Jules Favre

When Louis Napoleon was elected President of France, Favre openly opposed him.On 2 December 1851 he tried with Victor Hugo and others to organize armed resistance in the streets of Paris.

After the coup d'état, he withdrew from politics, returned to the legal profession, distinguishing himself by his defence of Felice Orsini, the perpetrator of the attack against the life of Napoleon III.

[1] In the government of National Defence he became vice-president under General Trochu, and minister of foreign affairs, with the onerous task of negotiating peace with victorious Germany.

His famous statement on 6 September 1870, that he "would not yield to Germany an inch of territory nor a single stone of the fortresses" was a piece of oratory which Bismarck met on the 19th by his declaration to Favre that Alsace and Lorraine had to be ceded as a condition of peace.

By a grave oversight, he neglected to inform Léon Gambetta that the Army of the East (80,000 men) was not included in the armistice, and it was thus obliged to retreat to neutral territory.

Although Favre recognized these children as his own legally, the story did not become known generally until after 1871, when his bungling of the diplomacy with Bismarck left him a good target for political enemies.