Search

The Online Encyclopedia and Dictionary

 
     
 

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Quotes

 

Mid-nineteenth century France

This article covers the history of France from the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 to the begining of the Third Republic in 1871.

Contents

Restored monarchy

Main article: French Restoration

Following the ouster of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, the Allies restored the Bourbon Dynasty to the French throne. The ensuing period is called in French the Restauration, characterized by a sharp conservative reaction and the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic church as a power in French politics. Louis XVIII, brother of the deposed Louis XVI ruled from 1814-1824 and was succeeded by his brother Charles X in 1824.

The issues raised by the Revolution were not settled, and when Charles attempted to bring the state closer to that of the Ancien Régime the people of Paris rose up in the July Revolution of 1830. Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe ascended the throne, and ruled, not as "King of France" but as "King of the French," an evocative difference among contemporaries. Most historians treat the resulting July Monarchy, 1830 - 1848, as a separate period in French history.

Louis-Philippe was himself ousted whern the Revolutions of 1848. The Second Republic was formed after the election of Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as President (1848-1852), who subsequently had himself declared Emperor Napoleon III of the Second Empire from 1852 - 1871.

Imperial France

Domestic affairs

From 1852 to 1871 France rulled by Emperor Louis Napoleon III. Much of the era saw great prosperity and economic growth. Under the influence of the Saint-Simonians and men of business great credit establishments were instituted and vast public works entered upon: the Credit foncier de France, the Credit mobilier, the conversion of the railways into six great companies between 1852 and 1857. The rage for speculation was increased by the inflow of Californian and Australian gold, and consumption was facilitated by a general fall in prices between 1856 and 1860, due to an economic revolution which was soon to overthrow the tariff wall, as it had done already in England. Thus French activity flourished exceedingly between 1852 and 1857, and was merely temporarily checked by the crisis of 1857. Paris was transformed by Baron Haussmann, taking on its modern character. The Exposition Universelle (1855) was its culminating point. The great enthusiasms of the romantic period were over; philosophy became sceptical and literature merely entertainment. The festivities of the court at Compiègne set the fashion for the bourgeoisie, satisfied with this energetic government which kept such good guard over their bank balances.

The working class had never forgotten the loi Le Chapelier of 1791, which by forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placed them at the mercy of their employers, nor had they forgotten how the limited suffrage had conferred upon capital a political monopoly which had put it out of reach of the law, nor how each time they had left their position of rigid isolation in order to save the Charter or universal suffrage, the triumphant bourgeoisie had repaid them at thc last with neglect. The silence of public opinion under the Empire and the prosperous state of business had completed the separation of the labour party from the political parties. The visit of an elected and paid labour delegation to the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave the emperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with that party, and these relations were to his mind all the more profitable, since the labour party, by refusing to associate their social and industrial claims with the political ambitions of the bourgeoisie, maintained a neutral attitude between the parties, and could, if necessary, divide them, while by its keen criticism of society it aroused the conservative instincts of the bourgeoisie and consequently checked their enthusiasm for liberty.

A law of May 23, 1863 gave the workmen the right, as in England, to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another law, of May 25, 1864, gave them the right to enforce better conditions of labour by organising strikes. Still further, the emperor permitted the workmen to imitate their employers by establishing unions for the permanent protection of their interests. And finally, when the ouvriers, with the characteristic French tendency to insist on the universal application of a theory, wished to substitute for the narrow utilitarianism of the English trade unions the ideas common to the wage-earning classes of the whole world, he put no obstacles in the way of their leader Tolain 's plan for founding an International Association of Workers (Société Internationale des Travailleurs). At the same time he encouraged the provision made by employers for thrift and relief and for improving the condition of the working classes.

Foreign affairs

The Crimean War

Napoleon III's foreign policy was based on L'Empire, c'est la paix. So long as his power was not yet established, Napoleon III made special efforts to reassure European opinion, which had been made uneasy by his previous protestations against the treaties of 1815. The Crimean War, in which, supported by England and the king of Sardinia, he upheld against Russia the policy of the integrity of the Turkish empire, a policy traditional in France since the days of Francis I, won him the adherence both of the old parties and the Liberals. And this war was the prototype of all the rest. It was entered upon with no clearly defined military purpose, and continued in a hesitating way. This was the cause, after the victory of the allies at the Battle of Alma (September 14, 1854), of the long and costly siege of Sevastopol (September 8, 1855).

