1873 in France

Events from the year 1873 in France.

Incumbents

 * President: Adolphe Thiers (until 24 May), Patrice de MacMahon, Duke of Magenta (starting 24 May)
 * President of the Council of Ministers: Jules Armand Dufaure (until 24 May), Albert, duc de Broglie (starting 24 May)

Events

 * 16 September – German troops leave France upon completion of payment of indemnity for Franco-Prussian War.
 * 27 October - Henry, Count of Chambord, refuses to be crowned 'King Henry V of France' until France abandons its tricolour and returns to the old Bourbon flag.
 * 21 December – Francis Garnier is attacked outside Hanoi by Black Flag mercenaries fighting for the Vietnamese.

Births

 * 2 January – Thérèse de Lisieux, Roman Catholic Carmelite nun, canonised as a saint (died 1897)
 * 28 January – Colette, writer (died 1954)
 * 2 February – Maurice Tourneur, film director and screenwriter (died 1961)
 * 19 February – Louis Feuillade, film director (died 1925)
 * 17 May – Henri Barbusse, novelist, journalist and communist (died 1935)
 * 28 June – Alexis Carrel, surgeon and biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (died 1944)
 * 1 July – Alice Guy-Blaché, pioneer filmmaker, first female film director (died 1968 in the United States)
 * 4 August –
 * Joseph Paul-Boncour, politician (died 1972)
 * Alice Pruvot-Fol, malacologist (died 1972)
 * 14 August
 * Madeleine Fournier-Sarlovèze, golfer (died 1962)
 * Alice Jouenne educator, socialist activist, and writer (died 1954)
 * 8 September – Alfred Jarry, playwright and novelist (died 1907)
 * 25 November – Pierre Lacau, Egyptologist and philologist (died 1963)

Deaths

 * 10 January – Napoleon III of France, first President of the French Republic and only emperor of the Second French Empire (born 1808)
 * 23 January – Louis Gustave Ricard, painter (born 1823)
 * 1 April – Marc Girardin, politician and man of letters (born 1801)
 * 16 April – Joseph Albert Alexandre Glatigny, poet (born 1839)
 * 4 May – Charles Rigault de Genouilly, Admiral (born 1807)
 * 16 June – Eugène Flachat, civil engineer (born 1802)
 * 18 July – Philarète Chasles, critic and man of letters (born 1798)
 * 8 August – Antoine Chintreuil, painter (born 1814)
 * 7 September – Jules Verreaux, botanist and ornithologist (born 1807)
 * 21 September – Auguste Nélaton, physician and surgeon (born 1807)
 * 23 September – Jean Chacornac, astronomer (born 1823)