide a definite date to mark the opening of the era of
anti-republican incompetency in France which has lasted for more than a
generation, and has been perhaps the most effective guardian of the
Third Republic.
The comte de Chambord.
The Septennate.
The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated never to be
corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs, and the
year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for a restoration saw also
that restoration indefinitely postponed by the fatal action of the
legitimist pretender. The comte de Paris went to Frohsdorf to abandon to
the comte de Chambord his claims to the crown as the heir of the July
Monarchy, and to accept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his
grandfather Louis Philippe was a usurper. With the "Government of Moral
Order" in command the restoration of the monarchy seemed imminent, when
the royalists had their hopes dashed by the announcement that "Henri V."
would accept the throne only on the condition that the nation adopted as
the standard of France the white flag--at the very sight of which
Marshal MacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves.
The comte de Chambord's refusal to accept the tricolour was probably
only the pretext of a childless man who had no wish to disturb his
secluded life for the ultimate benefit of the Orleans family which had
usurped his crown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outraged his
mother the duchesse de Berry. Whatever his motive, his decision could
have no other effect than that of establishing the Republic, as he was
likely to live for years, during which the comte de Paris' claims had to
remain suspended. It was not possible to leave the land for ever under
the government improvised at Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of
France; so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize another
provisional government on more regular lines, which might possibly last
till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flag to the grave,
leaving the way to the throne clear for the comte de Paris. On the 19th
of November 1873 a Bill was passed which instituted the Septennate,
whereby the executive power was confided to Marshal MacMahon for seven
years. It also provided for the nomination of a commission of the
National Assembly to take in hand the enactment of a constitutional law.
Before this an important constitutional innovation had been adopted.
Under Thiers there were no changes of ministry. The president of the
Republic was perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individual
holders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment the whole
council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day after his appointment,
nominated a cabinet with a vice-president of the council as premier, and
thus inaugurated the system of ministerial instability which has been
the most conspicuous feature of the government of the Third Republic.
Under the Septennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican,
were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class than those
who governed France during the last twenty years of the 19th century.
But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief, thus displaying the
fact, already similarly demonstrated under the Restoration and the July
Monarchy, that in France parliamentary government is an importation not
suited to the national temperament.
Constitution voted, 1875.
The duc de Broglie was the prime minister in MacMahon's first two
cabinets which carried on the government of the country up to the first
anniversary of Thiers' resignation. The duc de Broglie's defeat by a
coalition of Legitimists and Bonapartists with the Republicans displayed
the mutual attitude of parties. The Royalists, chagrined that the fusion
of the two branches of the Bourbons had not brought the comte de
Chambord to the throne, vented their rage on the Orleanists, who had the
chief share in the government without being able to utilize it for their
dynasty. The Bonapartists, now that the memory of the war was receding,
were winning elections in the provinces, and were further encouraged by
the youthful promise of the Prince Imperial. The republicans had so
improved their position that the duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, great-nephew
of the chancellor Pasquier, tried to form a coalition ministry with M.
Waddington, afterwards ambassador of the Republic in London, and other
members of the Left Centre. Out of this uncertain state of affairs was
evolved the constitution which has lasted the longest of all those that
France has tried since the abolition of the old monarchy in 1792. Its
birth was due to chance. Not being able to restore a monarchy, the
National Assembly was unwilling definitively to establish a republic,
and as no limit was set by the law on the duration of its powers, it
might have continued the provisional state of things had it not been for
the Bonapartists. That party displayed so much activity in agitating for
a plebiscite, that when the rural voters at by-elections began to rally
to the Napoleonic idea, alarm seized the constitutionalists of the Right
Centre who had never been persuaded by Thiers' exhortations to accept
the Republic. Consequently in January 1875 the Assembly, having voted
the general principle that the legislative power should be exercised by
a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, without any mention of the executive
régime, accepted by a majority of one a momentous resolution proposed by
M. Wallon, a member of the Right Centre. It provided that the president
of the Republic should be elected by the absolute majority of the Senate
and the Chamber united as a National Assembly, that he should be elected
for seven years, and be eligible for re-election. Thus by one vote the
Republic was formally established, "the Father of the Constitution"
being M. Wallon, who began his political experiences in the Legislative
Assembly of 1849, and survived to take an active part in the Senate
until the twentieth century.
