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Léon Gambetta | |
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.jpg) Gambetta photographed byÉtienne Carjat | |
| Prime Minister of France | |
| In office 14 November 1881 – 30 January 1882 | |
| President | Jules Grévy |
| Preceded by | Jules Ferry |
| Succeeded by | Charles de Freycinet |
| President of the Chamber of Deputies | |
| In office 31 January 1879 – 27 October 1881 | |
| Preceded by | Jules Grévy |
| Succeeded by | Henri Brisson |
| Minister of the Interior | |
| In office 4 September 1870 – 6 February 1871 | |
| Prime Minister | Louis-Jules Trochu |
| Preceded by | Henri Chevreau |
| Succeeded by | Emmanuel Arago |
| Member of the Chamber of Deputies | |
| In office 8 June 1869 – 31 December 1882 | |
| Constituency | Bouches-du-Rhône(1869–71) Bas-Rhin(1871) Seine(1871–76) Paris(1876–82) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1838-04-02)2 April 1838 |
| Died | 31 December 1882(1882-12-31) (aged 44) |
| Political party | Moderate Republican (1863–1869) Republican far-left (1869–1871) Republican Union (1871–1882) |
| Alma mater | University of Paris |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Signature |  |
Léon Gambetta (French:[leɔ̃ɡɑ̃bɛta]; 2 April 1838 – 31 December 1882) was a French lawyer and republican politician who proclaimed theFrench Third Republic in 1870 and played a prominent role in its early government.
Born inCahors, Gambetta is said to have inherited his vigour and eloquence from his father, aGenoese grocer who had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie.[1] At the age of fifteen, Gambetta lost the sight of his right eye in an accident, and it eventually had to be removed. Despite this disability, he distinguished himself at school in Cahors.[2] He then worked at his father's grocery shop in Cahors, theBazar génois ("Genoese bazaar"), and in 1857 went to study at theFaculty of Law of Paris.[3] His temperament gave him great influence among the students of theQuartier latin, and he was soon known as an inveterate enemy of the imperial government.[2]
Gambetta was called to the bar in 1859.[2] He was admitted to theConférence Molé in 1861 and wrote to his father, "It is no mere lawyers club, but a veritable political assembly with a left, a right, a center; legislative proposals are the sole subject of discussion. It is there that are formed all the political men of France; it is a veritable training ground for the tribune."[4]Gambetta, like many other French orators, learned the art of public speaking at the Molé.[5]
However, although he contributed to a Liberal review edited byChallemel-Lacour, Gambetta did not make much of an impression until, on 17 November 1868, he was selected to defend the journalistDelescluze. Delescluze was being prosecuted for having promoted a monument to the representativeBaudin, who had been killed while resisting thecoup d'état of 1851, and Gambetta seized his opportunity to attack both thecoup d'état and the government with a vigour which made him immediately famous.[2]
In May 1869, he was elected to the Assembly, both by a district in Paris and another inMarseille, defeatingHippolyte Carnot for the former constituency andAdolphe Thiers andFerdinand de Lesseps for the latter. He chose to sit for Marseille, and lost no opportunity of attacking the Empire in the Assembly.[2] Early in his political career, Gambetta was influenced byLe Programme de Belleville, the seventeen statutes that defined the radical program in French politics throughout theThird Republic.
This made him the leading defender of the lower classes in theCorps Législatif. On 17 January 1870, he spoke out against naming a new Imperial Lord Privy Seal, putting him into direct conflict with the regime's de facto prime minister,Émile Ollivier. (see Reinach, J.,Discours et plaidoyers politiques de M. Gambetta, I.102 – 113) His powerful oratory caused a complete breakdown of order in the Corps. The Monarchist Right continually tried to interrupt his speech, only to have Gambetta's supporters on the Left attack them. The disagreement reached a high point when M. le Président Schneider asked him to bring his supporters back into order. Gambetta responded, thundering, "l'indignation exclut le calme!" ("indignation excludes calm!") (Reinach,Discours et plaidoyers politiques de M. Gambetta, I.112)
It was also in 1869 that Gambetta was initiated intoFreemasonry at "La Réforme" lodge in Paris, sponsored byLouis-Antoine Garnier-Pagès. In this lodge he metGustave Naquet andMaurice Rouvier.[6]
Gambetta opposed the declaration of theFranco-Prussian War. He did not, however, like some of his colleagues, refuse to vote for funds for the army.[3] On 2 September 1870, the French Army suffered a disastrous defeat at theBattle of Sedan, in which the emperorNapoleon III surrendered and was taken prisoner. The news arrived in Paris on the night of 3 September, and early on 4 September large-scale protests began in the capital.