Intervention in Italy

Count Walewski(son of Napoléon I and Maria Walewski ), his minister for foreign affairs, gave a sudden and unexpected extension of scope to the deliberations of the Congress of Paris (1856) by inviting the plenipotentiaries to consider the questions of Greece, Rome, Naples, etc. Cavour and Piedmont immediately benefited by it, for thanks to Napoleon III they were able to lay the Italian question before an assembly of diplomatic Europe, and before Napoleon in particular.

France nad its Emperor were emboldened by the success in Crimea and turned towards Italy, where public sentiment in France had long opposed the Austrian domination. The emperor was divided between the empress Eugénie, who as a Spaniard and a devout Catholic was hostile to anything which might threaten the papacy, and Prince Napoleon, who as brother-in-law of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy favoured the cause of Piedmont, hoped to conciliate both sides by setting up an Italian federation , intending to reserve the presidency of it to Pope Pius IX as a mark of respect to the moral authority of the Church. Moreover, the very difficulty of the undertaking appealed to the emperor, elated by his recent success in the Crimea. At the secret meeting between Napoleon and Count Cavour (July 20, 1858) the eventual armed intervention of France, demanded by Orsini before he mounted the scaffold, was promised.

Austria issued ultimatum demanding the immediate cessation of Piedmont's preparations for war precipitated the Italian expedition. On May 3, 1859 Napoleon declared his intention of making Italy "free from the Alps to the Adriatic." Two months later after the victories of Montebello, Magenta and Solferino France and Austria signed the Peace of Villafranca on July 9, 1859. Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon III, who in turn ceded it to Victor Emmanuel; Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes, and the Romagna to the pope, now president of an Italian federation. France received Savoy from Piedmont. The conflict and the resulting near unification of Italy had given great offence to the Catholics, to whose support the establishment of the Empire was largely due.

Franco-Prussian rivalry

A new rivalry was quickly developing with quickly rising Prussia. After 1865 the temporary agreement which had united Austria and Prussia for the purpose of administering the conquered duchies gave way to a silent antipathy. Although the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was not unexpected, its rapid termination and outcome came as a severe shock to France. Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his throne and new influence for France by an intervention at the proper moment between combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted. His calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the Battle of Sadowa (Koniggratz) on July 4, 1866. The Treaty of Prague put an end to the secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollern for the hegemony of Germany, which had been France's opportunity; and Prussia could afford to humour the just claims of Napoleon by establishing between her North German Confederation and the South German states the illusory frontier of the Main. The belated efforts of the French emperor to obtain "compensation" on the left bank of the Rhine at the expense of the South German states, made matters worse. France realised with an angry surprise that on her eastern frontier had arisen a military power by which her influence, if not her existence, was threatened; that in the name of the principle of nationality unwilling populations had been brought under the sway of a dynasty by tradition militant and aggressive, by tradition the enemy of France; that this new and threatening power had destroyed French influence in Italy, which owed the acquisition of Venetia to a Prussian alliance and to Prussian arms; and that all this had been due to Napoleon, outwitted and outmanoeuvred at every turn, since his first interview with Otto von Bismarck at Biarritz in October 1865.

The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire. In Mexico the greatest idea of the reign ended in a humiliating withdrawal before the ultimatum of the United States, while Italy, relying on her new alliance with Prussia and already forgetful of her promises, was mobilising the revolutionary forces to complete her unity by conquering Rome. The chassepots of Mentana were needed to check the Garibaldians. And when the imperial diplomacy made a belated attempt to obtain from the victorious Bismarck those territorial compensations on the Rhine, in Belgium and in Luxembourg, which it ought to have been possible to exact from him earlier at Biarritz, - Benedetti added to the mistake of asking at the wrong time the humiliation of obtaining nothing. Even in Japan, the Bakufu government, which Napoleon had supported by sending a Military mission, finally lost to Japanese Imperial forces in the Boshin War, leading to the Meiji restoration.

