1873 in France

Events from the year 1873 in France.

Incumbents

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.

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){{cite web |title=Alice Guy-Blaché {{!}} French director |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Guy-Blache |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date=10 April 2020 |language=en}}
4 August –
Joseph Paul-Boncour, politician (died 1972)
Alice Pruvot-Fol, malacologist (died 1972)
14 August
Madeleine Fournier-Sarlovèze, golfer (died 1962){{cite web |title=Olympedia – Madeleine Fournier-Sarlovèze |url=https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/17845 |website=www.olympedia.org |access-date=20 July 2021}}
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)

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)