ABSTRACT
The political opposition to the Second Empire which developed during the 1860s was, to a considerable extent, an urban, and particularly a Parisian, phenomenon. In contrast, rural and provincial France tended to accept the imperial regime. The experience of the Franco-Prussian War and of the siege of Paris accentuated this political divide. Paris, and to a lesser extent other major urban centres, became more left wing, whereas the conservatism of rural provincial France was reinforced by a widespread association of left-wing republicanism with Gambetta’s policies of national resistance. The national parliamentary elections of 8 February 1871 illustrated the political polarization of France. Of the 645 candidates elected, approximately 200 were Legitimists or supporters of the senior line of the Bourbon dynasty which had been overthrown in the revolution of 1830, while a further 150 to 200 were Orleanists or supporters of the junior line of the Bourbon monarchy (which had ruled France in the person of Louis-Philippe between 1830 and 1848), including the younger sons of Louis-Philippe, the Prince de Joinville and the Duc D’Aumale. Moreover, no less than 106 members of the National Assembly of 1871 possessed titles of nobility, of which 44 were pre-1600 (Locke, 1974, p. 58).
