16 May 1877 crisis
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The May 16, 1877 crisis (French: Crise du Seize mai) was one of the main political crises of the French Third Republic (1870-1940), with two defining traits: it concerned both the contested supremacy of counterrevolutionary monarchists on the new Republic, and the role and power of the president.
The May 16 crisis was triggered after the 1876 election, won by the Republicans. The French president, royalist Marshal MacMahon — who had succeeded to Adolphe Thiers — dismissed the moderate republican president of the Council Jules Simon after an argument concerning the relevant functions of the presidency and of the parliament. However, the Parliament refused to accord its trust to the new government led by orleanist duc de Broglie. MacMahon henceforth dissolved it, thus calling for new elections which were overwhelmingly won again by Republicans. Henceforth, the Republican interpretation of the Constitution and its favoring of a parliamentary system over a presidential system were victorious, and the right of dissolution not used again under the Third Republic.
The crisis ultimately signified the defeat of the legitimist movement, whom since 1789 had never accepted a single trait of the French Revolution and had been defeated during the 1830 July Revolution, which established constitutional monarchy and Louis-Philippe as the "King of all Frenchmen" — instead of the King of France. The 1883 death of the comte de Chambord convinced most of the liberal Orleanists to progressively "rally" to the Republic, as had already done a few years before Adolphe Thiers, better known for his harsh repression of the 1871 Paris Commune.
Along with the 1875 constitutional laws voted under the initiative of moderate Republicans Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta — joined by the "destroyer of the Commune" Adolphe Thiers — and the 1883 death of the comte de Chambord, the May 16, 1877 crisis was instrumental in creating the conditions of the longevity of the Republic, which finally lasted until the 1940 defeat.
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[edit] Background
Following the defeat of the 1871 Paris Commune, the elections had brought upon a right-wing monarchist majority, divided into legitimists and orleanists. They conceived the republican institutions, settled on September 4, 1870, as a temporary setback after the Franco-Prussian War and the ensuing dissolving of the Second Empire (1852-1870). Until the May 16 crisis, the royalist movement dominated the legislature, thus creating the paradox of a Republic led by anti-republicans. The royalist deputies supported Marshal MacMahon as president of the new Republic, and his term was set to seven years the time to find a compromise between the two rival royalist families.
In 1873, a plan to reset back on the throne the orleanist comte de Chambord, had failed over the comte's intransigency. President MacMahon was supposed to accompanied him to the National Assembly in order to have him acclaimed. However, the comte of Chambord rejected this plan by the white flag manifest of July 5, 1871, reiterated by an October 23, 1873 letter, in which he explained that under no case would he abandon the white flag, symbol of the monarchy (with its fleur-de-lis), in exchange of the republican tricolor. Chambord's decision thus ruined the hopes of a quick restoration of the monarchy.
In 1875, orleanist Adolphe Thiers, the "destroyer of the Commune", joined with the initiative of moderate Republicans Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta to vote the constitutional laws of the Republic. The next year, the elections were won by the Republicans, although the end result was contradictory:
- in the Senate, the majority was composed by the monarchist, whom have the advantage of only one voice (151 against 149 Republicans)
- in the Chamber, the majority was overwhelming composed by the Republicans
- and the president was Marshal MacMahon, an avowed monarchist.
The political crisis was thus inevitable. It involved a struggle for supremacy between the president Marshal MacMahon and the republican-controlled Chamber of Deputies. MacMahon was a declared anti-republican belonging to the legitimist tendency, whom had declared in the last days of the Commune: "To the inhabitants of Paris. The French army has come to save you. Paris is freed! At 4 o'clock our soldiers took the last insurgent position. Today the fight is over. Order, work and security will be reborn." This triptych, which obviously opposed the Revolution's Liberté, égalité, fraternité!, put the bases of his ideology.
[edit] The crisis
The crisis was triggered by president Marshal MacMahon who asked the moderate republican Jules Simon, head of the government, to resign, and substituted to him a new "Ordre moral" government led by the duc de Broglie, an Orleanist. MacMahon had forced Jules Simon to resign, because according to him, the government had to follow his views since he was the president. To the contrary, the republicans conceived a more parliamentary regime, in which the Parliament was the predominant political organ, which decided the policies of the nation. Thus, the presidential regime option, incarnated by an anti-republican royalist, opposed itself to the parliamentary option, supported by the republicans.
