16 May 1877 crisis

Difficulties of a nascent republic Initial hesitations between republic and monarchy and . On 4 September 1870, amid the ruins of the Second Empire defeated by Prussia, the republic was proclaimed. In order to stem the insurrection and rule out the prospect of a revolutionary government, the republican deputies agreed on the formation of a Government of National Defense. A series of military disasters and the suffering by the people during the siege of Paris ultimately swept away the cabinet despite the determination of Léon Gambetta. On 20 November 1873, the Duke of Broglie had the passed, an institutional solution that made it possible to further postpone the definitive choice of the nature of the regime and oriented it toward a parliamentary republic, since, because of the reserve and irresponsibility of the President of the Republic, it was up to the Vice-President of the Council to assume responsibility for the executive's actions before the Assembly. Key figures , 1873. Elected President of the Republic by the royalist majority on 24 May 1873 to replace Adolphe Thiers, Patrice de Mac Mahon acted "as absolute master of the executive power" during the early years of his term and, unlike his predecessor, provided himself with a real head of government in the person of Albert de Broglie, Vice-President of the Council of Ministers, a title that marked his submission to the head of state. Following the elections of 30 January 1876, the Senate retained a narrow conservative majority with 151 seats for the monarchists and Bonapartists against 149 for the republicans. In contrast, the legislative elections of February–March 1876 confirmed the trend seen in the most recent by-elections and gave an absolute majority to the republicans, who held nearly 350 sieges in the Chamber of Deputies. The collapse of the conservatives was experienced as a disaster by President , who appointed Jules Dufaure to head a government composed of moderate monarchists and centre-left republicans. A conservative republican, Dufaure came under pressure from the deputies and his ministry constantly sought compromises. On 9 December, accused by the republican majority of supporting the president's opposition to the amnesty of the Communards, he resigned. To form the new government, turned to Senator Jules Simon, who described himself as "profoundly republican and profoundly conservative" . Close to Adolphe Thiers, Simon had the advantage in the president's eyes of being clearly further to the left than his predecessor while being a notorious opponent of Léon Gambetta, the leader of the republican majority . == Course of events ==

The expression "Seize Mai" does not refer only to the events of that day, 16 May 1877, but to the whole of a period "politically agitated and deeply troubled" that ended seven months later with the submission of the head of state. On 4 May 1877, from the rostrum of the Chamber, Gambetta reproached Jules Simon for having lacked firmness in the face of ultramontane manoeuvres. He denounced "clerical evil [...] deeply infiltrated into what are called the ruling classes of the country" and ended his speech by repeating a phrase inspired by his journalist friend , "Clericalism? That is the enemy!". His motion was adopted without Simon opposing it. Thus the religious question revived the confrontation between the republican and conservative blocs and, in this state of heightened tension, President reproached Jules Simon for being under the influence of a majority radicalised in an anticlerical direction and accused him of being Gambetta's hostage, especially since on 15 May the President of the Council allowed the Chamber to vote for the repeal of a law punishing press offences against the government's opinion. File:La Lune RoussePremière Année - N°5Dimanche 7 Janvier 1877Peuh par Gill. Paris Musées 20231005193621.jpg|alt=Press caricature showing two wrestlers.|Depicted as a fairground strongman, Jules Simon manages to lift the weight of opportunism in front of a jealous Léon Gambetta. Caricature by André Gill, '''', 7 January 1877. File:Édouard Pépin - À qui le tour ? - Le Grelot (18 février 1877).jpg|alt=Press drawing showing a moustachioed man standing in a doorway, holding a tooth-extraction instrument, in front of several people burying their heads in their newspapers.|Jules Simon depicted as a tooth-puller of journalists.Satire by Pépin of press censorship, Le Grelot, 18 February 1877. File:Édouard Pépin - À vos pièces - Le Grelot (6 mai 1877).jpg|alt=Press drawing showing men in ecclesiastical dress bustling around a cannon.|In order to push France down the path of ultramontanism, Jesuits prepare to bombard public opinion and the public authorities with petitions, pastoral letters and other depicted as shells filled with Lourdes water.Anticlerical caricature by Pépin, Le Grelot, 6 May 1877. Mac Mahon's letter and Jules Simon's resignation , President of the Council.Caricature by Karel Klíč, published in the satirical Vienna magazine Humoristische Blätter, 20 May 1877. On 16 May 1877, early in the morning, the president reacted sharply to reading the Journal officiel de la République française which reported the previous day's debate in the Chamber. Considering that Jules Simon's speech departed from the positions agreed in the Council of Ministers, he sent him a letter asking "whether he still had over the Chamber the influence necessary to make his views prevail" and demanding "an explanation [...] that is indispensable", justifying his intervention by the sacred idea he had of his office: "if I am not responsible as you are to parliament, I have a responsibility to France, which today more than ever I must be concerned about" . A few moments later, the secretary-general of the President of the Republic, , read the text and, understanding the gravity of the situation, persuaded to send an usher to retrieve the letter, but in vain. Disavowed, Jules Simon immediately tendered his resignation to the head of state, even though he had not been put in the minority in the Chamber. The president accepted it, declaring among other things that he would "rather be overthrown than remain under the orders of Moscow". Jules Simon then attended the funerals of the former minister Ernest Picard and then those of the former deputy , where he informed his various ministers and the numerous politicians present of the situation; they were outraged by the presidential move. A meeting of the Republican Left, already scheduled for 3 PM on the Boulevard des Capucines, was opened to the other political groups. It ultimately brought together 200 parliamentarians including a few senators. A plenary meeting was decided for that same evening at the Grand Hôtel where about 300 deputies adopted the motion proposed by Léon Gambetta who, sticking strictly to the legality of the Constitution, recalled that "the preponderance of parliamentary power exercised through ministerial responsibility is the first condition of government of the country by the country". In the letter that the deputy immediately sent to his mistress Léonie Léon, he displayed his determination to lead the fight at the head of the republicans: My dear child, war has been declared, they are even offering us battle: I have accepted it, for my positions are impregnable; we occupy the heights of the law from which we can machine-gun at our leisure the miserable troops of reaction floundering in the plain. Conflict between the Chamber and the president Prorogation of the Assembly and manifesto of the 363 (17–18 May) Marshal Mac Mahon recalled the duke Albert de Broglie to the presidency of the Council and the latter formed a right-wing government that marked the return to the moral order. By appointing a ministry in line with his views, against the opinion of the deputies, the president offered a dualist reading of the constitution: for him the government was as much his emanation as that of the Chamber of Deputies. File:Union de tous les groupes républicains - 1877.jpg|alt=Commemorative handkerchief of the "union of all republican groups", 26 June 1877, reproducing the portraits of Thiers and Gambetta in medallions.|Commemorative handkerchief of the republican union, reproducing the portraits of Thiers and Gambetta as well as "the coat of arms of Paris, surmounted by a battlemented crown and accompanied by the motto Fluctuat nec mergitur". most often replacing them with former senior Bonapartist officials whose mission was to relentlessly prosecute press, publishing or peddling offences. Local elected officials were affected by these measures: 1,743, or 4% of mayors, and 1,334 adjuncts were dismissed, and 613 city councils were dissolved. 133 secretaries-general and 170 prefectural councillors were also transferred or dismissed. File:La Lune RoussePremière Année - N°36Dimanche 12 Août 1877M. Menier, par Gill. Paris Musées 20231005190255.jpg|alt=Press drawing depicting a man depositing a purse in front of a bust of Marianne.|The chocolate manufacturer industrialist Émile-Justin Menier financing the republican electoral campaign to the tune of 100,000 francs. Illustration by André Gill, La Lune rousse. File:Revue comique, par Cham - Une épouse convaincue - Le Monde illustré (22 septembre 1877).jpg|alt=Press caricature showing a woman pouring the contents of a kettle into a cup placed in front of a man with a disgusted look.|A "convinced wife" forces her husband to swallow chocolate as compensation for the generous donation made by the Menier company in favour of republican candidates. Caricature by Cham, Le Monde illustré, 22 September 1877. To finance their campaign, the republicans relied on numerous personalities, notably the owner of the department store Le Bon Marché, Aristide Boucicaut, the chocolate-making patronal dynasty of the Menier, the banker Henri Cernuschi or the financier , who placed his private mansion at Gambetta's disposal. The latter delivered a speech in Lille on 15 August 1877 whose peroration has remained famous. Acclaimed by the audience, he declared to the president and his supporters: "When France has made her sovereign voice heard, believe it well, gentlemen, it will be necessary to submit or resign". This formula was immediately reprinted in La République française and the Council of Ministers decided to prosecute the speaker, who was no longer protected by parliamentary immunity, and his newspaper, for insulting the head of state. This decision was criticised even in the conservative camp, which feared that the trial would give too much publicity to the republican candidate. Gambetta, tried in absentia on 11 September by the correctional tribunal of the Seine, was sentenced to three months in prison and a fine of 2,000 francs. Confident of his re-election, he immediately appealed, the second judgment being able to take place only after the ballot. The death of Adolphe Thiers on 3 September was exploited by the republicans, the "363" gathering around the family of the deceased during the funeral which no official attended on 8 September. This sudden disappearance, however, tempered the optimism of the republicans who had envisaged the return of Thiers to the presidency of the Republic in the event of electoral victory and resignation of the marshal. It was the name of Jules Grévy that replaced it, despite the disagreements that persisted between the latter and Gambetta. At the end of September, François-Auguste Mignet published a posthumous manifesto by Thiers in which the former president recalled the absolute necessity of the Republic to avoid civil war. File:Léon Gambetta aux funérailles d'Adolphe Thiers.jpg|alt=Press drawing showing men accompanying a hearse.