Adolphe Thiers

Adolphe Thiers
Adolphe Thiers (1872)
2nd President of the French Republic Co-Prince of Andorra
In office 31 August 1871 – 24 May 1873
Prime Minister	Jules Armand Dufaure
Preceded by	Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte
Succeeded by	Patrice de MacMahon
15th Prime Minister of France
In office 1 March 1840 – 29 October 1840
Monarch	Louis Philippe I
Preceded by	Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult
Succeeded by	Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult
In office 22 February 1836 – 6 September 1836
Monarch	Louis Philippe I
Preceded by	Victor de Broglie
Succeeded by	Louis-Mathieu Molé
Personal details
Born	Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797-04-15)15 April 1797 Bouc-Bel-Air, France
Died	3 September 1877(1877-09-03) (aged 80) Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Political party	Party of Movement (1830–1848) Party of Order (1848–1852) (1852–1870) Independent (1870–1873) Moderate Republican (1873–1877)
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Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers (French: [lwi adɔlf tjɛʁ]; 15 April 1797 – 3 September 1877) was a French statesman and historian. He was the second elected President of France, and the first President of the French Third Republic. He was ex offico Co-Prince of Andorra during his term as president.

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 (who served from 1848 to 1852 as President of the Second Republic and as Emperor Napoleon III, reigning from 1852–71.) 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-German 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. His chief accomplishment as president was to achieve the departure of German soldiers from most of French territory two years ahead of schedule. Opposed by the monarchists in the French assembly and the left wing of the Republicans, he resigned on May 24, 1873, and was replaced as President by Patrice de Mac-Mahon, Duke of Magenta. When he died in 1877, his funeral became a major political event; the procession was led by two of the leaders of the republican movement, Victor Hugo and Leon Gambetta, who, at the time of his death, were his allies against the conservative monarchists.