"Liberté, égalité, fraternité"NationFrance
LeaderPresident Benito Beaudoin
HistoryA month after the war, things got worst as people were now waiting in line for bread and the soldiers for the war were getting tired of it. It was getting worse that the women and the elderly had to work for poor wages as the casualties were high. People were disliking the government every week as they tried to make the country stable before the war. But, the Great War changed people as they never saw a war going on for years and with the high amount of casualties never seen before in any war.
When the announcement that the arts programs in schools were getting cut, a group of prominent poets and musicians
took over the administration building at Nanterre University. They held a meeting about class discrimination in French society and the political bureaucracy that controlled the university's funding. The university's administration soon called the police and demanded that the students get out of the building. As soon as the meeting ended, the students left the building without any trouble. This caused students to distrust the police and the administration at the university. After months of conflicts between students and authorities, the university was finally closed.
After hearing about the closing of Nanterre, students at the Sorbonne University met to protest against the closure. With the help for The Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (UNEF), the number of protesters grew to 20,000 as the police arrived. The high school student unions, then joined the protesters at the famous Arc de Triomphe to demand three things happen after the protest:
1) All criminal charges against arrested students, teachers, and supporters be dropped,
2) The police leave the universities,
3) And the authorities reopen them.
Government officials didn't like the list that much; but, a 'leak report' that the government reopened the universities surfaced. The students ended the protesting and returned to their schools. But, students at the universities were shocked that police were still there. When students tried to enter the universities, they were sent back by police forces and some were even arrested. They now had a near revolutionary fervor.
After the false reports surfaced, a massive protest was held at Rive Gauche. When the police again blocked them from crossing the river, the crowd threw up barricades and said that they weren't leaving the bridge. After hours of negotiations, the police attacked the crowd at 2:15 in the morning. The confrontation, which produced hundreds of arrests and injuries, lasted until dawn of the following day. The events were broadcast on radio as they occurred and the aftermath was shown on television the following day. Many people were upset at the police force for treating the people harshly.
The government's heavy-handed reaction brought on a wave of sympathy for the strikers as mainstream singers and poets joined after the heavy-handed police brutality came to light. Artists all over the word also began voicing support of the strikers. The major left union federations, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and the Force Ouvrière (CGT-FO), called a one-day general strike and demonstration. Then, over a million people marched through Paris on that day; the police stayed largely out of sight. The Prime Minister personally announced the release of the prisoners and the reopening of the university.
After the university reopened, students occupied it and declared it an autonomous "people's university". Public opinion supported the students' actions at the university. The police couldn't do anything without upsetting the people more, so the police was put on hold until they could retake the university.
While the students were protesting, the factory workers were tired of not getting enough money for their work. A group of them decided to do a sit-down strike at the Sud Aviation plant, the first factory to start the protest. This was the start as workers had occupied roughly fifty factories on the first day, and 200,000 were on strike by the next. That figure snowballed to two million workers on strike the following day and then ten million, or roughly two-thirds of the French workforce, on strike the following week.
The police tried to contain this spontaneous outbreak of militancy by channeling it into a struggle for higher wages and other economic demands. Workers put forward a broader, more political and more radical agenda, demanding the ousting of the government and the president attempting, in some cases, to run their factories. But, the demands were changed to fit the The Ministry of Social Affairs' deal, which increased the minimum wage by 25% and the average salaries by 10% to the workers. The deal was rejected, and the strike went on as the working class and top intellectuals were joining in solidarity for a major change in workers' rights.
With the massive numbers, a meeting of the UNEF, the most outstanding of the events, proceeded and gathered 30,000 to 50,000 people in the Stade Sebastien Charlety. The meeting was extremely militant with speakers demanding the government be overthrown and elections held. The parties demanded it as well, start with the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left declared that "there is no more state" and stated that they were ready to form a new government. A day after the meeting, the president suddenly disappears from the public eye. He had gone to Germany in order to get somewhere safe from his family, if the government was overthrown. As soon as his disappearance made headlines, the people were declaring that the president had left the country. Crowds were formed to celebrated the news and fireworks could be heard in Paris.
During the time of celebration, the government was in panic mode as they were removing classified information or planning out their escape. During that time, the Prime Minister took over and acted like the government during the chaos moments. He demanded that the military find the President and bring him to safely as he was afraid that he was kidnapped or worse. As soon as the President heard the news, he returned to France and told the people that he was in Germany doing something 'personal'. The people believed that he was planning his escape route if the revolution did break out.
After the President's speech, 400,000 to 500,000 protesters (many more than the 50,000 the police were expecting) led by the CGT met and marched through Paris, chanting that the President must leave. The head of the Paris' police force told the officers to not use force; however, his word didn't mean anything. The protest was largely centered around the Paris metropolitan area, and not elsewhere. Soon, they started to occupy a key public building in the heart of Paris: Les Invalides. They weren't doing anything harmful, but the government used military troops to force them out. Soon, it turned bloody as a soldier shot at one of them. Claiming that he was running towards him with something on his hand, even known people claimed that he just shot him for no reason. After the shot was fired, a couple more soldiers fired into the crowd out of fear until they were told to stop. Five died and three were wounded for gunshots at Les Invalides.
After the shooting, the people were getting ready to force the government to change in both a peaceful and harmful way. The revolution had begun due to the resulting casualties in the streets of Paris. The Socialist Party and French Communist Party gains public support quickly as the revolution starts in Paris and spreads all over France. The government and military are confused by the revolution as officials left the country or captured by the rebels. Two months of fighting between police and military forces and the people turned France into another war zone as towns were damaged and Paris was on fire.
This revolution would end with the president's death as he and his family were caught escaping a month and a half after the revolution started. The family was killed in the car, that they were escaping in, and the President was taken to an unknown location. Days later, camera filmed the execution of the President as a man waited for the President's last words to be said and then fired three bullets to the head. The revolution had ended. The parties had done well gaining the support needed for the elections in the coming months.
After the people voted, they founded out that the Socialist Party won the election as their president's name was called. The Communist Party was such that they would gain the next election; but, due to leadership changes and the fears of Communism later on would lower them. After the president was elected to office, he introduced several reforms and programs over his term and tried to improve his country. France would be improved until the Great Depression, which almost caused France to enter another revolution. But, the government was able to fix them before the fire could spread.
During that time, France improved relations by helping Britain restore their monarchy as they realized that their king was in France. After sending supplies to them, they became close friends and still are to this day. However, they had to give up almost all of their colonies in order to force back at home. Lost to rebellions or sold them to other countries, France was such to rebuild themselves and become once more a powerful nation in this world.