Parisians broke into thePalais Bourbon, meeting place of theChamber of Deputies, interrupting a session and calling for a Republic. Later that day, from theHôtel de Ville, Gambettaproclaimed the French Republic to a large crowd gathered in thePlace de l'Hôtel-de-Ville:[7]
Frenchmen!The people has forestalled the Chamber which was wavering.
To save theNation in danger, it has asked for the Republic.
It has put its representatives not in power, but in peril.
The Republic was victorious against the invasion of 1792: the Republic is proclaimed.
The Revolution has been carried in the name of the right of public safety.
Citizens, watch over the City which is entrusted to you, tomorrow, along with the army, you shall avenge the Nation![8]
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Gambetta was one of the first members of the newGovernment of National Defense, becomingMinister of the Interior. He advised his colleagues to leave Paris and run the government from some provincial city.[2]
This advice was rejected because of fear of another revolution in Paris, and a delegation to organize resistance in the provinces was dispatched toTours, but when this was seen to be ineffective, Gambetta himself left Paris 7 October withEugène Spuller in acoal gas-filled balloon—the "Armand-Barbès"—and upon arriving at Tours took control as minister of the interior and of war. Aided byFreycinet, a young officer of engineers, as his assistant secretary of war, he quickly organized an army, which might have relieved Paris ifMetz had held out, butBazaine's surrender brought the army of the Prussian princeFriederich Karl back into the field, and success was impossible. After theFrench defeat nearOrléans early in December the seat of government was transferred toBordeaux.[2]
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Gambetta had hoped for a republican majority in the general elections on8 February 1871. These hopes vanished when the conservatives and Monarchists won nearly 2/3 of the six hundred Assembly seats. He had won elections in eight differentdépartements, but the ultimate victor was the OrléanistAdolphe Thiers, winner of twenty-three elections. Thiers's conservative and bourgeois intentions clashed with the growing expectations of political power by the lower classes. Hoping to continue his policy of "guerre à outrance" against the Prussian invaders, he tried in vain to rally the Assembly to the war cause. However, Thiers' peace treaty on 1 March 1871 ended the conflict. Gambetta, disgusted with the Assembly's unwillingness to fight, resigned and quit France forSan Sebastián in Spain.
Meanwhile, theParis Commune had taken control of the city. Despite his earlier career, Gambetta voiced his opposition to the Commune in a letter toAntonin Proust, his former secretary while Minister of the Interior, in which he referred to the Commune as "les horribles aventures dans lesquelles s'engage ce qui reste de cette malheureuse France" or "the ghastly madness blighting what remains of our poor France".[9]
Gambetta's stance has been explained by reference to his status as a republican lawyer, who fought from the bar instead of the barricade[10] and also to his father having been a grocer in Marseille. As a small-scale producer during the decades of theSecond Industrial Revolution in France, Joseph Gambetta was nearly ruined by the competition of new chain-store food shops. This sort of "big business" made the hard-working middle-class - "petite bourgeoisie" - very resentful, not only of bourgeois industrial capitalism, but also of the working class, which now held the status of backbone of the French economy, rather than the class of small, independent shopkeepers.[11] This resentment may have been passed down from father to son, and manifested itself in an unwillingness to support the lower-class Communards in their usurpation of what the "petite bourgeoisie" had won a certain hegemony over.
On 24 June 1871, a letter was sent by Gambetta to his Parisian confidant, Dr. Édouard Fieuzal:
Je veux déjouer l'intrigue de parti de ceux qui vont répétant que je refuse toute candidature à Paris. Non. J'accepte au contraire avec fierté et reconnaissance les suffrages de la démocratie Parisienne si elle veut m'honorer de son choix. Je suis prêt.
