title: Graph neural network

text: In the more general subject of "Geometric Deep Learning", certain existing neural network architectures can be interpreted as GNNs operating on suitably defined graphs. Convolutional neural networks, in the context of computer vision, can be seen as a GNN applied to graphs structured as grids of pixels. Transformers, in the context of natural language processing, can be seen as GNNs applied to complete graphs whose nodes are words in a sentence.


title: Graph neural network

text: The key design element of GNNs is the use of "pairwise message passing", such that graph nodes iteratively update their representations by exchanging information with their neighbors. Since their inception, several different GNN architectures have been proposed, which implement different flavors of message passing. , whether it is possible to define GNN architectures "going beyond" message passing, or if every GNN can be built on message passing over suitably defined graphs, is an open research question.


title: Graph neural network

text: Several open source libraries implementing graph neural networks are available, such as PyTorch Geometric (PyTorch), TensorFlow GNN (TensorFlow), and jraph (Google JAX).


title: Graph neural network

text: It has been demonstrated that GNNs cannot be more expressive than the Weisfeiler–Lehman Graph Isomorphism Test. In practice, this means that there exist different graph structures (e.g., molecules with the same atoms but different bonds) that cannot be distinguished by GNNs. More powerful GNNs operating on higher-dimension geometries such as simplicial complexes can be designed. , whether or not future architectures will overcome the message passing primitive is an open research question.


title: Graph neural network

text: Message passing layers are permutation-equivariant layers mapping a graph into an updated representation of the same graph. Formally, they can be expressed as message passing neural networks (MPNNs).


title: Graph neural network

text: Let formula_1 be a graph, where formula_2 is the node set and formula_3 is the edge set. Let formula_4 be the neighbourhood of some node formula_5. Additionally, let formula_6 be the features of node formula_5, and formula_8 be the features of edge formula_9. An MPNN layer can be expressed as follows:


title: Graph neural network

text: where formula_11 and formula_12 are differentiable functions (e.g., artificial neural networks), and formula_13 is a permutation invariant aggregation operator that can accept an arbitrary number of inputs (e.g., element-wise sum, mean, or max). In particular, formula_11 and formula_12 are referred to as "update" and "message" functions, respectively. Intuitively, in an MPNN computational block, graph nodes "update" their representations by "aggregating" the "messages" received from their neighbours.


title: Graph neural network

text: The outputs of one or more MPNN layers are node representations formula_16 for each node formula_5 in the graph. Node representations can be employed for any downstream task, such as node/graph classification or edge prediction.


title: Graph neural network

text: Graph nodes in an MPNN update their representation aggregating information from their immediate neighbours. As such, stacking formula_18 MPNN layers means that one node will be able to communicate with nodes that are at most formula_18 "hops" away. In principle, to ensure that every node receives information from every other node, one would need to stack a number of MPNN layers equal to the graph diameter. However, stacking many MPNN layers may cause issues such as oversmoothing and oversquashing. Oversmoothing refers to the issue of node representations becoming indistinguishable. Oversquashing refers to the bottleneck that is created by squeezing long-range dependencies into fixed-size representations. Countermeasures such as skip connections (as in residual neural networks), gated update rules and jumping knowledge can mitigate oversmoothing. Modifying the final layer to be a fully-adjacent layer, i.e., by considering the graph as a complete graph, can mitigate oversquashing in problems where long-range dependencies are required.


title: Graph neural network

text: Other "flavours" of MPNN have been developed in the literature, such as graph convolutional networks and graph attention networks, whose definitions can be expressed in terms of the MPNN formalism.


title: Graph neural network

text: A GCN layer defines a first-order approximation of a localized spectral filter on graphs. GCNs can be understood as a generalization of convolutional neural networks to graph-structured data.


title: Graph neural network

text: where formula_21 is the matrix of node representations formula_16, formula_23 is the matrix of node features formula_6, formula_25 is an activation function (e.g., ReLU), formula_26 is the graph adjacency matrix with the addition of self-loops, formula_27 is the graph degree matrix with the addition of self-loops, and formula_28 is a matrix of trainable parameters.


title: Graph neural network

text: In particular, let formula_29 be the graph adjacency matrix: then, one can define formula_30 and formula_31, where formula_32 denotes the identity matrix. This normalization ensures that the eigenvalues of formula_33 are bounded in the range formula_34, avoiding numerical instabilities and exploding/vanishing gradients.


title: Graph neural network

text: A limitation of GCNs is that they do not allow multidimensional edge features formula_8. It is however possible to associate scalar weights formula_36 to each edge by imposing formula_37, i.e., by setting each nonzero entry in the adjacency matrix equal to the weight of the corresponding edge.


title: Graph neural network

text: The implementation of attention layer in graphical neural networks helps provide attention or focus to the important information from the data instead of focusing on the whole data.


title: Graph neural network

text: where formula_39 is the number of attention heads, formula_40 denotes vector concatenation, formula_25 is an activation function (e.g., ReLU), formula_42 are attention coefficients, and formula_43 is a matrix of trainable parameters for the formula_44-th attention head.


title: Graph neural network

text: For the final GAT layer, the outputs from each attention head are averaged before the application of the activation function. Formally, the final GAT layer can be written as:


title: Graph neural network

text: Attention in Machine Learning is a technique that mimics cognitive attention. In the context of learning on graphs, the attention coefficient formula_46 measures "how important" is node formula_5 to node formula_48.


title: Graph neural network

text: where formula_50 is a vector of learnable weights, formula_51 indicates transposition, and formula_52 is a modified ReLU activation function. Attention coefficients are normalized to make them easily comparable across different nodes.


title: Graph neural network

text: A GCN can be seen as a special case of a GAT where attention coefficients are not learnable, but fixed and equal to the edge weights formula_36.


title: Graph neural network

text: The gated graph sequence neural network (GGS-NN) was introduced by Yujia Li et al. in 2015. The GGS-NN extends the GNN formulation by Scarselli et al. to output sequences. The message passing framework is implemented as an update rule to a gated recurrent unit (GRU) cell.


title: Graph neural network

text: where formula_57 denotes vector concatenation, formula_58 is a vector of zeros, formula_28 is a matrix of learnable parameters, formula_60 is a GRU cell, and formula_61 denotes the sequence index. In a GGS-NN, the node representations are regarded as the hidden states of a GRU cell. The initial node features formula_62 are zero-padded up to the hidden state dimension of the GRU cell. The same GRU cell is used for updating representations for each node.


title: Graph neural network

text: Local pooling layers coarsen the graph via downsampling. We present here several learnable local pooling strategies that have been proposed. For each cases, the input is the initial graph is represented by a matrix formula_23 of node features, and the graph adjacency matrix formula_29. The output is the new matrix formula_65of node features, and the new graph adjacency matrix formula_66.


title: Graph neural network

text: where formula_68 is a learnable projection vector. The projection vector formula_68 computes a scalar projection value for each graph node.


title: Graph neural network

text: where formula_72 is the subset of nodes with the top-k highest projection scores, formula_73 denotes element-wise matrix multiplication, and formula_74 is the sigmoid function. In other words, the nodes with the top-k highest projection scores are retained in the new adjacency matrix formula_66. The formula_74 operation makes the projection vector formula_68 trainable by backpropagation, which otherwise would produce discrete outputs.


title: Graph neural network

text: where formula_72 is the subset of nodes with the top-k highest projection scores, formula_73 denotes element-wise matrix multiplication.


title: Graph neural network

text: The self-attention pooling layer can be seen as an extension of the top-k pooling layer. Differently from top-k pooling, the self-attention scores computed in self-attention pooling account both for the graph features and the graph topology.


title: Graph neural network

text: Graph neural networks are one of the main building blocks of AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence program developed by Google's DeepMind for solving the protein folding problem in biology. AlphaFold achieved first place in several CASP competitions.


title: Graph neural network

text: Social networks are a major application domain for GNNs due to their natural representation as social graphs. GNNs are used to develop recommender systems based on both social relations and item relations.


title: Graph neural network

text: GNNs are used as fundamental building blocks for several combinatorial optimization algorithms. Examples include computing shortest paths or Eulerian circuits for a given graph, deriving chip placements superior or competitive to handcrafted human solutions, and improving expert-designed branching rules in Branch and Bound.


title: Graph neural network

text: When viewed as a graph, a network of computers can be analyzed with GNNs for anomaly detection. Anomalies within provenance graphs often correlate to malicious activity within the network. GNNs have been used to identify these anomalies on individual nodes and within paths to detect malicious processes, or on the edge level to detect lateral movement.


title: International status and usage of the euro

text: The international status and usage of the euro has grown since its launch in 1999. When the euro formally replaced 12 currencies on 1 January 2002, it inherited their use in territories such as Montenegro and replaced minor currencies tied to the pre-euro currencies, such as in Monaco. Four small states have been given a formal right to use the euro, and to mint their own coins, but all other usage outside the eurozone (the EU states who have adopted the euro) has been unofficial. With or without an agreement, these countries, unlike those in the eurozone, do not participate in the European Central Bank or the Eurogroup.


