The Political Story: 1815-1900. From Monarchy to Republic, the struggle for stability and compromise • Republicanism a minority allegiance up to 1880 • Critics associate it with Jacobinism, violent democracy, “Bolshevism” in its day. • By 1880, a permanent majority of the French converted to the republican ideal (Wright, 205) • Transition was exceptional, not normal, it its day A series of experiments in search of stability and compromise (Wright) • The Bourbon Experiment (1814-1830) • The Orléanist Experiment (1830-1848) • The Republican Experiment (1848-1852) • The Imperial Experiment (1852-1870) • The Rooting of the Republican System (1870-1919) Louis XVIII, King of France (1814-1824) Louis-Philippe, King of the French, 1830-1848 Official portrait of Louis XVIII by Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gros Official portrait by Franz Xavier Winterhalter, 1839 Louis XVIII and the Royal Family Charles X, King of France 1824-1830 Official portrait François GERARD, 1825 1814-1848 Struggles for Compromise that Failed How to blend the Revolution and the Old Regime? How to bridge deep divisions created by the Revolution? • Louis XVIII (1814-1824) & the Charter—divine right and a nobility with a legislature • 1817—90,000 men of the wealthy elite had the right to vote • The Chamber: ultras, moderates, liberals (constitutional monarchists, a few republicans) • Charles X (1824-1830) “Stubbornly Unwise” • Coronation at Reims (symbol of the Old Regime) • Compensation of noble émigrés • Partial restoration of the Church—seminaries and missions • Trio of unpopular ultra ministers in 1829—Polignac, Bourmont, La Bourdonnaye • Response: stronger opposition led by Adolfe Theirs • Charles issues July Ordinances set aside elections won by the Left • Three Glorious Days of Revolution (28, 29, 30 July) Eugène Delacroix, Liberty leading the People, 1830 The July Monarchy under Louis-Philippe of Orléans line of the Bourbon family King of the French (1830-1848) • Guizot: the regime = culmination of reform • Theirs and Tocqueville = the beginning of an evolution—extend suffrage to middle classes • Hugo (1862)=“The Halt” that could not be justified. • King’s morning prayer: “O Lord, give us this day our daily platitude.” • Inclusion—Notables of the nobility and “Grand Bourgeoisie” • Exclusion—peasants, urban workers, shop keepers, non-elite lawyers, petit bourgeoisie • Motto of the regime: “le juste milieu”—moderate course between competing ideals of liberty and order. • How to benefit: “enrich yourself” according to the unpopular minister Guizot • Discontent and instability (1830-1834) • Insurrection of Lyon textile workers 1831 • Uprising of June 1832 • Economic crisis 1846-47 • Alienation of intellectuals: Hugo, George Sand, Eugène Sue; Daumier; Michelet, Lamartine, Louis Blanc—new histories of the French Revolution. Karl Marx in Paris. • Mobilizing dissatisfaction in the political banquets of 1847-48 • February 22 revolution Honoré Daumier on Louis Philippe Le passé, le présent et l'avenir, 1834 Les poires [The Pears], 1831 The Past, the Present, and the Future Honoré Daumier, Gargantua, 1831 Daumier, Le Ventre Législatif. Aspect des bancs ministériels de la chambre improstituée de 1834. The Belly of the Legislature. View of the ministerial benches of the debauched chamber of 1834. Louis-Philippe, King of the French, 1830-1848 Official portrait by Franz Xavier Winterhalter, 1839 The Second Republic, 1848-1852: Republican Hopes dashed and Popular Participation violently suppressed • Provisional government, led by Lamartine • a bourgeois entity with factions that agreed to universal manhood suffrage—all but unprecedented • National Workshops—temporary relief of unemployment that grew large because of the economic crisis • Election on April 23 1848: 900 seats, majority elected were moderate to conservative: 300 monarchists, 300; moderate republicans (Lamartine), 500; radicals/socialists (Ledru- Rollin), 100. • June Days (20-23), “civil war” in Paris repressed by army under Cavaignac (about 3000 rebels killed; 12,000 arrested and sent to prison camps in Algeria) • President = Louis Napoléon (liberal or authoritarian schemer), by landslide in December 1848 • Legislature = monarchists in majority (400 seats), large left wing (nearly 200), little room for compromise or effective independence from the President • Church—round 2 of restoration in Falloux Law (1850) expanding Church influence over education—alienated republicans. • Coup d’état on December 2, 1851. Napoléon takes what the Legislature refused to grant: second term as president and money to pay his personal debts. • Widespread resistance and repression. 2 days of violence in Paris; uprisings in the South The Vote or the Rifle, ca. 1848 The bourgeois and the worker, 1848 by Jean-Pierre Moynet Let’s see Mr. Bourgeois . You have confiscated two revolutions for your profit only. We started the work again so that all the world would win, you and us. You call that obstinate. Frankly, that’s right. Barricades on rue Saint-Maur. Daguerréotypes by Thibault. 25 et 26 juin 1848 The Second Empire: “Authoritarian Democracy”? Or Very Orderly Progress? Old Wines in a New Bottle: libertarian, egalitarian, and authoritarian? • Phase I: Redeploying the Napoleonic system: centralized administration directed from the top and vigilant policing of the opposition (“esprit public”) • Removing trouble makers through prison or deportation: Theirs, Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo, 23,000 “rebels.” • Symbolic legislature (Corps Législatif) elected by universal suffrage every six years • Plebiscites in 1851, 1852, 1870 • Phase II: Relaxing control and introducing reforms (from 1859) • Right to strike in 1864 • Expansion of public education • State supported railway expansion • Increasing success of opposition candidates in the Corps Législatif • 1870 introduction of liberal constitution, with accountability for ministers, enlarged authority of the legislature. Plebiscite returns 70 percent approval. • War brings down the curtain • War with Prussia July 19 • Defeat at Sedan August 31; Napoléon captured by the Prussians Louis Napoléon, Prince President Coup d’état by Louis Napoléon, December 2, 1852 « 4me journée - la Victoire », illustration by Ernest Dargent for Histoire d’un crime, c. 1853 Napoléon III, Emperor of the French, 1852-1870 Official portrait by Franz Xavier Winterhalter, 1853 Victor Hugo sur le rocher des Proscrits (1853) [on the rock of the exiled on the island of Guernsey} The Third Republic, 1870-1900 (1940). A Compromise that Endures A Decade of instability • Inauspicious beginnings: The Paris Commune 1871 • French troops besieged Paris for 9 weeks • 20,000 deaths; 50,000 tried, most deported • Adolphe Thiers leads the Republic, allied himself with republican deputies in the National Assembly • The Constitution of 1875 formally established the Republic • Monarchist party controlled the Presidency until 1880 Building Republicanism, 1880-1900 • The importance of education (secular, national, compulsory) • See next slide • See my lecture notes for History 151 A Map of Rural School Classes per 1000 Children 6 to 14 years old in the departments of France, 1876 Shading from dark red to pale: highest high levels of children in rural schools to the lowest levels low This statistical map indicates the growing interest of the Third Republic of instituting an improved and universally available system of primary education. The color scheme uses shades of red to indicate rates from low (pale) to high (intense). Note how the central part of France and Brittany (pennisula with the departments of Finistere, Morbihan, Ille-et-Villain, Cotes-du-Nord, and Loire-Inferieur) had the lowest rates. These became target areas for succeeding efforts to send state-trained teachers (instituteurs) into every village in the country. .