The 16 May 1877 crisis, or more simply the Seize Mai, was a political crisis and institutional crisis that occurred in France during the Third Republic. It pitted the President of the Republic, Marshal Patrice de Mac Mahon, a convinced monarchist, against the republican majority that had emerged from the 1876 legislative elections.
The events took place in a turbulent political context. In the Chamber of Deputies, the republicans led by Léon Gambetta, who sought to break with the lingering Orléanist spirit of the regime, attempted to impose their demands and fiercely opposed ultramontanism. Marshal de Mac Mahon, who reproached the Jules Simon government for its lack of firmness, dismissed it on 16 May 1877. From then on, the situation escalated: left-wing deputies met to sign the manifesto of the 363, which condemned the president's attitude; Mac Mahon in turn appointed the duke Albert de Broglie as head of a government that marked the return of the ordre moral. Mac Mahon dissolved the Chamber on 25 June 1877, but the subsequent legislative elections in October confirmed the republican majority. Initially, President Mac Mahon refused to yield and rumours of an alleged coup d'état circulated, but he eventually submitted and acknowledged his political defeat on 13 December 1877 by recalling the republican Jules Dufaure to the presidency of the Council.
The significance of this political crisis was immense, as it definitively shaped the practical operation of the institutions. It set aside the conservative interpretation of the constitutional laws of 1875, in favour of a strictly republican interpretation of the Constitution in which the government is accountable only to parliament, which invests and dismisses it. The head of state's renunciation of his constitutional prerogatives henceforth placed the executive power under the domination of the legislative power, while the practice of the right of dissolution, although enshrined in the Constitution, disappeared. Furthermore, the 16 May crisis marked the transition between two eras of French democracy and strengthened the rooting in people's minds of a still-nascent republican regime, dashing the hopes of the various monarchist currents of seeing a new restoration established.
An event relatively little studied by historiography, the Seize Mai has left some traces in popular culture and marks an important date for republicans, who regularly referred to it in their political struggles. It was also in the context of this crisis that Victor Hugo published his Histoire d'un crime.
Historical background
Difficulties of a nascent republic
Initial hesitations between republic and monarchy
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. Until 1877, monarchists and republicans engaged in an intense political struggle for control of the institutions and for the legal definition to be given to them.
After the large victory of the monarchists in the legislative elections of 8 February 1871, Adolphe Thiers was appointed "head of the executive power of the French Republic", pending the signature of peace and the restoration of order. Under the leadership of the head of state, who officially received the title of President of the Republic after the passage of the Loi Rivet, the regime gradually moved toward a conservative republicanism. In fact, the monarchists, while awaiting a pretender to the throne, postponed the drafting of a definitive constitution and the provisional institutions evolved slowly, while the republicans advanced in every by-election.
Hopes for a monarchical restoration resurfaced after Thiers's resignation in 1873 and the election of Patrice de Mac Mahon, whose political ambition appeared limited to the return of the king and to "moral order". However, the intransigence of the Count of Chambord, leader of the Legitimist monarchists who demanded the adoption of the white flag in place of the tricolour flag, ruled out any possibility of a royalist restoration in the short term.
On 20 November 1873, the Duke of Broglie had the septennat law 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.
Constitution of the Third Republic (1875)
In his message to the Nation on 6 January 1875, President Mac Mahon urged the Chamber to begin the debate on the regime's constitution, but rather than a sudden conversion to republican ideas, this appeal reflected the growing concern of the monarchists and moderate republicans in the context of a new Bonapartist surge, several deputies of that tendency having been elected the previous year in by-elections. The republican principle of the regime appeared definitively established on 30 January 1875 by the adoption, by a majority of one vote (353 against 352), of the Wallon amendment. The latter provided that the President of the Republic is elected for seven years by an absolute majority of votes by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies meeting as a National Assembly, which marked a decisive turning point: by dissociating the office from its holder, the Wallon amendment institutionalised an impersonal presidency of the Republic.
The constitutional laws that followed, passed between February and July 1875, were the result of a compromise between monarchists and republicans and established a parliamentary regime with a strong executive. The President of the Republic was its main actor and enjoyed extensive powers. In addition to the armed forces and the right of pardon, he appointed and dismissed ministers who were responsible to the Chamber of Deputies, with the possibility of dissolving the latter subject to the conforming opinion of the Senate. In legislative matters, the president shared the initiative of laws with the two Chambers. It was his duty to promulgate them after their vote in Parliament, and then to ensure and oversee their execution. Furthermore, since the president was irresponsible, each of his decisions had to be countersigned by a minister who assumed responsibility for it before the Chamber.
The government appointed by the president was therefore theoretically accountable both to the president and to the deputies, which made it, according to Professor Marcel Morabito, the "true centre of the opposition between the constituted organs that strive to weigh on its orientation".
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 Mac Mahon, 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, Mac Mahon 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.
Origins of the crisis
Simon ministry and the clerical question
For Jules Simon, as for his predecessor, the position was delicate between a monarchist Senate, a conservative president and a republican Chamber. The new President of the Council gave pledges to the left by purging the upper administration (prefects and magistrates), which earned him the hostility of the marshal, but the republicans made increased demands and Gambetta relentlessly tried to put him in difficulty. In the first months of 1877, the religious question agitated the Chamber after bishops had responded to the pope's appeal by asking their diocesans to send petitions to the President of the Republic urging him to intervene to restore the temporal power of the sovereign pontiff in the face of the Kingdom of Italy.
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 Alphonse Peyrat, "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 Mac Mahon 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.
Mac Mahon's letter and Jules Simon's resignation
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, Emmanuel d'Harcourt, read the text and, understanding the gravity of the situation, persuaded Mac Mahon 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 Taxile Delord, 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.
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.