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EPUBLICAN   FRANCE 

1870-1912- 


HER  PRESIDENTS,  STATESMEN,  POLICY 
VICISSITUDES  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE 


BV 

LE  PETIT  HOMME  ROUGE 

(ERNEST  ALFRED  VIZETELLY) 

I 

AUTHOR    OF    'THE    COURT    OF    THE    TUILERIES,     1852-1870,'    ETC. 


1  La  Ripublique,  c'est  la  forme  de 
gouvernement  qui  nous  divise  le  moins.' 
— Thiers. 


WITH  NINE  PORTRAITS 


LONDON 

HOLDEN   &   HARDINGHAM 
ADELPHI 

MCMXII 


TO 

MY  DEAR  DAUGHTER 
MARIE   ERNESTINE   VIZETELLY 

I    DEDICATE   THIS    RECORD 
OF    HER    MOTHER'S    LAND   AND    PEOPLE 


;  (  256232 


/ 


PREFACE 

This  work  is  an  attempt  to  tell  the  story  of  the  present  French 
Republic  from  its  foundation  onward,  and,  in  particular,  to 
recount  the  careers  of  its  most  eminent  public  men.  For  well 
nigh  fifty  years  I  have  been  much  attached  to  France  and  her 
people.  I  was  taken  to  France  in  my  boyhood,  I  found  there 
my  home  and  my  alma  mater,  I  loved  and  married  there,  and  it 
was  there* too  that  I  formed  some  of  the  firmest  friendships  of 
my  life.  But  remembering  that  it  is  incumbent  on  any  writer 
who  attempts  to  recount  some  period  of  a  nation's  life,  to  tell 
the  whole  truth,  as  far  as  he  can  ascertain  it,  and  that  no  useful 
purpose  is  ever  served  by  shirking  unpleasant  facts,  I  have 
not  penned  in  the  following  pages  any  panegyric  of  France 
and  the  French.  I  have  certainly  tried  to  show  the  nation 
rising  from  the  depths  of  disaster,  gathering  fresh  strength, 
and  again  taking  the  position  due  to  it  by  right  of  its 
genius.  I  have  also  tried  to  show  the  Republican  idea — 
limited,  at  first,  to  a  portion  of  the  population, —  spreading 
gradually  through  the  country,  and  developing  into  something 
far  beyond  what  several  of  the  most  prominent  founders  of  the 
regime  would  have  thought  either  likely  or  advisable.  Again, 
I  have  striven  to  depict  that  regime  resisting  every  assault, 
triumphing  over  every  enemy,  and  demonstrating,  by  its 
stability,  the  existence  of  far  greater  stability  of  character 
among  the  nation  than  the  latter  had  been  credited  with  for 
many  years. 

But  if  I  have  spoken  of  progress  made,  of  great  achieve- 
ments accomplished,  I  have  not  hesitated  to  chronicle  faults 
wherever  I  have  found  them.  I  have  felt  constrained  to  write 
with  some  severity  of  certain  trends  of  policy,  ambitions, 
occurrences,  and  other  matters ;  and  I  have  not  overlooked  the 
occasional  foolish  impulses  of  the  masses,  for  the  most  part 


viii  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

happily  checked  before  too  much  harm  was  done,  and  entitled, 
after  all,  to  the  leniency  which  should  be  extended  to  the 
errors  of  those  who  are  deceived  by  self-seeking  leaders.  In 
sketching  my  principal  characters  I  have  endeavoured  to  set 
forth  all  the  good  points  they  displayed,  yet  allowing  their 
warts  to  be  seen,  if  warts  they  had.  My  one  desire  has  been 
to  make  my  portraits  as  true  to  life  as  possible.  Moreover, 
there  are  pages  in  which  I  have  sought  to  justify  and  rehabili- 
tate certain  prominent  men,  judged  with  undue  harshness,  in 
my  opinion,  by  the  majority  of  their  compatriots ;  and  it  may 
so  prove  that,  being  able  to  look  at  certain  things  more 
dispassionately,  more  impartially,  than  would  be  possible  for 
most  Frenchmen,  I  have  now  and  again  got  nearer  to  the  truth 
than  they  could  get.  In  any  case,  whatever  may  be  the  imper- 
fections of  this  book,  it  has  been  written  in  good  faith,  with  a 
sincere  desire  to  place  before  its  readers  an  accurate  account  of 
the  period  of  French  history  which  I  have  dealt  with. 

I  must  add,  however,  that  the  work  has  long  been  in  pre- 
paration, and  that  for  a  considerable  period  a  variety  of 
circumstances  delayed  its  publication ;  in  such  wise  that  it  has 
become  necessary  for  me  to  draft  several  errata  and  addenda 
which  will  be  found  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  Moreover,  as 
some  of  my  readers  may  be  acquainted  with  my  history  of  the 
Anarchists,  I  would  point  out  that  the  account  of  the  French 
branch  of  the  sect  which  will  be  found  in  my  present  pages, 
embodies,  in  a  slightly  abridged  form,  much  the  same  informa- 
tion as  that  given  by  me  in  the  work  in  which  I  dealt  with  the 
Anarchists  generally.  It  was,  however,  incumbent  on  me  to 
include  this  matter,  for  no  history  of  the  Third  Republic  could 
be  deemed  complete  if  it  omitted  an  account  of  the  French 
Anarchist  Terror  and  the  assassination  of  President  Carnot. 

E.  A.  V. 

Paris,  1912. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.    INTRODUCTION  ........  1 

II.    THIERS THE    GERMANS    IN    PARIS THE    COMMUNE  .  .  30 

III.  THE   NATIONAL   ASSEMBLY THIERS,  FIRST  PRESIDENT  OF   THE 

REPUBLIC THE    PRETENDERS  ......  70 

IV.  THE     ELYSEE      PALACE PARISIAN     LIFE FALL     OF     THIERS 

MACMAHON,    PRESIDENT 108 

V.    UNDER     MACMAHON THE     ROYALIST     FUSION  —  THE    WHITE 

FLAG THE    THRONE    LOST BAZAINE    AND    HIS    TRIAL  .        136 

VI.    THE    SEPTENNATE PARIS   SALONS   AND    CLUBS THE    REPUBLI- 
CAN   CONSTITUTION    AND    ELECTIONS THE    GREAT    CHURCH 

CRUSADE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .170 

VII.    THE     SIXTEENTH     OF     MAY GAMBETTA     AND     THIERS THE 

GREAT    EXHIBITION MACMAHON's    DEFEAT    AND    FALL  .       200 

VIII.    GREVY'S     PRESIDENCY      AND      GAMBETTA's      PREDOMINANCE 

STATE,    CHURCH,    AND    EDUCATION EGYPT    AND    TUNIS  .       227 

IX.    "THE     GREAT     MINISTRY" GAMBETTA'S     LAST     YEARS     AND 

DEATH 247 

X.    JULES     FERRY     AND     THE     FRENCH     COLONIAL     EMPIRE THE 

EXPULSION  OF  THE    PRINCES BOULANGER  AND  GERMANY 

V'         THE    WILSON    SCANDAL    AND    GREVY's    FALL  .  .  .       277 

ix 


x  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

CHAP.  PAGE 

xi.  carnot's    presidency — boulangEr's    apogee    and    AFTER- 
WARDS          .........  307 

XII.    THE    GREAT    PANAMA    SCANDAL 343 

XIII.  THE    ANARCHIST    TERROR THE    ASSASSINATION    OF    CARNOT    .  372 

XIV.  THE      PRESIDENCIES     OF     JEAN     CASIMIR  -  PERIER     AND     FELIX 

FAURE 404 

XV.    THE    PRESIDENCY   OF    ^MILE  LOUBET THE    RUSSIAN   ALLIANCE 

AND    THE    ENTENTE    CORDIALE 449 

XVI.    THE    PRESIDENCY    OF    ARMAND    FALLIERES CONCLUSION              .  466 

ADDENDA    AND    ERRATA 489 

INDEX 493 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


I.    ADOLPHE    THIERS    . 
II.    LEON    GAMBETTA    IN    1870 
III.    MARSHAL    MACMAHON 
IV.    JULES    GREVY 
V.    SADI    CARNOT 
VI.    JEAN    CASIMIR-PERIER 
VII.    FELIX    FAURE 
VIII.    EMILE    LOUBET 
IX.    ARMAND    FALLIERES 


.     Frontispiece 

To  face  page    32 

128 

226 


392 
424 
448 
466 


XI 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


CHAPTER   I 

INTRODUCTION 

The  Revolution  of  1870  :  An  Episode — Leon  Gambetta — General  Trochu — 
Jules  Favre — Other  Members  of  the  Government  of  National  Defence — 
Some  of  its  Errors — The  Germans  and  the  Continuance  of  the  War — The 
Fighting  in  the  Provinces — Disadvantages  and  Hardships  of  the  French 
— The  Army  of  the  Loire — The  great  Battle  of  Le  Mans — The  Arctic 
Retreat — A  Recollection  of  Lord  Kitchener — The  Siege  and  Capitulation 
of  Paris — France  and  her  Armies  at  the  Armistice — Gambetta's  Efforts 
— The  Necessity  of  Peace — Fall  of  Gambetta — The  Elections — Thiers 
Chief  of  the  Executive  Power. 

It  was  the  afternoon  of  Sunday,  September  4,  1870 — the  third 
day  after  the  disaster  of  Sedan.  The  Second  Empire  had 
fallen,  Napoleon  III.  was  a  prisoner  of  war,  the  Empress 
Eugenie  a  fugitive.  While  thousands  of  Parisians  were  still 
streaming  towards  the  H6tel-de-Ville,  there  to  acclaim  the 
Government  of  the  new  Republic,  a  little  cortege  passed  along 
the  Avenue  Marigny  in  the  direction  of  the  Place  Beauvau, 
adjacent  to  the  Ely  see  Palace.  At  the  head  of  it  came  a  dozen 
red-shirted  Francs-tireurs  de  la  Presse,  whose  bugler  sounded 
the  familiar  strains  of  "  La  Casquette  du  Pere  Bugeaud,"  while 
their  young  officer  flourished  his  sword  as  if  to  warn  all 
inquisitive  folk  from  venturing  too  near.  This  officer,  it 
happened,  was  a  certain  Henri  Chabrillat,  who,  prior  to  the 
war,  had  already  acquired  some  reputation  as  a  journalist.  In 
later  years  he  leased  a  Paris  theatre,  the  Ambigu,  where  he 
staged  Emile  Zola's  Nana,  confiding  the  title-role  of  the  play 
to  the  fair  and  fickle  Leontine  Massin,  with  whom  he  became 

l  B 


2  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

infatuated.     When  she  had  ruined  and  deserted  him  he  put 
a  pistol  to  his  head. 

Behind  Chabrillat  and  his  men  as  they  marched  along  the 
Avenue  Marigny  came  one  of  those  old-fashioned  four-wheel 
cabs,  drawn  by  two  little  Breton  nags,  which  were  familiar 
enough  to  the  Parisians  of  that  period.  In  addition  to  the 
driver,  seven  persons  had  found  accommodation  in  or  on  the 
vehicle.  There  were  four  passengers  inside,  a  fifth  sat  beside 
the  cabman,  while  on  the  roof  were  two  others,  each  tightly 
grasping  the  rails  which  usually  served  to  prevent  luggage  from 
falling  to  the  ground.  One  of  these  two  passengers,  a  thick- 
set man  of  five-and- thirty,  with  light  hair  and  a  red  scrubby 
beard,  answered  to  the  name  of  Eugene  Spuller.  Born  in 
Burgundy,  but  of  Teutonic — some  have  said  Bavarian,  and 
others  Badener — origin,  he  was  known  more  or  less  in  French 
art  and  newspaper  circles  by  some  bludgeon-like  criticisms  both 
of  Meissonier's  battle-pictures  and  of  the  foreign  policy  of  the 
Empire.  With  his  friends,  however,  he  was  fonder  of  talking 
of  Schopenhauer,  Schlegel,  and  Fichte,  on  whose  works,  which 
he  knew  by  heart,  he  mused,  when  alone,  for  hours  at  a  stretch, 
a  pipe  in  his  mouth  the  while,  and  a  glass  mug  of  beer  before 
him.  But  he  was  destined  to  play  a  very  considerable  part  in 
French  politics,  long  as  a  kind  of  Imminence  grise,  and  ultimately 
as  one  of  the  Republic's  Ministers  for  Foreign  Affairs. 

Behind  the  cab,  laden  as  we  have  described,  came  a  small 

troop  of  enthusiastic  citizens  exchanging   cries   of  "Vive  la 

Republique  ! "  with  the  onlookers  whom  they  passed ;  and  while 

the  bugle  sounded  yet  another  fanfare  the  procession  crossed 

the  Place  Beauvau  and  halted  outside  the  lofty  wrought-iron 

gates  of  the   Ministry  of  the   Interior.     Some   of  the   cab's 

passengers  then  alighted,  the  first  to  do  so  being  a  man  of 

two-and-thirty,   of  average  height  and   of  a  robust  but  still 

fairly  slim  figure.     He  had   somewhat  long  and  wavy  black 

hair  and  a  full,  glossy,  black  beard.     His  nose  was  aquiline, 

almost  of  the  Semitic  type ;  his  under-lip  full  and  sensual ;  one 

eye  attracted  you  by  its   ardour  and   mobility,   whereas  the 

other,  being  false,  stared  with  a  vitreous  blindness.     Garmented 

in  one  of  those  black  frock-coat  suits  then  favoured  by  all 

French  professional  men,  with  his  shirt-front  badly  rumpled, 

his  narrow  black  neck-tie  all  awry,  and  his  seedy-looking  silk 

hat  set  on  the  back  of  his  head,  thus  allowing  one  to  note  both 


l£on  GAMBETTA  3 

the  height  and  the  breadth  of  his  brow,  this  individual  stepped 
towards  a  chubby  provincial  infantryman  standing  as  sentry  at 
the  Ministry  gates,  and  exclaimed  imperatively :  "  Au  nom  de 
la  Republique,  faites  ouvrir  cette  grille  ! " 

The  injunction  was  heard  by  the  concierge,  who  had  already 
come  forth  from  his  lodge  and  who  hastened  to  open  the  gates ; 
which  done,  he  stood  aside,  bowing  humbly,  his  velvet-tasselled 
smoking-cap  dangling  from  his  hand,  while,  at  Chabrillafs 
command,  the  sentry  presented  arms,  and  the  cab,  preceded  by 
the  passengers  who  had  alighted,  rolled  into  the  gravelled 
courtyard.  Another  shout  of  "  Vive  la  Republique  ! "  then  went 
up  from  the  onlookers,  who  seemed  very  desirous  of  following, 
but  the  same  individual  who  had  ordered  the  gates  to  be 
opened,  now  caused  them  to  be  shut,  and  turning  to  the  little 
crowd  he  addressed  it  hastily,  to  this  effect:  "Citizens,  be 
calm,  I  conjure  you.  I  am  here  in  the  name  of  the  Republic. 
There  is  much  to  be  done.  We  have  thrown  off  the  despotism 
of  twenty  years,  but  we  must  not  forget  that  France  is  invaded. 
Great  duties,  great  responsibilities,  great  dangers  confront  us, 
and  must  be  grappled  with  at  once.  If  we  do  so  unflinchingly 
victory  will  assuredly  be  ours,  for  it  is  only  the  Empire  which 
is  dead — not  France,  she  is  but  wounded,  and  her  very  wounds 
will  inflame  her  with  renewed  courage.  But,  now,  retire  in 
confidence  to  your  homes.  Await  the  call  of  the  Republic,  it 
will  come  swiftly,  and  I  know  that  you  will  all  respond  to  it. 
I  promise  you  that  the  whole  nation  shall  be  armed.  What- 
ever effort  may  be  needed  we  shall  make  it,  so  courage  and 
confidence,  trust  in  us  as  we  shall  trust  in  vou  ! " x  s^ 

Then  again  came  a  shout  of  "  Long  live  the  Republic ! " 
mingled  this  time  with  cries  of  "  Death  to  the  Prussians  ! "  and 
"  Long  live  Gambetta  ! "  But  Gambetta — the  reader  will  have 
already  divined,  we  think,  that  it  was  he  who  had  spoken — 
tarried  at  the  gate  no  longer.  Followed  by  his  friends,  he 
hurried  away  across  the  courtyard,  and  took  possession  of  the 
deserted  Ministry  of  the  Interior. 

He  had  come  thither  in  hot  haste  from  the  H6tel-de-Ville, 
which  with  his  parliamentary  colleagues  Cremieux  and  Ke'ratry 
he  had  been  the  first  to  reach  after  the  tumultuous  proclama- 

1  From  our  somewhat  imperfect  notes  made  at  the  time.  We  were  then 
living  in  the  Rue  de  Miromesnil  close  by,  and  were  returning  from  the  invasion 
of  the  Palais  Bourbon,  etc.,  when  we  witnessed  the  incident  we  have  narrated. 


4  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

tion  of  the  Republic  on  the  steps  of  the  Palais  Bourbon.  At 
the  H6tel-de-Ville  he  had  proclaimed  the  new  regime  afresh, 
and  had  participated  in  the  summary  selection  of  the  so-called 
Government  of  National  Defence — a  name  which  was  suggested 
by  Henri  Rochefort,  who  had  just  been  released  from  the 
prison  of  Ste.  Pelagie.  The  actual  members  of  the  Government 
were  Emmanuel  Arago,  Adolphe  Cremieux,  Jules  Favre,  Jules 
Ferry,  Leon  Gambetta,  Louis  Garnier-Pages,  Alexandre  Glais- 
Bizoin,  Eugene  Pelletan,  Ernest  Picard,  Henri  Rochefort,  and 
Jules  Simon — that  is,  all  the  deputies  of  Paris  excepting  Thiers, 
who  refused  office.  They  eventually  accepted  General  Trochu, 
the  military  governor  of  the  capital,  as  their  President,  and 
apportioned,  as  we  shall  see,  various  ministries  and  other  offices 
among  certain  of  their  friends. 

But  Gambetta  did  not  remain  at  the  H6tel-de-Ville  while 
all  such  matters  of  detail  were  being  settled.  Before  the  actual 
constitution  of  the  Board  of  Government,  as  one  may  call  it, 
he  had  appointed,  without  consulting  his  colleagues,  Emmanuel 
Arago's  brother  jfttienne,  Mayor  of  Paris ;  but  for  the  rest  he 
quitted  the  H6tel-de-Ville  as  soon  as  an  opportunity  presented 
itself,  and,  accompanied  by  his  henchmen,  proceeded  by  devious 
ways — owing  to  the  great  crowds  in  the  streets — to  the 
Ministry  of  the  Interior,  of  which  he  was  eager  to  obtain 
possession.  He  knew  indeed  that  this  particular  department 
was  coveted  by  his  colleague,  Ernest  Picard,  and  he  feared  lest 
the  discussions  at  the  H6tel-de-Ville  should  result  in  the  latter 
securing  it.  With  all  despatch,  then,  he  seized  it  himself, 
organised  his  cabinet,  and  in  other  ways  exercised  authority, 
while  his  colleagues  of  the  new  Government  were  still  discussing 
the  distribution  of  various  administrative  offices.  At  that 
moment  Gambetta  was  certainly  not  the  man  whom  the 
majority  of  them  would  have  chosen  for  the  Home  Department, 
but  they  soon  had  to  bow  to  the  fait  accompli.  Very  opportunely 
had  the  young  orator  remembered  the  Latin  tag  about  Fortune 
favouring  the  audacious. 

It  is  not  unworthy  of  note  that  in  that  hour  of  Revolution 
Gambetta  in  no  wise  aspired  to  the  control  of  military  affairs. 
He  was  a  civilian,  an  advocate,  and  had  never  even  been  called 
upon  to  serve  in  the  ranks  of  the  army.  Thus  he  knew  little 
or  nothing  of  military  matters,  the  direction  of  which  he  was 
content  to  leave  to  others,  his  own  ambition  being  to  secure 


l£on  GAMBETTA  5 

the  most  important  civilian  post  of  the  new  regime.  Before 
long,  however,  circumstances,  far  more  than  actual  desire,  placed 
the  supreme  control  of  military  as  well  as  civil  affairs  through- 
out the  uninvaded  provinces  of  France  in  his  hands.  From  the 
time  when  he  left  beleaguered  Paris  he  had  to  defend  as  well 
as  govern  the  country,  becoming  virtually  its  Dictator. 

Although  Gambetta  thus  rose  to  be  the  most  important, 
he  was  not  at  the  outset  the  best  known  member  of  the 
Government  of  National  Defence ;  for  he  was  comparatively  a 
new-comer  in  the  political  world.  In  the  days  of  Louis  Philippe 
his  father  had  migrated  from  Genoa  to  Cahors,  an  interesting 
little  town  of  southern  France,  the  birthplace  of  Clement 
Marot,  and  once  the  capital  of  the  quaint  region  of  Quercy. 
At  Cahors,  on  the  Place  de  la  Cathedrale,  Gambetta,s  father 
established  a  so-called  Bazar  Gdnois,  where  olive -oil,  wine, 
sugar  and  sundry  other  groceries,  together  with  metal  and 
glass  ware  and  crockery,  were  sold.  It  was,  however,  in  the 
Rue  du  Lycee  that  the  future  statesman  was  born  on  April  2, 
1838.  One  day,  some  nine  or  ten  years  later,  while  the  boy 
stood  watching  a  cutler  who  was  piercing  rivet  holes  in  some 
knife-handles,  a  drill,  bounding  from  the  appliance  used  in  the 
work,  struck  his  left  eye,  the  sight  of  which  he  lost.  As 
regards  his  education  he  first  attended,  it  seems,  the  school  of 
the  Christian  Brothers,  going  later  to  the  college  of  Cahors, 
where  he  was  known  to  his  school  -  fellows  by  the  nickname  of 
Molasses  junior  (Melasse  jeune).  But  at  last  his  thrifty  father, 
having  saved  sufficient  money,  sent  him  to  Paris  to  study  for 
the  profession  of  the  law.  Alphonse  Daudet  first  met  him 
about  that  time,  at  the.  bohemian  Hotel  du  Senat  in  the 
Quartier  Latin,  and  subsequently  traced  a  repulsive,  malicious, 
and  doubtless  exaggerated  portrait  of  him,  some  portion  of 
which  we  here  venture  to  exhume : 

How  unbearable  those  young  Gascons  were !  What  a  fuss 
they  made  over  nothing,  how  silly,  how  full  of  bounce,  howT 
turbulent  they  were.  I  particularly  remember  one  of  them,  the 
noisiest  one,  the  greatest  gesticulator  of  the  whole  band.  I  can 
still  see  him  entering  the  dining-room,  his  back  bent,  his  shoulders 
swaying,  his  face  aflame,  and  one-eyed  also.  As  soon  as  he 
appeared  all  the  other  equine  heads  around  the  table  were  raised, 
and  he  was  greeted  with  loud  neighs  of:  "Ah!  ah!  ah!  here's 
Gambetta  ! "  .  .  .  He  sat  down  noisily,  spread  himself  over  the 
table,  or  threw  himself  back  in  his  chair,  perorated,  struck  the 


6  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

table  with  his  fists,  laughed  loudly  enough  to  break  the  windows, 
pulled  all  the  table-cloth  towards  himself,  sent  his  spittle  flying 
about  the  place,  got  drunk  without  drinking,  snatched  the  dishes 
away  from  you,  took  the  words  out  of  your  mouth,  and  after  talk- 
ing the  whole  time,  went  off  without  having  said  anything.  He 
was  Gaudissart  and  Gazonal  combined,  that  is  to  say  the  most 
rustic  and  loudest  mouthed  bore  that  can  be  imagined.1 

For  a  time  Gambetta  certainly  vegetated.  But  in  the  first- 
floor  room  of  the  famous  Cafe  Procope,  of  which  he  became  a 
frequenter,  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  all  the  aspiring  young 
men  then  dwelling  in  the  Quartier  Latin,  all  the  embryonic 
revolutionists  in  politics,  literature,  and  art.  And  though  after 
becoming  an  advocate  he  remained  for  a  time  comparatively 
briefless,  he  began  to  exercise  no  little  influence  at  the  Confer- 
ence Mole,  the  famous  debating  society  of  young  Parisian 
barristers.  At  last  his  hour  came ;  he  defended  the  revolu- 
tionary journalist  Delescluze,  when  the  latter  was  prosecuted 
by  the  Imperial  Government  for  promoting  a  subscription  for 
the  erection  of  a  monument  to  Baudin,  the  Republican  deputy 
shot  down  at  Louis  Napoleon's  Coup  d'Etat ;  and  by  the  speech 
which  the  young  man  made  on  that  occasion  (November  14, 
1868) — a  speech  indicting  the  Second  Empire  and  its  origin 
in  the  most  uncompromising  fashion — he  leapt  into  sudden 
notoriety.  Becoming  in  the  following  year  a  deputy,  he  pitted 
himself  against  Emile  Ollivier  and  other  partisans  of  the 
"  Liberal "  Empire.  He  defended  Rochefort  in  the  Legislative 
Body,  denounced  the  last  Imperial  Plebiscitum,  demanded — in 
vain  as  it  happened — the  production  of  diplomatic  documents 
when  hostilities  were  pending  against  Prussia,  and  repeatedly 
intervened  in  discussions  on  military  and  other  important 
measures  after  the  earlier  reverses  of  the  war.  He  asked,  for 
instance,  that  the  National  Guard  should  be  armed,  that  Paris 
should  be  placed  in  a  proper  state  of  defence,  and  that  the 
Emperor  should  lay  down  the  chief  command.  At  that  diffi- 
cult period,  indeed,  Gambetta  displayed  great  vigour  in  the 
discharge  of  his  parliamentary  duties,  and  each  day  saw  his 
influence  increase  among  the  enemies  of  the  Empire.  Finally, 
when  the  Palais  Bourbon  was  invaded  on  September  4,  he 
played  the  supreme  part  in  the   proceedings,  though  not  a 

1  For  the  rest  we  must  refer  the  reader  to  Alphonse  Daudet's  Lettres  & 
un  Absent— first  impression  only  ;  the  sketch  being  omitted  from  all  subse- 
quent editions. 


