History of France

From left to right and from top to bottom: Vercingetórix and Julio César, Clodoveo, Carlomagno, Juana de Arco, Louis XIV, take of the Bastille, Napoléon Bonaparte, Freedom leading the people, French colonial troops in Africa, battle of Verdun, liberation from Paris, flags of France and the European Union.

The history of France begins in sources written during the Iron Age, when Roman historians called the region Gaul. This was inhabited mainly by the Gauls, people of Celtic origin who did not maintain a political unit, they competed with each other and used writing marginally. The Gauls made several raids outside their original territories, including an invasion of Rome in the IV century BCE. c.

The Roman Republic conquered southern Gaul in the late II century BCE. C. and established the province of Galia Narbonense. Julius Caesar annexed the rest of the region during the Gallic War (58-51 BC). The conquest brought with it a fusion of Celtic and Roman cultures and finally the Romanization of the Gauls and the full integration of the territory within the Roman empire.

In the last years of the Roman Empire, Gaul was the scene of constant incursions by Germanic peoples, among which the Franks would come to dominate the territory from the 17th century V up to the 15th century. The first Frankish dynasty was that of the Merovingians, who with their king Clovis unified Gaul. The second dynasty, the Carolingians, founded in 751, built an empire in western Europe under Charlemagne in the 8th and centuries. style="font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">IX. This empire would be divided among his grandchildren in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, which separated West Francia from East Francia, which would become Germany's ancestor. The third Frankish dynasty, the Capetians, took power in Western Francia from 987. The Capetians, originally with little power over the feudal lords, increased it considerably through their military campaigns and their alliance with the Church. In the 12th century, Philip Augustus was the first to be named "king of France" instead of "king of the Franks". Philip IV (1268-1314), the most powerful Capetian king, achieved dominance over the pope and the Church.

On the death of the last of the direct Capetians in 1328, a succession crisis ensued between the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet. The first acceded to the throne and the second, of French origin but ruler in England, was also a pretender. The crisis led to the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), in which France was devastated. The Plantagenets dominated in the early part of the war, but the Valois managed to prevail in the final phase. In this war, Joan of Arc arose, a peasant teenager who managed to lead the French army and become a national heroine.

Between the 16th and XVIII, the power of the French kings was consolidated in the Old Regime. In the 16th century came the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation and with the latter, the Wars of Religion (1562-1598), which originated a new succession crisis and the coming to power of the House of Bourbon with Henry IV in 1589. France remained Catholic and the monarchy's alliance with the Church was consolidated. Beginning in the 16th century France began to forge a colonial empire with possessions in North America, the West Indies and India. At the same time, she was involved in numerous wars for hegemony in Europe, mainly against Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and England. The rise of the Old Regime was reached with the absolutism of Louis XIV, known as the "sun king".

The monarchy was overthrown by the French Revolution (1789-1799), a series of events of universal impact that elevated the bourgeoisie to power and gave prominence to the masses. The first French republic was established in 1792 and the country was attacked by several countries. The first republic was abolished in 1804 with the proclamation of Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor of France. Napoleon fought against the absolutist monarchies and achieved the submission of a large part of Europe thanks to his great military talent until he was defeated (1815).

The monarchy returned in 1814, but without the previous privileges. A new revolution broke out in 1830 against what the liberals considered an attempt by the king to restore the Old Regime, and the result was the July Monarchy (1830-1848), a more liberal monarchical government. This increasingly authoritarian government was overthrown in 1848 by a third revolution, which gave way to a brief second republic and served as an example in several European countries. In 1852 President Louis Napoléon Bonaparte established the second French empire. During the 19th century France industrialized and pursued an imperialist policy. The Second Empire was defeated in 1870 by Prussia, a rising German nation and a rival to France. That year a republican system was started again. The third republic, parliamentary, secular and of freedoms, took root in society, at the same time that it conquered a vast colonial territory in Africa and Asia that rivaled the United Kingdom and especially Germany. France agreed with the United Kingdom on the Entente Cordiale, which would later become the Triple Entente with the accession of Russia. France and its allies fought against Germany and the Central Powers during World War I (1914-1918). Much of the war was fought in northern France, which despite being victorious suffered serious economic damage and more than 1.5 million deaths.

In World War II (1939-1945), France was invaded by Nazi Germany. The northern half of the country was occupied by German troops, while the southern half was ruled by the collaborationist Vichy regime. In the colonial empire, General Charles De Gaulle started the Free French movement, which led the resistance against the occupation and fascism. Northern France served as the landing site for numerous Allied armies during the offensive against Germany. France, in critical condition from the devastation, was liberated in August 1944.

After the war, France joined the Western bloc during the Cold War, and has since been part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as well as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. United (UN). It received significant financial aid from the United States and its economy grew significantly during the thirty glorious years (1946-1975). The fourth republic (1946-1958) tried unsuccessfully to reissue the system of the third, but it was replaced by the fifth republic (1958-present), whose government system is semi-presidential. In 1960 France became the fourth country to develop nuclear weapons. The French colonial empire began to unravel during the Indochina War (1945-1954), the Algerian War (1954-1962), and the subsequent decolonization of its African territories in the 1960s. Its remaining colonies were integrated into departments and collectivities overseas. France was an important cog in the formation of the European Union in 1993. In the 21st century, France is still considered a power in the economic, military, political and cultural aspects.

Prehistory

Tools from the Acheulean industry of Homo erectus from 900,000 years ago have been found in the Le Vallonnet grotto, (Poor Clare's generation) in southern France.

Significant Lower Paleolithic remains exist in the Somme River and traditional Pyrenees (Neanderthal Man), as well as at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Le Moustier and La Ferrasie. From the Upper Palaeolithic there are abundant remains of the Cro-Magnon, Grimaldi and Chancelade men, dated to about 25,000 years old, which are located in the Dordogne valley. Among the most famous cave paintings in the world are those of Lascaux and Font de Gaume, in the French Pyrenees.

In the Mesolithic, some agricultural activities gradually replaced caves in importance, and in the Neolithic (from the 3rd millennium BC) the megalithic culture emerged (using menhirs, dolmens and burials). From around 1500 B.C. C. the age of the bronze begins, developing commercial routes.

The Iron Age and Celtic cultures date back to the 1st millennium BCE. c.

Protohistory

The first Celts

Gallo Funeral Car, used in the centuries VIII and VIa. C.

Although there is little tangible evidence, there is a theory according to which the colonization of the future Gaul by the Celts originally from Central Europe began around 1300 BC. C., at the end of the Bronze Age, with the culture of the urn fields and ended around the year 700 a. Another theory suggests that the earliest Celtic peoples correspond to the archaeological Hallstatt culture (800-400 BC) which developed in Central Europe, including eastern France and corresponds to the early Iron Age. Towards the end of the VIII century B.C. C. iron metallurgy spreads and a warrior aristocracy is constituted thanks to the appearance of iron swords and combat on horseback. Celtic princes and princesses were buried with regalia weapons and chariots, as in the tomb of Vix (550 BC-450 BC), in the Côte-d'Or department.

According to Livy, the abundant warrior populations of the Biturigian, Arverni, Aedui, Ambarro, Carnuti and Aulerc tribes under the command of the legendary Biturigian Beloveso invaded the Po plain and joined the Insubres to found the city of Mediolanum (Milan) around 600 BC. c.

Pre-Roman Gaul (5th century - 51 BC)

Welsh chief Breno and Marco Furio Camilo during the plunder of Rome from 390 a. C.

Civilization gala

Oppidum Celtic (centuryIa. C.)

Reconstruction of the Wall of Bibracte

Grenade gala

currency

Gaul, as defined by Julius Caesar, was the territory where the Gauls lived, and included the present-day territories of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, northern Italy, as well as parts of Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. The Gallic peoples correspond to the archaeological culture of La Tène, which is considered the apogee of Celtic culture. The Gauls were a conglomerate of Celtic tribes that spoke dialects of a common language, but they did not form a political unit, but rather rivaled each other. In addition to the Gauls, the Romans identified two other peoples: the Aquitanians in the southwest of present-day France, and the Belgians in the northeast.

Celts from regions around the Rhine, the Danube, or the Hercynian Forest extended their authority over the rest of Gaul at the end of the century VI a. C. and beginning of the century V a. C. in the time known as the second iron age or period of the La Tène culture. This new period of expansion corresponds to economic and social transformations. The aristocratic warriors, few in number, were replaced by peasant soldiers regrouped around a clan chief. The iron share plow replaced the wooden plow and made it possible to till the heavy soils of central and northern France today. This largely explains the colonization of new lands, population growth, and the resulting new invasions.

At the beginning of 390 a. C., chief Breno took Gallic warriors (senones, cenómanos, lingones, among others) to northern Italy, where they joined other Celtic peoples (ínsubres, boyos and carnios). Rome was taken in 390 B.C. C. The Romans contained these invaders from the end of 349 a. c.

The Celts began trading with the Greek colonies in southern Gaul as early as the VII century BCE. C. as Massalia (Marseille). This trade was interrupted during the invasions of the 5th century BCE. C. but were vigorously retaken at the end of the IV century B.C. C. During this period, Greek coins are found throughout the Rhone Valley, the Alps, and even in Lorraine.

The Gallic civilization experienced a particularly flourishing period between 290 B.C. C. and 52 a. C. Characteristics of this civilization are the emergence of true fortified cities (oppida) of dimensions much larger than the fortresses of previous periods and the use of currency.

In the II century B.C. C. a relative Arverna hegemony characterized by a strong military power and great wealth of its chiefs is established. At the same time, the Roman influence in southern Gaul increased, which initially manifested itself in the commercial field. Archaeological investigations show that in the course of the II century B.C. C. Italian amphoras gradually replaced those from Greece in the Marseille trade. On several occasions, Marseille went to Rome to defend it from the threats of the Celto-Ligurian tribes and the pressures of the Arverni.

Vercingetórix puts weapons before Julius Caesar after the battle of Alesia.

South-eastern Gaul, particularly the present-day regions of Languedoc and Provence, was conquered by Rome before the end of the century II a. C. and formed the Roman province of Galia Narbonense. This region, which ran from the Pyrenees to the Alps and crossed the Rhone Valley, was a strategic territory to unite Italy with Hispania, which had been conquered during the Second Punic War (late III B.C.) The conquest of Narbonne was achieved in 118 B.C. C. after the defeat of the Arverni and Allobroges and the alliance of Rome with the Aedui. After the fall of the Arverna hegemony under the pressure of the Romans, the great peoples of Gaul —particularly Aedui and Sequani— vied strongly among themselves.

In 58 B.C. C., Julius Caesar used the threat that the Germanic peoples represented for the Gauls to intervene in aid of the Aedui, allies of Rome. The Gallic war was long and in January 52 a. C., with the rise to power of Vercingetorix, the Arverni and their allies rebelled against the proconsul's army. Julius Caesar faced the determination of the Gauls, whose uprising was almost general. The war, which included sieges, burning of cities, scorched earth, massacres, and deportations into slavery, ended in 51 BC. C. with the Roman victory against the disorganized impetus of the Gauls.

Old Age

Greek Colonies

Silver coin of Massalia with Greek legend (siglos V-III a. C.).

About 600 B.C. C., Ionian Greeks from the city of Phocea founded the colony of Massalia (present-day Marseille) on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, making Marseille the oldest city in France. At the same time, some Celtic tribes penetrated the eastern parts of present-day France, but this occupation spread to the rest of France only between the V and III a. c.

Massalia was a prosperous city that founded more cities in the Mediterranean, such as Agathe (Agde), Nikaia (Nice) and Antipolis (Antibes). Pytheas, originally from Massalia, explored northern Europe and reached the Arctic Circle around 325 BC. C. The Greek colonies maintained a lucrative trade with the Gauls, as evidenced by the presence of Greek coins and amphorae in various parts of Gaul. Greek coins influenced the style of Gallic coins, who used the Greek alphabet in what little evidence there is of their writing. The Greek colonies were constantly threatened by the Gallic tribes, so Massalia had to resort to an alliance with Rome. The city lost its independence to the Romans in 49 BC. c.

Roman Gaul

The gala provinces within the Roman Empire at the beginning of the centuryII.

Roman monuments in France

Arenas de Arlés

Maison Carrée (Nimes)

Orange Triumph Arc

Gard Bridge

Amphitheatre of the Three Galias (Lyon)

Temple of Augusto and Livia (Vienne)

The Emperor Augustus organized Gaul into four provinces: to Narbonensis, sufficiently romanized to become a senatorial province, he added Gaul Aquitaine, Gaul Lyonnaise, and Gaul Belgium. The limits of the Gauls exceeded those of present-day France, mainly as far as Belgian Gaul was concerned, which surrounded the Rhine River. After the conquest of Gaul, the Romans forced displacements of natives to prevent them from becoming a threat, both within of the Gallic provinces as well as outside of them. In addition to the large number of natives, Gaul became the homeland of Roman citizens from other places and of Germanic peoples who migrated to the empire.

Culturally, a syncretism occurred between the Roman culture of the new ruling class and the native Celtic culture, giving rise to the Gallo-Roman culture. Religious practices were a combination of Roman and Celtic, with Celtic gods subject to interpretatio romana. Along with Latin, the Gauls continued to use their language, but switched from the Greek to the Latin alphabet and became considers that their language was used in France until the VI century. Some Celtic influences permeated the culture of the Roman Empire: the caracalla, a cloak that gave a Roman emperor a nickname; the cask, stronger than the Roman amphora, and the coat of mail, the Gallic imperial helmet and braccae, adopted by the Roman army. The Gauls became more and more integrated into the empire. For example, the generals Marco Antonio Primo and Cneo Julio Agrícola and the emperors Claudius and Caracalla were born in Gaul. Also the Emperor Antoninus Pius was from a Gallic family.

The Roman roads largely took over the Gallic roads, which were numerous and in good condition, which explains the great speed of movement of the Roman legions. The pacification of the Rhine and Britain favored the economic boom. Urbanization was widespread and numerous cities developed, organized on the model of the Italian municipia, which still survive, while the countryside was covered with villages (vici) and large farms (villae). Gaul, along with Egypt, was the most populous region of the Roman Empire, with an estimated population of 7 million. In 48, the Emperor Claudius gave access to the Roman Senate to Gaul notables, as shown in the table of Lyons.

Martin de Tours, diffuser of Christianity in Galia during the centuryIV.

Economic development brought about centuries of Pax Romana: vineyards were cultivated in Aquitaine, the Rhône, Saône and Moselle valleys, and Gallic wines competed with Italian wines. In imitation of the terra sigillata itálica, a sealed ceramic industry was created (for example in La Graufesenque). Gallic artisans also produced abundant wooden objects and woolen fabrics that were exported to the great centers of consumption in Italy, the Rhine and the upper Danube. The exchanges were not limited to material goods: in addition to the popular cult of the Gallic religion and its Roman syncretism, which is prohibited by Claudius (41-54), other religions of oriental origin appeared in the cities: the cult of Mithras, of Cibeles and finally Christianity.

Since the II century, there was already an important Christian community in Lugdunum (Lyon), where the first martyrs are from (177) and the first bishopric in Gaul, where Saint Irenaeus would exercise. Christianity, whose origins date back to the Jewish diaspora, spread through the cities thanks to merchants from the East and the army, and after the Edict of Milan spread through the towns, where the emblematic evangelizer is Saint Martin of Tours (316 -397), to whom the founding of monasticism in France is also attributed. Around 250, according to Cyprian of Carthage, Gaul had eight bishoprics (Lyon, Arles, Tolosa, Narbonne, Vienne, Reims, Paris and Trier) and with 120 at the end of the century IV. In 314 the Emperor Constantine convened the first council of Arles, the first held in Gaul.

Five centuries of Romanization left a deep mark on Gaul: languages derived from Latin (Occitan and French), a written law, cities, monumental architecture, the Catholic religion and daily customs, such as the consumption of bread and wine.

