Adolphe Thiers

Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers (15 April 1797 – 3 September 1877) was a French statesman and historian. He was the second elected President of France and first President of the French Third Republic.

It [a republic] is the form of government which divides us the least.

Quotes

• You should never hand over a country to one man, whoever the man, whatever the circumstances.
  • Histoire de Consulat et de l'Empire, Vol. XX (1862), pp. 795-796, quoted in Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (1994; 1996), p. 98

• It [a republic] is the form of government which divides us the least.
  • Statement, quoted in Ernest J. Knapton, 'France: 1871 and 1944', Current History, Vol. 7, No. 39 (November 1944), p. 392

Quotes about Thiers

• Thiers was the savage, limited type of bourgeois who steeps himself in blood without flinching.
  • Georges Clemenceau, remarks to Jean Martet (19 June 1928), quoted in Jean Martet, Clemenceau: The Events of His Life As Told by Himself to His Former Secretary Jean Martet (1930), p. 281

• What do you expect me to think of Thiers? There's no one who detested me more... Thiers was a man who firmly abstained from having an idea, who literally had no perception of anything. During the Commune he did the same as he had done in the Rue Transonain, and with the same ferocity. And not only did he do it, but he boasted and crowed about it. Did I tell you about the abominable act he committed? After having promised to leave the Parisians their guns, he took them away—which was the cause of everything that happened... He was one of those hide-bound fools who fancy that you can achieve something with an order written on a piece of paper.
  • Georges Clemenceau, remarks to Jean Martet (3 July 1928), quoted in Jean Martet, Clemenceau: The Events of His Life As Told by Himself to His Former Secretary Jean Martet (1930), pp. 339-340

• It fell to the liberal statesman, academician, and historian Adolphe Thiers to forge this broader synthesis in his Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire (1845–1862). Begun under the July Monarchy, continued under the Republic, and concluded under the Second Empire, this 20-volume work sold more than a million copies, and established Thiers' reputation as France's "national historian" (as well as his fortune). The author was supremely well placed to produce such a work. From his early years at school in Marseilles he had been fascinated by Napoleon, and like many men of his generation his obsession with the Emperor continued well into his adult life. Bringing back Napoleon's remains for burial in Paris had been his idea, although he was out of office by the time the cendres were returned to Paris.
  • Sudhir Hazareesingh, 'Napoleonic Memory in Nineteenth-Century France: The Making of a Liberal Legend', MLN, Vol. 120, No. 4, French Issue (September 2005), p. 765

• He was...an intellectual lightweight. This is apparent in his voluminous histories of the Revolution, Consulate and Empire. He boasted that his books were the sensation of his century. Perhaps, but they are no longer read in our own. Thiers offered a well written, sometimes dramatic, narrative undistinguished by its depth of analysis. Intellectual or socio-economic influences upon history are absent from his work. His originality lay with the fact that he was the first to write of France's recent past in relatively dispassionate terms, not an easy task in his day, although he was unable to stifle his great admiration for Napoleon.
  • Douglas Porch, 'Reviewed Work: Thiers 1797-1877. A Political Life by J. P. T. Bury and R. P. Tombs', The Historical Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 1987), p. 500