GENERAL  TROCHU  7 

completely  successful  one,  for  he  wished  to  compel  the  Legis- 
lative Body  to  vote  in  due  form  the  dethronement  of  the 
Emperor  and  his  dynasty — a  course  which  seemed  advisable  in 
view  of  future  possibilities,  but  which  could  not  be  followed 
owing  to  the  impatience  of  the  multitude.  To  that  impatience 
Gambetta  ultimately  yielded  like  his  colleagues  of  the  Opposi- 
tion, and  the  Revolution  was  forthwith  consummated. 

If,  however,  the  strenuous  part  played  by  Gambetta  for 
some  time  past  had  made  him,  like  Henri  Rochefort,  one  of 
the  idols  of  the  Parisian  masses,  he  did  not  inspire  anything 
like  the  same  confidence  among  more  thoughtful  Frenchmen, 
who  regarded  him  not  only  as  a  very  advanced  Republican  but 
as  a  somewhat  dangerous  one  also.  Again,  General  Trochu, 
who  became  President  of  the  new  Government,  was  more 
esteemed  in  certain  military  circles  than  actually  famous  or 
popular  among  Frenchmen  generally.  Born  in  1815  on  Belle- 
Ile,  off  the  coast  of  Brittany,  he  had  been  in  Louis  Philippe's 
time  the  favourite  aide-de-camp  of  Marshal  Bugeaud.  Under 
the  Empire  he  had  largely  organised  the  Crimean  Expedition, 
and  had  served  as  aide-de-camp  to  St.  Arnaud.  Familiar  with 
the  many  defects  of  the  Imperial  military  system,  he  had  de- 
nounced them  in  a  work  entitled  VArmee  fran$aise  en  1867, 
which,  while  it  gave  much  offence  in  French  official  regions, 
attracted  the  attention  of  military  circles  all  the  world  over,  in 
such  wise  that  no  fewer  than  eighteen  large  editions  of  it  were 
issued  in  the  course  of  a  year  or  two.  Suspected  of  "  Orleanism  " 
and  disliked  as  a  reformer,  Trochu  had  failed  to  secure  any 
important  command  at  the  outset  of  the  Franco-German  War, 
and  it  was  mainly  the  pressure  of  the  parliamentary  Opposition 
and  the  popular  Parisian  newspapers  which  procured  him  the 
post  of  Governor  of  the  capital  after  the  earlier  French  reverses. 
Even  then  he  was  distrusted  by  the  Empress  and  her  entourage 
as  well  as  by  the  Minister  of  War,  General  Cousin-Montauban, 
Count  de  Palikao.1 

At  the  Revolution  Trochu  was  virtually  powerless  by 
reason,  largely,  of  Palikao's  action  in  depriving  him  of  effective 
command ;  still,  according  to  his  own  account,  he  wished  to 
save  the  Legislative  Body  from  invasion,  and  was  on  his  way 
to  the  Palais  Bourbon  when  he  encountered  Jules  Favre,  who 

1  Other  particulars  concerning  Trochu  will  be  found  in  our  Court  of  the 
Tuileries,  1852-1870.     London  :  Chatto  and  Windus,  1907. 


8  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

told  him  that  all  was  over  and  begged  him  to  repair  to  the 
H6tel-de-Ville.  Trochu  at  first  refused  to  do  so,  and  returned 
to  his  quarters  at  the  Louvre,  whither  presently  came  a 
deputation  consisting  of  Glais-Bizoin,  a  member  of  the  new 
Government,  Steenackers,  soon  to  be  director  of  the  telegraph 
services,  and  Daniel  Wilson,  an  Opposition  member  of  the 
Legislative  Body  and  subsequently  son-in-law  of  Jules  Grevy, 
President  of  the  Republic.  These  ambassadors  renewed  the 
request  that  Trochu  would  go  to  the  H6tel-de-Ville  and 
support  the  new  administration.  Before  replying,  the  general, 
like  many  Frenchmen  at  critical  moments  of  their  lives — we  in 
no  wise  blame  them — consulted  his  wife;  and  she  assenting, 
he  went  to  the  H6tel-de-Ville.  Favre  thereupon  begged  him 
to  assume  the  direction  of  military  affairs  and  rally  the  troops, 
who,  officers  and  men  alike,  had  dispersed  through  Paris. 
Trochu's  reply  was  to  inquire  if  the  new  Government  intended 
to  respect  religion,  property,  and  family  ties,  a  question 
answered  affirmatively  by  the  eight  members  present.  There- 
upon the  general  declared  that  he  also  needed  the  "moral 
adhesion  "  of  the  War  Minister,  whose  subordinate  he  deemed 
himself  as  long  as  the  Minister  remained  at  the  War  Office. 

He  therefore  called  on  Palikao,  who  advised  him  to  assume 
the  proffered  direction  of  military  matters,  as  otherwise,  with 
the  prevailing  confusion,  "all  might  be  lost.'"  Trochu  then 
returned  to  the  H6tel-de-Ville,  and,  premising  that,  in  the 
existing  situation,  military  considerations  were  paramount  and 
that  it  was  necessary  he  should  be  unhampered  in  his  actions 
by  any  division  of  authority,  he  claimed,  as  the  price  of  his 
adhesion,  the  Presidency  of  the  new  Government,  which  had 
been  previously  assigned  to  Jules  Favre.  To  that  course  the 
others  assented,  even  as  Trochu,  on  his  side,  assented  to  the 
inclusion  of  Rochefort  (whom  he  now  first  saw)  among  the 
members  of  the  administration. 

The  new  President,  then  five-and-fifty  years  old,  was  a  little 
man,  short  and  slight,  with  a  waspish  waist.  Completely  bald, 
he  had  a  curiously-rounded  cranium,  strong  jaws,  and  a  very 
prominent  chin.  On  the  whole,  his  face  was  perhaps  more 
expressive  of  stubbornness  than  of  energy.  A  fervent  Catholic, 
possessed  of  many  private  virtues,  an  excellent  son,  husband, 
and  brother,  his  competence  for  the  position  he  assumed  resided 
chiefly  in  his  powers  of  organisation.     As  a  divisional  general 


GENERAL  TROCHU  9 

he  had  given  a  good  account  of  himself  at  Solferino  in  1859, 
but  that  had  been  his  only  notable  command  in  the  field. 
Though  he  possessed  real  ability  as  an  organiser  he  had  a 
curious  defect,  such  as  seldom  appears  in  a  man  of  that  stamp. 
He  was  verbose,  he  not  only  spoke  and  "  proclaimed "  far  too 
often,  but  on  every  occasion  he  used  three  times  as  many  words 
as  Napoleon  I.,  for  instance,  would  have  done.  Verbosity  was 
indeed  the  sin  of  many  members  of  the  Government  of  National 
Defence,  of  many  of  its  officials,  and  many  of  its  most  famous 
adherents,  such  as  Hugo,  Quinet,  and  Louis  Blanc.  Glancing 
in  these  later  times  at  all  the  literature  of  that  period,  pro- 
clamations, circulars,  addresses,  speeches  and  so  forth,  one  is 
struck  by  their  redundancy,  their  interminable  length.  Colonel 
Lecomte,  an  able  Swiss  officer,  has  pungently  remarked : 
"Composed  so  largely  of  eloquent  advocates  and  clever 
litterateurs,  and  presided  over  by  a  general  who  was  even  more 
of  a  litterateur  and  an  advocate  than  all  his  colleagues  put 
together,  the  National  Defence  Government  was  better  suited 
to  adorn  the  French  Academy  than  to  fill,  as  it  said,  the 
breach." 

One  of  its  number,  Jules  Favre — its  Vice-President  when 
Trochu  took  the  higher  post — was  indeed  an  Academician. 
Later,  his  colleague  Jules  Simon  became  one ;  so  did  Eugene 
Pelletan,  and  so  too  did  Charles  de  Freycinet,  Gambetta's 
coadjutor  in  the  provinces.  Moreover,  Favre,  Cremieux, 
Gambetta,  Picard,  Ferry,  Arago,  and  Glais-Bizoin  were  all 
advocates ;  Pelletan  and  Jules  Simon  were  literary  men, 
Rochefort  was  a  journalist.  Some,  however,  had  occupied 
political  offices  under  the  Second  Republic — that  of  1848. 
Among  these  were,  first,  Garnier-Pages,  who  had  then  for  a 
short  time  controlled  the  national  finances,  and  contributed  by 
his  obnoxious  measures  to  bring  the  Republican  regime  into 
odium ;  and,  secondly,  Jules  Favre,  who  had  served  for  a  brief 
season  as  Under-Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs.  He  now 
became  Minister  for  that  Department,  though  he  was  in  no 
wise  the  man  to  contend  at  all  successfully  with  one  so  astute 
as  Count  Bismarck. 

Born  at  Lyons  in  1809,  renowned  for  his  oratory  which  was 
more  mellifluous  than  stirring,  chief  spokesman  of  the  Re- 
publican parliamentary  Opposition  to  the^  Second  Empire, 
bdtonnier  of  the  Bar  of  Paris,  leading  counsel  for  the  defence 


10  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

in  the  Orsini  conspiracy  and  other  famous  political  cases  of  the 
period,  Favre  was  probably  the  best  known  and  most  respected 
of  the  members  of  the  new  Government.  A  man  of  rugged 
exterior,  heavy  and  fairly  tall,  with  a  mass  of  more  or  less 
tangled  wavy  hair,  a  lofty  brow,  kindly  eyes,  and  a  large 
mouth  with  a  thick  pendent  under-lip,  he  wore  no  moustache 
— advocates,  indeed,  were  then  debarred  from  wearing  any — but 
he  had  a  full  and  somewhat  unkempt  beard.  A  Protestant  in 
religion,  though  he  pleaded  for  Mile,  de  la  Merliere  in  the 
famous  affair  of  the  "  miracles  "  of  La  Salette,  Favre  enjoyed  a 
great  reputation  for  integrity,  even  austerity,  but  unfortunately 
there  was  a  skeleton  in  his  cupboard,  as  was  shown  subsequent 
to  the  war. 

While  he  was  still  quite  a  young  man  he  had  fallen  in  love 
with  a  Mme.  Vernier,  who  had  been  known  in  her  maiden  days 
as  Mile.  Jeanne  Charmont.  She  had  contracted  a  very 
unhappy  marriage  with  a  certain  Louis  Adolphe  Vernier,  who 
dabbled  in  shady  financial  affairs ;  and  finding  her  life  with 
him  intolerable,  and  reciprocating  the  passion  which  Favre  had 
conceived  for  her,  she  at  last  quitted  her  husband  and  lived 
with  her  lover  as  his  wife.  There  was  then  no  divorce  law  in 
France,  and  consequently  no  means  of  regularising  the  position. 
For  the  rest,  everybody  believed  the  young  couple  to  be  duly 
married.  Favre,  at  the  time,  was  virtually  unknown,  but  even 
when  he  had  made  his  way  in  the  world  people  still  imagined 
that  the  charming  and  good-hearted  woman  who  shared  his  life 
was  legally  entitled  to  the  position  she  occupied.  Children 
were  born  of  the  connection,  and  Favre,  although  a  barrister, 
well  acquainted  with  the  law  and  the  penalties  it  specified, 
registered  those  children  as  his  legitimate  offspring.  By  doing 
so  he  rendered  himself  liable  to  fine  and  imprisonment,  but  he 
was  carried  away  by  his  desire  to  hide  the  truth  from  his 
children  in  order  that  they  might  not  at  some  future  time 
blush  for  their  origin  and  reproach  their  parents.  That  he 
committed  an  offence  against  the  law  is  certain,  but  from  the 
standpoint  of  equity  he  wronged  no  one. 

However,  that  was  not  everything.  Vernier,  the  husband, 
raised  no  public  scandal  at  the  time  of  the  elopement,  being 
content  to  let  his  wife  go.  But  some  suspicious  financial 
transactions  having  compelled  him  to  quit  Paris,  he  took  up 
his  residence  in  Algeria,  and  subsisted  there  by  levying  black- 


JULES  FAVRE  11 

mail  on  Favre,  who,  to  avoid  exposure,  paid  him  a  regular 
allowance.  For  many  years  this  highly  successful  man,  head 
of  his  profession,  leader  of  his  party,  member  of  the  French 
Academy,  encompassed  by  all  the  home  affections  which 
usually  conduce  to  happiness  of  life,  lived  in  daily  dread  of 
seeing  himself  denounced  by  Vernier,  if  he  should  fail  to  com- 
ply with  the  latter's  demands  for  money.  Had  the  divulgation 
of  the  truth  preceded  the  downfall  of  the  Empire,  Favre  would 
certainly  have  been  prosecuted,  for  the  opportunity  of  ruining 
such  a  redoubtable  adversary  would  have  been  one  which  the 
supporters  of  the  Imperial  institutions  would  have  eagerly 
seized.  But  the  facts  did  not  become  known  until  the  time 
when  Favre  and  Thiers,  each  striving  to  do  his  best  for  France, 
were  anxiously  negotiating  with  Bismarck  the  peace  following 
the  Franco-German  War. 

That  was  considered  a  proper  moment  to  stab  the  un- 
fortunate Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  in  the  back,  to  com- 
promise and  discredit  him  in  full  view  of  the  enemy.  A 
Frenchman  was  guilty  of  that  grossly  unpatriotic  action,  a 
Frenchman,  however,  who  was  also  a  Socialist,  a  lean,  spectacled, 
ranting  individual  named  Milliere,  whom  extremist  Parisians 
had  lately  elected  as  a  deputy.  This  man  contributed  the 
whole  story  of  Favre  and  the  Verniers  to  a  newspaper  called 
Le  Vengeur,  which  was  conducted  by  the  most  cowardly  of  all 
the  revolutionaries  of  that  period,  Felix  Pyat,  a  plotter  who 
always  egged  on  others,  but  who  invariably  contrived  to  save 
his  own  particular  hide.  At  first  nobody  believed  the  story, 
but  after  it  had  been  repeated  and  enlarged  upon  in  various 
directions,1  the  National  Assembly  called  upon  Favre  to 
vindicate  his  reputation.  The  unhappy  man  could  only  hang 
his  head,  and  confess — weeping  bitterly  the  while — that  he 
had,  indeed,  made  false  declarations  respecting  his  children's 
legitimacy.  The  Assembly  listened  to  him  in  deep  silence — 
too  shocked,  it  seemed,  for  words.  He  was  no  favourite  with 
the  majority,  he  had  simply  retained  office  because  apart  from 
Thiers  himself  it  was  difficult  to  find  anybody  willing  to  accept 
the  humiliating  duty  of  treating  with  Germany  and  setting 
his  name  to  the  instrument  which  would  finally  sever  Alsace 
and  Lorraine   from  France.     Favre  was  never  prosecuted   for 

1  The  truth  had  previously  become  known  to  just  a  few  of  Favre's 
intimates,  but  they  had  kept  it  secret. 


12  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

his  infringement  of  the  registration  law,  but  the  exposure, 
falling  on  a  man  whose  reputation  as  a  politician  and 
diplomatist  was  already  tottering,  proved  terrible,  and  after 
the  conclusion  of  peace  and  the  fall  of  the  Commune  he 
resigned  office.  As  for  Milliere,  he  was  shot  by  some  of  the 
Versailles  troops  on  the  steps  of  the  Pantheon  during  the 
Bloody  Week. 

Four  members  of  the  National  Defence  Government, 
Emmanuel  Arago,  Garnier-Pages,  Pelletan,  and  Glais-Bizoin, 
abstained  from  taking  charge  of  any  particular  Ministerial 
department.  The  first,  a  tall,  long-jawed,  clean-shaven,  and 
extremely  loud-voiced  man  of  fifty-eight,  was  a  son  of  the  great 
Arago,  and  became  chairman  of  a  committee  appointed  to 
report  on  judicial  reorganisation.  To  the  career  of  the  second, 
an  amiable,  tall,  slim  septuagenarian,  with  rugged  features 
and  long  white  hair  curling  over  his  shoulders,  we  have 
previously  referred.  The  third,  Pelletan,  then  fifty-seven 
years  old,  had  written  books  on  the  rights  of  man,  family  life, 
and  royal  philosophers,  besides  some  trenchant  philippics 
directed  against  the  alleged  demoralising  influence  of  the 
Empire.  Further,  he  had  directed  a  Republican  organ  called 
La  Tribune  in  conjunction  with  Glais-Bizoin,  another  septua- 
genarian of  the  band,  who  had  sat  as  an  ardent  democrat  in 
the  various  French  legislatures  ever  since  1830  and  had  made 
a  distinct  reputation,  not  by  any  speeches  of  his  own  but  by 
the  caustic,  galling,  and  irrelevant  manner  in  which  he  per- 
petually interrupted  the  speeches  of  others.  Glais-Bizoin  was 
short  and  lean,  with  a  glistening  cranium,  hollow  cheeks,  a 
scrubby  beard  which  he  dyed,  and  a  nose  like  a  hawk's  beak.1 
He  became  one  of  the  Defence  delegates  in  the  provinces, 
where  he  often  inspected  camps  of  instruction  and  reviewed 
new  levies,  to  whom  he  would  say  with  as  much  majesty  as  he 
could  assume :  "  Soldats,  je  suis  content  de  vous  !  " 

That  phrase  was,  of  course,  borrowed  from  Napoleon,  even 
as  Jules  Favre,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  derived  the  words, 
u  Not  a  stone  of  our  fortresses,  not  an  inch  of  our  territory,"" 
from  the  ancient  oath  of  the  Knights  Templars,  as  Gambetta 
derived  his  boast  about  a  compact  with  victory  or  death  from 

1  The  above  description  of  Glais-Bizoin  has  been  borrowed  from  our 
book,  Emile  Zola,  Novelist  and  Reformer,  in  which  a  few  further  particulars 
concerning  him  are  given.     Zola  became  for  a  time  his  secretary. 


MEN  OF  THE  NATIONAL  DEFENCE  13 

Corneille,  and  as  Rochefort,  moreover,  derived  the  regime's 
very  name — Government  of  National  Defence — from  Michelet's 
History  of  France^  in  which  it  is  assigned  to  the  Armagnac 
party  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

But  let  us  say  something  of  the  other  new  rulers  of  France. 
Jules  Simon,1  who  was  well  known  by  his  writings  on  natural 
religion,  liberty  of  conscience,  duty,  education,  juvenile  and 
female  labour,  and  whose  high-perched  flat  on  the  Place  de  la 
Madeleine  had  been  the  favourite  rendezvous  of  the  Opposition 
deputies  of  the  Empire's  Legislative  Body,  became  Minister 
of  Public  Instruction.  Simon  was  then  fifty-six  years  old, 
stout,  with  curly  hair  and  whiskers,  and  a  Semitic  cast  of 
countenance.  His  colleague  Cremieux  was  really  a  Jew.  He 
had  been  Minister  of  Justice  in  1848,  and  again  took  that  post 
in  spite  of  his  four -and -seventy  years.  Moreover,  he  was 
actually  the  man  first  chosen  to  govern  provincial  France  on 
behalf  of  the  Government  generally,  his  colleagues  wishing  to 
remain  in  Paris,  whither  the  Germans  were  marching.  Ernest 
Picard,  a  jovial-looking  and  extremely  corpulent  advocate, 
just  under  fifty  years  of  age,  became  Minister  of  Finance ; 
while  Jules  Ferry,  another  advocate  and  forty-seven  years  old, 
took  the  post  of  Secretary -General,  which  he  afterwards 
relinquished  for  that  of  Mayor  of  Paris — an  office  that  made 
him  largely  responsible  for  the  rations  measured  out  to  the 
Parisians  in  the  latter  days  of  the  German  Siege.  We  shall 
have  to  speak  more  particularly  of  Ferry  in  other  sections  of 
this  book.  Finally,  among  the  members  proper  of  the  Govern- 
ment, there  was  Henri  Rochefort,  the  famous  pamphleteer 
imprisoned  by  the  Empire  for  his  attacks  upon  it,  and  now 
raised  to  office.  But  thirty-nine  years  old,  slim  and  straight 
as  a  dart,  with  a  wonderful  toupet  of  very  dark  curly  hair,  a 
lofty  brow,  deep-set  flashing  eyes,  high  and  prominent  cheek- 
bones, a  curiously  misshapen  nose,  a  small  moustache  and 
goatee,  he  was  the  most  popular  member  of  the  National 
Defence  among  the  extremists  of  the  capital.  He  became 
President  of  the  Committee  of  Barricades.  Of  him  as  of  Ferry 
we  shall  have  to  speak  again. 

Let  us  now  pass  from  the  twelve  actual   members  of  the 

1  His  real  patronymic  was  Suisse,  but  his  Christian  names  having  served 
as  his  noms  de  plume  when  he  produced  his  first  books,  he  remained  known 
by  them,  and  virtually  discarded  his  surname. 


14  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Government  of  the  Defence  to  the  more  important  men, 
whose  co-operation  they  secured.  First  there  was  General  Le 
Flo,  an  old  Republican  soldier,  who  had  been  cashiered  by 
Napoleon  III.  for  resisting  the  Coup  d'Etat  in  1851.  He  became 
Minister  of  War  under  Trochu.  Vice-Admiral  Fourichon,  an 
officer  of  considerable  merit  but  a  sexagenarian,  was  appointed 
Minister  of  Marine,  and  afterwards  accompanied  Cremieux  into 
the  provinces;  while  Magnin,  a  provincial  iron-master  and 
landed  proprietor,  obtained  the  portfolio  of  Agriculture  and 
Commerce,  in  which  respect,  like  Ferry,  he  had  to  deal  with  the 
provisioning  of  the  Parisians.  Count  Emile  de  Keratry,  a 
Breton  who  had  seen  service  in  Mexico,  became  the  first  Prefect 
of  Police,  being  succeeded  for  a  short  time  by  Edmond  Adam, 
the  urbane  and  liberal-minded  husband  of  a  lady  who  subse- 
quently exercised  much  influence  in  the  parliamentary  world  of 
the  Republic.  An  energetic  lawyer  named  Cresson  took  Adam's 
place  after  an  insurrection  which,  breaking  out  in  besieged  Paris 
on  October  31  when  the  surrender  of  Metz  became  known,  Mould 
have  overthrown  the  Government  had  it  not  been  for  the 
vigour  of  Jules  Ferry  and  Ernest  Picard. 

Last  but  not  least  in  the  long  list  of  the  Defence  Ad- 
ministration came  Frederic  Dorian,  Minister  of  Public  Works, 
a  handsome,  frank,  pleasing  man,  in  his  fifty-sixth  year,  who,  of 
all  the  Government's  coadjutors,  was  the  most  practical,  active, 
and  competent.  A  native  of  Montbeliard,  a  great  iron-master 
and  manufacturer  in  the  St.  Etienne  district,  he  had  also  been  a 
deputy  since  1869,  but  had  never  been  looked  upon  as  one  of 
Radical  views.  He  was  the  only  man  of  the  ruling  band  who 
emerged  from  the  trials  of  the  Siege  of  Paris  with  an  enhanced 
reputation.  He  largely  provided  for  the  defence  of  the  city, 
he  cast  cannon  and  mitrailleuses,  perfected  ramparts,  constructed 
redoubts,  bu^t  armoured  locomotives,  trained  engineers,  and 
generally  acquitted  himself  of  his  office  in  a  way  which  left  no 
cause  for  reproach.  At  the  insurrection  of  October  31,  such 
was  his  popularity  that  he  might  have  become  Dictator,  but  he 
was  too  loyal  a  man  to  seize  such  an  opportunity.  Great  as 
was  his  usefulness  in  Paris,  it  might  have  proved  greater  still  in 
the  provinces,  had  he  been  sent  out  as  one  of  Gambetta's 
assistants.  He  died  prematurely,  amid  universal  regret, 
in  1873. 

The    Government    of    National    Defence   was    completely 


MEN  OF  THE  NATIONAL  DEFENCE  15 

installed  by  September  6.  On  the  19th  the  investment  of 
Paris  by  the  Germans  was  completed.  Jules  Favre,  who  had 
passed  through  their  lines,  was  at  that  moment  conferring  with 
Bismarck  respecting  both  an  armistice  for  the  election  of  a 
National  Assembly,  and  the  ultimate  conditions  of  peace. 
Those  fixed  by  the  German  statesman  were  the  cession  to 
Germany  of  the  two  Alsatian  departments  of  the  Lower  and 
Upper  Rhine  and  a  part  of  the  Moselle  department  inclusive  of 
Metz,  Chateau  Salins,  and  Soissons.  Even  the  conditions  for 
an  armistice  were  onerous  and  humiliating,  and  Favre  returned 
to  Paris  after  a  fruitless  journey. 

Onegreat  mistake  of  the  National  Defence  Government  was 
that  it  remained  in  the  capital.  Instead  of  sending  delegates 
into  the  provinces — as  it  did  on  September  12  and  15 — it 
should  have  left  delegates  in  Paris  and  have  transported  itself 
to  some  other  city,  there  to  organise  both  the  capital's  relief 
and  the  defence  of  the  country  generally.  Moreover,  the 
provincial  delegates  were  at  first  Cremieux  (74  years  old),  Glais- 
Bizoin  (70  years  old),  and  Fourichon  (66  years  old),  who,  as 
General  Trochu  afterwards  admitted,  had  been  chosen  on 
account  of  their  great  age !  To  them,  fortunately  for  France, 
Gambetta  (then  32  years  old)  was  ultimately  adjoined.  He  had 
proposed  at  the  very  outset  that  at  least  the  Ministers  of  the 
Interior,  Finance,  War  and  Foreign  Affairs  should  quit  the 
capital  even  if  others  remained  there ;  and  a  month  after  he 
and  his  secretary  Spuller  quitted  Paris  by  balloon  (October  7) 
he  urgently  renewed  that  request.     But  he  did  so  in  vain. 

It  was  also  a  great  mistake  to  accumulate  and  lock  up  such 
large  military  forces  in  the  capital.  The  city  did  not  need  nearly 
half  a  million  defenders.  When  the  German  Siege  began  there 
were  in  Paris  about  90,000  regulars  (including  all  categories), 
a  naval  contingent  of  13,500  men,  and  110,(jp0  provincial 
Mobile  Guards — that  is  a  force  of  213,000  men  in  addition  to 
all  the  National  Guards — whereas  100,000,  over  and  beyond  the 
National  Guards  (280,000  in  number),  would  certainly  have 
sufficed  for  all  defensive  purposes,  with  due  allowance  also  for 
the  suppression  of  any  riots  which  malcontents  might  provoke 
in  the  city.  As  General  Chanzy  said  in  his  evidence  at  the 
Inquiry  held  after  the  war:  "The  Government  made  a 
tremendous  mistake  (une  faute  hiorme)  in  keeping  in  Paris 
everything  that  might  have  been  so  useful  in  the  provinces. 