Germanic invasions

Map of Galia at the end of the centuryV Kingdom of Soissons Kingdom Kingdom of the Alamans Kingdom of the burgundy Visigoth Kingdom of Tolosa Armore

During the crises of the 3rd century, civil wars broke out on Gallic soil. In the middle of this century, Franks and Alemanni, both Germanic peoples, crossed the Rhine and plundered Gaul on several occasions. General Posthumous created the so-called Gallic Empire (260-274), independent of Rome. Gaul was affected by the Bagauda rebellions that would ravage the entire north of the region from the III century until the V. The Romans allowed the establishment of laeti (barbarian colonies) in Gaul in the IV and V. The defensive systems of the Rhine incorporated more and more Germanic contingents. Groups of Franks in Belgian Gaul and Alemanni in Alsace served as federated auxiliary troops, and certain Frankish officers led brilliant careers in the Roman Empire. A Celtic migration appeared in Armorica in the IV century, consisting of refugees from Britain, who remained independent from the rest of Gaul until 939..

On the night of December 31, 406, Vandals, Suevi, Alans and other Germanic peoples crossed the Rhine border, despite the defense of Frankish auxiliaries. In 412, the Visigoths crossed the Alps and reached Aquitaine. The Roman Empire ceded territories to them until their demise in 476. As the imperial structures fell apart, political power passed into the hands of barbarian kingdoms with their own laws and power. own religion, Arianism or polytheism. The danger posed by the Huns caused a temporary alliance of the occupiers of Gaul. In 451, the patrician and generalissimo Flavio Aecio was put at the head of a Gallo-Roman and Frankish coalition that stopped the incursions of the Huns commanded by Attila in the Catalaunic Fields.

In the midst of various barbarian kingdoms, Aetius was one of the last Roman soldiers to attempt the political reorganization of Gaul, as were the general Egidio and his son Siagrio. Aegidius, in alliance with the Franks, achieved some victories against the Visigoths and the Burgundians and in 457 managed to control militarily a territory between the Seine and the Loire, which history has called "the kingdom of Soissons" a kind of enclave of the Roman Empire that survived its fall. This "kingdom" it would endure with his son Siagrio, who styled himself "king of the Romans," but was finally conquered by Clovis, king of the Franks, in 486. Gallo-Roman noble elites, still present in the cities, maintained the local authority and appointed bishops, who were representatives and protectors of their communities and interlocutors of the Germanic kings and the last representatives of Roman culture. Among these we can mention Avitus of Vienne, Nicetus of Lyon, Remigio de Reims and Gregory of Tours.

Middle Ages

The nation of France only appeared very progressively over the centuries. Some consider that it is only possible to speak of France from the Treaty of Verdun, which would also be the origin of Germany; others that from the accession of Hugo Capeto to power and some others even later. The tradition of primary schools in France traces the origin of the country back to the unification of the Franks, so that today's France is heir to the Frankish kingdom of Clovis, and exists without discontinuity from the year 486 to the present day, where Franks, Burgundians (Burgundians), Vikings (Normans), and also Britons (Bretons), merged with the Gauls in the melting pot that is now called France.

The following dynasties reigned over the territories that made up France in the Middle Ages:

• The Merovingians, descendants of Meroveo and Clodoveo.
• The Carolingians, descendants of Carlos Martel.
• The Capetos, and their secondary branches the Valois and the Bourbons, descendants of Hugo Capeto.

The Merovingians

The Frank kingdoms in 511

The Carolingians

Carlomagno according to an illustration by Alberto Durero (1511).

Pepin the Short, the first Carolingian monarch, conquered the province of Aquitaine, which had become independent, and Septimania, which had become one of the five Muslim provinces of Al-Andalus between 719 and 759. He also intervened outside its borders and conquered Lombard lands, with which he would create the States of the Church, also known as the Papal States or "Patrimonio de San Pedro", as he donated them to the Pope and at the same time declared himself their guarantor. Upon his death, in accordance with Frankish tradition, he divided his kingdom between his two sons, Carloman and Carlos, but Carloman's early death allowed Carlos to reign over a unified Frankish kingdom.. The kingdom of the Franks experienced its greatest expansion during the reign of Carlos, better known as Charlemagne.

Germigny-des-Prés (sixteenth century)IX).

The Frank Kingdom in the time of Charlemagne.

Charlemagne extended the borders of the Frankish kingdom, at the cost of twenty years of war, to Saxony, Brittany, Vasconia, Lombardy, Bavaria and the Avar kingdom. However, these conquests would not be definitive and the regions of Brittany and Vasconia were shaken by numerous rebellions. Charlemagne established territories known as "marcas", which were militarized zones that allowed to control the attacks of Bretons and Vascones. This policy of conquest, as well as the support it provided to the papacy, resulted in the coronation of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor on December 25, 800 by Pope Leo III in Saint Peter's Basilica. Until then, the Byzantine emperors were considered the sole heirs of the Roman Empire, so Charlemagne's coronation represented a conflict between the Frankish kingdom and the Byzantine Empire. After the Franks seized Byzantine territory in the Adriatic, Emperor Michael sent delegates to Charlemagne's court in Aachen in 812 to recognize him as Western Emperor. Contemporaries wanted to see in this circumstance the rebirth of the Western Roman Empire. However, the Carolingian empire was centered in the regions of Gaul and Germania and its lineage was of Germanic and not Roman origin.

The reigns of Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious witnessed two waves of invasions, but were also a period of strengthening royal power and a renaissance of arts and culture.

The division of the Frank Kingdom with the Treaty of Verdun (843). In red, Western France, the precedent of the present France; in yellow, Eastern France, the precedent of the current Germany; in green, Middle France, which would be divided between the previous two.

Louis the Pious, emperor between 814 and 840, renounced confiscating the Church's lands to donate them to his faithful as a reward. By doing this, he was forced to use his own assets and thereby weaken the power of the Carolingians. Louis held the empire together, but it would not survive his death. Two of his sons –Carlos el Calvo and Luis el Germánico– allied themselves against his brother Lotario in the oaths of Strasbourg. Finally, the three sons reached an agreement in the treaty of Verdun (843) and the empire was divided into three parts: West Francia for Carlos the Bald, Middle France for Lothair, and East Francia for Louis the German. This is the first time that the name of Gaul is replaced by that of western Francia. Lothair held the title of emperor, but in 869 his kingdom would be divided between his two brothers. In this way, two entities remained as heirs of the old Carolingian empire: Western Francia and Eastern Francia, which would be the germ of present-day France and Germany, respectively. The two Frances were briefly reunited between 884 and 887 under Charles the Fat. On his death, the Frankish kings lost the title of Roman Emperor.

During the IX and X, Western France was threatened with rupture. Brittany, under the leadership of Nominoe, reasserted its independence, and the reincorporation of Aquitaine into the kingdom was nothing more than something purely theoretical. The second wave of invasion by Vikings, Saracens and Hungarians accentuated the disintegration of royal authority. The sovereigns, powerless to defend their territories, resigned themselves to seeing power pass from their hands to those of powerful lords, who constituted principalities, vast semi-independent territories. To curb the Viking threat, King Charles the Simple was forced to cede Normandy to the Viking chieftain Rollo in 911.

The title of king became elective and the Carolingians had to cede the crown to Count Odo of Paris, between 888 and 898, to his brother Robert I between 922 and 923, and to Raul of Burgundy between 923 and 936. In 987 Hugh Capet, Duke of the Franks and descendant of Odo, was preferred as king to the Carolingian pretender Charles of Lower Lotharingia thanks to the active intervention of Archbishop Adalberon of Reims.

The Capetians

The Capetian (or Capetian) dynasty came to rule France, which successively became more and more subdivided, a feature that has been called "classical feudalism". Throughout this period the king had to continually confront the other nobles of his kingdom, in theory his vassals, but who sometimes acquired too much power to openly challenge royal authority. In this period the crusades and the Hundred Years War took place. France invented Gothic art, and there was a time when all of Europe fell victim to the bubonic plague, an epidemic that was called the "black plague". He also participated in humanism that would be a precursor to the Renaissance.

The authority of the early Capetians was limited to their royal domain, confined to an area between Beauvais and Orleans, a remnant of Robert I's duchy of France, while various vassals held much larger possessions. Thanks to a skilful policy of most of them, they were able to ensure the growth of their domains. Faced with their vassals, who were almost independent, the Capetian kings had the following advantages:

• They inherited their lineage by choosing and consecration of their children in life and associating them to the throne, a use that followed up to Philip Augustus.
• They were at the top of the feudal hierarchy and all the feudal lords of the kingdom were to pay tribute to him.
• Real consecration allowed them to acquire a divine right through anointing with the oil of the holy blister, which according to tradition was a gift of the Holy Spirit to the first Frank King, Clodoveo. Thus the king, whose power proceeded directly from God, had the covenant of the Church.

Several regions enjoyed a local authority comparable to that of a kingdom. Several dynasties of French origin even expanded their territories outside of France: the Normans, Plantagenet, Lusignan, Hauteville, Poitiers, and Toulouse. The most important of these conquests was the Norman Conquest of England by William the Conqueror. This event would keep England connected to France for the rest of the Middle Ages and would be a source of conflict between the two kingdoms. The kings of England would be the most powerful vassals of the king of France and would come to aspire to the French throne.

Early Capetians

The kingdom of francs under Hugo Capeto (940-996). The king's domains in blue.

The founding of the French state began with the election of Hugh Capet in Reims in 987. Capet, until then called "duke of the Franks". he became "king of the Franks". Hugo's territory stretched out in a small area of little relevance that contrasted with the territories of the barons who had elected him. The figure of Hugo Capeto is not well documented in history; His greatest achievement was surviving as king and defeating the Carolingian candidate, allowing him to establish what would become one of the most powerful royal dynasties in Europe centuries later.

Cluny's abbey.

Godofredo de Bouillon, Frank Knight, one of the leaders of the first crusade and founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Hugh's son, Robert II the Pious, was crowned king before his father's death. Hugh Capet decided so to ensure the succession. Robert II met Emperor Henry II on the border between the two kingdoms. The monarchs agreed to end mutual territorial claims. Although Robert II was a weak king, his efforts were considerable. He relied on the church to rule France to a much greater extent than his father did. Although he lived with a mistress and was excommunicated for it, he was seen as a model of piety; hence the nickname of him, the Pious. From Robert II, miraculous powers were attributed to the kings of France, who could cure scrofula with simple touch. His reign is also remembered for the peace and truce of God (which began in 989) and the Cluniac reform.

During the extraordinarily long reign of Philip I (1060-1108) the kingdom experienced a modest recovery. At this time the first crusade was launched to recover the Holy Land, which had fallen into Saracen hands. This expedition, which culminated in the conquest of Jerusalem and the founding of several Frankish states in the Middle East, involved the king's family, although he was not personally involved.

From the reign of Louis V (1108-1137), royal authority became more widely accepted. Louis VI was above all a warmongering king. His way of raising money by attacking his vassals made him an unpopular king, but on the other hand he strengthened the royal power. From 1127 the king had the assistance of Abbot Suger, an efficient statesman. Louis VI defeated many of his vassals both militarily and politically. He frequently called them to court and those who did not attend had their territories confiscated and military campaigns launched against them. This drastic policy imposed some royal authority in Paris and the surrounding areas. When Louis VI died in 1137 he had done quite a bit to strengthen the authority of the Capetians.

Gothic architecture in France XII-XIII)

Cathedral of Laon

Paris Cathedral

Cathedral of Chartres

Thanks to the political advice of Abbot Suger, Louis VII (1131-1180) enjoyed greater moral authority than his predecessors. Abbot Suger arranged for Louis VII's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, which took place in 1137. This made Louis VII Duke of Aquitaine and gave him considerable power. However, tensions soon surfaced in the couple. Through Eleanor's influence, the king went to war against the count of Champagne, a conflict in which more than a thousand people were burned alive in Vitry. The king, sorry for the event, did penance and traveled to the Holy Land. Later, he involved the kingdom of France in the second crusade, but his relationship with Eleanor did not improve. Her marriage was annulled by the pope, and Eleanor soon married Henry Fitzempress, Duke of Normandy. Louis VII now faced a much more powerful vassal than he, as Henry was the largest feudatory of France, holding Normandy and Aquitaine, and in 1154 he became King Henry II of England.

Abbot Suger was the architect of Gothic architecture, born in northern France, particularly in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions. This style, which spread, would be the standard for most European cathedrals in the Late Middle Ages.

Philip II Augustus

Conquests of Philip II Augusto.

Philip Augusto victorious after the battle of Bouvines of 1214, after which he annexed Normandy and Anjou to the real domains.

The reign of Philip II Augustus (1179-1223) was an important step in the history of the French monarchy, witnessing the expansion of royal power and influence. He laid the foundation for the rise of far more powerful monarchs, such as Saint Louis and Philip the Beautiful.

Philip II spent a significant part of his reign fighting the Angevin Empire, which included England and half the kingdom of France and was perhaps the greatest threat to a French king since the rise of the Capetian dynasty. Philip II allied with Richard the Lionheart against his father, Henry II of England, and together they launched a decisive attack on Henry's castle at Chinon and removed him from power. Richard replaced his father as King of England. Felipe and Ricardo fought together in the third crusade; however, their alliance and friendship broke down during the crusade. The two kings later clashed in France, and Richard came close to defeating Philip II.

In addition to their battles in France, both kings attempted to place their respective allies on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. Philip II supported Philip of Swabia, of the House of Hohenstaufen, while Richard the Lionheart supported Otto IV, a member of the House of Welf. Otto IV crowned himself emperor, which meant a great danger for Felipe. The crown of France was saved thanks to Richard's death during a battle in the Limousin.

Philip II confiscated the possessions of Juan sin Tierra, Ricardo's successor, in France. John attempted to recover his possessions at the Battle of Bouvines (1214), where he was defeated. Felipe II was then able to annex Normandy and Anjou, in addition to capturing the counts of Boulogne and Flanders, although Aquitaine and Gascony remained faithful to the King of England. Following the Battle of Bouvines, John's ally Otto IV was overthrown from the Holy Roman Empire by Frederick II, an ally of Philip Augustus. The King of France has since played a crucial role in Western European politics in both England and France.

Philip Augustus founded the Sorbonne University and turned Paris into a city of learning. He also expanded the city walls, paved the roads, and built the Louvre castle.

Prince Louis (later Louis VIII, 1223-1226), became involved in the English civil war known as the First Barons' War (1215-1217). While the kings of France faced the Plantagenets both in France and abroad, the Church summoned them to the Albigensian crusade against the Cathars, a Christian movement rooted in southern France that was considered heretical. The war, which was fought between 1209 and 1244, ended with the eradication of Catharism and the expansion of royal domains in the south.

Saint Louis

San Luis zarpa de Aigues Mortes to the seventh crusade.

Louis IX, known as Saint Louis, was only twelve years old when he became King of France. His mother, Blanca de Castilla, exercised power as regent. Blanca's authority met with strong opposition from the French barons, but she managed to stay in power until her son was able to rule for himself.

The Holy Chapel of the Cité Palace, the masterpiece of the radiant Gothic.

Under Louis IX, France became a centralized kingdom. St. Louis has often been seen as a representative of the Catholic faith and a reformer concerned with his government. However, his reign was far from perfect. In 1229, the king fought a strike at the University of Paris, causing damage to the city's Latin Quarter. Saint Louis also fought a war against the County of Tolosa and fought the resistance in Languedoc. Count Raymond VII of Toulouse signed the Treaty of Paris in 1229. His daughter, Juana, had no heirs, so the county passed into the hands of the King of France. King Henry III of England did not recognize the Capetian possession of Aquitaine and hoped to recapture Normandy and Anjou to restore the Angevin Empire. He landed in 1230 at Saint-Malo with a large army. Brittany and Normandy immediately surrendered. This English invasion evolved into the Saintonge War (1242). Finally, Henry III was defeated and had to recognize French rule, although the King of France could not take Aquitaine. Louis IX, in addition to holding the royal title, became the largest land owner in France, although he faced some opposition in Normandy. In those times the King's Council was founded, which would later become the parliament. After the conflict with the King of England, both established a cordial relationship.

