French III

Monarchy Restoration

Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830)

The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period of French history following the fall of Napoleon in April 1814 until the July Revolution of 1830. The brothers of the executed Louis XVI came to power and reigned as  Louis XVIII of France in highly conservative fashion.

Name	King From	King Until	Relationship with Predecessor(s)	Title
Louis XVIII	11 April 1814 7 July 1815	20 March 1815 16 Sept 1824	Grandson of Louis XV, Younger Brother of Louis XVI	King of France and of Navarre
Charles X	16 Sept 1824	2 August 1830	Grandson of Louis XV, Younger Brother of Louis XVI and Louis XVIII	King of France and of Navarre

There was an interlude in spring 1815—the "Hundred Days"—when the return of Napoleon forced the Bourbons to flee France. When Napoleon was again defeated by the Seventh Coalition, they returned to power in July 1815. 

The new king, Louis XVIII, accepted the vast majority of reforms instituted from 1792 to 1814. Continuity was his basic policy. He did not try to recover land and property taken from the royalist exiles. He continued in peaceful fashion the main objectives of Napoleon's foreign policy, such as the limitation of Austrian influence. It also saw the reestablishment of the Catholic Church as a major power in French politics. Louis XVIII was succeeded by his brother, the Comte d'Artois, who took the title of Charles X.

There is still considerable debate among historians as to the actual cause of the downfall of Charles X. What is generally conceded, though, is that between 1820 and 1830, a series of economic downturns combined with the rise of a liberal opposition within the Chamber of Deputies, ultimately felled the conservative Bourbons. The popular uprisings of the Revolutions of 1830 brought to an end the Bourbon monarchy.

House of Orléans, July Monarchy (1830–1848)

The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, led to the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch. It marked the shift from one constitutional monarchy, under the restored House of Bourbon, to another, the July Monarchy; the transition of power from the House of Bourbon to its cadet branch, the House of Orléans; and the replacement of the principle of hereditary right by popular sovereignty. 

The revolution created a constitutional monarchy. On 2 August, Charles X and his son the Dauphin abdicated their rights to the throne and departed for Great Britain. Although Charles had intended that his grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux, would take the throne, the politicians who composed the provisional government instead placed on the throne a distant cousin, Louis Philippe of the House of Orléans, who agreed to rule as a constitutional monarch. Louis-Philippe ruled, not as "King of France" but as "King of the French", marking the shift to national sovereignty. 

Name	King From	King Until	Relationship with Predecessor(s)	Title
Louis-Philippe I the Citizen King	9 August 1830	24 February 1848	Sixth generation descendant of Louis XIII in the male line. Fifth cousin of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X	King of the French

This period became known as the July Monarchy. Supporters of the exiled senior line of the Bourbon dynasty became known as Legitimists, and supporters of Louis Philippe Orléanists. The Orléanists remained in power until 1848. 

The climaxing banquet was scheduled for 22 February 1848 in Paris but the government banned it. In response citizens of all classes poured out onto the streets of Paris in a revolt against the July Monarchy. Demands were made for abdication of "Citizen King" Louis-Philippe and for establishment of a representative democracy in France. The king abdicated, and the French Second Republic was proclaimed. Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine, who had been a leader of the moderate republicans in France during the 1840s, became the Minister of Foreign Affairs and in effect the premier in the new Provisional government.

United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–1839)

This 1830 French Revolution sparked an August uprising in Brussels and the Southern Provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, leading to the collapse of the United Kingdom after the 1830 Belgian Revolution. William I, King of the Netherlands, would refuse to recognize a Belgian state until 1839. 

The newly created United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 had two capitals: Amsterdam and Brussels. The new nation had two equal parts. The north (Netherlands proper) had 2 million people. They spoke chiefly Dutch but were divided religiously between a Protestant majority and a large Catholic minority. The south (which would be known as "Belgium" after 1830) had a population of 3.4 million people. Nearly all were Catholic, but it was divided between French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemings. The upper and middle classes in the south were mostly French-speaking. Officially Amsterdam was the capital, but in a compromise the government met alternately in Brussels and The Hague.

William was determined to create a united people, even though the north and south had drifted far apart in the past three centuries. Protestants were the largest denomination in the North (population 2 million), but formed a quarter of the population in the overwhelmingly Catholic South (population 3.5 million). Nevertheless, Protestants dominated William's government and army.

After having been dominant for a long time, the French-speaking elite in the Southern Netherlands now felt like second-class citizens. The French-speaking Walloons strenuously rejected his attempt to make Dutch the universal language of government, while the population of Flanders was divided. Flemings in the south spoke a Dutch dialect ("Flemish") and welcomed the encouragement of Dutch with a revival of literature and popular culture. Other Flemings, notably the educated bourgeoisie, preferred to speak French.

