Activities and affiliations

Government and administration France state institutions 1755–1794 ✕ Executed

Committee of Public Safety member allied with Robespierre

A lawyer elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1791 and the National Convention in 1792, he joined the Committee of Public Safety in 1793. Working with Robespierre and Saint-Just, he drafted the Law of 22 Prairial, which stripped defendants of counsel and sharply increased executions.

A lawyer and deputy in the Legislative Assembly and National Convention, Couthon joined the Mountain. On the Committee of Public Safety he worked closely with Robespierre and Saint-Just and played a central role in the Law of 22 Prairial, which sharply restricted defendants’ rights. Arrested on 9 Thermidor, he was executed with Robespierre.

Political and party leadership French revolutionary movement 1760–1829

Politician who moved from the revolutionary triumvirate to the Feuillants

He joined the Third Estate in 1789 but, through the triumvirate and the Feuillants, sought to stabilise the Revolution behind a constitutional monarchy; when the monarchy fell in 1792 he emigrated.

An aristocratic officer and veteran of the American War of Independence, Lameth joined the Third Estate in 1789 and supported the abolition of privilege. He formed the “triumvirate” with Barnave and Duport before becoming a Feuillant defender of constitutional monarchy. After exile and return, he served as a prefect under Napoleon and later as a liberal deputy.

Government and administration France state institutions 1769–1821

A conqueror who rose from revolutionary general to emperor

In the coup of 9–10 November 1799 (18 Brumaire), he conspired with Talleyrand and Sieyès and used troops with fixed bayonets to disperse the Council of Five Hundred and overturn the Directory, then took effective power as First Consul.

Born into an Italian-descended Corsican family, he was commissioned in the French royal artillery in 1785, supported the Revolution of 1789, and rose through his victories over royalists at Toulon in 1793 and Vendémiaire in 1795. The Italian campaign of 1796 made him a national hero, and in November 1799 the Brumaire coup overthrew the Directory and made him First Consul; in 1804 he became emperor of the First Empire. He won at Austerlitz in 1805 but was ruined by the Russian campaign of 1812 and Leipzig in 1813, was exiled to Elba in 1814, and after the Hundred Days lost at Waterloo and died on Saint Helena in 1821. His reforms such as the Napoleonic Code and public education endure, while the plunder of occupied lands, suppression of the press and deportation or imprisonment of critics, and the restoration of slavery in the colonies make him a contested figure.

Government and administration France state institutions 1871–1950 ○ Natural causes

Last president of the Third Republic, who signed the 1940 transfer of power

After Paul Reynaud's cabinet fell on 16 June 1940, he appointed Philippe Pétain to head the government; Pétain requested an armistice the next day. He signed the Constitutional Law on 10 July, and Pétain became head of state the day after.

A French centre-right republican politician trained as a mining engineer, he entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1900 at 29 for Meurthe-et-Moselle and presided that department's general council for 26 years from 1906. He was Minister for the Colonies in 1911–1914, briefly Minister of War in 1913 and Minister for the Blockade and Liberated Regions in 1917–1919, entered the Senate in 1920 and became its president in 1931. Elected last president of the Third Republic in 1932 after Paul Doumer's assassination, he was re-elected in 1939 but had little executive room under Third Republic practice. On 16 June 1940 he appointed Pétain to head the government; on 10 July he signed the Constitutional Law carried 569 to 80, and on 11 July Pétain became head of state. He never resigned and was seized by German forces in 1943. He died in Paris on 6 March 1950, aged 78.

Government and administration France state institutions 1872–1950 ○ Heart disease

France's first Socialist prime minister, who left behind paid holidays and the 40-hour week

'I rarely left my desk while in power; but whenever I went out and crossed the Paris suburbs and saw the roads covered with processions of jalopies, motorcycles and tandems, with working-class couples in matching pullovers, I had the feeling that, despite everything, I had brought a kind of clearing, a break in the clouds, into difficult and obscure lives', statement at the Riom trial, March 1942

A literary critic drawn into politics by the Dreyfus affair, he kept the Socialist SFIO's 'old house' standing at the 1920 Congress of Tours when the majority left to found the Communist Party. As prime minister of the 1936 Popular Front government he brokered the Matignon Agreements and enacted two weeks of paid holidays and the 40-hour week, becoming France's first Socialist and first Jewish head of government and a target of the far right. One of the eighty parliamentarians who voted against full powers for Pétain in 1940, he turned Vichy's Riom trial into a platform for defending the Popular Front, survived internment near Buchenwald, and briefly headed a caretaker government in late 1946.

Government and administration France state institutions 1878–1966 ○ Natural causes

A republican statesman who urged resistance in the face of defeat

In June 1940, he argued that France should continue the war from North Africa.

Paul Reynaud was a French republican statesman and lawyer whose independent positions ranged across economics, colonial policy, and defence. Facing Nazi Germany, he pressed for wartime financial mobilisation and modern warfare built around tanks and air power. When France collapsed in 1940, he sought to preserve the alliance with Britain and continue the war from North Africa, but resigned as premier after the armistice camp prevailed and was subsequently detained by Vichy and Germany. After liberation he returned to parliament and remained a prominent defender of parliamentary government.

Government and administration France state institutions 1883–1945 ✕ Executed

A republican politician who became an architect of Vichy collaboration

In 1942, while calling for labor mobilization, he publicly declared that he desired a German victory.

Pierre Laval began as a lawyer and Socialist politician, then moved rightward and became a leading minister and prime minister of the Third Republic. After France's defeat in 1940, he helped secure Pétain's full powers and the dismantling of the constitutional order, making himself central to the Vichy regime. He believed collaboration with Germany could preserve France's position, and after returning to power in 1942 he expanded labor provision and police cooperation. Convicted of treason after liberation, he was executed in 1945.

