160 Facts About Adolphe Thiers

Adolphe Thiers was the second elected president and the first of the Third French Republic.

Adolphe Thiers served as a prime minister in 1836 and 1840, dedicated the Arc de Triomphe, and arranged the return to France of the remains of Napoleon from Saint-Helena.

Adolphe Thiers was first a supporter, then a vocal opponent of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.

When Napoleon III seized power, Adolphe Thiers was arrested and briefly expelled from France.

Adolphe Thiers then returned and became an opponent of the government.

Adolphe Thiers's father, Pierre-Louis-Marie Thiers, was a businessman and occasional government official under Napoleon, who led a life of debauchery and was frequently in trouble with the law.

Adolphe Thiers showed no interest towards Adolphe, and only contacted him in 1825 when he was becoming famous in the Paris journalism scene, to ask him for money.

Adolphe Thiers responded to the letter saying he feels love and duty only towards his mother, and that only if Pierre can prove he needs the money to stay alive and not for "the most ignoble excesses", would he see what he can do.

Adolphe Thiers's paternal grandfather, Louis-Charles Thiers, was an attorney in Aix-en-Provence, who moved to Marseille to become the guardian of the city archives, as well as secretary-general of the city administration, although he lost that post during the French Revolution.

Adolphe Thiers was of Greek ancestry on his maternal grandmother's side; his grandfather Claude Amic left Marseille for Constantinople around 1750 to work for the Seymandi trading post, and while there married a Catholic Greek woman named Marie Lhomaka, whose paternal family originally hailed from Chios and claimed "Frankish" descent.

Adolphe Thiers's father, Antoine Lhomaka, was a wealthy jeweler who supplied the Imperial Harem, and in 1722 accompanied Mehmet Efendi to Paris as a dragoman.

Adolphe Thiers's mother was a first cousin of the poet Andre Chenier.

Adolphe Thiers's mother, born in Bouc-Bel-Air, had little money, but Thiers was able to receive a good education thanks to financial aid from an aunt and a godmother.

Adolphe Thiers won admission to a lycee of Marseille through a competitive examination, and then, with the help of his relatives, was able to enter the faculty of law in Aix-en-Provence in November 1815.

Adolphe Thiers, who showed a strong interest in literature, won an academic prize of five hundred francs for an essay on the Marquis de Vauvenargues.

In 1821, the 24-year-old Adolphe Thiers moved to Paris with just 100 francs in his pocket.

Adolphe Thiers stayed only three months with the Duke, whose political views were more conservative than his own, and with whom he could see no rapid avenue for advancement.

Adolphe Thiers was then introduced to Charles-Guillaume Etienne, the editor of the Le Constitutionnel, the most influential political and literary journal in Paris at the time.

Adolphe Thiers offered Etienne an essay on the political figure Francois Guizot, Thiers' future rival, which was original, polemical and aggressive, and caused a stir in Paris literary and political circles.

Adolphe Thiers met Stendhal, the Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt, the famed banker Jacques Laffitte, the author and historian Prosper Merimee, the painter Francois Gerard; he was the first journalist to write a glowing review for a young new painter, Eugene Delacroix.

Adolphe Thiers soon collected and published a volume of his articles, the first on the Paris Salon of 1822, the second on his trip to the Pyrenees.

Adolphe Thiers was very well paid by Johann Friedrich Cotta, the part-proprietor of the Constitutionnel.

Under the tutelage of Talleyrand, Adolphe Thiers became an active member of the circle of opponents of the Bourbon regime, which included the financier Lafitte and the Marquis de Lafayette.

Adolphe Thiers began his celebrated Histoire de la Revolution francaise, which founded his literary reputation and boosted his political career.

The history of Adolphe Thiers was particularly popular in liberal circles and among younger Parisians.

The British historian Thomas Carlyle, who wrote his own history of the French Revolution, complained that it "was far as possible from meriting its high reputation", though he admitted that Adolphe Thiers is "a brisk man in his way, and will tell you much if you know nothing".

Adolphe Thiers had been planning a literary career, but in August 1829, when the King appointed the ultra-royalist, Polignac as his new prime minister, Adolphe Thiers began to write increasingly fierce attacks on the royal government.

