Léon Gambetta (April 2, 1838 in Cahors - December 31, 1882 in Ville-d'Avray) was a French politician. He mainly distinguished himself as a national defender during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and as a reformer during his government in 1881. His dynamic policy came up against financial lobbies and the conservatism of political personnel. She was nevertheless a source of inspiration for other politicians, notably Jean Jaurès.
Origin
Léon Gambetta was born on April 2, 1838 in Cahors, in the Lot department, to an Italian immigrant father, a modest grocer, and a Gascon mother. At the age of sixteen, Léon Gambetta lost his left eye following an accident. He studied at the Petit Séminaire, then at the Lycée de Cahors where he passed the baccalaureate, and finally in Paris where he obtained a law degree and became a lawyer. During his studies in Paris, he assiduously frequented republican circles which met in the Latin Quarter at the Café Voltaire. At the age of twenty-one, Léon Gambetta opted for French nationality.
His career as a lawyer
A lawyer, he became known in 1868 as an opponent of the imperial regime by defending Charles Delescluze, a republican journalist. This fierce opponent of the Second Empire is charged with having opened a public subscription in his newspaper in order to erect a monument to the memory of Jean-Baptiste Baudin, deputy of the Second Republic. The latter died while opposing alongside the workers Napoleon III's coup d'etat on December 3, 1851. The trial was lost, Delescluze was sentenced to deportation, but his defender gained notoriety. In a few months, Léon Gambetta became the new orator of the Republican left at the age of barely thirty.
His beginnings in politics
A few months after entering politics and barely thirty years old, Léon Gambetta was a candidate in the legislative elections of 1869. On this occasion, he announced the Belleville Program in April 1869 in the Belleville district of Paris. This speech lays out the main battle lines of the Republican opposition. Gambetta showed himself in favor of radical measures, which the Republican left would later take up. He campaigns for:
* freedom of the press;
* the separation of Church and State;
* the introduction of income tax;
* the election of officials
* the abolition of standing armies.
On April 23 and 24, 1869, Léon Gambetta was elected in Paris and Marseille. This strong personality, a scruffy tribune, who does not belong to the establishment of the big bourgeoisie will gradually establish himself as a political leader, that of a reforming and moderate republican left. Gambetta was undoubtedly the fiercest opponent of the Emperor Napoleon III. To the point of having been accused of having encouraged, secretly, the disastrous war against Prussia to get rid of the empire and thus restore the republic (La Depeche stupide de Ulms sent to a non-belligerent Kaiser, unlike Bismarck who wanted war to "build" Germany). Napoleon III being completely overwhelmed by the situation. The testimonies of soldiers and officers giving cases strange clumsiness among French generals known to be Republicans.
His political career
Fierce opponent of the Prussian army
On October 7, 1870, charged by the government of National Defense to lead the Franco-Prussian war in the provinces, Gambetta left Paris in a balloon to raise new troops, but his plan to liberate the capital failed. In Tours, he organizes a new government which will have to withdraw to Bordeaux.
On January 28, 1871, when Paris surrendered, Gambetta offered to continue the war. Described as a "madman" by Adolphe Thiers, he finally accepted the armistice.
From February 8 to March 1, 1871, he represented Bas-Rhin in the National Assembly. He left the Assembly among the deputies of Alsace-Lorraine ceded to the German Empire. Sick, he then withdrew for a few months in Spain and Switzerland, and, during the Paris Commune, encouraged the attempts at conciliation by certain municipal councils elected on May 7 and 8.
On July 2, 1871, Léon Gambetta was elected deputy for the Seine. He became the "trading clerk of the Republic" between 1871 and 1875 by delivering numerous speeches at public meetings (eleven volumes were published from 1881):thus in Grenoble on September 26, 1872, he announced during a speech that remained celebrates "the arrival and presence, in politics, of a new social stratum".
Triumphantly re-elected deputy of the 20th arrondissement of Paris in 1875 and 1877, he then lost the confidence of the working population of Belleville and the surrounding neighborhoods who reproached him for his indifference to social conditions and his refusal to vote for an amnesty for the former communards. Léon Gambetta definitively renounced all political activity in this popular district of Paris after an electoral meeting on August 16, 1881 which brought together 8000 people rue Saint-Blaise in the Charonne district during which he was forced to abandon the platform, in front of the hostility from the audience, half an hour after his arrival.
He was a candidate in the presidential election of 1879, where he received practically no votes.
Léon Gambetta was appointed President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1879 to 1881 then President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs from November 14, 1881 to January 27, 1882.
The reforming republican
On November 14, 1881, Léon Gambetta was appointed President of the Council by the President of the Republic Jules Grévy. He then envisaged major reforms, particularly in favor of workers:
* the nationalization of the railway;
* the introduction of income tax;
* recognition of the right to organize;
But a lobby is organized around his policy (the Rothschild bank in particular, the railway companies, and the mining companies). The mediocrity of political personnel, anxious to preserve their short-term interests (re-election, fear of having to undergo a firm executive), and the fear of reforms leading to the opening of power to other social strata are causing his ministry to fail. after only seventy-four days.
List of mandates and political responsibilities
* 1869 - 1871:Member of Parliament for Paris and Marseille;
* 1870 - 1871:Minister of the Interior of the Provisional Government of the Third Republic; Head of Delegation;
* 1871 - 1871:Deputy for Bas Rhin - resigned during the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany;
* 1871 - 1873:Deputy of the Seine;
* 1873 - 1881:Member of Parliament for the 20th arrondissement;
* 1879 - 1879:Candidate for the presidential election;
* 1879 - 1881:President of the Chamber of Deputies;
* 1881 - 1882:President of the Council;
* 1881 - 1882:Minister of Foreign Affairs.
His diaries
Léon Gambetta founded various newspapers:
o La Revue politique:an opposition newspaper to the Second Empire (1869);
o The French Republic (1871).
Miscellaneous
Léon Gambetta belonged to the lodge La Réforme de la Franc-maçonnerie.
His death
Wounded in the hand, officially while repairing his pistol or more probably by his mistress Léonie Léon, he contracted sepsis. During his convalescence, an acute appendicitis (which we did not yet dare to operate on before 1885) occurred and carried him away on December 31, at the age of 44. Léon Gambetta died in Sèvres in the Hauts-de-Seine, in the house of Jardies, a residence he had bought in 1878. Gambetta was buried in Nice (castle cemetery), next to his mother.
According to the embalmer Baudrian, his friends shared the parts of the corpse transformed into a Republican relic:V... boned the arm, l... cut off the appendix, Bert packaged the heart... source Historia no491 of November 1987 page 88, according to Gheuzi.
On November 11, 1920, the day the unknown soldier was buried under the Arc de Triomphe, Gambetta's heart was transferred to the Panthéon.