|Léon Gambetta at the funeral of Adolphe Thiers, 8 September 1877. Illustration published in The Graphic. File:Punch - Two Manifestoes (October 6, 1877).jpg|alt=Press drawing showing a ghost holding out a written document to a moustachioed man in military attire.|The shade of Thiers brandishes his manifesto from beyond the grave to exhort Mac Mahon to maintain the republican regime but the marshal sticks to his own presidential manifesto. "Two Manifestoes", caricature published in Punch, 6 October 1877. Involvement of business circles on the Paris Stock Exchange. Caricature by Cham, Le Monde illustré, 3 November 1877. In the early years of the Third Republic, the influence of business circles in the political game was considerable: on the one hand, the country's economic recovery required close collaboration between political power, high finance and credit institutions; on the other hand, business circles were largely over-represented among political personnel, precisely among the centre right and centre left groups that made up most of the ministerial cabinets of this period. Just as several ministers of the Broglie cabinet were closely associated with the economic world, numerous members of the centre left held seats as directors in the largest companies in the key sectors of the French economy, particularly banks, railways, mining and metallurgy. Unable to form a new government, the president asked on 6 November the ministers of the cabinet to withdraw their resignations, to which the republican deputies responded by demanding the invalidation of all deputies elected with the presidential white poster and the indictment of the ministers. On 10 November, they declared the Chamber constituted and two days later re-elected Jules Grévy to its presidency, while his brother Albert Grévy proposed the creation of an inquiry commission on illegal acts committed since 16 May. Composed of 35 deputies, it was accepted by 312 votes to 205 and appointed on 14 October. The sought the Senate's support to reject the commission, but Audiffret-Pasquier informed him that, since a decision to create an inquiry commission was not a law, the upper chamber could not oppose it. The cabinet finally submitted its resignation on the evening of 17 November. , President of the Council and Minister of War in his short-lived government.|alt=Engraving depicting a middle-aged man with moustache and goatee, in civilian clothes. At an impasse, appointed one of his close associates to the presidency of the Council, General de Rochebouët. At the beginning of December, Léon Gambetta met with General de Galliffet to ensure his support for the republic, and several generals spontaneously placed themselves at his disposal, such as Justin Clinchant, Jean-Baptiste Campenon or Jean-Joseph Farre. Faced with the impossibility of forming a cabinet to his liking, considered resigning but his close associates dissuaded him again, both to protect themselves and to avoid a total victory for the republicans. File:Punch - Stuck in the Mud (November 3, 1877).jpg|alt=Press drawing showing a man in military uniform with both boots deeply sunk in mud.|Mac Mahon bogged down in the mud of Legitimism, Bonapartism and clericalism (Punch, 3 November 1877). File:Punch - Mistress and Man (November 17, 1877).jpg|alt=Press drawing showing a man in military uniform, looking submissive and holding his bicorne, standing before a seated woman wearing a toga and Phrygian cap.|Marianne scolds : "I intend to be the mistress in my own house. You will execute my orders or you will leave!" (Punch, 17 November 1877). File:Punch - The Tug of War (December 8, 1877).jpg|alt=Press drawing showing a man and a woman playing tug of war. In the background, three crowned birds of prey are perched on a rock.|Who will step over the Constitution? Tug of war between Marianne and under the eye of crowned raptors, allegory of the trial of strength between the republicans and the President of the Republic (Punch, 8 December 1877). Mac Mahon submits (13 December) (Punch, 29 December 1877). On 13 December 1877, President finally submitted to the election results and recalled Jules Dufaure to form a government dominated by moderate republicans of the centre left but which also included some close to Gambetta such as Charles de Freycinet at Public Works. Gambetta also imposed the presence of William Waddington at Foreign Affairs, despite the reservations of the head of state who was consulted only for the War portfolio, awarded to his former aide-de-camp Jean-Louis Borel, the only apolitical and conservative member of the new cabinet. Other close associates of the president were removed from their responsibilities: the prefect of police was dismissed as was 's chief of