Léon Gambetta
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Léon Gambetta (April 2, 1838, Cahors - December 31, 1882, Paris) was a French statesman prominent after the Franco-Prussian War.
Contents |
[edit] Youth and education
He is said to have inherited his vigour and eloquence from his father, a Genoese grocer of Jewish descent who had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie. At the age of fifteen, Gambetta lost the sight of his left eye in an accident, and it eventually had to be removed. Despite this handicap, he distinguished himself at school in Cahors, and in 1857 went to Paris to study law. His southern temperament gave him great influence among the students of the Quartier Latin, and he was soon known as an inveterate enemy of the imperial government.
[edit] Career
He was called to the bar in 1859, but, although contributing to a Liberal review, edited by Challemel-Lacour, did not make much impact until, on November 17, 1868, he was selected to defend the journalist Delescluze, prosecuted for having promoted the erection of a monument to the representative Baudin, who was killed in resisting the coup d'état of 1851. Gambetta seized his opportunity and attacked both the coup d'état and the government with an invective which made him immediately famous.
In May 1869 he was returned to the Assembly, both by the first circumscription of Paris and by Marseille, defeating Hippolyte Carnot for the former constituency and Adolphe Thiers and Ferdinand de Lesseps for the latter. He chose to sit for Marseille, and lost no opportunity of attacking the Empire in the Assembly. At first opposed to the war with Germany, he did not, like some of his colleagues, refuse to vote supplies, but took the patriotic line and accepted that it had been forced on France. When the news of the disaster at Sedan reached Paris, Gambetta called for strong measures. He himself proclaimed the fail of the emperor at the corps législatif, and the establishment of a republic at the hôtel de ville. He was one of the first members of the new Government of National Defense, becoming minister of the interior. He advised his colleagues to leave Paris and conduct the government from some provincial city.
This advice was rejected through the fear of another revolution in Paris, and a delegation to organize resistance in the provinces was despatched to Tours, but when this was seen to be inefficient Gambetta himself (October 7) left Paris in a balloon -the "Armand-Barbès"- and upon arriving at Tours took the supreme direction of affairs as minister of the interior and of war. Aided by Freycinet, then a young officer of engineers, as his assistant secretary of war, he displayed prodigious energy and intelligence. He speedily organized an army, which might have effected the relief of Paris if Metz had held out, but the surrender of Bazaine brought the army of the crown prince into the field, and success was impossible. After the defeats of the French near Orléans early in December the seat of government had to be transferred to Bordeaux.
Gambetta's early political career was dictated by Le Programme de Belleville, the seventeen statues that defied what would be the radical program of French politics throughout the Third Republic. This made him the foremost defender of the lower classes in the Corps Législatif. On (January 17) (1870), he spoke out against naming a new Imperial Guard of the Seals, putting him into direct conflict with the regime's de facto prime minster, Emile Ollivier. (see Reinach, J., Discours et Playdories de Léon Gambetta, I.102 - 113) His powerful orations culminated in 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 voiciferously attack them. The conflagration 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!"(Reinach, J., Discours et Playdories, I.112)
[edit] Exile to San Sebastián
His career reached a turning point while on the beaches of San Sebastián, across the Spain/France border. He had been hopeful for a republican majority in the (February 8) (1871) general elections. His hope vanished with the conservatives and Monarchists filling nearly 2/3 of the six hundred Assembly seats. He had won elections in eight different départements, but the ultimate victor was the Orléanist Adolphe Thiers, winner of twenty-three elections. Thiers's conservatie and bourgeois intentions clashed with the growing expectations of political power by the lower class. 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 (March 1) (1871) ended the conflict. Gambetta, disgusted with the Assembly's unwillingness to fight - neither for nation nor honor - resigned and quit France.
