1895 in France

Incumbents

• President: Jean Casimir-Perier, Felix Faure
• President of the Council of Ministers:
• * until 26 January: Charles Dupuy
• * 26 January–1 November: Alexandre Ribot
• * starting 1 November: Léon Bourgeois

Events

• 1 January – Alphonse Mucha's lithographed poster for the play Gismonda starring Sarah Bernhardt is posted in Paris. Bernhardt is so satisfied with its success that she gives Mucha a six-year contract.
• 5 January – The military degradation of Alfred Dreyfus takes place on the Champ de Mars, Paris.
• 17 January – Félix Faure is elected President of French Republic after the resignation of Jean Casimir-Perier.
• 17 January – Dreyfus is moved into a military reformatory on the island of Ré.
• 21 February – Dreyfus is put on board ship to be exiled.
• 15 March – Dreyfus is landed on Devil's Island off French Guiana.
• 22 March – Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière make what is probably the first presentation of a projected celluloid film moving picture, the 46-second Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, to members of the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale in Paris.
• 3 July – Painter Paul Gauguin leaves France to settle permanently in Polynesia.
• 27 August – Swami Vivekananda is invited by the Paris Congress to deliver a speech on Psychic Prana.
• 1 October – French troops capture Antananarivo, Madagascar.
• November – Painter Paul Cézanne has his first solo exhibition, at the Paris gallery of Ambroise Vollard.
• 22 October – Montparnasse derailment: A railway locomotive runs through the exterior wall of the Gare Montparnasse terminus in Paris.
• 28 December – Auguste and Louis Lumière make what is probably the first commercial public screening of projected moving picture films to a paying audience, at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris.

Literature

• Joris-Karl Huysmans - En Route
• Jules Verne - ''L'Île à hélice''

Sport

• 11 June – The Paris–Bordeaux–Paris automobile trial is held.
• 24 September–31 October – The Automobile Club de France sponsors the longest race to date, a event from Bordeaux to Agen and back. Because it is held in ten stages, it can be considered the first rally. The first three places are taken by a Panhard, a Panhard, and a three-wheeler De Dion-Bouton.

Births

January to March

• 29 January – Pierre Gaxotte, historian
• 11 February – Maurice Cottenet, soccer player
• 28 February – Marcel Pagnol, novelist, playwright and filmmaker
• 2 March – Marcel Carpentier, military officer
• 16 March – Ernest Labrousse, historian
• 20 March – Robert Benoist, motor racing driver and war hero
• 30 March
• * Père Marie-Benoît, friar who helps smuggle Jews to safety from Nazi-occupied Southern France
• * Jean Giono, author

April to June

• 5 April – Fernand Mourlot, printer and publisher
• 3 May – Gabriel Chevallier, novelist
• 4 May – René Mayer, politician and Prime Minister of France
• 11 May – Jacques Brugnon, tennis player
• 9 June – Henri Diamant-Berger, screenwriter, film director and producer
• 12 June – Eugénie Brazier, cook

July to September

• 2 July – Gen Paul, painter and engraver
• 7 August – Alain Saint-Ogan, comics author and artist
• 20 August – Albert Gilles, copper craftsman
• 18 September – Jean Batmale, soccer player

October to December

• 9 October – René Lasserre, rugby union player
• 3 November – Pierre Richard-Willm, actor
• 5 November – Walter Gieseking, pianist and composer
• 20 November
• * Pierre Cot, politician
• * Germain Jousse, member of the French Resistance
• 25 November – Adrienne Bolland, test pilot and first woman to fly over the Andes
• 27 November – Pierre-Paul Grassé, zoologist
• 29 November – Edgard de Larminat, General
• 9 December – Marguerite Huré, stained glass artist
• 14 December – Paul Éluard, poet

Deaths

January to June

• 10 January – Benjamin Godard, violinist and composer
• 28 January – François Certain de Canrobert, Marshal of France
• 29 January – Charles Frédéric Girard, biologist
• 16 February – André Garin, missionary and parish priest
• 19 February – Auguste Vacquerie, journalist and man of letters
• 11 March – Louis-Florentin Calmeil, psychiatrist and medical historian
• 22 April – Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, artist, astronomer and amateur entomologist, introduced the gypsy moth into North America
• 11 May – Auguste-Théodore-Paul de Broglie, professor of apologetics
• 22 May – Claude Marie Dubuis, second Roman Catholic bishop of Texas
• 28 May – Alexandre Martin, socialist statesman

July to December

• 19 July – Henri Ernest Baillon, botanist and physician
• 16 August – Mathieu Auguste Geffroy, historian
• 28 September – Louis Pasteur, chemist and microbiologist
• 24 November – Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, philosopher, journalist and statesman
• 27 November – Alexandre Dumas, fils, writer, author and playwright
• 11 December – Jean-Baptiste Joseph Émile Montégut, critic
• 31 December – Père Jean Marie Delavay, missionary, explorer and botanist