France is one of the countries with a long history in Europe and one of the more important developed countries in the world. However, it is more interesting that although the history of France itself is relatively long in the modern European nation-states, which has lasted for more than 1,000 years, the current French regime was established relatively late in the major European and American countries, and the modern French regime is generally called the French Fifth Republic, and it was actually established in 1958. So it is called the "Fifth" Republic, which means that France has had 4 republics before, so when did these 4 republics exist? What history have they had? What happened in 1958 that led to another change of dynasty in France?
What happened to the king's treason?
The First French Republic was founded in 1792 AD, and its establishment can be said to be the result of a series of previous events. At the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, France and Britain gradually became a pair of sworn enemies, not only after the Hundred Years' War lasted more than 100 years, but also after the beginning of the colonial era, the two sides also extended this competition to the New World in North America. In 1763, France lost to Britain in the Seven Years' War and was forced to cede its North American colony of Quebec to Britain.
Scene of French and American forces accepting british surrender at the end of the North American Revolutionary War
But France was not content with defeat in North America, and a few years later gave strong support to the independence movement of the British North American colonies, the American War of Independence, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the American War of Independence was led by France, or at least jointly promoted by France and the United States. But after the war, although the successful independence of the United States made France angry with Britain, France itself directly benefited very little. And because of the huge cost of supporting the American Revolutionary War, France also had a bunch of debts, forcing the French royal family to survive the crisis by raising taxes at home.
But this soon led to a series of crises in his country, and in order to resolve these crises, King Louis XVI of France decided in August 1788 to convene a parliamentary council in the following year, with one-third of the clergy, nobles and commoners in France sending one-third of the representatives to discuss how to deal with the crisis. But this representation arrangement at that time was clearly unfavorable to the civilian class, so the civilian class demanded to double its seats so that it could truly have the ability to compete with the upper echelons in the National Assembly. But this demand was quickly rejected, and the contradictions between the commoners and the aristocratic and clergy classes soon intensified, eventually leading to the outbreak of the French Revolution.
However, in the early days of the French Revolution, despite a series of radical measures taken by the revolutionaries, they did not depose the king, so Louis XVI remained the king of France for more than two years after the outbreak of the revolution in 1789 AD. But the French Revolution soon provoked opposition from other European royal families, and two other European powers, Prussia and Austria, soon formed a coalition to invade France in an attempt to quell the French Revolution. During this time, Empress Marie Antonette of Louis XVI leaked French military secrets to her brother, Emperor Leopold II of Austria. As a result, the French army lost on the battlefield.
Scene of French revolutionaries capturing the royal palace
This soon made the French royal family considered traitors by french civilians, and finally on August 10, 1792, French civilians captured the French royal palace, Louis XVI and Marie were imprisoned, the French Bourbon dynasty collapsed, and the French First Republic was established. The following year, Louis XVI and Mary were executed for treason, which in turn provoked a stronger reaction from the European royal families, and Prossytheus and several Italian and German principalities soon formed an alliance to intervene militarily against France.
Scenes of civil unrest in France during this period
The enormous military pressure from the outside soon led to many contradictions and divisions within the French revolutionaries, and the different factions and royalists of the French revolutionaries carried out many coups d'état in the following years, and there was a large amount of bloodshed, and the internal situation was extremely chaotic. In this case, Napoleon, a senior French general, launched the Mist Moon Coup on November 9, 1799, and seized power in France.
The Napoleonic family that twice ended the republic
Because napoleon initially stabilized the political situation in France after coming to power, he received a certain degree of support from the French people, and he quickly achieved an unshakable position. Eventually, five years later, he changed from ruling to emperor by referendum, the First French Empire was established, and the French First Republic was declared extinct. But after Napoleon became emperor, France continued to be opposed by the anti-French alliance formed by Austria, Britain, Russia and other countries, so France was almost always at war in the following years.
Napoleon became Emperor of France
Although Napoleon won the War of 1805 AD, defeated Austria and dismembered the Holy Roman Empire, and two years later defeated Tsarist Russia and imposed a blockade on Britain, gaining the status of hegemony in Europe, he lost successively in the later wars of invasion of Spain and Russia, and was defeated by the Anti-French Alliance at the Battle of Leipzig, and soon lost power. Although Napoleon made a comeback in 1815, he was defeated by the Anglo-Prussian army at the Battle of Waterloo and lost power completely.
Scene of Napoleon's army retreating after defeating Russia
After this, the Bourbon Dynasty, which had ruled France, was soon restored. However, both the French Revolution and Napoleon's reign had a permanent impact on French society, and the old nobles represented by the French royal family never regained the sovereignty over most of the lands that had been lost at that time, so the foundation for their re-election was not solid. So in July 1830, the July Revolution broke out in France, and the Orleans family, a branch of the Bourbon royal family, with the support of some bankers and large railway, mineral deposits, forests and landowners, overthrew the Bourbon dynasty and established a new July dynasty.
But under the July Dynasty, ruled by these financial aristocrats, poverty among the ordinary french population became more prevalent. Beginning in 1845, an economic crisis swept through Europe, and crop disasters caused grain harvest failures. Economic difficulties eventually led to the revolutionary wave that swept across Europe in 1848. Against this backdrop, a new revolution also broke out in France in February 1848. On February 22, an uprising broke out in Paris, the capital of France, and just four days later, King Louis Philip of France fled to England, and the rebels formed a revolutionary provisional government and the French Second Republic was established.
