Adolphe Thiers
Louis Adolphe Thiers (15 April 1797 in Marseille - 3 September 1877 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye) was a French historian and politician. He was repeatedly prime minister under Louis-Philippe of France. After the fall of the Second Empire, he became provisional president of the French Third Republic, ordering the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871. From 1871 to 1873 he ruled under the title of provisional president. After losing a vote of confidence in the National Assembly, he submitted his resignation, an offer that was accepted (he was confident that the resignation would not be accepted) and he was forced out of office. He was succeeded as Provisional President by Patrice MacMahon, Duke of Magenta, who became President of the Third Republic, a title Thiers had coveted, in 1875 when a series of Organic Acts officially created the Third Republic. French.
Biography
Thiers was born in Marseille, France. He would later describe his family somewhat grandly as "cloth merchants ruined by the Revolution"; but it seems that, at birth, his father was a locksmith. He received a good education, first at the Lycée de Marseille, and then at the Faculty of Law in Aix-en-Provence, where he began his long friendship with the future historian François Mignet.
Despite studying law, he had little appreciation for it; instead he enjoyed literature, winning an academic prize at Aix for a speech on the Marquis de Vauvenargues. In the fall of 1821, Thiers left for Paris, where he became editor of the daily Constitutionnel . In the years after his arrival in Paris, he collected and published a volume of his articles, the first on the parliamentary chamber of 1822, and the second on a trip to the Pyrenees. He did not have great financial needs thanks to the singular donation of Cotta, owner of part of the Constitutionnel , who gave Thiers part of his dividends.
Meanwhile he began to be recognized in the liberal Parisian society, and began his famous work Histoire de la revolution française, which consolidated him as a writer and helped his establishment in politics. The first two volumes appeared in 1823, and the last two (of a total of ten) in 1827.
In 1833, Thiers was made a member of the French Academy.
He died on September 3, 1877.
Political career
The July Monarchy
For a moment it seemed as if Thiers had definitely chosen the life of a man of letters. He even planned the writing of a Histoire generale . But Jules de Polignac's accession to power in August 1829 changed his projects, and in the early 1830s, Thiers, along with Armand Carrel, Mignet, Sautelet, and others founded El Nacional, a new daily newspaper. opposition, under the protection of Talleyrand.
After Charles X signed the Saint-Cloud Ordinances on July 25, 1830, which abolished freedom of the press, the new chamber and created a new, more reactionary electoral law, Thiers published a plea against these provisions on the 27th in which it stated: “Today the government loses all its legitimacy, and citizens do not have to obey it. As for us, we will resist, and France will decide how far our resistance must go". Because of this reply to the ordinances, the government occupied the newspaper's newsroom building and confiscated the newspaper, but it would be useless because the atmosphere created had thrown all the discontents into the streets, coming from all social classes, causing the fall of the king. Thiers was not a revolutionary who sought the republic, but the change of monarch for a more liberal one, being his candidate Luis Felipe de Orleans. He even went so far as to look for him at his palace to insist on the advisability of his presence in Paris, a request shared by many other liberals and which materialized on July 30, with which the July monarchy was inaugurated.
At the beginning of the new reign, Thiers, although an elected deputy for Aix, only obtained a subordinate position in the Ministry of Finance.
After the overthrow of his patron, Jacques Laffitte, he shifted his political position to the right, and, after the riots of June 1832, he was appointed Minister of the Interior. He remained in the government for four years in which he frequently changed portfolios and was appointed president of the council and prime minister, from where he began his series of clashes and disputes with François Guizot.
A rebellion of silk workers in Lyon that began in the spring of 1834, despite being forcefully crushed, spread to the rest of the country, reaching the capital, and being interior minister, he ordered policemen and soldiers shoot at anyone who fired, and then personally direct the repression in the company of the prefect of police, a situation that reached its climax on April 14, when the soldiers went so far as to enter a house from where some salvoes were fired against them and kill all their tenants. Trials were held against the rebels that lasted all year, but order was restored and the workers temporarily abandoned their demands.
At the time of his resignation in 1836 he was Minister of Foreign Affairs and, as always, he desired an active policy in Spain, which he was unable to carry out.
