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The French Third Republic ( French: Troisième République, sometimes written as La IIIe République) was the system of government adopted in France from 4 September 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, until 10 July 1940, after the Fall of France during World War II led to the formation of the Vichy ...
Third Republic, French government from 1870 to 1940. Despite its series of short-lived governments, the Third Republic was marked by social stability (except for the Alfred Dreyfus affair), industrialization, and establishment of a professional civil service.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Birth of the Third Republic, 1875. After four years of uncertainty over the leadership of the country, the Third Republic was firmly instituted in Versailles in 1875. The proclamation quenched the monarchist quarrels. The Third Republic was proclaimed in France on 4 September 1870 after the defeat at Sedan, but it struggled to win universal ...
The Third Republic. Léon Gambetta, photograph by Étienne Carjat; in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. A provisional government of national defense was set up in 1870 and took as its first task the continuation of the war against the invaders.
- Overview
- Republican factions
Meanwhile, the task of writing a constitution for the republic could no longer be postponed. The assembly began its deliberations in 1873; in 1875 it adopted a series of fundamental laws, which, taken collectively, came to be known as the constitution of the Third Republic. A patchwork compromise, it established a two-house legislature (with an indirectly elected Senate as a conservative check on the Chamber of Deputies); a Council of Ministers (cabinet), responsible to the Chamber; and a president, elected for seven years by the two houses, with powers resembling those of a constitutional monarch. The label republic was approved by a single-vote margin. Monarchists believed that this system could be easily converted to their purposes once the right monarch was available. The constitution left untouched many aspects of the French governmental structure, notably the centralized administrative system inherited from Napoleon I, the hierarchy of courts and judges, and the Concordat of 1801, governing church-state relations. At the end of 1875 the National Assembly at last dissolved itself, and the provisional phase of the Third Republic came to an end.
The new Senate, which heavily overrepresented rural France, was safely monarchist from the outset; and the term of President Mac-Mahon, a loyal monarchist, ran until 1880. But when the first Chamber of Deputies was elected in 1876, the republicans won more than two-thirds of the seats. A period of severe friction between Mac-Mahon and the Chamber followed, and a crisis in May 1877 produced a total deadlock. Mac-Mahon dissolved the Chamber and called on the voters’ support, but again they opted for the republic, by a narrower but clear-cut margin. Léon Gambetta, who had returned to political life and had led the republicans during the campaign, called on Mac-Mahon to “give in or get out.” The president gave in, naming a premier acceptable to the republican majority. Two years later partial elections gave the republicans control of the Senate, and Mac-Mahon shortly found an excuse to resign. He was replaced by a colourless republican, Jules Grévy, who was believed to favour a reduced role for the president.
With the republican regime apparently safe from outside attack, rival factions developed among the republicans. During the 1880s the labels Radical and Opportunist began to be attached to the two wings of the republican movement. On the left, the Radicals saw themselves as heirs to the Jacobin tradition: they stood for a strong centralized regime, ...
Nov 17, 2022 · The Third Republic. Following the collapse of France’s Second Empire, the remaining government officials established the Third Republic, formed a new legislative National Assembly and...
This regime had lasted seventy years, yet until recently the Third Republic was often criticized, particularly in its constitution and political mores. In considering the regime in a new light, this chapter reveals a complex, bifurcated history of the Republic.
