Léon Gambetta

The Republic was victorious against the invasion of 1792: the Republic is proclaimed.

The Revolution has been carried in the name of the right of public safety.

Citizens, watch over the City which is entrusted to you, tomorrow, along with the army, you shall avenge the Nation!"

Gambetta was one of the first members of the new Government of National Defense, becoming Minister of the Interior.

He advised his colleagues to leave Paris and run the government from some provincial city.

This advice was rejected because of fear of another revolution in Paris, and a delegation to organize resistance in the provinces was dispatched to Tours, but when this was seen to be ineffective, Gambetta himself left Paris 7 October with Eugène Spuller in a coal gas-filled balloon—the "Armand-Barbès"—and upon arriving at Tours took control as minister of the interior and of war.

Aided by Freycinet, a young officer of engineers, as his assistant secretary of war, he quickly organized an army, which might have relieved Paris if Metz had held out, but Bazaine's surrender brought the army of the Prussian prince Friederich Karl back into the field, and success was impossible.

After the French defeat near Orléans early in December the seat of government was transferred to Bordeaux.

Léon Gambetta (2 April 1838 – 31 December 1882) was a French lawyer and republican politician who proclaimed the French Third Republic in 1870 and played a prominent role in its early government.

Born in Cahors, Gambetta is said to have inherited his vigour and eloquence from his father, a Genoese grocer who had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie.

At the age of fifteen, Gambetta lost the sight of his right eye in an accident, and it eventually had to be removed.

Despite this disability, he distinguished himself at school in Cahors.

Delescluze was being prosecuted for having promoted a monument to the representative Baudin, who had been killed while resisting the coup d'état of 1851, and Gambetta seized his opportunity to attack both the coup d'état and the government with a vigour which made him immediately famous.

He then worked at his father's grocery shop in Cahors, the Bazar génois ("Genoese bazaar"), and in 1857 went to study at the Faculty of Law of Paris.

His temperament gave him great influence among the students of the Quartier latin, and he was soon known as an inveterate enemy of the imperial government.

Gambetta was called to the bar in 1859.

He was admitted to the Conférence Molé in 1861 and wrote to his father, "It is no mere lawyers club, but a veritable political assembly with a left, a right, a center; legislative proposals are the sole subject of discussion. It is there that are formed all the political men of France; it is a veritable training ground for the tribune."

Gambetta, like many other French orators, learned the art of public speaking at the Molé.

However, although he contributed to a Liberal review edited by Challemel-Lacour, Gambetta did not make much of an impression until, on 17 November 1868, he was selected to defend the journalist Delescluze.

In May 1869, he was elected to the Assembly, both by a district in Paris and another in Marseille, defeating Hippolyte Carnot for the former constituency and Adolphe Thiers and Ferdinand de Lesseps for the latter.

He chose to sit for Marseille, and lost no opportunity of attacking the Empire in the Assembly.

Early in his political career, Gambetta was influenced by Le Programme de Belleville, the seventeen statutes that defined the radical program in French politics throughout the Third Republic.

This made him the leading defender of the lower classes in the Corps Législatif.

It was also in 1869 that Gambetta was initiated into Freemasonry at "La Réforme" lodge in Paris, sponsored by Louis-Antoine Garnier-Pagès.

In this lodge he met Gustave Naquet and Maurice Rouvier.

Gambetta opposed the declaration of the Franco-Prussian War.

He did not, however, like some of his colleagues, refuse to vote for funds for the army.

On 17 January 1870, he spoke out against naming a new Imperial Lord Privy Seal, putting him into direct conflict with the regime's de facto prime minister, Émile Ollivier.

(see Reinach, J., Discours et plaidoyers politiques de M. Gambetta, I.102 – 113) His powerful oratory caused a complete breakdown of order in the Corps.

The Monarchist Right continually tried to interrupt his speech, only to have Gambetta's supporters on the Left attack them.

The disagreement reached a high point when M. le Président Schneider asked him to bring his supporters back into order.

Gambetta responded, thundering, "l'indignation exclut le calme!"

("indignation excludes calm!") (Reinach, Discours et plaidoyers politiques de M. Gambetta, I.112)

On 2 September 1870, the French Army suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Sedan, in which the emperor Napoleon III surrendered and was taken prisoner.

The news arrived in Paris on the night of 3 September, and early on 4 September large-scale protests began in the capital.

Parisians broke into the Palais Bourbon, meeting place of the Chamber of Deputies, interrupting a session and calling for a Republic.

Later that day, from the Hôtel de Ville, Gambetta proclaimed the French Republic to a large crowd gathered in the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville: "Frenchmen! The people has forestalled the Chamber which was wavering.

To save the Nation in danger, it has asked for the Republic.

It has put its representatives not in power, but in peril.

Gambetta had hoped for a republican majority in the general elections on 8 February 1871.