text: Its international usage has also grown as a trading currency, acting as an economic or political alternative to using the United States dollar. Its increasing usage in this sense has led to its becoming the only significant challenger to the U.S. dollar as the world's main reserve currency.


text: Several European microstates outside the EU have adopted the euro as their currency. For EU sanctioning of this adoption, a monetary agreement must be concluded. Prior to the launch of the euro, agreements were reached with Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City by EU member states (Italy in the case of San Marino and Vatican City, and France in the case of Monaco) allowing them to use the euro and mint a limited amount of euro coins (with their own national symbols on the obverse side) to be valid throughout the Eurozone. However, they cannot print banknotes. All of these states had previously had monetary agreements to use yielded eurozone currencies. San Marino and Vatican City had their currencies pegged to the Italian lira (Vatican and Sammarinese lira) and Monaco used the Monegasque franc, which was pegged to the French franc. Between 2010 and 2012, new agreements between the EU and Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican City came into force.


text: A similar agreement was negotiated with Andorra and came into force on 1 April 2012. Andorra did not previously have an official currency. Prior to 2002, it used both the French franc and Spanish peseta as "de facto" legal tender currencies, though they never had an official monetary arrangement with either country, and switched to the euro (without any monetary agreement) when it was introduced on 1 January 2002. After years of negotiations, partially over concerns with banking secrecy, the EU and Andorra signed a monetary agreement on 30 June 2011 which made the euro the official currency in Andorra and allowed them to mint their own euro coins as early as 1 July 2013, provided they comply with the agreement's terms. However, the first Andorran euro coins did not enter into circulation until January 2015.


text: Outside the EU, there are currently three French territories and a British territory that have agreements to use the euro as their currency. All other dependent territories of eurozone member states that have opted not to be a part of EU, usually with Overseas Country and Territory (OCT) status, use local currencies which are often pegged to the euro or US dollar. As non-sovereign entities, dependent territories which have adopted the euro are not permitted to mint euro coins like the European microstates, nor do they get a seat in the European Central Bank (ECB) or the Eurogroup. France is responsible for ensuring that the laws governing the EMU apply in their territories which use the euro.


text: The first OCTs to adopt the euro through a monetary agreement were the French overseas territories of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, located off the coast of Canada, and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. They both adopted the euro on 1 January 1999 when the currency was first introduced at the electronic level. Mayotte subsequently held a referendum in 2009 in which it decided to become an integral part of France. Its status was changed from an OCT to an OMR, where EU laws apply without separate agreements, on 1 January 2014, which rendered the previous monetary agreement unnecessary.


text: On 22 February 2007, Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin were politically separated from the French Outermost region (OMR) Guadeloupe to form two new French overseas collectivities. This caused their status in the EU to briefly be in legal limbo until ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon reaffirmed both territories remained in the EU. The euro continued to be used in both territories throughout this time without incident. When Saint Barthélemy subsequently became an overseas territory of the European Union on 1 January 2012, changing its status to an OCT, the territory had to sign a monetary agreement to continue using the euro.


text: With the adoption of the euro by Cyprus per 1 January 2008, the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, which had previously used the Cypriot pound, also decided to adopt the euro. The base areas are an overseas territory of the United Kingdom and under military jurisdiction. Even when the UK was an EU member state, the base areas were not considered part of the EU. The euro was instead adopted to align the base areas with the laws and currency of the Republic of Cyprus.


text: Montenegro and Kosovo have also used the euro since its launch, as they previously used the German mark rather than the Yugoslav dinar. Unlike the states above, they do not have a formal agreement with the EU to use the euro as their currency, and have never minted marks or euros; rather, they depend on bills and coins already in circulation.


text: There were political concerns that Serbia could use the currency to destabilise these territories (Montenegro was then in a union with Serbia) so they received Western help in adopting and using the mark (though there was no restriction on the use of the dinar or any other currency). They switched to the euro when the mark was replaced. In North Kosovo, which is mainly populated by the Serbian minority, the Serbian dinar, which replaced the Yugoslav dinar, continues to be used despite its lack of recognition or use elsewhere in Kosovo.


text: The use of the euro in Montenegro and Kosovo has helped stabilise their economies, and for this reason the adoption of the euro by small states has been encouraged by former Finance Commissioner Joaquín Almunia. Former European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet has stated the ECB – which does not grant representation to those who unilaterally adopt the euro – neither supports nor deters those wishing to use the currency.


text: In October 2012, the President of Panama Ricardo Martinelli suggested that he was considering making the euro a third official currency of the country to go along with the US dollar and the Panamanian balboa.


text: In various countries the euro is accepted by some merchants albeit not being official currency there. Additionally sometimes it is used for pricing purposes even if the actual payments are made in the official currency (e.g., for real estate).


text: The euro is often accepted in shops in countries neighboring the Eurozone, like the borders areas and capitals of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which are near to Germany, Austria, Slovenia or Slovakia, the border areas of Switzerland, the border of Sweden to Finland and more.


text: Also, a large number of petrol stations and motorway service areas in European countries outside the eurozone accept euros, Croatia and Poland (as well as non-EU members Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia) allow payment of highway tolls in euros.


text: The euro is explicitly present in some elements of the laws of these countries, as well as EEA countries, based on EU directives, for example money laundering. The laws can for example mention certain amounts in euro above which certain rules apply.


text: In some areas of New Caledonia and French Polynesia, both non-EU territories of an EU member state (France), payments in Euro can be accepted, alongside the territorial CFP Franc.


text: Some tourist-oriented shops in the United Kingdom accept the euro. In Northern Ireland, which shares a land border with the Eurozone, the euro is accepted in some shops including many chain stores.


text: The application of EU law and treaties to Northern Cyprus is currently suspended. Its territory is claimed by the Republic of Cyprus, one of the EU member states, but currently northern Cyprus is under Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) control. The TRNC is not recognised by the Republic of Cyprus (which claims jurisdiction over the whole island), by the European Union or by any country other than Turkey. EU law would start to apply in Northern Cyprus if it comes under control of the Republic of Cyprus (if the Cyprus dispute is resolved through unification), whose official legal tender is the euro.


text: Presently, the TRNC government has declared the Turkish lira to be its legal tender. The euro (along with other major currencies, such as the US dollar and the British pound) can be used to pay for goods and services in many shops related to or situated near tourist hotspots, as well as in some major supermarkets. However the exchange rate used by these businesses may not always reflect the true value of the currencies involved. The Cypriot euro coins, using both Greek and Turkish languages, have been designed to avoid any bias towards any particular area of the island, in keeping with both Greek and Turkish being the official languages of the Republic of Cyprus. Some in northern Cyprus have called for the unilateral adoption of the euro.


text: From April 2009 to June 2019, the Zimbabwean dollar was no longer in active use after it was officially suspended by the government due to hyperinflation. The United States dollar (US$), South African rand (R), Botswanan pula (P), Pound sterling (£), Euro (€), Indian rupees (₹), Australian dollars (A$), Chinese yuan (元/¥), and Japanese yen (¥) were used instead, along with US-cent denominated Zimbabwean bond coins and bond notes.


text: In 1998, Cuba announced that it would replace the US dollar with the euro as its official currency for the purposes of international trading. On 1 December 2002, North Korea did the same. (Its internal currency, the wŏn, is not convertible and thus cannot be used to purchase foreign goods. The euro also enjoys popularity domestically, especially among elites and resident foreigners.) Syria followed suit in 2006.


text: Since 2007 Iran has asked all petroleum customers to pay in non-US-dollar currency in response to American sanctions. This has resulted in the Iranian oil bourse trading in several currencies, predominantly the euro for European trade and either the yen or euros for sales in Asia.


text: In 2018, in response to US sanctions, the Venezuelan Minister of Industries and National Production Tareck El Aissami announced that all foreign exchange government auctions will no longer be quoted in US dollars and would use euros, Chinese yuan and other hard currencies instead. El Aissami said the government would open bank accounts in Europe and Asia as potential workarounds to financial sanctions. In addition, Venezuela's banking sector will now be able to participate in currency auctions three times a week, adding that the government would sell some 2 billion euros amid a rebound in oil prices.


text: Currently, there are several currencies pegged to the euro, some with fluctuation bands around a central rate and others with no fluctuations allowed around the central rate. This can be seen as a safety measure, especially for currencies of areas with weak economies. The euro is seen as a stable currency, i.e., there are no dramatic appreciations or depreciations of its value that might suddenly damage the economy or harm trade. Thus it provides security to traders and people holding that currency.


text: In 2011, the Swiss franc was rapidly appreciating against the euro, harming its exports to the eurozone. In response, Switzerland implemented a cap to the Swiss franc's value. This was not so much a peg, as they were merely limiting its highest value and not its lowest.


text: The Bulgarian lev and the Croatian kuna are pegged to the euro through a currency board. As part of ERM II, the currencies have a fluctuation band of ±15%. Denmark, however, has committed to a tighter fluctuation band of 2.25%.


text: Convertible mark is the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and it was fixed to 1 German mark when it was introduced on the basis of the Dayton agreement; consequently after introduction of the euro, the Convertible mark uses the German-mark-to-euro rate at 1.95583 BAM per euro.