San Luis was a patron of Gothic art. During his reign, the Holy Chapel of Paris was built, one of the masterpieces of radiant Gothic. He is also credited with the Morgan Bible. Saint Louis participated in two crusades. In the seventh crusade (1248-1250) he attacked Egypt and managed to conquer the city of Damietta, but was defeated and taken prisoner at Fariskur in 1250. The eighth crusade was launched against Tunis in 1270, where the French king died of illness that same anus.

Philip III and Philip IV

The Potato Palace in Avignon. During the reign of Felipe IV the papal headquarters moved to this French city, where it would remain for 67 years.

Philip III ascended to the throne on the death of Saint Louis in 1270. He was called "the daring" in reference to his skills in combat and horsemanship and not precisely because of his ability to govern or his temperament. Philip III took part in yet another Crusader disaster: the Aragonese Crusade, which cost him his life in 1285.

Philip IV (1285-1314) made several administrative reforms. He was responsible for the suppression of the Knights Templar, signed the Old Alliance with Scotland, and established the Parliament of Paris. Philip IV, unlike the early Capetians, was so powerful that he was able to appoint popes and emperors. The papal seat was transferred to Avignon and all contemporary popes were French.

The three male children of Philip IV who reached adulthood reigned in short successive periods between 1314 and 1328. None of his children had male children, so in 1328 the direct Capetian house became extinct.

The first Valois and the Hundred Years War

On the death of Charles IV, the last king of the direct childless Capetian house in 1328, there were two claimants to the French throne: Edward III of England, grandson of Philip IV of France, and Philip of Valois, grandson of Philip III of France. The assembly of notables of the kingdom chose Philip of Valois (Philip VI) because he was French, descended from the Capetians through the male route, and was older than his young English rival. Philip VI was the first king of the House of Valois, a collateral branch of the Capetians who would reign in France until 1589.

Edward III of England counts the dead after his victory in the battle of Crécy.

John II of France is captured in the battle of Poitiers.

Joan of Arc enters victorious in Orleans.

Tensions between the Plantagenet and Valois houses reached their peak in the so-called Hundred Years' War (actually a series of several armed conflicts between 1337 and 1453), in which the Plantagenets, rulers in England, claimed for himself the French throne. The war began when Edward III of England, Duke of Guyenne, invaded France through Flanders in 1337.

The war did not develop throughout the country, but wherever it occurred it brought desolation, death, looting, civil wars and epidemics. The bands of mercenaries, in the absence of a military quartermaster and a regular salary, looted the regions where they were stationed. During this interminable conflict, French territory was the field of fierce fighting between the kings of France and those of England. The English benefited from the tactical superiority of their army, particularly their archers, and inflicted two resounding defeats on the French cavalry – far superior in number – at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356); in the latter King John II of France was taken prisoner by the black prince, Edward of Woodstock. The Dauphin Charles was forced to sign the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, in which he granted the English a third of the kingdom of France and promised to pay a ransom of 3 million escudos – the equivalent of two years' royal income. – for the release of the king. He died in London in 1364 without the ransom having been paid in full.

Carlos V, son of Juan II, was a good strategist: peace allowed him to reconquer the ceded territories and entrusted great captains, such as Du Guesclin, with the reconquest of the territory, retaking the strongholds of the enemy one by one through a strategy of successive sieges. In 1377 the English controlled only Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Calais and Cherbourg.

Recovery was provisional. The madness of Charles VI plunged the country into civil war between Philip II of Burgundy, the King's uncle, and Louis of Orleans, the King's brother. The latter took control of the State and allied himself with gentlemen from the southwest hostile to the King of England, known as the Armagnacs, who would fight the Burgundians. The Duke of Burgundy, also Count of Flanders, traded with the English in that region.

Taking advantage of the confusion of the civil war, the English launched a devastating chevauchée across France. After avoiding Paris they crossed Picardy to the port of Calais and met up at Azincourt with the cream of French cavalry in 1415. The French suffered another devastating defeat against a tired and outnumbered English army. Armagnacs were crushed. The Duke of Burgundy, Juan Fearless, took advantage of the situation to seize Champagne and later Paris. His son, Felipe el Bueno, forced King Carlos VI to sign the Treaty of Troyes on May 21, 1420, which stipulated: that the king's son, the dauphin Carlos, was disinherited; Henry V of England became regent of France and would marry Catherine, the daughter of the French king, and on the death of Charles VI, the kingdom of France would pass to the son of Henry V and Catherine.

On the death of Charles VI in 1422, France was divided into three: the north and the west under the control of Henry V's brother, John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, as regent for the young English king, the future Henry VI; the northeast, where the Duke of Burgundy was semi-independent, and the region south of the Loire, where the dauphin takes the title of Charles VII, whose legitimacy is questioned by English propaganda.

The key to the conflict is then the nationalist awakening in the face of the suffering of the French people. The English, with their looting strategy, received the hatred of the people and were only supported by artisans and university students from the big cities. That nationalism would be embodied by Joan of Arc, a young peasant girl who would catalyze the desire to drive the English out of France by receiving command of the military campaigns. After a victorious campaign on the Loire, Joan liberated Orleans and crushed the English at the Battle of Patay. Later he rode to Reims, where he achieved the coronation of Charles VII on July 17, 1429. During the winter of 1429, Joan seized the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, but failed in the village of La Charité-sur- Loire before being captured in Compiègne on March 24, 1430. The end of the conflict was near: Carlos VII sealed peace with the Burgundians in 1435 through the treaty of Arras. Deprived of their powerful ally, the English are expelled from France in 1453 after the Battle of Castillon.

After the war, the kings of France regained their prestige and authority. However, they maintained a rivalry with the dukes of Burgundy Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, who incorporated the Netherlands into their possessions and ranked among the most powerful sovereigns in Europe. On the death of the Bold, his possessions, which came from the Capetian family, were annexed by Louis XI, but the Netherlands passed into the hands of his daughter, Maria de Borgoña, who gave them to her husband Maximilian of Austria.. This partition of the Burgundian possessions was a source of conflict between the houses of France and Austria.

The Middle Ages ended with the end of the independence of the great principalities that were the Duchy of Burgundy (1482) and the Duchy of Brittany (defeated in 1488, reincorporated in 1491 and formally united to the kingdom in 1532).

Modern Age

Affirmation of royal power

France in 1477

From the end of the 15th century to the middle of the XVI, French foreign policy was dominated mainly by the wars in Italy. The Valois sought to assert the rights inherited from their ancestors over the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan. In 60 years, the Valois conquered and lost Naples four times and the duchy of Milan six times. Ultimately, they abandoned their ambitions in Italy. There are several explanations for the usefulness of these expeditions that inevitably ended in failure, including the lure of the wealth and culture of prestigious Italian cities, as well as the desire to control routes that would threaten Habsburg interests in the south. In the 16th century, military strategies focused on the idea of the offensive frontier, which consisted of occupying support points to prevent the advance of the enemy rather than expand the territory of the kingdom.

Francisco I de France

In 1519, Carlos I, King of Spain since 1516, inherited the possessions of the Habsburgs (Austrian Empire, Netherlands, Franche-Comté). France was the obstacle to overcome to territorially unify her territories. The emperor also had inexhaustible reserves of gold and silver from the Spanish colonies in America. Francis I of France ran for election to the Holy Roman Empire in vain to limit Habsburg influence and also failed to forge an alliance with Henry VIII of England. Beginning in 1521, France went to war long and difficult in Italy, which began with the disaster of Pavia in February 1525, where Francis I was taken prisoner. The king was forced to sign the Treaty of Madrid in 1526, which amputated a third of the territory of France, but resumed the war once released. In 1529, in the peace of Cambrai, he relinquished the sovereignty of Flanders and Artois, two possessions of Charles V, while he renounced Burgundy. Although he fought the Protestant Reformation in his kingdom, Francis I allied himself with the German Protestant princes and even the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman the Magnificent, against the Habsburgs. Henry II continued his father's fight, and recaptured Boulonnais and pale de Calais from the English. In exchange for his support of the German Protestant princes, at war with Emperor Charles V, he obtained the right to occupy Calais, Metz, Toul, and Verdun. In 1559, the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis finally established peace between France and Spain.

In the 16th century warfare was considerably transformed. Artillery, whose role was decisive in naval battles and sieges, began to be used in combat in the open field. France, in order to retain its power in the European game, not only had to maintain a standing army (the compagnies d'ordonnance created by Charles VII), but also possess solid artillery and build fortresses capable of to resist the new techniques of warfare.

Renaissance Loire Castles: Montsoreau, Blois, Chenonceau and Chambord.

The Italian Renaissance reached France through the Italian Wars. Francis I brought Leonardo da Vinci to his court. The Loire castles were built at this time: Blois, Chambord, Chenonceau and Montsoreau.  French sculpture, painting and architecture are transformed under the influence of the Italian model and give rise to the French Renaissance, whose most recognized school would be the from Fontainebleau school. Francis I was the first king of France to understand that the artistic splendor of a country is an element of glory and power. Understanding the importance of colonial possessions, Francisco I financed distant expeditions. In 1534 the Breton Jacques Cartier discovered New France, which would later become Canada.

Jacques Cartier in Canada.

All of the above cost quite dearly. The size (tax) multiplied four times throughout the XVI century, going from 5 to 20 million pounds. However, fiscal resources were insufficient to finance the expenses. The kings of France resorted to loans –the debt doubled between 1522 and 1550–; to bankruptcy in 1558 and 1567, which made it possible to cancel certain debts, but above all to renegotiate payments, and the venality of charges. A position was a public function whose holders were immovable from 1467 and were sold in the name of the king. Although venality had existed since the 15th century, Louis XII and Francis I developed it systematically. With venality, the official inheritance was established little by little with the creation of the paulette in 1604, an annual tax that was 1/60 of the purchase value of the charge. The advantages were obvious in providing kings with quick inflows of money, but there were also drawbacks.

During the reign of Francis I, Auvergne was definitively incorporated into the royal domain. Henry IV acquired Bresse, Bugey, the country of Gex, which placed him in a position to interfere with communications between the Habsburg possessions. At first, he refused to unite his personal fiefs to the crown under the pretext of preserving the interests of his sister. The Parliament of Paris refused, in 1590, to register the letters that separated the patrimonial assets of the Navarre family and the royal domain. After the death of his sister, Henry IV accepted the integration of his fiefs into the royal domain. Also in the XVI century, the theory of the inalienability of royal domain was forged: the king could not give fiefdoms to the his minor children.

The Wars of Religion

The San Bartolome massacre.

The reigns of the three sons of Henry II, Francis II (1559-1560), Charles IX (1560-1574) and Henry III (1574-1589) were marked by religious wars between Protestants and Catholics. The reform had spread progressively in France from 1520, to the point that in 1562, the year the eight wars of religion began, one tenth of the population was Protestant. Calvinism, whose followers in France were called Huguenots, had their main strongholds in Normandy and the southwest of the country.

Key character of the wars of religion: Catalina de Médici, Enrique III, Enrique de Guisa and Enrique IV.

Henry II's sons were weak kings, and the widowed queen Catherine de' Medici assumed power as regent for the first two. She is credited with instigating the Saint Bartholomew massacre on August 24, 1572, and the following days, when Protestants were attacked in their own homes, resulting in several thousand casualties in Paris and the provinces. The civil war was also a great threat to territorial unity. The Protestants promised Elizabeth I of England to restore the Calais pale in exchange for her intervention, while the reaction of the Catholics, led by the Catholic League, obtained the support of Philip II of Spain. In addition, the agitation allowed the parties involved to arrogate parcels of the State's royalties. The Catholic princes were very powerful in the regions where they obtained the government, such as the Guises in Burgundy and the Montmorency in Languedoc. Beaulieu's edict of 1576 allowed Protestants to worship publicly except in Paris. They were able to occupy eight strongholds and benefited from parity chambers (chambres mi-parties, courts of justice with half Protestant and half Catholic magistrates) in parliaments. The Protestants were thus able to establish a Huguenot state within the French state.

The religious wars ended with the War of the Three Henrys. Duke Henry I of Guise, head of the Catholic League, confronted King Henry III over his agreements with the Huguenots. The power of Guise, an ally of Spain and with strong popular support, became a threat to the king, who ordered his assassination in 1588. In retaliation, the monk Jacques Clément assassinated the king six months later. The throne, without an heir from the Valois branch, then passed to a collateral branch, the Bourbons, in the person of Henry IV, once King of Navarre. However, being a Protestant, Henry IV was not recognized by the Catholics of the League, so he had to convert to Catholicism in 1593.

Consolidating his power, Henry IV put an end to the religious wars by promulgating the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which recognized Catholicism as the official religion of France, but granted civil rights and privileges to the protestants. Helped by his minister Sully, Henry IV strove to rebuild the kingdom, hard hit by the wars of religion. When Henry IV was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic in 1610, he bequeathed to his son Louis XIII a considerably strengthened kingdom.

The Great Century

France ' s territorial gains between 1552 and 1798

Grand Century (Grand Siècle) refers to the XVII century, which constitutes one one of the richest periods in the history of France. With the end of the wars of religion, royal authority was reestablished. During this period, marked by absolute monarchy, the kingdom of France marked Europe in a lasting way thanks to its military expansion or its increasingly dominant cultural influence. The French language, art, fashion and literature spread throughout Europe.

Louis XIII

Cardinal Richelieu in the siege of the Rochela, during the Hugonote rebellions.

Louis XIII was only nine years old when his father Henry IV was assassinated in 1610. His mother, Marie de' Medici, ruled with her favorites and neglected the young king's education. Louis XIII removed his mother from power in 1617 by assassinating his favorite Concini. From 1624, Louis XIII reigned closely with his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, whom he supports against the intrigues of the nobles, who resented being excluded from power. Louis XIII led a policy of taming the great lords of the kingdom (for example, the affair of the Count of Chalais in 1626), of hardening towards the Protestants, from whom he managed to snatch the strongholds that the Edict of Nantes had granted them. He installed administrations of justice, police and finance in the provinces. Unlike the officers, the intendants had revocable charges. They were indispensable in border regions or in French-occupied areas, and they ensured order by fighting looting by French soldiers and winning the allegiance of nobles and cities. The king accentuated centralization by favoring the minting shop in Paris to the detriment of those in the provinces.

In 1620 religious conflicts continued. The Huguenots proclaimed a constitution for the "Republic of the Reformed Churches of France" and Minister Richelieu used all the force of the State to stop them. He forced the Protestants to dismantle their army and forts. This conflict ended with the siege of La Rochelle (1627-1628), in which the Huguenots and their English allies were defeated. The 1629 Peace of Alais confirmed religious freedom but dismantled the Huguenot military defenses.

Since 1635, Louis XIII and Cardinal de Richelieu entered the Thirty Years' War alongside the German Protestant princes in order to reduce the power of the Habsburgs, both in Spain, the leading European power at the time, as in Austria, the head of the Holy Roman Empire. To weaken the Habsburgs, the French occupied strongholds and secured the passes that connected them with their allies in Alsace, Lorraine, and Piedmont. The considerable increase in tax pressure due to the war led to numerous popular uprisings, such as the Saintonge-Périgord crocantes (1636-1637) and the Normandy va-nu-pieds (1639), severely suppressed.

Louis XIV

Cardinal Mazarino.