While in San Sebastián, Gambetta walked the beaches daily, the warm sea winds of early spring did little to refresh his mind. The Paris Commune had taken control of the city. Although often cited as another iteration of 'urban revolt' in Paris, especially by Roger V. Gould (see Gould R., Insurgent Identies), the Paris Commune was supported almost entirely by the working class and the "petit bourgeoisie", as seen in "arrondissement" election charts.(Tombs, R., The Paris Commune, 1871, p. 110) Judging by the positions of his early career, one would expect Gambetta to have been a supporter of the Commune. However, in one of the few communications sent by Gambetta, to Antonin Proust, his former secretary while Minister of the Interior]], he referred to the Commune as "les horribles aventures dans lesquelles s’engage ce qui reste de cette malheureuse France".(Gambetta, L., Lettres de Gambetta, no. 118 (a Antonin Proust, 24 Mars 1871)
The answer to his change of heart still eludes to this day. However, a combination of conflicts of identity may be ultimately responsible. As a lawyer, Gambetta was a part of the new republican tradition of the Paris bar. This tradition had its foundation in the naming of Jules Favre to the governing Council of the Paris Bar. As a republican lawyer, Gambetta had been trained to fight oppression and authoritarianism with rhetoric rather than rifles, from the bar instead of the barricade. This professional identity means that Gambetta could neither philosophically comprehend nor actively participate in the bloodly street fights that, coming from the "sans-culottes", created the lower class revolutionary identity (see Joly, M., "Le Barreau de Paris"; Debré, J.-L., Les Républiques des Avocats).
It is also arguable that Gambetta's identity was shaped by his father being a grocer in Marseille. As a small-scale producer during the decades of the Second Industrial Revolution in France, Joseph Gambetta would have found chain groceries begin to steal business away from his establishment. This added a measure of resentment to the "petit bourgeois" identity. This resentment was not only directed at bourgeois industrial capitalism, but also at the worker, who was now proclaimed as the backbone of the French economy, stripping the title from the small-scale, independent shopkeeper. (see Nord, P., Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment) This resentment may have been passed down from father to son, and manifested itself in a psychological unwillingness to support the lower-class Communards usurp what rightfully belonged to the "petit bourgeoisie".
[edit] Return
On June 24 1871, a letter was postmarked by Gambetta to his Parisian confidant, Dr. Édouard Fieuzal:
Je veux déjouer l’intrigue de parti de ceux qui vont répéntant 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.
I want to deter the intrigues of the party of those spreading the rumor that I am refusing all candidacy in Paris. No. I accept, to the contrary, with pride and recongnition the sufferings of Parisian democracy, so that it honors me to be its choice. I am prepared. (Lettres de Gambetta, no. 122)
With that, the beachwalker abandoned his exile and returned to the political stage. He wasted no time, winning on three separate ballots. On November 5 1871 he established a journal, La Republique française, which soon became the most influential in France. His orations at public meetings were more effective than those delivered in the Assembly, especially that made at Bordeaux. His turn towards moderate republicanism first became apparent in Firminy, a small coal-mining town along the Loire River. There, he boldly proclaimed the radical republic he once supported to be "avoided as a plague" (se tenir éloignés comme de la peste) (Discours, III.5). From there, the highways of France took him to Grenoble. 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 the petite bourgeoisie to whom his father belonged. When Adolphe Thiers fell from power in May 1873, and a Royalist was placed at the head of the government in the person of Marshal MacMahon, Gambetta unceasingly urged his friends to a moderate course, and by his tact and parliamentary dexterity, no less than by his eloquence, he was mainly instrumental in the voting of the constitution in February 1875. He gave this policy the appropriate name of "opportunism."
It was not until May 4, 1877, when the danger of reactionary intrigues was notorious, and the clerical party had begun a campaign for the restoration of the temporal power of the pope, that he delivered his famous speech denouncing "clericalism" as the enemy. On May 16 Marshal MacMahon, in order to support the clerical reactionaries, perpetrated his parliamentary coup d'état, and on August 15 Gambetta, in a speech at Lille, gave him the alternative se soumettre ou se démettre. He then undertook a political campaign to rouse the republican party throughout France, which culminated in a speech at Romans (September 18, 1878) formulating its programme. MacMahon, equally unwilling to resign or to provoke civil war, had no choice but to dismiss his advisers and form a moderate republican ministry under the premiership of Dufaure.