text: Since 2005, stamps issued by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta have been denominated in euros, although the Order's official currency remains the Maltese scudo. The Maltese scudo itself is pegged to the euro and is only recognised as legal tender within the Order.


text: The euro is a major global reserve currency, the second most widely held international reserve currency after the US dollar. Inheriting this status from the German mark, its share of international reserves has risen from 23.65% in 2002 to a peak of 27.66% in 2009 before declining due to the European debt crisis, with Russia and Eastern Europe being the most significant users.


text: The possibility of the euro becoming the first international reserve currency was widely discussed before 2009.


text: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan gave his opinion in September 2007 that the euro could indeed replace the US dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. He said it is "absolutely conceivable that the euro will replace the dollar as reserve currency, or will be traded as an equally important reserve currency."


text: As of 2021, however, the euro has not displaced the U.S. dollar as primary reserve currency due to the European debt crisis. The euro's stability and future existence was doubted and its share of global reserves fell to 19% by year-end 2015 (compared to 66% for the US dollar). As of year-end 2020 these figures stand at 21% for the euro and 59% for the US dollar.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: The siege of Odessa, known to the Soviets as the defence of Odessa, lasted from 8 August until 16 October 1941, during the early phase of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: Odessa was a port on the Black Sea in the Ukrainian SSR. On 22 June 1941, the Axis powers invaded the Soviet Union. In August, Odessa became a target of the Romanian 4th Army and elements of the German 11th Army. Due to the heavy resistance of the Soviet 9th Independent Army and the rapidly formed Separate Coastal Army, supported by the Black Sea Fleet, it took the Axis forces 73 days of siege and four assaults to take the city. Romanian forces suffered 93,000 casualties, against Red Army casualties estimated to be between 41,000 and 60,000.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: On 9 July 1941, the Primorskaya Army was created from the units of the Maritime Group of Forces. On 22 July 1941, the bombing of Odessa began (groups of bombers twice raided the city on that day). As a result of the breakthrough of the Soviet defense on the Dniester River by the 11th German and the 4th Romanian Armies, the situation in the Odessa direction became more complicated. In early August 1941 the troops of the 4th Romanian Army, commanded by General Nicolae Ciupercă (5 infantry divisions, two cavalry divisions and one motorized brigade), cut off the units of the Maritime Army (two rifle divisions and the 1st Cavalry Division) from the main forces of the Southern Front. Subsequently, it was the 4th Romanian Army that was the main attacking force in the fight for Odessa. In addition to the Romanian troops, the 72nd Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht (in part), 2 German assault and 4 German engineer battalions, 3 German heavy artillery divisions, and periodically Luftwaffe units were also involved near Odessa. By early September the total number of German-Romanian troops near Odessa was about 277,000 soldiers and officers, up to 2,200 guns and mortars, 100–120 tanks, and 300 to 400 planes.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: The defense of Odessa lasted 73 days, from 5 August to 16 October 1941. On 10 August, in the sector of the 3rd Corps, the bulk of the 7th Infantry Division reached Elssas, while the 1st Guard Division arrived on the alignment Strassburg–Petra Evdokievka. In the sector of the 5th Corps, the 1st Armored Division broke through Odessa's first line of defense. That evening, the Romanian division reached the second line of defense. The 1st Cavalry Brigade took Severinovca and joined the 1st Armored Division. At the same time, the 10th Dorobanți Regiment overran the Soviet forces at Lozovaya. The 4th Army gradually closed the circle around Odessa, but the offensive was temporarily stopped by Ion Antonescu on 13 August to strengthen the line west of the Hadjibey bank.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: The offensive resumed on 16 August, as Romanian troops attacked along the entire line, capturing Odessa's water reservoirs on 17 August. The Soviet forces put up a stubborn resistance, launching repeated counter-attacks, inflicting and taking heavy casualties. The Royal Romanian Air Force actively supported the ground troops, disrupting Soviet naval traffic to and from Odessa, and also destroying an armored train on 20 August.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: By 24 August, despite constant attacks, the Romanians were bogged down in front of the Soviets' main line of defense. The 4th Army had already suffered 27,307 casualties, including 5,329 killed in action. Nevertheless, the Soviets were also weakened, and thanks to the capture of Kubanka, Romanian heavy artillery now threatened the port of Odessa. Over the next three days, there was a lull in the fighting.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: On 28 August, the Romanians resumed their offensive, reinforced by a German assault battalion and ten heavy artillery battalions. The 4th, 11th and 1st Army Corps advanced towards Gnileakovo and Vakarzhany, only to be pushed back in some areas by a strong Soviet counterattack the following day. On 30 August the Romanians retook the initiative, but gained very little ground. Hitler and the German High Command noted that 'Antonescu [was] using at Odessa the tactics of the First World War,' depending upon infantry to make unsupported frontal attacks against Soviet trench line defenses. The Soviets temporarily retook Kubanka but were driven back by nightfall. Soviet troops in Vakarzhany were encircled and continued to fight until 3 September, when combined German and Romanian infantry successfully stormed the village.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: On 3 September, General Ciupercă submitted a memoir to by-now Marshal Antonescu, highlighting the poor condition of the front-line divisions, which were exhausted after nearly a month of continuous fighting. He proposed a reorganization of six divisions (the 3rd, 6th, 7th, 14th, 21st Infantry and Guard Divisions), which would be split into 2 corps and supported by 8 heavy artillery battalions. These units would then attack in a single area to break through the Soviet line. The memoir however, was rejected by both Antonescu and Brigadier-General Alexandru Ioanițiu, chief of the Romanian General Staff, who argued that an attack in a single direction would leave the rest of the Romanian line too exposed. Marshal Antonescu subsequently issued a new directive calling for attacks between Tatarka and Dalnik, and Gniliavko and Dalnik, to be made by the 11th and 3rd Corps, respectively. Ioanițiu forwarded a note to Major-General Arthur Hauffe, chief of the German military mission to Romania, informing him of the situation at Odessa and requesting assistance in the form of aircraft and several pioneer battalions. Although the Royal Romanian Air Force enjoyed some success against the Soviets ground and air forces, it was ill-equipped for anti-shipping raids, and the Soviets were being steadily reinforced and resupplied via the Navy.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: Meanwhile, the Romanian offensive was halted to wait for reinforcements. A German detachment led by Lieutenant-General René von Courbier and comprising one infantry regiment, one assault pioneer regiment and two artillery regiments arrived. Concurrently, the Soviets also received 15,000 men and ammunition. On 9 September, Ciupercă was replaced by Lieutenant-General Iosif Iacobici, who was expressly ordered to follow the General Staff's directives without question. The offensive resumed on 12 September, but was again stopped temporarily on September 14 as Romanian and German artillery units were running low on ammunition. Two Vânători battalions were encircled by Red Army troops near the Hadjibey bank, but were eventually relieved despite Soviet efforts to annihilate them.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: On the night of 15 September, Soviet troops broke contact with the Romanian 1st Corps and retreated toward the southeast. On 16 September, the 1st Corps took the heights northwest of Gross-Liebenthal. Romanian troops also occupied the area south of the Sukhoy bank. Over 3,000 Soviet soldiers were captured, but these losses were replaced by the 157th Rifle Division, with a strength of 12,600 troops. Also, 18 Soviet companies were brought in from Novorossiysk. Partisan fighting continued, however, in the city's catacombs.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: The Soviet counteroffensive which was meant to break the siege came during the night of 21/22 September 1941, and it was the climax of the battle for Odessa. Red Army troops established a bridgehead at Chebanka, threatening the Romanian 4th Army's weaker right flank. Before the Soviets could attack, a formation of 94 Romanian aircraft (32 bombers and 62 fighters) supported by 23 Italian aircraft attacked the Red Army troops as they advanced North. During the ensuing aerial battle, which lasted ten hours, numerous bombing and strafing attacks were carried out against the Soviet bridgehead, as well as numerous dogfights with the Soviet Air Force. The bridgehead was pulverized, with all Soviet troops withdrawing from the area during the night of 4/5 October. Axis air forces destroyed over 20 Soviet aircraft (nine or ten of them during air battles) while losing one Romanian fighter during air combat plus four more either shot down by Soviet flak or destroyed on the ground. One Italian Savoia-Marchetti bomber was also lost.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: With the advance of Axis forces into the Soviet Union, Stavka decided to evacuate the defenders of Odessa. On the night of 14–15 October 1941, the Black Sea Fleet evacuated the garrison to Sevastopol where most of the units were later destroyed in the bitter fighting that took place there during the defence of Sevastopol. The Black Sea Fleet also managed to evacuate 350,000 soldiers and civilians.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: In support of the land offensive, the Romanian Navy dispatched motor torpedo boats to the recently occupied port of Vylkove (Vâlcov in Romanian). During the night of 18 September, the motor torpedo boats NMS "Viscolul" and NMS "Vijelia" attacked a Soviet convoy south of Odessa, each boat launching her two torpedoes at the closest enemy destroyer. Three of the four torpedoes missed. The fourth torpedo struck and damaged the Soviet destroyer, but failed to detonate. It was one of the few actions the Romanian Navy undertook to support the siege, generally limiting itself to patrols of the submarine "Delfinul". No Western source could be found to confirm this claim.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: On 20 August, "Delfinul" fought the only submarine vs submarine engagement of the siege. At 12:08 pm, the Soviet M-class submarine "M-33" launched a torpedo at her, which missed. "Delfinul" swiftly counterattacked with her twin 13 mm machine gun, causing the Soviet submarine to submerge and retreat.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: During the October evacuation, Heinkel He 114 seaplanes of the Romanian Naval Aviation captured a Soviet armed merchantman.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: The operations at Odessa highlighted significant weaknesses in the Romanian Army, leading both military and political leaders in the country to call for a discontinuation of military operations against the Soviet Union. Antonescu ignored such objections, regarding continued participation and eventual victory on the Eastern Front as necessary for the restoration of Romania's territorial integrity.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: The recapture of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in Operation München and the subsequent victory at Odessa led to a partial demobilization of the Romanian army, which was reduced in size from nearly 900,000 personnel on 1 October to 465,000 on 1 January 1942. Politically, the presence of Romanian troops in Odessa and the establishment of the Transnistria Governorate led to a deterioration of Romania's international situation, with the British declaring war on Romania on 6 December, and on 12 December Romania declared war on the United States in solidarity with Germany and Japan.