Independent of Belgium and Luxembourg 1839

Although the south was industrializing and was more prosperous than the north the accumulated grievances allowed the multiple opposition forces to coalesce. The outbreak of revolution in France in 1830 was a signal for action, at first on behalf of autonomy for Belgium, as the southern provinces were now called, and later on behalf of total independence. William dithered and his half-hearted efforts to reconquer Belgium were thwarted both by the efforts of the Belgians themselves and by the diplomatic opposition of the great powers.

At the London Conference of 1830, the chief powers of Europe ordered (in November 1830) an armistice between the Dutch and the Belgians. The first draft for a treaty of separation of Belgium and the Netherlands was rejected by the Belgians. A second draft (June 1831) was rejected by William I, who resumed hostilities. Franco-British intervention forced William to withdraw Dutch forces from Belgium late in 1831, and in 1833 an armistice of indefinite duration was concluded. Belgium was effectively independent but William’s attempts to recover Luxembourg and Limburg led to renewed tension. The London Conference of 1838–39 prepared the final Dutch-Belgian separation treaty of 1839. It divided Luxembourg and Limburg between the Dutch and Belgian crowns. The Kingdom of the Netherlands thereafter was made up of the 11 Northern provinces.

French Second Empire

Second Republic (1848–1852)

The Second French Republic lasted from 1848 to 1852, when its president, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, was declared Emperor of the French. 

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president on 10 December 1848 by a landslide. His support came from a wide section of the French public. Various classes of French society voted for Louis Napoleon for very different and often contradictory reasons. Louis Napoleon, himself encouraged this contradiction by "being all things to all people." One of his major promises to the peasantry and other groups was that there would be no new taxes.

The new National Constituent Assembly was heavily composed of royalist sympathizers of both the Legitimist (Bourbon) wing and the Orleanist (Citizen King Louis Philippe) wing. Because of the ambiguity surrounding Louis Napoleon's political positions, his agenda as president was very much in doubt. For prime minister, he selected Odilon Barrot, an unobjectionable middle-road parliamentarian, who had led the "loyal opposition" under Louis Philippe. Other appointees represented various royalist factions.

The Pope had been forced out of Rome as part of the Revolutions of 1848, and Louis Napoleon sent a 14,000 man expeditionary force of troops to the Papal State under General Nicolas Charles Victor Oudinot to restore him. In June 1849, demonstrations against the government broke out and were suppressed. Leaders were arrested, including prominent politicians. The government banned several democratic and socialist newspapers in France; the editors were arrested. Karl Marx was at risk so he moved to London in August.

House of Bonaparte, Second Empire (1852–1870)

As 1851 opened, Louis Napoleon was not allowed by the Constitution of 1848 to seek re-election as President of France. Instead he proclaimed himself President for Life following a coup in December that was confirmed and accepted in a dubious referendum.

Napoleon III of France took the imperial title in 1852 and held it until his downfall in 1870. The era saw great industrialization, urbanization (including the massive rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann) and economic growth.

Name	Emperor From	Emperor Until	Relationship with Predecessor(s)	Title
Napoleon III	2 Dec 1852	4 Sept 1870	Nephew of Napoleon I	Emperor of the French

In 1854, The Second Empire joined the Crimean War, which saw France and Britain opposed to the Russian Empire, which was decisively defeated at Sevastopol in 1854–55 and at Inkerman in 1854. In 1856 France joined the Second Opium War on the British side against China; a missionary's murder was used as a pretext to take interests in southwest Asia in the Treaty of Tientsin.

When France was negotiating with the Netherlands about purchasing Luxembourg in 1867, the Prussian Kingdom threatened the French government with war. This "Luxembourg Crisis" came as a shock to French diplomats as there had been an agreement between the Prussian and French governments about Luxembourg. Napoleon III suffered stronger and stronger criticism from Republicans like Jules Favre, and his position seemed more fragile with the passage of time.

France was looking for more interests in Asia. When French imperial ambitions revived, Africa and Indochina would be the main targets, and commercial incentives, which had driven the creation of the pre-revolutionary empire, were secondary.

Rising tensions in 1869 about the possible candidacy of Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the throne of Spain caused a rise in the scale of animosity between France and Germany. Prince Leopold was a part of the Prussian royal family. He had been asked by the Spanish Cortes to accept the vacant throne of Spain.