When Louis XIII died in 1643, his son Louis XIV was four years old. His mother Anne of Austria assumed the regency together with Cardinal Mazarin. The latter is the one who governed effectively until 1661, the date of his death, even after Louis XIV came of age. Mazarin continued the war effort started by Richelieu. French troops won decisive victories that brought the Thirty Years' War to an end in 1648. The Treaty of Münster of 1648 gave France almost all of Alsace, confirmed possession of the three bishoprics, and granted it three fortresses on the right bank of the Rhine: Landau, Philippsburg and Breisach. Mazarin also continued the policy of controlling the passes to the Holy Roman Empire. The conflict would continue with Spain until 1659. With the peace of the Pyrenees, the royal domain was extended with the acquisition of Roussillon, Artois and certain places in Hainaut, such as Thionville and Montmédy, the Pyrenees were established as the border between France and Spain and Louis XIV married the Spanish Infanta Maria Teresa of Austria. During the king's minority, the Fronde (1648-1653) took place, a series of rebellions caused by increased taxes that turned the government against princes, courts and most of the people. The Fronde was the last attempt by the nobility to counter the king's power, and its failure further strengthened the monarchy.

Louis XIV.

Neuf-Brisach, one of the fortresses of Vauban, the chief military engineer of Louis XIV.

On Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis XIV declared that he would rule alone, that is, without a prime minister. He demanded strict obedience from his secretaries of state and forbade them to decide without him. To ensure the obedience of his ministers, he chose them from among the bourgeoisie, as is the case with Colbert and Le Tellier. The reign of Louis XIV marked an extreme centralization of royal power. The big decisions were taken by the superior council, which met two or three times a week and had no more than 3 to 5 ministers. The intendants became more than ever the voice of the king in the provinces. From the beginning of his personal reign in 1661, Louis XIV reinstated royal authority. The governors of the provinces, coming from the high nobility, no longer had an army at their disposal and had to reside in the courts, which made clientelism more difficult. With Colbert, the king undertook a judicial reform and had a series of ordinances or codes applicable throughout the kingdom drawn up. Not being sure of the fidelity of the officers who had hereditary charges, the king entrusted their functions to commissioners with revocable charges. This procedure ended up forcing the officials to obey the king. The nobility lost all political power and their main concern since then was to be noticed by the king. To do this, he had to spend excessively and request pensions from the king to ensure his lavish lifestyle.

The palace of Versailles, symbol of the absolute monarchy and the French might during the Old Regime.

Louis XIV believed that war was the natural vocation of a king. However, at the beginning of his reign the army was still a private enterprise monopolized by the nobility. Under Le Tellier and after Louvois, officers were controlled by civil administrators who applied strict regulations and stripped them of much of their power. Efforts to modernize and discipline the army enabled Louis XIV to win important victories in the early part of his personal reign. The War of Devolution (1667-1668) allowed him to conquer new strongholds in northern France, such as Dunkirk, Lille and Douai. The Treaties of Nijmegen in 1678 ended the Franco-Dutch War. Louis XIV was unable to defeat the Netherlands, but acquired the Franche-Comté of Spain. Through exchanges of strongholds, the northern border was regularized. In the years 1680 and 1681 Louis XIV carried out a & # 34; meeting policy & # 34;, through which he took over the rural areas that surrounded the strongholds acquired in treaties with other countries. During the period of peace, he annexed, among others, Nancy and Strasbourg. This policy involved France in two conflicts. After the War of the Reunions (1684-1685), France won Luxembourg from Spain and Strasbourg from the Holy Empire. The War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) confirmed French possession of Alsace, but France had to evacuate Luxembourg, Catalonia and the Palatinate.

On October 22, 1685, by the Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes of 1598. Protestantism was outlawed in France, its churches and schools were destroyed, and its faithful had to convert to Catholicism or emigrate. Between 140,000 and 160,000 chose this option.

In 1701 the War of the Spanish Succession began. Louis XIV's grandson, Philip of Anjou, was designated heir to the Spanish throne as Philip V. Emperor Leopold opposed the Bourbons' extension of their power in Europe and claimed the Spanish throne for himself. Leopold counted on the alliance of England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The allies were victorious at the Battle of Blenheim (1704) and had some Pyrrhic victories at the bloody battles of Ramillies (1706) and Malplaquet (1709), where they lost too many men to continue the war. Commanded by Villars, the French recovered in battles such as Denain (1712). Finally, an agreement was reached with the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. Philip of Anjou was confirmed as Philip V of Spain, but he renounced the throne of France.

The Age of Enlightenment

Louis XV

Duke Philip of Orleans.

Louis XV.

Louis XV reigned from 1715 to 1774. Having been five years old on the death of his great-grandfather Louis XIV, power was entrusted to a regency council led by Duke Philippe II of Orleans. This made the parliament of Paris annul the testament of the late king, which limited his power. In exchange, he restored to Parliament the right of reprimand, a power that Louis XIV had withdrawn from it and which Parliament would use throughout the XVIIIth century as a means of challenging the monarchy. The era was marked by the relaxation of morale, the economic boom and speculation. The taste for exotic products favored the development of Atlantic ports. Colonial product merchants, the monarchy, and slave traders made great fortunes, and colonists imported products made in France. At this time the port of Nantes developed and slave traders built imposing buildings in Nantes, Bordeaux and La Rochelle. Under the regency of the Duke of Orleans, France entered the War of the Quadruple Alliance against Spain. Philip V of Spain withdrew from the conflict, confronted with the reality that Spain was no longer a great power in Europe.

When the regent died in 1723, Louis XV relied on one of his ministers, Fleury, his former tutor and in whom he had complete confidence, until his death in 1743, the date on which the king took over the reins power. In his reign, France expanded. In 1735, after the War of the Polish Succession, Lorraine, a sovereign principality occupied several times by France, was donated to Stanislaus Leszczyński, father-in-law of Louis XV who had been expelled from the Polish throne by Russia and Austria. On his death in 1766, Lorraine entered the royal domain. Corsica, de facto independent since 1755, was symbolically ceded to France by the Republic of Genoa in 1768 and then subjugated militarily after the Battle of Ponte Nuovo in May 1769. Years earlier, in 1762, the Dombes region had also joined the royal domain. During the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, a policy of simplification and regularization of the borders was carried out, with which places were exchanged with neighboring states to avoid French exclaves outside the borders and foreign enclaves in France. In 1789 there were only three foreign enclaves on French territory: Avignon and the Venetian County, which belonged to the pope, the principality of Montbéliard and the republic of Mulhouse.

In the 18th century the theory of France's natural borders was forged: the Atlantic Ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, the Alps, the Meuse and the Rhine. However, this theory does not seem to have been the official doctrine of the State at that time, since Louis XV rejected the annexation of the Austrian Netherlands (present-day Belgium) several times, which remained within those limits.

Military school, Paris.

Plaza de la Bolsa, Bordeaux.

Stanislas Square, Nancy.

In 1740, the War of the Austrian Succession broke out. The war raged in North America, India, and Europe, and inconclusive terms were agreed upon in the Treaty of Aachen (1748). Prussia was becoming a threat, since she had gained substantial territory at the expense of Austria. This led to the diplomatic revolution of 1756, in which the alliances of the previous war were mostly reversed. France was now allied with Austria and Russia, while Great Britain was allied with Prussia. This end of the conflict was not seen as a peace, but as a mere truce.

The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) pitted France against Great Britain. In North America, France had some temporary successes in alliance with various Amerindian peoples, but was defeated at the Battle of Quebec. In Europe, he tried in vain several times to subdue Hannover, and with her allies Russia and Austria he was about to destroy Prussia, but the Anglo-Prussian alliance was saved by the miracle of the House of Brandenburg. At sea, France suffered defeats at Lagos and Quiberon Bay in 1759, and a blockade forced French ships to remain in port. Peace was concluded in the Treaty of Paris (1763) in which France lost its empire with the loss of New France and India, where it only kept Yanaon, Chandernagor, Karikal, Mahé and Pondicherry, against its rival Great Britain.

The state's biggest problem is the chronic budget deficit, which makes the king dependent on financiers and money managers. Another source of paralysis was the opposition of the parliament, which is positioned as defender of the laws of the kingdom and as a counterbalancing power. By opposing any attempt to reform the kingdom, Parliament contributed to the crisis of the absolute monarchy during the reign of Louis XVI.

Louis XVI

Louis XVI.

Louis XV's grandson, Louis XVI, came to power in 1774. Shy by nature, he lived at a court permeated by intrigue and cabals. His reign was marked by fickle politics. Faced with pressure from the court, parliaments and the nobility, the king is incapable of taking the necessary measures to remedy an excessive public debt and budget deficit.

Having lost its colonial empire, France saw an opportunity to exact revenge on Great Britain by making an alliance with the Americans in 1778 and sending an army and navy to the Thirteen Colonies. Admiral Grasse defeated a British fleet in the Chesapeake Bay while the Comte de Rochambeau and the Marquis de Lafayette joined American forces in defeating the British at Yorktown. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris (1783) and American independence, but with large debts for France.

Despite attempts at administrative centralization, the country was not unified. There were internal customs between the provinces and there was no unit of weights and measures. All this hampered the economic development of France at a time when England was in full industrial boom. Taxes were not collected in the same way throughout the country, even when the mayors supervised the distribution and collection. Despite the efforts undertaken by Francisco I with the Villers-Cotterêts ordinance, the laws were not the same throughout the kingdom. The north was still governed by customary law (uses and customs), with just over 300 customs, while the south was governed by written law, inspired by Roman law. The Old Regime had the custom not to suppress anything, but to superimpose. In this way, in the 1780s there was a tangle of circumscriptions with different sizes and functions: dioceses of Antiquity, bailiwicks and stewards of the Middle Ages and generalities of the century XVI. For example, an inhabitant of Saint Mesnin resided in the bailiwick of Semur, paid his taxes at the Semur tax office, and was subject to the sub-delegate of Vitteaux and the Bishop of Dijon. If he had any business with waters or forests, he should go to Avallon; if he needed consular justice, his trip would take him to Saulieu. This confusion is explained by the manner in which the royal domain was formed. With each acquisition, the kings promised to respect the privileges and customs of the provinces and cities. At the dawn of the revolution, regional particularities were still very much alive.

The French Enlightenment

Leaders of the French Enlightenment: Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Diderot

From the end of the XVIII century and throughout the following France would be the epicenter of intellectual trends known under the term of the Enlightenment, the prelude to the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

The "philosophers" they were French intellectuals who dominated the French Enlightenment and were influential throughout Europe. Their interests were diverse, and there were experts in science, literature, philosophy, and sociology. His goal was human progress. Concentrating on social and material sciences, they believed that a rational society was the only logical outcome of a free-thinking and congruent population. They also defended deism and religious tolerance. Many believed that religion had been a source of conflict since time immemorial and that logical and rational thought was the way forward for humanity.

In the first half of the 18th century the movement was dominated by Voltaire and Montesquieu, but the movement grew as the century progressed. In general, philosophers were inspired by the thoughts of René Descartes, the skepticism of the libertines and the popularization of science by Bernard de Fontenelle. Sectarian dissensions within the church, the gradual weakening of the absolute monarch, and Louis XIV's numerous wars allowed his influence to spread throughout Europe, in what is known as enlightened despotism. Between 1748 and 1751 the philosophers reached their most influential period, with Montesquieu (The Spirit of Laws, 1748) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the moral effects of arts and sciences, 1750).

The philosopher Denis Diderot was the chief editor of one of the greatest achievements of the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedia (1751-1752), a reference work with 72,000 articles that sparked a revolution in the Learning in the Enlightenment World.

Contemporary Age

French Revolution

It was a social and political process that took place between 1789 and 1799 whose main consequences were the abolition of the absolute monarchy and the proclamation of the Republic, eliminating the economic and social bases of the Old Regime. Although the political organization of France oscillated between republic, empire and monarchy for 75 years after the First Republic fell after Napoleon's coup, the truth is that the revolution marked the definitive end of absolutism and gave birth to a new regime where the citizenry, and sometimes the popular masses, became the dominant political force in the country.

National Assembly and Constituent Assembly (1789-1791)

The oath of the ball game, June 20, 1789

Bastille Take, 14 July 1789

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789

Unable to establish a universal tax, Louis XVI convened the Estates General on 5 May 1789 at Versailles. The Third Estate managed to have double representation, but their votes were not double counted. Due to this situation, the third estate broke with the Estates General and with the support of some members of the clergy and the nobility decided to establish itself as the National Assembly, a legislative body erected as the representative of the nation.

Louis XVI closed the Estates room, in an attempt to prevent the Assembly from meeting. This, with the support of some members of the nobility and the clergy, managed to meet and proclaim the oath of the ball game in a nearby building in Versailles, on June 20, 1789, in which its members swore to stay together until endowing the kingdom. of a constitution. On July 9, the Assembly adopted the name of the National Constituent Assembly.

Faced with political instability and economic crisis, Paris fell into anarchy. The concentration of royal troops in Versailles, Paris and the surrounding area, and the dismissal of the economy minister Necker for having supported the Assembly raised fears that a coup d'état was being prepared. The Parisian voters met on July 13 to form bourgeois militias, whose symbol was the bicolor cockade, the traditional colors of Paris. The next day, July 14, 1789, the insurgents, supported by these militias, launched to take the Bastille prison, which served as a depot for weapons and ammunition and at the same time was a symbol of monarchical tyranny. This event is celebrated every year as the national holiday of France. The insurgents then targeted the Paris City Hall and executed its ruler, Jacques de Flesselles.

March of women to the palace of Versailles.

On July 15, Bailly, then president of the Assembly, is appointed the first mayor of Paris under a new government structure known as the Paris Commune. The bourgeois militias change their name to the National Guard, whose commander is Lafayette. The king accepted the new order born of the revolution when he visited the Assembly on July 16, 1789, and the following day the Paris City Hall, where he agreed to wear the cockade bicolor. On July 27, the bicolor cockade was changed to tricolor at the proposal of Lafayette, where the white stripe represented the king. This would be the antecedent of the flag of France. Despite peace being reached between the king and the insurgents, violent peasant rebellions called "the great fear" broke out in the interior of the country. In addition, various members of the nobility, the clergy and even the bourgeoisie Unwilling to accept the changes, they went abroad in search of support to fight the revolution: they are called émigrés. In August, the Assembly published several decrees, among which the recognition of the king and the abolition of privileges stand out., feudalism, serfdom and tithing, as well as the declaration of the rights of man and the citizen. In October 1789 a crowd led by women marched on the Palace of Versailles to protest the shortage of bread; after which the royal family and the Assembly were forced to settle in the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

The following year —1790— the Assembly replaced the old provinces with 80 departments of similar size and population, eliminated internal customs, established the metric system as the unit of measurement, eliminated guilds, and established free enterprise and equal rights for Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, nationalized Church property, and drew up the civil constitution for the clergy. These measures were largely opposed by most clergy in the Normandy, Brittany, and Vendée regions. where the civilian population, deeply Catholic, was hostile to the revolution. The refractory clergy —who did not swear to the constitution— were persecuted.

In June 1791 the royal family secretly left Paris for the north-eastern border with the aim of meeting with royalist troops, but could only reach Varennes, where they were discovered, forced to return to Paris and remain in the the Tuileries Palace in a sort of home prison. The escape from Varennes caused a division among the revolutionaries, between those who wanted to maintain the monarchy and those who wanted to abolish it. In the massacre of the Champ de Mars on July 17, 1791 Lafayette, under the orders of the Assembly, fired into a crowd demanding the republic. After the massacre, the Assembly ordered the closure of radical newspapers, such as Marat's Friend of the People, and persecuted to Republican politicians, until he applied the amnesty in September.

The Assembly drafted the constitution on September 3, 1791, of a monarchical nature, which established the division of powers: executive, legislative and judicial; ratified the decrees of 1789 and 1790, established census suffrage and secular education. Sovereignty rested with the people and no longer with the monarch, who became "king of the French" Instead of & # 34; King of France & # 34;, he was the head of the executive branch, his position was quite limited, but he had veto power. Louis XVI was sworn in on the constitution on September 13.

Legislative Assembly (1791-1792)

Queen Marie Antoinette in front of the crowd at the Tuileries Palace on June 20, 1792.

Assault on the Tuileries on August 10, 1792.

