THIERS, LOUIS- ADOLPHE

born April 18, 1797, Marseille, France

died Sept. 3, 1877, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris

French politician and historian.

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