The First cabinet of Jules Dufaure was the 54th cabinet of France and the second of the Third Republic, seating from 19 February 1871[1] to 18 May 1873,[2] headed by Jules Dufaure as Vice-President of the Council of Ministers[3] and Minister of Justice, under the presidency of Adolphe Thiers.

[5] Their initial project was a third Restoration of descendants of either the Bourbons or the Orléans;[6] the Republic was merely seen at that time by royalists as a system of transition before the return of a constitutional monarchy.

However, Jules Dufaure succeeded in assembling a coalition of Opportunists, Legitimists, Orleanists and independent Liberals, while leaving Bonapartists, marginalized following the fall of the Second Empire,[6] and Radicals, openly in favour of the pursuit of the war, out of the majority.

On 18 May 1873, Adolphe Thiers, wishing to reorganize the government and to make it more republican leaning, asked the cabinet to resign and tasked Jules Dufaure to form a new one, leading to the formation of the Cabinet Dufaure II.

[2] The main actions of the government were to deal with the Paris Commune[7] and to end the Franco-Prussian War by conducting negotiations with Bismarck before signing the Treaty of Frankfurt and reducing the indemnity requested by Prussia to five billion francs.