History of Modern France — Spring – Institute for the Study of Western Civilization

Week 21

Week 21: Thursday, April 4, 2024
The Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War (19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871) was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete Prussian and German victory brought about the final unification of Germany under King Wilhelm I of Prussia. It also marked the downfall of Napoleon III and the end of the Second French Empire, which was replaced by the French Third Republic. As part of the settlement, the territory of Alsace-Lorraine was taken by Prussia to become a part of Germany, which it would retain until the end of World War I when it was given back to France in the Treaty of Versailles. The conflict was a culmination of years of tension between the two nations, which finally came to a head over the issue of a Hohenzollern candidate for the vacant Spanish throne, following the deposition of Isabella II in 1868. The public release of the Ems Dispatch, which played up alleged insults between the Prussian king and the French ambassador, inflamed public opinion on both sides. France mobilized, and on 19 July declared war on Prussia only, but the other German states quickly joined on Prussia's side. It soon became evident that the Prussian and German forces were superior, due in part to their efficient use of railways and the better Krupp steel artillery. Prussia had the fourth densest rail network in the world; France had the fifth. A series of swift Prussian and German victories in eastern France culminated in the Battle of Sedan, at which Napoleon III was captured with his whole army on 2 September. Yet this did not end the war, as the Third Republic was declared in Paris on 4 September 1870, and French resistance continued under the Government of National Defence and later Adolphe Thiers. Over a five-month campaign, the German armies defeated the newly recruited French armies in a series of battles fought across northern France. Following a prolonged siege, Paris fell on 28 January 1871. The siege is also notable for the first use of anti-aircraft artillery, a Krupp piece built specifically to shoot down the hot air balloons being used by the French as couriers. Ten days earlier, the German states had proclaimed their union under the Prussian king, uniting Germany as a nation-state, the German Empire. The final Treaty of Frankfurt was signed 10 May 1871, during the time of the Paris Commune uprising of 1871. (The above from Wikipedia.)

LECTURE NOTES:

In the sidebar are links to notes written by Prof. Bruce Thompson who lectures here at the Institute. He taught a course called "The Long Century" some years ago and for that course he wrote these notes. Some of the note topics are perfect for our class so I am sure you will enjoy having them. We have them for three of our ten weeks.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Gordon Wright,

France in Modern Times, Fifth edition,

Norton paperback,

ISBN 9780393967050

This Amazon review is for: France in Modern Times (Fifth Edition) (Paperback) "Gordon Wright's "France In Modern Times" is an all-encompassing book about French history from the start of the 1789 Revolution to contemporary times. This book has been required reading in all of my French history classes and with good reason: it clearly defines the main themes of French history in language that everyone can understand. In other words, one does not have to be a professional historian or a graduate student like myself in order to understand the points that Wright is highlighting. Furthermore, Wright gives an outstanding bibliography that enables one to continue their research on the various topics that he discusses within the book. If you are looking for one book on modern French history, this is the one that you should buy!"

About the Author: Gordon Wright was William H. Bonsall Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University. He was a past president of both the American Historical Association and the Society for French Historical Studies, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His many other books include Raymond Poincare and the French Presidency; Rurual Revolution in France; The Ordeal of Total War: 1939-1945; and Between the Guillotine and Liberty: Two Centuries of the Crime Problem in France.

Alistair Horne,

La Belle France,

Vintage paperbacks,

ISBN 1400034876

Reviews

"Fascinating. . . . Engaging. . . . Filled with 'hot-blooded' kings, royal mistressesÉand tales of cruelty, treachery and even, occasionally, heart-warming loyalty."

–San Francisco Chronicle

"[Horne] is a virtuoso of the character sketch and the illuminating vignette. . . . La Belle France, with its refreshingly subjective style, possesses more treasures than a whole wall full of textbooks."

–The Wall Street Journal

"A breathtaking tour of French history, from its earliest kings through the Mitterrand government. . . . There are few countries with a more fascinating history than France."

–The Seattle Times

"A useful and charming introduction to a nation that has oh-so-definitely helped make the modern world what it is. . . . Horne does a service in helping the reader navigate the complexities of French history."

–Los Angeles Times

22

Week 22: Thursday, April 11, 2024
The Siege of Paris

The Siege of Paris
Leon Gambetta
General Louis Trochu
Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers

The Siege of Paris, lasting from September 19, 1870 – January 28, 1871, and the consequent capture of the city by Prussian forces led to French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of the German Empire as well as the Paris Commune. As early as August 1870 the Prussian 3rd Army led by the Crown Prince (the future Emperor) Frederick III had been marching towards Paris, but was recalled to deal with French forces accompanied by Napoleon III himself. These forces were crushed at the Battle of Sedan and the road to Paris was left open. Personally leading the Prussian forces Wilhelm I of Prussia along with his chief of staff Helmuth von Moltke, took the 3rd Army along with the new Prussian Army of the Meuse under Crown Prince Albert of Saxony and marched on Paris virtually unopposed. In Paris the Governor and commander-in-chief of the city's defenses General Louis Jules Trochu, assembled a force of regular soldiers that had managed to escape Sedan under Joseph Vinoy plus the National Guards and a brigade of sailors which totalled around 400,000. (The above from Wikipedia.)