Replacing the republican Jules Simon by the royalist and counterrevolutionary duc de Broglie as head of the government, president MacMahon thus openly opposed himself to the choice of the French people incarnated in the results of the 1876 elections. Six years after the crushing of the Commune, the political conditions had somehow changed. The Chamber of Deputies refused to accord its trust to the new government formed by the duc de Broglie. On May 16, 1877, 363 French deputies — among them Clemenceau — passed a vote of no confidence (Manifeste des 363) in the duc de Broglie. Mac-Mahon thus dissolved the parliament.
The new elections called for by MacMahon brought 323 Republicans to the Chamber against 209 counterrevolutionaries, marking a clear popular refusal of MacMahon's presidential option. MacMahon had either to submit himself or to resign, as had Léon Gambetta famously called for: "When France will have let its sovereign voice heard, than one will have to submit himself or resign" (se soumettre ou se démettre <ref> Quand la France aura fait entendre sa voix souveraine, il faudra se soumettre ou se démettre. This famous sentence — se soumettre ou se démettre, "to submit oneself or to resign" — is still often used in the modern French political debate. </ref>) MacMahon thus called for a moderate republican, Jules Dufaure, to become president of the Council, and accepted Dufaure's interpretation of the constitution:
- ministers are responsible before the Chamber of deputies (following the 1896 institutional crisis, the Senate obtained the right to control ministers)
- the right of dissolution of parliament must remain exceptional. It wasn't used again during the Third Republic; even Pétain, in 1940, didn't dare dissolve it.
[edit] Aftermath
Observing the defeat of the counterrevolutionary Ordre moral government which had been in power during the first years of the Third Republic, president MacMahon finally accepted his defeat and resigned in January 1879. The May 16 crisis thus signed the defeat of the royalists and the abandon of the political arena by the legitimist movement. The comte de Chambord's intransigeancy had ruined the alliance between legitimist and orleanists. After his 1883 death, several orleanists woul "rally" themselves to the Republic, hearing Adolphe Thiers' words according to which "the Republic is the form of government which divides [the French] the less". These newly rallied would become the first right-wing republicans of France — see René Rémond's classic distinction of the three right-wing families in France. After World War I (1914-18), some of the independent radicals and members of the right-wing of the late Radical-Socialist Party would ally themselves with these pragmatics republicans, although anticlericalism remained a gap between these long-time rivals (and indeed continues, to this day, of being a main criteria of distinction between the French left-wing and its right-wing).
In the constitutional field, the presidential system was definitely rejected in favor of a parliamentary system, and the right of dissolution of parliament severely restricted, so much that it was never used again under the Third Republic. After the Vichy regime, the Fourth Republic (1946-1958) would again be founded on this parliamentary system, something which Charles de Gaulle despised and rejected (le régime des partis). Thus, when general de Gaulle had the opportunity to come back to power, in the favor of in another May crisis, this time in 1958, he designed a constitution which would balance again powers to the advantage of the president. His 1962 reform to have the president elected by direct universal suffrage (instead of being elected by deputies and senators) further improved his authority. However, the constitution designed by de Gaulle for the Fifth Republic (1958-) specifically tailored his needs, but this specificity was strongly supported by de Gaulle's personal interpretation of the constitutional text. In other words, his personal charisma was doubtlessly a major factor of this new presidential regime.
Until the 1980s, his disappearance from the political scene a year after the May 68 crisis didn't change much. However, the various cohabitations under president François Mitterrand renewed the conflict, although in the opposite political sense, between the presidency and the prime minister. The reduction of the presidency from seven to five years (the fr:quinquennat) proposed by president Jacques Chirac and accepted by referendum in 2000 supposedly permit to avoid any further "cohabitation" and thus conflict between the executive branch and the legislative power. This (relatively unusual) seven years period had been fixed by Marshal MacMahon himself.
[edit] The 363 deputies
Include the following
[edit] Endnotes
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