Patrice de MacMahon
Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de MacMahon, marquis de MacMahon,[1] duc de Magenta (French pronunciation: [patʁis də makma.ɔ̃]; 13 June 1808 – 17 October 1893), was a French general and politician, with the distinction of Marshal of France. He served as Chief of State of France from 1873 to 1875 and as President of France from 1875 to 1879.
The 1st Duke of Magenta
Napoleon III
13 June 1808
Sully, Saône-et-Loire, France
17 October 1893 (aged 85)
Montcresson, Loiret, France
Marie Armand Patrice de Mac Mahon
(1855–1927)
Eugene de Mac Mahon
(1857–1907)
Emmanuel de Mac Mahon
(1859–1930)
Marie de Mac Mahon
(1863–1954)
Countess de Pinnes
1827–1873
French Army
Lt. colonel
2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment
2ème R.E.L.E/2e RE
(1843–1845)
Commander I Army Corps
Army of the Rhin (1870)
Commander-in-Chief
Army of Châlons (1870)
Conquest of Algeria (1827–1857)
- Siege of Constantine (1837)
Crimean War (1853–1856)
- Battle of Malakoff (1855)
Franco-Austrian War (1859)
- Battle of Magenta (1859)
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871)
- Battle of Wörth (1870)
- Battle of Sedan (1870)
MacMahon led the main French army in the war against the Germans in 1870. He was trapped and wounded at the Battle of Sedan in September 1870, in part because of his confused and indecisive strategic planning. The army, including MacMahon and Emperor Napoleon III, surrendered to the Germans. Thus France lost the war and the Emperor went into exile. After convalescing, MacMahon was appointed head of the Versailles army, which suppressed the Paris Commune revolt in May 1871 and set the stage for his political career.
According to David Bell, after Thiers' resignation in May 1873, the royalist majority in the National Assembly drafted MacMahon as the new leader, with the hope that he would hold the fort until the Bourbon pretender was ready to restore the throne. However, the Count of Chambord's extreme Legitimist stance made restoration politically impossible. MacMahon refused to support efforts to force the Assembly's hand. In the absence of his full support there was no way to achieve monarchy by extra-parliamentary means. The right had no choice but to keep MacMahon in office to gain time and act as a barrier to the left by repressing radical agitation and pursuing policies to restore "moral order" to the country. In November 1873, he was voted a term of office of seven years. However, the divisions among the royalists left MacMahon in a political predicament for which he was not prepared, trying to keep the Republicans at bay without defined powers or a clear source of legitimacy, without a clear majority in parliament or the country, and without the use of force. In 1874, due to demands for Bonapartism, MacMahon called for constitutional reform. To ensure calm this led to a system of a President and Senate elected indirectly. In 1876, MacMahon had to accept governments by moderate Republicans. However, in 1877, MacMahon dismissed Simon and recalled the Duke de Broglie. The new government was dissolved on a no confidence vote. Conservatives hoped to exploit their influential press, heavy patronage, and martial law to coerce the voters. They failed in the general election of October 1877, as the Republicans won the majority despite the challenges on the right. In January 1879, the Republicans forced MacMahon's resignation. He died in 1893, with Republicans viewing him as a danger to the Republic and diehard monarchists considering him a bungler who mishandled their dream of restoration.[2]
MacMahon was a devout conservative Catholic, and a traditionalist who despised socialism and strongly distrusted the mostly secular Republicans. He kept to his duty as the neutral guardian of the Constitution and rejected suggestions of a monarchist coup d'état, but refused to meet with Gambetta, the leader of the Republicans. He moved for a parliamentary system in which the assembly selected the ruling government of the Third Republic, but he also insisted on an upper chamber. He later dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, resulting in public outrage and a Republican electoral victory. Soon after MacMahon resigned and retired to private life.
Biography[edit]
Family origins[edit]
The MacMahon family is of Irish origin. They were Lords of Corcu Baiscind[3] in Ireland and descended from Mahon, the son of Muirchertach Ua Briain, High King of Ireland.[4][5] After losing much of their land in the Cromwellian confiscations of 1652, a branch moved to Limerick for a time. They supported the deposed King James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and settled in France during the subsequent reign of King William III.[6] They applied for French citizenship in 1749; after the definitive installation of the family in France, their nobility was recognised by the patent letter of King Louis XV of France.
A military family (14 members of the house of de Mac Mahon were in the Army), they settled in Autun, Burgundy, at the Chateau de Sully, where Patrice de Mac Mahon was born on 13 June 1808, sixteenth and the second-youngest son of Baron Maurice-François de Mac Mahon (1754–1831), Baron of Sully, Count de Mac Mahon and de Charnay, and Pélagie de Riquet de Caraman (1769–1819), a descendant of Pierre-Paul Riquet.
Patrice de MacMahon (as he was usually known before being elevated to a ducal title in his own right) was born in Sully near Autun, in the département of Saône-et-Loire. He was the 16th of 17 children of a family already in the French nobility; his grandfather Knight Lord Overlord Jean-Baptiste de MacMahon,[7] was named Marquis de MacMahon and 1st Marquis d'Éguilly (from his wife Charlotte Le Belin, Dame d'Éguilly) by King Louis XV, and the family in France had decidedly royalist politics.
Legion of Honour
In his voluntary retirement he carried with him the esteem of all parties: Jules Simon, who did not love him, and whom he did not love, afterwards called him:
.
MacMahon's line became widely quoted as an expression of defiance. P. G. Wodehouse's character Bertie Wooster used it in response to pressure from his valet Jeeves to shave off his new moustache ('Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit' Ch.1).
Élisabeth de MacMahon (1834–1900), wife of Patrice
MacMahon, c. 1880-90
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Marie-Edmé-Patrice-Maurice de MacMahon". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.