title: Siege of Odessa (1941)

text: Odessa was one of the first four Soviet cities to be awarded the title of "Hero City" in 1945, the others being Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Sevastopol. Museum of the Heroic Defense of Odessa (411th Coastal Battery Memorial) was opened on the day of the 30th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, 9 May 1975. Close by is also the Museum of Partisan Glory in the Odessa Catacombs. The underground museum commemorates the partisan movement in the Odessa region.


title: Longest professional baseball game

text: The Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings, two teams from the Triple-A International League, played the longest game in professional baseball history. It lasted 33 innings, with 8 hours and 25 minutes of playing time. 32 innings were played April 18–19, 1981, at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and the final 33rd inning was played June 23, 1981. Pawtucket won the game, 3–2.


title: Longest professional baseball game

text: The game commenced on Saturday, April 18, 1981, at 8:25 p.m., after a delay of around 30 minutes due to problems with the stadium lights, with an estimated 1,740 in attendance. It continued throughout the night and into Easter morning. Although most leagues had a curfew rule that would have suspended the game—the International League's activates at 12:50 a.m.—the copy of the rule book of home plate umpire Dennis Cregg failed to mention this cutoff time. After Pawtucket's Russ Laribee's sacrifice fly drove in Chico Walker in the bottom of the ninth inning and tied the game at one run each, the teams continued playing.


title: Longest professional baseball game

text: Several times, a team would come close to victory before circumstances changed. When Wade Boggs drove in the tying run in the bottom of the 21st inning after a Rochester run, even the Pawtucket players groaned. He recalled, "I didn't know if the guys on the team wanted to hug me or slug me." The weather was so cold that players burned broken bats and the stadium's wooden benches to warm themselves, and the clubhouses ran out of food. The wind blew into the infield, making hits difficult; Pawtucket's Dave Koza later said that otherwise his team would have won in nine innings, with "four or five shots that would have been out of the park". For example, Sam Bowen hit a fly ball to center that reportedly left the field before the wind blew it back to Rochester outfielder Dallas Williams. Williams went 0–for–13 in 15 plate appearances, one of many records achieved during the game.


title: Longest professional baseball game

text: After Pawtucket's Luis Aponte pitched the seventh to tenth innings in relief, manager Joe Morgan—who himself would be ejected in the 22nd inning by Cregg—let him leave before the game ended. Aponte's wife did not believe his explanation for coming home at 3 a.m. Sunday. He promised that the Sunday newspaper would prove his story, but since the game's postponement occurred too late to appear in it, Aponte had to wait until the Monday edition. Cregg had brought his nephew David to the game; David's father became concerned for his family and called the police, who told him that the game had not ended.


title: Longest professional baseball game

text: By 4 a.m. the players were "delirious" from exhaustion; Rochester's Dave Huppert had caught the first 31 innings before being replaced, and Jim Umbarger pitched 10 scoreless innings from the 23rd inning, striking out nine and giving up four hits. The president of the league, Harold Cooper, was finally reached on the phone by Pawtucket general manager Mike Tamburro sometime after 3:00 a.m.; the horrified Cooper ordered that play stop at the end of the current inning. Finally at 4:07 a.m., at the end of the 32nd inning and more than eight hours after it began, the game was stopped. There were 19 fans left in the seats—not including David Cregg, who had fallen asleep—all of whom received season or lifetime passes to McCoy Stadium. As the players went home to rest before returning at 11 a.m. for an afternoon game that Sunday, they saw people going to Easter sunrise service. When Boggs' father complimented him for getting four hits in the game, the player admitted that he actually had 12 at bats.


title: Longest professional baseball game

text: Both teams signed a baseball on Sunday for display at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Cooper had suggested that the game resume that day, but Rochester manager Doc Edwards requested a delay because of the risk of injury. Instead, it resumed on the evening of Tuesday, June 23, the next time the Red Wings were in town. A sellout crowd of 5,746 and 140 reporters from around the world were present, partly because the major leagues were on strike at the time; the players voted against an offer to resume the game at Fenway Park to avoid crossing the picket line. On that evening, it took just one inning and 18 minutes to finish the game, with Koza driving in the winning run in the bottom of the 33rd. The losing pitcher was Steve Grilli, who had joined Rochester in the interim since the game's suspension.


title: Longest professional baseball game

text: Many members of both teams attended a luncheon and round table discussion in Providence, Rhode Island, and a ceremony was held before the game against the Columbus Clippers that night. Dennis Cregg says that he thinks that David Cregg has never attended another baseball game.


title: Longest professional baseball game

text: Two future inductees for the Baseball Hall of Fame were part of the historic game. Cal Ripken Jr., who was inducted in 2007, went 2-for-13 on the night playing third base for Rochester. Ripken made his major league debut two months after the game was completed, and was the American League's Rookie of the Year in . Wade Boggs, who was inducted in 2005, played third base for Pawtucket and went 4-for-12 with a double and an RBI; he would make it to the majors starting in April 1982. The Baseball Hall of Fame possesses other artifacts of the game, including the official scorecard.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The history of France from 1789 to 1914 (the long 19th century) extends from the French Revolution to World War I and includes:


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: By the French Revolution, the Kingdom of France had expanded to nearly the modern territorial limits. The 19th century would complete the process by the annexation of the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice (first during the First Empire, and then definitively in 1860) and some small papal (like Avignon) and foreign possessions. France's territorial limits were greatly extended during the Empire through Revolutionary and Napoleonic military conquests and re-organization of Europe, but these were reversed by the Vienna Congress. Savoy and Nice were definitively annexed following France's victory in the Franco-Austrian War in 1859.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: In 1830, France invaded Algeria, and in 1848 this north African country was fully integrated into France as a "département". The late 19th century saw France embark on a massive program of overseas imperialism — including French Indochina (modern day Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos) and Africa (the Scramble for Africa brought France most of North-West and Central Africa) — which brought it in direct competition with British interests.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: With the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, France lost her provinces of Alsace and portions of Lorraine to Germany (see Alsace-Lorraine); these lost provinces would only be regained at the end of World War I.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Between 1795 and 1866, metropolitan France (that is, without overseas or colonial possessions) was the second most populous country of Europe, behind Russia, and the fourth most populous country in the world (behind China, India, and Russia); between 1866 and 1911, metropolitan France was the third most populous country of Europe, behind Russia and Germany. Unlike other European countries, France did not experience a strong population growth from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. The French population in 1789 is estimated at 28 million; by 1850, it was 36 million and in 1880 it was around 39 million. Slow growth was a major political issue, as arch-rival Germany continued to gain an advantage in terms of population and industry. Ways to reverse the trend became a major political issue.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Until 1850, population growth was mainly in the countryside, but a period of slow urbanization began under the Second Empire. Unlike in England, industrialization was a late phenomenon in France. France's economy in the 1830s had a limited iron industry, under-developed coal supplies, and the great majority lived on farms. The systematic establishment of primary education and the creation of new engineering schools prepared an industrial expansion which would blossom in the following decades. French rail transport only began hesitantly in the 1830s, and would not truly develop until the 1840s, using imported British engineers. By the revolution of 1848, a growing industrial workforce began to participate actively in French politics, but their hopes were largely betrayed by the policies of the Second Empire. The loss of the important coal, steel and glass production regions of Alsace and Lorraine would cause further problems. The industrial worker population increased from 23% in 1870 to 39% in 1914. Nevertheless, France remained a rather rural country in the early 1900s with 40% of the population still farmers in 1914. While exhibiting a similar urbanization rate to the U.S. (50% of the population in the U.S. was engaged in agriculture in the early 1900s), the urbanization rate of France was still well behind that of the UK (80% urbanization rate in the early 1900s).


