Adolphe Thiers

Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877) was a French statesman and historian who served as Prime Minister under King Louis-Philippe and became the first President of the French Third Republic (1871–1873). Educated in law in Aix-en-Provence, he gained early fame as a liberal journalist and author of the monumental ten-volume History of the French Revolution.

Following the catastrophic defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Thiers was elected Chief Executive by the National Assembly. He negotiated the Treaty of Frankfurt with Bismarck and successfully floated massive national loans to pay the five-billion-franc indemnity ahead of schedule, earning the title 'Liberator of the Territory' (Libérateur du Territoire). In May 1871, he ruthlessly suppressed the Paris Commune before famously establishing the Third Republic as 'the government that divides us least'.