La Belle Époque
France 1871-1914
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876
McKay 838-850 Palmer 14.74
French Third Republic (1870-1940)
Napoleon III
captured
-Republic
Proclaimed
1870
Thiers
replaced
with
MacMahon
as president
1873
-German Empire
Declared
-Franco Prussian War
ends
-Paris Commune (1871)
Captain
Dreyfus
convicted of
espionage
1879
MacMahon
resigns
1894
Third
Republic
replaced by
Vichy
government
1906
Dreyfus case
dismissed
1940
La Belle Epoch/Age of Imperialism 1871-1914
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period in European history (1871-1914)
considered a "golden age" for the upper
classes
–
Overlaps and includes the Victorian/
Edwardian Era, Era of Bismarck, the Gilded
Age in America
Period of relative peace prevailed, increased
leisure time, technological boom, prosperity,
ostentation, “New Imperialism, the façade of
harmony
Gustave Caillebotte, (1848–1894),
Champagne perfected, telegraph invented,
department store developed, cafes,
Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877
secularism
Emergence of mass politics & political parties
Birth of spectator sports (soccer, bicycle races,
the Olympics (1896)
Mass loyalty to nation-state via mass
education
Growing disparity between haves/have nots
distracted via imperial conquests
Under surface avant garde (Freud, Nietzsche,
Camille Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre,
Einstein) are breaking the paradigm
1897
Art of La Belle Époque
Impressionism (1860s-1900)
• Meant to capture one’s “impression” of a
moment in time
• First glance
• A reaction to photography
– A subjective alternative
• Like Barbizon style, subject matter was
secular, non-historical
– But not realistic
– Day to day activities, landscape
• visible brush strokes, emphasis on light in its
changing qualities
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la
Galette, 1876
– accentuated the effects of the passage of time
– ordinary subject matter
• Light colors usually reserved for historic
themes
• Rejected at 1st by critics
• Some pieces were laced with critique of
bourgeois society
– Edouard Manet’s Barmaid at the FoliesBergere
Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant
(Impression, Sunrise), 1872
Pissarro, The garden at
Pontoise, painted in
1877
Camille Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre, 1898
Is she merely serving
drinks or sadly
something more?
Edouard Manet’s A Barmaid at the Folies-Bergère
Edoard Manet’s Olympia (1863)
Art of La Belle Époque
French Academic Style
• Synthesis of Neo
Classicism and
Romanticism
• Mythological themes of
Classical subjects with a
heavy emphasis on the
female human body
• Secular themes painted
from still life
• A favorite style among the
wealthy bourgeois of La
Belle Epoque
• Critiques called it
sentimental, clichéd,
conservative, noninnovative, bourgeois, and
"styleless"
Return
of
Spring
(1886)
This Year
Venuses
Again…
Always
Venuses!.
Honoré
Daumier, No.
2 from series
in Le
Charivati,
1864
1863 Alexandre Cabanel - The Birth of Venus
This Year Venuses
Again… Always
Venuses!. Honoré
Daumier, No. 2 from
series in Le Charivati,
1864
Decline of the Second French Empire
• Liberalization was designed to
divert criticism from Napoleon
III’s unsuccessful foreign policy
– Crimean War benefited
France little
– Italian Unification
– Establishment of North
German Confederation
• Franco-Prussian War (18701871)
– Napoleon III was lured into a
war via the Ems Dispatch
– Thought war would return
him to glory, power
– Second French Empire
collapsed after the capture
of Napoleon III during the
Battle of Sedan
Napoleon III with Bismarck after B. of Sedan
Characteristics of the Third Republic
 Politically very unstable
 Intended to be a temporary republic
until a new monarch could be found
• Plagued by short lived ministries
(political instability)
– 50 between 1871-1914 (disruptive to
continuity)
 Extremely polarized
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Republicans v Monarchists
 Corrupt, Anti-Semitic & Scandals Ridden
 The Boulanger Affair
 The Panama Canal Scandal
 The Dreyfus Affair [L’Affaire]
 Still, it survived longer than any other
regime since 1789! (1871-1940)
Third French Republic Declared!