Provisions of the Constitution of 1875.
The Republic being thus established, General de Cissey, who had become
prime minister, made way for M. Buffet, but retained his portfolio of
war in the new coalition cabinet, which contained some distinguished
members of the two central groups, including M. Léon Say. A fortnight
previously, at the end of February 1875, were passed two statutes
defining the legislative and executive powers in the Republic, and
organizing the Senate. These joined to a third enactment, voted in July,
form the body of laws known as the "Constitution of 1875," which though
twice revised, lasted without essential alteration to the twentieth
century. The legislative power was conferred on a Senate and a Chamber
of Deputies, which might unite in congress to revise the constitution,
if they both agreed that revision was necessary, and which were bound so
to meet for the election of the president of the Republic when a vacancy
occurred. It was enacted that the president so elected should retain
office for seven years, and be eligible for re-election at the end of
his term. He was also held to be irresponsible, except in the case of
high treason. The other principal prerogatives bestowed on the
presidential office by the constitution of 1875 were the right of
initiating laws concurrently with the members of the two chambers; the
promulgation of the laws; the right of dissolving the Chamber of
Deputies before its legal term on the advice of the Senate, and that of
adjourning the sittings of both houses for a month; the right of pardon;
the disposal of the armed forces of the country; the reception of
diplomatic envoys, and, under certain limitations, the power to ratify
treaties. The constitution relieved the president of the responsibility
of private patronage, by providing that every act of his should be
countersigned by a minister. The constitutional law provided that the
Senate should consist of 300 members, 75 being nominated for life by the
National Assembly, and the remaining 225 elected for nine years by the
departments and the colonies. Vacancies among the life members, after
the dissolution of the National Assembly, were filled by the Senate
until 1884, when the nominative system was abolished, though the
survivors of it were not disturbed. The law of 1875 enacted that the
elected senators, who were distributed among the departments on a rough
basis of population, should be elected for nine years, a third of them
retiring triennially. It was provided that the senatorial electors in
each department should be the deputies, the members of the _conseil
général_ and of the _conseils d'arrondissement_, and delegates nominated
by the municipal councils of each commune. As the municipal delegates
composed the majority in each electoral college, Gambetta called the
Senate the Grand Council of the Communes; but in practice the senators
elected have always been the nominees of the local deputies and of the
departmental councillors (_conseillers généraux_).
Scrutin d'arrondissement and scrutin de liste.
The Constitutional Law further provided that the deputies should be
elected to the Chamber for four years by direct manhood suffrage, which
had been enjoyed in France ever since 1848. The laws relating to
registration, which is of admirable simplicity in France, were left
practically the same as under the Second Empire. From 1875 to 1885 the
elections were held on the basis of _scrutin d'arrondissement_, each
department being divided into single-member districts. In 1885 _scrutin
de liste_ was tried, the department being the electoral unit, and each
elector having as many votes as there were seats ascribed to the
department without the power to cumulate--like the voting in the city of
London when it returned four members. In 1889 _scrutin d'arrondissement_
was resumed. The payment of members continued as under the Second
Empire, the salary now being fixed at 9000 francs a year in both houses,
or about a pound sterling a day. The Senate and the Chamber were endowed
with almost identical powers. The only important advantage given to the
popular house in the paper constitution was its initiative in matters of
finance, but the right of rejecting or of modifying the financial
proposals of the Chamber was successfully upheld by the Senate. In
reality the Chamber of Deputies has overshadowed the upper house. The
constitution did not prescribe that ministers should be selected from
either house of parliament, but in practice the deputies have been in
cabinets in the proportion of five to one in excess of the senators.