Adolphe Thiers brought workers who seized key mechanical parts of the printing presses, and locked the building.

Adolphe Thiers noticed that the anti-royalist demonstrators had attacked shops which had signs showing that they were patronized by Charles X, but not those which advertised they were patronized by the King's cousin, Louis-Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, whose family had been sympathetic to the French Revolution.

Adolphe Thiers talked instead to the Duke's wife, Marie-Amelie, and his sister, Madame Adelaide.

Adolphe Thiers explained that they wanted a representative monarchy and a new dynasty, and that everyone knew that Louis-Philippe was not ambitious and had not sought the crown for himself.

Adolphe Thiers put on a tricolor ribbon, the symbol of the opposition, and rode to the Palais-Royal, where Thiers, the Marquis de Lafayette and Jacques Laffitte were waiting.

Adolphe Thiers ranked as one of the Radical supporters of the new dynasty, in opposition to the party of which his rival Francois Guizot was the chief literary man, and Guizot's patron, the duc de Broglie, the main pillar.

Now that he was eligible, Adolphe Thiers ran and was elected on 21 October 1830.

Adolphe Thiers gave his first speech in the Chamber of Deputies, on the financial situation of the country, a month after his election.

Adolphe Thiers had no experience as an orator; because of his small stature, his head barely appeared over the podium, and he spoke with a strong Provencal accent, which made the Parisians smile.

Adolphe Thiers worked very hard to improve his speaking style, and eventually became a very effective orator.

Adolphe Thiers was out of the government, and left only with his position as Deputy, which had no salary.

Adolphe Thiers helped put down a Quixotic armed rebellion of the Legitimists under the Duchess de Berry who wanted to put the Bourbon dynasty back on the throne.

Adolphe Thiers was hiding in a secret room behind a fireplace in Nantes, and was captured when the police looking for her, wishing to stay warm, started a fire, forcing her to surrender.

Adolphe Thiers was elected on the first ballot, with twenty-five votes; at age thirty-six, he was the second-youngest member elected in the 19th century.

In July 1833, Adolphe Thiers dedicated a new Paris landmark, the column in Place Vendome.

Adolphe Thiers played an active role in the decoration of Paris; he cleared the space in front of the eastern colonnade of the Louvre, so visitors could have a clear view, and ordered the restoration of the Salon of Apollo, which became the setting for the famous Paris salon art exhibitions.

Adolphe Thiers commissioned the bas-reliefs for the Arc-de-Triomphe, and selected Eugene Delacroix to paint murals for the library of the French Senate and frescoes on the walls of the church of Saint-Sulpice, despite the opposition of Louis-Philippe, who disliked Delacroix's painting.

Adolphe Thiers accepted the position, and chose a government, keeping for himself the position of Foreign Minister.

Adolphe Thiers suggested to the King that France should follow the British model, and allow the Prime Minister to conduct all of the diplomatic and military affairs.

Adolphe Thiers felt he had no alternative but to resign as prime minister, which he did on 29 August 1836.

Adolphe Thiers's place was taken by a conservative royalist, Louis-Mathieu Mole.

Adolphe Thiers went first to Rome, where his friend Ingres, the Director of the Villa Medici, gave him a tour of the monuments, then to Florence, where he had the idea of writing a history of that city.

Adolphe Thiers rented a villa at Lake Como and began collecting documents for his research.

Adolphe Thiers went to Italy two more times in 1837, renting the Villa di Castello and going through the archives.

Adolphe Thiers returned to the Deputies and in January 1839 delivered of series of speeches denouncing the government of the King, led by Mole.

Louis-Philippe, who by this time detested Adolphe Thiers, said with satisfaction that Adolphe Thiers "had the effect of a melon striking a stone".

Adolphe Thiers was sentenced to life in prison, and sent to serve his sentence to the fortress of Ham.

Adolphe Thiers offered to resign, but the King refused his resignation, arguing that he wanted the British to believe that France would fight.

Adolphe Thiers promptly offered his resignation, and this time it was accepted.

In December 1840, Adolphe Thiers helped secure the election of Victor Hugo to the Academie Francaise, despite the opposition of the more conservative members.

