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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Leon Gambetta Biography Gambetta, Léon (1838–82) A French statesman. He was born April 3, 1838, at Cahors, of a family which had come originally from Genoa, and which is said to have been of Jewish origin. In 1854 an accident caused the loss and removal of his left eye. In 1859 he began the practice of law at Paris. His first great success, however, did not come until 1868, when he attacked the coup d'état of 1851 while defending a journalist who had come under the ban of the Empire. He was returned to the Chamber of Deputies from Paris and Marseilles in the elections of 1869, and on May 5, 1870, he delivered a speech containing a panegyric of the republican form of government, which attracted great attention. After the disaster of Sedan and the fall of the Empire, he became Minister of the Interior in the provisional government and remained for some time in Paris after it was invested by the Germans. It was he who announced the fall of the Emperor and the establishment of the Republic. In order to arouse the provinces he escaped from the city in a balloon (October 7), proceeded to Tours, and established a virtual dictatorship. He urged his countrymen to fight to the bitter end and denounced the capitulation of Metz as an act of treason on the part of Marshal Bazaine. He left France and went to Spain as a protest against the treaty signed with Germany. When a National Assembly was resolved upon in 1871, Gambetta sought to give it an exclusively republican character by a decree directing that no official of the Second. Empire should take part in the election. The decree was canceled at the instigation of Prince Bismarck, and Gambetta resigned office, Feb. 6, 1871. He subsequently entered the Assembly as a member for Paris and became the leader of the Extreme Left, violently attacking the monarchical parties. After the retirement of M. Thiers his political action became more moderate. The Republicans owed to his leadership their success in the elections of 1877, and their defeat of the attempts of the Conservatives to deprive them of its results. In the same year he was twice prosecuted for violence of speech and once condemned to imprisonment. He strongly attacked the clerical party, who wanted to restore the temporal power of the Pope. On the election of Jules Grévy to the presidency of the Republic in 1879, Gambetta became President of the Chamber of Deputies (January 31). Upon the fall of the Ferry ministry in November, 1881, Gambetta was asked to form a new cabinet. Prevented by Léon Say and others from bringing the various factions of the Republic together by giving the representatives of each a place in the ministry, he startled the nation by a selection which it could not but regard with apprehension and alarm. The Roman Catholics were directly insulted by the choice of Paul Bert, an open skeptic, as Minister of Public Worship. The Conservatives, agitated by his proposed curtailment of the powers of the Senate, joined with the Church in opposing his policy. The Extreme Left also had reasons for opposition. At an early date Gambetta reintroduced his favorite schemes of scrutin de liste (q.v.) and senatorial abridgment. The Lower Chamber was to share in the election of senators, and the vote of the latter upon financial measures was to be taken away. The scrutin de liste was defeated in the Senate, and Gambetta immediately resigned (Jan. 14, 1882). Although his influence over national affairs was still felt through his newspaper, the République Française (established 1871), he seldom appeared in public after his resignation. The Republicans, who had not wholly trusted him while in power, were thrown into confusion by the news of his death, as it deprived them of the one man whose strong opposition the Royalist and Bonapartist factions especially feared. A pistol wound in the hand aggravated a malady from which he had long suffered, and he died' Dec. 31, 1882. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. IX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 440-441. |