On October 1, 1791, the Legislative Assembly was formed, elected from among 4.3 million men who paid a certain minimum amount of taxes. On April 20, 1792, the Assembly voted to declare war on Austria, thus it would be the start of the French Revolutionary Wars. Later that same month, France invaded and conquered the Austrian Netherlands.

The Assembly was made up of the right: the club of the feuillants —monarchical spokesmen for the upper bourgeoisie—, the left, coming from the clubs of the Jacobins (moderate left) and cordeliers (radical left) —middle bourgeoisie and close to the common people—, and the largest group, called the center or "constitutional party".

On June 12, 1792, the King vetoed the decrees of the Assembly on the deportation of refractory clergy and the creation of a national guard camp to defend Paris. This attitude led to a demonstration at the Tuileries Palace on June 20, 1792. In this episode, the sans-culottes became relevant, popular militias that forced the king to wear the Phrygian cap, but the monarch did not reverse his veto. Prussia to the war on the side of Austria on July 6 caused the Assembly to ignore the royal veto and summon all volunteers to defend Paris. The Brunswick manifesto, drawn up on July 25, 1792, was a Prussian threat to the population of Paris if the King of France and his family were harmed, it ended up ruining the reputation of the King, who was accused of collaborating with the enemy. On August 10, 1792, a violent attack by citizens and members of the national guard against the Tuileries Palace occurred. This attack organized by the Paris Commune massacred the Swiss Guard and forced the royal family to take refuge in the Assembly. This temporarily suspended the constitutional function of the king and called for elections. Since then, the Assembly has lost power and the commune, dominated by Jacobins and allied with the sans-culottes and declared a rebel, exercises a de facto government.

In early September 1792, hundreds of Parisians fired by the French defeat at Verdun, rebellions in the west, and rumors of conspiracies between prisoners and politicians and the foreign enemy, attacked the prisons and executed between 1,000 and 1,400 prisoners.   Marat, a radical republican politician close to the lower social strata, incited the example of Paris to be followed in the provinces. Both the Assembly and the Paris Commune were unable to prevent the massacres. The elections were carried out held between 2 and 19 September.

National Convention

Girondin rule (1792-1793)

Battle of Valmy, first great victory of revolutionary France.

Execution of Louis XVI on January 21, 1793.

Vendée War, the main counterrevolutionary insurgency in western France.

Arrest of the Girandinos on June 2, 1793.

After the elections of September 1792, the National Convention replaced the Legislative Assembly. The Convention had its first meeting on September 20, when the first French republic was established, which coincided with the first major French victory at Valmy under Dumouriez. The convention was made up of the right or Girondins (mostly former Jacobins), the left or highlanders (Jacobins and cordeliers), and the majority, called the center or plain, without a defined ideology. The Convention created the republic and the republican calendar, which replaced the Christian Gregorian calendar and the year 1792 was renamed the year I.

The time of the National Convention was marked by the revolutionary wars, which threatened the existence of the republic both abroad and at home, and by the rivalry between the Girondins and the Montagnards. The Girondins, who dominated the first months thanks to the support of the plain, fought for respect for the institutions, to stop the agitations of the sans-culottes , contain the Paris Commune and create a decentralized government.. They accused the mountaineers of the September massacres and of wanting to establish a dictatorship, while encouraging rebellions against promontanes governments in the province. They established measures in favor of emigrants and suspects and tried to save the life of the king, actions that the mountaineers judged counterrevolutionary.

Militarily, it seemed that peace would be achieved, but the Girondins sought to spread the revolution outside of France. The former King Louis XVI was tried, sentenced and executed by guillotine in January 1793, after which he began the war of the first coalition (1792-1797), which in addition to Austria and Prussia joined Great Britain and Spain. France was invaded by four countries at the same time. The levy of 300,000 men provoked riots and from March 10 to 15, 1793, the Vendée War broke out, an insurrection in defense of the Catholic religion and the monarchy. France suffered a defeat by Austria at Neerwinden in March 1793 and General Dumouriez went over to the enemy side. His desertion and the civil war began to put the plain on the side of the mountaineers: the laws against emigrants and refractories were aggravated, the law of the maximum general was drafted —which established maximum prices to basic products—, the revolutionary court was organized and on April 6 the Public Safety Committee was created, made up of 9 and later 12 members of the Convention, which would be in charge of executive functions.

The highlanders plotted a coup with the support of the sans-culottes and the National Guard that became effective with the insurrection of May 31 and the decree of June 2, 1793 that he expelled the Girondins and ordered their arrest.

Jacobin rule (1793-1794)

Robespierre

Execution of emigrés in the guillotine, during the reign of terror

Nantes’ acronyms of 1793, part of the repression against counterrevolutionary rebels

Festival of the Supreme Being in Paris, June 8, 1794

The Highlanders came to power and established an extremely centralized government in which decisions were made by the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre, coming from the Jacobin club, would end up dominating the committee and setting the agenda for the Convention. The Jacobin government, which had the support of the masses, adopted urgent economic measures to deal with food shortages, hoarding and speculation were punished with death, price controls were applied, certain concessions were made to the popular classes, slavery was abolished and a new declaration of the rights of man and citizen was drafted. On June 24, 1793, the constitution of the year I was adopted, democratic and decentralized, which established universal male suffrage and the right to insurrection, which, however, would never come into force when the government declared itself in a revolutionary state until the peace. Mass conscription was instituted, recruiting 420,000 soldiers and the army increased to over 600,000 men.

During the government of the Committee of Public Salvation, there were de-Christianization movements that tried to replace the Catholic faith: they are the religions of the cult of reason (1793-1794), which included iconoclasm, the closure of churches or their conversion to temples of the reason, and the cult of the supreme being —a non-Christian deist religion—; the latter an initiative of Robespierre from 1794.

In the summer of 1793, there was opposition in most departments to the course the revolution had taken. Several rebellions broke out: Lyon, Toulon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Brittany and Caen, while in the Vendée the rebels won major battles. Some surviving Girondins encouraged rebellions, and Marat was assassinated on July 13. To combat the counterrevolution, the Convention approved the Law of Suspects on September 17, 1793, which ordered the arrest of opponents of the government. This decree would be one of the causes of the death sentence before the revolutionary court of some 17,000 people until July 1794, within the phase known as the reign of terror. The criteria to be tried by the court were vast and ambiguous and the trial was final.

The civil war ended with the defeat of the Vendeans at the Battle of Le Mans on December 12, 1793, at the same time as the British-backed Toulon rebellion was put down. A month earlier, the rebellions in Normandy, Bordeaux and Lyon had been put down. The repression that followed was brutal. Some historians consider that the civil war cost 450,000 victims.

In addition to harsh repression against the rebels, terror became a weapon against Robespierre's political rivals and rebels as well as the extreme left (Hébert's exaggerated) and moderate (Hébert's indulgent) mountain factions were executed. Danton). With the law of 22 de pradial (June 10, 1794) the persecution became even more severe and the defendant's ability to defend himself was limited.

Meanwhile, the war was going well. France won victories against Austria and Britain in May and June 1794, opening Belgium to French conquest. Within a year, the Jacobins had defeated the counter-revolution, but lost popular support by failing to meet basic lower-class demands, while sectors of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry enriched themselves with the sale of state assets.

Thermidorian reaction (1794-1795)

Robespierre's fall.

The Thermidorian reaction was a movement in response to terror, so named for the month in the republican calendar in which it began, in 1794. Robespierre began to face growing opposition from the plain within the Committee of Public Safety and when in a speech threatened to start a purge against members of the Convention, this ordered their arrest on 9 Thermidor of the year II (26 July 1794). Robespierre, 21 of his allies, including Saint-Just and Couthon, were beheaded two days later, and the next day 71 members of the Paris Commune, putting an end to the terror and insurrection of the commune.

After the fall of Robespierre, conservative Republicans dominated the National Convention. During this Thermidorian government, the laws of terror were repealed, numerous "suspects" were released, freedom of worship was restored, monarchist demonstrations were tolerated and peace was sought with the rebels (the chuanes), the mountaineers and the sans-culottes lose influence. The Jacobin club was closed in November 1794 and in the winter white terror broke out against the Jacobins and their allies. war and rising prices, the government was unpopular and several popular insurrections broke out, the most important of which was the occupation of the Convention by sans-culottes on May 20, 1795, which included the support of the mountaineers, but the rebels were defeated, after which a wave of repression was unleashed. legislative would be bic ameral and the executive would be exercised by a board of five people. The new constitution was regressive in terms of rights, such as public assistance, basic education and work. Although the Thermidorians sought to annul democratic conquests, they did not want the return of the Old Regime, from whose fall they had benefited. An émigré landing at Quiberon was defeated in July 1795, and a royalist rebellion was put down in Paris on 5 October. Peace was signed with Prussia, the Netherlands, and Spain between April and July 1795.

Directory (1795-1799)

General Napoleon Bonaparte in the Council of the Fifth.

The board of directors was made up of two legislative chambers: the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Elders. Both met in different parts of the Tuileries Palace. Executive power, based in the Luxembourg Palace, was shared by five directors chosen from among the chambers. To avoid a dictatorship, a director and a third of the chambers would be renewed each year through elections. The constitution established a strict separation of powers and these had specific functions and could not interact with each other. The problem was that no procedure was foreseen in case of disagreement between the powers.

The four years of the board of directors were marked by the financial crisis, economic liberation, corruption, the prevalence of the bourgeoisie, rebellions and plots, coups d'état and the fight against both Jacobins and Catholics and royalists. Of these events, the conspiracy of the equals stands out, a proto-socialist rebellion of 1796, the coup d'état of Fructidor 18 of the year V (September 4, 1797), which annulled the election that gave victory to the royalists, and the floreal laws of the year VI (May 1798), which invalidated elections favorable to the Jacobins and discredited the directory. Policies of persecution against emigrants and refractories were reactivated and the de-Christianization of society was once again attempted. The era of directory was the extension of the Thermidorian reaction with a new constitution that would be violated by the government itself to establish a dictatorship.

The directory was a time of military turmoil. In 1796 France went on the offensive against Austria through Germany, but it was the Italian campaign, led by General Bonaparte, that forced peace with Austria in 1797. Conquests in the Rhineland, Belgium, and much of Italy shaped sister republics with institutions modeled on the French. The Papal States were invaded in February 1798 and Pope Pius VI died a prisoner in France. That same year Bonaparte undertook the Egyptian campaign, in order to cut off communication between Great Britain and India, but caused the formation of the Second Coalition against the republic, made up of Russia, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, Naples and again Austria. In 1799, when the French armies were experiencing some setbacks, General Bonaparte returned to France and supported by the director Sieyès, his brother Lucien Bonaparte and the revisionist republicans carried out the coup d'état on 18 Brumaire of the year VIII (November 9, 1799), which put an end to the directory and the French Revolution.

Napoleonic France

The Consulate

Napoleon crossing the Alps (1801).

After the Brumaire coup d'état that put an end to the French Revolution, the constitution of the year VIII (December 24, 1799) was drawn up, which granted the power of the republic to a Consulate of three people. In practice, the first consul - General Napoleon Bonaparte - exercised the powers of a dictator, while the legislative branch would have merely decorative functions. Bonaparte chose ministers and a Council of State, which constituted the executive arm of his government. The general came to power amid great popularity thanks to his military victories during the revolution. Already as consul, he increased his prestige by winning the battle of Marengo and achieving peace with Austria (February 9, 1801) and with the United Kingdom (March 25, 1802). The "natural frontiers of France" to the Rhine, as well as the four sister republics: Bátava (Netherlands), Helvetica (Switzerland), Cisalpina and Ligur (Italy).

During the Consulate, universal suffrage was abolished and local elections disappeared in the French departments. At the same time, a police state headed by Minister Fouché was established; The press was censored, several laws of the revolution were repealed, control over the workers was maintained, and taxes were increased. On the other hand, the bourgeoisie, industry, commerce and agriculture were supported, finances were reorganized and the Bank of France was created. One of the main legacies was the Napoleonic code, in force since March 21, 1804, which definitively dismantled the feudal laws of the Old Regime; it was progressive compared to the European laws of the time, but regressive in terms of the civil rights of the revolutionary laws.

Bonaparte, an enemy of both radical revolutionaries and the feudal monarchy, nonetheless sought reconciliation and peace in France. The Concordat of 1801 was signed with the Pope, which recognized the pre-eminence of the Catholic Church, returned some assets seized in the revolution and established a salary for the clergy by the State, while the Pope recognized the civil authority to designate the high clergy. The Republican calendar was also abolished. Amnesty was granted to émigrés, but the ultra royalist faction continued in exile.

Napoleonic Empire

Napoleon's coronation.

Europe in 1812, with the French Empire in its apogee, its vassal states (blue), and its allies.

Battle of Austerlitz.

Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself emperor of France and was crowned on December 2, 1804 in Paris in the presence of the pope. The monarchy returned after 12 years and a new imperial nobility was created among those close to the emperor.

Empire did not mean peace. Instead, France would be permanently at war over Napoleon's desire to extend his empire over all of Europe. The Napoleonic Wars would be the continuation of the Revolutionary Wars. France became the first world power. Napoleon demonstrated unprecedented military talent, spreading the war across Europe and taking over half the continent.

The war restarted in 1805, this time against the United Kingdom, Austria, Russia, Naples and Sweden, in the so-called third coalition. France and its ally Spain suffered a resounding naval defeat at the hands of the British at Trafalgar, but Napoleon defeated Russia and Austria at the Battle of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805). After this battle, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist and Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine, which would comprise 35 German states allied to his empire. In 1806 he invaded the kingdom of Naples and bestowed the throne on his brother Joseph Bonaparte, and soon after made his other brother, Louis, king of Holland.

Napoleon in Berlin.

A fourth coalition materialized in 1806 between Russia, the United Kingdom, Saxony, Sweden, and Prussia. Napoleon invaded Prussia in a blitzkrieg and captured Berlin on October 27, 1806. In June the coalition was broken after the Russian defeat at Friedland. The peace of Tilsit was reached on July 7, 1807, in which a Franco-Russian alliance was agreed. One consequence of this war was the continental blockade which was intended to ruin the economy of the United Kingdom.

To make the blockade effective, France invaded Portugal, an ally of the British, in 1807. France had received permission from Carlos IV of Spain to cross his territory, but the transit of troops ended in the occupation of Spain, whose crown It was granted by Napoleon to his brother Joseph. The population rebelled against the French occupation.

The fifth coalition, led by the United Kingdom, succeeded in drawing Austria back into the war in April 1809, but it was defeated again in a swift campaign, after which it ceded more territory to French client states. In addition, Napoleon conquered the Papal States from his former ally Pius VII.

Napoleon in Moscow.

In 1812 Tsar Alexander I of Russia stopped collaborating with France and moved closer to the United Kingdom. Napoleon responded by invading Russia with an army of 685,000 men, the largest army ever assembled. The Russians based their defense on the scorched earth tactic, and Moscow itself was abandoned and burned when the French army arrived. In October Napoleon ordered a withdrawal, which took place in the middle of winter. The war against Russia meant a disaster in loss of lives (90% of the army) and prestige.

The tsar continued the war and in early 1813 joined the sixth coalition with the United Kingdom. In Prussia a nationalist movement arose and the king rebelled against Napoleon. Austria joined the coalition in August. Napoleon managed to gather an army of 500,000 soldiers, most of them teenagers, and invaded Germany. Although he managed to win some battles, he was defeated at Leipzig in the Battle of the Nations on October 16, 1813. The Allies entered France at the end of 1813 and took Paris on March 30, 1814. Napoleon relinquished the crown to him. and his son and went into exile on the island of Elba.

The Congress of Vienna gave France its 1792 borders, which included Savoy, Nice and the Saarland, and the country was able to keep works confiscated abroad. But Napoleon abandoned Elba in 1815 and returned to power in the period known as the Hundred Days (March 20-June 18, 1815), until he was definitively defeated at Waterloo and sent into exile on Saint Helena Island. France paid hard for the Hundred Days, since it lost its acquisitions of 1792 and had to subsidize the occupation of 150,000 foreign soldiers.