He made a trip to Italy where he spent some time, and it was not until 1838 that he began a constant campaign of parliamentary opposition, which led him in March 1840 to become the president of the council, and Minister of Foreign Affairs for second time. His policy of supporting Egypt's ruler, Mehmet Ali, in that year's crisis in the East brought France to the brink of war with the other powers. This caused the dismissal of Thiers, since Luis Felipe did not want to embark on any warlike adventure. After this failure, Thiers abandoned politics for a few years, to devote his time to the writing of his Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire , the first volume of which appeared in 1845.
Though still a member of parliament, he made few interventions, until early 1846, when he once again began a campaign to return to power, this time leading the centre-left opposition group. However, he was working with forces that he could not control, as the center-left group would join the outbreak of the 1848 revolution, while Thiers was called by King Louis-Philippe to constitute an "emergency cabinet";, but seeing that there would be no salvation for the monarchy when the soldiers went over to the revolutionary cause, he resigned a few days later.
The Second Republic and the Second Empire
Under the Second French Republic he changed his position to that of a conservative republican. Changes in his political position, especially when he voted for Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as president, were criticized. One of those criticisms led him to a duel with a young deputy named Bixio. He was arrested during the coup, sent to Mazas, and then escorted out of France, but the following summer he was assassinated in Paris. . For the next decade, his public performance was virtually non-existent, his time being occupied mainly by his historical work on the Consulate and the Empire.
It would not be until 1863 that he entered the political arena again, when he was elected by a Parisian constituency. Over the next seven years he became the leading spokesman for the small group of anti-imperialists in the French chamber, and was considered one of the Empire's most formidable enemies. However, by protesting against companies abroad, he also echoed the country's loss of prestige, thus contributing to the formation of the spirit that would lead to the war against Prussia in 1870.
The Collapse of the Empire and the Paris Commune
Until 1870, Thiers was one of the promoters of the Franco-Prussian War, but when the French armies suffered defeat after defeat in just a few weeks, he quickly changed his strategy and began to speak out against the war, when it was already practically lost. By his maneuvering, he placed himself in a politically victorious position after the crushing defeat of the country, despite the fact that his entire career was devoted to agitating to drive France into some war. He achieved this by separating himself as much as possible from the Government of National Defense, the government that would be forced to surrender and capitulate to Germany.
He undertook at the end of September and in the first three weeks of October a trip to different courts in Europe, hoping to obtain some intervention, or at least some good offices. The mission failed, but the negotiator changed his conclusion: an armistice should be obtained, immediately if possible, directly with the Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck.
Once the armistice treaty was signed (prior to the final Treaty of Frankfurt), Thiers triumphantly entered the scene and national elections were called for: Thiers was elected by twenty-six different departments; on February 17, 1871 he was elected President, nominally as "chef du pouvoir executif de la République en attendant qu'il soit statue sur les institutions de la France" (Chief of the executive power of the Republic until the institutions of France are prescribed). He succeeded in convincing the authorities that peace was necessary, and it was voted in (March 1, 1871) with a majority of more than five to one.
In May 1871, Thiers sent French soldiers, with German support, to Paris to crush the Paris Commune. Between 10,000 and 30,000 workers died on the streets of Paris. Thousands more were arrested and 7,000 were exiled for life from France[citation needed].
The Third Republic
On August 30, he became provisional president of the as yet undeclared republic.
His strong personality and uncompromising opinions contributed to the revival of France; but at the same time he summoned a violent opposition to his person. He was a lifelong protectionist, but the ideas of free trade advocated by his minister Léon Say had made great strides during the Empire; he advocated a long military service, while the devotees of la revanche wanted a general but short military service. Both his talent and his character prevented him from maintaining the attitude of a president of the republic, since his language was usually indomitable.
In January 1872 he formally offered his resignation; and though she was rejected, almost all parties disliked him, while his chief supporters, men like Charles de Rémusat, Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, and Jules Simon, belonged more to the republican past than to the present.
The year 1873, as a year of parliamentary elections in France, was largely occupied with attacks on Thiers and his government. In the spring, regulations on his powers were proposed and, on April 13, when they were voted on, it was desired to restrict the power of the executive and, above all, the parliamentary powers of the president. On April 27, a contested election in Paris ended with the victory of the opposition candidate, Barodet, which was considered a serious disaster for the Thiers government, which was forced to dissolve and reconstitute the cabinet on May 20..
Following a vote of no confidence in Parliament, he tendered his resignation, which to his surprise was accepted, and left office on May 24, succeeded by Patrice MacMahon as interim president.
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