Léon Gambetta

Biography

Léon Michel Gambetta was born on April 2, 1838, in Cahors, the son of a Genoese immigrant grocer and a French mother. He became a lawyer in Paris, a republican politician of fierce conviction, and the most powerful advocate of French national resistance in 1870–71 — the man who, almost alone, refused to accept that Sedan meant the end of the war and organized the provincial resistance that prolonged it for four months. Gambetta had made his reputation in the 1860s as one of the most effective opposition orators under the Second Empire, combining personal magnetism, rhetorical brilliance, and a radical republicanism that made him the hero of the Parisian working class. When the republic was proclaimed on September 4, 1870, he became Minister of the Interior in the Government of National Defense — the most energetic member of a government that was otherwise characterized by paralysis and defeatism. His balloon escape from Paris on October 7, 1870, was a calculated risk. The balloon was shot at by German rifles during its ascent, rose to 1,600 meters to escape the fire, and came down in the Vosges after several hours in the air, nearly killing Gambetta when it caught in a tree. He made his way to Tours, then Bordeaux, and threw himself into organizing the levée en masse with a physical energy that astonished contemporaries. He requisitioned factories for arms production, conscripted hundreds of thousands of men, bullied and threatened local officials who dragged their feet, and supervised the creation of three new armies essentially from nothing in a matter of weeks. The armies could not match German professionals in open battle — they were defeated at Orléans, at Le Mans, and in the eastern campaign — but they tied down German forces across a vast area and made Bismarck's task immeasurably harder than he had anticipated. Gambetta refused to accept the armistice of January 28, 1871 and resigned from the government rather than sign it. He became the dominant figure of the early Third Republic, serving briefly as Premier in 1881–82, but never achieved the supreme power his wartime role seemed to promise. He died suddenly in December 1882, aged forty-four, from a gunshot wound that was possibly accidental and possibly suicide.

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