 Napoleon III abdicated September, 1870
 New government headed by Conservative
Adolphe Thiers
 Reluctantly continued the fight against
the Germans who laid siege to Paris
 To defend Paris, a National Guard was
raised numbering over 350,000
 France surrendered in February, 1871 after
40,000 Parisians died
 Prussian troops marched into Paris in March,
1871
– Bismarck called for free elections for
members of a National Assembly
• Needed a legitimate government to
surrender
• Third Republic declared
The Third French Republic
• Elections led to large monarchist presence in
the National Assembly (400 out of 600)
• Republicans were distrusted by provincial
French people
• Viewed as violent, stupid in foreign
policy, unfriendly to Church, too
socialistic
• Thiers’ provisional President but viewed as:
• Unpatriotic (had opposed war from the start)
• Too conservative (supported Falloux Laws)
• Too ready to accept a humiliating peace with
Prussia (Alsace & Lorraine)
• Too Royalist (government established itself
at Versailles, NOT in Paris)
• Parisians seethed with angered
• March 18, 1871 Thiers ordered army to
remove cannons from Montmartre
• Parisians said NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The
Montmartre
Section of
Paris
The Paris Commune (March-May, 1871)
• Parisians (republicans, socialists,
anarchists, Jacobins, workers)
declared the Paris Commune
• Lasted from March 18-May 28,
1871
• Viewed by Marxists as a
communist utopia
• Was really a revival of Jacobinism
(’93) more than a social revolution
• Republicans characterized by
patriotic, anti-bourgeois, antiaristocrats/clergy, pro price, wage
control, and working condition
supervision
• But not sweepingly socialist
• Dreamed of small direct
democratic communes
A contemporary sketch of women and
children helping take two National
Guard cannons to Montmartre
Communard Reforms
 Allowed unions & workers
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cooperatives to take over factories
not in use and start them up again
Set up unemployment exchanges
in town halls
Provide basic elementary
education for all 
 were strongly against churchcontrolled schools
Day nurseries near factories for
working mothers
inspiration
to later revolutionaries like
Vladimir Lenin
Paris Commune (March to May 1871)
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May 21 western gate was
left opened
Known as the “Bloody
Week
Thiers ordered National
Assemblies armies to
invade
25,000 Communards killed
38 thousand arrested
330 thou were denounced
7, 500 deported to New
Caledonia
Third Republic is born
amidst class hatred &
terror
Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris
Sacré-Cœur
• Cathedral built
(1875-1914)
• Conceived as a
national penance for
the excesses of the
Second Empire and
socialist Paris
Commune
• Built over most
rebellious
neighborhood
• Embodiment of
conservative moral
order
Characteristics of Third Republic
 Republic meant to be temporary
 New French legislative assembly dominated
by monarchists
 BUT Divided over which royal family
their wished to grant throne
 Legitimist (Bourbon) supported Henri,
Count of Chambord
 1st in line to receive crown
 Descendant of Charles X
 He refused crown unless given
near absolutist power
 Refused Tricolor
 Bonapatist- were discredited
 Orléanists wanted descendant of Louis
Phillipe
 But as time passed French cooled on idea of
monarchy
The Boulanger Affair
 General Georges Boulanger-
Minister of War
 Extremely popular general
 nationalist who was loved by
republicans and conservatives in
the military
 Became involved in plot to seize
gov. and become dictator
 Was summoned to trial in 1887
 fled to Belgium where he
committed suicide on the grave
of his mistress
 Shook confidence in stability
of Gov.