16  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

The  necessary  forces  had  to  be  left  there,  of  course,  but  not 
over  400,000  men." 

At  the  same  inquiry  Trochu  admitted  that  the  Government 
had  erred  in  refusing  to  quit  Paris — as  it  might  have  done, 
leaving  him  behind.  Jules  Favre  was  unanimously  begged  to 
go  to  Tours,  but  refused,  and  not  till  then  was  Gambetta 
sent  out.  The  latter,  at  the  same  inquiry,  spoke  as  follows  : 
"Only  one  thing  was  thought  of — the  defence  of  Paris,  and 
that  idea  became  so  exclusive  that  no  heed  was  given  to  any- 
thing else.  It  occurred  to  me  that  the  rest  of  the  country 
was  being  somewhat  overlooked.  But  it  was  thought  that 
Paris  would  suffice  not  only  to  deliver  herself,1  but  even  to 
drive  the  enemy  out  of  the  country.  ...  I  think  that  among 
the  mistakes  which  may  have  been  made  that  was  the 
capital  one." 

On  Cremieux,  Glais-Bizoin,  and  Fourichon  assuming  the 
direction  of  affairs  in  the  provinces  they  found  very  few  forces 
at  their  disposal  and  did  little  to  increase  them.  But  when 
Gambetta  had  joined  them  at  Tours,  where  they  were 
established,  armies  sprang  up  as  if  by  magic.  Trochu  and 
Favre,  shut  up  in  Paris,  were,  as  the  former  relates,  astonished 
at  the  rapidity  with  which  the  provincial  armies  were  got 
together.  They  had  formed  a  poor  opinion  of  provincial 
resources  generally.  On  the  German  side  Moltke  had  imagined 
that  the  war  would  end  with  the  advance  on  Paris.  Until 
then  there  had  been  only  a  few  slight  mistakes  in  his  arrange- 
ments ;  but  when  the  provinces  rose,  at  the  inspiration  of  the 
Delegate-Government  of  Defence,  he  found  himself  at  a  loss. 
The  truth,  long  hidden  from  the  world  by  the  German  General 
Staff,  was  at  last  established  peremptorily  by  Hoenig,  Goltz, 
Blumenthal,  and  others.  King,  afterwards  Emperor,  William 
and  Bismarck  held  views  very  different  from  Moltke's  ;  under- 
standing better  than  he  did  the  character  of  the  French  nation, 
they  foresaw  the  further  campaigning  in  the  provinces.  Again, 
while  Moltke  was  fully  acquainted  with  the  country  between 
the  Rhine  and  Paris  he  had  much  less  knowledge  of  other 
regions  of  France,  and  of  the  possibilities  of  effective  warfare  on 

1  Yet  history  shows  that  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  for  an  invested  array 
to  raise  a  siege  without  the  co-operation  of  relief  forces.  Trochu  himself 
admits  it  in  his  Memoirs,  and  his  M  plan,"  at  first,  was  purely  and  simply 
one  for  the  defence  of  Paris. 


THE  WAR  AFTER  SEDAN  17 

the  part  of  the  French.  At  the  outset,  after  Sedan  and  the 
investment  of  Paris,  the  great  strategist  made  several  mistakes 
which  might  have  proved  disastrous  had  the  French  been 
stronger ;  and,  curious  to  relate,  it  was  chiefly  King  William 
who  set  Moltke  right,  at  times  even  overruling  his  decisions. 
Sufficient  evidence  has  been  produced  of  recent  years  to  establish 
that  statement  as  historical  fact,  and  to  show  that  the  present 
Kaiser's  "  illustrious  grandfather "  was  a  far  more  capable 
soldier  than  the  admirers  of  Moltke — and  of  Moltke  only — 
were  in  former  times  willing  to  acknowledge. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  here  to  relate  in  detail  either  the 
many  episodes  of  the  siege  of  Paris  or  of  the  war  in  the 
provinces.  The  recital  of  either  would  require  a  bulky  volume. 
With  respect  to  the  war  in  the  provinces,  it  is  to  be  regretted 
that  no  complete  independent  work  on  the  subject  exists  in 
our  language.  The  able  record  produced  by  Colonel  Lonsdale- 
Hale1  extends,  unfortunately,  no  further  than  the  second 
occupation  of  Orleans  in  December  1870,  and  gives  no  account 
of  either  the  operations  in  the  North  or  in  the  East  of  France. 
Had  a  complete  book  on  the  subject  been  available  among  our 
officers  some  time  before  the  Boer  war,  it  would  have  imparted 
to  them  a  far  greater  amount  of  useful  knowledge  than  could 
ever  be  acquired  from  the  deluge  of  works  on  the  campaign 
which  ended  at  Sedan.  We  have  invasion  scares  in  this 
country,  and  those  who  would  form  an  idea  of  the  possibilities 
of  defence  possessed  by  a  nation  having  only  a  small  force  of 
regulars  at  its  disposal,  must  refer  to  what  was  done  in  France 
in  the  latter  part  of  1870. 

Early  in  the  war  the  French  Francs-tireurs,  often  somewhat 
theatrically  costumed,  were  laughed  at  by  foreigners ;  but 
there  is  plenty  of  evidence  to  show  that  as  time  went  on  they 
worried  the  Germans  exceedingly,  the  latter  even  being 
unnerved,  when  in  small  detachments,  by  their  fear  of  those 
guerillas.  Again,  the  heroic  resistance  offered  in  October, 
first  by  the  villages  of  Varize  and  Civry,  and  immediately  after- 
wards by  the  little  town  of  Chateaudun  in  Eure-et-Loir,  on 
which  last  occasion  Francs-tireurs  and  inhabitants,  1200  in 
number,  fought  valiantly  against  6000  infantry,  a  regiment  of 
cavalry   and   four   batteries    of  artillery   under    General    von 

1  The  People's  War  in  France,  by  Colonel  Lonsdale-Hale.  London  : 
H.  Rees,  1904. 


18  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Wittich,  fairly  staggered  the  Germans.  The  reprisals  were 
terrible:  the  seventy-four  houses  of  Varize,  the  fifty-three 
houses  of  Civry,  and  two  hundred  and  thirty-five  at  Chateaudun 
were  committed  to  the  flames,  while  a  number  of  non-combatant 
inhabitants,  including  women,  were  massacred.  It  was  hoped 
that  this  terrible  lesson  would  suffice,  but  for  some  time  the 
Germans  feared  lest  the  example  set  by  Chateaudun,  Civry,  and 
Varize  might  be  repeated.  Had  the  temper  of  the  people  been 
everywhere  the  same  it  is  certain  that  the  progress  of  the 
invasion  must  have  been  retarded. 

While  France  made  great  efforts  during  the  latter  part  of 
1870,  she  was,  as  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  war,  very 
unfortunate.  Only  two  of  her  generals — Chanzy  and  Faidherbe 
— were  at  all  of  the  first  class.  The  winter,  too,  was  one  of 
the  most  cruel  of  the  century,  and  its  effects  were  felt  more  by 
the  raw  French  levies  than  by  the  more  seasoned  Germans. 
Again,  the  French  supplies,  derived  so  largely  from  abroad, 
were  often  terribly  defective,  the  rifles  and  carbines  useless, 
the  boots  soled  with  some  abominable  composition  whose 
durability  was  of  the  briefest,  and  the  cartridges  a  mockery 
and  a  sham.  The  United  States  and  Great  Britain  may 
divide  that  disgrace  between  them.  Many  a  time  did  we 
handle  Springfields  and  other  firearms  which  were  absolutely 
unserviceable,  but  with  which,  none  the  less,  unlucky  Mobilises 
were  sent  into  action.  Many  a  time,  too,  did  we  find  men 
wearing  English-made  boots,  only  the  "  uppers "  of  which 
remained ! 

One  particular  hardship  endured  by  the  French  troops  was 
that  of  having  to  camp  at  night  in  the  open.  General  d'Aurelle 
de  Paladines,  when  commanding  the  Loire  army,  made  that  a 
strict  rule,  holding  that  the  men  might  become  demoralised 
and  desert  if  they  were  billeted  on  the  villagers.  It  is  certain 
that  the  older  peasantry  in  Touraine  were  against  the  pro- 
longation of  the  war.  Faidherbe  had  a  similar  experience  in 
northern  France,  and  issued  a  similar  regulation.  Only  in  the 
large  towns  were  the  soldiers  billeted  on  the  inhabitants. 
Elsewhere  they  slept  in  tents — if  they  had  any — or  absolutely 
unsheltered,  and  this  amid  the  slush  of  autumn  and  the  snow 
of  winter,  and  although  villages  were  generally  close  at  hand. 
Further,  owing  to  the  enemy's  proximity — particularly  during 
the  long  retreat  of  General  Chanzy  with  the  second  army  of 


THE  LOIRE  ARMY  19 

the  Loire — an  order  went  forth  that  no  camp-fires  should  be 
lighted.  The  effect  of  all  this  both  on  the  physique  and  on 
the  morale  of  the  men  was  very  marked.  Next  day  they  fell 
back,  and  the  Germans  advanced  to  their  positions  ;  but  they 
did  not  quarter  their  men  in  the  fields,  they  occupied  every 
village  and  hamlet,  appropriated  every  available  house,  cottage, 
barn  and  shed,  so  as  to  be  as  comfortable  as  possible.  Further, 
the  French  commissariat  was  often  deplorable,  and  the 
peasantry,  in  their  folly,  secreted  food  and  fodder  which  they 
might  easily  have  sold  to  their  fellow-countrymen  (who  would 
have  been  grateful  for  it),  but  which  was  extorted  from  them, 
under  menace  of  death  and  without  payment,  by  the  invader 
on  the  morrow.1 

Metz,  where  Marshal  Bazaine  had  long  been  shut  up  with 
the  flower  of  the  former  army  of  France,  capitulated  on  October 
27,  and  a  terrible  blow  was  thereby  inflicted  on  the  country, 
for  the  German  Headquarters  Staff  was  then  able  to  transfer 
the  troops  which  had  hitherto  blockaded  Metz  to  other  regions 
and  prosecute  the  war  there  more  actively.  The  force  on 
which  the  Government  at  Tours  set  most  of  its  hopes  was  the 
Army  of  the  Loire,  which  under  D'Aurelle  de  Paladines  gained 
an  incomplete  victory  over  the  Bavarians  under  Von  der  Tann 
at  Coulmiers  on  November  9.  The  enemy  then  had  to  evacuate 
Orleans ;  but  a  series  of  French  defeats,  due  largely  to  the 
enemy's  superior  strength — the  engagements  of  Beaune-la- 
Rolande  (November  28)  and  Loigny  (December  2),  followed  by 
the  two  days'  battle  of  Orleans  (December  3  and  4) — brought 
about  the  reoccupation  of  that  city  by  the  Germans  under 
Prince  Frederick  Charles  of  Prussia  and  the  Grand  Duke  of 
Mecklenburg-Schwerin.  Further,  the  French  forces  were  now 
dislocated,  some  being  on  one,  and  some  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Loire,  and  (D'Aurelle  being  removed  from  his  command) 
they  were  divided  into  two  distinct  armies,  one  of  two  corps 
under  General  Bourbaki  and  one  of  three  corps  under  General 
Chanzy.  The  former  force  was  styled  officially  the  First  and 
the  latter  the  Second  Army  of  the  Loire.  As  it  happened, 
the  operations  of  the  First  Army  were  gradually  transferred 
to  the  more  central  and  then  to  the  eastern  part  of  France, 

1  The  above  is  written  from  personal  knowledge.  We  quitted  Paris  with 
American  "  papers  "  during  November,  passed  through  the  German  Lines 
and  joined  the  Loire  army. 


20  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

for  which  reason  the  name  of  "  Army  of  the  East "  ended  by 
prevailing. 

Chanzy,  with  the  three  corps  cFarmee  he  had  rallied, 
executed  a  masterly  retreat  towards  the  forest  of  Marchenoir, 
and  gave  the  Germans  no  little  trouble.  Indeed,  even  Moltke 
subsequently  declared  that  he  was,  without  doubt,  the  best 
French  commander  with  whom  the  invading  armies  came  in 
contact.  For  three  days  (December  8  to  10)  he  contested  the 
German  advance  at  Villorceau,  but  being  compelled  to  resume 
his  retreat,  he  fell  back  to  the  line  of  the  Loir  near  Vendome. 
The  Delegates  of  the  Defence  were  now  obliged  to  quit  Tours, 
and  installed  themselves  at  Bordeaux.  On  December  15, 
after  engagements  at  Moree,  Freteval  and  other  localities  near 
Vendome,  Chanzy  had  to  retreat  again,  and  this  time  he  with- 
drew the  bulk  of  his  forces  to  positions  in  front  of  Le  Mans, 
the  old  capital  of  Maine.  The  German  advance  had  not  gone 
on  without  resistance ;  it  had  often  been  well  disputed,  the 
French  striving  to  put  the  enemy  to  trouble  and  inconvenience 
even  if  they  could  not  prevent  his  ultimate  success.  At  Le 
Mans,  and  in  its  vicinity,  had  been  gathered  all  the  supplies  for 
the  relief  of  besieged  Paris :  a  vast  amount  of  railway  stock — 
some  scores  of  locomotives  and  thousands  of  vans  and  trucks 
l.iden  with  provisions,  stores  of  every  kind ;  and  it  was  certain 
that  a  great  effort  would  be  made  at  this  point  to  stem  the 
tide  of  the  invasion.  That  effort  was  made,  but  it  failed  like 
others, 

After  some  preliminary  fighting  came  a  battle  of  three  days' 
duration  (January  10  to  12,  1871)  amid  snow  and  ice  in  the 
difficult  country  before  Le  Mans.  There  were  about  170,000 
combatants.  Though  the  French  forces  were  no  longer  such 
as  they  had  been — having  been  sorely  tried  by  prolonged 
retreats — they  held  their  ground  well,  and  the  fighting,  despite 
adverse  climatic  conditions,  was  marked  on  most  points  by 
gallantry  and  endurance.  Occasional  weakness  was  counter- 
balanced by  the  energy  of  certain  commanders,  such  as  Post- 
Captain  Gougeard  of  the  French  navy,  who,  serving  as  a 
brigadier,  had  two  horses  killed  under  him  and  his  cap  carried 
away  by  a  projectile  in  a  charge  which  enabled  him  to  regain  a 
position  momentarily  seized  by  the  Germans.  Unfortunately, 
on  the  evening  of  January  11,  a  Prussian  battalion  succeeded  in 
"rushing"  a  position  called   La  Tuilerie,  held  by  some  raw, 


THE  BATTLE  OF  LE  MANS  21 

badly-armed,  hungry,  and  exhausted  Breton  Mobilises,  who 
ought  never  to  have  been  posted  at  such  an  important  point. 
They  fled  and,  every  effort  to  retake  La  Tuilerie  failing,  it 
became  necessary  to  fall  back  behind  Le  Mans  lest  the  French 
forces  should  be  cut  in  halves.  Panic  spread,  moreover,  and 
the  night  was  marked  by  disgraceful  scenes.  We  can  still 
picture  the  wretched  soldiers  fleeing  through  the  town,  throw- 
ing away  their  weapons,  and  struck  by  their  indignant  officers. 
In  the  battle  of  Le  Mans  and  the  terrible  retreat  which  again 
followed,  the  Germans  took  over  20,000  prisoners,  with  a  vast 
amount  of  materiel  de  guerre  and  other  supplies. 

It  was  a  wonderful  and  an  awful  business.  A  Siberian 
temperature  with  incessant  snowstorms ;  occasional  sharp  rear- 
guard actions  with  a  German  flying  column ;  then  men  desert- 
ing on  all  sides ;  the  railway  lines  blocked  for  miles  by  trains 
crammed  with  supplies  for  Paris;  the  roads,  going  towards 
Laval  and  Mayenne,  similarly  blocked  by  all  the  impedi- 
menta of  the  army ;  the  horses  dying  '.by  the  wayside,  the 
famished  soldiers  cutting  steaks  from  the  flanks  of  the  dead 
beasts  and  devouring  them  raw ;  many  in  boots,  whose  com- 
position soles  had  disappeared  as  we  have  mentioned,  others  in 
sabots,  ethers  with  mere  rags  around  their  feet,  and  yet  others 
absolutely  barefooted,  who  trudged  along  woefully  till  they  fell 
despairing  and  exhausted  on  the  snow  to  perish  there.  Now 
and  again  some  poor  fellow  was  hoisted  on  to  some  baggage 
waggon,  but  ambulances,  remedies,  cordials,  there  were  none. 
In  presence  of  those  scenes  we  were  able  to  form  some  idea  of 
what  the  Retreat  from  Moscow  must  have  been. 

Chanzy  had  first  wished  to  fall  back  on  Alencon,  but 
Gambetta,  rightly  we  think,  chose  the  line  of  the  Mayenne, 
and  headquarters  were  therefore  next  established  at  Laval, 
garrisoned  at  that  moment  by  a  few  battalions  of  Breton 
Mobilises,  in  one  of  which,  belonging  to  the  C6tes-du-Nord 
(we  forget  its  number),  a  young  Englishman  was  then  serving 
as  a  private.  His  name  was  Horatio  Herbert  Kitchener.  Soon 
afterwards,  when  the  staff  arrangements  had  been  fully  settled 
at  Laval,  he  was  employed  in  connection  with  the  captive- 
balloon  service  under  Gaston  Tissandier,  and  made  a  few 
ascents  to  assist  in  topographical  observations.  He  thereby 
contracted  a  severe  chill  and  had  to  be  removed  to  the  local 
hospital,  whither  his  stepmother,  then  resident  at  Dinan,  came 


22  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

to  nurse  him.  We  fancy  that  he  cannot  have  forgotten  his 
experiences  in  those  days  of  rout  and  disaster. 

At  Laval  Chanzy  began  to  reorganise  his  army,  but  the 
end  of  the  war  was  now  at  hand.  Bourbaki's  Army  of  the 
East,  after  a  slight  success  at  Villersexel,  was  badly  worsted 
on  the  Lisaine  (January  15  to  17)  and  condemned  to  a  retreat 
which  (through  some  misunderstanding  in  the  ensuing  armistice 
negotiations)  eventually  threw  it  into  Switzerland.  Faidherbe, 
whose  forces  were  small,  had  previously  fought  two  indecisive 
battles  at  Bapaume  and  St.  Quentin  in  the  North,  some 
advantages  resting  with  him  and  some  with  the  Germans. 
However,  the  fighting,  generally,  in  that  region,  was  hardly 
of  a  nature  to  exercise  much  influence  on  the  fate  of  France. 
That  was  virtually  settled  by  the  fall  of  Paris,  which  capitulated 
on  January  28.  Thousands  of  weary  people  in  the  provinces 
had  been  waiting  for  that  capitulation,  feeling  that  it  would  be 
the  harbinger  of  peace. 

Trochu's  first  plan  as  regards  the  capital  had  been,  as 
previously  stated,  a  purely  defensive  one.  But  early  in  the 
siege  General  Ducrot,  his  subordinate,  conceived  the  idea  of 
breaking  out  of  the  city  by  way  of  the  valley  of  the  Seine. 
Trochu  was  won  over  to  that  idea,  and  great  preparations  were 
made  for  carrying  it  into  effect.  But  the  Delegates  at  Tours 
did  not  attempt  relief  by  way  of  Normandy;  and  after  the 
battle  of  Coulmiers  the  Paris  authorities  found  it  necessary 
to  abandon  the  Seine-valley  plan,  and  try  a  sortie  to  the 
east  of  the  city.  All  sorts  of  preparations  had  to  be  made 
afresh,  but  Ducrot  finally  led  the  Army  of  Paris  across  the 
Marne,  and  the  battle  of  Champigny  ensued  (November  30  and 
December  2),  with  the  result  that  the  French  had  to  withdraw 
after  some  very  strenuous  fighting  on  both  sides.  About  that 
time  it  was  expected  that  Bourbaki  would  advance  to  the  relief 
of  the  capital  with  the  First  Army  of  the  Loire,  proceeding  by 
way  of  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau,  but  that  course  proved 
impracticable,  and  Paris  was  reduced  to  her  own  resources. 
On  December  21  an  attempt  was  made  on  the  German  positions 
at  Le  Bourget,  north  of  the  city,  but  was  repulsed.  Then,  on 
January  19,  a  kind  of  forlorn-hope  effort  was  made  at  Buzenval 
on  the  west,  but  resulted  in  serious  losses  among  the  Parisian 
National  Guards  who,  having  long  clamoured  to  be  led  against 
the  enemy,  figured  largely  in  this  sortie — the  last  one  of  the 


THE  SIEGE  OF  PARIS  23 

siege.  Two  days  later  General  Trochu  resigned  the  office  of 
Commander-in-Chief,  though  not  that  of  President  of  the 
Government.  The  former  post  was  taken  by  General  Vinoy, 
to  whom  fell  the  duty  of  carrying  out  the  capitulation  as 
negotiated  by  Favre  and  Bismarck  on  January  28. 

The  sufferings  of  the  Parisians  had  been  severe  during  the 
long  blockade.  At  first  500  oxen  and  4000  sheep  had  been 
slaughtered  daily  for  their  consumption.1  At  the  end  of 
September  meat  was  rationed,  the  daily  allowance  for  each 
individual  being  about  three  ounces.  Horseflesh  was  then 
largely  patronised,  and  somewhat  later,  when  the  ration  of  beef 
or  mutton  fell  to  l£  oz.  per  diem,  it  became  more  in  request 
than  ever,  in  such  wise  that  on  November  13  only  some 
70,000  horses  were  left,  30,000  of  them  being  required  for 
military  purposes,  so  that  only  40,000  might  be  utilised  as 
food.  Animals  from  the  Jardin  des  Plantes  and  the  Jardin 
d'Acclimatation  were  then  slaughtered,  and  dogs,  cats,  guinea 
pigs,  and  rats  were  added  to  the  Parisian's  fare.  Horseflesh 
was  in  due  course  strictly  rationed,  but  the  Government 
abstained  as  long  as  possible  from  the  rationing  of  bread.  On 
December  8,  however,  it  was  found  that  the  Government  stores 
both  of  grain  and  flour  represented  only  about  24,000  tons, 
and  on  January  18  bread  (now  made  of  just  a  little  wheaten 
flour  with  an  admixture  of  bran,  rice,  barley,  oats,  vermicelli, 
and  starch)  was  rationed  at  the  rate  of  ten  ounces  a  day, 
children  under  five  years  of  age  receiving  only  half  that  quantity. 
The  meat  allowance  was  then  actually  under  one  ounce  per 
diem,  so  that,  on  an  average,  the  Parisian  obtained  only  about 
one  quarter  of  the  quantity  of  food  which  he  usually  consumed. 
Great  was  the  distress,  nobly  did  an  Englishman,  Mr. — after- 
wards Sir — Richard  Wallace,  seek  to  relieve  it. 

The  bombardment — chiefly  on  the  southern  side  of  the 
Seine — had  some  moral  effect,  but  the  material  damage  it 
caused   was  comparatively   small.     It   killed   about   100   and 

1  Prior  to  the  siege  the  average  daily  consumption  had  been  935  oxen, 
4680  sheep,  570  pigs,  and  600  calves,  to  which  should  be  added  46,000  head 
of  poultry,  game,  etc.,  50  tons  of  fish,  and  670,000  eggs.  At  the  moment  of 
the  investment  on  September  19,  the  live  stock,  collected  together  (largely 
in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne),  amounted  to  175,000  sheep,  30,000  oxen,  8800  pigs, 
and  6000  milch  cows.  In  addition  to  considerable  quantities  of  grain  (wheat 
and  rye)  the  stock  of  flour  in  the  hands  of  the  Government  or  the  trade  was 
estimated  at  about  44,000  tons. 


24  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

wounded  about  200  people.  Far  more  serious  was  the  health 
bill  of  the  city.  Among  the  non-combatant  population  there 
were  in  November  7444  deaths  against  3863  in  November  the 
previous  year.  In  December  there  were  10,665  deaths  against 
4214  in  December  1869.  The  proportion  rose  in  the  last 
week  of  the  year  to  85  per  thousand,  whereas  21  per  thousand 
was  then  the  rate  in  London.  In  January,  between  sixty  and 
seventy  people  died  from  small-pox  every  day,  and  the  ravages 
of  bronchitis  and  pneumonia  were  always  increasing.  At  last, 
between  January  14  and  January  20,  the  mortality  from 
natural  causes  rose  to  no  less  than  4465,  whilst  only  enough 
bread  for  a  few  more  days  was  left.  Thus  capitulation  became 
a  necessity. 

It  ensued,  accompanied  by  an  armistice.  Paris  paid  a  war 
levy  of  ,^8,000,000 ;  the  forts  round  the  city  were  occupied  by 
the  Germans;  the  garrison — Line,  Mobiles,  and  Naval  con- 
tingent— altogether  about  180,000  men,  became  prisoners  of 
war ;  an  armament  of  1500  fortress  guns  and  400  field-pieces 
went  to  the  enemy  as  well  as  large  stores  of  ammunition.  A 
division  of  12,000  men  was  left  to  the  French  Government  for 
service  inside  the  city,  and  the  National  Guards  were  allowed 
to  retain  their  arms.  That  was  done  at  the  request  of  Jules 
Favre,  who  dreaded  the  result  of  any  attempt  to  disarm  the 
citizen-soldiery.  The  consequences  were  terrible — they  were 
the  insurrection  of  March  18,  1871,  the  Commune,  and  the 
Bloody  Week  of  May. 

At  the  time  of  the  capitulation  not  only  was  Paris  ex- 
hausted but  France,  generally,  was  weary  of  the  struggle.  It 
is  true  that  the  South — Gascony,  the  Pyrenean  country,  the 
Lyonnais  and  the  stretch  of  Rhone  departments  towards  Mar- 
seilles, had  been  only  indirectly  affected  by  it.  The  number  of 
southern  battalions  of  Mobilises  that  went  into  action  during 
the  war  was  small ;  yet  such  fruits  as  the  war  left  behind 
it  were  mainly  gathered  by  Southerners  who  had  not  partici- 
pated in  it  or  known  anything  of  its  hardships  and  horrors. 
However,  the  South  had  given  one  great  man  to  France,  Leon 
Gambetta,  a  circumstance  which,  when  the  first  reaction  had 
passed  away,  lent  it  prestige.  Only  a  few  years  elapsed,  and 
the  cry,  "  Le  Midi  monte  ! "  resounded  through  France. 

