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Who Lost The Franco Prussian War Blame Politics
Who Lost The Franco Prussian War Blame Politics
Rachel Chrastil
Yale University
1
E. S., L'Union de la Sarthe, 6 Sept. 1874.
2
Charles-Victor Fournier, Une Commune de la Sarthe pendant
l'Invasion (Angers: L. Hudon, 1874), 42-43.
1
278 Rachel Chrastil
Revanchisme
The historical term revanchisme broadly refers to
supposed French antagonism toward Germany during the
early French Third Republic. It evokes a mythologized
national goal of wreaking revenge for the humiliation of
1870 by recovering Alsace-Lorraine. Revanchisme was in
reality more complicated and less potent. Over time it
varied in the extent of its popularity, its precise goals, its
links to particular political or intellectual persuasions, and
the extent of organized movements to promote it. While it
would be foolish to dispute that xenophobia and
nationalism ran high in some quarters in late-nineteenth-
century France, the desire for revenge played only a minor
role in French politics during the 1870s.
Revanchisme was largely confined to men of letters and
science, such as Ernest Renan and Louis Pasteur. They
deplored the German Empire's embrace of Bismarckian
calculation and authoritarianism, which appeared to
subordinate all that was lofty, subtle, and spiritual about
German culture to the doctrine of might makes right.3 The
3
For example, Ernest Renan, La Rforme intellectuelle et morale,
3rd ed. (Paris: Michel Lvy Frres, 1872); letters between Louis
Pasteur and the dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Bonn at the
Bibliothque nationale de France, Mfiche 4-Z le Senne-2177; see also
Charles-Olivier Carbonnell, "Les Historiens franais chroniqueurs de la
guerre Franco-allemande et de la Commune: Naissance du nationalisme
historiographique en France (1871-1875)," Bulletin de la Socit
d'Histoire Moderne 4:13 (1976): 15-24.
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280 Rachel Chrastil
4
See Maurice Barrs, Violons de Lorraine: Recueil de chants
lorrains de Maurice Barrs (avec une introduction) (Bayonne: Louis
Lasserre, 1912); Robert Soucy, Fascism in France: The Case of
Maurice Barrs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972);
Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1979); H. L. Wesseling, Soldier and Warrior: French
Attitudes toward the Army and War on the Eve of the First World War,
trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000).
5
Claude Digeon, La Crise allemande de la pense franaise
(1870-1914) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1959); Socit
d'Histoire Littraire de la France, Les Ecrivains franais devant la
guerre de 1870 et devant la Commune (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970).
6
Wesseling, 5; Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On
National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, trans. Jefferson Chase
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003), 128; Henry Contamine, La
Revanche 1871-1914 (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1957).
7
Bertrand Joly, "La France et la revanche (1871-1914)," Revue
d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 46: 2 (April-June 2002): 326-28;
Allan Mitchell, The Divided Path: The German Influence on Social
Reform in France after 1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1991), idem., The German Influence in France after
1870: The Formation of the French Republic (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1979), and idem., Victors and Vanquished:
The German Influence on Army and Church in France after 1870
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); Bndicte
Grailles, De la Dfaite l'Union Sacre ou les chemins du
consentement: Hommages publics et commmorations de 1870 1914:
l'exemple du Nord de la France (Ph.D. diss., Universit Lille III
Charles de Gaulle, 2000), 312. A recent exception is Schivelbusch.
8
Joly, 335; Stphane Tison, Guerre, mmoire et traumatisme:
comment champenois et sarthois sont-ils sortis de la guerre? 1870-
1940 (Ph.D. diss., Universit Paris III, 2002), 452-65.
Volume 32 (2004)
282 Rachel Chrastil
9
Few expanded the scope to call into question European values or
human nature. Guillaume Monod, who lamented the corruption of
Protestantism by the Germans in La France et la rformation en deuil
(Paris: Librairie protestante, 1871), might be considered an exception.
10
Scholars disagree over the number of republicans elected, with
estimates ranging from 150 to 250 of the 635 seats (Stphane Audoin-
Rouzeau, 1870: La France dans la Guerre (Paris: Armand Colin,
1989), 307; Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times, 5th ed. (New
York: Norton, 1981), 208; David Hanley, Party, Society and
Government: Republican Democracy in France (New York: Beghahn
Books, 2002), 49-54. Campaigns for conservatives for peace in
L'Esprance, Courrier de Nancy, 3 Feb. 1871; Henri Duchesne, "Les
Elections," La Sarthe, 5 Feb. 1871.