staff, Emmanuel d'Harcourt, who, at the request of the republicans, had no replacement. Finally, General Ducrot, whom the deputies accused of having too openly conspired in favour of a coup d'État, was relieved of his command of the . The next day, the President of the Republic addressed a message to parliament that sounded like a political capitulation. first acknowledged that dissolution could not be a normal way of governing a country and concluded by saying: "The Constitution of 1875 founded a parliamentary Republic by establishing my irresponsibility, while instituting the joint and individual responsibility of the ministers. Thus are determined our respective duties and rights. The independence of the ministers is the condition of their responsibility. [...] These principles, drawn from the Constitution, are those of my government". For the historian Jean-Marc Guislin, "The hesitations and divisions of the conservatives, the hostility of business circles and the reluctance of the army led the Marshal to submit. He also encountered the firmness and resolution of the country won over to the Republic". File:Édouard Pépin - La grande retraite de 1877 - Le Grelot (30 décembre 1877).jpg|alt=Colour drawing depicting a column of officers in full dress, Jesuits and financiers fleeing across the countryside.|"La Grande Retraite de 1877": Pépin caricatures the political failure of the monarchists as a military debacle reminiscent of Napoleon (Le Grelot, 30 December 1877). File:Jules Armand Dufaure.jpg|alt=Sepia photograph of Jules Dufaure, facing forward, seated. His arm is resting on a table, and his head is resting in his hand.|Portrait of Jules Dufaure, recalled to the presidency of the Council. == Consequences of 16 May ==

Republic of the republicans Control of the institutions In his statement to the Chamber, President turned towards the future and affirmed that "the end of this crisis will be the starting point of a new prosperity". On 24 January 1878, the Chamber adopted by 313 votes to 36 the amnesty law for offences and misdemeanours committed from 16 May to 14 December 1877, an appeasement law proposed by the government and which, according to its rapporteur René Goblet, allowed "to repair the disorders committed by the 16 May". The Universal Exhibition, inaugurated on 1 May 1878 in Paris and which attracted nearly six million visitors, was intended to show the recovery of France and its nascent Republic to the eyes of the world, while parliamentary work was suspended so as not to give a spectacle of division. Supported by Gambetta, the President of the Council Jules Dufaure showed pragmatism to reassure public opinion as well as the political class and his government initiated major projects such as the Freycinet Plan, a vast public works programme that won strong support. , ''''. The definitive break between and the republicans nevertheless occurred over the question of the purge of the army administration, demanded by Jules Ferry and Gambetta. The president was also indignant when the minister Émile de Marcère presented for his signature a decree providing for the revocation, transfer or retirement of 82 mayors. At the same time, the republicans continued their progress: the Chamber itself invalidated 70 elections on the pretext of clerical or political pressure and, following the by-elections, their number of deputies approached 400. On 5 January 1879, the republicans also won the Senate elections, the logical consequence of their victory in the municipal elections of 1877, Ultimately, the resolution of the crisis without violence or transgression of legality demonstrates the "pacification" of French political life that results from the rooting of parliamentary liberalism in the country and President 's initiative can be seen as the authoritarian act of a head of state to try to recover the power that was his in a hierarchical society, organised by religion and governed by a king. As the historian points out, 16 May coup reflects the desire of the "elites of old France" to preserve their influence and that of the Church on society at the expense of the promotion of "the new layer". In the months following the president's submission, the appeasement advocated by Gambetta and desired by a large majority of the political class materialised in the abandonment of proceedings against the ministers of the 17 May cabinet, a measure approved by the Chamber at the request of the new President of the Council William Waddington in March 1879. The triumphant Republic celebrated its victory through a series of laws aimed at uniting the French: on 14 February 1879, La Marseillaise became the national anthem; the return of the Chambers to Paris was adopted on 21 June and became effective in November; finally, the following year, 14 July was declared the national holiday and the amnesty of the Communards was promulgated. Order changes sides parodies the fresco The Last Judgment by depicting Victor Hugo with republican politicians watching the conservatives fall to the ground after the legislative elections. La Lune rousse, December 1877. In a country where social fear is no longer present, where the economy is prospering and where universal suffrage has enabled the politicisation of the masses, the possibility of a coup de force is rejected by the majority of the French , so that the disruptive effect introduced by President 's initiative made the fear of disorder work against the camp of conservation according to the