page_title: Adolphe Thiers
section_title: Last years
hierarchical_section_title: Adolphe Thiers / Biography / Last years
caption_attribution_description: Three-quarter CDV portrait of Louis Adolphe Thiers
context_page_description: Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French statesman and historian. He was the second elected President of France, and the first President of the French Third Republic.
  Thiers was a key figure in the July Revolution of 1830, which overthrew the Bourbon monarchy, and the French Revolution of 1848, which established the Second French Republic. He served as a prime minister in 1836, 1840 and 1848, dedicated the Arc de Triomphe, and arranged the return to France of the ashes of Napoleon from Saint-Helena. He was first a supporter, then a vocal opponent of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. When Napoleon III seized power, Thiers was arrested and briefly expelled from France. He then returned and became an opponent of the government.
  Following the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, which Thiers opposed, he was elected chief executive of the new French government and negotiated the end of the war. When the Paris Commune seized power in March 1871, Thiers gave the orders to the army for its suppression. At the age of seventy-four, he was named President of the Republic by the French National Assembly in August 1871.
context_section_description: Thiers continued to sit in the Assembly as a deputy from Paris after his fall, though he spoke only once, on 27 March 1874, against a proposal to build more forts around Paris. Rather than making Paris a battlefield again, Thiers preferred using the money to add more soldiers to the army. Despite his opposition, the measure was passed by the conservative government.
  Thiers did have the satisfaction of seeing de Broglie fail in his effort to make France a constitutional monarchy; the monarch proposed by de Broglie, the Count of Chambord, once again refused to accept the tricolor flag and certain limits on his reign. The restoration plan was defeated in the Assembly, and de Broglie resigned on 16 May 1874. Count Chambord went back into exile and never returned to France. New elections were held on 20 February 1876. Thiers was re-elected to his seat in Paris, and the republicans triumphed. The new Assembly had 360 republicans, 120 royalists, and 80 supporters of a new Bonaparte regime.
  Thiers, seventy-six years old at the time of leaving the government, was in declining health. He came less frequently to the Assembly, and spent his time supervising the reconstruction of his house, and traveling in Switzerland and Italy. He was elected to the new French Senate as the representative of the city of Belfort, which he had refused to cede to Germany, but he preferred to sit in the Assembly, and, after the dissolution of the old Assembly in 1876, in the new Chamber of Deputies,
  In his last parliament session, he found himself on the side of the republicans against the monarchist government. A right-wing journal referred to Thiers as a "sinister old man". During one debate a member of the government claimed that the Assembly, not Thiers, was responsible for liberating French territory from the Germans. Thiers was present when the republican leader, Léon Gambetta, rose to speak. He pointed out to Thiers and said: "I will not take away from the illustrious man of state who is before me, whom no one honors more than me, the honor and glory which belongs to him, but which he does not want to claim for himself alone. That which he cannot do, history will do."  The Chamber gave a long ovation to Thiers, and the old man wept with emotion. 
  On 15 April 1877, Thiers celebrated his 80th birthday; he received telegrams of congratulations from all over Europe, including a friendly message from Bismarck. President MacMahon, a political novice, was having difficulties forming a government. He recalled de Broglie to be his Prime Minister. On 16 May 1877, Thiers was one of 363 deputies voted no confidence in de Broglie. The government fell and new elections were scheduled, but Thiers did not live to see them. He succumbed to a fatal stroke on 3 September at St. Germain-en-Laye while writing an election manifesto for the republicans.
  The funeral of Thiers on 8 September was both a state and a political event. President MacMahon wanted to organize a state funeral, and to personally follow the casket, but Madame Thiers refused; she wanted no monarchists to take part in the ceremony. Instead, Thiers was buried with full military honors; the cortège was accompanied by three battalions of infantry, a squadron of cavalry and a battery of artillery. Shops in Paris were closed, buildings were covered with black crepe. The cortege to Père Lachaise, was led by the group of 363 republican deputies who had voted with Thiers against the government. It was headed by Léon Gambetta and Victor Hugo. 
  The historian Jules Ferry described the funeral procession: "From rue Le Pelletier to Père Lachaise, a million people were packed in masses along the route of the cortege, standing up, hats off, saluting the casket, which was covered with mountains of flowers carried from all of France. The crowd gave one single rolling cry, grave, resolute, formidable, from both sides of the boulevards: Vive la Republique!"
caption: Adolphe Thiers photographed by Disdéri, ca. 1876
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