Such an event was more than France could possibly accept. Relations between France and Germany deteriorated, and finally the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) broke out. German nationalism united the German states, with the exception of Austria, against Napoleon III. The French Empire was defeated decisively at Metz and Sedan. Emperor Louis Napoleon III surrendered himself and 100,000 French troops to the German troops on 1–2 September 1870.

After Napoleon's capture by the Prussians in the Battle of Sedan, Parisian Deputies established the Government of National Defense as a provisional government on 4 September 1870. This first Government of the Third Republic, headed by the President, General Louis Jules Trochu, ruled during the Siege of Paris (19 Sep 1870 – 28 Jan 1871).

French Republics

Third Republic 1870–1940 


The French Third Republic was the system of government adopted in France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed, until 1940, when France's defeat by Nazi Germany in World War II led to the formation of the Vichy government in France. It came to an end on 10 July 1940. 

The early days of the Third Republic were dominated by political disruptions caused by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, which the Republic continued to wage after the fall of Emperor Napoleon III in 1870. Harsh reparations exacted by the Prussians after the war resulted in the loss of the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine. 

Issues over the re-establishment of the monarchy dominated the tenures of the first two presidents, but the growing support for the republican form of government in the French population and a series of republican presidents during the 1880s quashed all plans for a monarchical restoration.

The Third Republic established many French colonial possessions, including French Indochina, French Madagascar, French Polynesia, and large territories in West Africa during the Scramble for Africa, all of them acquired during the last two decades of the 19th century.

World War I (1914-1918) 

France entered World War I because Russia and Germany were going to war, and France honored its treaty obligations to Russia. Britain wanted to remain neutral but entered the war when the German army invaded Belgium on its way to Paris. 

The French victory at the Battle of the Marne in September 1914 ensured the failure of Germany's strategy to win quickly. It became a long and very bloody war of attrition, but France emerged on the winning side.A quick change of fortunes in the late summer and autumn of 1918 saw the defeat of Germany in World War I. The most important factors that led to the surrender of Germany were its exhaustion after four years of fighting and the arrival of large numbers of troops from the United States beginning in the summer of 1918. France regained Alsace-Lorraine, and the German industrial Saar Basin, a coal and steel region, was occupied by France. The German African colonies, such as Kamerun, were partitioned between France and Britain.

The flow of reparations from Germany played a central role in strengthening French finances. The government began a large-scale reconstruction program to repair wartime damages, and was burdened with a very large public debt.

World War II (1939-1945)

Germany's Invasion of Poland in 1939 finally caused France and Britain to declare war against Germany. But the Allies did not launch massive assaults and instead kept a defensive stance. When Germany had its hands free for an attack in the west, the Battle of France began in May 1940. The second German force was sent into Belgium and the Netherlands to act as a diversion to this main thrust. In six weeks of savage fighting the French lost 90,000 men.

Paris fell to the Germans on 14 June 1940, but not before the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk, along with many French soldiers. Vichy France was established on 10 July 1940 to govern the unoccupied part of France and its colonies.

Germany occupied three-fifths of France's territory, leaving the rest in the southeast to the new Vichy government. However, in practice, most local government was handled by the traditional French officialdom. In November 1942 all of Vichy France was finally occupied by German forces. Vichy continued in existence but it was closely supervised by the Germans.

After the liberation of France, the Provisional Government of the French Republic was an interim government of Free France between 1944 and 1946 following the liberation of continental France after the operations Overlord and Dragoon, and lasted until the establishment of the French Fourth Republic. Its establishment marked the official restoration and re-establishment of a provisional French Republic assuring continuity with the defunct French Third Republic.

Fourth Republic 1946-1958

The Fourth Republic saw an era of great economic growth in France and the rebuilding of the nation's social institutions and industry after World War II, and played an important part in the development of the process of European integrationwhich changed the continent permanently. The greatest accomplishments of the Fourth Republic were in social reform and economic development

The trigger for the collapse of the Fourth Republic was the Algiers crisis of 1958. France was still a colonial power, although conflict and revolt had begun the process of decolonization. French West Africa, French Indochina, and French Algeria still sent representatives to the French parliament under systems of limited suffrage in the French Union. Algeria in particular, despite being the colony with the largest French population, saw rising pressure for separation from the Métropole. The situation was complicated by those in Algeria, such as the Pied-Noirs, who wanted to stay part of France, so the Algerian War became not just a separatist movement but had elements of a civil war.

Fifth Republic 1958-Present

The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, introduced on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, replacing the prior parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system. It is France's third-longest-enduring political regime, after the pre-revolutionary Ancien Régime and the Third Republic.