Adolphe Thiers (15 April 1797 – 3 September 1877) was Prime Minister of France from 22 February to 6 September 1836 (succeeding Victor de Broglie and preceding Louis-Mathieu Mole) and from 1 March to 29 October 1840 (interrupting Jean-de-Dieu Soult's terms), as well as President from 31 August 1871 to 24 May 1873, succeeding Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and preceding Patrice de MacMahon. Thiers was a moderate Republican, formerly an Orleanist, and he played a key role in the establishment of the July Monarchy, the French Second Republic, and the French Third Republic.
Biography[]
Adolphe Thiers born in Bouc-Bel-Air, France on 15 April 1797, and he moved to Paris in 1821 to become a journalist and historian. In 1829, he fiercely criticized the royal government of King Charles X of France for appointing Jules de Polignac and the Ultra-Royalists to head the government. Thiers was one of the principal movers behind the July Revolution in 1830, assisting in the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy, and he served as Prime Minister in 1836 and 1840. He later took part in the French Revolution of 1848, establishing the French Second Republic in the place of the July Monarchy. He dedicated the Arc de Triomphe and arranged the return of Napoleon I's ashes to France from Saint-Helena, and he initially supported Napoleon's nephew Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in politics. When Louis-Napoleon seized power in 1851, Thiers was briefly expelled from France, but he returned to challenge Napoleon III's rule. After the end of the Second French Empire during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, Thiers was elected chief executive of the new French government and negotiated the end of the war. When the Communards seized power in March 1871, Thiers gave the orders for the French Army to suppress its uprising. In August 1871, the National Assembly made Thiers President of France, and he achieved the departure of German soldiers from most of France. Thiers nevertheless found himself opposed by the right-wing monarchists and the left-wing republicans, and he resigned in May 1873. Thiers died in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1877 at the age of 80.