PART TWO:

Paintings, newspaper articles and cartoons, depicting the events and personalities of 1870-1871. Portraits of Gambetta, Trochu, Thiers and others.

23

Week 23: Thursday, April 18, 2024
The Paris Commune, 1871

The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution. Debates over the policies and outcome of the Commune contributed to the break between those two political groups. In a formal sense, the Paris Commune simply acted as the local authority, the city council (in French, the "commune"), which exercised power in Paris for two months in the spring of 1871. However, the conditions in which it formed, its controversial decrees, and its violent end make its tenure one of the more important political episodes of the time. (The above from Wikipedia.)

24

Week 24: Thursday, April 25, 2024
The National Assembly 1871-1875

1871-1875 The National Assembly

The National Assembly which was elected in the beginning of 1871 to ratify the treaty of Germany continued to sit up to 31 December 1875. It not only ratified the Treaty of Frankfurt but also crushed the revolt of the Paris Commune. Having accomplished that, the National Assembly addressed itself to the work of national reconstruction.

The problem of paying the war-indemnity was a very urgent one and consequently Thiers raised a large loan and thereby paid off the whole of war-indemnity in two years. The result was that the German troops were withdrawn from the French soil and Thiers came to be called “the Liberator of the Territory.” The French army was reorganised on the model of the Prussian army. A law of 1872 provided for compulsory military service throughout the length and breadth of the country.

The National Assembly had to address itself to the task of framing a constitution for the country. Thiers was originally a believer in constitutional monarchy but he was not afraid of a republican government as well. With the passage of time, he came to believe that a Republic was the only possible form of government for his country. To quote him, “There is only one throne and there are the claimants for seat on it.” “Those parties who want a monarchy do not want the same monarchy.” As regards the republican form of government, “it is the form of government which divides us least!”

This fact is made clear if we refer to the various sections which advocated the cause of monarchy in France. Those sections were the Legitimists, the Orleanists and the Bonapartists. The Legitimists supported the cause of the Count of Chambord, the grandson of Charles X. The Orleanists supported the cause of the Count of Paris. The Bonapartists advocated the cause of Napoleon III or his son. Although the Monarchists had a majority in the National Assembly, they were not able to have their own way to set up a monarchy in the country on account of the differences among them. In 1873, Thiers was made to resign as he was showing a tendency towards republicanism.

Many efforts were made to write a monarchical constitution for France. The Count of Chambord had no children and it was decided that the Count of Paris should give up his claims in favour of the Count of Chambord who should succeed as Henry V of France. As the Count of Chambord had no children, Count of Paris was to succeed him. The compromise having been secured it seemed certain that monarchy would be restored in France and negotiations started for that purpose. Negotiations were successful on all points except on the question of the flag.

The Count of Chambord openly declared that he was not prepared to accept the Tri-colour flag of the revolution. To quote him, “Henry V could never abandon the white flag of Henry IV.” His contention was that if he was to be the king of France, he must not sacrifice his principles and the flag. He was not prepared to be the king of the revolution. The negotiations failed on account of the stubbornness of the Count of Chambord.

In spite of this defeat, the Monarchists did not lose heart. Their view was that either the Count of Chambord would change his mind or he would die and be succeeded by the Count of Paris who was willing to accept the Tri-colour flag of the revolution. Under the circumstances, the Monarchists started playing delaying tactics. Their object was to gain time so that they may be able to attack when the iron was hot. After the resignation of Thiers, Macmahon was made the President. The term of his office had not been fixed so far and the same was fixed for 7 years in 1873. The Monarchists hoped that within the next 7 years they would be able to carry their point.

As the National Assembly was following a policy of delay, it did not seriously address itself to the task of framing the constitution. In this way, months and years passed. However, during this period, Gambetta was carrying on a vigorous campaign in favour of republicanism in every nook and comer of the country. To meet the danger of republicanism, the National Assembly passed a law in 1875 by which the mayors of all the Communes in France were to be appointed directly or indirectly by the ministry and not by the local Council as before.

This was intended to give the ministry control over the local affairs. Busts representing the Republic were removed from all public buildings. The name of Republic was omitted from all public documents. Republican newspapers were prosecuted and harassed. It is estimated that in one year, more than 200 Republican newspapers were suppressed. Instead of being disheartened, the Republicans continued their propaganda with more and more vigour.

