The impact of the French Revolution (1789-1815) on life in France during the nineteenth century

Résumé du document

The whole nineteenth century can be seen as a century of experiment of political systems and institutions, a span of time where the French population looked for a political identity according to its specific heritage by trying a lot of regimes through different Constitutions. However, no system of this century was really new: they had all been tested during the Revolution, and the memory each one determined the possibility of their reappearance during the nineteenth century. As the dates of the French Revolution are discussed among historians, I choose, for this paper, to settle them from 1789 to 1815. So I shall see the evolution of the nineteenth century from 1815 to 1879 through the perspective of the revolutionary legacy. Thus the main parts of the paper shall be shaped by the four regimes which took place during the period, the Restoration, the Second Republic, the Second Empire and the Third Republic.

Extraits

[...] This first period of the Second Empire was a tight dictatorship, supported by the catholic right. However, the Emperor allowed progressively some liberties. Since 1860, he let the public opinion develop itself, through press and syndicalism, for example. The elections oh 1863 gave a chief to the united opposition, Adolphe Thiers. The Empire glided toward a sort of parliamentary regime, Napoléon get closer to the left wing parties. He went on with social politics and industrial developing. In the continuation of the First Empire, Napoléon III developed an ambitious foreign policy. [...]

[...] After Thiers resignation, in 1873, Mac-Mahon became the new President elected by the National Assembly and supported by its right wing. The new attempts to establish the king failed. New elections permitted the official instauration of the Third Republic. Mac-Mahon resigned in 1879, date of the real start of the secular, democratic and parliamentary regime. The sociology reveals that skilled workers and town merchant constituted the aristocracy of the “petit peuple parisien” and formed the main basis of the “sans-culotte”, revolutionary of 1830 and 1848, members of the Commune. [...]

[...] It may question the legitimacy of those revolutions, based on a really small part of the population but able to destroy the current power. It may explained why it demanded the bloody repression of the Commune and so the hard weakening of those classes to succeed in establishing a long lasting regime, accepted and recognized by the whole Nation. The Revolution remained and remains a source of inspiration for French and foreign people. It experienced all regimes through an incredibly short time and educated people with democratic values claimed all over the nineteenth century and after. [...]

[...] The ideology of the Revolution couldn't permit to return to an absolute monarchy, the execution of Louis XVI had meant the denial of the divine link between the king and God. The country knew a period of stability and thus prosperity with a demographic growth and the beginning of the industrial revolution. The Chamber of MPs balanced between ultra monarchists and liberals, making and unmaking decisions about, for instance, the press freedom. If Louis XVIII stayed moderated, the assassination of the Duc de Berry in 1820 and then the coronation of Charles X get to the search of a more absolute power. [...]

[...] However, no system of this century was really new: they had all been tested during the Revolution, and the memory each one left determined their possibility of reappearance during the nineteenth century. As the dates of the French Revolution are discussed among historians, I choose for this paper to settle them from 1789 to 1815. So I shall see the evolution of the nineteenth century from 1815 to 1879 through the perspective of the revolutionary legacy. Thus the main parts of the paper shall be shaped by the four regimes which took place during the period, the Restoration, the Second Republic, the Second Empire ant the Third Republic. [...]