Bourbon Restoration

Louis XVIII.

After the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna tried to restore the European political map. However, the foundations of the old Europe had been shaken, and it would never be the same again. Louis XVIII of the Bourbon dynasty and brother of Louis XVI was enthroned. The émigrés and the ultra-realists returned, who tried to return the Old Regime. But the new king was conciliatory, he issued a constitutional charter, which established a constitutional monarchy, and some laws of the revolution and the empire were maintained. The legislative power was made up of two chambers: the Chamber of Deputies, elected by census suffrage, and the Chamber of Peers, elected by the king and for life and hereditary. The time was characterized by the dispute between the party of the ultra-religious and the party of the doctrinaires, the latter of a liberal tendency.

Higher national school of fine arts.

France kept a low profile abroad and only participated in a few minor campaigns: an intervention in Spain in favor of King Ferdinand VII (1823), financing an intervention to restore the Bourbon monarchy in Naples (1815), and the invasion of Algiers (1830).

The Restoration was also a period of relative peace and prosperity. Arts and science flourished, and France maintained a leading role with the founding of institutions such as the National School of Letters (1821), specialized in auxiliary disciplines of history (1829); the Central School of Arts and Manufactures, in engineering, and the School of Fine Arts (1830).

The Restoration was also a period of relative peace and prosperity. Arts and science flourished, and France maintained a leading role with the founding of institutions such as the National School of Letters (1821), specialized in auxiliary disciplines of history (1829); the Central School of Arts and Manufactures, in engineering, and the School of Fine Arts (1830).

When Louis XVIII died childless, he was succeeded by his brother Carlos X, whose ultra-reactionary ideas led him to become enemies with the bourgeoisie, with measures such as compensation for the nobles whose properties had been seized during the revolution and the strengthening of the Church. In 1830, the ultras lost the legislative elections, and their minister Polignac promulgated ordinances, which, among other things, dissolved the Chamber of Deputies and curtailed freedom of the press. Thus a new revolution broke out.

Revolution of 1830

Freedom guiding the peopleEugène Delacroix, an allegory of the revolution of 1830.

Fight against the City HallJean-Victor Schnetz.

Duke Luis Felipe de Orleans heads to the city of Paris in the middle of the barricades. Painting of Horace Vernet.

The background to the 1830 revolution is framed in the government of Carlos X, whose popularity collapsed a few months after he ascended the throne due to his conservative policies. The new king granted new privileges to the Catholic Church, attempted to grant property rights to émigrés from the French Revolution, and to control the press. In this context, the Chamber of Deputies stood up to the king. At the end of 1829 the legislative elections gave victory to the liberals, but Minister Polignac delayed the formation of the chambers until March 1830. When the chambers were finally formed, the majority of the deputies wrote the letter of the 221, in the one who made public their mistrust of the government and expressed their fear of a coup d'état. The king responded by dissolving the chambers on May 16, 1830, and called elections for June 23 and July 19. But in these the liberals obtained a new advantage with greater ease. The king's response was even more severe: through the July ordinances, he established by decree the censorship of the press, the suspension of the cameras and the calling of new elections, from which the middle class was excluded. The general view was that a return to the Old Regime was sought by force by altering the social pact represented by the letter of 1814. On July 26, the police began to seize copies of newspapers that had been published clandestinely.

The unpopularity of the government, coupled with high unemployment, triggered the revolution on Tuesday, July 27, when soldiers in Paris were attacked by insurgents. The king, from the palace of Saint-Cloud, ordered to suppress the rebellion. Several liberal politicians and military members organized a committee proposing the repeal of the July ordinances while endorsing the king, but they were unsuccessful. By July 29, there were more than 4,000 barricades in the streets of Paris, cheering for the republic or Napoleon. The national guard, recently dissolved by the king, had joined the rebellion and Lafayette himself, its founder, supported the popular cause. The main public buildings were taken: the Tuileries, the Louvre, the archiepiscopal palace, the courthouse and the town hall. The revolution lasted only three days (July 26-29), which is why it was called "the three glorious days".

The disorganization of the masses led to the fruits of the revolution being reaped by the bourgeoisie, represented by moderate politicians such as Adolphe Thiers, Jacques Laffitte and Talleyrand, who were inclined to overthrow the king and were supported by liberal deputies. Carlos X abdicated on August 2 and went into exile. There was then a vacillation between two options: continue with the constitutional monarchy, this time represented by Duke Louis-Philippe of Orleans, and the republic, whose leader would be Lafayette. Bonapartism posed no threat, as Napoleon's young son was in Austria and the Bonapartist military was now loyal to the monarchy. The majority of the deputies leaned towards the monarchy, which was supported by Lafayette himself. On August 9, 1830, Louis-Philippe of Orleans was appointed King of the French, which meant that his power emanated from the people. The July revolution, therefore, did not represent a break with the preceding regime.

July Monarchy

Luis Felipe I, king of the French. Franz Xaver Winterhalter's picture.

The regime of Luis Felipe I, called the "July monarchy", was much more secular, more liberal and more bourgeois than that of his predecessors. To break with the past, the tricolor flag of the revolutionaries was adopted as the national ensign. The new constitutional charter of 1830 represented few changes with respect to that of 1814. The census suffrage was maintained, although the amount of taxes that had to be paid in order to be able to pay was reduced.

The July Monarchy corresponds with the beginnings of industrialization in France. The country followed in the footsteps of the United Kingdom in terms of the railway boom of the 1840s, which stimulated steel production. In this period, the great bourgeois dynasties were formed, linked to the banks and large companies, which asserted themselves in their desire to dominate political life. The big bourgeoisie and the traditional aristocracy were the only ones who could vote and be elected to the Chamber of Deputies, which resulted in the appearance of two political parties: the conservatives —representatives of the old nobility— and the liberals —representatives of the world. of bussiness. However, these two groups converged on preserving the regime as it was, thus serving their interests. The 1833 law of Prime Minister Guizot forced each municipality to have at least one primary school. The industrial revolution created a new social class, that of the proletariat, prey to misery. In this context, the socialist theories of Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon appeared, seeking to remedy social injustices.

The July Monarchy was also marked by a new heyday of French colonization. A minor diplomatic incident led to the campaign to conquer Algeria, which gradually spread to the rest of Africa. In 1842 France launched the conquest of the Ivory Coast.

The regime faced opposition from both the left and the right. From 1831 to 1839 sporadic republican riots broke out, some of them armed, but they were quickly put down. The rebellion of June 1832 claimed 800 dead. In 1831 and 1834, the rebellions of the canuts —silk workers— broke out in Lyon, one of the first worker rebellions in history. For their part, the legitimists, who defended the return to power of the house of Bourbon, led the Rue de Prouvaires plot in 1832, which sought to assassinate the king, and an attempted insurrection in western France. After several assassination attempts, Luis Felipe was able to stabilize his government and stay in power until 1848 thanks to his heavy hand.

The weakness of the electoral body, the authoritarianism of the king and the revelation of great corruption within the government ended up discrediting the regime. As a result of bad harvests, the country experienced a deep economic crisis starting in 1846, a situation that the Republican opposition took advantage of to rise up in arms again. Victor Hugo would write on purpose: "89 gave birth to a monster; 1830 a dwarf".

Revolution of 1848

Lamartine proclaims the second French republic in front of the Paris City Hall Palace.

Because of constant threats to the king, the government adopted increasingly authoritarian measures. Political gatherings were banned, but "banquets" they continued to be legal. For this reason, throughout 1847 the opposition, fueled by growing discontent due to government corruption and the economic crisis, organized large republican banquets throughout the country in which they demanded electoral reform. A great banquet had been arranged in Paris for February 22, 1848, but the government forbade it. This sparked demonstrations demanding the removal of the King and Prime Minister Guizot, which continued the next day. The king ordered the military occupation of the city. On the morning of February 23, members of the National Guard protected the protesters and some openly supported their cause. Guizot resigned and that same day, troops from the royal army fired on protesters at the foreign ministry, killing 52 people.

This news triggered a popular rebellion in the capital, where barricades were erected and fires were started. The insurgent citizens began to gather in the vicinity of the Tuileries Palace, the king's residence. Luis Felipe refused to use force against the rebellion and on February 24 he abdicated in favor of his little grandson Felipe de Orleans and fled to the United Kingdom. Felipe's mother, Elena, went to the Borbón palace, seat of the deputies, to invest her son. The deputies, for the most part, seemed in favor of the continuation of the monarchy, but the republican revolutionaries, who had learned from their failure of 1830, invaded the palace and demanded a provisional republican government.

That same day the provisional government was established, the July monarchy was abolished, and the poet Alphonse de Lamartine, newly appointed foreign minister and head of the new government, proclaimed the second French republic. Lamartine ratified the tricolor flag as the national ensign and symbol of the glories of revolutionary France and rejected the red flag flown by some revolutionaries. The French Revolution of 1848 was the first of a series of liberal revolutions in Europe, called the Spring of the Peoples, which ended absolutist regimes.

Second French Republic

First interim government, during the social and democratic republic.

Luis Napoleón Bonaparte swears the constitution as the first president of the French republic.

After the abdication of Luis Felipe due to the revolution of 1848, a provisional government was created. From February until April 23, 1848, the date of the first elections to the National Assembly, the provisional government of the republic is made up of moderate republicans, radicals and socialists. This stage is known as the "republic". social and democratic". Universal male suffrage is established. On the proposal of Victor Schœlcher, the abolition of slavery was decreed. However, that did not prevent the conquest of Senegal from beginning that same year. Algeria ceased to be a colony to become an integral part of France from 1848. Under pressure from the people and the socialists, social measures were adopted, such as the right to work, the 10-hour working day in Paris and 11 hours in the provinces, and the creation of national workshops, designed to give work to Parisians affected by the economic crisis. At the international level, members of the government, erected as continuators of the 1789 revolution, supported intervention in favor of other revolutions in Europe, but Lamartine, head of diplomacy, preferred prudence.

Barricada during the days of June 1848, insurrection against the conservative republic. Painting of Horace Vernet.

In the general elections, the first with universal male suffrage, the weight of the peasant vote, traditionally dominated by the most conservative classes, gave national politics a clear turn to the right, the "conservative republic".  The new provisional government closed the national workshops, an unpopular measure that provoked a rebellion in Paris from June 23 to 26, 1848, the June days. A state of siege was declared and the revolt was harshly suppressed, which caused the young republic to lose support among the workers.

To establish new institutions, a constituent assembly drew on the model of the United States, popularized in France by Alexis de Tocqueville. The constitution of November 4, 1848, entrusted executive power to a president elected by direct universal suffrage for a period of four years, who could re-present himself for elections after a four-year period after the end of his first term. As in the United States, the Assembly and the president were completely independent, but in France the president had no veto power.

On December 10, 1848, the first president of the French Republic was elected: Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew. The new assembly elected in May 1849 was dominated by the monarchists, who led an extremely conservative policy. They sent troops to Rome to keep the pope in the Papal States, which were threatened by Italian republican revolutionaries. They voted for the Falloux law that placed teaching under the control of the Catholic Church. They passed an electoral law that excluded people from voting. those who could not justify three years of continuous residence in the same municipality, which eliminated 3 million people from the electoral body. Luis Napoleón opposed this reform.

Faced with the assembly's refusal to modify the constitution for his immediate re-election, Louis Napoleon prepared a coup that he carried out on December 2, 1851. On November 7, 1852, a new plebiscite put an end to the Second Republic and established the Second Empire.

Second French Empire

Emperor Napoleon III. Hippolyte Flandrin, 1861.

Napoleon III of France, Napoleon I's nephew, launched a coup against the republic and, supported by the November 1852 plebiscite, proclaimed himself emperor. Napoleon III exercised executive power aided by his ministers. Legislative power was divided into three chambers: a Council of State, appointed by the emperor and in charge of preparing bills; a Senate, guardian of the imperial constitution and made up of senators for life also appointed by Napoleon, and a Congress, elected by universal male suffrage but without legal initiative. Under the appearance of popular participation, between 1852 and 1860 an authoritarian and conservative regime was maintained to the taste of the high bourgeoisie. Freedom of the press was limited and opponents were persecuted. There was little opposition and only a few Republicans managed to be elected to Parliament. However, political stability was achieved thanks to a good economic situation.

From 1860 the Second Empire was liberalized. Napoleon III had lost a part of the support of the Catholics by helping the King of Sardinia Victor Emmanuel II to achieve Italian unification, which went against the interests of the Pope. In addition, the signing of a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom, then the world's leading industrial potential, caused discontent among French industrialists, who feared competition from British products. The emperor then sought new support in the liberals and the popular classes. The Le Chapelier law was abolished, the right to strike was granted in 1864 and the workers obtained the right to set up cooperation funds (caisses d'entraide). The legislature gradually gained rights: it was able to criticize the government, vote on the budget and even propose bills from 1869. The Second Empire gradually evolved towards a parliamentary regime, in which the ministers were responsible to parliament. This liberalization was massively supported by a plebiscite in May 1870. The Second Empire seemed consolidated on more solid democratic foundations when war against Prussia broke out in 1870.

Remodeling of Paris

Opera Garnier.

Rivoli's rue.

Bois de Boulogne (pintura de Édouard Manet).

Les Halles Market.

Battle of Malakoff, in the Crimean War. Adolphe Yvon (1856).

France's industrial takeoff occurred during the Second Empire. Credit was liberalized and the creation of corporations was facilitated. Napoleon III made the railway system a priority. By 1870, France had an excellent railway network, with Paris as its nerve center, supported by good roads, canals, and ports. Paris grew dramatically in population, industry, commerce, finance, and tourism. During this period, the most radical urban and infrastructure transformation in the history of Paris took place, under the direction of Baron Haussmann.

In foreign affairs, Napoleon III developed an active imperialist policy that sought to give the country a leading role in the world, much inspired by the epic of Napoleon Bonaparte. To contain Russian expansionism, he participated with the United Kingdom in the Crimean War (1853-1856). This war marked the return of France to European affairs, but despite the victory the country did not make any substantial gains. An admirer of Italy, Napoleon III supported its unification and assisted King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia in a campaign to expel Austria from Lombardy. In exchange, France received from the Kingdom of Sardinia the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice, which she annexed in 1861 after the Treaty of Turin.

Take from Saigon (Vietnam), during the expedition to the Cochinchina.

Inauguration of the Suez Canal (1869).

France undertook expeditions to Africa and Asia. The emperor supported a French company to build the Suez Canal. Louis Faidherbe gave new impetus to the conquest of Senegal and created the Senegalese riflemen, the military corps of the French colonial empire. In 1856 France intervened in the second opium war on the British side, allowing it to open trade with China. In 1853 she took possession of New Caledonia, in the Pacific. In 1864 she acquired Cochinchina from the Vietnam Empire. In 1863 he intervened in defense of Cambodia against Siam, and that country became a French protectorate in 1867. Less fortunate were the French expeditions to Korea (1866) and Japan (1867-1868).

The Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Napoleon III after the battle of Sedan.

The French intervention in Mexico between 1861 and 1867 supported the creation of the Mexican Empire, a conservative and Catholic client state of France, which in theory would serve as a counterweight to US influence in Latin America. However, the Mexican adventure would prove a failure.

Napoleon III was neutral in the conflicts between Prussia and Austria for domination of the German states. In exchange for his neutrality, the emperor demanded Prussian support for territorial claims in Luxembourg and Belgium, but Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor, rejected them. After the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Prussia increased its power in Europe and rivaled France. The possible candidacy of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen —member of the Prussian royal family— to the throne of Spain ended up deteriorating relations between both powers and the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870. While German nationalism united the German states, with the exception of Austria, against France, this could not make any alliance. Napoleon III capitulated on September 2, 1870 at Sedan, along with a troop of between 70,000 and 100,000 soldiers. When this event became known, on September 4 the republic was proclaimed in Lyon and Paris.