11
In the 1870s the National Assembly published an inquiry aimed
at exposing the dictatorship of the Government of National Defense
during the war: Rapport fait au nom de la Commission d'Enqute sur
les actes du Gouvernement de la Dfense Nationale (Versailles: Cerf et
fils, Imprimeurs de l'Assemble Nationale, 1873-75); Bertrand Taithe,
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284 Rachel Chrastil
14
"Les Annonces des journaux nanciens," La Feuille du Village,
6 March 1872.
15
On Bonapartism after 1870 see John Rothney, Bonapartism after
Sedan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969).
16
The phrase popped up in commentaries on the war in the early
1870s, often without explicit reference to Ollivier: A. Garnier, Le Lyce
du Mans pendant la guerre contre la Prusse (Le Mans: Edouard
Monnoyer, 1872), 6; Les Murailles d'Alsace-Lorraine: Metz,
Sarreguemines, Strasbourg, Haguenau, Saverne, Nancy, etc. (Paris: L.
Le Chevalier, 1874), preface.
17
Thomas J. Adriance, The Last Gaiter Button: A Study of the
Mobilization and Concentration of the French Army in the War of 1870
(New York: Greenwood, 1987), 3.
18
Jules Chautard, Du Rle de la science dans la guerre de 1870-
1871 (Nancy: Sordoillet et fils, 1871), 7; [J. Latour], Le Moyen de
payer cinq millards et de prparer la revanche (Toulouse: L. Hbrail,
Durand et Cie, 1871), 23; Gabriel Monod, Allemands et franais:
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286 Rachel Chrastil
21
Archives Dpartementales [hereafter AD] Sarthe, 3 M 566,
Lopold Galpin, Messieurs les lecteurs de l'arrondissement de La
Flche, 8 Feb. 1876 (also republicans Rubillard (1st Le Mans), 1876,
and Lemonnier, (Saint-Calais), 1876). See also Cordelet (2nd Le
Mans), in Chambre des dputs (1876-1940), Recueil, Documents
lectoraux pour les lections lgislatives du 20 fvrier 1876
[collections in this series hereafter Documents lectoraux], Sarthe-
Deux-Sevres, 1876, and AD Sarthe, 3 M 567, Cordelet, 1876; Cosson
(Lunville), Documents lectoraux, Manche-Morbihan, 1876.
22
On this point across France, see Jean-Franois Chanet, Arme
nouvelle et rpublique conservatrice, 1871-1879 (unpublished paper,
October 2002), 318, and Mitchell, German Influence,153-70.
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288 Rachel Chrastil
24
Berlet, Cosson, Duvaux, and Petitbien, Adresse de MM. Les
dputs rpublicains aux lecteurs de Meurthe-et-Moselle, (Nancy: E.
Reau, [1877]). Response included in the same document.
25
[Latour], 12; La Touanne, 107-9; Antoine Chanzy, Campagne de
1870-1871: La Deuxime Arme de la Loire, 8th ed. (1872; Paris: Plon,
1885), 477. Chanzy was also elected deputy and senator.
26
On the changing conscription laws and the place of the army in
French society, see Michel Auvray, L'ge des casernes: Histoire et
mythes du service militaire (Paris: Aube, 1998), esp. 88-124; Jean-
Jacques Becker and Stphane Audoin-Rouzeau, La France, La Nation,
La Guerre: 1850-1920 (Paris: Seds, 1995), 41-50, 150-51, 216;
Chanet; Raoul Girardet, La Socit militaire de 1815 nos jours
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290 Rachel Chrastil
30
Wawro, 41-64, 76-78. A few contemporary critics - not
politicians - referred to indiscipline or alcohol abuse among the
soldiers: Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot, La Dfense de Paris (1870-1871),
4 vols. (Paris: Dentu, 1875-78), 1:76; 1:82; Doctor Jules Bereron,
"Rapport sur la rpression de l'alcoolisme," Annales d'Hygiene
publique et de mdecine lgale 38 (July-Dec. 1872): 6; AD Sarthe, 1 M
195.
31
La Touanne, 106-7; Mallet, "Le 12 Janvier," La Sarthe, 13 Jan.
1872; Hubert Dbrousse, "La Libration du territoire." See also
Audoin-Rouzeau, 1870,101, and Grailles, 279-86.
32
Republican politicians did, of course, plan to reform the
populace, notably through education, but they did not link education to
the Franco-Prussian War in their legislative campaigns.
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292 Rachel Chrastil
Conclusion
The silences surrounding the political legacy of the
Franco-Prussian War are as revealing as the ringing
trumpet of peace that the republicans hoped would be heard
both in the provinces and in Berlin. French politicians were
34
Mitchell, German Influence, 143; Chanet, 435.
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