Adolphe Thiers
(1797-1877)

statesman, historian, and President of the French Republic (1871-1873)

Died aged 80

Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers (/tiˈɛər/ tee-AIR, French: [maʁi ʒɔzɛf lwi adɔlf tjɛʁ]; 15 April 1797 – 3 September 1877) was a French statesman and historian. He was the second elected President of France and first President of the French Third Republic. Thiers was a key figure in the July Revolution of 1830, which overthrew King Charles X in favor of the more liberal King Louis Philippe, and the French Revolution of 1848, which overthrew the Orléans monarchy and established the Second French Republic. He served as a prime minister in 1836 and 1840, dedicated the Arc de Triomphe, and arranged the return to France of the remains of Napoleon from Saint-Helena. He was first a supporter, then a vocal opponent of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (who served from 1848 to 1852 as President of the Second Republic and then reigned as Emperor Napoleon III from 1852 to 1871). When Napoleon III seized power, Thiers was arrested and briefly expelled from France. He then returned and became an opponent of the government. Following the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, which Thiers opposed, he was elected chief executive of the new French government and negotiated the end of the war. When the Paris Commune seized power in March 1871, Thiers gave the orders to the army for its suppression. At the age of seventy-four, he was named President of the Republic by the French National Assembly in August 1871. His chief accomplishment as president was to achieve the departure of German soldiers from most of French territory two years ahead of schedule. Opposed by the monarchists in the French assembly and the left wing of the Republicans, he resigned on 24 May 1873, and was replaced as president by Patrice de MacMahon. When he died in 1877, his funeral became a major political event; the procession was led by two of the leaders of the republican movement, Victor Hugo and Léon Gambetta, who, at the time of his death, were his allies against the conservative monarchists. He was also a notable popular historian. He wrote the first large scale history of the French revolution in 10 volumes, published 1823–1827. Historian Robert Tombs states it was, "A bold political act during the Bourbon Restoration...and it formed part of an intellectual upsurge of liberals against the counter-revolutionary offensive of the Ultra Royalists." He also wrote a twenty-volume history of the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte (Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire). In 1834 he was elected to the Académie Française.

DbPedia
Wikidata Wikipedia

Family tree

Commemorated on 2 plaques

THIERS, Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe est né dans cette maison le 15 avril 1797

40 Rue Adolphe Thiers, Marseille, France where they was born (1797)

Hôtel Thiers. Adolphe Thiers, homme d'État et historien, fut élu Président de la République, en 1871, par l'Assemblée Nationale. Cet hôtel fut celui de Madame Dosne, qui le vendit à son gendre, M. Thiers, en 1833 pour la somme de 100.000F, quand celui-ci épousa Elisa Dosne. La maison fut détruite en 1871 par les communards; c'est le peintre Courbet qui sauva les biens de Thiers, et l'hôtel fut reconstruit en 1873 par Aldrophe, puis légué a l'Institut en 1905, avec sa bibliothèque, par la belle-soeur de Thiers, Félicie Dosne.

English translation: Hôtel Thiers. Adolphe Thiers, a statesman and historian, was elected President of the Republic in 1871 by the National Assembly. This hotel was that of Madame Dosne, who sold it to her son-in-law, M. Thiers, in 1833 for the sum of 100,000 F, when he married Elisa Dosne. The house was destroyed in 1871 by the Communards; it was the painter Courbet who saved Thiers's property, and the hotel was rebuilt in 1873 by Aldrophe and bequeathed to the Institute in 1905, with its library, by Thiers's sister-in-law, Félicie Dosne.

27 Place Saint-Georges, Paris, France where they lived