Adolphe Thiers was born into a bourgeois family. A scholarship student at the Marseille high school, a brilliant speaker, he studied law in Aix-en-Provence, where he became friends with the historian Auguste Mignet. Received as a lawyer in 1820, he moved to Paris, where Mignet protected him. He writes articles on politics or historical criticism for the Constitutionnel then for Globe .
In 1823, he published the first two volumes of his History of the French Revolution . A clever strategist, he encouraged Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte to run for the presidency of the Republic, but broke with him when the coup d'etat of December 2, 1851 loomed which established the Second Empire. In February 1871, after the fall of the Second Empire, he became head of the executive power.
On August 31, 1871, during the repression of the Commune, he became the first president of the III th Republic. He is remembered as the "liberator of the territory". Indeed, in two years he closed the reimbursement of the war indemnity of 5.5 billion francs due to the Germans by issuing two loans, in June 1871 and July 1872. He thus favored the early departure of the occupying troops from September 1873 (with the exception of Alsace and northern Lorraine). He died on September 3, 1877, at the age of 80.
1797 - 1877
Status
Lawyer
Journalist
Historian
French statesman
President of the III th Republic