Similarly the very numerous ministerial crises which have taken place
under the Third Republic have with the rarest exceptions been caused by
votes in the lower chamber. Among minor differences between the two
houses ordained by the constitution was the legal minimum age of their
members, that of senators being forty and of deputies twenty-five. It
was enacted, moreover, that the Senate, by presidential decree, could be
constituted into a high court for the trial of certain offences against
the security of the state.
1876: Political parties under the new Constitution.
The constitution thus produced, the fourteenth since the Revolution of
1789, was the issue of a monarchical Assembly forced by circumstances to
establish a republic. It was therefore distinguished from others which
preceded it in that it contained no declaration of principle and no
doctrinal theory. The comparative excellence of the work must be
recognized, seeing that it has lasted. But it owed its duration, as it
owed its origin and its character, to the weakness of purpose and to the
dissensions of the monarchical parties. The first legal act under the
new constitution was the selection by the expiring National Assembly of
seventy-five nominated senators, and here the reactionaries gave a
crowning example of that folly which has ever marked their conduct each
time they have had the chance of scoring an advantage against the
Republic. The principle of nomination had been carried in the National
Assembly by the Right and opposed by the Republicans. But the quarrels
of the Legitimists with the duc de Broglie and his party were so bitter
that the former made a present of the nominated element in the Senate to
the Republicans in order to spite the Orleanists; so out of seventy-five
senators nominated by the monarchical Assembly, fifty-seven Republicans
were chosen. Without this suicidal act the Republicans would have been
in a woeful minority in the Senate when parliament met in 1876 after the
first elections under the new system of parliamentary government. The
slight advantage which, in spite of their self-destruction, the
reactionaries maintained in the upper house was outbalanced by the
republican success at the elections to the Chamber. In a house of over
500 members only about 150 monarchical deputies were returned, of whom
half were Bonapartists. The first cabinet under the new constitution was
formed by Dufaure, an old minister of Louis Philippe like Thiers, and
like him born in the 18th century. The premier now took the title of
president of the council, the chief of the state no longer presiding at
the meetings of ministers, though he continued to be present at their
deliberations. Although the republican victories at the elections were
greatly due to the influence of Gambetta, none of his partisans was
included in the ministry, which was composed of members of the two
central groups. At the end of 1876 Dufaure retired, but nearly all his
ministers retained their portfolios under the presidency of Jules Simon,
a pupil of Victor Cousin, who first entered political life in the
Constituent Assembly of 1848, and was later a leading member of the
opposition in the last seven years of the Second Empire.
The Seize Mai 1877.
The premiership of Jules Simon came to an end with the abortive _coup
d'état_ of 1877, commonly called from its date the _Seize Mai_. After
the election of Marshal MacMahon to the presidency, the clerical party,
irritated at the failure to restore the comte de Chambord, commenced a
campaign in favour of the restitution of the temporal power to the Pope.
It provoked the Italian government to make common cause with Germany, as
Prince Bismarck was likewise attacked by the French clericals for his
ecclesiastical policy. At last Jules Simon, who was a liberal most
friendly to Catholicism, had to accept a resolution of the Chamber,
inviting the ministry to adopt the same disciplinary policy towards the
Church which had been followed by the Second Empire and the Monarchy of
July. It was on this occasion that Gambetta used his famous expression,
"_Le cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi_." Some days later a letter appeared
in the _Journal officiel_, dated 16th May 1877, signed by President
MacMahon, informing Jules Simon that he had no longer his confidence, as
it was clear that he had lost that influence over the Chamber which a
president of the Council ought to exercise. The dismissal of the prime
minister and the presidential acts which followed did not infringe the
letter of the new constitution; yet the proceeding was regarded as a
_coup d'état_ in favour of the clerical reactionaries. The duc de
Broglie formed an anti-republican ministry, and Marshal MacMahon, in
virtue of the presidential prerogative conferred by the law of 1875,
adjourned parliament for a month. When the Chamber reassembled the
republican majority of 363 denounced the coalition of parties hostile to
the Republic. The president, again using his constitutional prerogative,
obtained the authorization of the Senate to dissolve the Chamber.
