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V. The Seine and the Rhône. Two French By-Elections in 1873

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2010

J. P. T. Bury
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Extract

It is well known that the nomination of a Radical candidate in the by-election held in April 1873 in the department of the Seine split the Republican ranks and that his victory contributed to the fall of Thiers, the President of the Third French Republic. This contest, in which the comparatively obscure Désiré Barodet, a former primary school teacher and latterly mayor of Lyon, defeated the Comte Charles de Rémusat, friend of Thiers and minister for Foreign Affairs, was one of the most exciting in the history of the Third Republic; indeed Paris witnessed no such tumultuous election again until the candidature of General Boulanger in 1889. It was important for its consequences and for the passions it aroused. But it is also of interest for reasons which are less well known, and which are considered or reconsidered here. Quite apart from the fact that it was only one, albeit by far the most dramatic, of eight by-elections which took place on 27 April, it cannot be separated from the subsequent election of Arthur Ranc at Lyon on 11 May. These two elections brought into the limelight two interesting and influential figures in the early history of the Third Republic; they also vividly illustrated the methods and influence of the leader of the Radical Republicans, Léon Gambetta.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

1 One historian compared it also to the election of the Abbé Grégoire in 1819 and to that of Eugène Sue in 1850 (Chevallier, J. Y., Histoire des Institutions Politiques de la France de 1789 à nos jours, Paris, 1952, p. 307).Google Scholar

2 In a letter of 11 April to Barodet (Halévy, D. and Pillias, E., Lettres de Gambetta, Paris, 1938, no. 148)Google Scholar Gambetta said that Rémusat might not go on. It was presumably at this juncture that Gambetta sent his former collaborator Freycinet to see Thiers (see C. de Freycinet, Souvenirs 1848–1878, 6th ed. 1914, pp. 298–9).

3 Adam, Mme Juliette, Mes Angoisses et nos Luttes 1871–1873 (Paris, 1907), pp. 389–90.Google Scholar

4 Halévy, D., La Fin des Notables (Paris, 1930), p. 240Google Scholar. Halévy suggested that Barodet's name might have been mentioned by ‘some defeated adherent of the Paris Commune’, but that ‘if it was preferred to any other it was no doubt the result… of a clear design’ and of the mustering of the forces of the freemasons.

5 Mme Adam, op. cit. p. 389.

6 Lettres de Gambetta, no. 144.

7 A. Ranc, De Bordeaux à Versailles (Paris, s.d.), pp. 161–2.

8 Daniel Halévy, a right-wing historian, may have been too prone to suspect the clandestine influences of freemasonry.

9 For sympathetic references to Barodet's conduct at Lyon during the period September 1870—April 1871, see Andrieux, L., La Commune à Lyon en 1870 et en 1871 (Paris, 1906)Google Scholar. It would be interesting to know, in view of his close association with Lyon as prefect there during the war, whether another of Gambetta's principal collaborators, Challemel-Lacour, had any influence on the choice of Barodet; but the author of the principal study of Challemel, Edouard Krakowski, in his La Naissance de la IIIe République: Challemel-Lacour, le Philosophe et l'homme d'Etat (Paris, 1932) is silent on the matter and indeed makes only a passing reference to the Barodet election.

10 Halévy, op. cit. pp. 247. The part played by Ranc (see below, pp. 397–9) also suggests that the shadow of the Commune counted for something in this election.

11 Barodet, D., L'Election Parisienne du 27 Avril 1873 — Vilenies officielles de l'ordre moral (Lyon, 1903), p. 6.Google Scholar

12 This central committee never met, however, since the government banned committees of more than twenty. A smaller consultative committee, not elected, was subsequently formed by Garnier-Pagès to direct the Republican campaign (see Weill, G., Histoire du Parti Républicain en France (1814–1870), Paris, 1928, p. 367).Google Scholar

13 Op. cit. p. 13.

14 Gheusi, P.-B., Gambetta par Gambetta (Paris, 1909), pp. 299301.Google Scholar

15 Daniel Halévy, the historian who has given most attention to Barodet's candidature, appears to have thought that he did appear in Paris during the election, for he wrote: ‘Barodet showed himself and did not displease.’ He added:‘…he was the man one might have expected, a provincial but a thoroughly worthy man’. But to a contemporary monarchist like the Due d'Audiffret-Pasquier he was a man ‘tiré des bas-fonds de la démagogie’ (d'Audiffret-Pasquier, Due, La Maison de France et l'Assemblée Nationale: Souvenirs 1871–1873, Paris, 1938, p. 92).Google Scholar

16 With one important exception: he did not, he says, consult Gambetta about accepting the three points of the mandate proposed to him by the Comité Fédéral (Barodet, op. cit. P. 13).

