508Chapter 26
industrialists. Bülow directed German energies to
“world policy” (Weltpolitik). With the enthusiasm of the
emperor and the energy of a strong minister of the
navy, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the Bülow govern-
ment (1900–09) undertook a major arms race (espe-
cially in naval construction), the extension and
consolidation of a German colonial empire (reluctantly
begun by Bismarck), and the assertion of German lead-
ership in global issues.
The French Third Republic
The war of 1870–71 destroyed the French Second
Empire as it created the German Second Empire.
Napoleon III was taken prisoner at Sedan in September
- When the news reached Paris, a bloodless revolu-
tion announced the creation of a Third Republic (hon-
oring the predecessors of 1792 and 1848). The Third
Republic became the first republic in European history
to last long enough to offer a viable alternative to
monarchy. Despite its rocky start, and a history filled
with crises, the French Third Republic survived a gen-
eration longer than imperial Germany did.
Gambetta’s provisional government of 1870 was re-
placed by an elected assembly after the capitulation of
Paris in January 1871, when Bismarck allowed an
armistice for the French to elect a new government to
negotiate a peace treaty. Republicans and Parisians
wanted to fight to the bitter end, while monarchists
and the provinces favored peace. A majority of the na-
tion would have voted against monarchy if that were
the issue, but they accepted monarchist representatives
as the price of peace. A French National Assembly
chose Adolphe Thiers, a leader of the Orleanist monar-
chy and a critic of Napoleon III, as its executive. His
government negotiated the Frankfurt Peace Treaty of
May 1871, which cost France Alsace, much of Lorraine,
and a five-billion-franc war indemnity (one billion
dollars).
While the monarchist government of Thiers delib-
erated in suburban Versailles, Paris elected a municipal
government, known as the Paris Commune of 1871,
which denied the authority of the Versailles govern-
ment. The Commune was a mixture of republicans, so-
cialists, and anarchists. It did not last long enough to
prepare a full program, but the Communards favored
decentralized government, the separation of church
and state, and a variety of social programs. Although it
became a famous symbol in socialist literature, the
Commune never even seized the Bank of France or the
Stock Exchange. It (and smaller communes in other
cities) survived only for a few weeks from March to
May 1871 before falling in a bloody civil war. Thiers
used the French army to attack Paris (while the German
army watched), and Versailles troops fought Commu-
nards street-by-street, executing anyone who was
armed. The Communards responded with a similar fe-
rocity, executing hostages (including the archbishop of
Paris) and destroying monarchist monuments. The Ver-
sailles army destroyed the Commune in a week of street
fighting, known as “the bloody week.” Under the direc-
tion of a candidly cruel general, the Marquis de Gal-
lifet, the army began to punish the city. Gallifet felt
justified in executing anyone who had stayed in Paris
during the Commune, and he set such examples as exe-
cuting wounded prisoners (wounds were evidence of
being involved in the fighting) or white-haired prison-
ers (who were thought old enough to have fought in
the revolution of 1848, too). The monarchical revenge
upon Paris killed ten times as many Parisians (an esti-
mated twenty-five thousand) as the Reign of Terror had
guillotined there (twenty-six hundred). An additional
forty thousand military trials produced ten thousand
sentences of imprisonment or deportation to a penal
colony.
Following this civil war, the French had great diffi-
culty in agreeing upon a government during the 1870s.
The National Assembly held a monarchist majority,
split among supporters of three royal families: the Bour-
bon legitimists, who wanted to crown the grandson of
Charles X; the Orleanists, who favored the grandson of
Louis Philippe (see genealogy 24.1); and the Bona-
partists, who supported Napoleon III or his son. While
these factions squabbled, by-elections filled vacant
seats with republicans, until even Thiers admitted that
France must become a republic. The constitutional laws
of the Third Republic were finally adopted in 1875.
Monarchist deputies tried to make the new regime con-
servative, to guard against democracy and to provide
for a future monarchical restoration. The constitution
created a strong lower house of Parliament (the Cham-
ber of Deputies), which was elected by universal man-
hood suffrage, and balanced it with an upper house (the
Senate) elected indirectly. The head of the government
(the premier) needed the support of a majority in the
Chamber of Deputies.
In the late 1870s and the 1880s, republicans cre-
ated many of the basic laws and institutions of modern
France. Moderates led by a quiet lawyer named Jules
Ferry and radicals led by the more flamboyant Georges
Clemenceau compromised on an initial program. The
Ferry laws of the early 1880s created one of the basic