When the resignation of the Dufaure cabinet brought about the abdication of Marshal MacMahon, Gambetta declined to become a candidate for the presidency, but gave his support to Jules Grévy; nor did he attempt to form a ministry, but accepted the office of president of the chamber of deputies (January 1879). This position did not prevent his occasionally descending from the presidential chair to make speeches, one of which, advocating an amnesty to the communards, was especially memorable. Although he really directed the policy of the various ministries, he evidently thought that the time was not ripe for asserting openly his own claims to direct the policy of the Republic, and seemed inclined to observe a neutral attitude as far as possible; but events hurried him on, and early in 1881 he placed himself at the head of a movement for restoring scrutin 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 of scrutin d'arrondissement, the system of small constituencies, giving one member to each district and one vote to each elector. A bill to re-establish scrutin de liste was passed by the Assembly on May 19 1881, but rejected by the Senate on June 19.
This personal rebuff could not alter the fact that his was the name on the lips of voters at the election. His supporters were in a large majority, and on the reassembling of the chamber, Jules Ferry's cabinet quickly resigned. Gambetta was unwillingly entrusted by Grévy on November 24, 1881 with the formation of a ministry-known as Le Grand Ministère. Every one suspected him of aiming at a dictatorship; attacks, albeit unjust, were directed against him from all sides, and his cabinet fell on January 26, 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 Freycinet administration, which succeeded, shrank from that enterprise only to see it undertaken with signal success by Britain alone, Gambetta's foresight was quickly justified. However, on December 31, 1882, at his house in Ville d'Avray, near Sèvres, he died by a shot from a revolver which accidentally went off. His public funeral on January 6, 1883 evoked one of the most overwhelming displays of national sentiment ever witnessed.
Gambetta rendered France three inestimable services: by preserving her self-respect through the gallantry of the resistance he organized during the German 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 the early age of 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.
[edit] Personal life
The romance of his life was his connection with Léonie Leon, the full details of which were not known to the public till her death in 1906. She was the daughter of a French artillery officer. Gambetta fell in love with her in 1871. She became his mistress, and the liaison lasted till 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.
However, some of her later recollections are untrustworthy. For example, she claimed that an actual interview took place in 1878 between Gambetta and Bismarck. That Gambetta after 1875 felt strongly that the relations between France and Germany might he 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 in him France lost prematurely a master mind, whom she could ill spare. In April 1905 a monument by Dalou to his memory at Bordeaux was unveiled by President Loubet.
[edit] Gambetta's Ministry, 14 November 1881 - 26 January 1882
- Léon Gambetta - President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Jean-Baptiste Campenon - Minister of War
- René Waldeck-Rousseau - Minister of the Interior
- François Allain-Targé - Minister of Finance
- Jules Cazot - Minister of Justice
- Maurice Rouvier - Minister of the Colonies and of Commerce
- Auguste Gougeard - Minister of Marine
- Paul Bert - Minister of Public Instruction and Worship
- Antonin Proust - Minister of the Arts
- Paul Devès - Minister of Agriculture
- David Raynal - Minister of Public Works
- Adolphe Cochery - Minister of Posts and Telegraphs
| Preceded by Henri Chevreau |
Minister of the Interior 1870–1871 |
Succeeded by Emmanuel Arago |
| Preceded by Jules Grévy |
President of the Chamber of Deputies 1879–1881 |
Succeeded by Henri Brisson |
| Preceded by Jules Ferry |
Prime Minister of France 1881–1882 |
Succeeded by Charles de Freycinet |
| Preceded by Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire |
Minister of Foreign Affairs 1881–1882 |
[edit] References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. The 1911 Britannica gives the following references:
- By Gambetta
- Discours et plaidoyers politiques, published by J Reinach in 11 vols. (Paris, 1881-1886)
- Dépêches, circulaires, décrets… in 2 vols. (Paris, 1886-1891)
- Biographies:
- Joseph Reinach, Léon Gambetta (1884), Gambetta orateur (1884) and Le Ministère Gambetta, histoire et doctrine (1884)
- Neucastel, Gambetta, sa vie, et ses idées politiques (1885)
- J Hanlon, Gambetta (London, 1881)
- Dr Laborde, Léon Gambetta biographie psychologique (1898)
- PB Gheusi, Gambetta, Life and Letters (Eng. trans. by VM Montagu, 1910)
- Other:
- G Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine (1903)
- F Laur Le Creur de Gambetta (1907, Eng. trans., 1908) contains the correspondence with Léonie Leon
- F Laur: articles on "Gambetta and Bismarck" in The Times of August 17 and 19, 1907, with the correspondence arising from them.
