Oscar Bardi de Fourtou

Oscar Bardi de Fourtou

Marie François Oscar Bardi de Fourtou (born January 3, 1836 in Ribérac , Dordogne department , † December 6, 1897 in Paris ) was a French politician.

Only a lawyer and sub-prefect of the second empire in his hometown, de Fourtou was elected to the national assembly in his homeland in 1871 and joined the monarchists .

From December 1872 to May 1873 he was Minister of Public Works, from November 1873 to May 1874 of Education and Culture, and from May to July 1874 of the Interior. In these places he showed himself to be a clerical Bonapartist , and while he favored the ultramontanes in every way, he persecuted the liberals with harsh measures. He voted against the constitution of the republic and, elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1876, was one of the most ardent clerical reactionaries.

After Simon was dismissed from the Ministry on May 16, 1877, he took on the particularly important Ministry of the Interior in the Broglie cabinet , to which he was particularly suited due to his ruthless, determined energy. While he declared in the Chamber on June 16 that he was defending the glorious principles of 1789 against the criminal ones of 1793, after the chamber's dissolution he opened a campaign against the republican party, as it had not been worse under the Empire: 50 prefects and 150 others high officials were deposed or transferred, censorship reintroduced, and all bars and shops that exhibited it were closed.

Over 3,000 complaints for press offenses or offenses against the order were known and all opponents of the government were slandered and insulted in a special paper (“Bulletin des Communes”). But none of this helped; the government was defeated both in the deputy elections on October 14th and in the general council elections on November 4th, and Fourtou had to resign with the whole ministry on November 20th.

This article is based on a text in the public domain from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

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