Third Republic

The republic was proclaimed on September 2, 1870, in the midst of the war against Prussia. While Paris was under siege, a national defense government was created and arms were distributed among the Parisian citizens. On January 28, 1871, the government signed the armistice. In the midst of the Prussian occupation, the elections took place, which gave the majority to the monarchists. The new assembly, installed in Versailles, signed a peace treaty, ceding Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and undertook to pay heavy compensation. Adolphe Thiers, former prime minister of the July Monarchy, was elected head of the executive branch while the country's form of government was being decided.

The Paris Commune

The fire of the Tuileries Palace, during the Paris Commune.

The Parisians, who had resisted and suffered the harsh Prussian siege, were scandalized by the peace conditions and mistrusted a monarchical assembly. Faced with hardship, the provisional government abrogated the moratorium on rents and debts in force during the war and ordered the disarmament of the Parisian volunteers, sparking a rebellion. Thiers withdrew from the capital. The national guards decided to elect a municipal council, which began its functions on March 26, 1871 under the name of the Paris commune. This government took radical measures to alleviate misery: requisitioning of homes, free, secular and compulsory education, and invented a participatory democracy that allowed citizens to intervene in the affairs of the commune. Along with demands emanating from the Sansculottism of the French Revolution, such as anti-clericalism and respect for freedom of conscience, the insurgents embraced socialist demands and condemned militarism and capitalism. Karl Marx considered the Paris Commune the first truly proletarian revolution.

The commune only lasted 70 days. On May 21, 1871, government troops invaded Paris. The insurgents set fire to several areas of the city, including monuments such as the Tuileries Palace and the town hall to slow down the advance of the enemy. After the execution of the Archbishop of Paris by the Communards, the repression led to a bloodbath. Between 20,000 and 30,000 insurgents were executed in one week. Thousands of surviving rebels were sent to Algeria or New Caledonia.

Monarchical rule

Patrice de Mac-Mahon, president of the republic (1873-1879) of monarchical ideology.

Léon Gambetta, leader of the Republican opposition and parlamentarist.

The Third Republic, dominated by a monarchist assembly, had little chance of survival, but it did so thanks to disagreement among the monarchists. These were divided into two groups: legitimists, supporters of the Count of Chambord, grandson of Charles X, and the Orleanists of the Count of Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe I. Both agreed to cede the throne to Chambord, but he refused to recognize the flag. tricolor, for which Thiers was granted the title of president of the republic on August 31, 1871. Thiers's penchant for republicanism caused him to lose support among the monarchist majority and he finally resigned in 1873. His successor was the Loyalist General Mac Mahon, who would be in power for seven years awaiting the return of the monarchy. In this period he dominated a conservative, openly religious and anti-republican policy, which advocated the return of the "moral order"; in the face of the trauma that had been the experience of the Paris Commune. In 1876 the Republicans won the elections. In 1877, the new Assembly came into conflict with the president over the appointment of a royalist prime minister, and the president responded by dissolving the chamber. Thus began the so-called crisis of 1877, in which two conceptions of the republic clashed. President Mac Mahon defended a presidentialist vision, while the republican deputies, whose most visible head was Léon Gambetta, a parliamentarian vision. The latter ended up prevailing after a new republican victory in the October 1877 elections and Mac Mahon would resign in January 1879. Since then, the president of the republic would fulfill a representative role and ceded power to the president of the council of ministers (first minister) and parliament.

Consolidation of the republic

Republicans set about entrenching the republic by establishing great liberties: freedom of assembly and press in 1881, the right to form unions in 1884, and the right to divorce. The freedom of association of 1901 allowed the formation of political parties that replaced the informal groupings of clubs and committees. The first parties to be constituted were the Radical Party in 1901 and the French Section of the Workers' International in 1905. The republic was made of its great symbols: Marianne, La Marseillaise and the national holiday of July 14.

Prime Minister Jules Ferry played a central role in pursuing three Republican goals: the extension of liberties, the removal of schools from the Catholic Church, and the "uprising" of France from defeat thanks to colonization. In 1881 and 1882 the free, compulsory and secular school was established, and public high schools for girls were created. Education became an essential axis to make the republic irreversible and teachers one of its pillars. In 10 years, France had gone from monarchical to republican.

The republican movement was divided in two: the moderates or opportunists and the radicals, confronted above all regarding the influence of the Church. The adherence of the French to the republic did not prevent it from being shaken by numerous crises due to the increase in nationalism (boulangism) or anti-Semitism (the Dreyfus case), which showed that there were two large groups among the French: one conservative and one revanchist, and another attached to revolutionary ideals and social progress. The latter would win the battle. The Republicans formed a government of national union led by Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau between 1899 and 1902. The rise to power of the Radical Party accentuated the secularism of society. In 1904 the religious orders lost the right to teach and a large number of them were expelled. In 1905, with the impulse of the Prime Minister Émile Combes, the National Assembly voted the law of separation of the Church and the State, and the ministers of worship stopped receiving a salary from the State, which put an end to the Napoleonic concordat of 1801. Cult movable and immovable property was nationalized. In some regions there were violent clashes between Catholics and law enforcement, but in a marginal way. From 1905, religion became a private matter.

Imperialism

Illustration of the French intervention in Madagascar.

During the last decades of the 19th century, France, like the other European powers, saw an area of partial social development and economic and in turn launches to colonize Africa. The colonial conquests were carried out partly for economic reasons: to bring raw materials to French industry and to create market outlets. They were carried out under the pressure of colonialist groups that included bankers, businessmen, journalists, parliamentarians and the military. Other reasons were the pretext of a civilizing mission, a patriotic desire to achieve pre-eminence over other powers and revenge against Germany. The Republicans, initially opposed to colonialism, ended up supporting it when Germany began to create its own colonial empire.

In 1881, under the pretext that Tunisian troops had crossed into Algeria, France occupied Tunisia and in May of that year made the territory a protectorate. From bases in Senegal, Algeria, and the Congo, campaigns of conquest over Africa were launched, giving France the largest colonial domain on the continent. This is how French Equatorial Africa (colonies of Gabon, French Congo, Ubangui-Chari and Chad) and French West Africa (Senegal, French Sudan, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Mauritania, Upper Volta and Niger) were formed. In 1882 the kingdom of Madagascar became a protectorate and in 1897 a French colony. In 1883 French Somaliland was created. In Asia, in 1887 the colony of French Indochina was formed, where the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin in Vietnam were annexed to Cochinchina, and Cambodia, and later Laos (1899) and the Guangzhouwan dependency in China (1898). In Oceania, the Marquesas (1870) and Tahiti (1880) became colonies and from there control expanded over other islands, which together formed French Polynesia. In 1914 the French empire was 22 times the size of metropolitan France and included a population of 110 million people.

French imperialism was not without its conflicts: a protest by Italy over the occupation of Tunisia (1881); a conflict with China (1884-1885) for influence in northern Vietnam, and another with Siam (1893) for control of Laos, which were resolved in favor of France. On the other hand, France had to cede its influence in Egypt to the British Empire and share the administration of the Suez Canal since 1875, in addition to giving up claims on the upper Nile after the Fashoda incident of 1898, which was resolved through of the Entente cordiale, a pact between the two countries. The crisis of Tangier (1905) and that of Agadir (1911) against Germany for hegemony in Morocco were also resolved favorably, thanks to British support.

World War I

Plan Schlieffen and Plan XVII, offensive plan German and counteroffensive French, respectively.

The hostility between the main imperialist powers of Europe resulted in the establishment of two great alliances, one opposed to the other. On the one hand, Germany forged in 1882 the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy. On the other hand, France formed the Entente Cordiale with the United Kingdom in 1907 and after a military agreement with Russia in 1907 the three countries formed the Triple Entente. With the entry into the war of different actors, the Triple Entente and its allies would be called simply "the allies", while Germany and its allies would be known as the "core empires".

The trigger for the war was the attack in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, in which the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated by a Serb nationalist. The event unleashed the July crisis, a diplomatic conflict that could not avoid war: Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany, gave Serbia an ultimatum on July 23 and, as it did not comply with all the conditions imposed, declared war on it. the 28th of July. Russia, self-appointed protector of Serbia due to its cultural ties, mobilized its troops. This activated the alliances and triggered the first world war. On July 31, Germany sent an ultimatum to Russia to stop the mobilization and another to France not to support Russia.

Reims Cathedral under German attack (September 1914).

French soldiers begin an assault during the battle of Verdun (1916). With almost 10 months of duration and more than 700 000 dead, it is one of the longest and most deadly battles in history.

The president of France, who had British diplomatic support, ordered the mobilization of troops on August 1, whereupon Germany declared war a day later. Germany had the Schlieffen plan, through which it planned a quick invasion of France and for this it moved its troops to Luxembourg and Belgium to attack from there. The United Kingdom, guarantor of Belgian independence, declared war on Germany on August 4. France, for its part, launched Plan XVII, which included the invasion of Germany through Alsace-Lorraine by means of an all-out attack. The first confrontations were part of the so-called Battle of the Borders, in which French troops were soundly defeated in the battles of Mulhouse, Lorraine, Charleroi and the Ardennes. The French offensive faced heavy human losses which resulted in withdrawal. August 22, 1914 is the deadliest day in French history: around 27,000 soldiers died in the Belgian Ardennes, four times as many as at the Battle of Waterloo. German troops rapidly advanced into French territory; by early September they were 40 miles from Paris and the French government had moved into Bordeaux. The course of the war changed when the German advance was halted at the First Battle of the Marne (September 5-12, 1914) by the Allied armies.

Paris Canyon, used by the Germans to bomb Paris long distance during the spring offensive (1918).

French troops in the ruins of a church during the second battle of the Marne (1918).

What followed was a stalemate in the conflict. The war of movements gave way to a war of positions. The western front, which took place mainly in French territory, was characterized by a winding series of trenches between the North Sea and the border with Switzerland. There were several offensives on both sides, but between 1915 and 1917 there were no major changes, despite extremely long and violent battles, in which there was intensive and extensive use of artillery, barbed wire, warplanes, and chemical weapons. This trench warfare lasted from September 1914 to March 1918. Among the battles on the Western Front, the Battle of Verdun (February 21 - December 18, 1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July 1 - November 18) stand out. 1916), two of the bloodiest battles in history. The northern departments, rich in industry and mining, were occupied by Germany for most of the war, severely damaging the French economy. The entry of the United States on the side of the allies on April 6, 1917 would mean relief for the French troops, who were showing signs of exhaustion and mutiny due to the precarious situation at the front. The first American troops arrived in France in October 1917.

After defeating Russia in 1917, Germany concentrated its forces on a major offensive against France in March 1918 that was finally able to displace the Western Front. Again the Germans found themselves in the vicinity of Paris, which was bombarded with long-range artillery and airships, but they were defeated in the second battle of the Marne (July 15 - August 6, 1918) by Marshal Foch. Immediately, France and its allies began the Hundred Days Offensive, which ended when Germany signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918.

Interwar Period

French troops in Dortmund, Germany, during the Ruhr occupation.

Léon Blum, first head of socialist government between 1936 and 1938.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919 in the palace of the same name, the same place where France had accepted defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Harsh peace conditions were imposed on Germany, which had to pay expensive war reparations. France regained Alsace-Lorraine and was a founding member of the League of Nations, an international organization that sought to preserve peace. From the dismemberment of the German colonial empire, France occupied and administered Cameroon and Togo and from the Ottoman Empire it received the Mandate for Syria and the Mandate for Lebanon.

France was one of the powers that occupied the Rhineland from 1918 to 1930, as a means to secure its borders and as a guarantee of compliance with the Treaty of Versailles. Faced with Germany's delay in paying reparations, France also occupied the Ruhr region between 1923 and 1925, when it accepted the United States' Dawes and Young plans to restructure the German payment. Between 1918 and 1935 France also had control of the Saarland until, after a plebiscite, it returned it to Germany. To prevent a possible invasion of Germany in the future, France built a defensive system along the border with that country, the Maginot line, between 1929 and 1938.

The Great Depression hit France around 1931. Its effects were relatively mild compared to other countries. The growth of the Gross Domestic Product, which grew at a rate of 4.43% at the end of the 1920s, fell to 0.63% in the 1930s; unemployment reached 5% and the drop in production was approximately 20%; there was no banking crisis.

In contrast, the 1930s saw great political change. The socialist Léon Blum, leader of the Popular Front, brought together socialists, communists and radicals and was appointed prime minister in 1936. The Popular Front approved numerous labor reforms in favor of the workers. However, inflation, unemployment and the slow economic recovery from the crisis significantly reduced the effect of the reforms of the first French socialist government, which had generated great expectations among the left. Foreign policy during the Blum and Daladier governments was pacifist, in line with the appeasement policy followed by the United Kingdom against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The government nationalized the arms factories and started a new arms race in the face of German rearmament and the Rhineland crisis. Franco-British and Franco-Polish alliances dominated interwar foreign policy. The socialist government refused to intervene on behalf of the republic during the Spanish civil war.

World War II

German soldiers parade before the bow of the triumph of Paris, June 14, 1940.

France and the United Kingdom declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939 under a treaty signed with Poland, whose territory had been invaded by the Wehrmacht, the German army. However, the allies did not launch decisive attacks on enemy positions and limited themselves to maintaining a defensive posture, a phase that was known in France as strange warfare (drôle de guerre). A French invasion on the Saarland was abandoned four days after it started. In April 1940, French and British troops came to the aid of Norway, which was also being invaded by Germany, but they did not achieve any major success.

During the 1940 exodus, about 10 million people left their homes for the German advance.

The situation changed when on May 10, 1940, through a lightning offensive (blitzkrieg), Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France itself. Belgium had declared itself neutral, but before the German invasion, the French and the British came to its support. Allied forces hoped to contain the attack east of Brussels, but a German army group entered France through the Ardennes, a wooded area considered impenetrable and therefore poorly defended. The Germans advanced rapidly towards the English Channel and by May 18 they had encircled nearly a million Allied troops in northwestern France. From Dunkirk, 300,000 Allied soldiers escaped to Great Britain (May 26 - June 4), leaving France practically alone in the war. On June 14, the Germans took Paris without resistance. The rest of the British troops left the ports of western France between 15 and 25 June during Operation Ariel. The last German maneuver was to attack the Maginot Line from the west and east and cut it off from the rest of France. The last fortress in the line capitulated on July 10. The German invasion caused a massive exodus of the civilian population from the north of France and the Benelux, first to Paris and then to the south of the country. When France signed the armistice on June 22, it had some 100,000 military losses and the same number of civilian losses.

Vichy Regimen

France in June 1940, with the territory belonging to the Vichy regime in purple.

On July 10, 1940, in the midst of the German invasion, the National Assembly voted a constitutional law granting full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain. As of July 11, with the signing of the first of a series of constitutional acts in Vichy, Pétain proclaimed himself head of state, abolished the republic, and established the so-called Vichy regime. The new government signed the armistice with Germany on June 22, 1940 under very harsh conditions: payment of expensive compensation, one million military prisoners and the occupation of three fifths of its territory. The Vichy regime followed an authoritarian and collaborative policy with Nazi Germany, although it never had a formal military alliance. Through the Compulsory Labor Service, hundreds of thousands of French people were transferred to Germany to make up for the lack of labor in that country. The French Volunteer Legion participated on the German side in the war against the Soviet Union. The opposition was fought, political groups were persecuted and laws were passed against the Jewish population.

In November 1942, the entire territory of the Vichy regime was occupied by Germany and Italy. Although the French government continued to exist, it was under strict German control.

Stamina

Charles de Gaulle, leader of Free France and the Fighting France.

Oradour-sur-Glane, a town destroyed on June 10, 1944 for its resistance activities.

General Charles de Gaulle opposed the armistice and on June 18 issued a radio appeal to the French people from London to continue the war on the side of the British. This event is considered the birth of the French Resistance. De Gaulle founded Free France, a government in exile that relied on the Free French Forces. Obtaining the rapid accession of several colonial possessions, especially in French Equatorial Africa, the Free French remained present on the allied side and would continue fighting on various fronts, such as Egypt, Libya, and later in Tunisia and Italy.

