The Republic was also rocked by a series of crises, none more notorious that the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, when a Jewish officer in the French Army was wrongly jailed on charges of spying for Germany. This claim played on all the fears and perspectives of all sides. Monarchists and right-wing Roman Catholics, many of whom were anti-semitic, and in some cases blaming a "Jewish plot" for the triumph of republicanism, immediately attacked Dreyfus and refused to consider the possibility that he was innocent. Others on the left, still fighting the 'monarchy versus republic' battle, championed his cause, irrespective of his guilt or innocence. When it became clear that he was indeed totally innocent and the victim of a conspiracy, the state itself failed to accept his innocence straight away, and even when he was released from his exile, whispering campaigns still suggested he was actually guilty. In the aftermath of the affair, when the truth finally did come out, the reputations of monarchists and conservative Catholics, who had expressed unbridled anti-semitism were severely damaged. So too was the state by its unwillingness to right what had clearly been a major wrong visited on an innocent and loyal officer.
Despite this turmoil, the midpoint of the Third Republic was known as the belle epoque in France, a golden time of beauty, innovation, and peace with its European neighbors. New inventions made life easier at all social levels, the cultural scene thrived, cabaret, cancan, and the cinema were born, and art took new forms with Impressionism and Art Nouveau. But the glory of this turn-of-the-century time period came to an end with the outbreak of World War I.
France is a nation of varied landscapes, ranging from coastal lowlands and broad plains in the north, to hilly uplands in south central France, to lush valleys and towering, snow-capped Alps in the east.
France first attained cultural preeminence in Europe during the Middle Ages; later, the wealth of the French crown in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries provided a subsidization of art on a scale comparable to that of the papacy in Rome, attracting to Paris many of Europe’s most talented artists and artisans.
Under provisions established in the Maastricht Treaty, France is among a group of EMU members that have adopted a single, multinational currency, the euro.
The French ThirdRepublic, sometimes written as the IIIrd Republic (1870-1940), was the governing body of France between the Second Empire and the Fourth Republic.
By the late 1870s, with public opinion swinging heavily in favour of a republic, the President of the Republic, Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta, himself a monarchist, made one last desparate attempt to salvage the monarchical cause by dismissing the republic-orientated prime minister and appointing a monarchist duke to office.
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