At that stage, the Bonapartists became aggressive in the country and won a number of elections. The danger of a Bonapartist restoration changed completely the political situation in the country. A number of Orleanist members of the National Assembly were prepared to prefer Republicanism to Bonapartism. As their own chances were slender, they joined hands with the Republicans in the National Assembly. It was the combination of the Republicans and the Orleanists that enabled the National Assembly to frame a Republican constitution in France and the same was done in 1875. The Republican constitution was adopted by a majority of only one vote (353 to 352).

25

Week 25: Thursday, May 2, 2024
Charles Baudelaire

From Wikipedia: Charles Baudelaire, (April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. Baudelaire was one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of the earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connect it more closely to the work of the contemporary 'Parnassians'. As for theme and tone, in his works we see the rejection of the belief in the supremacy of nature and the fundamental goodness of man as typically espoused by the romantics and expressed by them in rhetorical, effusive and public voice in favor of a new urban sensibility, an awareness of individual moral complexity, an interest in vice (linked with decadence) and refined sensual and aesthetical pleasures, and the use of urban subject matter, such as the city, the crowd, individual passers-by, all expressed in highly ordered verse, sometimes through a cynical and ironic voice. Formally, the use of sound to create atmosphere, and of 'symbols', (images which take on an expanded function within the poem), betray a move towards considering the poem as a self-referential object, an idea further developed by the Symbolists Verlaine and Mallarmé, who acknowledge Baudelaire as a pioneer in this regard.

On the sidebar you will find a link to the best article ever written in English on Symbolism in literature. It was written by Rene Wellek (1903-1995) the founder of the field of comparative literature in the United States. Professor Wellek created comparative literature at Yale in the 1950's and 1960's. The crowning work of Wellek's career was an eight-volume magnum opus entitled A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, the last two volumes of which he dictated from his bed in a nursing home. This article is taken from the Dictionary of the History of Ideas.

REQUIRED READING

Charles Baudelaire,

Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du mal: A Bilingual Edition,

University Of Chicago Press,

ISBN 0226039269

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Week 26: Thursday, May 9, 2024
André Gide: The Immoralist

WARNING: DO NOT READ THE LONG INTRODUCTION, ANY BLURBS ON THE COVER OR BACK, ANY NEWSPAPER REVIEWS OR EVEN GRAFITTI ON THE WALLS ABOUT THIS BOOK: WHEN YOU GET TO IT, OPEN THE BOOK, TURN TO PAGE 15 which begins thus:

OK SO NOW YOU CAN CONTINUE READ ON ABOUT GIDE AND THE BOOK.

Gide's brilliant confessional novel The Immoralist is a small gem that captures perfectly the intellectual crisis that permeated the intellectual world of France at the end of the nineteenth century. Everyone had begun to doubt everything: country, religion, family, everything. And Gide's narrator of this tale lives this doubt in his journey into sickness, self-analysis (read: Freud) and self-discovery. The massive, encyclopedic Magic Mountain from Thomas Mann (1924) follows the same journey.

Wikipedia: André Paul Guillaume Gide (22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation between the two sides of his personality, split apart by a strait-laced education and a narrow social moralism. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints, and gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, even to the point of owning one's sexual nature, without at the same time betraying one's values. His political activity is informed by the same ethos, as suggested by his repudiation of communism after his 1936 voyage to the USSR.

REQUIRED READING

André Gide,

The Immoralist ,

Penguin Classics,

ISBN 0142180025

27

Week 27: Thursday, May 16, 2024
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

As we approach the end of the Nineteenth Cenutry in our thirty weeks of study of Modern France, there is no better example of the changing values and styles of French painting and culture than Toulouse-Lautrec. Oh of course we could study his very good friend Van Gogh, or their other friend Gauguin. But I think Toulouse-Lautrec more than his two contemporaries, embodies the rapidly changing quality of French cultural life at the end of the century. In one way, his personal tragedy is a kind of emblem of a larger sickness at the heart of the very lively European artistic scene in the 1890's. More than anyone else, Toulouse-Lautrec was a recorder of the wild, drug-filled, sexual liberation that was Montmartre in the 1890's. The Montmartre of Renoir was gone. And in the 1890's the new cabarets like the Moulin Rouge ushered in a different kind of night time tourism, of international fame, and of a decayed social scene filled with human tragedies, washed up prostitutes, sexual disease, and lots of money. Toulouse-Lautrec made all this famous with his brilliant new lithographs that could be printed up overnight by the thousands and posted all over the city on the kiosks. Soon Toulouse-Lautrec was famous and the Moulin Rouge was famous and people were stealing the newly valuable posters from the walls of Paris as soon as they went up. Toulouse-Lautrec's short unhappy life is one of the great stories of art of all time.

