Jules Favre

France state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1809–1880 ○ Natural causes

Foreign minister who vowed not to yield "an inch of territory" and then negotiated the armistice and the Treaty of Frankfurt

Born in Lyon, he became a lawyer and declared himself a republican from 1830. He tried with Victor Hugo to resist the coup of 1851 and was elected for Paris in 1858 as one of the republican "Five" opposing the Empire. With Thiers he opposed the war of 1870, and after Sedan demanded the emperor's deposition. As vice-president and foreign minister of the Government of National Defence he declared on 6 September that France would not yield "an inch of territory nor a single stone of the fortresses", only to hear Bismarck's demand for Alsace-Lorraine at Ferrières. He arranged the armistice of 28 January 1871 without knowing the state of the armies and failed to report that the Army of the East was excluded, so that it had to retreat into Switzerland. Discredited after the Treaty of Frankfurt, he withdrew in August 1871, became a senator in 1876 and died in 1880.

Also known as: Jules Claude Gabriel Favre