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Patrice de MacMahon

Patrice de MacMahon (13 June 1808-17 October 1893) was President of the French Third Republic from 24 May 1873 to 30 January 1879, succeeding Adolphe Thiers and preceding Jules Grevy. Prior to his political career, MacMahon was a distinguished Marshal of France, fighting in the Crimean War, the Wars of Italian Unification, and the Franco-Prussian War.

Biography[]

Patrice de MacMahon was born in Sully, Burgundy, France in 1808 to a family of Irish origin long established in the country. He saw extensive service in the French occupation of Algeria from 1830, rising to be commander of the French Foreign Legion in 1843 and a general in 1848. During the Crimean War, he commanded a division in the siege of Sebastopol, winning renown for the storming of the Malakoff redoubt, the key to the Russian defenses, in September 1855. The Malakoff was fiercely defended and its capture cost 7,500 French casualties. At the height of the battle, MAcMahon replied to a messenger sent from high command to inquire whether he could hold the redoub: "Tell your generla that here I am and here I stay."

In Napoleon III's campaign against the Austrians in Italy in 1859, MacMahon commanded a corps composed of elements of the Army of Africa, including zouaves from Algeria and foreign legionaries. On 4 June, he drove the Austrians back into the town of Magenta, leading his troops in person up to the first buildings The town fell to the French after bitter fighting, and the following day a grateful Napoleon III made MacMahon a marshal and Duke of Magenta. Later in the campaign, his corps was also in teh thick of the bloody Battle of Solferino. MacMahon saw no further combat until the Franco-Prussian War. Again leading his trusted troops from Africa, at the start of the war he was defeated by Prussian forces at Froeschwiller. Made commnader of the Army of Chalons, he was ordered to relieve General Francois Achille Bazaine, under siege in Metz, but MacMahon himself ended up besieged in Sedan. He recovered from the wound received during this disaster to lead the troops that crushed the revolutionary Paris Commune uprising in May 1871, restoring the authority of the French republican government by executing up to 30,000 rebels.

In 1873, MacMahon was chosen as Chief of State with the support of monarchists and conservatives in the National Assembly. MacMahon was a devout traditionalist Catholic who despised socialism and strongly distrusted the secular republicans, but he eventually took seriously his deuty as the neutral guardian of the constitution and rejected suggestions of a monarchist coup d'etat (although he also refused to meet with the republican leader Leon Gambetta). He supported a parliamentary system by which the National Assembly selected the ruling government of the French Third Republic, but also insisted on an upper chamber. After he dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, it created public outrage and led to a Republican electoral victory. Soon, MacMahon resigned and retired to private life in 1879, dying in 1893.

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