L’Ancien Régime Reborn : Does recent unrest spell the end for the Fifth Republic?

On May 7^th, 2017 Emmanuel Macron marched through the gates of the Louvre to the thunderous cheers of thousands of French citizens. This walk marked the culmination of a meteoric rise, the likes of which are rarely seen. However, the true significance of this pageantry wouldn’t have been recognised by many foreign on lookers. Although the grandeur of Versailles came to represent the excess of the French monarchy in later years, the Louvre was the Bourbon’s main residence for over a century, and this fact was not lost on the French public. Macron had presented himself to be a continuation in a bizarre phenomenon in French politics. Since the 1789 revolution, it seems the French political system has attracted and promoted providential men, in what, political historian, Jean Garrigues refers to as a “nostalgia for the unifying figure of the monarch”.

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