Vichy France capital Vichy
10 July 1940 vote of full powers
On 10 July 1940, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate gathered in joint session in the quiet spa town of Vichy, their provisional capital in central France. Lyon, France's second-largest city, would have been a more logical choice but Mayor Édouard Herriot was too associated with the Third Republic. Marseilles had a reputation as an organized crime hub. Toulouse was too remote and had a left-wing reputation. Vichy was centrally located and had many hotels for ministers to use.Pierre Laval and Raphaël Alibert began their campaign to convince the assembled senators and deputies to vote full powers to Pétain. They used every means available, such as promising ministerial posts to some and threatening and intimidating others. They were aided by the absence of popular, charismatic figures who might have opposed them, such as Georges Mandel and Édouard Daladier, who were then aboard the ship Massilia on their way to North Africa and exile. On 10 July the National Assembly, comprising both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, voted by 569 votes to 80, with 20 voluntary abstentions, to grant full and extraordinary powers to Marshal Pétain. By the same vote, they also granted him the power to write a new constitution. By Act No. 2 on the following day, Pétain defined his own powers and abrogated any Third Republic laws that were in conflict with them. (These acts would later be annulled in August 1944.)
Most legislators believed that democracy would continue, albeit with a new constitution. Although Laval said on 6 July that "parliamentary democracy has lost the war; it must disappear, ceding its place to an authoritarian, hierarchical, national and social regime", the majority trusted Pétain. Léon Blum, who voted no, wrote three months later that Laval's "obvious objective was to cut all the roots that bound France to its republican and revolutionary past. His 'national revolution' was to be a counter-revolution eliminating all the progress and human rights won in the last one hundred and fifty years". The minority of mostly Radicals and Socialists who opposed Laval became known as the Vichy 80. The deputies and senators who voted to grant full powers to Pétain were condemned on an individual basis after the Liberation.
The majority of French historians and all postwar French governments have contended that this vote by the National Assembly was illegal. Three main arguments are put forward:
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