Meanwhile the Broglie ministry had put in practice the policy, favoured
by all parties in France, of replacing the functionaries hostile to it
with its own partisans. But in spite of the administrative electoral
machinery being thus in the hands of the reactionaries, a republican
majority was sent back to the Chamber, the sudden death of Thiers on the
eve of his expected return to power, and the demonstration at his
funeral, which was described as a silent insurrection, aiding the rout
of the monarchists. The duc de Broglie resigned, and Marshal MacMahon
sent for General de Rochebouet, who formed a cabinet of unknown
reactionaries, but it lasted only a few days, as the Chamber refused to
vote supply. Dufaure was then called back to office, and his moderate
republican ministry lasted for the remainder of the MacMahon presidency.
1879: Jules Grévy president of the Republic.
Thus ended the episode of the _Seize Mai_, condemned by the whole of
Europe from its inception. Its chief effects were to prove again to the
country the incompetency of the monarchists, and by associating in the
public mind the Church with this ill-conceived venture, to provoke
reprisals from the anti-clericals when they came into power. After the
storm, the year 1878 was one of political repose. The first
international exhibition held at Paris after the war displayed to Europe
how the secret of France's recuperative power lay in the industry and
artistic instinct of the nation. Marshal MacMahon presided with dignity
over the fêtes held in honour of the exhibition, and had he pleased he
might have tranquilly fulfilled the term of his Septennate. But in
January 1879 he made a difference of opinion on a military question an
excuse for resignation, and Jules Grévy, the president of the Chamber,
was elected to succeed him by the National Assembly, which thus met for
the first time under the Constitutional Law of 1875.
Jules Ferry.
Henceforth the executive as well as the legislative power was in the
hands of the republicans. The new president was a leader of the bar, who
had first become known in the Constituent Assembly of 1848 as the
advocate of the principle that a republic would do better without a
president. M. Waddington was his first prime minister, and Gambetta was
elected president of the Chamber. The latter, encouraged by his rivals
in the idea that the time was not ripe for him openly to direct the
affairs of the country, thus put himself, in spite of his occult
dictatorship, in a position of official self-effacement from which he
did not emerge until the jealousies of his own party-colleagues had
undermined the prestige he had gained as chief founder of the Republic.
The most active among them was Jules Ferry, minister of Education, who
having been a republican deputy for Paris at the end of the Empire, was
one of the members of the provisional government proclaimed on 4th
September 1870. Borrowing Gambetta's cry that clericalism was the enemy,
he commenced the work of reprisal for the Seize Mai. His educational
projects of 1879 were thus anti-clerical in tendency, the most famous
being article 7 of his education bill, which prohibited members of any
"unauthorized" religious orders exercising the profession of teaching in
any school in France, the disability being applied to all ecclesiastical
communities, excepting four or five which had been privileged by special
legislation. This enactment, aimed chiefly at the Jesuits, was advocated
with a sectarian bitterness which will be associated with the name of
Jules Ferry long after his more statesmanlike qualities are forgotten.
The law was rejected by the Senate, Jules Simon being the eloquent
champion of the clericals, whose intrigues had ousted him from office.
The unauthorized orders were then dissolved by decree; but though the
forcible expulsion of aged priests and nuns gave rise to painful scenes,
it cannot be said that popular feeling was excited in their favour, so
grievously had the Church blundered in identifying itself with the
conspiracy of the _Seize Mai_.
Meanwhile the death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand had shattered the
hopes of the Bonapartists, and M. de Freycinet, a former functionary of
the Empire, had become prime minister at the end of 1879. He had
retained Jules Ferry at the ministry of Education, but unwilling to
adopt all his anti-clerical policy, he resigned the premiership in
September 1880. The constitution of the first Ferry cabinet secured the
further exclusion from office of Gambetta, to which, however, he
preferred his "occult dictatorship." In August he had, as president of
the Chamber, accompanied M. Grévy on an official visit to Cherbourg, and
the acclamations called forth all over France by his speech, which was a
hopeful defiance to Germany, encouraged the wily chief of the state to
aid the republican conspiracy against the hero of the Republic. In 1881
the only political question before the country was the destiny of
Gambetta. His influence in the Chamber was such that in spite of the
opposition of the prime minister he carried his electoral scheme of
_scrutin de liste_, descending from the presidential chair to defend it.
