Alleged military conspiracy of 1877
Faced with a restive Chamber of Deputies intent on imposing its demands and putting an end to the Ordre Moral policy, the Marshal refused to back down.
From then on, the situation escalated: left-wing deputies met to sign Manifesto of the 363 [fr], which condemned the attitude of the president, who appointed Duke Albert de Broglie as head of government.
The monarchists and republicans threw all their weight into the electoral battle, with Minister Oscar Bardi de Fourtou taking firm control of the administration to ensure the victory of the conservatives.
By appointing Rochebouët as President of the council, Mac Mahon reaffirmed his respect for institutions and seemed to be forming a transitional government, thus ruling out the idea of a coup d'état.
General du Barail, for example, wrote in his memoirs that in order to be successful in Seize Mai, he would have acted "by not looking back, by throwing away the scabbard from which the sword had been drawn, by marching straight and fast.
Throughout the May 16th crisis, this staunch Legitimist - he had been elected on that ticket in 1871 - sought to overthrow the Third Republic in order to restore the Comte de Chambord to the French throne.
A journalist using the pseudonym Saint-Genest, Emmanuel-Arthur Bucheron [fr], published editorials sharply criticizing the passivity of the Minister of War, General Berthaut, in the face of the unrest fomented by the Republicans.
[7] In November 1877, Ducrot again played a central role: it was he who proposed to Mac Mahon the formation of a military cabinet in which he would receive the interior portfolio.
He urged Rochebouët to accept, setting as a precondition "that you be allowed to make any changes in the ministerial staff and the garrisons of Paris and Versailles that you deem indispensable, under your responsibility," as a means of bypassing Mac Mahon.
[9] Colonel Théodore Fix, Chief of Staff of the 1st Infantry Division, wrote in his memoirs that he discovered these orders a few months later when he accidentally opened a confidential envelope.
[10]On December 13, 1877, the commander of the 14th infantry regiment, stationed in Limoges, summoned his officers to inform them of General Antoine-Aubin Bressolles's instructions "in case of disturbances in the city".
[11] However, the historian Xavier Boniface believes that Labordère's fears were no longer justified, since on December 13, the military plot had been definitively ruled out and Gaëtan de Rochebouët's government had decided to leave office.
Lastly, General Gaston de Galliffet (commander of the 15th infantry division), whom Gambetta had met on numerous occasions, asserted: "What I would defend in the government is the majority."
These claims were based on Mac Mahon's speech to the army on July 1, 1877, where he declared to soldiers: "Objective evaluations were excluded, and causal connections between statements were established".
[17] On January 6, 1878, L'Estafette [fr], a Bonapartist newspaper, released documents regarding the potential military plot from December 1877, alongside a detailed account of the attempted coup.
The Left sought to conquer the State, but the officer corps represented a significant obstacle due to their conservative views; 88% of its major generals were monarchists.
[9] In a statement released in the Journal Officiel on December 31, 1877, the Ministry of War restated the army's responsibility to restore public order "in the event of disturbances" and highlighted that the conscription law of 1872 resulted in the departure of the class of 1872 in the fall of 1877, which substantially reduced the armed forces stationed in Paris.
[18] To illuminate the matter and challenge the army's traditionalism within social issues, the commission assigned to investigate the legislative elections of October 1877, led by the newly Republican-dominated Chamber, opted to expand their inquiry into the supposed conspiracy of December 1877.
[6] After the victory of the left in the senatorial elections of 1879 [fr], the purge of general officers with monarchist convictions continued, affecting some of the instigators of the alleged military conspiracy of December 1877.
[6] In fact, the only general who might have been involved in the December 1877 plot and who remained in a prominent position after this political change was Joseph de Miribel, who, despite his reactionary views and the role he might have played in the attempted coup, was held in high esteem by Léon Gambetta, who called him back to the prestigious post of army chief of staff in 1881.
