Léon Gambetta

Léon Michel Gambetta (1838–1882) was a French republican statesman and orator of Genoese descent from Cahors who was the foundational hero of the French Third Republic. Gaining national celebrity in 1868 for a brilliant legal defense of a radical republican journalist that electrified opposition to Napoleon III, Gambetta entered the Legislative Body in 1869.

Following the French surrender at Sedan on September 4, 1870, Gambetta stood on the balcony of Paris City Hall to proclaim the Third Republic. Serving as Minister of the Interior, he famously escaped besieged Paris on October 7 in the hot air balloon Armand-Barbès, establishing a provisional government at Tours and raising a heroic new army of 600,000 men. Throughout the 1870s, his legendary campaign 'Clericalism, that is the enemy!' and charismatic parliamentary leadership permanently defeated monarchist restoration plots.