Its rejection by the Senate caused no conflict between the houses. The
check was inflicted not on the Chamber, but on Gambetta, who counted on
his popularity to carry the lists of his candidates in all the
republican departments in France as a quasi-plebiscitary demonstration
in his favour. His rivals dared not openly quarrel with him. There was
the semblance of a reconciliation between him and Ferry, and his name
was the rallying-cry of the Republic at the general election, which was
conducted on the old system of _scrutin d'arrondissement_.
Gambetta prime minister.
The triumph for the Republic was great, the combined force of
reactionary members returned being less than one-fifth of the new
Chamber. M. Grévy could no longer abstain from asking Gambetta to form a
ministry, but he had bided his time till jealousy of the "occult power"
of the president of the Chamber had undermined his position in
parliament. Consequently, when on the 14th of November 1881 Gambetta
announced the composition of his cabinet, ironically called the "_grand
ministère_," which was to consolidate the Republic and to be the
apotheosis of its chief, a great feeling of disillusion fell on the
country, for his colleagues were untried politicians. The best known was
Paul Bert, a man of science, who as the "reporter" in the Chamber of the
Ferry Education Bill had distinguished himself as an aggressive
freethinker, and he inappropriately was named minister of public
worship. All the conspicuous republicans who had held office refused to
serve under Gambetta. His cabinet was condemned in advance. His enemies
having succeeded in ruining its composition, declared that the
construction of a one-man machine was ominous of dictatorship, and the
"_grand ministère_" lived for only ten weeks.
Death of Gambetta.
Gambetta was succeeded in January 1882 by M. de Freycinet, who having
first taken office in the Dufaure cabinet of 1877, and having continued
to hold office at intervals until 1899, was the most successful specimen
of a "_ministrable_"--as recurrent portfolio-holders have been called
under the Third Republic. His second ministry lasted only six months.
The failure of Gambetta, though pleasing to his rivals, discouraged the
republican party and disorganized its majority in the Chamber. M.
Duclerc, an old minister of the Second Republic, then became president
of the council, and before his short term of office was run Gambetta
died on the last day of 1882, without having had the opportunity of
displaying his capacity as a minister or an administrator. He was only
forty-four at his death, and his fame rests on the unfulfilled promise
of a brief career. The men who had driven him out of public life and had
shortened his existence were the most ostentatious of the mourners at
the great pageant with which he was buried, and to have been of his
party was in future the popular trade-mark of his republican enemies.
Opportunism.
Gambetta's death was followed by a period of anarchy, during which
Prince Napoleon, the son of Jerome, king of Westphalia, placarded the
walls of Paris with a manifesto. The Chamber thereupon voted the exile
of the members of the families which had reigned in France. The Senate
rejected the measure, and a conflict arose between the two houses. M.
Duclerc resigned the premiership in January 1883 to his minister of the
Interior, M. Fallières, a Gascon lawyer, who became president of the
Senate in 1899 and president of the Republic in 1906. He held office for
three weeks, when Jules Ferry became president of the council for the
second time. Several of the closest of Gambetta's friends accepted
office under the old enemy of their chief, and the new combination
adopted the epithet "opportunist," which had been invented by Gambetta
in 1875 to justify the expediency of his alliance with Thiers. The
Opportunists thenceforth formed an important group standing between the
Left Centre, which was now excluded from office, and the Radicals. It
claimed the tradition of Gambetta, but the guiding principle manifested
by its members was that of securing the spoils of place. To this end it
often allied itself with the Radicals, and the Ferry cabinet practised
this policy in 1883 when it removed the Orleans princes from the active
list in the army as the illogical result of the demonstration of a
Bonaparte. How needless was this proceeding was shown a few months later
when the comte de Chambord died, as his death, which finally fused the
Royalists with the Orleanists, caused no commotion in France.
Revision of the Constitution, 1884.
