1857 in France
Events from the year 1857 in France.
Incumbents
Events
- 3 March - France and the United Kingdom formally declare war on China in the Second Opium War.
- 27 April - First horse race run at Longchamp Racecourse in Paris.
- 21 June - Legislative election held.
- 5 July - Legislative election held for the second legislature of the French Second Empire.
Arts and literature
- 18 April - The Spirits' Book, one of The Five Fundamental Works of Spiritism, is published by the French educator Allan Kardec.
- The Flowers of Evil, an immensely influential collection of Charles Baudelaire's first poems, is published.
Births
- 4 January - Émile Cohl, caricaturist, cartoonist and animator
- 18 January - Eugène Gley, physiologist and endocrinologist
- 12 February - Eugène Atget, photographer
- 26 February - Émile Coué, psychologist and pharmacist
- 3 March - Alfred Bruneau, composer
- 22 March - Paul Doumer, President of France
- 30 March - Léon Charles Thévenin, telegraph engineer
- 1 June - Le Pétomane, flatulist
- 29 June - Jean-François Klobb, colonial officer
- 10 August - Georges Aaron Bénédite, Egyptologist
Deaths
- 22 February - Joseph Crétin, first Roman Catholic Bishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota
- 2 May - Alfred de Musset, dramatist, poet and novelist
- 11 May - Eugène François Vidocq, criminal, later first director of Sûreté Nationale
- 17 May - Adolphe Dureau de la Malle, geographer, naturalist, historian and artist
- 23 May - Augustin Louis Cauchy, mathematician
- 30 June - Alcide d'Orbigny, naturalist
- 29 July - Charles Lucien Bonaparte, naturalist and ornithologist
- 3 August - Eugène Sue, novelist
- 5 September - Auguste Comte, philosopher
- 28 October - Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, General
- 23 December - Achille Devéria, painter and lithographer