17 Nos. 144, 146–52, 154–6.

18 Barodet, D., L'Election Parisienne du 27 Avril 1873 — Vilenies officielles de l'ordre moral (Lyon, 1903).Google Scholar The original letters are preserved in the Joseph Reinach papers in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Nouvelles acquisitions françaises 24906).

19 Lettres de Gambetta, no. 147.

20 Ibid. no. 146. The article appeared as a leader in the issue of April 8.

21 Ibid. no. 149.

22 Barodet, op. cit. p. 12.

23 Lettres de Gambetta, no. 154. The tribute to Gambetta's performance at this meeting of the Union Républicaine was paid by Scheurer-Kestner in his unpublished diary (Bibliothèque Nationale, Nouvelles acquisitions francaises 12. 707). Scheurer-Kestner was secretary of the group.

24 Unpublished letter in the Reinach papers.

25 Barodet, op. cit. p. 12.

26 Ibid. p. 14.

27 Lettres de Gambetta, no. 151. A later successful candidate who attended no election meetings but merely sent a circular to the electors was Louis Blane in 1876. He was prevented by ill-health from more active campaigning and the fact that he had enjoyed a national reputation for nearly forty years and was particularly well known in Paris no doubt ensured his return in all the three constituencies in which he stood, namely St Denis and the fifth and thirteenth arrondissements in Paris.

28 An article in L'État of 23 April alleged that ‘the inventors of Barodet's candidature had forbidden their instrument to come to Paris during the electoral period’ (cit. Barodet, op. cit. pp. 23–4) and Le Temps on the 27th referred to Barodet as a candidate ‘whom his patrons have thought it prudent not to exhibit’.

29 Mme Juliette Adam, op. cit. p. 390. Scheurer-Kestner also thought that Gambetta's affection for Ranc helped to explain his support of Barodet (Journal inédit, vol. iii, B.N. n.a. fr. 12. 706). Gambetta's published letters and Ranc's memoirs give no clue; nor have I found any clue in Gambetta's unpublished papers.

30 The Barodet is described by the Grand Larousse Encyclopédique (vol. i, Paris, 1960, p. 913) as a ‘recueil établi au début de chaque législature et qui renferme les articles inscrits par les candidats sur leurs programmes. (Son objet est de faire connaître l'opinion du pays sur les questions posées par les candidats.)’ It was instituted at Barodet's instigation and more wittily described by Andrieux (op. cit. p. 26) as ‘ce recueil parlementaire, confident indiscret des promesses trahies’.

31 In La République des Professeurs (Paris, 1927), p. 188.Google Scholar

32 Ranc: Souvenirs — Correspondance 1831–1908 (Paris, 1913), p. 425Google Scholar. This book, compiled by his widow, is a curious patchwork, which leaves much unsaid. Thus it dismisses the elections of 1873 in a couple of sentences. Similarly, while his own book De Bordeaux à Versailles contains a longish passage about Barodet's candidature, it makes only the most oblique reference to his own connexions with Lyon: ‘Haven't the elections in Paris, Lyon and Marseilles always returned Radicals. Wasn't M. Ranc elected a municipal councillor in Paris two months after the Commune?’ (p. 162).

33 Halévy and Pillias erroneously state that Ranc was elected on 27 April, op. cit. no. 157, n. (a).

34 See Tchernoff, J., Le Parti Républicain au Coup d'État et sous le Second Empire (Paris, 1906), pp. 535–6Google Scholar. The most celebrated example in 1869 was Gambetta's mandate at Belleville.

35 Ostrogorski, M., Democracy and the organisation of political parties (2 vols. London, 1902).Google Scholar

36 The latest example is M. Jean-Paul Charnay's comprehensive and valuable Le Suffrage Politique en France (Paris, 1965).

37 E.g. Gouault, J., Comment la France est devenue Républicaine. Les élections génerates et partielles à l'Assemblée nationale 1870–1875 (Paris, 1954).Google Scholar

38 E.g. his celebrated description of his candidature in the department of La Manche in 1848 (A. de Tocqueville, Souvenirs, ch. 4).