Adolphe Thiers called new elections in July 1846, which Guizot's party narrowly won, with 266 seats of 449.

Adolphe Thiers, believing that the government was too strong to allow an uprising, advised caution and said he would not attend the banquet.

Adolphe Thiers toured the streets on foot, and was recognized and cheered by many of the demonstrators.

Adolphe Thiers addressed them, reminding them that the assembly was democratically elected.

Adolphe Thiers met with Marshal Bugeaud, and learned that the army had only sixteen thousand men available; they were short of ammunition and exhausted.

The King turned to his marshals and generals and to Adolphe Thiers and asked if there was any alternative, but they were silent.

New elections were held; Adolphe Thiers ran as a candidate in Marseille, and, for the first and only time in his career, was defeated.

Adolphe Thiers had been considered a leftist republican in the government of Louis-Philippe, but after the political earthquake of the 1848 revolution and the influx of new deputies, he appeared relatively conservative.

Adolphe Thiers took his seat as the head of the Finance Committee, and leader of the conservative republicans.

Adolphe Thiers believed that Louis-Napoleon's term would be a failure, which would open the way for Thiers to run in 1852.

Adolphe Thiers wanted to retain his independence as a deputy.

Adolphe Thiers did not foresee that Louis-Napoleon, elected by universal suffrage, would later use this law as a weapon against the Assembly to reinforce his own rule.

Adolphe Thiers began looking for other candidates to replace Louis-Napoleon, perhaps with the Duke of Joinville, from the Orleans family.

Adolphe Thiers went to Brussels, where he learned that Louis-Napoleon had organized a national referendum on his rule; more than seven million voters approved the coup, while 646,000 disapproved it.

Adolphe Thiers was bored in Brussels, so he moved to London, where his wife and mother-in-law joined him.

Adolphe Thiers was received by the Duke of Wellington and Benjamin Disraeli, but as a native of Provence, he could not endure the British climate and soon departed for long travels in Germany and Italy.

Adolphe Thiers resumed his friendship with the painter Delacroix and with the sculptor Francois Rude, whom he had commissioned to make sculptural decoration for the Arc-de-Triomphe.

Adolphe Thiers was encouraged to re-enter political life by his friends, and by a new acquaintance, the Prussian ambassador to Paris, Otto von Bismarck.

Adolphe Thiers returned to the Assembly on 6 November 1863 and took his seat, but found that under Napoleon III the protocol had changed.

Adolphe Thiers was uncomfortable with this way of speaking, and his first few speeches were failures, but he soon mastered the form.

Adolphe Thiers condemned the Emperor's principle of nationalities, as applied in Italy, of supporting the unification into one country of small states whose populations spoke a common language.

Adolphe Thiers adroitly managed a diplomatic crisis over the Spanish throne to bring about a war with France, which he was confident Prussia would win.

Two hundred twenty Deputies of the Assembly gathered on the 4th and, following Adolphe Thiers' formula, declared that, "due to circumstances", there was a vacancy of power.

Adolphe Thiers traveled by train and boat to Calais and London, where he met with Lord Granville, the British Foreign Minister, and William Gladstone, the Prime Minister.

Adolphe Thiers was so exhausted by the voyage that he fell asleep when Gladstone was speaking.

Adolphe Thiers did offer to arrange a meeting between Favre and the Germans to learn what the terms would be for ending the war.

Adolphe Thiers travelled to Vienna and met with the Chancellor of Austria, then to Saint Petersburg, where he met with the Czar and the Russian prime minister, but he received no support.

Adolphe Thiers returned to Vienna to meet Emperor Franz Joseph, and went to Florence to meet King Victor Emmanuel II, and was kindly received, but received no offers of military support.

Adolphe Thiers returned to France, convinced that government would have to negotiate an end to the war.

Chancellor Bismarck arranged for Adolphe Thiers to pass through the German lines to meet with the French government within the city, which by this time was completely surrounded by German troops.

Favre urged Adolphe Thiers to go to Versailles and negotiate with Bismarck.

Adolphe Thiers returned to Paris and urged Favre and the Government to accept the offer and end the war, but General Trochu and Favre were adamant that Paris could hold out and that France was still strong enough to win the war.