In  this  rapid  survey  of  the  time  we  have  perhaps  done  scant 
justice  to  Gambetta  and  his  helpers.     He  had  a  very  able 


THE  FALL  OF  PARIS  25 

coadjutor  in  Charles  de  Freycinet  and  another  in  Count  de 
Chaudordy,  but  little  real  good  was  done  by  Clement  Laurier, 
the  negotiator  of  the  onerous  Morgan  Loan,  and  many  costly, 
almost  disreputable  army  contracts.  At  times  Gambetta 
made  mistakes  in  the  direction  of  military  operations,  and  was 
unlucky  in  his  selections  from  a  limited  number  of  generals. 
Further,  he  sometimes  chose  sites,  as  at  Conlie,  on  the  confines 
of  Brittany,  which  were  scarcely  fit  to  be  camps  of  instruction 
for  the  levies  which  rose  at  his  bidding.  But  the  man  was  a 
patriot,  he  did  his  best,  his  utmost  best.  With  the  example  of 
the  First  Republic's  achievements  before  him,  he  never  despaired 
of  his  country.  From  the  material  point  of  view  it  might  un- 
doubtedly have  been  more  advantageous  had  peace  been  signed 
after  Sedan ;  but  France  would  then  have  remained  under  a 
stigma  of  disgrace,  never  to  be  wiped  away.  And  Gambetta 
and  those  who  helped  him  at  least  saved  their  country's 
honour.  They  also  began  their  task  with  several  chances  in 
their  favour.  That  France  was  not  exhausted  by  Sedan  was 
shown  by  her  subsequent  efforts,  the  materiel  de  guerre  she  pro- 
vided and  the  number  of  men  she  raised.  A  really  great 
general,  had  such  arisen,  might  have  done  much  with  the 
means  produced.  We  know,  by  all  the  revelations  of  late 
years,  how  perturbed  the  Germans  were,  at  first,  by  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  war ;  we  know  the  mistakes  they  made,  the 
opportunities  they  gave.  Again,  by  prolonging  the  war  after 
Sedan  there  was  a  chance  of  securing  foreign  intervention  in 
favour  of  France — an  intervention  which,  unhappily  for 
Europe  during  all  these  subsequent  years,  never  came  in 
any  decisive  form.  Still,  for  a  time  it  seemed  possible ; x  and 
as  long  as  there  remains  any  good  ground  for  hoping  that  one 
may  save  one's  country,  duty  requires  that  one  should  continue 
fighting. 

But  after  the  reverses  of  Bourbaki  on  the  Lisaine,  after  the 
lack  of  any  decisive  success  on  Faidherbe's  part  in  his  cramped 
position  in  the  North,  and  on  Garibaldi's  with  his  heterogeneous 
little  force  on  the  confines  of  Burgundy,  particularly  also  after 
the  final  retreat — almost  rout — of  the  Second  Loire  Army 
under  Chanzy,  coupled,  too,  with  the  capitulation  of  Paris,  there 
was,  we  feel,  even  though  the  South  of  France  remained  almost 
untried,  but  a  very  faint  chance  indeed  of  retrieving  the  position. 
1  We  refer  to  Thiers 's  efforts  in  that  respect  on  p.  38  post. 


26  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

It  is  true  that  on  February  8,  1871,  when  Chanzy  with  his 
customary  energy  had  largely  reorganised  his  army  he  had  under 
his  orders  4952  officers  and  227,361  men  with  26,797  horses, 
and  74  batteries  of  artillery,  representing  430  guns.  Moreover, 
there  were  the  armies  of  the  North  under  Faidherbe  and 
of  Le  Havre  under  Loysel,  the  troops  holding  the  lines  of 
Carentan  and  stationed  at  the  camp  of  Cherbourg,  two  detached 
corps  d'arme'e  (the  24th  and  26th)  under  Pourcet  and  Billot 
(who  had  escaped  internment  with  Bourbaki  in  Switzerland), 
the  Garibaldian  army  of  the  Vosges,  the  corps  of  Lyons, 
Nevers,  and  Bourg,  and  some  remnants  of  Bourbaki's  Army  of 
the  East.  Including  Chanzy's  command,  those  various  forces 
represented  534,000  men.  Further,  at  the  regimental  depots  in 
different  regions  there  were  53,000  men  ready  for  service  but 
unarmed,  and  62,000  undrilled  men.  The  Gendarmerie  could 
supply  another  10,000,  and  the  staff  and  administrative  services 
an  equal  number.  There  were  also  18,000  Mobile  guards 
who  had  never  been  in  action,  in  various  territorial  divisions ; 
and  52,000  Mobilises  were  stationed  at  different  camps  of 
instruction,  and  54,000  more  were  due  there.  Additional  levies 
were  officially  estimated  to  yield  more  than  another  hundred 
thousand  men.  Thus  with  the  forces  in  the  field  and  those 
ready  for  service,  France  could  dispose  of  over  600,000  men, 
and  provide  about  260,000  more. 

On  the  other  hand,  according  to  Major  Blume,  the  Germans 
disposed  of  over  700,000  men  in  the  field  (including  570,000 
infantry,  63,500  cavalry,  and  about  40,000  artillery),  and  there 
were  250,000  more  men  in  Germany  quite  ready  for  service. 
Some  of  the  German  columns  were,  materially,  in  a  very  bad 
condition,  as  we  had  opportunities  to  observe  during  the 
armistice;  but  on  one  side  there  was  what  may  be  called  a 
virtually  ever-victorious  host  and,  on  the  other,  forces  which 
had  retreated  almost  incessantly  after  repeated  defeats.  Among 
the  latter,  demoralisation  existed  on  all  sides.  It  was  often 
difficult  to  keep  the  men  with  the  colours.  At  Chateauroux 
several  battalions  "demonstrated""  in  favour  of  peace;  at 
Issoudun  the  men  requisitioned  a  railway  train  to  take  them 
home ;  in  the  Nievre  a  complete  column  of  400  deserted,  men 
and  officers  alike ;  in  the  Indre  a  force  of  2300  lost  400  men 
by  desertion  in  three  days.  Those  instances  might  easily  be 
multiplied.     Further,   the   men   were   often    wretchedly  shod, 


THE  POSITION  AT  THE  ARMISTICE  37 

deplorably  clad,  and  at  times  imperfectly  or  badly  equipped 
and  armed.  Moreover,  the  nation  was  tired  of  the  struggle. 
It  had  lost  for  the  time  all  grit  and  strength  of  character. 
Feverish  hopes,  raised  again  and  again,  had  ever  been  followed 
by  despair,  consternation,  and  increasing  distrust.  The  country 
generally  had  lost  confidence  in  its  rulers  and  generals,  and 
was,  largely  for  that  reason,  incapable  of  making  the  supreme 
effort  which  would  have  been  required  had  the  war  continued. 
Thus  peace  was  imperative. 

Gambetta  and  a  few  generals,  such  as  Chanzy,  wished  to 
prolong  the  struggle,  but  they  had  to  bow  to  the  decisions 
of  the  Paris  Government.  Then  it  was  that  Gambetta,  who 
hitherto  had  placed  the  interests  of  France  before  everything 
else,  with  comparatively  little  regard  for  party  considerations, 
bethought  him  of  the  danger  to  which  the  Republican  cause 
was  exposed  by  the  disastrous  termination  of  the  war.  He 
knew,  by  the  reports  of  his  subordinates,  the  prefects,  that 
reaction  was  rampant  on  many  sides,  and  he  resolved  to  do  at 
least  his  utmost  to  prevent  any  restoration  of  the  Empire.  His 
fears  in  that  respect  were  groundless,  as  events  showed,  the 
tendency  of  the  reaction  being  towards  the  re-establishment  of 
one  or  other  of  the  former  monarchies,  under  the  House  of 
Bourbon  or  that  of  Orleans. 

Already,  at  the  close  of  December,  Gambetta  and  his 
colleagues  had  dissolved  the  General  Councils  of  France,1  for 
which  step  there  was  some  justification,  as  they  held  their 
mandate  from  the  Empire,  and  could  survive  no  more  than  had 
the  latter's  defunct  Senate  and  Legislative  Body.  But,  in  view 
of  the  approaching  elections  for  a  National  Assembly  which 
was  to  consider  the  question  of  peace — as  arranged  between  the 
Paris  Government  and  the  Germans — the  young  Dictator  took 
a  course  contrary  to  equity  and  freedom.  He  decreed  that 
whosoever  had  served  the  Empire  as  a  minister,  senator,  or 
councillor  of  state,  or  had  ever  been  an  official  Government 
candidate  at  elections  in  the  Empire's  time,  should  be  in- 
eligible at  the  approaching  polls.  It  was  a  decree  worthy  of 
Robespierre.  Bismarck  protested  against  it  on  the  ground 
that  the  armistice  convention  stipulated  that  the  elections 
should  take  place  in  all  freedom ;  there  was  even  a  threat  of 
curtailing  the  armistice,  leaving  Paris,  which  was  hungering  for 
1  Equivalent  to  our  County  Councils. 


28  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

more  provisions,  to  starve,  and  resuming  hostilities ;  and,  as 
Gambetta  refused  to  give  way,  the  Paris  Government  despatched 
Jules  Simon  to  Bordeaux  with  full  powers  to  remove  and  arrest 
him  if  he  did  not  yield.     He  thereupon  threw  up  his  posts. 

The  elections  ensued,  resulting  in  the  return  of  a  large 
reactionary  Royalist  majority.  Nearly  all  of  the  forty-three 
deputies  chosen  by  Paris,  however,  were  Republicans,  Louis 
Blanc  coming  at  the  head  of  the  poll,  followed  immediately  by 
Victor  Hugo.  Garibaldi  was  third,  Edgar  Quinet  fourth,  and 
Gambetta  fifth  on  the  list  of  elected  candidates.  Among  the 
others  were  several  Red  Republicans  and  Socialists,  such  as 
Rochefort,  Delescluze,  Felix  Pyat,  Gambon,  Malon,  Cournet, 
Razoua,  and  Milliere,  who  were  destined  to  play  more  or  less 
conspicuous  parts  in  the  approaching  convulsion  of  the  Com- 
mune. Only  five  acknowledged  Bonapartists  were  returned 
in  all  the  departments,  inclusive  of  Corsica;  though  many 
Orleanists  who  had  sat  in  the  Legislative  Body  in  Imperial 
times,  including  two  ex -Ministers  of  the  Emperor,  Count  Daru 
and  M.  Buffet,1  were  elected.  Gambetta  was  returned  in  nine 
departments  including  that  of  the  Bas  Rhin  (Strasburg)  for 
which  he  resolved  to  sit.  Jules  Favre  was  chosen  in  five,  so 
was  Dufaure,  an  old  "  parliamentary  hand  "  of  whom  we  shall 
speak  again.  Garibaldi  secured  election  in  four  localities,  as 
did  Changarnier,  sometime  Minister  of  War  under  the  Second 
Republic. 

But  the  man  who  polled  by  far  the  most  votes  in  all  France, 
who  was  elected  indeed  in  no  fewer  than  twenty-six  depart- 
ments (inclusive  of  the  Seine,  that  is  Paris),  was  an  ex-Prime 
Minister  of  Louis  Philippe,  a  writer  who  had  devoted  several 
years  of  his  life  to  extolling  the  genius  and  glory  of  Napoleon  L, 
yet  who  had  been  one  of  the  victims  of  the  Bonapartist  Coup 
d'Etat  of  1851  and  had  sat  in  the  Legislative  Body  of  the 
Second  Empire  as  an  adversary  of  Napoleon  III.  and  his  policy. 
A  little  man  he  was,  almost  a  dwarf,  with  a  shrewd  round  face, 
clean-shaven  save  for  some  short  white  whiskers  growing  no 
lower  than  the  ears.  He  had  somewhat  pendent  cheeks  and  a 
broad  and  lofty  forehead,  surmounted  by  a  plentiful  crop  of 
white  hair,   worn   in  a  way  which  suggested  Perraulfs  hero, 

1  They  had  served  for  just  a  short  time  in  £mile  Ollivier's  administration, 
taking  office  not  to  serve  the  Empire  but  to  undermine  it.  See  our  Court  of 
the  Tuileriesy  p.  389. 


ADOLPHE  THIERS  29 

"  Riquet  with  the  Tuft."  An  expression  of  irony  flitted  across 
the  lines  about  the  little  man's  mouth,  and,  under  his  drawn 
brows,  his  dark  eyes  sparkled  from  behind  their  gold-rimmed 
glasses  with  humorous  maliciousness.  His  compact  and  well- 
proportioned  little  body — 

"  il  semblait  que  sa  mere  ■*" 
L'avait  fait  tout  petit  pour  le  faire  avec  soin  "*f 

was  usually  wrapped  in  a  closely-buttoned  snuff-coloured  frock- 
coat,  one  immortalised  by  a  clever  portrait,  the  work  of 
Nellie  Jacquemart.  Just  a  soupgon  of  white  waistcoat  could  be 
discerned  above  the  lapels  of  the  coat ;  the  trousers  were  usually 
dark  grey,  while  the  silk  hat  bespoke  a  respectable  antiquity. 
As  for  the  little  man's  hands  and  feet  they  were  as  small  as  those 
of  a  young  girl.  Such  was  the  outward  appearance  of  Adolphe 
Thiers,  who  being  appointed  on  February  18,  1871,  Chief  of  the 
Executive  Power  by  the  National  Assembly  sitting  at  Bordeaux, 
concluded,  with  the  co-operation  of  Jules  Favre,  the  peace 
negotiations  with  Germany,  hastened  by  a  series  of  skilful 
financial  measures  the  liberation  of  the  territory  of  France 
occupied  by  the  invading  armies,  and  became  the  real  founder 
of  the  Third  French  Republic. 


CHAPTER  II 

THIERS — THE    GERMANS    IN    PARIS — THE    COMMUNE 

Parentage,  Birth,  and  Studies  of  Thiers — Talleyrand's  Opinion  of  him — His 
Premierships — His  Attitude  under  the  Second  Republic  and  the  Second 
Empire — His  Diplomatic  Missions  in  1870 — Survey  of  his  Career  and 
Character — His  First  Ministry  in  1871 — Agitation  in  Paris — Tippling 
Habits  of  the  National  Guard — Seizure  of  the  City's  Armament — Entry 
of  the  Germans — Renewed  Unrest  in  Paris — Causes  of  the  Commune — 
The  Guns  at  Montmartre — Murder  of  Generals  Thomas  and  Lecomte — 
Retreat  of  the  Authorities  to  Versailles — Early  Stages  of  the  Insur- 
rection— Defence  of  Thiers's  Policy — The  Insurrection  a  Crime — The 
Men  of  the  Commune — Chief  Incidents  of  its  Reign — The  Bloody  Week 
— The  Advance  of  the  Troops — The  Conflagrations,  Massacres,  and 
Reprisals — The  Courts-Martial — Statistics  of  Sentences. 

The  Thiers  family  was  long  established  at  Marseilles,  where 
the  great  grandfather  of  the  first  President  of  the  Third 
Republic  became  a  wealthy  merchant,  largely  concerned  in 
the  colonial  trade  of  France.  He  made  some  unfortunate 
speculations,  however,  and  was  of  prodigal  tastes,  so  that  at 
his  death  the  family  fortune  was  not  particularly  large. 
Nevertheless,  his  son,  Charles  Louis,  was  a  man  of  position, 
an  advocate  at  the  bar  of  the  Parliament  of  Aix,  and  Keeper 
of  the  Archives  of  Marseilles.  In  1752  he  married  Marguerite 
Bronde,  the  daughter  of  a  Marseilles  merchant,  by  whom  he 
had  two  daughters,  Virginie  and  Victoire,  and  a  son,  Pierre 
Louis  Marie  Thiers.  Virginie  married  an  advocate  named 
Gratton,  of  Aix ;  Victoire  became  the  wife  of  an  Englishman, 
Horace  Pretty,  who  had  established  himself  at  Mentone,  where 
he  owned  an  estate ;  while  Pierre  Louis  espoused,  in  the  first 
instance,  a  Mile.  Marie  Claudine  Fougasse,  by  whom  he  had 
no  issue. 

He  acted  under  his  father  as  sub -archivist  of  Marseilles, 
but  he  was  a  young  man  of  prodigal,  eccentric,  and  roving 

30 


ADOLPHE  THIERS  31 

inclinations,  quite  destitute  also  of  principle  in  his  relations 
with  women.  During  the  last  year  of  his  wife's  life  he  seduced 
a  young  lady  of  good  family,  Mile.  Marie  Magdelaine  Amic, 
who  on  "the  26th  Germinal,  Year  Five  of  the  Republic" 
(April  15,  1797),  that  is  five  weeks  after  the  death  of  Mme. 
Thiers  nee  Fougasse,  gave  birth  at  No.  15  Rue  des  Petits  Peres 
to  a  son — the  future  statesman.  The  diary  of  the  medical  man 
who  attended  her,  M.  Rostan,  is  still  in  existence,  and  contains 
some  curious  entries.  The  infant,  though  small,  was  very 
vigorous,  the  period  of  gestation  having  been  nearly  a  month 
longer  than  usual ;  but  on  the  other  hand  the  accouchement 
was  difficult,  the  young  mother  being  in  the  greatest  distress 
as  "  her  husband  *  had  disappeared,  and  "  she  knew  not  what 
had  become  of  him."  Her  widowed  mother,  however,  was  by 
her  side. 

The  child  was  registered  as  being  Mile.  Amic's  offspring 
"  by  the  Citizen  Pierre  Louis  Marie  Thiers,  at  present  absent," 
and  received  the  Christian  names  of  Marie  Joseph  Louis 
Adolphe.  The  Catholic  religion  not  being  openly  re-estab- 
lished at  Marseilles  at  that  date,  the  rites  of  baptism  were 
performed  surreptitiously  in  a  cellar.  Shortly  afterwards, 
Pierre  Louis  Thiers  reappeared  on  the  scene,  and  pressure 
being  put  upon  him,  he  married  Mile.  Amic,1  and  in  the  Act 
of  Marriage  expressly  legitimated  his  son,  as  the  law  allowed 
him  to  do.  Then,  however,  he  again  disappeared,  vanished 
into  the  Ewigkeit,  for  over  thirty  years. 

Adolphe  Thiers  was  therefore  reared  by  his  mother  and  her 
relatives.  Marie  Amic  was  the  daughter  of  a  Marseilles 
merchant,  who  having  been  appointed  by  Louis  XV.  repre- 
sentative of  the  city's  commerce  at  Constantinople,  there 
married  a  young  Greek,  Mile.  Santi  Lomaika,  whose  sister 
became  the  wife  of  M.  Louis  de  Chenier,  French  Consul- 
General  in  the  Turkish  capital.  Marie  Joseph  and  Andre  de 
Chenier,  the  poets,  and  their  sister  Helene  (who  married  Count 
de  La  Tour  de  St.  Igest)  were  the  offspring  of  that  last  union, 
and  therefore  first  cousins  to  the  Mile.  Amic  who  became  the 
mother  of  Thiers.  It  will  have  been  noticed  that  among  the 
latter's  Christian  names  were  those  of  Marie  Joseph :  that  was 
because  Marie  Joseph  de  Chenier  was  his  godfather. 

1  Registers  of  Marseilles  :  24th  Floreal,  Year  Five  of  the  Republic  One 
and  Indivisible  (May  1797). 


32  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

The  Amic  family  had  been  ruined  by  the  Revolution,  but  a 
brother  of  Thiers^  mother  who  settled  at  Mauritius  accumulated 
considerable  means  there.  In  his  sister's  difficult  circumstances 
he  for  some  years  made  her  an  annual  allowance  of  2000  francs. 
He  also  took  no  little  interest  in  her  son  and  his  studies,  the 
results  of  which  were  reported  to  him.  In  one  of  his  letters 
still  extant  he  refers  to  the  lad  as  "a  precocious  genius.'" 
Later,  when  Thiers  had  achieved  a  position  and  had  let  some 
time  elapse  without  communicating  with  him,  M.  Amic  wrote 
excusing  that  forgetfulness,  for  the  young  fellow,  said  he,  was 
now  at  the  summit,  and  how  could  a  man  perched  atop  of  the 
Peak  of  Teneriffe  discern  one  standing  at  the  bottom  ? 

Thiers's  mother,  a  little  woman  scarcely  taller  than  he  was, 
and  speaking  with  a  marked  Provencal  accent,  lived  to  witness 
his  success  in  life ;  but  he  appears  to  have  kept  her  somewhat 
at  a  distance,  possibly  from  a  fear  that  the  story  of  his  birth 
might  leak  out  and  expose  him  to  even  more  virulent  attacks 
than  those  to  which  he  was  usually  subjected  by  his  political 
adversaries.  She  resided,  then,  by  herself  in  a  small  apartment 
at  no  very  great  distance  from  his  residence,  where  she  was 
seldom  seen.  Her  son's  friend,  Mignet,  the  historian,  seems, 
however,  to  have  watched  over  her ;  and  she  received  a  small 
allowance,  ^10  a  month  when  her  son  was  in  office  as  a 
Minister,  and  =£8  when  he  was  out  of  office.  This  might  seem 
niggardly,  but  ministerial  salaries  were  small,1  and  Thiers,  who 
had  to  keep  up  a  position,  possessed  no  private  means  prior  to 
the  success  of  his  historical  writings. 

When  he  became  Under-Secretary  for  Finances  under  Louis 
Philippe,  his  father  unexpectedly  reappeared.  Thiers  senior 
had  been  leading  a  roving  life.  At  one  time  he  had  been 
interested  in  the  commissariat  of  the  French  army  in  Italy,  at 
others  he  had  been  trying  his  fortunes  in  one  and  another 
Mediterranean  port.  He  was  a  great  boaster,  claimed  to  have 
sailed  round  the  world,  and  related  stories  of  adventure  such 
as  Baron  Munchausen  might  have  devised.  Reaching  Paris 
in  November  1830  he  put  up  at  the  Plat  detain  in  the  Rue 
St.  Martin,  and  went  to  seek  his  son.     The  latter  was  horrified 

1  £800  a  year  for  Ministers  and  £480  for  Under-Secretaries  of  State. 
£200  a  year  was  regarded  as  a  fair  bourgeois  income  in  Louis  Philippe's  time. 
Vide  Balzac  ami  Paul  de  Kock,  the  latter  a  real  authority  on  some  features 
of  bourgeois  life  despite  his  grossncss. 


Leon   Gambetta 


•   •    e      •   •      • 
•     ••*<•      • 


ADOLPHE  THIERS  33 

by  this  apparition.  Nevertheless  Thiers  senior  demanded 
employment  and  money,  and  his  son  at  least  had  to  help  him 
financially,  as  it  was  only  by  such  means  that  he  could  get  rid 
of  him.  But  the  most  extraordinary  part  of  the  affair  was 
that  Thiers  senior  had  contracted  either  bigamous  marriages  or 
else  passing  liaisons  (we  incline  to  the  former  view)  during  his 
long  absence,  and  had  no  fewer  than  seven  children,  in  addition 
to  his  son  the  Under-Secretary  of  State.  Six  of  those  children, 
three  sons  and  three  daughters,  who  were  his  offspring  by  an 
Italian  woman  of  Bologna,  always  claimed  that  Thiers  senior 
had  married  their  mother  there.  Thiers  junior  was  compelled 
to  assist  some  of  them.  It  was  through  him  that  the  eldest 
son,  Germain,  was  appointed  Justice  of  the  Peace  at  Pondichery, 
where  he  died,  and  the  second  son,  Charles,  Secretary  to  the 
French  Consulate  at  Ancona.  The  third  one,  Louiset,  became 
a  courier  to  English  "  milords "  travelling  on  the  Continent, 
and  only  troubled  his  eminent  half-brother  occasionally,  that 
is,  when  being  out  of  work  he  needed  a  little  money.  It  is  less 
clear  whether  Thiers  assisted  his  half-sisters  by  the  lady  of 
Bologna.  One  of  them,  who  married  a  man  named  Ripert,  he 
seems  to  have  neglected,  for  after  the  Revolution  of  1848  she 
placed  outside  a  table  d'hote  establishment,  which  she  kept  in 
the  Rue  Basse  du  Rempart  near  the  Madeleine,  a  huge  sign- 
board bearing  the  inscription :  "  Marie  Ripert,  sister  of  M. 
Thiers,  the  former  Minister."  However,  the  police  compelled 
her  to  remove  it — possibly  at  Thiers's  instigation. 

In  addition  to  that  family,  Thiers  senior  had  a  daughter  by 
a  Mile,  ^leonore  Euphrasie  Chevalier,  a  cousin  of  the  statesman 
Dupont  de  PEure.  This  daughter,  who  stoutly  claimed  that 
she  was  legitimate  (Thiers  pere  having  married  her  mother  with 
all  due  formality,  she  said),  became  the  wife  of  a  man  named 
Brunet,  and  persecuted  Thiers  for  assistance.  He  procured  her 
a  bureau  de  tabac  at  Carpentras — that  often  being  a  fair  source 
of  income  owing  to  the  Government  monopoly  of  the  tobacco 
trade — while  her  husband  was  appointed  head  jailer  at  the 
prison  of  Riom.  It  is  possible  that  Thiers  senior  resided  with 
his  daughter,  Mme.  Brunet ;  for  after  his  interviews  with  his  son 
in  Paris  he  retired  to  Carpentras,  where  he  died. 

Bearing  the  above  facts  in  mind  the  reader  will  realise  under 
what  difficulties  Adolphe  Thiers  made  his  way  in  the  world. 
Of  course  he  was  in  no  wise  responsible  for  his  father's  mis- 

D 


34  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

conduct,  which  was  a  heavy  weight  to  bear,  and  there  was  little 
compensation  in  the  fact  that  his  relatives  on  the  maternal 
side  were  most  worthy  people.  We  honour  the  man  who  in 
spite  of  such  disadvantages,  which  would  have  severely  checked 
if  not  entirely  quelled  many  another  spirit,  rises  by  his  personal 
talents,  integrity,  and  strength  of  character,  to  the  highest 
position  which  his  country  can  bestow.1 

Let  us  now  go  back  a  little.  We  have  mentioned  that 
Thiers's  mother  was  in  poor  circumstances.  Fortunately,  when 
the  boy  was  nine  years  old,  he  secured,  by  the  help  of  Count 
Thibaudeau,  then  Prefect  of  Marseilles,  one  of  the  "purses'" 
which  Napoleon  allotted  to  children  of  poor  parents  to  enable 
them  to  receive  a  good  education.  Thus  young  Thiers  became 
a  pupil  at  the  college  of  Marseilles,  where  he  carried  off  numerous 
prizes.  In  later  years  he  frankly  admitted  that  feelings  of 
gratitude  towards  the  great  Emperor  for  placing  the  means  of 
education  within  the  reach  of  lads  circumstanced  like  himself, 
had  largely  prompted  him  to  write  the  History  of  the  Consulate 
and  the  Empire. 