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: In the 19th century, France was a country of immigration for peoples and political refugees from Eastern Europe (Germany, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ashkenazi Jews) and from the Mediterranean (Italy, Spanish Sephardic Jews and North-African Mizrahi Jews). Large numbers of Belgian migrant workers laboured in French factories, particularly in the textile industry in the Nord.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 gave full citizenship for the Jews in French Algeria. By 1872, there were an estimated 86,000 Jews living in France (by 1945 this would increase to 300,000), many of whom integrated (or attempted to integrate) into French society, although the Dreyfus affair would reveal anti-semitism in certain classes of French society (see History of the Jews in France).


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Alsace and Lorraine were lost to Germany in 1871. Some French refugees moved to France. France suffered massive losses during World War I — roughly estimated at 1.4 million French dead including civilians (see World War I casualties) (or nearly 10% of the active adult male population) and four times as many wounded (see World War I Aftermath).


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Linguistically, France was a patchwork. People in the countryside spoke various languages. France would only become a linguistically unified country by the end of the 19th century, and in particular through the educational policies of Jules Ferry during the French Third Republic. From an illiteracy rate of 33% among peasants in 1870, by 1914 almost all French could read and understand the national language, although 50% still understood or spoke a regional language of France (in today's France, only an estimated 10% still understand a regional language).


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Through the educational, social and military policies of the Third Republic, by 1914 the French had been converted (as the historian Eugen Weber has put it) from a "country of peasants into a nation of Frenchmen". By 1914, most French could read French and the use of regional languages had greatly decreased; the role of the Catholic Church in public life had been radically diminished; a sense of national identity and pride was actively taught. The anti-clericalism of the Third Republic profoundly changed French religious habits: in one case study for the city of Limoges comparing the years 1899 with 1914, it was found that baptisms decreased from 98% to 60%, and civil marriages before a town official increased from 14% to 60%.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: French economic history since its late-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the competition with Britain and its other neighbors in regards to 'industrialization', and the 'total wars' of the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Quantitative analysis of output data shows the French per capita growth rates were slightly smaller than Britain. However the British population tripled in size, while France grew by only third — so the overall British economy grew much faster. François Crouzet has summarized the cycles of French "per capita" economic growth in 1815–1913 as:


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: For the 1870-1913 era, Angus Maddison gives growth rates for 12 Western advanced countries — 10 in Europe plus the United States and Canada. In terms of per capita growth, France was about average. However again its population growth was very slow, so as far as the growth rate in total size of the economy France was in next to the last place, just ahead of Italy. The 12 countries averaged 2.7% growth per year in total output, but France only averaged 1.6% growth. Crouzet concludes that the:


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The reign of Louis XVI (1774–1792) had seen a temporary revival of French fortunes, but the over-ambitious projects and military campaigns of the 18th century had produced chronic financial problems. Deteriorating economic conditions, popular resentment against the complicated system of privileges granted the nobility and clerics, and a lack of alternate avenues for change were among the principal causes for convoking the Estates-General which convened in Versailles in 1789. On May 28, 1789, the Abbé Sieyès moved that the Third Estate proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so, and then voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People".


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Louis XVI shut the Salle des États where the Assembly met. The Assembly moved their deliberations to the king's tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath (June 20, 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a constitution. A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did 47 members of the nobility. By June 27 the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles. On July 9 the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: On July 11, 1789, King Louis, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles, as well as his wife, Marie Antoinette, and brother, the Comte d'Artois, banished the reformist minister Necker and completely reconstructed the ministry. Much of Paris, presuming this to be the start of a royal coup, moved into open rebellion. Some of the military joined the mob; others remained neutral. On July 14, 1789, after four hours of combat, the insurgents seized the Bastille fortress, killing its governor and several of his guards. The king and his military supporters backed down, at least for a short time.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: After this violence, nobles started to flee the country as "émigrés", some of whom began plotting civil war within the kingdom and agitating for a European coalition against France. Insurrection and the spirit of popular sovereignty spread throughout France. In rural areas, many went beyond this: some burned title-deeds and no small number of châteaux, as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as "la Grande Peur" (the Great Fear).


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: On August 4, 1789, the National Assembly abolished feudalism, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithes gathered by the First Estate. In the course of a few hours, nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies, and cities lost their special privileges. The revolution also brought about a massive shifting of powers from the Catholic Church to the State. Legislation enacted in 1790 abolished the Church's authority to levy a tax on crops known as the "dîme", cancelled special privileges for the clergy, and confiscated Church property: under the Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest landowner in the country. Further legislation abolished monastic vows. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed on July 12, 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the State and required that they take an oath of loyalty to the constitution. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy also made the Catholic Church an arm of the secular state.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Looking to the United States Declaration of Independence for a model, on August 26, 1789, the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Like the U.S. Declaration, it comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution with legal effect. The Assembly replaced the historic provinces with eighty-three "départements", uniformly administered and approximately equal to one another in extent and population; it also abolished the symbolic paraphernalia of the "Ancien Régime" — armorial bearings, liveries, etc. — which further alienated the more conservative nobles, and added to the ranks of the "émigrés".


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Louis XVI opposed the course of the revolution and on the night of June 20, 1791 the royal family fled the Tuileries. However, the king was recognised at Varennes in the Meuse late on June 21 and he and his family were brought back to Paris under guard. With most of the Assembly still favouring a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groupings reached a compromise which left Louis XVI little more than a figurehead: he had perforce to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to "de facto" abdication.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Meanwhile, a renewed threat from abroad arose: Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick William II of Prussia, and the king's brother Charles-Phillipe, comte d'Artois issued the Declaration of Pillnitz which considered the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his total liberty and the dissolution of the Assembly, and promised an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions. The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with Austria and its allies. France declared war on Austria (April 20, 1792) and Prussia joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The French Revolutionary Wars had begun.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: In the Brunswick Manifesto, the Imperial and Prussian armies threatened retaliation on the French population should it resist their advance or the reinstatement of the monarchy. As a consequence, King Louis was seen as conspiring with the enemies of France. He was arrested on August 10, 1792. On September 20, French revolutionary troops won their first great victory at the battle of Valmy. The First Republic was proclaimed the following day. By the end of the year, the French had overrun the Austrian Netherlands, threatening the Dutch Republic to the north, and had also penetrated east of the Rhine, briefly occupying the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main. January 17, 1793 saw the king condemned to death for "conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety" by a weak majority in Convention. On January 21, he was beheaded. This action led to Britain and the Netherlands declaring war on France.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The first half of 1793 went badly for the new French Republic, with the French armies being driven out of Germany and the Austrian Netherlands. In this situation, prices rose and the sans-culottes (poor labourers and radical Jacobins) rioted; counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary "coup", backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian "sans-culottes". An alliance of Jacobin and "sans-culottes" elements thus became the effective centre of the new government. Policy became considerably more radical. The government instituted the "levy-en-masse", where all able-bodied men 18 and older were liable for military service. This allowed France to field much larger armies than its enemies, and soon the tide of war was reversed.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The Committee of Public Safety came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror. At least 1200 people met their deaths under the guillotine — or otherwise — after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities. In October, the queen was beheaded, further antagonizing Austria. In 1794 Robespierre had ultra-radicals and moderate Jacobins executed; in consequence, however, his own popular support eroded markedly. Georges Danton was beheaded for arguing that there were too many beheadings. There were attempts to do away with organized religion in France entirely and replace it with a Festival of Reason. The primary leader of this movement, Jacques Hébert, held such a festival in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with an actress playing the Goddess of Reason. But Robespierre was unmoved by Hébert and had him and all his followers beheaded.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: On July 27, 1794, the French people revolted against the excesses of the Reign of Terror in what became known as the Thermidorian Reaction. It resulted in moderate Convention members deposing Robespierre and several other leading members of the Committee of Public Safety. All of them were beheaded without trial. With that, the extreme, radical phase of the Revolution ended. The Convention approved the new Constitution of the Year III on August 17, 1795. A plebiscite ratified it in September and it took effect on September 26, 1795.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The new constitution installed the "Directoire" and created France's bicameral legislature. It was markedly more conservative, dominated by the bourgeoise, and sought to restore order and exclude the sans-culottes and other members of the lower classes from political life.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: By 1795, the French had once again conquered the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine, annexing them directly into France. The Dutch Republic and Spain were both defeated and made into French satellites. At sea however, the French navy proved no match for the British, and was badly beaten off the coast of Ireland in June 1794.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Napoleon Bonaparte was given command of an army in 1796 that was to invade Italy. The young general defeated the Austrian and Sardinian forces and he negotiated the Treaty of Campo Formio without the input of the Directory. The French annexation of the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine was recognized, as were the satellite republics they created in northern Italy.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Although the War of the First Coalition ended in 1797, a second coalition was formed in May 1798 when France invaded the Swiss Confederation, the Kingdom of Naples, and the Papal States. Napoleon convinced the Directory to approve an expedition to Egypt, with the purpose of cutting off Britain's supply route to India. He got approval for this, and set off in May 1798 for Egypt with 40,000 men. But the expedition foundered when the British fleet of Horatio Nelson caught and destroyed most of the French ships in the Battle of the Nile. The army had no way to return to France and faced the hostility of the Ottoman Empire.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Napoleon himself escaped back to France, where he led the coup d'état of November 1799, making himself First Consul (his hapless troops remained in Egypt until they surrendered to a British expedition in 1801 and were repatriated to France).