The French forces inside Paris made unsuccessful efforts to break the German siege, while the German army advanced through the Loire Valley, and the Government of National Defense, along with Adolphe Thiers, was forced to move to Bordeaux.

Adolphe Thiers was a candidate in the elections, and won in twenty-six different departments, with a total of two million votes.

At the first session, Jules Grevy, a republican sympathetic to Adolphe Thiers, was elected president of the assembly, with 519 votes of the 536 voting.

Adolphe Thiers asked the Assembly that the words "Of the French Republic" be added to his title.

Adolphe Thiers traveled with a delegation of five members of the Assembly to Versailles, where Bismarck was waiting.

Adolphe Thiers insisted that France could pay no more than five billion francs, and Bismarck reduced the payment, but insisted that Germany must have part of Lorraine and Metz as well.

The talks were long and stressful; at one point Adolphe Thiers, exhausted, broke down and wept.

Adolphe Thiers found the city in a state of revolutionary fever.

The guardsmen did not know that Adolphe Thiers was still in Paris, at the new foreign ministry on the Quai d'Orsay; if they had known he certainly would have been captured and probably killed.

Adolphe Thiers then followed the same plan that he had proposed to Louis-Philippe during the 1848 Revolution, but which the King had rejected; instead of fighting the insurrection immediately in Paris with the troops he had, he ordered regular army to withdraw to Versailles, to gather its forces, and then, when it was ready, to recapture the city.

Adolphe Thiers named Marshal Patrice MacMahon, who had led the French Army during the victorious war to liberate parts of Italy from the Austrians, to command the new Army of Versailles.

Once the Commune had fallen to the French Army, Adolphe Thiers turned his attention to liberating French soil from German occupation.

Adolphe Thiers used his considerable financial skills to find the money.

In July 1871, Adolphe Thiers was able to pay the first five hundred million francs of the payment to Germany.

Adolphe Thiers protested that it was not possible to have constitutional monarchy with three different royal dynasties, the Bourbons, the Orleans, and the Bonapartes, all claiming the throne.

Adolphe Thiers persuaded the republicans that he was the least monarchist of the monarchists, and persuaded the monarchists that he was the least republican of the republicans.

Adolphe Thiers moved quickly to set up a strong and conservative republic.

Adolphe Thiers was a convinced protectionist, wishing to shelter French industry against free trade and foreign competition.

Adolphe Thiers offered his resignation, which was rejected by the Assembly; with only eight dissenting voices, they insisted that he remain as president.

Adolphe Thiers was an advocate of obligatory long military service; he pushed through a law requiring obligatory service of five years for French men.

Adolphe Thiers made agreements with the major fifty-five banks of Europe, and issued bonds which, based on the good credit of France, brought in more than the amount required.

Adolphe Thiers signed a new convention with Germany on 15 March 1873, calling for the Germans to leave the last four French departments they held, Ardennes, Vosges, Meurthe-et-Moselle and Meuse by July 1873, two years ahead of schedule.

The National Assembly voted a special resolution to thank Adolphe Thiers for liberating French territory ahead of schedule.

Adolphe Thiers modified the rules of the Assembly so that the President had the power to veto laws passed by the Assembly, but requiring that the President ask permission from the head of the Assembly before he spoke to the body.

MacMahon declined at first, but as Broglie persisted, he said that he had no political ambitions, but that if Adolphe Thiers retired, he did not want to leave France without a government.

Adolphe Thiers proposed a new cabinet, but de Broglie and the right wing objected that the new government was not conservative enough.

Adolphe 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, Adolphe Thiers preferred using the money to add more soldiers to the army.

Adolphe 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, refused to accept the tricolor flag and certain limits on his reign.

Adolphe Thiers was re-elected to his seat in Paris, and the republicans triumphed.

Adolphe Thiers came less frequently to the Assembly, and spent his time supervising the reconstruction of his house, and traveling in Switzerland and Italy.

Adolphe Thiers 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.

Adolphe Thiers was present when the republican leader, Leon Gambetta, rose to speak.