Napoleon  had  fallen  when  Thiers  repaired  to  Aix  in 
Provence  to  study  law  at  its  university.2  It  was  then  that  he 
first  met  Mignet,  with  whom  he  formed  a  close  and  life-long 
friendship.  Those  were  the  reactionary  days  of  the  Restoration, 
and  Thiers,  who  had  liberal  ideas,  was  regarded  in  official 
quarters  as  a  dangerous  young  Jacobin.  For  this  reason  when 
he  competed  for  a  prize  which  the  Aix  Academy  offered  for  the 
best  essay  in  praise  of  Vauvenargues,  the  Academicians,  nearly 
all  of  whom  were  fervent  Royalists,  refused  to  award  it  to  him, 
although  his  essay  was  by  far  the  best  of  those  submitted.  The 
next  in  merit  could  not  possibly  be  placed  first,  and  in  this 
dilemma  the  Academy  adjourned  the  competition  until  the 
ensuing  year.  Thiers  thereupon  resorted  to  an  ingenious 
stratagem.  He  had  a  fresh  essay,  paraphrasing  the  first  one, 
drafted,  and  sent  it  to  a  friend  in  Paris,  whence  it  was  despatched 
to  the  Aix  Academy.     That  august  body,  imagining  that  it 

1  There  seems  to  be  little  doubt  of  the  authenticity  of  the  above  account  of 
the  families  of  Thiers  pdre,  as  the  whole  matter  was  carefully  investigated 
several  years  ago  by  Dr.  Bonnet  de  Malherbc,  a  connection  of  Thiers  on 
the  maternal  side. 

2  The  picturesque  house  in  the  Impasse  Sylvacanne  at  Aix  where  he  then 
resided,  became  for  a  while  in  later  years  the  abode  of  young  £mile  Zola  and 
his  parents.     See  our  fimile  Zola,  Novelist  and  Reformer. 


ADOLPHE  THIERS  35 

was  the  work  of  some  Parisian  litterateur  who  had  condescended 
to  enter  the  competition,  immediately  awarded  it  the  prize,  and 
was  greatly  annoyed  when,  on  opening  the  sealed  envelope 
containing  the  competitor's  name,  it  discovered  that  Thiers  was 
again  the  winner.  The  quiet  artfulness  evinced  on  this  occa- 
sion proved  a  distinguishing  trait  of  Thiers's  character. 

He  was  little  more  than  twenty -four  years  old  when  he 
quitted  Aix  for  Paris,  where  he  speedily  made  his  way  by  taking 
to  journalism  instead  of  to  the  Bar.  He  also  formed  many 
useful  friendships  among  the  more  liberal-minded  men  of  the 
time.  Lomenie  says  that  he  immediately  attracted  notice  by 
his  southern  vivacity,  his  ready  conversational  powers,  his  big 
spectacles,  his  little  figure,  his  unconventional  manners,  the 
perpetual  springiness  of  his  gait,  and  the  peculiar  swaying  of  his 
shoulders;  those  physical  characteristics  stamping  him  at  once 
as  an  etre  apart.1  Talleyrand,  who  was  then  in  Opposition  and 
frequented  Liberal  drawing-rooms,  met  young  Thiers  at  the 
house  of  Jacques  Laffitte,  the  famous  banker  who  owed  his 
success  in  life  to  his  care  in  picking  up  a  pin  on  quitting  the 
house  of  Perregaux,  the  financier,  who  had  just  refused  him  a 
situation,  but  who,  on  noticing  his  action  from  a  window,  called 
him  back,  gave  him  a  clerkship,  and  ultimately  made  him  his 
partner  and  successor.  Towards  the  close  of  the  Restoration 
Laffitte  was  one  of  the  chief  leaders  of  public  opinion  in  Paris, 
and  Talleyrand,  who,  as  we  have  said,  first  met  Thiers  in  his 
drawing-room,  prophesied  that  the  young  man  would  "  go  far." 
Subsequently,  when  Thiers  was  already  a  Minister,  one  of 
Talleyrand's  acquaintances  in  speaking  of  him  remarked  :  "  Le 
voila  parvenu."  But  the  witty  old  diplomatist  retorted :  "  II 
n'est  pas  parvenu,  il  est  arrive.11 

We  have  in  other  writings  questioned  the  authenticity  of 
several  bons  mots  ascribed  to  Talleyrand,  but  there  seems  to  be 
no  reason  why  this  one,  which  can  be  traced  back  to  publications 
of  Louis  Philippe's  time,  should  not  be  accepted.  We  take  it 
to  have  been  the  origin  of  a  French  expression  which  has  come 
much  to  the  front  in  our  days,  and  has  even  been  imported  into 
our  own  journalism.  Thiers,  however,  though  he  succeeded 
early  in  life,  was  no  mere  arriviste  in  the  common  sense  of  that 
term.     His  life  was  one  of  genuine  hard  work,  in  the  sphere  of 

1  In  September  1833  Greville  met  Thiers  at  dinner  at  Talleyrand's  and 
found  him  "  mean  and  vulgar-looking  with  a  squeaking  voice." 


36  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

politics  as  in  that  of  letters.  Founder,  in  conjunction  with 
Mignet  and  Armand  Carrel,  of  that  famous  journal  Le  National, 
in  which  he  launched  the  smart  aphorism :  "  The  King  reigns 
but  does  not  govern,'1  he  was  one  of  the  chief  authors  of  the 
Revolution  of  1830,  which  overthrew  Charles  X.  and  installed 
Louis  Philippe  in  his  place.  He  was  appointed  a  Councillor 
of  State,  Under-Secretary  of  Finances,  and,  on  the  death  of 
Casimir  Perier,  Minister  of  the  Interior.  In  that  capacity  he 
had  to  thwart  the  attempts  of  the  Duchess  de  Berri  to  restore 
the  old  Bourbon  monarchy.  Later,  he  became  in  turn  Minister 
of  Public  Works,  and  Prime  Minister  with  Foreign  Affairs  as 
his  particular  department.  His  career  at  this  period  was  marked 
by  a  good  deal  of  inconsistency.  At  one  moment  he  brought 
liberal  measures  forward,  at  another  he  was  against  all  innova- 
tions, at  another  he  almost  pooh-poohed  the  introduction  of 
railways  into  France,  at  yet  another  he  carried  laws  against  the 
Republican  party  and  the  French  press  generally,  which  were 
even  more  drastic  than  those  famous  Ordonnances  of  Charles  X., 
which,  in  1830,  he  had  personally  resisted. 

For  some  years  of  Louis  Philippe's  reign  the  political 
history  of  France  was  that  of  the  ambition  of  two  men,  Thiers 
and  Guizot,  the  chief  of  the  doctrinaire  party,  whose  contest 
for  supremacy  preceded  that  which  we  witnessed  in  England 
between  Disraeli  and  Gladstone.  Thiers  fell  in  August  1836, 
and  forthwith  betook  himself  to  Italy;  he  was  then  already 
preparing  his  History  of  the  Consulate  and  the  Empire.  A 
little  later,  in  order  to  overthrow  Count  Mole,  he  allied  him- 
self with  Guizot ;  Mole  fell,  but  Marshal  Soult  succeeded  him, 
and  it  was  only  in  1840  that  Thiers  again  became  Prime 
Minister.  He  soon  embroiled  himself  with  Great  Britain  over 
the  question  of  Egypt  and  Mehemet  Ali,  and  it  was  the 
threatening  outlook  in  foreign  affairs  at  that  time  which 
inspired  him  with  the  idea  of  surrounding  Paris  with  a  girdle 
of  fortifications  and  a  number  of  detached  forts.  The  scheme 
was  adopted,  but  the  bellicose  attitude  of  Thiers  had  produced 
a  bad  effect,  and  he  again  had  to  resign  office,  whereupon 
Guizot  succeeded  him.  At  last  came  1847,  the  fatal  year  of 
scandal,  agitation,  and  uproar  in  France.  Thiers  was  all 
activity  at  that  time,  attacking  the  Guizot  Administration 
with  the  greatest  violence,  but  never  imagining  that  by  over- 
throwing it   he  would  overthrow  the   monarchy  also.     When 


ADOLPHE  THIERS  37 

the  Revolution  came  in  February  1848,  he  wished  to  save  the 
institutions  of  the  country,  but  he  was  too  late  and  the 
Republic  followed.  For  a  while  he  remained  in  semi-seclusion, 
continuing  his  History  of  the  Empire  and  writing  a  book  on 
Property,  which  is  still  an  able  answer  to  many  Socialist 
theories. 

Thiers  had  been  in  power  at  the  time  of  Louis  Napoleon's 
attempt  at  Boulogne,  and  was  largely  responsible  for 
the  Prince's  imprisonment  at  Ham.  Nevertheless,  on  Louis 
Napoleon  coming  forward  as  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency  of 
the  Republic,  he  voted  for  him;  and  when  a  parliamentary 
colleague,  Bixio,  reproached  him  for  giving  such  a  vote,  saying 
that  the  Prince's  election  would  be  a  disgrace  for  France, 
Thiers  challenged  him,  and  they  fought  a  duel  forthwith,  that 
is  actually  in  the  Palais  Bourbon.  For  some  time  Thiers 
continued  to  support  the  Prince-President,  but  after  paying  a 
visit  to  Louis  Philippe,  then  in  exile  at  Claremont,  his  political 
views  became  modified ;  he  already  saw  a  Bonapartist  Coup 
d'etat  looming  in  the  distance,  and  joined  the  more  liberal 
sections  of  the  Assembly  in  trying  to  prevent  it.  When  it 
came,  he  was  arrested  like  so  many  others  and  taken  to  the 
prison  of  Mazas.  But  he  was  afterwards  allowed  to  quit 
France,  whither  he  was  able  to  return  in  August  1852. 

He  virtually  confined  himself  to  literary  work  from  that 
time  until  he  was  elected  as  one  of  the  deputies  for  Paris  in 
May  1863.  Then,  for  seven  years,  he  played,  at  intervals,  an 
important  part  in  the  Legislative  Body  of  the  Second  Empire ; 
he  spoke  on  finance,  on  the  measure  of  liberty  necessary  for 
the  nation,  on  the  question  of  Rome  and  the  Papacy,  on  the 
disastrous  Mexican  business,  and  on  the  war  of  1866  between 
Prussia  and  Austria,  which,  as  he  rightly  foresaw,  was  pregnant 
with  the  greatest  consequences  for  Europe.  After  Austria  had 
been  crushed  at  Koniggratz  he  again  warned  the  Imperial 
Government  respecting  the  dangers  ahead,  pointing  out  the 
isolation  of  France  and  advising  it  to  draw  as  closely  as  possible 
to  Great  Britain — "for  never,  I  declare,"  said  he,  "have  I 
thought  the  English  alliance  more  necessary  to  France  than  it 
is  now."1  On  one  occasion  in  1869  he  attacked  the  financial 
policy  of  the  city  of  Paris ;  on  another  he  demanded  complete 
independence  for  the  Legislature.  In  the  following  year, 
1  Speech  delivered  in  March  1867. 


38  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

though  he  was  now  seventy-three  years  old,  he  seemed  to  regain 
all  the  ardour  of  youth,  plunging  into  every  discussion  of 
importance  which  arose,  and  advocating,  notably,  the  reorganisa- 
tion and  reinforcement  of  the  army.  The  other  Opposition 
deputies  were  amazed  by  this  last  suggestion,  and  Jules  Favre 
twitted  Thiers  for  having  gone  over  to  the  Empire.  In  reply- 
ing, Thiers  remarked :  "  Why  did  Sadowa  offer  the  world  such 
an  unexpected  spectacle?  Because  they  were  ready  at  Berlin 
whereas  they  were  not  ready  at  Vienna.  It  is  thus  that 
states  perish ! " 

Soon  afterwards  came  the  Prince  of  Hohenzollern's  candi- 
dature to  the  crown  of  Spain.  War  was  already  virtually 
decided  upon  when  Thiers  entered  a  solemn  protest  against 
the  Government's  policy,  brushing  aside  the  observations  of 
Schneider,  the  President  of  the  Legislative  Body,  who  urged 
that  there  should  be  unanimity  in  the  Chamber  on  a  question 
affecting  the  nation's  honour.  Said  Thiers,  in  the  speech  he 
made  amid  incessant  interruptions :  "  There  is  no  call  on  any- 
body here  to  assume  more  responsibility  than  he  chooses  to 
assume.  As  for  myself  I  think  of  the  memory  I  shall  leave 
behind  me,  and  I  decline  all  responsibility  whatever. "  The 
war  followed,  bringing  disaster  and  revolution  with  it.  On  the 
evening  of  September  4,  Thiers  presided  over  a  meeting  of 
deputies  held  with  the  object  of  promoting  some  agreement 
between  them  and  the  Government  of  National  Defence.  But 
Jules  Favre  and  his  colleagues  rejected  the  idea  and  the 
deputies  dispersed.  Thiers  repeatedly  declined  to  enter  the 
new  Administration,  but  when  it  appealed  to  him  to  sound  the 
European  Powers  and  induce  them,  if  possible,  to  intervene,  he 
agreed  to  accept  that  particular  mission  in  spite  of  his  age  and 
his  ill-health  at  the  time.  He  went  in  turn  to  London,  Rome, 
Vienna,  and  St.  Petersburg,  pleading  his  country's  cause;  he 
interviewed  both  King  William  and  Bismarck  at  Versailles, 
and  for  a  moment  there  was  at  least  some  prospect  of  an 
armistice  for  the  election  of  a  National  Assembly  to  decide 
what  course  France  should  adopt.  But  the  Parisian  rising  of 
October  31,  when  most  of  the  members  of  the  National  Defence 
Government  became  for  some  hours  prisoners  at  the  H6tel-de- 
Ville,  virtually  prevented  the  cessation  of  hostilities,  and  the 
war  continued,  as  we  know.  During  its  last  stages  Thiers 
never  ceased  advising  peace ;    he  freely  prophesied   that   the 


ADOLPHE  THIERS  39 

longer  hostilities  lasted  the  greater  would  be  the  sacrifices 
demanded  of  France  at  the  finish.  His  uppermost  thought 
was  his  country's  interest,  even  as  Gambetta's  was  his  country's 
honour. 

It  was  generally  acknowledged  that  he  had  done  his  best  in 
the  negotiations  he  conducted  in  those  critical  times,  and  his 
numerous  successes  at  the  elections  in  February  1871  clearly 
indicated-  that  ;he  was  the  man  in  whom  France  as  a  whole, 
placed  most  of  her  confidence.     At  the  same  time  he  certainly 
had   his  faults.     Succeeding  early  in   life,  he  had  frequently 
subordinated  principles  and  the  general  interests  to  his  personal 
ambition.     He  served  Louis  Philippe  first  as  Minister  of  the 
Interior  for  two  years,  then  twice  as  Prime  Minister,  but  his 
tenure    of  office   in   the   latter   capacity   lasted,    on   the   first 
occasion,  for  only  six,  and  on  the  second  for  only  seven  months. 
He  could  not  lead  or  control  a  majority,  he  could  not  curry 
favour  with  it,  persuade  it,  grant  it  graceful  concessions  in 
return  for  its  constancy.     Although  ingenious,  even  artful  at 
times,  he  was  too  autocratic,  too  firm  a  believer  in  his  own 
views,  and    others   had  to  follow  him  blindly  or  not  at  all. 
That  he  in  no  small  degree  contributed  to  the  overthrow  of 
the  Orleans  Monarchy  is  certain,  and  that  alone  indicates  to 
what  lengths  he  went  at  times  in  furtherance  of  his  personal 
ambition.     Under  the  Second  Republic  his  conduct  in  relation 
to  the  Prince  who  became  Napoleon  III.  was  at  times  equivocal, 
and  it  is  possible,  as  some  have  said,  that  he  hoped  for  a  while 
to  become  the  latter's  chief  Minister  and  Mentor,  and  turned 
against  him  when  he  found  that  hope  unrealised.     At  the  same 
time,  he   often  displayed   great  shrewdness.      His   refusal   to 
become  a  member  of  the  National  Defence  Government  was 
a  case  in  point.     He  judged  the  position  far  less  hopefully 
than  did,  for  instance,  Gambetta,  and  he  had  no  desire  to  link 
his  name  with  efforts  which  he  considered  must  prove  unavail- 
ing.    He  prepared  to  hold  himself  in  reserve,  foreseeing  that 
at  the  end  of  the  war  France  would  need  the  help  of  men 
compromised  neither  in  the  errors  of  the  Empire  nor  in  the 
failure  of  the  military  efforts  of  the  National  Defence.     In  this 
again  he  was  wise,  even  if  personal  ambition  influenced  his 
views.     When  the  end  came  everybody  turned  to  him  as  to 
a  man  who  had  retained  his  authority,  his  prestige,  unimpaired 
amid  the  downfall  of  others. 


40  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Although  personal  considerations  influenced  Thiers  more  or 
less  until  his  last  hour,  it  is  unquestionable  that  he  rendered 
great  services  to  France  after  his  elevation  to  power  in  1871. 
While  Jules  Favre  remained  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  and 
Pouyer-Quertier  became  Minister  of  Finances,1  it  was  pre- 
eminently Thiers  who  conducted  the  peace  negotiations  with 
Germany.  And  he  was  not  altogether  unsuccessful  in  the 
struggle.  He  tried  to  dissuade  the  enemy  from  exacting  a 
triumphal  entry  into  Paris,  but  when  he  was  told  that  this  could 
only  be  dispensed  with  if  the  fortress  of  Belfort,  in  addition 
to  the  territories  previously  specified,  were  ceded  to  Germany, 
he  did  not  hesitate — he  preferred  to  put  up  with  a  passing 
humiliation  and  save  Belfort  for  France. 

For  a  while  the  National  Assembly  remained  at  Bordeaux. 
Paris  was  now  being  reprovisioned,  the  English  gifts — the  fruit 
of  a  highly  successful  Lord  Mayors  fund — forming  an  important 
contribution  in  that  respect.  But  the  city  continued  restless ; 
the  working  classes,  almost  entirely  incorporated  in  the  National 
Guard,  were  swayed  by  revolutionary  leaders,  and  frequent 
demonstrations  took  place.  There  were  even  deplorable 
excesses,  as  when,  in  the  presence  of  some  thousands  of  applaud- 
ing people  on  and  near  the  Place  de  la  Bastille,  an  unfortunate 
detective  named  Vicensini  was  flung  into  the  Seine  from  a 
barge,  and  pelted  with  stones  to  prevent  him  from  regaining 
land.  We  saw  him  sink  twice,  then  rise  again  to  the  surface 
dead,  and  drift  towards  the  He  St.  Louis.  A  Central  Com- 
mittee of  the  National  Guard,  composed  mainly  of  the  Com- 
manders of  the  more  revolutionary  battalions,  directed  most  of 
the  demonstrations  of  the  time.  The  resumption  of  ordinary 
life  was,  it  must  be  admitted,  impossible.  No  work  was 
procurable,  employers  declaring  that  they  had  little  if  any 
money,  and  no  means  of  obtaining  credit  in  the  existing 
financial  state  of  the  country.  Besides,  although  provisions 
continued  to  arrive,  there  was  only  the  scantiest  supply  of  fuel, 
and  in  most  factories  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  set  the 
machinery  in  motion.  Thus  it  was  that  the  workmen  still 
served  as  National  Guards,  with  virtually  no  military  duties  to 

1  The  other  members  of  the  first  Ministry  he  constituted  were  :  Justice, 
Dufaure ;  Public  Instruction,  Jules  Simon ;  Public  Works,  Larcy  ;  Agri- 
culture and  Commerce,  Lambrecht ;  War,  Le  Flo ;  Marine,  Admiral 
Pothuau  ;  and  Interior,  Ernest  Picard,  who  at  last  secured  the  post  in  which 
Gambetta  had  forestalled  him  at  the  Revolution  of  September  4. 


PARIS  AFTER  THE  SIEGE  41 

perform,  but  in  receipt  of  the  same  pay  (one  franc  and  a  half 
per  diem *)  as  during  the  German  Siege. 

The  morale  of  the  men  had  been  badly  affected  by  that 
siege.  If  food  had  then  been  scarce,  wine  and  spirits  had 
remained  plentiful — indeed  when  Paris  capitulated,  there  was 
still  sufficient  alcoholic  liquor  to  suffice  for  another  twelve 
months;  and  this  although  the  consumption  during  the  siege 
had  been  many  times  larger  than  in  ordinary  times.  The  cause 
was  obvious :  receiving  a  deficiency  of  food  and  exposed  to 
the  hardships  of  a  terrible  winter,  the  men  had  sought  suste- 
nance in  drink.  The  Parisian  ouvrier,  previously  far  more 
abstemious  than  the  British  workman,  had  become  a  tippler, 
and  unfortunately  the  vice  of  over-indulgence,  acquired  in 
those  dreadful  siege  days,  has  never  since  been  eradicated,  but 
has  been  transmitted  from  father  to  son  and  grandson  also. 
Before  long  the  National  Assembly,  in  the  hope  of  coping 
with  the  evil,  passed  the  first  law  on  drunkenness  known  to 
modern  France.  For  centuries  before  that  time  no  such  law 
had  been  needed.  We  know,  too,  what  efforts  have  vainly  been 
made  of  late  years  by  successive  French  Ministries,  by  the 
municipalities  of  the  country,  and  by  innumerable  temperance 
societies,  to  bring  back  the  old  order  of  things.  The  particular 
misfortune  has  been  that  the  consumption  of  wine  has  decreased 
(in  proportion  to  the  population)  and  that  the  consumption  of 
ardent  spirits  and  potent  liqueurs  has  long  been  in  the  ascendant. 
While  the  French  workman  was  content  with  his  petit  bleu  no 
great  harm  was  done,  even  if  he  did  occasionally  celebrate 
"  St.  Monday,"  but  when  he,  and  not  only  he  but  his  wife  and 
his  daughter  also,  took  to  drinking  that  pernicious  beverage 
absinthe,  neat,2  the  consequences  were  naturally  disastrous. 

But  the  tippling  habits  contracted  by  the  Parisian  National 
Guards  during  the  German  Siege  had  an  immediate  result  of 
political  importance.  The  men's  minds  were  more  or  less 
inflamed,  and  they  listened  the  more  readily  to  the  exhorta- 
tions and  suggestions  of  Revolutionary  leaders,  Jacobins  and 

1  There  were  small  extra  allowances  for  men  with  wives  and  families. 

2  We  are  not  exaggerating.  In  1902  we  compared  notes  with  some 
distinguished  members  of  the  French  Anthropological  Society,  and  found 
that  their  observations  coincided  with  our  own.  Not  only  did  we  observe  in 
Paris  the  practice  mentioned  above,  but  we  noticed  it  in  several  other  cities 
— notably  at  Reims  among  the  girls  employed  in  the  cloth  factories,  and 
again  at  Lyons  among  the  silk  workers  of  both  sexes. 


42  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Socialists  of  various  schools.  Moreover,  the  capitulation  of 
Paris  had  angered  many  men,  and  the  disastrous  terms  of 
peace  (the  annexation  of  Alsace  Lorraine,  the  payment  of  an 
indemnity  of  ^200,000,000,  and  the  occupation  of  French 
territory  till  the  terms  were  executed)  angered  them  still  more. 
Thousands  of  folk  in  Paris  absolutely  believed  that  the  country 
had  been  betrayed.  In  these  circumstances,  although  the 
capitulation  specified  that  the  city's  armament  was  to  be  de- 
livered to  the  Germans,  the  Extremists,  who  declared  that  the 
convention  did  not  and  should  not  apply  to  any  guns  cast 
during  the  siege  with  the  proceeds  of  public  subscriptions, 
found  numerous  adherents.  Thus  a  Red  Republican  battalion 
seized  several  such  cannon  on  the  Place  Wagram,  while  other 
detachments  laid  hands  on  a  number  of  guns  removed  from  the 
fortifications  at  Montmartre  and  Belleville.  Altogether  about 
one  hundred  siege  and  field  guns,  a  dozen  mitrailleuses,  and 
half  a  dozen  howitzers  were  captured,  and  by  the  orders  of  the 
National  Guard's  Central  Committee  were  zealously  watched — 
both  on  the  Place  Royale  and  the  Place  St.  Pierre  at  Mont- 
martre— by  trusty  battalions  appointed  to  prevent  the 
Government  from  regaining  this  ordnance  and  handing  it  over 
to  the  Germans. 

Day  by  day  the  city  became  more  restless.  An  attempt  on 
the  H6tel-de-Ville  was  foiled,  but  when  the  news  came  that 
the  Germans  would  march  into  Paris  and  occupy  the  Champs 
Elysees  quarter,  on  March  1,  the  position  became  threatening. 
The  Red  Republican  leaders  knew,  however,  that  there  was  no 
possibility  of  resisting  the  Germans,  and,  besides,  they  preferred 
to  reserve  their  powder  and  shot  for  their  "  reactionary  "  fellow- 
countrymen,  as  their  newspapers  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  in 
threatening  language. 

