French National Assembly

The elected legislature that governed France after the fall of the Second Empire in 1870. It proclaimed the Third Republic and negotiated the peace ending the Franco-Prussian War.

Second French Empire: The French regime ruled by Napoleon III from 1852 until its collapse in 1870. Its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War created the political opening for a new legislature.
Treaty of Frankfurt: The May 1871 treaty that formally ended the Franco-Prussian War and imposed territorial and financial terms on France. The Assembly ratified the settlement that ended the war and ceded Alsace-Lorraine.
Third French Republic: The French republic established in 1870 and lasting until the defeat of France in 1940. The Assembly’s vote in 1875 gave the republic a constitutional framework.
Léon Gambetta: A French republican politician who proclaimed the republic in 1870 and opposed the Assembly’s conservative majority. He became a leading republican critic of the Assembly’s monarchist and conservative forces.
Franco-Prussian War: The 1870–1871 conflict in which Prussia and its German allies defeated France. France’s defeat and Napoleon III’s capture precipitated the Assembly’s election.
Adolphe Thiers: A French statesman who led the executive power and later served as president of the Third Republic. The Assembly appointed him head of executive power in February 1871.
Constitutional Laws of 1875: Three laws adopted in 1875 that organized the institutions of the French Third Republic. They converted the Assembly’s provisional authority into a durable parliamentary system.
Patrice de MacMahon: A French army marshal who served as president of the Third Republic from 1873 to 1879. The Assembly elected him president in 1873, strengthening conservative hopes for a monarchist restoration.
Government of National Defense: A provisional French government formed in Paris after Napoleon III’s capture in September 1870. It governed during the war and organized the election that produced the Assembly.
Paris Commune: A revolutionary municipal government that ruled Paris from March to May 1871. Its revolt against the Assembly’s authority ended in violent suppression by government forces.

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