Government and administration France state institutions 1884–1970 ○ Illness

The Radicals' 'Bull of Vaucluse', who helped build the Popular Front and dismantled it with his own hands

'Ah! les cons! s'ils savaient...', the words attributed to him on seeing the crowds cheering at Le Bourget airfield on his return from Munich on 30 September 1938. Whether he said them, and where and to whom, is disputed.

A baker's son and history teacher who rose to lead the Radical Party. He quit as premier after the 6 February 1934 riot, then as defence minister from June 1936 helped sustain the Popular Front, but after returning as premier in April 1938 he ended the 40-hour week by decree in November and broke the general strike. He signed the Munich accords in September 1938, declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 and banned the Communist Party after the Nazi-Soviet pact. He fell over the failure to aid Finland in March 1940, stood trial at Riom and was interned near Buchenwald and at Itter Castle until 5 May 1945. Back in the Chamber after the war, he opposed de Gaulle's full powers in 1958 and died in Paris on 10 October 1970.

Government and administration France state institutions 1890–1936 ✕ Suicide

The Popular Front's interior minister, hounded to death by the far-right press

In a note to Blum before turning on the gas, he wrote: "If they could not succeed in dishonouring me, they will at least bear responsibility for my death. I am neither a deserter nor a traitor."

A Socialist politician, mayor of Lille, and Blum's interior minister. In the strike wave of June 1936 he refused to clear the occupied factories by force, and he carried out the dissolution of the far-right leagues, the first item of the Popular Front programme. When the far-right weekly Gringoire barraged him with a fabricated story of desertion in the First World War, a military court of honour and an overwhelming vote of the Chamber cleared him twice over; the campaign did not stop, and on 17 November he took his own life at his home in Lille. Hundreds of thousands came to his funeral, and his death set off the debate on legislating against press defamation.

Government and administration France state institutions 1890–1970 ○ Natural causes

A statesman who declared that France would continue the war amid defeat

“Must hope disappear? Is the defeat final? No!”

Charles de Gaulle was a French soldier, resistance leader, and statesman who claimed to represent France’s continued war effort after the defeat of 1940. From London he organized Free France and challenged Vichy’s claim to legitimacy, then led the provisional government after liberation while confronting disputes over the shape of reconstruction. He prized a strong executive and national autonomy, founding the Fifth Republic, but his rule also left enduring tensions over personal power and the colonial wars.

Government and administration France state institutions 1899–1943 ✕ Died after torture

The republican who bound a divided Resistance together

When German officers tried to force his signature on a false statement, Moulin chose attempted suicide rather than dishonour.

Jean Moulin was a senior French civil servant and republican organiser who linked the internal Resistance to Free France against the Nazi occupation. As Charles de Gaulle’s representative, he coordinated rival movements and brought political parties and trade unions into the National Council of the Resistance. His work of unification unfolded amid fierce tensions over the movements’ independence and ended with his arrest and death after torture in 1943.

Government and administration France state institutions 1899–1983 ○ Stroke

From Resistance chief to architect of the Marshall Plan response, the foreign minister who told Molotov that Soviet actions divided Europe

On July 2, 1947, when Molotov denounced the Marshall Plan as a plot to divide Europe, Bidault rose and quietly replied that it was the Soviet Union, by its own actions, that was splitting the continent; the next day he and Bevin sent invitations to 16 nations.

Bidault succeeded Jean Moulin as president of the National Resistance Council in 1943, leading the French internal Resistance, and after the Liberation co-founded the Christian-democratic MRP. As foreign minister at the 1947 Paris Three-Power Conference, he answered Molotov's charge that the Marshall Plan was 'dividing Europe' with the retort that Soviet actions alone were splitting the continent; when Molotov walked out, Bidault and Bevin rallied 16 Western European nations behind the plan. He served as premier in 1946 and 1949–50, and as foreign minister during Dien Bien Phu he even asked the US for atomic bombs. An irreconcilable opponent of Algerian independence, he organized a clandestine 'second CNR' in 1962, lost his parliamentary immunity, and spent four years in Brazilian exile before the 1968 amnesty.

Government and administration France state institutions 1900–1940 ✕ Killed in action

The undersecretary for leisure and sport who designed the workers' first holidays

'Our simple and human aim is to let the mass of French youth find joy and health in sport, and to organize the leisure of the workers so that they may enjoy the joy of life and the dignity regained', radio address on taking office, 10 June 1936

A lawyer and Socialist deputy who took the post the Blum government created first in the world: undersecretary for leisure and sport. With the railways' 40-per-cent-discount 'popular tickets', a boom in youth hostels and a popular sports certificate, he organized 600,000 first paid holidays in the summer of 1936, defining leisure policy as the restoration of dignity to workers. Volunteering for service in 1939, he was killed by shellfire on the Aisne front on 9 June 1940. Thousands of stadiums and gymnasiums across France carry his name today.

Government and administration France state institutions 1902–1989 ○ Natural causes

A Radical Socialist who defended the Republic

“Long live the Republic all the same!”

Vincent Badie was a French Radical Socialist lawyer and politician who worked in local government and parliament, defending veterans and republican institutions. In July 1940 he accepted that constitutional revision might be considered, but rejected transferring power to Pétain in a way that would abolish the Republic; he tried to present a motion signed by 27 parliamentarians and then voted against the grant of full powers. After Vichy suspended him as mayor, he joined the Resistance, was arrested, and deported to Dachau. After the war he returned to parliament and twice served as minister for veterans, while also defending French colonial rule and overseas presence.