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: By that point, the War of the Second Coalition was in progress. The French suffered a string of defeats in 1799, seeing their satellite republics in Italy overthrown and an invasion of Germany beaten back. Attempts by the allies on Switzerland and the Netherlands failed however, and once Napoleon returned to France, he began turning the tide on them. In 1801, the Peace of Lunéville ended hostilities with Austria and Russia, and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: By 1802, Napoleon was named First Consul for life. His continued provocations of the British led to renewed war in 1803, and the following year he proclaimed himself emperor in a huge ceremony in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The pope was invited to the coronation, but Napoleon took the crown from him at the last minute and placed it on his own head. He attracted more power and gravitated towards imperial status, gathering support on the way for his internal rebuilding of France and its institutions. The French Empire (or the Napoleonic Empire) (1804–1814) was marked by the French domination and reorganization of continental Europe (the Napoleonic Wars) and by the final codification of the republican legal system (the Napoleonic Code). The Empire gradually became more authoritarian in nature, with freedom of the press and assembly being severely restricted. Religious freedom survived under the condition that Christianity and Judaism, the two officially recognized faiths, not be attacked, and that atheism not be expressed in public. Napoleon also recreated the nobility, but neither they nor his court had the elegance or historical connections of the old monarchy. Despite the growing administrative despotism of his regime, the emperor was still seen by the rest of Europe as the embodiment of the Revolution and a monarchial parvenu.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: By 1804, Britain alone stood outside French control and was an important force in encouraging and financing resistance to France. In 1805, Napoleon massed an army of 200,000 men in Boulogne for the purpose of invading the British Isles, but never was able to find the right conditions to embark, and thus abandoned his plans. Three weeks later, the French and Spanish fleets were destroyed by the British at Trafalgar. Afterwards, Napoleon, unable to defeat Britain militarily, tried to bring it down through economic warfare. He inaugurated the Continental System, in which all of France's allies and satellites would join in refusing to trade with the British.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Portugal, an ally of Britain, was the only European country that openly refused to join. After the Treaties of Tilsit of July 1807, the French launched an invasion through Spain to close this hole in the Continental System. British troops arrived in Portugal, compelling the French to withdraw. A renewed invasion the following year brought the British back, and at that point, Napoleon decided to depose the Spanish king Charles IV and place his brother Joseph on the throne. This caused the people of Spain to rise up in a patriotic revolt, beginning the Peninsular War. The British could now gain a foothold on the Continent, and the war tied down considerable French resources, contributing to Napoleon's eventual defeat.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Napoleon was at the height of his power in 1810–1812, with most of the European countries either his allies, satellites, or annexed directly into France. After the defeat of Austria in the War of the Fifth Coalition, Europe was at peace for years except for the conflict in Spain. The emperor was given an archduchess to marry by the Austrians, and she gave birth to his long-awaited son in 1811.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: After eleven months of exile on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, Napoleon escaped and returned to France, where he was greeted with huge enthusiasm. Louis XVIII fled Paris, but the one thing that would have given the emperor mass support, a return to the revolutionary extremism of 1793–1794, was out of the question. Enthusiasm quickly waned, and as the allies (then discussing the fate of Europe in Vienna) refused to negotiate with him, he had no choice but to fight. At Waterloo, Napoleon was completely defeated by the British and Prussians, and abdicated once again. This time, he was exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he remained until his death in 1821.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Louis XVIII was restored a second time by the allies in 1815, ending more than two decades of war. He announced he would rule as a limited, constitutional monarch. After the Hundred Days in 1815 when Napoleon suddenly returned and was vanquished, a more harsh peace treaty was imposed on France, returning it to its 1789 boundaries and requiring a war indemnity in gold. Allied troops remained in the country until it was paid. There were large-scale purges of Bonapartists from the government and military, and a brief "White Terror" in the south of France claimed 300 victims. Otherwise the transition was largely peaceful. Although the old ruling class had returned they did not recover their lost lands, and were unable to reverse most of the dramatic changes in French society, economics, and ways of thinking.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: In 1823, France intervened in Spain, where a civil war had deposed king Ferdinand VII. The French troops marched into Spain, retook Madrid from the rebels, and left almost as quickly as they came. Despite worries to the contrary, France showed no sign of returning to an aggressive foreign policy and was admitted to the Concert of Europe in 1818.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Louis XVIII, for the most part, accepted that much had changed. However, he was pushed on his right by the Ultra-royalists, led by the comte de Villèle, who condemned the Doctrinaires' attempt to reconcile the Revolution with the monarchy through a constitutional monarchy. Instead, the "Chambre introuvable" elected in 1815 banished all Conventionnels who had voted Louis XVI's death and passed several reactionary laws. Louis XVIII was forced to dissolve this Chamber, dominated by the Ultras, in 1816, fearing a popular uprising. The liberals thus governed until the 1820 assassination of the duc de Berry, the nephew of the king and known supporter of the Ultras, which brought Villèle's ultras back to power.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Louis died on September the 16th in the year 1824 and was succeeded by his brother. Charles X of France followed the "ultra" conservative line but was a much less effective coalition builder than Louis XVIII. Freedom of the press was severely restricted. He compensated the families of the nobles who had had their property taken during the Revolution. In 1830 the discontent caused by these changes and Charles X's authoritarian nomination of the Ultra prince de Polignac as prime minister led to his overthrow.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The Restoration did not try to resurrect the Ancien Régime. Too much had changed for that. The egalitarianism and liberalism of the revolutionaries remained an important force and the autocracy and hierarchy of the earlier era could not be fully restored. The economic changes, which had been underway long before the revolution, had been further enhanced during the years of turmoil and were firmly entrenched by 1815. These changes had seen power shift from the noble landowners to the urban merchants. The administrative reforms of Napoleon, such as the Napoleonic Code and efficient bureaucracy, also remained in place. These changes produced a unified central government that was fiscally sound — for example, the indemnities imposed by the victors were quickly paid off, and the occupation troops left quietly. The national government did not face strong regional parliaments or power centers and had solid control over all areas of France in sharp contrast with the chaotic situation the Bourbons had faced in the 1770s and 1780s. Restoration did not lessen inequality in France, and it did not promote industrialisation. On the whole, however, there was more wealth, and more political freedom for all classes. The parliamentary system worked well. Restrictions on the press resembled those in most of Europe. Frequent parliamentary transitions took place, but the losers were not executed or exiled. France regained its place among the respected major powers, and its voice was heard in international diplomacy. There was a new sense of humanitarianism, and popular piety. France began, on a small scale, to rebuild the overseas empire it had lost in 1763.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Charles X was overthrown in an uprising in the streets of Paris, known as the 1830 July Revolution (or, in French, "Les trois Glorieuses" - The three Glorious days - of 27, 28 and July 29). Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, a member of the Orléans branch of the family, and son of Philippe Égalité who had voted the death of his cousin Louis XVI, ascended the throne. Louis-Philippe ruled, not as "King of France" but as "King of the French" (an evocative difference for contemporaries). It was made clear that his right to rule came from the people and was not divinely granted. He also revived the Tricolor as the flag of France, in place of the white Bourbon flag that had been used since 1815, an important distinction because the Tricolour was the symbol of the revolution. The July Monarchy (1830–1848) saw the political dominance of the high middle class (haute bourgeoisie). Louis-Philippe clearly understood his base of power: the wealthy bourgeoisie had carried him aloft during the July Revolution and he kept their interests in mind.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Louis-Philippe, who had flirted with liberalism in his youth, rejected much of the pomp and circumstance of the Bourbons and surrounded himself with merchants and bankers. The July Monarchy, however, remained a time of turmoil. A large group of Legitimists on the right demanded the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne. On the left, Republicanism and, later Socialism, remained a powerful force. Late in his reign Louis-Philippe became increasingly rigid and dogmatic and his President of the Council, François Guizot, had become deeply unpopular, but Louis-Philippe refused to remove him. The situation gradually escalated until the Revolutions of 1848 saw the fall of the monarchy and the creation of the Second Republic.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: However, during the first several years of his regime, Louis-Philippe appeared to move his government toward legitimate, broad-based reform. The government found its source of legitimacy within the Charter of 1830, written by reform-minded members of Chamber of Deputies upon a platform of religious equality, the empowerment of the citizenry through the reestablishment of the National Guard, electoral reform, the reformation of the peerage system, and the lessening of royal authority. And indeed, Louis-Phillipe and his ministers adhered to policies that seemed to promote the central tenets of the constitution. However, the majority of these policies were veiled attempts to shore up the power and influence of the government and the bourgeoisie, rather than legitimate attempts to promote equality and empowerment for a broad constituency of the French population. Thus, though the July Monarchy seemed to move toward reform, this movement was largely illusory.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: During the years of the July Monarchy, enfranchisement roughly doubled, from 94,000 under Charles X to more than 200,000 by 1848 . However, this represented less than one percent of population, and, as the requirements for voting were tax-based, only the wealthiest gained the privilege. By implication, the enlarged enfranchisement tended to favor the wealthy merchant bourgeoisie more than any other group. Beyond simply increasing their presence within the Chamber of Deputies, this electoral enlargement provided the bourgeoisie the means by which to challenge the nobility in legislative matters. Thus, while appearing to honor his pledge to increase suffrage, Louis-Philippe acted primarily to empower his supporters and increase his hold over the French Parliament. The inclusion of only the wealthiest also tended to undermine any possibility of the growth of a radical faction in Parliament, effectively serving socially conservative ends.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The reformed Charter of 1830 limited the power of the King – stripping him of his ability to propose and decree legislation, as well as limiting his executive authority. However, the King of the French still believed in a version of monarchy that held the king as much more than a figurehead for an elected Parliament, and as such, he was quite active in politics. One of the first acts of Louis-Philippe in constructing his cabinet was to appoint the rather conservative Casimir Perier as the premier of that body. Perier, a banker, was instrumental in shutting down many of the Republican secret societies and labour unions that had formed during the early years of the regime. In addition, he oversaw the dismemberment of the National Guard after it proved too supportive of radical ideologies. He performed all of these actions, of course, with royal approval. He was once quoted as saying that the source of French misery was the belief that there had been a revolution. "No Monsieur", he said to another minister, "there has not been a revolution: there is simply a change at the head of state."