Panama Canal Scandal : Ferdinand de Lesseps
 President of the French Company that worked on the
Panama Canal
 Govt. officials took bribes from the company to
withhold news from the public that it was in serious
economic debt
 One billion francs affecting 800,000 investors
 All but one of the accused went unpunished due to lack of
evidence
 Anti-Semitism:
 Two German Jews were also
involved  received the most press coverage
 Results:
 Scandal proved to the public that the Republic was
corrupt
 It created a climate of anti-Semitism that would
increase in time
The Dreyfus Affair
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In 1894 a list of French top secret military documents
[called a bordereau] were found in the waste basket of
the German Embassy in Paris
Captain Alfred Dreyfus
* Jewish officer accused of spying for Germans
Dreyfus was tried, convicted of treason, and sent to
Devil’s Island in French Guiana
Major Esterhazy
* Real culprit whose handwriting was the same as that
on the bordereau
 government tried him and found him not guilty in two
days
Author, Emile Zola, published an open letter called
J’Accuse!
 accused the army of a mistrial and cover-up
 govt. prosecuted him for libel
 Found him guilty  sentenced to a year in prison
J’Accuse! (1898)
But this letter has been long, Mr. President, and it is time to
conclude.
I accuse Lt-Col du Paty du Clam of having been the diabolical
agent of the miscarriage of justice, unconsciously, I want to
believe, and of having defended his deed for the past three years
by preposterous and extremely guilty machinations.
I accuse General Billot of having held in his hands evidence that
would have exonerated Dreyfus and of having suppressed it, of
having committed this crime against humanity and justice for a
political end, and to save the compromised staff.
I have but one passion: to enlighten, in the name of humanity
that has suffered so much and deserves happiness. My inflamed
protest is simply a cry from my soul. Let them dare summon me
before a court of law and let the inquiry take place in the light of
day!
I am waiting. Please accept, Mr. President, the assurance of my
most profound respect.
Emile Zola
The Dreyfus Affair
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Public opinion was divided 
it reflected the divisions in Fr. society
Dreyfusards were anti-clericals, intellectuals, free
masons, & socialists
Anti-Dreyfusards, the honor of the army was more
important than Dreyfus’ guilt or innocence
 Were army supporters, monarchists, & Catholics
Dreyfus finally got a new trial in 1899.
He was brought back from Devil’s Island white-haired
and broken.
Results:
 Found guilty again, BUT with extenuating
circumstances.
 Was given a presidential pardon.
 Exonerated completely in 1906.
 Served honorably in World War I.
 Died in 1935
Results of Drefus Affair
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Army purged of Right-winged Conservatives
The Zionist Movement
* Led by Theodore Herzl
* Was motivated by the Dreyfus trial to write
the book, Der Judenstaat, or The Jewish
State in 1896
* Creates the First Zionist Congress in
Basel, Switzerland
* “Father of Modern Zionism.”
Ferry Laws
Separation of Church and State
-Only the State could grant
The anti-clerical, republican left took power in degrees.
-Free education in public
the National Assembly in 1879.
primary schools.
This anti-Catholicism was a remnant of the
-Religious instruction was
French Revolution
excluded from the State
Ferry Laws [1879-1885]:
school curriculum.
* Named after Jules Ferry, one of the ablest
-Unauthorized religious
orders forbidden to teach.
politicians of the 3rd Republic
-State improved training of
* first major attempt at educational reform
teachers
Building the Republic
• After 1879 the Third Republic’s
Assembly was composed mostly of
Republicans
• Reforms
• Trade unions legalized
• Free compulsory elementary schools est.
for boys and girls
• Critical tool of nation building
• Ended Catholic monopoly on education
• Learned pledge of allegiance and
Marseilles instead of catechism and “Ave
Maria”
• Bastille Day declared national holiday
• Taught by married men and women
– Served as vivid contrast to celibate
nuns, priests
– Easier for married people to cope
with loneliness of teaching in villages
– Stimulate low birth rate
Claude
Monet,
Rue
Montorg
ueil,
Paris,
Festival
of 30
June
1878.
In France, children were taught in school to not forget the lost
provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, which were colored in black on
maps
1889 Paris Exposition
* World’s Fair held in honor of the
French Revolution Centennial.
* The Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889,
served as the entrance to the Fair.
1889 Paris Exposition:
Gallery of Machinery