After convalescing, MacMahon was appointed head of the Versailles army, which suppressed the Paris Commune revolt in May 1871 and set the stage for his political career.

According to David Bell, after Thiers' resignation in May 1873, the royalist majority in the National Assembly drafted MacMahon as the new leader, with the hope that he would hold the fort until the Bourbon pretender was ready to restore the throne.

The right had no choice but to keep MacMahon in office to gain time and act as a barrier to the left by repressing radical agitation and pursuing policies to restore "moral order" to the country.

[2] MacMahon was a devout conservative Catholic, and a traditionalist who despised anarchism, communism, socialism and liberalism and strongly distrusted the mostly secular Republicans.

He kept to his duty as the neutral guardian of the Constitution and rejected suggestions of a monarchist coup d'état, but refused to meet with Gambetta, the leader of the Republicans.

Patrice de MacMahon (as he was usually known before being elevated to a ducal title in his own right) was born in Sully near Autun, in the département of Saône-et-Loire.

He was the 16th of 17 children of a family already in the French nobility; his grandfather Knight Lord Overlord Jean-Baptiste de MacMahon,[7] was named Marquis de MacMahon and 1st Marquis d'Éguilly (from his wife Charlotte Le Belin, Dame d'Éguilly) by King Louis XV, and the family in France had decidedly royalist politics.

In 1820, MacMahon entered the Petit Séminaire des Marbres at Autun; then completed his education at Lycée Louis-le-Grand at Paris.

MacMahon subsequently participated in the French conquest of Algeria as a sous-lieutenant in the 20th Line Infantry Regiment [fr].

He led several audacious cavalry raids across tribal occupied plains and distinguished himself during the Siege of Constantine, in 1837, where he was slightly wounded.

In 1840, he left Africa (Algeria) and upon his return to France, he learnt that he had been promoted to chef d'escadron (cavalry squadron chief).

In May 1841, he returned again to Algeria at the head of the 10th Chasseur Battalion à Pied [fr] with whom he distinguished himself, in April, at the Battle of Bab el-Thaza and against the troops of Emir Abdelkader, on 25 May.

Since 1848, MacMahon was nominated at the head of the subdivision of Tlemcen, where he was designated as a général de brigade on 12 June of the same year.

In 1852 MacMahon organized in Algeria the plebiscite of legitimation by universal suffrage destined to approve the French coup d'état of 1851.

During the Crimean War, he was given command of the 1st Infantry Division of the 2nd Orient Army Corps and, in September 1855, he won a victory at the Battle of Malakoff during the Siege of Sevastopol.

On his return to France, he voted as senator against a new law on general security, proposed after the failed assassination attempt of Felice Orsini against Emperor Napoleon III; the law (which passed) allowed easier government action against "enemies of the Empire" and those suspected of political crimes, and made anyone who did not pledge allegiance to Napoleon III ineligible for the legislature.

For his military services, he was appointed a Marshal of France by Emperor Napoleon III, and awarded the title of Duke of Magenta.

MacMahon favoured a restoration of the monarchy but when this project failed, accepted a seven-year mandate which the Assembly gave him on 9 November 1873.

In his still unpublished memoirs, MacMahon described his political convictions: "By family tradition, and by the sentiments towards the royal house which were instilled in me by my early education, I could not be anything but a Legitimist."

Nevertheless, in November 1873, he refused to meet with the Bourbon claimant to the throne, Henri, Count of Chambord, as he thought this incompatible with his duties as President of the Republic.

Bismarck did not seek war either, but the unexpected crisis forced him to take into consideration the alarm that his aggressive policies, plus Germany's fast-growing power, were causing among its neighbors.

Hoping for a conservative victory, MacMahon then convinced the Senate to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, and campaigned across the country, while protesting that he had no intention of overthrowing the Republic.

MacMahon attempted first to form a government under General Gaëtan de Rochebouët, but the Chamber refused to cooperate with him.

Faced with a decree which revolved around confiscating and diminishing a number of military authorities and commands to certain generals, MacMahon preferred to resign on 30 January 1879.

[20] From 1887 to 1893, he directed the Société de secours aux blessés militaires (S.S.B.M.—Rescue Society of Wounded Military), which in 1940 became the French Red Cross.

The five cordons (ornamental cords) of the funeral chariot were held by General Victor Février [fr], Grand Chancellor of the Legion d'Honneur; Admiral Henri Rieunier, Minister of the Navy; General Julien Loizillon [fr], Minister of War; Senator Charles Merlin; and M.