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Further expressions of this conservative trend came under the supervision of Perier and the then Minister of the Interior, François Guizot. The regime acknowledged early on that radicalism and republicanism threatened it, undermining its laissez-faire policies. Thus, the Monarchy declared the very term republican illegal in 1834. Guizot shut down republican clubs and disbanded republican publications. Republicans within the cabinet, like the banker Dupont, were all but excluded by Perier and his conservative clique. Distrusting the National Guard, Louis-Philippe increased the size of the army and reformed it in order to ensure its loyalty to the government.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Though two factions always persisted in the cabinet, split between liberal conservatives like Guizot ("le parti de la Résistance", the Party of Resistance) and liberal reformers like the aforementioned journalist Adolphe Thiers ("le parti du Mouvement", the Party of Movement), the latter never gained prominence. After Perier came count Molé, another conservative. After Molé came Thiers, a reformer later sacked by Louis-Philippe after attempting to pursue an aggressive foreign policy. After Thiers came the conservative Guizot. In particular, the Guizot administration was marked by increasingly authoritarian crackdowns on republicanism and dissent, and an increasingly pro-business laissez-faire policy. This policy included protective tariffs that defended the status quo and enriched French businessmen. Guizot's government granted railway and mining contracts to the bourgeois supporters of the government, and even contributing some of the start-up costs. As workers under these policies had no legal right to assemble, unionize, or petition the government for increased pay or decreased hours, the July Monarchy under Perier, Molé, and Guizot generally proved detrimental to the lower classes. In fact, Guizot's advice to those who were disenfranchised by the tax-based electoral requirements was a simple ""enrichissez-vous"" – enrich yourself. The king himself was not very popular either by the middle of the 1840s, and due to his appearance was widely referred to as the "crowned pear". There was a considerable hero-worship of Napoleon during this era, and in 1841 his body was taken from Saint Helena and given a magnificent reburial in France.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Louis-Philippe conducted a pacifistic foreign policy. Shortly after he assumed power in 1830, Belgium revolted against Dutch rule and proclaimed its independence. The king rejected the idea of intervention there or any military activities outside France's borders. The only exception to this was a war in Algeria which had been started by Charles X a few weeks before his overthrow on the pretext of suppressing pirates in the Mediterranean. Louis-Philippe's government decided to continue the conquest of that country, which took over a decade. By 1848, Algeria had been declared an integral part of France.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The Revolution of 1848 had major consequences for all of Europe: popular democratic revolts against authoritarian regimes broke out in Austria and Hungary, in the German Confederation and Prussia, and in the Italian States of Milan, Venice, Turin and Rome. Economic downturns and bad harvests during the 1840s contributed to growing discontent.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: In February 1848, the French government banned the holding of the Campagne des banquets, fundraising dinners by activists where critics of the regime would meet (as public demonstrations and strikes were forbidden). As a result, protests and riots broke out in the streets of Paris. An angry mob converged on the royal palace, after which the king abdicated and fled to England. The Second Republic was then proclaimed.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The revolution in France had brought together classes of wildly different interests: the bourgeoisie desired electoral reforms (a democratic republic), socialist leaders (like Louis Blanc, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and the radical Auguste Blanqui) asked for a "right to work" and the creation of national workshops (a social welfare republic) and for France to liberate the oppressed peoples of Europe (Poles and Italians), while moderates (like the aristocrat Alphonse de Lamartine) sought a middle ground. Tensions between groups escalated, and in June 1848, a working class insurrection in Paris cost the lives of 1500 workers and eliminated once and for all the dream of a social welfare constitution.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The constitution of the Second Republic which was ratified in September 1848 was extremely flawed and permitted no effective resolution between the President and the Assembly in case of dispute. In December 1848, a nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, was elected as President of the Republic, and pretexting legislative gridlock, in 1851, he staged a coup d'état. Finally, in 1852 he had himself declared Emperor Napoléon III of the Second Empire.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: France was ruled by Emperor Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870. The regime was authoritarian in nature during its early years, curbing most freedom of the press and assembly. The era saw great industrialization, urbanization (including the massive rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann) and economic growth, but Napoleon III's foreign policies would be catastrophic.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: In 1852, Napoleon declared that "L'Empire, c'est la paix" (The empire is peace), but it was hardly fitting for a Bonaparte to continue the foreign policy of Louis-Philippe. Only a few months after becoming president in 1848, he sent French troops to break up a short-lived republic in Rome, remaining there until 1870. The overseas empire expanded, and France made gains in Indo-China, West and central Africa, and the South Seas. This was helped by the opening of large central banks in Paris to finance overseas expeditions. The Suez Canal was opened by the Empress Eugénie in 1869 and was the achievement of a Frenchman. Yet still, Napoleon III's France lagged behind Britain in colonial affairs, and his determination to upstage British control of India and American influence in Mexico resulted in a fiasco.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: In 1854, the emperor allied with Britain and the Ottoman Empire against Russia in the Crimean War. Afterwards, Napoleon intervened in the questions of Italian independence. He declared his intention of making Italy "free from the Alps to the Adriatic", and fought a war with Austria in 1859 over this matter. With the victories of Montebello, Magenta and Solferino France and Austria signed the Peace of Villafranca in 1859, as the emperor worried that a longer war might cause the other powers, particularly Prussia, to intervene. Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon III, who in turn ceded it to Victor Emmanuel; Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes, and the Romagna to the pope, now president of an Italian federation. In exchange for France's military assistance against Austria, Piedmont ceded its provinces of Nice and Savoy to France in March 1860. Napoleon then turned his hand to meddling in the Western Hemisphere. He gave support to the Confederacy during the American Civil War, until Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation in the autumn of 1862. As this made it impossible to support the South without also supporting slavery, the emperor backed off. However, he was conducting a simultaneous venture in Mexico, which had refused to pay interest on loans taken from France, Britain, and Spain. As a result, those three countries sent a joint expedition to the city of Veracruz in January 1862, but the British and Spanish quickly withdrew after realizing the extent of Napoleon's plans. French troops occupied Mexico City in June 1863 and established a puppet government headed by the Austrian archduke Maximilian, who was declared Emperor of Mexico. Although this sort of thing was forbidden by the Monroe Doctrine, Napoleon reasoned that the United States was far too distracted with its Civil War to do anything about it. The French were never able to suppress the forces of the ousted Mexican president Benito Juárez, and then in the spring of 1865, the American Civil War ended. The United States, which had an army of a million battle-hardened troops, demanded that the French withdraw or prepare for war. They quickly did so, but Maximilian tried to hold onto power. He was captured and shot by the Mexicans in 1867.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Public opinion was becoming a major force as people began to tire of oppressive authoritarianism in the 1860s. Napoleon III, who had expressed some rather woolly liberal ideas prior to his coronation, began to relax censorship, laws on public meetings, and the right to strike. As a result, radicalism grew among industrial workers. Discontent with the Second Empire spread rapidly, as the economy began to experience a downturn. The golden days of the 1850s were over. Napoleon's reckless foreign policy was inciting criticism. To placate the Liberals, in 1870 Napoleon proposed the establishment of a fully parliamentary legislative regime, which won massive support. The French emperor never had the chance to implement this, however - by the end of the year, the Second Empire had ignominiously collapsed.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Napoleon's distraction with Mexico prevented him from intervening in the Second Schleswig War in 1864 and the Seven Weeks' War in 1866. Both of those conflicts saw Prussia establish itself as the dominant power in Germany. Afterwards, tensions between France and Prussia grew, especially in 1868 when the latter tried to place a Hohenzollern prince on the Spanish throne, which was left vacant by a revolution there.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck provoked Napoleon into declaring war on Prussia in July 1870. The French troops were swiftly defeated in the following weeks, and on September 1, the main army, which the emperor himself was with, was trapped at Sedan and forced to surrender. A republic was quickly proclaimed in Paris, but the war was far from over. As it was clear that Prussia would expect territorial concessions, the provisional government vowed to continue resistance. The Prussians laid siege to Paris, and new armies mustered by France failed to alter this situation. The French capital began experiencing severe food shortages, to the extent where even the animals in the zoo were eaten. As the city was being bombarded by Prussian siege guns in January 1871, King William of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Shortly afterwards, Paris surrendered. The subsequent peace treaty was harsh. France ceded Alsace and Lorraine to Germany and had to pay an indemnity of 5 billion francs. German troops were to remain in the country until it was paid off. Meanwhile, the fallen Napoleon III went into exile in England where he died in 1873.