There is no truth in the rumours being spread that I am refusing to stand for election in Paris. No. I accept, to the contrary, with pride and gratitude the Parisians' votes, if they would do me the honor of choosing me. I am prepared.(Lettres de Gambetta, no. 122)
Gambetta returned to the political stage and won on three separate ballots. On 5 November 1871 he established a journal,La Republique française, which soon became the most influential in France. His public speeches were more effective than those delivered in the Assembly, especially the one atBordeaux.[2] His turn towards moderate republicanism first became apparent inFirminy, a small coal-mining town along theLoire River. There, he boldly proclaimed the radical republic he once supported to be "avoided like the plague" (se tenir éloignés comme de la peste) (Discours, III.5). From there, he went toGrenoble. On 26 September 1872, he proclaimed the future of the Republic to be in the hands of "a new social level" (une couche sociale nouvelle) (Discours, III.101), ostensibly thepetite bourgeoisie to which his father belonged.
WhenAdolphe Thiers resigned in May 1873, and a Royalist,Marshal MacMahon, was placed at the head of the government, Gambetta urged his friends to a moderate course. By his tact, parliamentary dexterity and eloquence, he was instrumental in voting in theFrench Constitutional Laws of 1875 in February 1875. He gave this policy the appropriate name of "opportunism," and became one of the leader of the "Opportunist Republicans." On 4 May 1877, he denounced "clericalism" as the enemy. During the16 May 1877 crisis, Gambetta, in a speech atLille on 15 August called on President MacMahonse soumettre ou se démettre, to submit to parliament's majority or to resign. Gambetta then campaigned to rouse the republican party throughout France, which culminated in a speech atRomans (18 September 1878) formulating its programme. MacMahon, unwilling both to resign and to provoke civil war, had no choice but to dismiss his advisers and form a moderate republican ministry under the premiership ofDufaure.[2]
When the downfall of the Dufaure cabinet brought about MacMahon's resignation, Gambetta declined to become a candidate for the presidency, but supportedJules Grévy; nor did he attempt to form a ministry, but accepted the office of president of the chamber of deputies in January 1879. This position did not prevent his occasionally descending from the presidential chair to make speeches, one of which, advocating an amnesty to thecommunards,[12] was especially memorable. Although he directed the policy of the various ministries from behind the scenes, he evidently thought that the time was not ripe for asserting openly his direction of the policy of the Republic, and seemed inclined to observe a neutral attitude as far as possible. However, events hurried him on, and early in 1881 he headed off a movement for restoringscrutin de liste, or the system by which deputies are returned by the entire department which they represent, so that each elector votes for several representatives at once, in place ofscrutin d'arrondissement, the system of small constituencies, giving one member to each district and one for vote to each elector. A bill to re-establishscrutin de liste was passed by the Assembly on 19 May 1881, but rejected by the Senate on 19 June.[13]
This personal rebuff could not alter the fact that his name was on the lips of voters at the election. His supporters won a large majority, andJules Ferry's cabinet quickly resigned. Gambetta was unwillingly asked by Grévy on 24 November 1881 to form a ministry, known asLe Grand Ministère. Many suspected him of desiring a dictatorship; unjust attacks were directed against him from all sides, and his cabinet fell on 26 January 1882, after only sixty-six days. Had he remained in office, he would have cultivated the British alliance and cooperated with Britain in Egypt; and when the succeedingFreycinet government shrank from that enterprise only to see it undertaken with signal success by Britain alone, Gambetta's foresight was quickly justified.[14]
On 31 December 1882, at his house in Ville d'Avray, nearSèvres, he died from intestine or stomach cancer.[15] Even though he was wounded a month earlier from an accidental revolver discharge, the injury had not been life-threatening. Five artists,Jules Bastien-Lepage, a realist painter,Antonin Proust, defender of the vanguard who Gambetta had named Minister of Fine Arts,Léon Bonnat, an academic painter,Alexandre Falguière, who did his mortuary mask, and his personal photographerÉtienne Carjat all sat at his death-bed, making five widely different representations of him which were each published by the press the following day.[16] His public funeral was on 6 January 1883.