28

Week 28: Thursday, May 23, 2024
The Dreyfus Case

The Dreyfus affair (French: l'affaire Dreyfus) was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was sent to the penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana and placed in solitary confinement. Two years later, in 1896, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real culprit. However, high-ranking military officials suppressed this new evidence and Esterhazy was unanimously acquitted after the second day of his trial in military court. Instead of being exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus was further accused by the Army on the basis of false documents fabricated by a French counter-intelligence officer, Hubert-Joseph Henry, seeking to re-confirm Dreyfus's conviction. These fabrications were uncritically accepted by Henry's superiors. Word of the military court's framing of Alfred Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread largely due to J'accuse, a vehement public open letter in a Paris newspaper by writer Émile Zola, in January 1898. The case had to be re-opened and Alfred Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards), such as Anatole France, Henri Poincaré and Georges Clémenceau, and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Edouard Drumont (the director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole) and Hubert-Joseph Henry. Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army in 1906. He later served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. (The above from Wikipedia.)

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Week 29: Thursday, May 30, 2024
Fin de Siècle

Wikipedia: Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. “Fin de siècle” is most commonly associated with French artists, especially the French symbolists, and was affected by the cultural awareness characteristic of France at the end of the 19th century. However, the expression is also used to refer to a European-wide cultural movement. The ideas and concerns of the fin de siècle influenced the decades to follow and played an important role in the birth of modernism. The expression fin de siècle usually refers to the end of the 19th century, in Europe, France and/or Paris. It has connotations of decadence, which are seen as typical for the last years of a culturally vibrant period (La Belle Époque at the turn of the 19th century and until World War I), and of anticipative excitement about, or despair facing, impending change, or both, that is generally expected when a century or time period draws to a close. In Russia, the term Silver Age is somewhat more popular. That the expression is in French probably comes from the fact that the fin de siècle is particularly associated with certain late 19th-century French-speaking circles in Paris and Brussels, exemplified by artists like Stéphane Mallarmé and Claude Debussy, movements like Symbolism, and works of art like Oscar Wilde's Salomé (originally written in French and premiered in Paris)—which connects the idea of the fin de siècle also to the Aesthetic movement. Also, Edvard Munch spent some of his time in Paris around the turn-of-the-century, which was his most melancholy period.

Fin de siècle music: Erik Satie:

play various selections

PART TWO:

The films of the Lumiere Brothers.

and Georges Melies, "A Trip to the Moon" 1902

30

Week 30: Thursday, June 6, 2024
Paris 1900

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, there was a palpable sensation of coming catastrophe. Writers, painters, poets all registered their sense of gloom. It had been almost a century since the last great world war effort against Napoleon, and year after year, the general population was treated to increasingly violent patriotic propaganda against various parties. In France, it was the "Germans," a new term carrying nationalistic scorn that was ubiquitous now that Bismarck had pulled together all the tiny German-speaking states that had earlier been easy pickings for the French Grande Armee of Napoleon. Great international colonial empires were crashing into each other. Britain, France, Germany, Holland all had profitable colonial territories, and each nation was governed by imperialistic cabals dedicated to maintaining the vast international money-making machines of empire. If you would like one book to describe this atmosphere and the politics of the situation, there is none better than Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING

Barbara Tuchman,

The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914,

Ballantine Books paperback,

ISBN 0345405013

About the Book:

"The diplomatic origins, so-called, of the War are only the fever chart of the patient; they do not tell us what caused the fever. To probe for underlying causes and deeper forces one must operate within the framework of a whole society and try to discover what moved the people in it." --Barbara W. Tuchman

The fateful quarter-century leading up to the World War I was a time when the world of Privilege still existed in Olympian luxury and the world of Protest was heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate. The age was the climax of a century of the most accelerated rate of change in history, a cataclysmic shaping of destiny. In The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman concentrates on society rather than the state. With an artist's selectivity, Tuchman brings to vivid life the people, places, and events that shaped the years leading up to the Great War: the Edwardian aristocracy and the end of their reign; the Anarchists of Europe and America, who voiced the protest of the oppressed; Germany, as portrayed through the figure of the self-depicted Hero, Richard Strauss; the sudden gorgeous blaze of Diaghilev's Russian Ballet and Stravinsky's music; the Dreyfus Affair; the two Peace Conferences at the Hague; and, finally, the youth, ideals, enthusiasm, and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized in the moment when the heroic Jean Jaurès was shot to death on the night the War began and an epoch ended.

"Tuchman [was] a distinguished historian who [wrote] her books with a rare combination of impeccable scholarship and literary polish. . . . It would be impossible to read The Proud Tower without pleasure and admiration." --The New York Times

"Tuchman proved in The Guns of August that she could write better military history than most men. In this sequel, she tells her story with cool wit and warm understanding, eschewing both the sweeping generalizations of a Toynbee and the minute-by-minute simplicisms of a Walter Lord." --Time

All

Week 21: Thu., Apr. 4, 2024
The Franco-Prussian War