Jules Favre

Jules Claude Gabriel Favre (21 March 1809 – 20 January 1880) was a French statesman. After the establishment of the Third Republic in September 1870, he became one of the leaders of the Moderate Republicans in the National Assembly.

He was born in Lyon, and began his career as a lawyer. From the time of the Revolution of 1830, he openly declared himself a republican, and in political trials he took the opportunity to express this opinion. After the Revolution of 1848 he was elected deputy for Lyon to the Constituent Assembly, where he sat among the moderate republicans, voting against the socialists. When Louis Napoleon was elected President of France, Favre openly opposed him, and on 2 December 1851 he tried with Victor Hugo and others to organize armed resistance in the streets of Paris. After the coup d'état, he withdrew from politics, returned to the legal profession, and distinguished himself by his defence of Felice Orsini, the perpetrator of the attack against the life of Napoleon III.

In 1858 he was elected deputy for Paris, and was one of the "Five" who gave the signal for the republican opposition to the Empire. In 1863 he became the head of his party, and delivered a number of addresses denouncing the Mexican expedition and the occupation of Rome. These addresses, eloquent, clear and incisive, won him a seat in the Académie française in 1867.

With Adolphe Thiers he opposed the war against Prussia in 1870, and at the news of the defeat of Napoleon III at Sedan he demanded the deposition of the emperor. Favre opposed the removal of the government from Paris during the siege.

In the government of National Defence he became vice-president under General Trochu, and minister of foreign affairs, with the onerous task of negotiating peace with victorious Germany. He proved to be less adroit as a diplomat than he had been as an orator, and committed several irreparable blunders. His famous statement on 6 September 1870, that he "would not yield to Germany an inch of territory nor a single stone of the fortresses" was a piece of oratory which Bismarck met on the 19th by his declaration to Favre that Alsace and Lorraine had to be ceded as a condition of peace.

...
Wikipedia