On 15 April 1877, Adolphe Thiers celebrated his 80th birthday; he received telegrams of congratulations from all over Europe, including a friendly message from Bismarck.

Adolphe Thiers recalled de Broglie to be his prime minister.

On 16 May 1877, Adolphe Thiers was one of 363 deputies voted no confidence in de Broglie.

The government fell and new elections were scheduled, but Adolphe Thiers did not live to see them.

President MacMahon wanted to organize a state funeral, and to personally follow the casket, but Madame Adolphe Thiers refused; she wanted no monarchists to take part in the ceremony.

Louis Adolphe Thiers was married to Marie-Claire Fougasse in 1785, and had a son, but spent most of his time with his mistresses.

Adolphe Thiers was appointed by Lucien Napoleon as a providers of rations for Napoleon's Army of Italy, which brought him a large fortune.

Adolphe Thiers brought back two mistresses from Italy, obtained another lucrative government post, from which he seems to have embezzled a large sum; he was chased down, arrested, but again released through the influence of Lucien Bonaparte.

Adolphe Thiers had several children from his mistresses, but had no contact with Adolphe, who was raised entirely by his mother.

In 1825, when Adolphe Thiers was becoming famous, his father wrote to him, asking for money.

Adolphe Thiers responded coldly that Pierre-Louis had never been a father to him, and that his only loyalty was to his mother, who had raised him.

Adolphe Thiers's mother belonged to the family of the poet Andre Chenier.

Adolphe Thiers's maternal grandfather was a merchant from Marseille and his maternal grandmother was from Greece.

Adolphe Thiers left her behind when he moved to Paris, but her brother pursued Thiers to Paris, and fought a duel with him.

Adolphe Thiers was not hit and refused to fire on his opponent, and the matter was considered settled.

Not long after he arrived in Paris, Adolphe Thiers met Eurydice Dosne, the wife of a wealthy businessman and real estate speculator.

When she met Adolphe Thiers, she had been married fifteen years and had two children.

Adolphe Thiers's husband provided important financial support to Thiers throughout his political career.

On 7 November 1833, Adolphe Thiers married her daughter, Elise Dosne, who was sixteen years old, twenty years younger than Adolphe Thiers.

The wedding allowed Adolphe Thiers to pay off his debts, and to buy the house on Place Saint-Georges.

Adolphe Thiers's enemies claimed that his new wife was his own daughter, but Elise was born while Thiers was still a law student in Aix-en-Provence.

Adolphe Thiers attended all official events accompanied by both his wife and his mother-in-law, whom he called "My ladies".

Adolphe Thiers was involved in one minor scandal in the summer of 1835, when he was married, Minister of the Interior and member of the Academie Francaise.

Adolphe Thiers opened the window and showed them his rear end.

Adolphe Thiers's voice was harsh, and he spoke with a pronounced Provencal accent.

Adolphe Thiers's opponents tried every way they could to prevent him from speaking, with little success.

Adolphe Thiers was just one example of 19th century French writers who had prominent political careers.

Adolphe Thiers did more than any other Frenchman to keep alive in France "la legende napoleonienne", which made possible the second empire with all its disastrous consequences for France.

Adolphe Thiers's speeches were collected by his widow and published after his death.

Adolphe Thiers was consistent only in his greed for wealth and his hatred of the men that produce it.

Adolphe Thiers achieved a place in French literature as the model for Eugene de Rastignac, one of the main characters in the La Comedie humaine of Honore de Balzac.

Adolphe Thiers never thought of anything except his own career, and he imagined reaching the highest level.

Adolphe Thiers wanted to be at the top, which from the very beginning led him naturally to desire one day to be head of state; a dream that for a long time was not practical, because there was a monarchy or an empire.

The work of Adolphe Thiers did not include a single social law.

Adolphe Thiers was nothing less than the summary of French politics in the 19th century.

Adolphe Thiers expelled the Prussians from France.

Adolphe Thiers was responsible for the construction of Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides, and for the completion of the column on Place Vendome and the Arc de Triomphe, both of which he dedicated.

Adolphe Thiers built the ring of fortifications around Paris known as the Adolphe Thiers Wall, of which a few traces can still be seen.