The Jules Ferry laws are a set of French laws, which established first free education (1881) then mandatory and laic education (1882). Proposed by the (Republican) Minister of Public Instruction Jules Ferry, they were a crucial step in the grounding of the Third Republic (1871-1940), dominated until the 16 May 1877 crisis by the Catholic Legitimists who dreamed of a return to the Ancien Régime. These laws on public education are in part a consequence of the defeat of the 1870 war with Prussia: the German soldiers were considered to be better educated than Frenchmen, and this its existence, the Third Republic, dominated by the Radical-Socialist Party, would rest in a large part on those middle-class civil servants, which included teachers.