The  1st  of  March  dawned  grey  and  cheerless,  but  early  in 
the  forenoon  the  sun  shone  out,  much  to  the  disgust  of  the 
Parisians,  who  would  have  welcomed  with  delight  a  fall  of  sleet, 
snow,  or  rain,  indeed  anything  which  might  have  spoilt  the 
German  entry  as  a  spectacular  display.  At  first,  however, 
there  was  nothing  theatrical  in  the  proceedings,  and  little  even 
to  suggest  a  triumphal  march.  About  8  o'clock  the  German 
advanced  guard  entered  the  city  from  Neuilly,  and  a  detach- 
ment of  half  a  dozen  Hussars  rode  up  the  Avenue  de  la  Grande 
Armee  to  the  Arc  de  Triomphe,  where  a  few  score  of  onlookers 


THE  GERMANS  IN  PARIS  43 

were  assembled.  Around  the  arch  was  a  heavy  iron  chain 
supported  at  intervals  by  strong  stone  pillars,  but  as  this 
chain  was  no  real  obstacle  for  mounted  men,  the  Hussars  jumped 
it,  and  then  cantered  down  the  Champs  Elysees  to  the  Palais 
de  Tlndustrie.1  Following  them  came  other  small  detach- 
ments, and  about  nine  o'clock  a  strong  column  of  horse,  foot, 
and  artillery  appeared,  headed  by  a  general  officer  and  his 
staff.  These  men  also  wished  to  pass  under  the  Arc  de 
Triomphe,  and  the  spectators — who  on  their  approach  raised 
shouts  of  "  On  ne  passe  pas  ! " — were  motioned  aside  by  a  staff- 
officer  who  galloped  forward  to  clear  the  way.  The  onlookers 
thereupon  fell  back,  but  the  officer  on  perceiving  the  iron  chain 
decided  to  rein  in  his  charger.  The  French  people  present 
regarded  this  as  a  great  triumph,  and  immediately  raised  cries 
of  "  Vive  la  Republique  !  "  whilst  the  German  officers,  with  an 
air  of  perfect  indifference,  marched  their  men  first  round  the 
arch  and  then,  without  sound  of  even  drum  or  bugle,  down 
the  Champs  Elysees,  to  the  Palais  de  Tlndustrie,  in  which  it 
had  been  arranged  that  10,000  troops  should  be  quartered. 
There  were  very  few  people  about  at  this  time,  and  not  a  cry 
was  uttered,  nothing  was  heard  but  the  regular  cadence  of  men 
and  horses  marching  past  the  deserted  -  looking  houses  and 
closed  cafes. 

It  had  been  generally  anticipated  that  the  Emperor  William 
would  accompany  his  troops  into  Paris,  and  such  had  really 
been  his  intention — indeed  he  had  invited  all  the  reigning 
Sovereigns  of  Germany  to  take  part  in  the  pageant, — but  when 
his  advisers  became  acquainted  with  the  effervescence  in  the 
city,  and  realised  that  the  occupation  might  possibly  result  in 
some  affray  with  the  foolhardy  National  Guards,  they  insisted 
on  an  alteration  of  plans,  and  the  Kaiser  contented  himself 
with  reviewing  his  soldiers  on  the  race -course  at  Longchamp. 
Directly  this  review  was  over,  shortly  after  noon,  the  6th  and 
11th  Prussian  Army  Corps  and  the  1st  Bavarian  Army  Corps 
marched  from  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  along  the  various  arteries, 
leading  to  the  Arc  de  Triomphe.  The  long  lines  of  spiked 
helmets,  bayonets,  and  sabres  glittered  in  the  sunbeams,  which 
shone  brilliantly  on  those  German  legions,  as  with  their  bands 
playing   and   their   colours   waving   they   thus   effected   their 

1  Now  destroyed.     It  had  served  for  the  International  Exhibition  of 
1855,  and  for  successive  "  Salons  "  and  horse  and  cattle  shows. 


44  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

triumphal  entry.  The  last  to  arrive  were  the  Bavarians,  who 
made  a  brave  show  in  their  light  blue  tunics  and  crested 
helmets,  though  now  and  again  a  grotesque  element  entered 
into  the  display.  For  instance,  at  one  moment  there  appeared 
a  ramshackle-looking  carriage  containing  a  gouty  old  general, 
whose  soldier- servants,  seated  on  the  box,  were  complacently 
smoking  their  long  pipes  with  porcelain  bowls.  Again,  a  little 
basket -chaise,  drawn  by  a  pony,  and  occupied  by  a  richly- 
bedizened  German  princeling,  came  between  a  squadron  of 
heavy  horse  and  some  batteries  of  artillery.  The  incongruous 
apparition  was  greeted  with  quite  a  jeer  by  the  French  on- 
lookers, who  solaced  themselves  with  respect  to  the  formidable 
appearance  of  the  German  soldiery  by  remarking,  "  Tout  cela 
manque  de  chic." 

Unacquainted  with  the  arrangements  which  had  been 
officially  arrived  at,  most  of  the  Germans  anticipated  that  they 
would  enjoy  a  very  pleasant  time  in  that  wonderful  city  of 
Paris  of  which  they  had  heard  so  much ;  but  they  soon  dis- 
covered that  their  occupation  was  limited  to  a  comparatively 
small  district,  where  the  Champs  Elysees  and  the  Place  de  la 
Concorde  were  the  only  points  of  interest,  and  where  every 
shop  and  every  cafe — excepting  one — remained  strictly  closed. 
Many  officers  had  expected  that  they  would  enjoy  the  free 
run  of  the  Boulevards,  and  even  General  von  Blumenthal,  the 
commander  of  the  occupied  district,  seemed  extremely  surprised 
when  on  reaching  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  with  his  staff  he 
found  he  had  reached  the  Ultima  Thule  of  his  domain.  Here 
the  Rue  Royale  and  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  like  the  quay  alongside 
the  Seine  and  the  Concorde  bridge  across  it,  were  shut  off  by 
stout  barricades,  which  left  only  small  apertures  to  enable 
civilians  to  pass  to  and  fro — the  French  sentries,  either  Lines- 
men or  National  Guards  on  whom  the  authorities  could  rely, 
guarding  those  narrow  portals  with  all  vigilance.  A  force  of 
mounted  Gendarmerie  was  also  stationed  close  at  hand. 

Few  shops  were  open  in  Paris  that  day,  even  in  the  districts 
far  removed  from  the  so-called  German  zone.  The  Boulevard 
cafes  and  restaurants  remained  closed,  the  Bourse  was  shut,  no 
theatrical  performances  were  given,  and  the  only  newspaper 
that  appeared  was  the  Journal  Officiel.  The  Parisians  who 
ventured  into  the  Champs  Elysees  belonged  mostly  to  the 
lower  orders,  and  included  a  considerable  number  of  youthful 


THE  GERMANS  IN  PARIS  45 

hooligans,  who  soon  devised  a  means  of  demonstrating  their 
patriotism  under  the  very  eyes  of  the  German  soldiers. 
Numerous  Boulevard  women,  whose  calling  at  that  time  was 
anything  but  lucrative,  boldly  accosted  the  German  officers 
who  were  lounging  in  front  of  the  Palais  de  lTndustrie,  and 
found  them  quite  ready  to  enter  into  conversation.  While 
these  females  promenaded  within  the  German  lines  they  were 
all  smiles  and  laughter,  but  the  young  roughs  were  watching 
them,  and  directly  one  or  another  left  her  new  acquaintances 
she  was  chivied  along  the  Champs  Elysees,  captured,  and 
hustled  into  one  or  another  of  the  shrubberies  near  the 
open-air  concert  halls.  There  she  was  flung  on  the  ground, 
her  clothes  were  half- torn  from  her  back,  and  she  received  a 
sound  spanking  as  punishment  for  the  overtures  she  had  shame- 
lessly made  to  the  Germans.  We  saw  quite  half  a  dozen 
women  captured  in  that  manner,  and  their  screams  while  they 
were  being  whipped  could  have  been  heard  half  a  mile  away. 
Yet  on  no  occasion  did  the  Germans  interfere.  They  either 
looked  on  with  indifference,  or  grinned  as  though  they  con- 
sidered those  incidents  to  be  extremely  amusing.1  An  elderly, 
ladylike  person  in  deep  mourning,  who  addressed  a  few  words 
to  a  German  officer,  was  chivied  in  the  manner  already  de- 
scribed, and  would  undoubtedly  have  been  whipped  had  not 
two  or  three  gentlemen,  favourably  impressed  by  her  appear- 
ance, intercepted  her  pursuers  and  parleyed  with  them,  thus 
enabling  her  to  escape.  On  being  questioned  by  one  of  her 
protectors,  she  told  him  that  she  had  merely  inquired  of  the 
German  officer  how  she  might  best  communicate  with  her 
soldier  son,  a  prisoner  of  war  taken  in  a  recent  battle.  Some 
other  French  people,  whose  intercourse  with  the  enemy  was 
equally  innocent,  were  less  fortunate  than  this  lady,  and  met 
with  no  little  ill-usage.  Archibald  Forbes,  the  distinguished 
war  correspondent,  was  grossly  assaulted  for  acknowledging  a 
salutation  addressed  to  him  by  the  Crown  Prince  of  Saxony,  to 
whose  army  he  had  been  attached  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
Siege  of  Paris. 

During  the  afternoon  the  Champs  Elysees  were  transformed 

1  During  a  part  of  the  day  we  were  in  the  company  of  Archibald  Forbes, 
at  another  in  that  of  Mr.  (now  Sir)  William  Ingram,  and  Mr.  Landells  of 
the  Illustrated  London  News.  Forbes  and  Landells  are  dead,  but  Sir 
William  Ingram  must  remember  the  extraordinary  scenes  to  which  we  have 
referred. 


I  ,_ 


46  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

into  a  great  camp.  Commissariat  waggons,  country  carts  of 
all  kinds,  detachments  of  horse  and  foot,  encumbered  the  road- 
ways ;  officers  and  men  paraded  the  side  walks,  or  looked  down 
from  the  balconies  and  windows  of  the  houses  where  they  had 
been  thickly  billeted.  When  evening  arrived  camp-fires  were 
lighted,  and  the  night  was  largely  spent  in  the  singing  of 
martial  songs. 

On  the  following  morning  the  sun  again  shone  out 
brilliantly,  as  if  to  mock  the  distress  of  the  Parisians,  who  in 
the  more  democratic  quarters  hung  black  flags  from  their 
windows.  Meantime,  fresh  bodies  of  the  German  troops 
poured  into  the  city,  and  one  column  on  reaching  the  Arc  de 
Triomphe  promptly  severed  the  chain  which  girdled  it,  in  such 
wise  that  from  that  moment  regiment  after  regiment  marched 
in  triumph  through  the  arch.  Numerous  detachments,  carry- 
ing only  their  sidearms,  were  allowed  to  visit  the  Tuileries  and 
the  Louvre,  which  they  reached  from  the  Place  de  la  Concorde 
by  way  of  the  Tuileries  garden.  They  were  perceived,  how- 
ever, by  the  crowd  in  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  whose  demeanour 
became  so  threatening  that  the  French  authorities  soon  decided 
to  allow  no  more  Germans  beyond  the  Place  de  la  Concorde. 
Nearly  all  of  those  who  had  been  admitted  to  the  Tuileries, 
returned  with  sprigs  of  laurel  on  their  helmets,  much  to  the 
indignation  of  the  French,  who  protested  that  if  any  more  of 
the  enemy  were  allowed  to  enter  the  gardens,  the  latter  would 
be  virtually  destroyed. 

However,  the  excitement  subsided  as  rapidly  as  it  had 
arisen,  and,  curiously  enough,  during  the  afternoon,  a  large 
number  of  well-dressed  Parisians  appeared  in  the  Champs 
Elysees,  attracted  possibly  by  the  fine  weather,  the  many  bands 
of  music,  and  the  general  display  made  by  the  army  of  occupa- 
tion. About  half-past  three,  we  remember,  the  Crown  Prince 
of  Prussia — later  Emperor  Frederick — looking  very  hale  and  fit, 
drove  down  the  Champs  Elysees  in  an  open  carriage  drawn  by 
black  horses,  but  he  preserved  incognito,  as  it  were,  and  by  his 
express  desire  no  military  honours  were  paid  to  him.  That 
morning  Paris  had  learnt  that  the  preliminaries  of  peace  had 
been  ratified  by  the  Assembly  at  Bordeaux,  after  an  impressive 
scene  when  the  defunct  Second  Empire  had  been  declared  re- 
sponsible for  the  "invasion,  ruin,  and  dismemberment  of 
France.'"     During  the  day,  moreover,  it  was  ascertained  that 


THE  GERMANS  IN  PARIS  47 

the  immediate  evacuation  of  Paris  by  the  Germans  had  been 
agreed  upon ;  and  possibly  the  prospect  of  the  enemy's  speedy 
departure,  as  well  as  feelings  of  curiosity,  prompted  the  change 
which  was  observable  in  the  demeanour  of  many  Parisians. 

At  sunset  the  bivouac  fires  were  again  lighted,  and  the 
military  bands  continued  playing  inspiriting  airs  until  long 
after  the  moon  had  risen.  The  Parisians  gathered  round  them, 
seemingly  careless,  or  perhaps  unconscious  of  humiliation.  A 
little  later,  columns  of  troops,  with  bands  playing  and  the  men 
singing  in  chorus,  marched  up  the  Champs  Elysees  on  their 
way  back  to  Versailles.  As  they  passed  along,  the  many 
soldiers  still  billeted  in  the  houses  appeared  on  the  balconies 
with  lighted  candles,  which  were  so  numerous  as  to  suggest  a 
general  illumination.  Meantime,  near  the  Place  de  la  Concorde, 
Uhlans  stood  singing  part-songs  under  the  trees  to  which  their 
horses  were  tethered,  while  on  the  square  itself  a  German 
infantryman  addressed  an  audience  of  at  least  five  hundred 
French  folk,  in  their  own  tongue,  on  the  blessings  of  peace  and 
the  horrors  of  war  ! 

The  evacuation  of  the  city  was  resumed  in  the  morning, 
when,  in  order  to  prevent  disturbances,  no  civilians  were  allowed 
to  enter  the  Champs  Elysees.  In  the  afternoon,  however,  when 
the  last  German  column  had  departed,  a  gang  of  roughs 
wrecked  the  Cafe  Dupont  at  the  corner  of  the  Rond-Point  and 
the  Rue  Montaigne — that  being  the  only  establishment  of  the 
kind  that  had  opened  its  doors  to  the  enemy.  Every  window  of 
the  cafe  was  broken,  all  the  velvet-cushioned  seats  were  ripped 
open,  the  chairs  reduced  to  firewood,  and  the  marble  tables, 
like  the  stock  of  glass  and  crockery,  smashed  to  atoms. 

When  the  Germans  had  evacuated  Paris,  still  retaining 
possession,  however,  of  the  surrounding  forts,  the  Government 
were  confronted  by  the  task  of  quelling  the  revolutionary 
agitation.  So  bold  was  the  Central  Committee  of  the  National 
Guard,  that  even  while  the  Germans  were  in  the  Champs 
Elysees  it  despatched  a  strong  band  of  adherents  to  attack  the 
Gobelins  tapestry  manufactory,  recently  used  as  a  military 
store  place,  and  whence  chassepots  and  ammunition  were 
purloined.  Other  bands,  moreover,  appropriated  a  score  and 
a  half  of  howitzers,  which  they  added  to  the  formidable  stock 
of  artillery  already  held  by  the  Red  Republicans. 

The  Government  replied  to  those  proceedings  by  appointing 


48  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

General  cTAurelle  de  Paladines  to  the  command  of  the  National 
Guard,  imagining  that  he  would  be  able  to  restore  discipline. 
But  the  Revolutionary  leaders  gave  out  that  this  appointment 
was  only  a  preliminary  to  disbandment,  although  the  Govern- 
ment really  had  no  intention  of  taking  such  a  course,  being 
well  aware  that  most  of  the  men  would  be  destitute  if  they 
were  deprived  of  their  daily  pay.  Many  Guards,  however, 
relying  on  what  they  read  in  the  Extremist  press,  undoubtedly 
imagined  that  they  were  in  imminent  peril  of  losing  their 
thirty  sous  per  diem.  There  were  still  no  signs  of  the  city's 
workshops  opening  again,  and  many  men,  moreover,  after 
playing  at  soldiers  for  six  months  or  so,  demoralised,  as 
they  were,  too,  by  hardship  and  tippling,  had  little  inclination 
to  return  to  their  ordinary  avocations.  Another  important 
matter  was  the  rent  question — arrears  of  rent  having  been 
allowed  to  accumulate  ever  since  the  German  investment  in  the 
previous  year ;  and  it  was  generally  assumed  that  this  would 
be  eventually  settled  in  favour  of  the  Parisian  landlords,  as  the 
Government  and  the  Assembly  belonged  to  the  bourgeoisie. 

The  demoralisation  of  most  of  the  Guards,  the  thirty  sous 
question,  the  rent  question,  and  the  drink  question  all  led  up  to 
the  Commune.  Had  there  even  been  no  such  causes  at  work  a 
rising  would  have  occurred,  for  the  Red  Republican  leaders  had 
resolved  on  making  a  bid  for  power,  though  had  that  been  the 
only  disturbing  factor  we  think  that  the  rising  would  never 
have  proved  so  serious  as  it  did,  for  the  insurrectionary  forces 
would  then  have  been  limited  to  the  professional  agitators,  the 
more  rabid  citizens  of  Belleville,  Menilmontant,  Montmartre 
and  similar  districts,  and  about  a  thousand  foreign  adventurers 
then  scattered  through  the  city 1 — in  all  perhaps  some  20,000 
or  30,000  men,  whereas  under  the  circumstances  in  which  the 
Commune  originated,  it  actually  disposed  of  150,000  men,  more 
than  half  the  entire  National  Guard,  whose  total  strength  was 
280,000. 

General  d'Aurelle's  appointment  had  no  good  result.    Many 

1  Taine  speaks  in  his  "Correspondence,"  which  we  have  read  since 
writing  the  above,  of  thousands  of  Englishmen  being  among  the  Com- 
munards. The  assertion  is  grotesque.  The  foreigners  were  not  more 
numerous  than  we  have  stated  above.  As  for  Englishmen  there  were  not 
more  than  fifty  all  told  among  the  insurgents.  Nearly  every  reference  to 
the  Commune  in  Taine's  letters  shows  that  he  was  as  "gullible "as  were 
most  people  in  those  days. 


THE  COMMUNE  49 

battalions  set  his  orders  at  defiance,  and  instead  of  the  captured 
cannon  being  surrendered,  the  Reds  stoutly  held  to  them,  and 
even  added  to  their  number,  until  there  were  250  siege  and  field 
guns,  with  seventy  mitrailleuses,  and  as  many  mortars  or 
howitzers,  in  their  hands.  Rifles  and  muskets  were  also  added 
to  the  store,  and  early  in  March  the  Central  Committee 
disposed  of  more  than  500,000  rounds  of  ammunition.  It  had 
secured  as  yet,  however,  only  a  few  caissons  of  shells  and  round 
shot,  so  that  the  bulk  of  its  artillery  could  not  be  immediately 
utilised. 

The  Government  felt  that  the  provincial  Mobile  Guards  at 
their  disposal  in  Paris  had  been  contaminated  by  their  long 
service  there,  and  that  instead  of  rendering  help  in  any  struggle 
they  might  become  a  source  of  danger.  Some  40,000  were 
therefore  disbanded  and  sent  home,  while  Regulars  from  the 
provinces  were  despatched  to  Paris  as  fast  as  possible.  But 
those  Regulars  were  young  men  incorporated  either  just  before 
or  during  the  war,  and  they  soon  began  to  fraternise  with  the 
National  Guards.  The  Government  was  really  in  need  of 
veteran  troops,  men  of  the  old  Line  Regiments  and  the  ex- 
Imperial  Guard,  but  these  were  still  prisoners  of  war  in 
Germany,  and  it  seemed  unlikely  that  they  would  be  sent  home 
until  peace  should  be  finally  signed  at  Frankfort.  Day  by  day 
the  position  grew  more  critical.  The  demonstrations  on  the 
Place  de  la  Bastille  became  extremely  threatening.  Serious 
affrays  constantly  arose  between  the  Reds  and  those  who  did 
not  share  their  views,  notably  the  seamen  of  the  Naval  Brigade, 
who  openly  showed  their  contempt  for  the  landlubbers. 

At  last,  when  General  Vinoy — Trochu's  successor — who  was 
still  suffered  to  govern  Paris,  had  collected  some  60,000  of  the 
aforesaid  unreliable  Regulars,  and  General  Valentin,  presumed 
to  be  a  man  of  mettle,  had  been  appointed  Prefect  of  Police, 
an  attempt  was  made  to  assert  the  Government's  authority. 
Several  rabid  newspapers  were  suspended,  and  some  thirty  guns 
collected  on  the  Place  des  Vosges  were  seized  by  the  troops ; 
the  Reds  being  also  called  upon  to  surrender  all  the  ordnance 
parked  on  the  heights  of  Montmartre.  As  they  refused  to  do 
so,  Vinoy,  in  the  small  hours  of  March  18,  despatched  to  the 
Place  St.  Pierre  at  Montmartre  a  column  commanded  by 
Generals  Lecomte  and  Paturel.  For  a  moment  it  seemed  as 
if  the  Government  would  succeed  in  its  determination  to  seize 


50  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  guns  by  force.  On  reaching  Montmartre  the  troops 
occupied  the  entrenchments  there  after  a  slight  resistance,  in 
which  a  few  Guards  were  wounded.  Several  were  then  made 
prisoners,  together  with  some  suspicious  individuals  whose 
papers  indicated  that  they  were  members  or  delegates  of 
revolutionary  committees.  Finally,  all  the  guns  on  the  Place 
St.  Pierre,  171  in  number,  were  taken  by  the  troops.  But  it 
soon  became  apparent  that  somebody  had  blundered,  for  the 
horses  which  were  to  have  removed  the  ordnance  did  not  arrive. 
The  insurrectionary  leaders  profited  by  the  delay  to  have  the 
rappel  beaten,  and  this  brought  thousands  of  their  adherents  to 
the  square.  It  was  only  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that  the 
artillerymen  in  charge  of  some  of  the  expected  horses  at  length 
forced  their  way  to  the  spot,  and  once  there  it  became  equally 
difficult  for  them  to  depart.  When  General  Paturel  ordered 
his  infantry  to  drive  back  the  Guards  the  command  was  dis- 
regarded ;  instead  of  fixing  bayonets  the  men  raised  the 
butt-ends  of  their  rifles  in  the  air,  and  in  a  few  minutes  the 
fraternisation  of  the  Linesmen  and  the  citizen -soldiery  was 
complete.  The  general,  with  the  assistance  of  some  mounted 
Chasseurs  and  artillerymen,  then  attempted  to  carry  off  the 
few  guns  to  which  it  had  been  possible  to  harness  horses.  He 
retreated  slowly  by  way  of  the  precipitous  Rue  Lepic,  followed 
by  a  large  number  of  National  Guards,  who  called  upon  the 
Chasseurs  and  artillerymen  to  fraternise,  and  bombarded  the 
general,  first  with  epithets  and  then  with  a  street  hawker's 
stock  of  potatoes,  carrots,  turnips  and  other  vegetables,  which 
filled  a  hand-cart  standing  near  the  footway.  To  escape  those 
missiles  the  general  put  his  horse  to  a  trot,  but  it  fell,  throwing 
him  amid  the  cheers  of  the  National  Guards.  The  latter  now 
surrounded  the  *tr oops,  and  prevailed  on  them  to  abandon  the 
guns,  while  Paturel  with  his  staff  managed  to  escape. 

Far  less  fortunate  was  General  Lecomte  who  commanded 
some  of  the  troops.  He  also  had  managed  to  secure  a  few  of 
the  guns,  but  on  the  Place  Pigalle,  where  a  great  crowd  was 
assembled,  his  party  was  surrounded  by  National  Guards,  and 
a  brief  melee  ensued,  during  which  a  few  men  on  either  side 
were  wounded.  Almost  immediately  afterwards,  however, 
shouts  for  fraternisation  arose,  the  troops  joined  the  populace, 
and  Lecomte  and  some  of  his  officers  were  dragged  from  their 
horses  and  made  prisoners.     They  were  hurried  to  the  dancing- 


THE  COMMUNE  51 

hall  of  the  Chateau  Rouge,  where  Lecomte  was  required  to 
sign  an  undertaking  that  he  would  not  raise  his  sword  against 
the  Parisians.  He  complied,  and  also  sent  orders  to  those 
troops  who  still  remained  at  their  posts  to  return  to  their 
quarters.  Having  thus  satisfied  the  demands  of  his  captors  he 
had  every  reason  to  believe  that  his  life  would  be  spared,  but 
several  men  who  had  figured  in  the  affray  on  the  Place  Pigalle 
angrily  declared  that  he  had  then  ordered  his  soldiers  to  shoot 
the  women  and  children  in  the  crowd.  That  lie  virtually 
sealed  his  fate.  With  half  a  dozen  other  officers  who  had  been 
arrested  he  was  taken  to  a  house  in  the  Rue  des  Rosiers,  where 
the  so-called  Central  Committee  of  the  National  Guard  usually 
met.  Some  of  those  who  were  then  present  there  proposed 
that  a  court-martial  should  be  assembled,  and  the  suggestion 
was  under  discussion  when  a  band  of  Reds  arrived  with  another 
prisoner  of  importance,  an  old,  white-bearded  man. 

This  was  General  Clement  Thomas,  who  had  commanded 
the  National  Guard  during  some  part  of  the  German  Siege, 
and  made  himself  very  unpopular  among  the  Reds  by  dis- 
banding some  free  corps  for  cowardice  in  the  field.  Shortly 
after  the  Revolution  of  1830,  Thomas,  then  young  and  wealthy, 
joined  the  regular  army  as  a  volunteer,  but  his  participation  in 
the  popular  rising  of  April  1834  resulted  in  a  sentence  to 
several  years1  imprisonment.  After  the  Revolution  of  1848, 
however,  he  became  both  a  deputy  and  for  the  first  time 
commander-in-chief  of  the  National  Guard.  Three  years  later, 
Louis  Napoleon's  Coup  d'Etat  made  him  an  outlaw,  and  it  was 
only  on  the  downfall  of  the  Second  Empire  that  he  returned  to 
Paris  to  serve  the  new  Republic. 