Tongking.
The year 1884 was unprecedented seeing that it passed without a change
of ministry. Jules Ferry displayed real administrative ability, and as
an era of steady government seemed to be commencing, the opportunity was
taken to revise the Constitution. The two Chambers therefore met in
congress, and enacted that the republican form of government could never
be the subject of revision, and that all members of families which had
reigned in France were ineligible for the presidency of the Republic--a
repetition of the adventure of Louis Bonaparte in the middle of the
century being thus made impossible. It also decided that the clauses of
the law of 1875 relating to the organization of the Senate should no
longer have a constitutional character. This permitted the reform of the
Upper House by ordinary parliamentary procedure. So an organic law was
passed to abolish the system of nominating senators, and to increase the
number of municipal delegates in the electoral colleges in proportion to
the population of the communes. The French nation, for the first time
since it had enjoyed political life, had revised a constitution by
pacific means without a revolution. Gambetta being out of the way, his
favourite electoral system of _scrutin de liste_ had no longer any
terror for his rivals, so it was voted by the Chamber early in 1885.
Before the Senate had passed it into law the Ferry ministry had fallen
at the end of March, after holding office for twenty-five months, a term
rarely exceeded in the annals of the Third Republic. This long tenure of
power had excited the dissatisfaction of jealous politicians, and the
news of a slight disaster to the French troops in Tongking called forth
all the pent-up rancour which Jules Ferry had inspired in various
groups. By the exaggerated news of defeat Paris was excited to the brink
of a revolution. The approaches of the Chamber were invaded by an angry
mob, and Jules Ferry was the object of public hate more bitter than any
man had called forth in France since Napoleon III. on the days after
Sedan. Within the Chamber he was attacked in all quarters. The Radicals
took the lead, supported by the Monarchists, who remembered the
anti-clerical rigour of the Ferry laws, by the Left Centre, not sorry
for the tribulation of the group which had supplanted it, and by
place-hunting republicans of all shades. The attack was led by a
politician who disdained office. M. Georges Clémenceau, who had
originally come to Paris from the Vendée as a doctor, had as a radical
leader in the Chamber used his remarkable talent as an overthrower of
ministries, and nearly every one of the eight ministerial crises which
had already occurred during the presidency of Grévy had been hastened by
his mordant eloquence.
Elections of 1885.
The next prime minister was M. Brisson, a radical lawyer and journalist,
who in April 1885 formed a cabinet of "concentration"--that is to say,
it was recruited from various groups with the idea of concentrating all
republican forces in opposition to the reactionaries. MM. de Freycinet
and Carnot, afterwards president of the Republic, represented the
moderate element in this ministry, which superintended the general
elections under _scrutin de liste_. That system was recommended by its
advocates as a remedy for the rapid decadence in the composition of the
Chamber. Manhood suffrage, which had returned to the National Assembly a
distinguished body of men to conclude peace with Germany, had chosen a
very different type of representative to sit in the Chamber created by
the constitution of 1875. At each succeeding election the standard of
deputies returned grew lower, till Gambetta described them
contemptuously as "_sous-vétérinaires_," indicating that they were
chiefly chosen from the petty professional class, which represented
neither the real democracy nor the material interests of the country.
His view was that the election of members by departmental lists would
ensure the candidature of the best men in each region, who under the
system of single-member districts were apt to be neglected in favour of
local politicians representing narrow interests. When his death had
removed the fear of his using _scrutin de liste_ as a plebiscitary
organization, parliament sanctioned its trial. The result was not what
its promoters anticipated. The composition of the Chamber was indeed
transformed, but only by the substitution of reactionary deputies for
republicans. Of the votes polled, 45% were given to the Monarchists, and
if they had obtained one-half of the abstentions the Republic would have
come to an end. At the same time the character of the republican
deputies returned was not improved; so the sole effect of _scrutin de
liste_ was to show that the electorate, weary of republican dissensions,
was ready to make a trial of monarchical government, if only the
reactionary party proved that it contained statesmen capable of leading
the nation. So menacing was the situation that the republicans thought
it wise not further to expose their divisions in the presidential
election which was due to take place at the end of the year.