The Universal Exhibition (1867) was marked by Berezowski 's attack on Tsar Alexander II of Russia, and its success was clouded by the tragic fate of the unhappy emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Thiers exclaimed, "There are no blunders left for us to make."

France drifted in the direction of war with Prussia. Count Beust unsuccessfully revived, on behalf of the Austrian government, the project abandoned by Napoleon since 1866 of a settlement on the basis of the status quo with reciprocal disarmament. Napoleon refused, on hearing from Colonel Stoffel , his military attaché at Berlin, that Prussia would not agree to disarmament; but he was more anxious than he was willing to show. A reconstitution of the military organisation seemed to him to be necessary. This Marshal Niel was unable to obtain either from the Bonapartist Opposition, who feared the electors, whose old patriotism had given place to a commercial spirit, or from the Republican opposition, who were unwilling to strengthen the despot.

Franco-Prussian War

The desired pretext was offered on July 3, 1870 by the candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain. To the French people it seemed that Prussia was reviving against France the traditional policy of the Habsburgs. France, having rejected for dynastic reasons the candidature of a Frenchman, the duc de Montpensier, was threatened with a German prince. Never had the emperor, now both physically and morally ill, had greater need of statesmanlike advice and the support of an enlightened public opinion. He could find neither.

Ollivier's Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealous for national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upon doing something great, and swept away by the force of that opinion which it had itself set free, at once accepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for it with a light heart, In face of the decided declaration of the duc de Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, before the Legislative Body of July 6, 1870, Europe, in alarm, supported the efforts of French diplomacy and obtained the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature. This did not suit the views either of the war party in Paris or of Bismarck, who wanted the other side to declare war. Gramont's ill-advised action in demanding from King Wilhelm I of Germany a guarantee of future conduct, gave Bismarck his opportunity, and the king's refusal was transformed into an insult by the "editing" of the Ems telegram. The chamber, in spite of the desperate efforts of Thiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to 10 in favour of the war.

France was isolated, as much through the duplicity of Napoleon as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to the diets of Munich and Stuttgart of the written text of the claims laid by Napoleon on the territories of Hesse and Bavaria had since August 22, 1866 estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed the southern states to sign the military convention with Prussia. Owing to a similar series of blunders, the rest of Europe had become hostile. Russia, which it had been Bismarck's study both during and after the Polish insurrection of 1863 to draw closer to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the same indiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises made at Stuttgart. The hope of gaining a revenge in the East for her defeat of 1856 while France was in difficulties made her decide on a benevolent neutrality. The disclosure of Benedetti's designs of 1867 on Belgium and Luxembourg equally ensured an unfriendly neutrality on the part of the United Kingdom.

The emperor counted on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for which he had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August 1867). Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and 1866, was not ready and asked for a delay before joining in the war; while the hesitating friendships of Italy could only be won by the evacuation of Rome. The chassepots of Mentana, Rouher's "Never", and the hostility of the Catholic empress to any secret article which should open to Italy the gates of the Italian capital, deprived France of her last friend.

Marshal Leboeuf 's armies were no more effective than Gramont's alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers of the French army, the lack of preparation for war at headquarters, the irresponsibility of the field officers, the absence of any contingency plan, and the reliance on chance, previously a successful strategy for the emperor, instead of on scientific warfare, were all apparent as early as the insignificant engagement of Saarbrücken. Thus the French army proceeded by disastrous stages from Weissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler , Borny , Gravelotte, Noisseyule and Saint-Privat to the siege of Metz and the slaughter at Illy.

By the capitulation of Sedan the Empire lost its only support, the army. Paris was left unprotected and emptied of troops, with a woman at the Tuileries, a terrified Assembly at the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao, without authority, and leaders of the Opposition who fled as the catastrophe approached. On September 4, 1870 the republican deputies of Paris at the hotel de ville constituted a provisional government. The Empire had fallen, the emperor was a prisoner in Germany, and France now embarked on the era of the Third Republic.

Last updated: 09-12-2005 02:39:13