When  he  was  arrested  by  the  Reds  on  March  18  he  was 
walking  in  civilian  attire,  along  the  Boulevard  Ornano,  watching 
the  fraternisation  of  the  soldiers  and  the  guards.  Some  of  the 
latter  recognised  him,  and  seizing  him  on  the  pretext  that  he 
had  come  to  spy  out  the  land  and  take  plans  of  barricades 
and  batteries,  marched  him  off  to  the  Rue  des  Rosiers.  This 
was  a  little  pebbly  lane,  running  behind  the  mills  of  Montmartre 
and  lined  with  low  houses  and  their  gardens.  No.  6,  tenanted 
by  the  Central  Committee,  stood  back  from  the  road,  behind 
a  high  stone  wall.  After  opening  a  large  iron  gate  you  found 
yourself  in  a  paved  courtyard,  at  the  rear  of  which  stood  the 
house,  a  small,  commonplace,  two-storeyed  building,  belonging 


52  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

to  the  heirs  of  Scribe  the  playwright,  who  there  lived  and  wrote 
several  of  his  vaudevilles  and  comedies  before  acquiring  fame 
and  fortune.  A  side  passage  led  from  the  yard  to  the  garden, 
which  had  formerly  been  subdivided  by  some  green  trellis-work 
into  three  or  four  distinct  patches,  one  apiece,  no  doubt, 
for  each  tenant  of  the  house.  But  on  March  18,  1871,  the 
enclosures  were  broken  down  and  lay  about  in  fragments,  while 
little  remained  of  the  flower-beds,  repeatedly  and  roughly 
trampled  under  foot.  Here  and  there  were  a  few  gooseberry 
and  currant  bushes,  with  a  score  of  lime  trees,  on  glancing 
between  which  you  saw  the  plain  lying  north  of  Paris,  with  its 
deserted  factories,  from  none  of  whose  many  tall  chimneys  did 
smoke  ascend.  At  one  end  of  the  garden  was  a  high  dark  wall, 
to  which  a  dying  peach  tree  was  trained.  It  was  against  this 
wall  that  Clement  Thomas  and  Lecomte  were  shot. 

On  the  former  officer  reaching  the  house  he  was  thrust  into 
a  ground-floor  room,  where  the  other  prisoners  were  assembled 
with  the  members  of  the  Central  Committee.  While  the  latter 
discussed  the  question  of  a  court-martial  the  military  rabble 
outside  clamoured  more  and  more  impatiently,  and  before  long 
a  large  number  of  National  Guards,  Linesmen,  and  Francs- 
tireurs  burst  into  the  room  both  by  the  doorway  and  the 
window,  and  seized  first  Thomas  and  then  Lecomte,  despite  all 
the  efforts  which  the  Committee-men,  together  with  the  other 
prisoners,  made  to  defend  them.  Both  generals  were  dragged 
along  a  passage  leading  to  the  garden,  Lecomte  struggling  the 
while  and  attempting  to  escape,  and  even  at  one  moment 
beseeching  his  murderers  to  let  him  live  for  the  sake  of  his 
six  young  children.  Meantime,  however,  Thomas  had  been 
led  outside  and  thrust  against  the  garden- wall.  He  faced  his 
murderers  proudly,  holding  his  hat  in  his  hand,  and  died  as  it 
were  by  degrees,  for  so  faulty  was  the  marksmanship  that  he 
did  not  fall  until  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  shot.  Then 
Lecomte  was  dragged  out  of  the  passage  and  shot  in  the  back 
before  he  could  even  take  his  stand  against  the  wall. 

In  the  confusion  of  the  moment  some  of  the  other  prisoners 
escaped,  and  the  members  of  the  Central  Committee  were  after- 
wards able  to  assert  their  authority  and  release  the  remaining 
captives.  The  bodies  of  Thomas  and  Lecomte  remained  for 
some  hours  lying  in  the  garden,  and  were  afterwards  deposited 
on  the  floor  of  an  empty  room  with  a  barred  window,  which 


THE  COMMUNE  53 

faced  the  passage  leading  from  the  garden  to  the  yard.  A 
sheet  was  thrown  over  the  bodies,  but  the  faces  of  the  murdered 
men  remained  uncovered,  and  during  the  three  days  they  were 
left  lying  there  hundreds  of  people — including  scores  of  women 
and  children — came  to  gaze  through  the  open  window  at  those 
victims  of  so-called  "popular  justice," — whose  murderers,  by 
the  way,  were  so  little  averse  to  this  exhibition  that  at  night 
they  placed  a  candle  in  the  room  in  order  that  the  corpses 
might  still  be  seen.1  Eventually,  Georges  Clemenceau,  then 
Mayor  of  Montmartre,  and  Edouard  Lockroy — a  connection  of 
Victor  Hugo's  and  a  deputy  of  Paris — came  to  claim  the  remains, 
and  bury  them  in  a  little  disused  cemetery  on  the  Butte  Mont- 
martre. By  a  vote  of  the  National  Assembly  Lecomte's  children 
were  adopted  by  the  nation. 

Victorious  at  Montmartre,  the  Revolutionaries  descended 
into  central  Paris,  throwing  up  barricades  on  various  points, 
taking  possession  of  several  district  town-halls,  post-offices,  and 
other  public  buildings,  including  both  the  Ministry  of  Justice 
and  the  National  Guard  headquarters  in  the  Place  Vendome. 
The  Government  had  assembled  at  the  Ministry  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  and  remained  there  for  several  hours  receiving  frequent 
reports  respecting  the  progress  of  the  insurgents.  General 
Vinoy  held  that  if  any  more  of  his  troops  came  in  contact  with 
the  National  Guards  they  would  follow  the  example  of  their 
comrades,  and  therefore  decided  to  withdraw  his  men  from  all 
exposed  positions  and  collect  them  at  the  Ecole  Militaire.  In 
the  evening  the  Government  resolved  to  retire  to  Versailles, 
where  it  had  been  arranged  the  National  Assembly  should 
meet  a  couple  of  days  later ;  and  thither  Vinoy  followed  with 
40,000  troops.  An  hour  or  two  afterwards  when  General 
Chanzy  unsuspectingly  arrived  in  the  capital,  he  was  arrested 
by  the  insurgents  and  carried  off  to  the  Chateau  Rouge. 

The  Revolutionary  party  was  now  in  possession  of  the  whole 
city  with  the  exception  of  the  Luxembourg  Palace,  where  some 
troops  had  been  "  forgotten "  by  Vinoy,  and  of  two  or  three 
district  mairies  which  were  held  by  so-called  reactionary 
battalions  of  the  National  Guard.  These  obeyed  the  orders 
of  the  district  mayors,  who  devoted  much  time  and  energy  to 

1  We  made  a  sketch  of  them  at  the  time ;  and  a  wood  engraving,  after  the 
sketch,  figures  in  vol.  ii.  of  Paris  in  Peril,  edited  by  Henry  Vizetelly. 
London,  1882. 


54  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

fruitless  attempts  at  pacification.  The  Reds,  besides  seizing 
chassepots  at  the  Prince  Eugene  barracks  and  distributing  them 
among  unarmed  partisans,  plundered  the  municipal  treasury 
at  the  H6tel-de-Ville,  seized  the  funds  at  most  district  town- 
halls,  and  placed  guards  at  the  Bank  of  France,  whose  governor 
at  once  destroyed  his  entire  stock  of  bank-notes  as  a  pre- 
cautionary measure.  The  insurgent  leaders  did  not  as  yet 
dare  to  requisition  money  from  the  Bank,  and  as  they  found 
little  at  the  Ministry  of  Finances  they  were  soon  in  difficulties. 
In  the  first  moment  of  enthusiasm  they  had  promised  to  allow 
each  National  Guard  six  francs  per  day,  with  which  decision 
the  men  were  delighted.  But,  as  it  happened,  they  received 
only  one  franc  in  cash,  the  remainder  of  their  allowance  being 
paid  in  bons,  which  it  was  almost  impossible  to  negotiate. 

People  of  moderate  views  anxiously  wondered  what  the 
Germans  would  do  in  presence  of  this  formidable  rising.  As 
it  happened,  they  were  retiring  from  the  environs  of  Paris  when 
the  insurrection  broke  out.  Directly  they  heard  of  it  they 
stopped  their  movement  of  retreat  and  massed  a  large  force  at 
St.  Denis.  The  part  they  played  during  the  ensuing  contest 
was  very  equivocal.  Though  they  called  upon  the  French 
Government  to  put  down  the  insurrection,  and  even  released 
prisoners  of  war  in  order  that  the  Versailles  authorities  might 
have  sufficient  forces  at  their  disposal,  there  was  no  little 
underhand  intercourse  between  them  and  the  Parisian  rebels. 
Cluseret,  who  became  the  Commune's  Delegate  at  War,  carried 
on  secret  negotiations  with  them ;  so,  it  is  said,  did  Rossel  his 
successor ;  while  Paschal  Grousset,  who  took  over  the  department 
of  Foreign  Affairs,  was,  down  to  the  very  Bloody  Week,  in 
constant  communication  with  Von  Fabrice,  who  commanded  at 
St.  Denis. 

Many  Frenchmen,  and  particularly  Parisians  of  the  middle 
class,  were  indignant  with  Thiers  for  abandoning  Paris  to  the 
insurgents  at  the  first  outbreak ;  but  we  have  always  held  that 
although  that  course  led  to  great  trouble  and  a  second  siege,  it 
was  the  best,  if  not  the  only  one,  which  could  have  been 
adopted  in  the  circumstances.  After  the  first  regiments  had 
fraternised  with  the  National  Guards,  little,  if  any,  reliance 
could  be  placed  in  the  other  military  forces  at  the  Government's 
disposal.  In  such  moments  desertion  becomes  contagious. 
Thiers  had  witnessed  three  Revolutions,  those  of  1830,  1848, 


THE  COMMUNE  55 

and  1870,  and  knew  how  vain  had  been  the  efforts  of  the 
Bourbon  and  Orleans  Monarchies  to  save  themselves  by  a 
struggle  in  Paris.  On  each  occasion  the  city  had  prevailed  and 
the  authorities  had  been  swept  away.  In  his  opinion,  therefore, 
the  best  plan  was  to  withdraw  and  organise,  outside  the  city, 
a  proper  resistance  to  the  insurrectionary  movement.  Paris  in 
its  Revolutions  had  generally  carried  the  whole  country  with 
it,  because  the  authorities,  panic-stricken  at  losing  the  capital, 
had  fled  without  attempting  any  appeal  to  the  rest  of  France. 
Such  an  appeal  might  well  have  proved  useless  in  July  1830, 
February  1848,  and  September  1870,  but  in  March  1871 
circumstances  were  different.  France  had  only  just  elected  a 
sovereign  Legislature  whose  composition  clearly  indicated  her 
desire  for  the  restoration  of  peace  and  law  and  order  generally. 
We  know  that  outbreaks  occurred  in  some  inflammable  southern 
cities,  Lyons,  Marseilles,  Toulouse,  St.  Etienne  and  Narbonne ; 
but  an  overwhelming  majority  of  Frenchmen  were  opposed  to 
the  Commune  of  Paris.  If  the  Government  had  remained  in 
the  capital  they  would  have  risked  immediate  overthrow  and 
assassination.  Representatives  of  their  country,  entrusted  with 
its  interests,  they  had  no  more  right  to  expose  themselves  to 
such  a  risk  than  the  commander-in-chief  of  an  army  has  a  right 
to  expose  himself  unduly  in  battle.  It  was  their  duty  to 
organise  the  country  against  the  rebellious  city  and  subdue  it, 
as  they  did,  though  we  do  not  say  that  grievous  faults  were 
not  committed  during  the  period  which  followed  March  18. 

Various  writers  have  tried  to  excuse  the  insurrection  of  the 
Commune,  some  have  even  claimed  that  it  virtually  established 
the  present  Republic.  We  hold,  however,  that  while  there 
were  many  excuses  for  the  rank  and  file  (as  we  previously  indi- 
cated), the  insurrection  was,  on  the  part  of  those  who  fomented 
it,  one  of  the  greatest  crimes  that  history  has  been  called  upon 
to  record.  But,  it  is  said  at  times,  had  it  not  been  for  the 
Commune  there  would  have  been  a  Royalist  Restoration ; 
the  Commune  frightened  the  reactionaries,  and  they  dared  not 
carry  out  their  intentions.  That  is  not  correct.  When  the 
Communist  outbreak  occurred  the  National  Assembly  had  been 
scarcely  six  weeks  in  existence.  Thiers  had  assumed  power  by 
virtue  of  a  compact  concluded  at  Bordeaux,  which  provided 
that  he  should  do  nothing  against  the  various  parties  of  the 
Assembly  or  their  aspirations,  and  that  they  should  do  nothing 


56  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

against  him.  Of  the  various  Pretenders  to  the  throne  only 
Napoleon  III.  had  spoken  out  at  all  frankly ;  the  letters  and 
manifestoes  of  the  Count  de  Chambord,  the  last  of  the  Bourbon 
line,  were  as  yet  more  expressive  of  sorrow  for  the  country's 
misfortunes  than  of  personal  ambition.  Besides,  there  was 
still  at  that  moment  a  deep  chasm  between  him  and  his  cousins 
of  Orleans ;  Legitimists  and  Orleanists  were  by  no  means  ready 
to  unite  in  order  to  overthrow  the  Republic;  and  if,  subse- 
quently, they  did  unite,  it  was  precisely  the  rising  of  the  Com- 
mune which  inspired  them  to  do  so.  That  rising  was,  then, 
first  a  crime  against  France,  inasmuch  as  it  took  place  in  presence 
of  the  Germans  who,  had  they  not  preferred  to  let  the  French 
"  stew  in  their  own  juice,"  might  have  intervened  with  terrible 
results ;  and,  secondly,  it  was  a  crime  against  the  Republic,  for 
it  filled  all  sober-minded  citizens  in  France  with  horror  and 
alarm,  disposing  them  more  and  more  to  seek  the  help  of  some 
providential  saviour.  It  gave  the  Pretenders  and  their  adherents 
courage,  it  led  to  the  fusion  of  Legitimists  and  Orleanists,  to 
the  overthrow  of  Thiers,  to  manifold  attempts  at  a  Monarchical 
Restoration,  and  to  all  the  unrest  which  for  a  few  years  retarded 
the  recovery  of  France  from  her  severe  trials.  The  days  of 
June  1848  virtually  killed  the  Second  Republic,  the  Commune 
nearly  killed  the  Third. 

We  have  only  space  here  for  a  general  survey  of  that  terrible 
insurrection  which  prevailed  in  Paris  from  March  18  till  May 
28, 1871,  though  we  may  mention,  that,  apart  from  occasional 
day-trips  to  St.  Denis  and  Versailles,  facilitated  by  passports 
and  laissez-passers  from  both  sides,  we  were  in  the  city  during 
the  entire  period.  Efforts  were  made  at  conciliation,  but  they 
implied  the  surrender  of  France  to  her  capital.  Such  surrenders 
had  occurred  in  the  past,  but  Thiers  would  be  no  party  to  any 
such  termination  of  the  affair.  Besides,  the  only  chance  of  any 
lasting  quietude  and  prosperity  in  France  lay  in  reducing  the 
Revolutionaries.  Their  leaders  formed  a  strange  band,  their 
policy  was  foolish,  violent,  incoherent ;  directly  they  found 
that  the  rest  of  France  would  not  give  way  to  them,  they 
resorted  to  measures  which  were  the  negation  of  all  liberty  and 
order.  They  speedily  broke  up  into  opposing  groups,  Jacobins 
and  Socialists ;  and  each  group  sought  to  devour  the  other.  It 
was  a  repetition  of  what  had  been  witnessed  during  the  great 
Revolution,  when  the  Girondists  were  devoured  by  the  Danton- 


THE  COMMUNE  57 

ists  and  the  Dantonists  by  the  Robespierrists — if  we  may  be 
allowed  the  last  term.  Each  group  treated  its  opponents  as 
suspects  and  traitors,  delegates  at  war  and  generals  were  changed 
again  and  again,  you  were  here  to-day  and  gone  to-morrow — 
thrust  into  prison,  for  alleged  treachery  to  the  cause. 

It  was,  of  course,  the  Central  Committee  of  the  National 
Guard  which  at  first  seized  and  held  Paris.  The  actual  Council 
of  the  Commune  was  not  elected  until  March  27.  It  then  became 
patent  that  a  great  majority  of  the  Parisians  did  not  approve 
of  any  such  unconstitutional  election,  for  whereas  375,000 
electors  had  voted  at  a  plebiscitum  taken  by  the  National 
Defence  Government  during  the  siege,  only  180,000  participated 
in  the  election  for  the  Commune.  The  latter  represented, 
indeed,  only  a  minority  of  the  population,  a  minority,  however, 
which  by  its  military  strength,  its  threats,  and  its  violence,  so 
terrorised  the  majority  that  thousands  fled  from  the  city.  In 
three  arrondissements  of  Paris  Conservative  candidates  were 
successful,  in  two  others  candidates  favouring  compromise  were 
returned ;  but  the  other  fifteen  constituencies  elected  the  candi- 
dates of  the  Central  Committee.  In  presence  of  the  majority's 
speedy  usurpation  of  an  authority  far  exceeding  the  powers 
which  any  municipality  could  possibly  claim,  and  its  outrageous, 
often  insensate,  measures,  the  moderate  men  speedily  withdrew 
from  the  Commune,  leaving  the  Extremists  to  themselves. 

They  were  a  motley  crew.  Among  them  were  several  men 
of  some  talent  but  little  principle ;  old  men  embittered  against 
society  in  general,  young  ones  eager  for  power  and  position, 
and  unscrupulous  as  to  the  means  by  which  they  might  succeed. 
Luckily  the  betrayer  of  Barbes,  the  aged  agitator  Blanqui, 
who,  under  successive  governments,  had  spent  years  of  his  life 
in  prison,  had  been  arrested ;  and  the  Commune's  doyen  was 
a  certain  Beslay — an  honest  man  in  a  crowd  of  scamps,  who 
had  been  a  deputy  in  Louis  Philippe's  time.  Beside  him 
there  was  the  lunatic  Allix,  the  inventor  of  "sympathetic 
snails "  as  a  means  of  telegraphic  communication ;  and  there 
was  a  whole  tribe  of  authors  and  journalists,  good,  indifferent, 
and  bad.  Among  these  figured  the  portly  Felix  Pyat,  a  life- 
long conspirator,  who  was  also  the  author  of  Le  Chiffbnnier, 
Les  Deux  Serruriers,  and  Diogene,  three  dramatised  social 
pamphlets.  There  was  also  the  little,  withered,  one-eyed  Jules 
Andrieu,  who  had  compiled  V Amour  en  Chansons ;  there  was 


58  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Vesinier,  sometime  secretary  to  Eugene  Sue,  and  author  of  Le 
Mariage  tfune  Espagnok,  a  grotesque  libel  on  the  Empress 
Eugenie;  there  was  J.  B.  Clement,  a  versifier  who  penned  a 
few  pretty  romances  both  before  and  after  the  period  of  the 
Commune,  notably  one  called  Le  Temps  des  Cerises  which  was 
long  very  popular.  Then  also  there  was  Jules  Valles,  the 
author  of  Les  Refractawes,  Les  Irreguliers,  Les  Saltimbanqws? 
a  writer  with  a  style,  gloomy,  bitter,  but  thoroughly  distinctive, 
a  man,  too,  with  the  rasping  laugh  and  the  bilious  eyes  of  one 
whose  childhood  has  been  unhappy,  and  who  bears  a  grudge 
against  all  mankind,  because  he  has  been  obliged  to  wear 
ridiculous  garments  made  out  of  his  father's  old  clothes. 
Again,  there  was  Vermorel,  tall,  thin,  and  spectacled,  with  the 
face  of  a  pious  seminarist,  yet  who  had  made  his  literary  debut 
with  a  book  on  the  harlots  of  the  Jardin  Mabille,  illustrated 
with  naughty  portraits  of  them  photographed  by  Pierre 
Petit. 

Further,  among  the  journalist  members  of  the  Commune, 
there  was  Paschal  Grousset,  a  young  curled  dandy  with  a 
facile  pen,  who  had  done  second-rate  chroniques  and  third-rate 
serials  for  Le  Figaro,  and  a  mass  of  semi-scientific  piffle  for 
L?  fitendard.  He  was  careful  of  his  moustache,  irreproachable 
in  his  linen  and  his  gloves,  fond,  like  Valles,  of  good  living, 
and  extremely  partial  to  beauty.  He  became  the  Commune's 
Delegate  for  Foreign  Affairs,  addressed  impudent  and  ridiculous 
circulars  to  the  Powers,  and  corresponded  more  or  less  openly 
with  the  Germans.  When  the  fall  of  the  Commune  came,  he 
hied  him  to  the  abode  of  his  mistress,  sacrificed  his  moustache, 
attired  himself  in  one  of  the  woman's  frocks,  and  was  in  the 
very  act  of  adapting  one  of  her  false  chignons  to  his  own  head 
when  the  police  burst  in  and  arrested  him.  In  later  times  he 
reverted  to  literature,  producing  notably  (under  a  pseudonym) 
several  books  on  school  and  college  life  in  different  countries. 
In  spite  of  a  certain  threatening  address  to  the  great  cities  of 
France,  in  which  he  prophesied,  correctly  enough,  that,  if  the 
Commune  should  not  succeed,  Paris'  would  become  "  a  vast 
cemetery,"  Grousset  was  one  of  the  least  ferocious  of  the  band, 
as  was  also  his  friend  Arthur  Arnould,  the  author  of  some 
fairly  droll  Contes  humoristiques,  and    later   (under   the  name 

1  And,  subsequently,  of  Jacques  Vingtras,  virtually  an  autobiography, 
and  several  other  works,  often  of  considerable  merit. 


MEN  OF  THE  COMMUNE  59 

of  Matthey)  of  numerous  melodramatic  Jeuilletons,  such  as 
Le  Due  de  Kandos. 

But  there  was  also  the  hideous  and  foul-minded  Vermesch, 
who  wrote  Le  Pere  Duchesne,  and  the  good-looking,  courteous, 
and  suave  Cournet,  who  had  contributed  to  literary  journals, 
and,  finding  but  a  scanty  livelihood  in  that  work,  had  become 
for  a  while  master  of  the  ceremonies  at  the  Casino  of  Arcachon, 
where  he  welcomed  the  ladies  of  Bordeaux  with  his  most 
agreeable  smile,  introduced  them  to  partners  on  ball-nights, 
and  generally  acted  the  part  which  the  renowned  Angelo  Cyrus 
Bantam  played  at  Bath.  Yet  this  same  Cournet  became 
successor  to  the  odious  Raoul  Rigault  at  the  Prefecture  of 
Police,  and  carried  out  some  of  the  Commune's  most  arbitrary 
decrees.  Rigault,  whom  we  have  just  mentioned,  was  also 
connected  with  journalism;  he  had  written  for  Rocheforfs 
paper  La  Marseillaise.  Short  and  spectacled,  with  a  lofty 
forehead,  long  tangled  hair  and  beard,  he  was  a  chilly  mortal, 
and  we  remember  that  when,  prior  to  the  war,  he  frequented 
the  cafes  of  the  Quartier  Latin,  where  he  indulged  in  much 
extravagance  of  language,  he  usually  wore — even  as  it  is  said 
the  fifth  Duke  of  Portland  did — three  coats,  one  over  the 
other.  Rigault's  coats,  however,  were  frayed,  greasy,  and  of 
nondescript  hues.  He  quitted  the  post  of  Police  Delegate  to 
the  Commune  to  become  its  Public  Prosecutor,  and  to  him  and 
to  the  horrible  Ferre — another  long-haired,  full-bearded,  and 
short-sighted  Communard,  who  preferred,  however,  a  pince-nez 
to  spectacles — the  unhappy  hostages  seized  by  the  insurgents 
primarily  owed  their  fate.  Ferre,  moreover,  became  one  of  the 
incendiaries  of  the  Commune  :  his  famous  order,  Faites  Jlamber 
finances  ("Fire  the  Ministry  of  Finances"),  has  become 
historical.1  Another  implacable  fanatic  of  the  time  was  the 
gaudy  Billioray,  who  had  achieved  notoriety  by  ranting  at 
the  clubs. 

But,  reverting  to  those  members  of  the  Commune  who  were 

authors  or  journalists,  particular  mention  must  be  made  of 

Delescluze,  the  last  of  the  Robespierres.     The  son  of  a  sergeant 

1  The  order  has  been  occasionally  imputed  to  Jules  Valles,  but  that  is  an 
error.  The  facts  are  set  out  in  the  indictment  of  Ferre  before  the  Third 
Court  Martial  of  Versailles,  August  1871  ;  and  he  was  convicted  of  having 
issued  it,  as  well  as  of  having  brought  about  the  assassination  of  many  of 
the  hostages.  There  was  no  doubt  whatever  of  his  guilt.  He  displayed  the 
utmost  cynicism  at  his  trial,  and  was  deservedly  shot  at  Satory. 


60  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

in  the  armies  of  the  first  Republic,  chiefly  self-educated  and 
distinctly  clever,  he  had  been  a  Government  Commissary  in 
1848,  when  he  wished  to  carry  revolution  into  Belgium  and 
annex  that  country  to  France.  As  a  member  of  secret  societies 
and  an  editor  of  revolutionary  journals,  he  had  repeatedly 
come  into  conflict  with  the  Second  Empire,  which  deported  him 
first  to  Algeria  and  later  to  Devil's  Island  (so  long  the  prison 
of  Captain  Dreyfus),  whence  he  was  at  last  transferred  to  the 
mainland  of  Cayenne.  Returning  to  France  after  the  amnesty 
of  1859,  Delescluze  again  waged  war  on  the  Empire,  initiating 
in  his  newspaper,  Le  Reveil,  a  subscription  for  a  monument  to 
deputy  Baudin,  who  was  killed  at  the  Coup  d'Etat  of  1851. 
Being  prosecuted  on  that  account,  he  was  defended  by 
Gambetta,  but  was  again  sentenced  to  imprisonment.  Like 
Pyat  and  Blanqui,  Delescluze  was  one  of  the  malcontent 
revolutionary  leaders  who  fomented  hostility  to  the  National 
Defence  Government  during  the  Siege  of  Paris,  and  he  was 
again  one  of  the  foremost  to  bring  about  the  rising  of  the 
Commune. 