analysis of Jean-Marie Mayeur. The republicans who, traditionally, embodied the threat of disorder, now benefit from popular support and present themselves as guarantors of the institutions, even though their most radical adversaries threaten to use force against them. After his election to the presidency of the Republic in 1879, Jules Grévy declared to the assemblies that he never wished to enter into conflict with the national will expressed through its constitutional organs: he thus renounced the use of the right of dissolution, which de facto placed the executive, and in particular the government, under the control and domination of the legislative power. but it ultimately led to the opposite situation and, for Jean-François Chanet, "the hemicycle of the Palais Bourbon remained a battlefield where the corpses of ministries were no longer counted". that the republicans accepted all the more as ministerial instability appeared to them as a virtue against the authoritarian temptation of a head of state whose powers would be extended. Retained in the Constitution of the Fourth Republic, the right of dissolution remained theoretical until the President of the Council Edgar Faure resorted to it on 29 November 1955 to resolve the crisis opened by the overthrow of his ministry. Largely approved by the French population, this dissolution was widely criticised in the political camp, particularly by Pierre Mendès France and the members of the SFIO, to the point of leading to the expulsion of Edgar Faure from the Radical Party, and it was only under the Fifth Republic, starting with the dissolution of 9 October 1962 decided by President Charles de Gaulle to resolve the conflict with the National Assembly on the question of the election of the head of state by universal suffrage, that parliamentary dissolution ceased to be considered an anti-republican act. == Historiography ==

Studies who teases the creature with the tip of his umbrella. Caricature by Pépin in Le Grelot of 23 June 1878. Despite the fundamental role of the 16 May crisis in the definitive advent of the Republic, its historiography is sparse. While the is frequently mentioned in general works devoted to the early years of the Third Republic, by historians such as Daniel Halévy, Odile Rudelle, Jérôme Grévy or Jean-Marie Mayeur, as well as in biographies devoted to its protagonists, it is rarely the subject of a detailed study. In 1965, published with Éditions Robert Laffont, ''Le coup d'État manqué du 16 mai 1877, while on 16 November 2007, under the direction of Jean-Marc Guislin, a study day was devoted to it at University of Lille III. According to the historian , the small number of studies on the crisis and its origins is partly explained by the relative discretion of its protagonists: Jules Simon, in his memoirs entitled Le Soir de ma journée, practically evades the question, President Mac Mahon gives only an official version of it, and the Duke of Broglie does not address the subject at all in his Souvenirs''. Numerous articles and chapters in university works are nevertheless devoted to it. In 1986, Michel Winock provided a detailed account in his narrative of the political crises of contemporary French history, La fièvre hexagonale, and the same year, Guy Thuillier devoted a short thirteen-page study to its possible origins. Two years later, the sociologist spoke on the question at a colloquium devoted to the presidential institution. Jean-Marc Guislin for his part describes it as a "neuralgic" period. It is for this reason that "French historiographical and political tradition has made the Seize-Mai the threat of a coup d'État", as the historian Claude Nicolet asserts. In many respects, the course of events in 1877 indeed reproduced the process of 1851 that led to the establishment of the Second Empire and the republican historiography that immediately took shape imposed for a vision of the Seize-Mai as a coup de force intended to bring down the Republic. From the opening of the crisis, Jules Ferry presented it as the struggle "of the government of the President of the Republic against parliamentary government", so that the historian Michel Winock saw the presidential initiative as an abuse of power "exercised against universal suffrage and the Republic". In 1877, the atmosphere of a coup d'État was all the more perceptible because the Bonapartists explicitly invited the president to take action, as evidenced by the articles of Paul de Cassagnac in Le Pays which demanded the state of siege and exceptional laws. The crisis results above all from a difference in interpretation of the constitutional laws which still retained a certain ambiguity in 1877. If President considers that the government bound to share his views, the republicans believe it is responsible only to the chamber elected by direct universal suffrage and which expresses the will of the nation, as opposed to the Senate designated by grand electors and the president elected indirectly by parliamentarians. For Emmanuel Cherrier, "the Seize-Mai is therefore also a controversy as to the monist or dualist responsibility of the government". Nothing then obliged Jules Simon to resign since nothing expressly indicates the slightest responsibility of the government to the head of state in the constitutional laws of 1875, and the decision of the President of the Council results only from the prevalence of a dualist reading of the Constitution and the "à la française" practice of the parliamentary