Eugène Rouher

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Eugène Rouher

Eugène Rouher (born November 30, 1814 in Riom , † February 3, 1884 in Paris ) was a French statesman. From 1863 to 1869 he was Minister of State at the head of the French government for almost six years . He had a significant influence on Emperor Napoleon III. whose policy he defended mostly unreservedly. After the fall of the emperor in 1870, he continued to be politically active for the interests of Napoleon III's son, Napoléon Eugène Louis Bonaparte .

Life

Eugène Rouher studied law in Paris and established himself as a lawyer in his hometown of Riom in 1836. After the death of his eldest brother, he took over his prosperous law firm. He made a name for himself through several successful political trials. In 1846 he stood as an official candidate for the Guizot Ministry in the elections for the Chamber of Deputies ( Chambre des députés ), but failed at his first attempt.

Minister and advisor to Napoleon III.

After the February Revolution of 1848 , Rouher was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly for his home department of Puy-de-Dôme . There he initially joined the group of Republican MPs, but soon moved to the right. In 1849 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly , in which he supported Prince Louis Napoleon (later Emperor Napoleon III ). On October 31, 1849, Louis Napoleon appointed him to succeed Odilon Barrot as Minister of Justice and also keeper of the seals of France ( Garde des sceaux de France ). He worked zealously for the conservative policy initiated by the Prince-President. In a speech to the National Assembly ( Assemblée nationale ) he called the February Revolution of 1848 a "catastrophe" and supported reactionary legislation, in particular the bill of May 31, 1850 to restrict universal suffrage.

Resigned on October 26, 1851, Rouher took over the Ministry of Justice after the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon on December 2, 1851, and was entrusted with the editing of a new constitution. But he resigned from his post on January 22, 1852 , because he had vainly opposed the decree of confiscation against the property of the House of Orléans . On December 30, 1852 Napoleon III appointed him. Vice-President of the Council of State ( Conseil d'État ). The emperor rewarded his contribution to the establishment of the Second Empire with a donation of 50,000 pounds and with the large estate (including castle) Cerçay near Brunoy . In 1856 he entered the Senate .

From February 3, 1855 to June 23, 1863, Rouher was Minister of Commerce, Agriculture and Public Works. As such, he closed in the spirit of Napoleon III's free trade system . on January 23, 1860 a trade treaty with England, the agreement with Belgium, Italy and Germany followed. He also took care of the expansion of the railway network without making it a state monopoly .

Minister of State

On June 23, 1863, Rouher became President of the Council of State and, after Adolphe Billault's death, Minister of State on October 18, 1863. He headed the government for almost six years. As an advisor to Napoleon III. his influence was so great that his opponent Émile Ollivier called him a "vice emperor".

The office of Minister of State was linked to the task of representing the emperor in the legislative body ( Corps législatif ). Rouher was responsible for responding to the opposition's criticism of government policy in the Corps législatif . In doing so, he proved to be a talented and effective speaker. He had to defend the expensive transformation of Paris by Georges-Eugène Haussmann , the controversial free trade agreements and also Napoleon's foreign adventures such as the failed French intervention in Mexico from 1862 to 1867. Thiers attacked Rouher in a debate in the Corps législatif in 1866 and accused him of his foreign policy had enabled Prussia to expand her power in the German war at the expense of Austria .

Rouher opposed the half-hearted liberal concessions of January 1867 with which Napoleon III. wanted to meet his critics a little bit and which the emperor had announced to him in a personal letter. From January 20 to November 13, 1867, he also held the post of finance minister.

Franco-German War and Third Republic

The new, "liberal" era that began in 1869, Rouher did not want to follow. On July 17, 1869, he resigned as Minister of State. Émile Ollivier followed him on January 2, 1870 as head of government. Rouher was compensated by the Emperor with the post of Senate President; he kept his influence behind the scenes. As President of the Senate, Rouher continued to advocate reactionary policies. In this capacity, in the presence of the emperor on July 16, 1870, at the height of the dispute with Prussia over the succession to the Spanish throne , he gave a highly bellicose speech in Saint-Cloud . After the battle of Sedan and the fall of Napoleon III. On September 4, 1870, Rouher fled Paris to his castle Cerçay in view of the advancing German armies. There he took large amounts of secret government files with him, especially those of the Foreign Ministry, in order to protect them from access by the Germans. But that's exactly what happened: On October 10, 1870, units of the Mecklenburg 17th Division captured Cerçay Castle and found the files. They were so important to the French state that half a century later the Treaty of Versailles specifically ordered their return (Art. 245). At the time the files were found, Rouher had already fled to England.

