Adolphe Thiers summary

Adolphe Thiers, (born April 18, 1797, Marseille, France—died Sept. 3, 1877, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris), French politician and historian. He went to Paris in 1821 as a journalist and cofounded the opposition newspaper National in 1830. In the July Revolution he supported Louis-Philippe and served as minister of the interior (1832, 1834–36) and premier and foreign minister (1836, 1840). A leader of the conservative moderates, he crushed all insurrections. Following the February Revolution, he helped elect Louis-Napoléon (later Napoleon III) president of the Second Republic. As a leader of the opposition (1863–70), he attacked Napoleon III’s imperial policies. As president of the Third Republic (1871–73), he negotiated the end of the Franco-Prussian War and restored domestic order by crushing the Paris Commune. He also wrote major historical works, most importantly the huge History of the French Revolution (10 vol., 1823–27) and History of the Consulate and the Empire (20 vol., 1845–62).