regime which customarily establishes the dual responsibility of ministers. The letter addressed by therefore has no unconstitutional character, and even more, the president does not feel he is carrying out a coup d'État by taking this initiative: since it is up to him to appoint ministers, he believes he can also revoke them outright. Furthermore, the administrative pressure exerted by the Broglie cabinet until the legislative elections does not exceed the framework of the law: the transfer or revocation of officials is part of the powers available to the government, as is the suspension of municipal councils or the revocation of mayors, guaranteed by the laws of 14 April 1871 and 20 January 1874. In addition, while the law of 27 July 1849 subjects the peddling of newspapers and printed matter to prefectural authorisation, that of 29 December 1875 defines the referral of press offences to the correctional court, so that the censorship exercised by the government is also carried out by applying legal provisions. For Emmanuel Cherrier, the 16 May crisis is therefore a paradoxical event: "1877 has the particularity of not being a coup d'État but of appearing as such to the republicans of the time, without even mentioning those, revanchist Bonapartists or determined royalists, who regretted that it was not one". By qualifying the action of President as a coup d'État, the republicans sought above all to discredit him in the eyes of public opinion. == Seize Mai in arts and culture ==

Literature It was in the context of this crisis that Victor Hugo had his ''Histoire d'un crime'' published, a text mainly written in Brussels where the author had taken refuge the day after the coup d'État of 2 December 1851 and of which only the most pamphletary part was published as early as 1852 in the form of a book of about a hundred pages, Napoléon le Petit. and achieved great commercial success. The sentence that the author placed as an epigraph to his work sums up the pedagogical and propagandist role he intended to assign to this publication: "This book is more than topical: it is urgent. I publish it". In 1919, Marcel Proust mentions it in In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower to describe the talent or opportunism of his character, the , who managed to play an important role before and after this date. Popular culture s in October 1877. Mac Mahon's married life is ridiculed in a bawdy mode by playing on the proper names of the ministers of the Duke of Broglie and the quotations attributed to the marshal. From the beginning of the crisis, the authorities noted an increase in critical inscriptions and graffiti on the walls of major French cities, and the historian Susanna Barrows, who studied this phenomenon precisely, states that the Paris police prefecture files concerning these acts are four times more voluminous for the year 1877 than for any other year after the Paris Commune. She refers to a genuine "clandestine opposition culture" that sought to discredit the conservatives and more particularly President , sometimes likened to a "pig", mocked for his age or his Irish origins which would make him a traitor to the nation. These spontaneous acts follow a topographical logic. The historian notes that Parisian graffiti were mainly inscribed in the affluent districts of the city, with the aim of shocking the conservative electorate as much as possible: thus, on 1 October, the number 363, in reference to the republican deputies, was inscribed on the very façade of the Élysée Palace, and three days later, it was reproduced on a large scale on the walls of buildings Rue Saint-Honoré, on the façades of the Bank of France and the Rothschild house. Similarly, a temporal logic was at work because reports of graffiti multiplied around the most significant events of the crisis: the first two weeks of the crisis in May, the legislative elections in October and the first ten days of December, during the period of uncertainty and rumours of a coup d'État that preceded 's capitulation. Susanna Barrows estimates that "faced with the moral pretensions of the regime, its adversaries took malicious pleasure in denigrating it in a scabrous, often obscene and deliberately immoral manner". The historian sees in this proliferation of gestures or acts of derision a response to the massive purge undertaken by the government which manifests itself in a form of "brief and often scathing joke" where coarse or even scatological humour is often highlighted. Susanna Barrows notes that "the nickname Macmoncon for Mac-Mahon spread. Posters were put up in urinals or whispered at café counters baroque sexual scenarios featuring the president, his wife, high ecclesiastics and monarchist ministers". , La Petite Lune, 1878. On another level, to qualify their adversaries, some republicans coined the word "seizemayeux", The term became established in the political slang of the Third Republic and was embodied after the crisis in the character of Oscar Seizemayeux, a little hunchbacked, one-eyed and toothless man, drawn by the caricaturist André Gill in issue no. 25 of the satirical weekly La Petite Lune. It is inspired by a famous imaginary comic character in the under the July Monarchy, Mayeux, created by the caricaturist Traviès, and bears the same first name as the Minister of the Interior of the cabinet, Oscar Bardi de Fourtou, a figure hated by the entire republican group. == Notes and references ==

Notes References == See also ==