The hardening of the Vichy government inflamed resistance inside the country. The clandestine resistance movements, from a varied political spectrum, had more and more organization and room for maneuver. They were recognized by the government in exile in 1942 under the name of the French Forces of the Interior, the year in which Free France changed its name to Fighting France.

On June 3, 1944, the Provisional Government of the French Republic was formed, an alliance between communists, socialists, radicals and republicans, with De Gaulle at its head. This government declared the Vichy regime illegitimate and strongly opposed the creation of a US military government in France. On June 6, 1944, allied armies landed in Normandy, and on July 15 in Provence. The German occupation forces were displaced and Paris was liberated on August 25. De Gaulle recruited members of the resistance to continue the war in the Germany campaign. French troops crossed the Rhine in March 1945 and captured several places in southern Germany until the country's capitulation in May 1945.

In addition to the armed combat against the occupation, among the reforms of the provisional government in times of war are the right of women to vote (April 21, 1944), the expansion of unions, price controls to curb the inflation, the nationalization of companies in the energy, automotive, aeronautical and banking sectors and the foundations of the welfare state.

Postwar (1945-1946)

French Command in Indochina after the capitulation of Japan (1945).

After the war, France became one of the four victorious occupying powers of Germany, briefly regained control of the Saarland, was a founding member of the United Nations (UN), and one of the five powers entitled to vote in the Security Council of the same organization. However, several scenarios showed French weakness against the other three powers (the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom). For example, France was excluded from the Yalta and Potsdam conferences and had to renounce its claims to the Aosta Valley and the Syrian and Lebanese Mandates due to American and British pressure, respectively.

Regarding Indochina, an agreement in Yalta intended to divide the territory into two zones of influence, Chinese and British, so that after the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the French Expeditionary Corps in the Far East reestablished sovereignty French over the territory, but was confronted with the rebellion of the Việt Minh, a communist political-paramilitary organization that proclaimed the unification of Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin under the Republic of Vietnam. Negotiations with the Việt Minh were unsuccessful and conflict broke out in Haiphong in November 1946.

Tripartism dominated politics since the end of the war and was the architect of the constitution of 1946 and the Fourth Republic. The expulsion of the Communists of the government in 1947 meant the end of the alliance and the beginning of the cold war in Europe.

Politically, the country was dominated by Tripartism, an alliance between the Communist Party, the French Section of the Workers' International and the Popular Republican Movement. Given the discredit of the political class during the war, the main forces were Gaullism, centered on the strong personality of General De Gaulle, and Communism, with significant prestige due to its role in the resistance. The Provisional Government of the Republic was headed by De Gaulle from 1944.

Collaborationist elements were punished more severely than in other countries. The "legal purification" investigated approximately 300,000 cases between 1944 and 1949, carried out 791 executions and nearly 50,000 sentences of national degradation (loss of civil rights). On the other hand, the "savage purge", carried out by resistance militiamen, carried out thousands of summary trials, executions and public humiliation. The number of executions before and after liberation is estimated at 10,500.

On October 21, 1945, the first post-war legislative elections were held. In these, a Constituent Assembly was elected that would last seven months, long enough for the drafting of a new constitution that would end the third republic. The elections were won by Tripartism with 75% of the votes and De Gaulle was named head of government, but his disagreement with the communists led him to resign in January 1946. The constitution of the fourth republic was finally adopted by referendum on October 13, 1946.

Economically, the damage of the war was severe. The infrastructure was in shambles, there were few sources of energy, and the importation of raw materials had been largely cut off. France did not have the resources to recover on its own. An attempt was made to get Germany to advance 20% of the war reparations, but that country was in a worse situation and insolvent in payment. The United States shipped food from 1944 to 1946 and provided loans from 1945 to 1947. The 1946 Blum-Byrnes agreement forgave World War I debt in exchange for opening the French market to American products. The economic reconstruction was based, from the beginning of 1946, on the Monnet Plan, a five-year plan by which France would try to modernize and become the largest steel producer in Western Europe. To avoid competition and stock up on raw materials, he created the Saar protectorate and attempted to control production in the industrial and mining areas of western Germany.

French Fourth Republic (1946-1958)

The production was a key part during the economic reactivation of the Monnet and Marshall plans. In the image, factory and workers' houses in Nilvange (Mosela).

Rebuilt centre of El Havre (1945-1964).

The 1946 constitution reissued a parliamentary system, but this time "rationalized," in which reciprocal controls were sought between the executive and legislative branches. That was represented by the prime minister —head of government— and the president —with a rather symbolic role. The parliament was bicameral, with the National Assembly, of a legislative nature, and a Council of the Republic, of an advisory nature. The Assembly acquired too much power against the government: in addition to investing the prime minister, it approved or disapproved of the cabinets. Faced with shifting alliances, the government was often put in a minority position, had little room for manoeuvre, there was ministerial instability, and dissolving the Assembly was extremely difficult in accordance with the law. As a consequence, the Fourth Republic was unstable (21 administrations in 12 years), which prevented it from responding to the decolonization crisis and led to its fall in 1958.

The French Union was an organization that sought equality between peoples of the former colonial empire and granted citizenship to all its inhabitants. However, the difference between theory and practice, the centralization and pre-eminence of the metropolis over the other territories, among other aspects, ended with this organization. The protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia never agreed to join the union and finally achieved their independence in 1956.

In the first legislative elections of 1946, Tripartism endorsed its victory and the Communist Party was the most voted. Prime Minister Ramadier, under threat from the United States, expelled the communists from the government in May 1947, which is considered the beginning of the cold war in Europe. After the disappearance of Tripartism, the government would be dominated by a new coalition known as as the Third Force, while the opposition would be led by communism and the French People's Group (Gaullism).

The economic recovery, based on US aid since the time of the Provisional Government, had a spectacular boost with the entry into force of the Marshall Plan (1948-1951), in which the United States Department of the Treasury granted 2,300 millions of dollars without reimbursement, in addition to low-interest loans. The country was rebuilt, tariffs were reduced, the public administration was modernized and there was an intense program of "Americanization" of companies. This American influence also affected society in terms of consumption, mass culture, and lifestyle. In total, France received nearly $7 billion in aid. The French government directed an economic policy that resulted in sustained growth from 1946 to 1975, with high wages, purchasing power, consumption, tax collection, social benefits, and one of the highest living standards in the world, as far as is known. as the "thirty glorious years".

Faced with US and Soviet domination of Europe, France launched the Schuman declaration in 1951. In it, it is proposed that the only viable political model is an integrated Europe, with France and West Germany as fundamental pieces. France decides to abandon its idea of dominating the German industry and mining. Instead, with the consent of German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the European Coal and Steel Community was created, an organization that regulated the production of these minerals, created a common market and prevented competition between European countries and therefore the war. This was the first rapprochement between France and Germany and the first supranational body that preceded the European Union. In 1957 the Treaties of Rome were signed, which created the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. In 1957 the Saarland was integrated into West Germany after a referendum.

Indochina and Algeria

French Commands disembark at Annam (Indochina Francesa) in July 1950.

The main obstacle to French sovereignty over Indochina was the communist Việt Minh guerrillas, who promulgated the independence of Vietnam. In the war, which began in 1946, France was strongly supported by the United States financially and with military equipment, and brought in the Foreign Legion and its best generals. Starting in 1950, this Cold War conflict escalated with the support of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for the Việt Minh. The battle of Điện Biên Phủ was the decisive conflagration for the French Prime Minister, Pierre Mendès France, to negotiate with the Việt Minh the Geneva Conference of 1954, in which the definitive withdrawal of France from Indochina and the recognition of the independence of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Hunting Commands (Chasse Commandos), military units of counterinsurgency in Algeria.

As soon as the Indochina war ended, a new conflict arose: Algerian nationalism sought independence. Unlike Indochina, Algeria was one of the largest and oldest colonies, very close to France and legally an integral part of it, in addition to having more than a million inhabitants of European origin, who represented 10% of the population.

Insurgency activities began in 1954 with the creation of the National Liberation Front (FLN). On November 1, 1954 (red All Saints Day) the FLN began hostilities by attacking military and civilian targets. The insurgency, which began in rural areas, soon spread to the cities. French settlers, in response, formed paramilitary groups for clandestine activity. French governors granted increasing power and leeway to the military.

In the battle of Algiers (1956-1957), the FLN planted bombs in public places in the Algerian capital. The French army destroyed the rebel bases and began to harden its actions and sponsored counterinsurgency activities with the creation of the harkis, indigenous paramilitary groups, as well as pseudo-guerrillas, false flag operations, repression against towns suspected of supporting the rebels, population transfer, torture and laying of mines and electric fences to prevent the passage of rebels from Tunisia. The rebels for their part waged a guerrilla war.

Suez Crisis

Anglo-French air strike in the Suez Canal area, 5 November 1956.

The Suez Canal, built by France in 1869, and in condominium with the United Kingdom since 1875, was nationalized by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956. As a result, France, the United Kingdom, and Israel formed an alliance and they went to war against Egypt in order to overthrow Nasser. France, which was also suspicious of Egyptian support for the Algerian rebels, began bombing jointly with British forces from 31 October 1956 and dropped paratroop troops into Port Said on November 5. The Allies triumphed in a few days, but they had to withdraw under pressure from the United States and the Soviet Union. Two former imperialist powers were displaced in the correlation of forces between the two new superpowers. France accelerated the implementation of its nuclear deterrent force, considering that it could not trust its allies and after the Soviet threat to launch a nuclear attack on Paris. In addition, there was a cooling of Franco-American relations.

Coup of 1958

A military junta headed by General Massu took power in Algeria on May 13, 1958. On May 24, during Operation Córcega, a group of paratroopers from Algeria took control of that island. Another military movement, Operation Resurrection, aimed at taking Paris if the National Assembly did not appoint General Charles de Gaulle, a World War II hero, as prime minister, and issued an ultimatum that expired on May 29. The fourth republic had lost the support of the army and there was no choice but to give in to pressure. The president of the council Pflimlin resigned on May 28 and the following day the president of the republic René Coty made the appeal to De Gaulle. De Gaulle was elected by majority vote of the National Assembly on June 1, 1958 as the last president of the council of the fourth republic and with the constitutional law of June 3, 1958, he was granted the right to govern by decree. With this, De Gaulle was able to launch the drafting of a new constitution, which would be approved in a referendum on September 28 with 80.6% of the population's votes. In the French Union, only Guinea rejected the constitution and was the first African state with a French colonial past to gain its independence. On December 21, De Gaulle was elected president of the fifth republic by a large electoral college.

Today: Fifth Republic

Technological advances at the beginning of the fifth republic. From left to right and from top to bottom: Diamant A space rocket, Concorde supersonic plane, Renault car and Le Redoutable nuclear submarine.

Charles De Gaulle became president on January 8, 1959, after a threat of civil war and a new constitution approved in a referendum. Supported by the military, De Gaulle was seen as a man capable of maintaining a strong government, uniting the country and stopping communism. For some opponents, his coming to power was unconstitutional and a permanent coup.

The French Community replaced the French Union. It was a partnership between France and its former colonies, most of which now had more autonomy and could become independent. This association has expired since 1960, when its member states (all of them African) opted for full independence.

Algeria was never a member state of the French Union. De Gaulle tried to keep it united with France and the armed conflict continued. However, the loss of popularity of the war among the French population after the abuses committed by the army, the recognition by several countries - including China - of the Algerian provisional government established by the FLN, and the loss of support from its allies, led de Gaulle to enter into negotiations with the rebels. Ultras French settlers built barricades in Algiers and formed the Secret Army Organization (OAS), a terrorist group that would fight against the FLN and against the government from February 1961. Some soldiers attempted a coup in April 1961. After the failure, the army kept a low political profile. The Évian Accords, supported by referendums in 1961 and 1962, achieved a ceasefire and Algeria was declared independent on July 3, 1962. Following independence, 1.4 million people migrated from Algeria to metropolitan France.

President Charles de Gaulle and the Foreign Minister of West Germany Konrad Adenauer.

De Gaulle led a strong government focused on the greatness and independence of the country (politique de grandeur). France withdrew from NATO military command, canceled US bases on its soil, built a nuclear-armed deterrence force (force de frappe), created an alliance with West Germany, and backed the idea of a Integrated Europe without the States losing sovereignty or independence. During the governments of De Gaulle and his successor, Pompidou, France achieved very high rates of economic growth, in what was the peak of the thirty glorious years. An economic policy of dirigisme (State intervention) was followed. The first highways were built, culture was fostered, and the country's industrialization was strongly promoted, such as the aeronautical, automotive, nuclear, space, and high-speed rail industries.

Barricades in Bordeaux, during the French May.

In the midst of this growth, a series of anti-government protests known as the French May broke out in May 1968. Initially it was about anti-system student protests that criticized the authoritarianism and conservatism of the government, as well as capitalism, consumerism and class society. With the police repression, the students were supported by the communist party and numerous unions, whose strikes involved more than 11 million workers. Labor concessions and snap elections, in which Gaullism won by a wide margin, brought the protests to an abrupt end. May 1968 is the largest general strike in French history.

Gaullism left power in 1974 with the death of Pompidou. His successors were the centrist Giscard d'Estaing (1974-1981) and the socialist Mitterrand (1981-1995). The government had to deal with the oil crises of 1975 and 1979, which affected the economy and caused a dramatic rise in unemployment. Growth picked up in the mid-1980s, but slowed again early in the following decade. There were social reforms such as the reduction in the age of majority from 21 to 18 years (1974), divorce by mutual consent (1975), the decriminalization of abortion (Veil Law, 1975) and the abolition of the death penalty (1981).. Dirigisme was abandoned and economic policies of liberalization and privatization were opted for since the 1980s. Culture and technological and infrastructure projects were promoted, such as the high-speed train (Train à Grande Vitesse, TGV) and the Eurotunnel.

French combat aircraft Dassault Rafale of Operation Serval in Mali.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, France began to reduce its nuclear capacity, although its nuclear tests continued in the Pacific. Conscription was also abolished in 2001. France has continued with the policy of a strong presidency and state and an active foreign policy. In 1990, he supported the United States in the first Gulf War (1990); he again approached NATO, of which he was one of the main supporters during the Kosovo war in 1999. He also participated in the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. However, he led the bloc of countries that opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, threatening to use his right to veto in the United Nations Security Council, which led to a cooling of relations with USA. France has also led interventions in the Central African Republic (2012) and Mali (2013) as part of the stabilization of those countries, and in Greece (2020) in the dispute between that country and Turkey in the Aegean Sea.

The Eiffel Tower illuminated in honor of the victims of the 2015 attacks.

French presidents of the late 20th century and early XXI have linked the future of the country to the development of the European Union and its leadership within it together with Germany. In 1992 the French government ratified the Maastricht treaty that established the birth of the European Union and in 1999 the euro replaced the franc as currency. France has participated in several joint European projects, such as the European Space Agency, the Airbus company, the Galileo satellite navigation system and the Eurocorps. On the other hand, the French people rejected by referendum in 2005 the establishment of a European constitution.

Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel (2017).

Among the issues of interest within the country are unemployment, labor reforms, rights of the LGBT community, high rates of immigration, racism, the increase in groups close to the extreme right, Euroscepticism, Islamism and terrorism. In 2005, following the deaths of two young Muslims of African descent while escaping from the police, riots broke out across the country for two weeks, events believed to be the result of one or more factors, including radical Islam, unemployment, racism, inequality and police brutality. The first Islamic terrorist attack occurred in 1980 in retaliation for French intervention in Lebanon's civil war. The next case did not occur until 1994 and since 2012 the attacks have intensified and occurred every year. The deadliest attacks have been the Paris attacks in November 2015, with 131 dead and more than 400 injured.

Emmanuel Macron became the 25th President of the French Republic on May 14, 2017.