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The birth of the Third Republic would see France occupied by foreign troops, the capital in a popular socialist insurrection — the Paris Commune — and two provinces (Alsace-Lorraine) annexed to Germany. Feelings of national guilt and a desire for vengeance ("revanchism") would be major preoccupations of the French throughout the next two decades. Yet by 1900, France had resumed many economic and cultural ties with Germany, and few French still dreamed of a "revanche". No French political party even mentioned Alsace-Lorraine any more on its program.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Napoleon's rule came to an abrupt end when he declared war on Prussia in 1870, only to be defeated in the Franco-Prussian War and captured at Sedan. He abdicated on 4 September, with a Third Republic proclaimed that same day in Paris.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The French legislature established the Third Republic which was to last until the military defeat of 1940 (longer than any government in France since the Revolution). On 19 September the Prussian army arrived at Paris and besieged the city. The city suffered from cold and hunger; the animals, including the elephants, in the Paris zoo were eaten by the Parisians. In January the Prussians began the bombardment of the city with heavy siege guns. The city finally surrendered on January 28, 1871. The Prussians briefly occupied the city and then took up positions nearby.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: A revolt broke out on 18 March when radicalized soldiers from the Paris National Guard killed two French generals. French government officials and the army withdrew quickly to Versailles, and a new city council, the Paris Commune, dominated by anarchists and radical socialists, was elected and took power on March 26, and tried to implement an ambitious and radical social program.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The Commune proposed the separation of Church and state, made all Church property state property, and excluded religious instruction from schools, including Catholic schools. The churches were only allowed to continue their religious activity if they kept their doors open to public political meetings during the evenings. Other projected legislation dealt with educational reforms which would make further education and technical training freely available to all. However, for lack of time and resources, the programs were never carried out. The Vendôme Column, seen as a symbol of Napoleon's imperialism was pulled down, at the suggestion of Commune member Gustave Courbet, who was later briefly jailed and required to pay for putting it back up.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Nathalie Lemel, a religious workwoman, and Elisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian aristocrat, created the "Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés" ("Women Union for the Defense of Paris and Care to the Injured") on April 11, 1871. They demanded gender equality, wages' equality, right of divorce for women, right to "laïque" instruction (non-clerical) and for professional formation for girls. They also demanded suppression of the distinction between married women and concubins, between legitimate and natural children, the abolition of prostitution — they obtained the closing of the "maisons de tolérance" (legal unofficial brothels). The Women Union also participated in several municipal commissions and organized cooperative workshops.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The Paris Commune held power for only two months. Between May 21 and 28 the French army reconquered the city in bitter fighting, in what became known as "la semaine sanglante" or "bloody week." During the street fighting, the Communards were outnumbered four or five to one; they lacked competent officers; and they had no plan for the defense of the city, so each neighborhood was left to defend itself. Their military commander, Louis Charles Delescluze, committed suicide by dramatically standing atop a barricade on May 26. In the final days of the battle the Communards set fire to the Tuileries Palace, the Hotel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and other prominent government buildings, and executed hostages they had taken, including Georges Darboy, the archbishop of Paris.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Army casualties from the beginning April through Bloody Week amounted to 837 dead and 6,424 wounded. Nearly seven thousand Communards were killed in combat or summarily executed by army firing squads afterwards, and buried in the city cemeteries, and in temporary mass graves. About ten thousand Communards escaped and went into exile in Belgium, England, Switzerland and the United States. Forty-five thousand prisoners taken after the fall of the Commune. Most were released, but twenty-three were sentenced to death, and about ten thousand were sentenced to prison or deportation to New Caledonia or other prison colonies. All the prisoners and exiles were amnestied in 1879 and 1880, and most returned to France, where some were elected to the National Assembly.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Thus, the Republic was born of a double defeat: before the Prussians, and of the revolutionary Commune. The repression of the commune was bloody. One hundred forty-seven Communards were executed in front of the Communards' Wall in Père Lachaise Cemetery, while thousands of others were marched to Versailles for trials. The number killed during "La Semaine Sanglante" (The Bloody Week) had been estimated by some sources as high as twenty thousand; recent historians, using research into the number buried in the city cemeteries and exhumed from mass graves, now put the most likely number at between six and seven thousand. Thousands were imprisoned; 7,000 were exiled to New Caledonia. Thousands more fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, "stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left." For the imprisoned there was a general amnesty in 1880, and many of the Communards returned to France, where some were elected to the Parliament. Paris remained under martial law for five years.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Beside this defeat, the Republican movement also had to confront the counterrevolutionaries who rejected the legacy of the 1789 Revolution. Both the Legitimist and the Orléanist royalists rejected republicanism, which they saw as an extension of modernity and atheism, breaking with France's traditions. This lasted until at least the May 16, 1877 crisis, which finally led to the resignation of royalist Marshal MacMahon in January 1879. The death of Henri, comte de Chambord in 1883, who, as the grandson of Charles X, had refused to abandon the "fleur-de-lys" and the white flag, thus jeopardizing the alliance between Legitimists and Orleanists, convinced many of the remaining Orleanists to rally themselves to the Republic, as Adolphe Thiers had already done. The vast majority of the Legitimists abandoned the political arena or became marginalised, at least until Pétain's Vichy regime. Some of them founded "Action Française" in 1898, during the Dreyfus affair, which became an influent movement throughout the 1930s, in particular among the intellectuals of Paris' "Quartier Latin". In 1891, Pope Leo XIII's encyclical "Rerum novarum" was incorrectly seen to have legitimised the Social Catholic movement, which in France could be traced back to Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais' efforts under the July Monarchy. Pope Pius X later condemned these movements of Catholics for democracy and Socialism in "Nostre Charge Apostolique" against the "Le Síllon" movement.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The initial republic was in effect led by pro-royalists, but republicans (the "Radicals") and bonapartists scrambled for power. The period from 1879 to 1899 saw power come into the hands of moderate republicans and former "radicals" (around Léon Gambetta); these were called the "Opportunists" ("Républicains opportunistes"). The newly found Republican control on the Republic allowed the vote of the 1881 and 1882 Jules Ferry laws on a free, mandatory and secular education.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: The moderates however became deeply divided over the Dreyfus affair, and this allowed the Radicals to eventually gain power from 1899 until the Great War. During this period, crises like the potential "Boulangist" coup d'état (see Georges Boulanger) in 1889, showed the fragility of the republic. The Radicals' policies on education (suppression of local languages, compulsory education), mandatory military service, and control of the working classes eliminated internal dissent and regionalisms, while their participation in the Scramble for Africa and in the acquiring of overseas possessions (such as French Indochina) created myths of French greatness. Both of these processes transformed a country of regionalisms into a modern nation state.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: In 1880, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law, created the French Workers' Party ("Parti ouvrier français", or POF), the first Marxist party in France. Two years later, Paul Brousse's "Possibilistes" split. A controversy arose in the French socialist movement and in the Second International concerning "socialist participation in a bourgeois government", a theme which was triggered by independent socialist Alexandre Millerand's participation to Radical-Socialist Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet around the start of the 20th century, which also included the marquis de Galliffet, best known for his role as repressor of the 1871 Commune. While Jules Guesde was opposed to this participation, which he saw as a trick, Jean Jaurès defended it, making him one of the first social-democrat. Guesde's POF united itself in 1902 with the "Parti socialiste de France", and finally in 1905 all socialist tendencies, including Jaurès' "Parti socialiste français", unified into the "Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière" (SFIO), the "French section of the Second International", itself formed in 1889 after the split between anarcho-syndicalists and Marxist socialists which led to the dissolving of the First International (founded in London in 1864).


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Bismarck had supported France becoming a republic in 1871, knowing that this would isolate the defeated nation in Europe where most countries were monarchies. In an effort to break this isolation, France went to great pains to woo Russia and the United Kingdom to its side, first by means of the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, then the 1904 "Entente Cordiale" with the U.K, and finally, with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907 this became the Triple Entente, which eventually led France and the UK to enter World War I as Allies when Germany declared war on Russia.


title: France in the long nineteenth century

text: Distrust of Germany, faith in the army and anti-semitism in parts of the French public opinion combined to make the Dreyfus affair (the unjust trial and condemnation of a Jewish military officer for treason) a political scandal of the utmost gravity. The nation was divided between "dreyfusards" and "anti-dreyfusards" and far-right Catholic agitators inflamed the situation even when proofs of Dreyfus' innocence came to light. The writer Émile Zola published an impassioned editorial on the injustice, and was himself condemned by the government for libel. Once Dreyfus was finally pardoned, the progressive legislature enacted the 1905 laws on laïcité which created a complete separation of church and state and stripped churches of most of their property rights.