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The love of his life was his connection withLéonie Léon, the full details of which were not known to the public until her death in 1906. She was the daughter of acreole French artillery officer. Gambetta fell in love with her in 1871. She became his mistress, and the liaison lasted until he died. Gambetta constantly urged her to marry him during this period, but she always refused, fearing to compromise his career; she remained, however, his confidante and intimate adviser in all his political plans. It seems she had just consented to become his wife, and the date of the marriage had been fixed, when the accident which caused his death occurred in her presence. Contradictory accounts of this fatal episode exist, but it was certainly accidental, and not suicide. Her influence on Gambetta was absorbing, both as lover and as politician, and the correspondence which has been published shows how much he depended upon her.[14]
However, some of her later recollections are untrustworthy. For example, she claimed that a meeting took place in 1878 between Gambetta and Bismarck. That Gambetta after 1875 felt strongly that relations between France and Germany might be improved, and that he made it his object, by travelling incognito, to become better acquainted with Germany and the adjoining states, may be accepted, but M. Laur appears to have exaggerated the extent to which any actual negotiations took place. On the other hand, the increased knowledge of Gambetta's attitude towards European politics which later information has supplied confirms the view that when he died, France had prematurely lost a clear thinker whom she could ill spare. In April 1905 a monument byDalou to his memory at Bordeaux was unveiled byPresident Loubet.[14]
Gambetta rendered France three inestimable services: by preserving her self-respect through the gallantry of the resistance he organized during theFranco-Prussian War, by his tact in persuading extreme partisans to accept a moderate Republic, and by his energy in overcoming the usurpation attempted by the advisers of Marshal MacMahon. His death at forty-four cut short a career which had given promise of still greater things, for he had real statesmanship in his conceptions of the future of his country, and he had an eloquence which would have been potent in the education of his supporters.[citation needed]
Gambetta proclamation of the Republic and call for aLevée en masse left a lasting impact on Germany in the decades following. Future Field MarshallColmar Freiherr von der Goltz wrote in 1877:
Should it come to pass that...our German fatherland suffers a defeat like that of the French at Sedan, I would wish a man emerges who knows how to inspire the sort of absolute resistance Gambetta tried to organize.
In October 1918, when Germany was on the verge of defeat during theFirst World War, industrialistWalther Rathenau called for a GermanLevée en masse to reverse the deteriorating situation. Conservative RevolutionaryEdgar Jung was also inspired by Gambetta.Adolf Hitler favorably contrasted Gambetta's actions with that of thepost-revolutionary leaders of theWeimar Republic:
With the collapse of France at Sedan, the people rose in revolution tosave the fallen tricolor! The war continued with new energy! The revolutionaries bravely fought countless battles. The will to defend the state created the French Republic in 1870. It was a symbol not of dishonor but of the upstanding will to preserve the nation. French national honor was revived by the Third Republic. What a contrast to our republic![17]
A tallmonument to Léon Gambetta [fr] was planned in 1884 and erected in 1888 in the central space of theLouvre Palace, nowCour Napoléon. That initiative carried heavy political symbolism, since Gambetta was widely viewed as the founder of theThird Republic, and his outsized celebration in the middle ofNapoleon III's Louvre expansion thus affirmed the final victory ofrepublicanism overmonarchism nearly a century after theFrench Revolution – in the same vein, the Gambetta monument visually overpoweredNapoleon's comparatively diminutiveArc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Most of the monument's sculptures were in bronze and in 1941 were melted for military use byGerman occupying forces. What remained of the Gambetta Monument was dismantled in 1954.[citation needed]
A stone urn containing Gambetta's heart was placed in 1920 in the monumental staircase leading to the crypt of thePanthéon in Paris. The Russian redquartzite stone that was used for the urn was part of the same shipment that was used forNapoleon's tomb atLes Invalides.[18]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh (1911). "Gambetta, Léon". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 435–436.| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Minister of the Interior 1870–1871 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of the Chamber of Deputies 1879–1881 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Prime Minister of France 1881–1882 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of Foreign Affairs 1881–1882 | |
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