Presidents of the Republic [see also Republics]. There was no president of the First Republic. The Second Republic had one president, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (subsequently Emperor Napoleon III), elected for a term of four years in 1848. Under the Third and Fourth Republics the president was elected for a term of seven years by both chambers voting together. Under the Fifth Republic a referendum organized by de Gaulle in 1962 decided that the president, whose powers were much increased, should be elected for a term of seven years by direct universal suffrage.
Presidents of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Republics have been as follows:
| Third Republic | |
| 1871-3 | Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) |
| 1873-9 | Maréchal de Macmahon (1808-93) |
| 1879-87 | Jules Grévy (1807-91) |
| 1887-94 | Marie-François-Sadi Carnot (1837-94), |
| 1894-5 | Jean Casimir-Périer (1847-1907) |
| 1895-9 | François-Félix Faure (1841-99) |
| 1899-1906 | Émile Loubet (1838-1920) |
| 1906-13 | Armand Fallières (1841-1931) |
| 1913-20 | Raymond PoincarÉ (1860-1934) |
| 1920 | Paul-Eugène-Louis Deschanel (1855-1922) |
| 1920-4 | Étienne-Alexandre Millerand (1859-1943) |
| 1924-31 | Gaston Doumergue (1863-1937) |
| 1931-2 | Paul Doumer (1857-1932) |
| 1932-40 | Albert Lebrun (1871-1950) |
| Fourth Republic | |
| 1947-54 | Vincent Auriol (1884-1966) |
| 1954-8 | René Coty (1882-1962) |
| Fifth Republic | |
| 1958-69 | Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) |
| 1969-74 | Georges Pompidou (1911-74) |
| 1974-81 | Valéry Giscard D'estaing (b. 1926) |
| 1981-95 | François Mitterrand (1916-96) |
| 1995- | Jacques Chirac (b. 1932) |
The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
