Thiers
Thiers names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Thiers LOUIS ADOLPHE, a French statesman
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
LOUIS ADOLPHE, a French statesman; born in Marseilles, France, April 16, 1797. He studied law and at the age of 22 was admitted advocate. He soon relinquished law, however, for literature and politics (1821). After a long struggle with poverty in Paris, he won a high reputation as a political writer for the "Constitutionalist " and other journals. He took part with Armand Carrel and Mignet in the foundation of the "National" (1830) which aided in the downfall of the Bourbons; and during the July revolution of 1830, the office of the "National" was the headquarters of the revolutionary party . In the government of Louis Philippe, Thiers held several offices, till (1840) he found himself at the head of the ministry for a few months, and then retired into private life. After the revolution of 1848 he was elected deputy to the Assembly, and voted for the presidency of Louis Napoleon, but was ever after one of his fiercest opponents; and at the coup d'état (Dec. LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS 2, 1851) he was arrested and banished. Returning to France in the following year, he remained in comparative retirement till 1863, when he was elected one of the deputies for Paris. During the terrible crisis of 1870-1871 he came to the front as the one supreme man in France. After the fall of Paris he was returned to the National Assembly, and on Feb. 17, 1871, he was declared chief of the executive power . The first duty imposed on him as such was to assist in drawing up the treaty of peace, whereby France lost Alsace and Lorraine and agreed to pay an enormous indemnity; his second was to suppress the Communist insurrection. This done, his next task was to free the soil of the invaders by the payment of the ransom, which was effected in an incredibly short space of time. The Assembly in August, 1871, prolonged his tenure of office and changed his title to that of President. In November, 1872, Thiers declared himself in favor of the republic as a definitive form of government for France, and thus to some extent brought about the crisis which resulted in his being deprived of the presidency. He accepted his deposition with dignity, and went quietly into retirement. M. Thiers' chief works are: "History of the French Revolution" (6 vols. 1823-1827), and "History of the Consulate and the Empire" (20 vols. 1845-1862). The latter obtained for him the academic prize of $4,000. He died near Paris, Sept. 3, 1877.
Thiers JEAN BAPTISTE (tē-ār')
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JEAN BAPTISTE (tē-ār'), a French theological writer ; born in Chartres, France, France , in 1636. His treatises on theological and ecclesiastical subjects are very numerous; but he owes whatever celebrity he has to his "History of Wigs, wherein is Shown their Origin , their Use, their Form, the Abuse and Irregularity of Ecclesiastics ' Wigs" (1690). He died in Vibraye , France, in 1703. Origin,
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's biography of 1921 is accurate in its facts, and the outline of Adolphe Thiers's career has not been revised: the journalism, the 1840 ministry, the presidency of 1871-73, the death near Paris in 1877. What has moved is the verdict. Collier's calls him "the one supreme man in France" and treats the suppression of the Commune as simply a duty discharged; since then the Bloody Week of May 1871, in which thousands of Parisians were killed and many more deported, has made Thiers a byword for repression on the French left, and modern accounts weigh the massacre as heavily as the swift payment of the German indemnity. Worth noting too that Collier's, writing in 1921, does not mention that the Alsace and Lorraine lost by his peace treaty had been returned to France in 1918. His twenty-volume "Consulate and the Empire" is now read chiefly by historians of historiography; the entry on the obscure Jean Baptiste Thiers and his 1690 history of wigs stands untouched.
Written for this edition, 2026.