After the end of the war , he returned to France in 1871 to campaign for the interests of the Imperial Prince Napoléon Eugène Louis Bonaparte in the Third Republic . On February 11, 1872 he was elected a member of the National Assembly for the constituency of Ajaccio . The Corsican prefect Jean-Eugène Dauzon described his election and the great popularity he had received in Napoleon Bonaparte's home country as a “downright conspiracy in favor of the empire”. Rouher headed the small Bonapartist party Appel au Peuple . In his first speech in parliament on May 21, 1872, he defended the empire in the midst of a hostile chamber against the attacks of Gaston d'Audiffret-Pasquier and Léon Gambetta . In the following years he also showed himself to be a tireless defender of Bonapartism. He also assisted the ex-empress Eugénie de Montijo . The early death of Prince Napoléon Eugène Louis Bonaparte (1879), for whom he had been very active, induced him to resign from the leadership of the Bonapartist party. But he tried to get Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte recognized as heir to the imperial title.

Rouher lost her mind after a stroke in 1883. He died in Paris on February 3, 1884 at the age of 69.

literature

in order of appearance

  • Alfred Legoyt (under the pseudonym "Hermann"): M. Rouher et le Second Empire . Veuve Berger-Levrault, Strasbourg 1869.
  • Auguste Vermorel: M. Rouher . Administration des Biographies Contemporaines, Paris 1869.
  • Art. Rouher (Eugène) . In: Gustave Vapereau (ed.): Dictionnaire universel des contemporains, contenant toutes les personnes notables de la France et des pays étrangers , Supplément à la IVme édition , edited by Léon Garnier. Hachette, Paris 1873, pp. 153-154.
  • Eugène Rouher . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 13, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 1010.
  • Robert Schnerb: Rouher et le Second Empire . Colin, Paris 1949.
  • Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de l'Université de Clermont-Ferrand (ed.): Eugène Rouher. Actes des journées d'étude de Riom et Clermont-Ferrand of 16 and 17 March 1984 . Institut d'Études du Massif Central, Clermont-Ferrand 1985.
  • Alain Malglaive: Eugène Rouher (1814-1884). Un ministre de Napoléon III et Broût-Vernet . Association Azi La Garance, Broût-Vernet (Allier) 2005, ISBN 2-9524680-0-1 .

Footnotes

  1. Le Sénat sous le Second Empire et Napoléon III on the website of the French Senate, accessed on July 21, 2017.
  2. ^ Étienne Savary: M. Rouher à Cercay après la guerre . Nouvelle Revue, Paris 1893.
  3. ^ Albert Thomas: The liberal Empire . In: The Cambridge Modern History , planned by the late Lord Acton . Edited by Adolphus William Ward , George Walter Prothero, and Stanley Mordaunt Leathes . Vol. 11: The Growth of Nationalities . Cambridge 1909, pp. 467-506, therein the chapter The Triumph of Rouher , quoted p. 482.
  4. Alfred Legoyt: M. Rouher et le Second Empire . Veuve Berger-Levrault, Strasbourg 1869, p. 71.
  5. ^ Albert Thomas: The liberal Empire . In: The Cambridge Modern History , Vol. 11. Cambridge 1909, p. 480.
  6. ^ Willard Allen Fletcher: The Mission of Vincent Benedetti to Berlin 1864-1870 . Nijhoff, The Hague 1965, p. 268.
  7. Peace Treaty of Versailles, Art. 245: "Le Gouvernement allemand devra restituer au Gouvernement français ... the ensemble des papiers politiques pris par les autorités allemandes le 10 octobre 1870 au château de Cerçay, près Brunoy (Seine-et-Oise) appartenant alors à M. Rouher, ancien ministre d'État. "(" The German government has to return to the French government: ... all political documents that were sent by the German authorities to Cerçay Castle near Brunoy (Seine- et-Oise), which at that time belonged to the former Minister of State, Mr. Rouher, were taken away. ")
  8. ^ Art. Rouher (Eugène) . In: Gustave Vapereau (ed.): Dictionnaire universel des contemporains , Supplément à la IVme édition , edited by Léon Garnier. Hachette, Paris 1873, p. 154.