Scene of the Paris Uprising of 1848
But the Second French Republic also had the same situation as the First Republic, in which the various factions within the republicans were complex and contradictory. So just four months after the establishment of the Second Republic, there was another workers' uprising in Paris, and although this uprising was quickly suppressed, the image and prestige of the Second Republic government were greatly affected. During this period, Napoleon's nephew Louis Bonaparte returned to France from England, because he was an enemy of the Bourbon and July dynasties, and he had a certain distance from the various factions of the Second Republic at that time, so that he became a political figure acceptable to all sides in France.
In the French general elections held in December, Louis Bonaparte defeated Caffenjac, who was the head of state of France after the suppression of the Workers' Uprising in June, by absolute superiority and became president of the Second Republic. However, Louis Bonaparte was not satisfied with being president for only one term, and soon began to ask Parliament to give him the power to be re-elected (the French constitution at that time stipulated that the president could not be re-elected), but his request was quickly rejected by Parliament. Since then, the parliament has also passed a resolution to shorten the presidential term from 4 years to 3 years, and the parliament has deprived many people of the lower classes of society of the right to vote in order to prevent the lower strata of society from controlling the parliament through elections, which in turn has aroused strong dissatisfaction in French society. Eventually Louis Bonaparte took advantage of this social sentiment to stage a coup d'état on February 2, 1851, gaining dictatorial power, and a year later ascending the throne, establishing the Second French Empire and ending the Second Republic.
Napoleon III Louis Bonaparte, who became Emperor of France
Louis Bonaparte's reign promoted the modernization of France to some extent, but he, like Napoleon, was extremely interested in overseas expansion. Although his overseas expansion also achieved some results in the early stages, he soon encountered a series of setbacks, such as his attempt to establish a 4-nation federation in Italy was finally out of control, his attempt to occupy Mexico was finally completely unsuccessful, and the process of unification of the German regions was close to completion during this period, as a result, Louis Bonaparte realized that a unified Germany was unacceptable to France, so he went to war with Prussia, which was close to completing the unification of Germany, but he was defeated and eventually captured by the Prussian army.
Foreign invasions and coups d'état and the demise of the two republics
After the rapid demise of the Second French Empire, the French Third Republic was established. However, the Third Republic was soon defeated by Prussia, and almost all of France's territory except the capital Paris was occupied by Prussia, leaving France in an unprecedented crisis. This great crisis eventually gave birth to the Paris Commune, which was soon suppressed by the authorities of the Prussian-backed Third Republic with extremely bloody means. The Third Republic was maintained.
A group of Paris Commune fighters
During the Third Republic, France regained a large number of colonies overseas, largely controlling a large amount of land in West Africa and Southeast Asia, while also digging through the Suez Canal and becoming one of the major powers of the early 20th century. However, during the First World War, French territory became one of the main battlefields, which seriously weakened France's national strength and became a nominal victor. In the 1930s, the Third Republic, together with Britain, adopted a policy of appeasement, which quickly brought Nazi Germany to power, resulting in the Nazi blitzkrieg in France in June 1940, the Millions of troops of the Third Republic were quickly defeated, and the Third Republic was destroyed.
British and French soldiers captured by the Nazis
After the fall of the Third Republic, Nazi Germany annexed northern France and had Marshal Pétain establish the French state in southern France during World War I. After that, the French Brigadier general de Gaulle, who was in England, launched the Free French Movement in Britain, and gathered a considerable part of the French army that had retreated to Britain and the troops of the French overseas colonies, while in France, the French Communist Party and other resistance forces also launched underground resistance movements. In the counter-offensive of the anti-fascist camp in the late second world war, about 1 million or so French troops also joined it.
On August 19, 1944, the citizens of Paris launched an uprising, and the United States, Britain, France and other countries also launched an attack on Paris, and six days later the German army in Paris surrendered, and de Gaulle soon became the provisional president of France. But in January 1946, de Gaulle lost the support of the Constituent Assembly and was forced to resign, and soon after France adopted a new constitution establishing the French Fourth Republic.
French troops captured in Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam
The French Fourth Republic copied almost all the institutions of the Third Republic, and state power was mainly in the hands of the National Assembly. However, in the wave of national independence around the world after World War II, the French colonies of Vietnam and Algeria broke out in the War of Independence, and in 1954, France was completely defeated in Vietnam, and the northern part of Vietnam became independent, and the south was taken over by the United States. France was also passive in the war in Algeria, but because France had about 1 million expatriates in Algeria and could not afford to resettle refugees after the defeat, the Fourth Republic has always refused to agree to Algerian independence.
In 1956, France and Britain joined forces with Israel to regain control of the Suez Canal, which was jointly suppressed by the Soviet Union and the United States, and ultimately failed completely, and France's attempt to maintain a colonial empire around the world basically failed. Against this backdrop, some pro-Gaulle French soldiers staged a coup d'état in Algiers, then a French colony, on 13 May 1958 to seize power. On 24 May, the coup d'état sent paratroopers to land on corsica, close to the French mainland, and soon occupied the entire island and threatened the French mainland. In this case, the government of the Fourth Republic finally succumbed, and on May 29 handed over power to de Gaulle, and the French Fourth Republic collapsed.
A charles de Gaulle cartoon in a magazine in 1958
De Gaulle then presided over the formulation of a new French constitution, giving the president supreme powers. In December of that year, de Gaulle again became President of France and the French Fifth Republic was established. Therefore, at that time, Algeria could be said to be the direct cause of the demise of the French Fourth Republic, and it also determined the fate of France at that time, and one of the missions of the establishment of the French Fifth Republic was to preserve Algeria. However, the Fifth Republic failed to achieve this goal, and after four years of war, the French Fifth Republic was unable to fight any more in 1962, accepted Algerian independence, and 900,000 European (mainly French) residents fled back to France. However, the Fifth Republic survived this change and has remained so to this day. (Image from the Internet, infringement notice deleted)