Consequently, on the 28th of December 1885, M. Grévy, in spite of his
growing unpopularity, was elected president of the Republic for a second
term of seven years.
General Boulanger.
The Brisson cabinet at once resigned, and on the 7th of January 1886 its
most important member, M. de Freycinet, formed his third ministry, which
had momentous influence on the history of the Republic. The new minister
of war was General Boulanger, a smart soldier of no remarkable military
record; but being the nominee of M. Clémenceau, he began his official
career by taking radical measures against commanding officers of
reactionary tendencies. He thus aided the government in its campaign
against the families which had reigned in France, whose situation had
been improved by the result of the elections. The fêtes given by the
comte de Paris to celebrate his daughter's marriage with the
heir-apparent of Portugal moved the republican majority in the Chambers
to expel from France the heads of the houses of Orleans and of
Bonaparte, with their eldest sons. The names of all the princes on the
army list were erased from it, the decree being executed with unseemly
ostentation by General Boulanger, who had owed early promotion to the
protection of the duc d'Aumale, and on that prince protesting he was
exiled too. Meanwhile General Boulanger took advantage of Grévy's
unpopularity to make himself a popular hero, and at the review, held
yearly on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille,
his acclamation by the Parisian mob showed that he was taking an
unexpected place in the imagination of the people. He continued to work
with the Radicals, so when they turned out M. de Freycinet in December
1886, one of their group, M. Goblet, a lawyer from Amiens, formed a
ministry, and retained Boulanger as minister of war. M. Clémenceau,
however, withdrew his support from the general, who was nevertheless
loudly patronized by the violent radical press. His bold attitude
towards Germany in connexion with the arrest on the German frontier of a
French official named Schnaebele so roused the enthusiasm of the public,
that M. Goblet was not sorry to resign in May 1887 in order to get rid
of his too popular colleague.
The Wilson scandal.
To form the twelfth of his ministries, Grévy called upon M. Rouvier, an
Opportunist from Marseilles, who had first held office in Gambetta's
short-lived cabinet. General Boulanger was sent to command a _corps
d'armée_ at Clermont-Ferrand; but the popular press and the people
clamoured for the hero who was said to have terrorized Prince Bismarck,
and they encouraged him to play the part of a plebiscitary candidate.
There were grave reasons for public discontent. Parliament in 1887 was
more than usually sterile in legislation, and in the autumn session it
had to attend to a scandal which had long been rumoured. The son-in-law
of Grévy, Daniel Wilson, a prominent deputy who had been an under
secretary of state, was accused of trafficking the decoration of the
Legion of Honour, and of using the Elysée, the president's official
residence, where he lived, as an agency for his corrupt practices. The
evidence against him was so clear that his colleagues in the Chamber put
the government into a minority in order to precipitate a presidential
crisis, and on Grévy refusing to accept this hint, a long array of
politicians, representing all the republican groups, declined his
invitation to aid him in forming a new ministry, all being bent on
forcing his resignation. Had General Boulanger been a man of resolute
courage he might at this crisis have made a _coup d'état_, for his
popularity in the street and in the army increased as the Republic sank
deeper into scandal and anarchy. At last, when Paris was on the brink of
revolution, Grévy was prevailed on to resign. The candidates for his
succession to the presidency were two ex-prime ministers, MM. Ferry and
de Freycinet, and Floquet, a barrister, who had been conspicuous in the
National Assembly for his sympathy with the Commune. The Monarchists had
no candidate ready, and resolved to vote for Ferry, because they
believed that if he were elected his unpopularity with the democracy
would cause an insurrection in Paris and the downfall of the Republic.
MM. de Freycinet and Floquet each looked for the support of the
Radicals, and each had made a secret compact, in the event of his
election, to restore General Boulanger to the war office. But M.
Clémenceau, fearing the election of Jules Ferry, advised his followers
to vote for an "outsider," and after some manoeuvring the congress
elected by a large majority Sadi Carnot.