In  1871  he  was  already  in  his  sixty -second  year.  Of  the 
medium  height,  thin,  angular,  with  a  cold  metallic  stare,  like  a 
man  haunted  by  a  fixed  idea,  he  had  a  resolute  walk,  always 
going  straight  to  his  destination  without  glancing  either  to 
right  or  left.  His  hair  and  beard,  once  red,  were  then  of  a 
dingy  white ;  a  number  of  little  sanguineous  spots  speckled  his 
yellowish,  hard,  unflinching,  and  deeply  wrinkled  face,  which 
never  smiled.  Perhaps  he  would  have  been  an  inquisitor  had 
he  lived  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Born,  however,  not  long  after 
the  great  Revolution,  he  had  chosen  Robespierre  and  St.  Just 
as  his  masters,  and  used  with  a  kind  of  mystical  fervour  the 
language  employed  by  the  Incorruptible  Dictator  of  1793. 
But  though  he  confined  himself  within  the  narrow  limits  of 
the  Jacobin  faith,  he  was  a  true  journalist,  and  probably  the 
most  remarkable  of  all  the  men  who  ruled  Paris  in  the  spring 
of  1871.  His  manners  were  fastidious  like  those  of  his  patron 
Robespierre.  Like  the  latter,  too,  he  was  careful  in  his  attire. 
He  invariably  wore  a  silk  hat,  a  frock  coat,  and  patent-leather 
boots — being  the  only  member  of  the  Commune  who  assumed 
those  habiliments  common  to  the  hated  bourgeoisie.  Im- 
placable, never  forgiving,  never  forgetting,  he  was  also  cour- 
ageous.    When  the  end  came,  and  the  Commune  was  expiring 


MEN  OF  THE  COMMUNE  61 

in  the  bullet-swept  streets  of  Paris,  and  no  hope  of  saving  it 
remained,  he  quitted  the  town-hall  of  the  Xlth  Arrondissement, 
where  he  had  installed  himself  as  War  Delegate,  and  went 
straight  to  a  barricade  thrown  up  on  the  Boulevard  Voltaire 
near  the  present  Place  de  la  Republique.  He  wore  his  usual 
garments,  but  a  red  sash  was  wound  about  his  waist,  and  he 
carried  his  favourite  gold-headed  cane.  On  his  way  he  met 
some  of  his  confederates,  Lissagaray,  Jourde,1  Jaclard,  Lisbonne, 
who  was  badly  wounded,  and  Vermorel,  who  was  shot  dead 
before  his  eyes.  On  reaching  the  barricade  we  have  mentioned, 
Delescluze  climbed  it  amid  the  hail  of  bullets  raining  from  the 
troops  in  the  distance,  and  prepared  for  death.  It  came 
swiftly :  in  another  moment  he  fell  to  the  ground  lifeless,  shot 
in  the  head  and  the  chest. 

Among  other  prominent  leaders  of  the  Commune  were  Assi, 
Amoureux,  and  Varlin,  members  of  the  famous  International 
Association.  The  first  named  had  risen  to  notoriety  by  foment- 
ing strikes  at  the  well-known  Creusot  iron-works,  where  he  was 
employed  as  an  engineer.  He  was  well-nigh  illiterate.  He 
admitted  that  he  had  read  little  beyond  one  book,  Edgar  Quinefs 
Revolutions  aVItalie,  which  had  impressed  him  by  its  picture  of 
the  old  Italian  Communes  which  sprang  up  and  grew  strong 
while  the  Roman  Empire  was  dying.  And  Assi's  fevered  mind 
was  capable  of  but  one  idea,  that  of  reviving,  as  it  were,  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  establishing  independent  Communal  govern- 
ments on  all  sides,  in  order  to  free  France  for  ever  from  Caesarism 
and  monarchy.  In  the  motley  assembly  at  the  H6tel-de-Ville, 
it  was  strange  to  find  a  great  painter  like  Courbet,  but  he  also 
was  a  member  of  the  Commune,  one  who  was  chiefly  responsible 
for  the  overthrow  of  the  Vendome  column.  Henri  Rochefort, 
then  a  very  prominent  figure,  was,  in  some  matters,  on  the  side 
of  the  Commune,  and,  in  others,  against  it.  He  at  least 
suggested  the  confiscation  of  Thiers's  property  and  the  demolition 
of  his  house.  He  also  favoured  the  steps  taken  against  the 
clergy,  but  he  subsequently  embroiled  himself  with  some  of  the 
Communard  leaders,  and  took  to  flight — merely  to  fall,  however, 

1  Jourde,  who  became  the  Commune's  financial  delegate  and  who  helped 
to  carry  out  its  orders  for  requisitioning  money  of  the  Bank  of  France,  the 
Rothschilds,  several  insurance  companies  and  other  institutions,  was  person- 
ally an  honest  man,  who  accounted  for  every  sou  that  came  into  his  possession. 
But  one  could  not  say  the  same  of  some  of  his  colleagues,  who  stole  whatever 
they  could  lay  their  hands  upon  and  lived  riotous  lives. 


62  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

from  the  frying-pan  into  the  fire,  for  he  was  arrested  by  the 
Gendarmerie  at  Meaux  and  conveyed  to  Versailles,  there  to  be 
tried  and  sentenced  to  transportation. 

Let  us  now  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  Commune's  military 
men.  It  had  several  successive  Delegates  at  War  and  numerous 
generals  in  its  employ.  There  was  Cluseret,  who  had  seen 
service  in  the  United  States  during  the  War  of  Secession,  a  vain 
and  cantankerous  individual,  who  regarded  every  fellow  officer 
as  either  a  fool  or  a  traitor.  He  was  deposed,  however,  on 
the  suspicion  that  he  was  a  traitor  himself.  There  was  also 
Duval,  a  young  brassfounder,  who  imagined  himself  to  be  a 
heaven-born  general,  but  who  was  captured  in  the  environs  of 
Paris,  and  shot  by  the  Versailles  troops.  Again,  there  was 
Bergeret,  who  led  the  National  Guards  in  a  "  torrential  sortie," 
by  which  he  hoped  to  seize  Versailles,  but  which  ended  in  disaster 
and  disgrace.  Further,  there  was  La  Cecilia,  a  man  of  much 
greater  merit,  who  had  served  under  Garibaldi  in  Sicily,  and 
commanded  some  of  the  Francs-tireurs  who  fought  so  bravely  at 
Chateaudun  in  October  1870.1  He  escaped  at  the  close  of  the 
Commune,  and,  repairing  to  London,  earned  his  living  there  as 
a  professor  of  languages. 

He,  of  course,  was  an  Italian,  and  several  of  his  compatriots 
served  the  Commune.  There  were  also  numerous  Polish  generals. 
Dombrowski,  Wrobleski,  Laudowski,  and  Okolowitz.  The  last 
named  was  a  dastardly  coward.  When  he  was  in  command  at 
the  village  of  Asnieres  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine,  west  of  Paris, 
he  became  so  terrified  by  the  advance  of  the  Government  forces, 
that  he  fled  across  the  river,  and  immediately  afterwards  cut  the 
bridge  of  boats  by  which  he  had  effected  his  passage,  leaving 
the  bulk  of  his  men  behind  him.  To  save  themselves  from 
Galliffefs  light  cavalry,  who  suddenly  charged  into  the  village, 
the  unlucky  National  Guards  tried  to  cross  the  Seine  by  way  of 
the  railway  bridge,  which  had  been  dismantled,  in  such  wise  that 
only  its  iron  skeleton  remained.  They  often  had  to  jump  from 
one  girder  to  another,  and  scores  of  them  fell  into  the  river 
and  were  drowned ;  while  many  others  were  picked  off  by  the 
Versaillese  mounted  gendarmes  who  were  provided  with  carbines. 
Meantime,  the  batteries  of  the  Paris  fortifications  fired  vigorously 
in  the  hope  of  covering  the  retreat,  but  well-nigh  every  shell  fell 
hissing  into  the  Seine,  stirring  the  water  into  commotion,  and 
1  See  ante,  p.  17.     La  Cecilia  was  a  great  linguist  and  Orientalist. 


MEN  OF  THE  COMMUNE  63 

helping  to  seal  the  fates  of  the  hapless  men  who  had  fallen  from 
the  bridge.1 

Yaroslav  Dombrowski,  Okolowitz's  colleague,  was  a  more 
capable  man.  A  native  of  Volhynia,  he  had  studied  at  the 
military  academy  of  St.  Petersburg,  and  become  a  captain  in  the 
Russian  army.  But  he  took  part  in  the  Polish  rising  of  1862 
and  was  sent  to  Siberia,  whence  he  contrived  to  escape  three 
years  afterwards.  He  made  his  way  to  Paris,  and  in  1870  offered 
his  services  both  to  the  Empire  and  the  National  Defence.  The 
latter  wished  to  employ  him  in  the  provinces,  but  the  investment 
of  Paris  supervening,  he  was  unable  to  quit  the  city.  At  the 
advent  of  the  Commune  he  promptly  joined  it.  He  was  then 
about  eight-and-thirty,  very  short,  thin,  and  fair-haired.  He 
was  killed  fighting  during  the  Bloody  Week. 

Another  Communist  general,  a  Frenchman  however,  and  one 
who  survived  the  insurrection,  was  Eudes,  who  figured  chiefly  as 
commander  at  the  Palace  of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  where  he 
was  wont  to  lie  in  bed  and  indulge  in  revolver  practice,  the  three 
mirrors  in  the  room  which  he  occupied  serving  as  his  targets. 
His  wife,  meantime,  amused  herself  by  giving  balls,  that  is, 
when  she  was  not  engaged  in  purloining  the  Palace  linen  and 
ornaments. 

A  revolutionary  celebrity  of  those  times,  who  fell  early  in 
the  struggle,  was  Gustave  Flourens.  He  came  from  the  south 
of  France,  the  excitable  Midi,  but  his  father  achieved  fame  as  a 
professor  of  physiology,  and  was  elected  both  a  member  of  the 
French  Academy  and  Secretary  to  the  Academy  of  Sciences. 
Gustave  also  graduated  in  literature  and  science,  and  in  1863, 
when  illness  prevented  his  father  from  performing  his  duties,  he 
took  his  place.  A  little  later  he  travelled  in  England  and 
Belgium,  and,  on  a  rebellion  breaking  out  in  Crete,  joined  the 
insurgents  and  shared  their  fortunes  for  a  year.  He  was  after- 
wards sent  as  their  representative  to  Athens,  but  his  presence 
not  being  acceptable  to  the  Greek  authorities,  he  was  despatched 
to  France.  After  a  second  visit  to  Athens,  and  a  second  expul- 
sion, he  betook  himself  to  Naples.  But  some  violent  newspaper 
articles  made  Naples  also  too  hot  for  him,  and  the  officials 
sent  him  out  of  the  country.  He  next  appeared  in  Paris  in  1868, 
when  Napoleon  III.  had  just  restored  the  right  of  public  meeting. 

1  We  personally  witnessed  the  whole  of  that  affair  from  the  convenient 
shelter  of  a  ditch  alongside  the  river  tow-path. 


64  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Flourens  flung  himself  into  the  anti-governmental  campaign 
which  followed  that  concession,  and  before  long  found  himself 
arrested  and  imprisoned.  On  his  release,  he  challenged  the 
notorious  Bonapartist  champion,  Paul  de  Cassagnac,  and  in  the 
course  of  a  ferocious  fight  with  swords  Flourens  was  seriously 
wounded.  After  his  recovery  he  participated  in  the  agitation 
which  marked  the  last  days  of  the  Empire ;  but  to  avoid  being 
arrested  once  more,  he  had  to  quit  the  country  and  repair  to 
London.  The  overthrow  of  the  Empire  led  to  his  immediate 
return  to  France ;  he  raised  a  Free  Corps  in  Paris,  and  became 
the  leading  spirit  in  most  of  the  disturbances  which  arose  during 
the  siege.  Imprisoned  for  his  attempt  to  overthrow  the  Govern- 
ment of  National  Defence  on  October  31,  he  was  afterwards 
released  by  some  rioters,  and,  when  the  Commune  was  estab- 
lished, he  became  one  of  its  leading  defenders.  Early  in  April 
however,  he  was  surprised  by  some  gendarmes  in  a  house  near 
Le  Vesinet — west  of  Paris — and  was  shot  dead  by  them  while 
attempting  to  escape. 

A  man  of  great  culture  and  high  abilities,  tall,  bald,  with 
a  flowing  beard,  an  aquiline  nose  and  flashing  eyes,  impulsive 
by  reason  of  his  southern  origin,  Flourens  thirsted  for  adventure, 
and  gave  way  to  a  kind  of  unreasoning,  fiery,  fanatical  patriotism, 
which  was  carried,  at  times,  to  the  point  of  insanity.  There 
was  no  small  amount  of  such  insanity,  a  contagious  aberration, 
among  the  men  of  the  Commune.  Many  of  them  would  have 
been  at  a  loss  to  explain  clearly  what  they  were  fighting  for. 
They  acted  under  the  influence  of  hallucination,  something 
akin  to  religious  mania,  which  swept  them  off  their  feet.  And 
on  the  other  side,  among  the  citizens  who  did  not  take  part  in 
the  insurrection,  you  observed  something  like  stupor,  paralysis, 
and  utter  inability  to  resist  the  Terrorists,  a  benumbing,  as  it 
were,  of  both  mental  and  physical  vigour. 

We  will  conclude  this  survey  of  the  Men  of  the  Commune 
by  saying  something  respecting  Rossel,  who  succeeded  Cluseret 
as  Delegate  at  War.  Born  in  1844,  he  was  the  son  of  a  Major 
in  the  Line,  who  had  married  (it  is  said)  a  Miss  Campbell,  the 
daughter  of  an  officer  of  our  Indian  Army.  Not  unnaturally, 
the  young  fellow  took  to  the  military  profession,  and  when  the 
Franco-German  War  broke  out,  he  was  serving  as  a  Captain 
of  Engineers.  He  was  taken  prisoner  at  Metz  by  the  Germans, 
but  escaped,  and  was  promoted  to  a  colonelcy  by  the  National 


MEN  OF  THE  COMMUNE  65 

Defence.  His  patriotism  was  of  the  same  fiery  kind  as  that  of 
Flourens.  Moreover,  he  deeply  felt  the  humiliation  of  Sedan, 
the  capitulations  of  Metz  and  Paris,  and  the  terrible  terms  of 
peace  imposed  by  Germany  on  France.  Disgusted  with  every- 
thing in  the  military  spheres  of  the  time,  he  sent  in  his  papers 
on  the  very  morrow  of  the  Insurrection  of  March  18,  hastened 
to  Paris,  and  joined  the  Commune,  becoming  President  of  its 
Permanent  Court  Martial  and  aide-de-camp  to  Cluseret,  whom, 
as  already  mentioned,  he  succeeded — only  to  fall  out,  however, 
with  the  other  Communist  leaders,  much  as  his  predecessor  had 
done.  In  disgust  with  them  he  threw  up  his  office,  whereupon 
they  wrathfully  ordered  his  arrest.  Unluckily  for  him,  although 
he  escaped  from  confinement,  he  remained  in  Paris,  where,  at 
the  fall  of  the  regime,  he  was  recognised  by  some  former 
military  subordinates  in  spite  of  a  disguise  he  had  assumed. 
His  removal  to  Versailles  followed  as  a  matter  of  course.  He 
was  tried  there  and  sentenced  to  death. 

In  spite  of  the  sympathy  which  was  expressed  for  him  on 
various  sides,  we  feel  that  it  was  impossible  for  the  authorities 
to  spare  him.  He  had  thrown  up  his  rank  in  the  regular  army 
expressly  to  join  the  insurrection,  and  he  had  played  a  most 
important  part  in  the  military  operations  against  the  Govern- 
ment of  his  country.  He  was  responsible  for  the  loss  of  many 
lives.  And  thus,  though  he  had  been  an  able  officer  during 
the  Franco-German  War,  and  was  but  eight-and-twenty  years 
of  age,  his  case  was  one  which  called  for  exemplary  punishment. 
Rossel  was  not  of  prepossessing  appearance.  He  had  a  low, 
frowning  forehead,  crowned  with  thick,  bushy  hair,  brown,  with 
gleams  of  auburn.  When  he  arrived  in  Paris  to  join  the 
Commune,  his  long,  narrow  face  was  clean-shaven,  later  he 
displayed  a  small,  ill-growing  moustache  and  a  sparse  beard — 
both  of  them  red.  His  mouth  was  very  hard ;  his  eyes,  a  light 
blue,  were  usually  hidden  by  coloured  glasses.  He  had  written, 
at  one  moment,  some  crisp,  forcible,  well -arranged  military 
articles  for  Le  Temps-,  but  his  speech  was  not  pleasing,  he 
spoke  too  rapidly,  the  words  gushing  from  his  mouth  in  a  most 
disorderly  fashion.  Cluseret  asserts  in  his  work  The  Military 
Side  of  the  Commune  that  Rossel  was  very  ambitious,  and 
aspired  to  play  the  part  of  a  Bonaparte.  Further,  Cluseret 
accuses  him  of  underhand  intrigues  with  the  Germans,  and 
adds:  "It  was  invariably  through  him  that  I  communicated 

F 


66  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

with  them."  Again,  according  to  the  same  authority,  it  was 
Rossel  who  negotiated  with  the  Germans  the  supply  of  a  large 
number  of  horses  for  the  Commune  at  a  cost  of  0^16,000,  which 
arrangement  was  not  carried  into  effect,  however,  as  the  animals 
were  found  to  be  in  poor  condition,  and  by  no  means  worth 
the  price.  But,  in  any  case,  whether  those  tales  be  true  or  not 
— Cluseret's  assertions  must  often  be  taken  with  some  salt — 
we  feel  that  RossePs  position  as  an  ex-army  officer,  who  had 
gone  over  to  the  rebels,  precluded  the  Government  from 
exercising  any  clemency. 

Of  the  many  incidents  which  marked  the  Commune's  reign 
in  Paris,  we  can  only  enumerate  some  of  the  more  important. 
At  an  early  date,  a  pacific,  unarmed  demonstration  in  the  Rue 
de  la  Paix  was  greeted  with  the  fire  of  the  National  Guards 
assembled  on  the  Place  Vendome,  and  several  people  were  killed 
or  wounded.  Later  the  column  on  that  same  square  was 
thrown  down  in  hatred  of  Caesarism  and  the  Bonapartes. 
Barricades  sprang  up  at  an  early  stage  in  many  streets. 
Churches  were  turned  into  public  clubs,  where  demagogues 
perorated  from  the  pulpits.  All  independent  newspapers  were 
suppressed.  Thiers's  house  was  demolished  and  his  portable 
property  confiscated.  Many  other  private  residences  were 
broken  into,  searched  and  sometimes  pillaged.  Then  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Paris,  several  priests,  a  number  of  Dominican  monks, 
a  judge  (President  Bonjean),  a  banker  (M.  Jecker),  various 
functionaries  and  journalists,  and  some  fifty  gendarmes,  were 
seized  and  imprisoned  as  hostages.  The  Communists,  after 
being  beaten  back  and  almost  cut  to  pieces  in  an  attempted 
march  on  Versailles,  ended  by  losing  their  advanced  post  at 
Asnieres  across  the  Seine,  and  the  Government  army,  strongly 
reinforced  by  troops  released  from  captivity  in  Germany,  pressed 
onward,  assailing  Neuilly  just  outside  the  city.  Mont  Valerien 
and  Montretout  were  held  by  the  Versailles  authorities,  and 
their  batteries  bombarded  both  the  western  quarter  of  Paris 
and  the  fort  of  Issy,  which  the  Communists  occupied.  They 
ended  by  abandoning  it,  whereupon  the  Versaillese,  after  mount- 
ing fresh  guns,  availed  themselves  of  the  position  to  bombard 
the  city  ramparts  on  that  side.  Finally,  they  secured  possession 
of  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  and  advancing  towards  the  St.  Cloud 
gate  of  Paris,  prepared  to  assault  it.  But  on  the  evening  of 
Sunday,  May  21,  they  found  that  position  abandoned,  whereupon 


THE  BLOODY  WEEK  67 

a  few  companies  entered  Paris,  followed  by  a  division  which 
by  seven  o'clock  had  already  pushed  on  as  far  as  the  Trocadero. 
By  three  o'clock  on  the  following  morning  (Monday,  May  22) 
the  bulk  of  the  Government  forces  had  entered  the  city  by  one 
or  another  gate,  that  of  Sevres,  south  of  the  Seine,  being  carried 
by  General  de  Cissey.     And  now  the  Bloody  Week  began. 

On  many  points  the  Communists  resisted  staunchly,  and 
the  troops  advanced  with  great  caution  by  order  of  their 
officers,  who  feared  lest  some  of  them  might  fraternise  with 
the  National  Guards,  as  had  happened  on  March  18.  More- 
over, they  deemed  it  more  prudent  to  suspend  the  advance 
every  night.  When  darkness  fell  on  the  Monday,  the  Versaillese 
held  the  western  part  of  Paris  limited  by  the  Asnieres  gate  on 
the  north-east,  and  the  Vanves  gate  on  the  south.  The  district 
included  the  St.  Lazare  railway  terminus,  the  Ely  see,  and  the 
Palais  Bourbon.  On  Tuesday  the  troops  seized  Montmartre 
on  the  north  and  the  Observatory  district  on  the  south,  and 
advanced  from  both  those  points  towards  the  central  part  of 
Paris.  That  same  day  the  first  conflagrations  were  kindled  by 
the  Communards,  and  at  night  the  sky  was  lurid  with  the 
reflection  from  all  the  burning  piles,  the  many  private  houses, 
the  Tuileries,  the  Louvre  Library,  the  Palais  Royal,  the  Palace 
of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  the  Court  of  Accounts,  the  Orsay 
Barracks,  and  the  Ministry  of  Finances.  On  the  north  the 
Versaillese  had  now  extended  their  advance  to  the  Goods 
Depot  of  the  Northern  Railway  Line,  and  on  the  south  to 
the  Arcueil  Gate;  while  on  the  following  night  (that  of 
Wednesday)  their  lines  ran  right  across  the  city  from  the 
Northern  Terminus  to  the  Park  of  Montsouris.  More  than 
half  of  Paris  was  now  in  their  hands.  On  Thursday,  both  the 
H6tel-de-Ville  and  the  Palace  of  Justice x  were  burning,  as 
well  as  the  Lyric  Theatre,  the  Porte  St.  Martin  Theatre,  various 
district  town-halls,  and  many  more  private  houses.  Meantime, 
barricade  after  barricade  was  being  carried  by  outflanking 
movements,  and  the  remaining  members  of  the  Commune  were 
compelled  to  retreat  to  the  municipal  offices  on  the  Boulevard 
Voltaire.  Then  from  Montmartre  the  troops  bombarded  the 
Communists  gathered  at  Belleville  and  in  the  Pere  Lachaise 
Cemetery,  while  the  insurgents,  on  their  side,  employed  their 
remaining  guns  to  fire  upon  Paris  indiscriminately.  Shells  fell 
1  We  pumped  and  carried  water  there.     Only  a  portion  of  it  was  destroyed. 


68  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

on  the  Place  Vendome,  in  the  Rue  de  Richelieu,  and  even  as  far 
west  as  the  Rue  de  Miromesnil — carrying  away,  as  we  have  good 
occasion  to  remember,  a  part  of  the  fifth  floor  balcony  of  the 
house  where  we  were  residing. 

On  Friday,  the  Grenier  d'Abondance,  a  vast  storeplace  for 
oil  and  cereals,  was  fired,  as  were  also  the  magazines  of  La 
Villette,  in  spite  of  the  continued  progress  of  the  army  in  every 
direction.  On  Saturday,  the  troops  seized  Belleville  and  the 
Buttes  Chaumont,  and  only  the  Pere  Lachaise  Cemetery,  which 
had  been  turned  into  an  entrenched  camp,  then  remained  to  the 
Communists.  Meantime,  dreadful  deeds  had  been  perpetrated, 
as  was  now  first  ascertained.  On  Wednesday,  Archbishop 
Darboy  of  Paris,  Abbe  Deguerry  of  the  Madeleine,  President 
Bonjean,  M.  Jecker,  and  several  others  had  been  shot  by  the 
insurrectionists  in  the  courtyard  of  the  prison  of  La  Roquette  ;  on 
Thursday,  a  number  of  Dominican  monks  had  been  assassinated  ; 
while  on  Friday,  several  priests  and  forty- seven  gendarmes,  also 
held  as  hostages,  were  put  to  death  in  the  Rue  Haxo.  The 
reprisals  were  terrible.  When  the  troops  reached  La  Roquette 
(where  they  arrived  in  time  to  save  168  hostages),  227  insurgents, 
captured  at  various  points,  were  shot  down  in  a  heap ;  and  when 
Pere  Lachaise  was  carried,  148  others  were  placed  against  a 
wall  and  likewise  despatched ;  while  both  on  Saturday  and 
Sunday  (May  28)  at  the  Lobau  Barracks  in  central  Paris,  and 
in  the  Luxembourg  Gardens  on  the  south,  there  were  numerous 
other  summary  executions. 

Most  of  the  insurgents  who  perished  were  killed  in  the 
fighting,  but  those  captured  at  the  barricades  were  also  often 
shot  on  the  spot,  and  a  certain  number  of  women,  charged  with 
incendiarism,  met  with  similar  fates.  We  believe,  however,  that 
the  tales  of  women  going  about  with  cans  of  petroleum  to  set 
fire  to  the  city  were  vastly  exaggerated.  There  may  have  been 
a  few  crazy  creatures  who  did  so,  but  in  the  great  majority 
of  instances  the  charges  were  false.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Communist  historians  have,  as  a  rule,  grossly  overestimated  the 
deaths  on  their  side.  From  first  to  last,  that  is  from  March  18 
to  May  28,  about  12,000  insurgents  perished. 

From  the  time  of  the  insurrection  until  July  15,  1872,  the 
number  of  people  arrested  on  more  or  less  serious  charges 
connected  with  it  was  no  less  than  32,905.  Of  these,  however, 
21,610  were,  after  investigation,  released  without  being  brought 


FATE  OF  THE  COMMUNISTS  69 

to  trial.  Further,  2103  were  acquitted  by  the  courts-martial 
before  which  they  were  arraigned;  while  the  number  of  those 
found  guilty  and  sentenced  was  9192.1  Those  figures  are  not 
complete,  as,  subsequent  even  to  the  date  given  above,  there 
were  further  arrests  resulting  from  denunciations  or  from 
evidence  supplied  in  the  course  of  the  earlier  cases.  It  would 
appear  that  from  first  to  last  about  12,000  prisoners  were 
convicted.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Commission  des  Graces 
instituted  by  the  National  Assembly  granted  reductions  of 
sentences — and,  in  some  instances,  pardons — in  about  one  out 
of  every  three  cases  brought  before  it.  With  respect  to  capital 
sentences,  its  clemency  went  farther.  Of  sixty-two  persons 
condemned  to  death  by  court-martial  between  May  1871  and 
July  15,  1872,  forty-two  had  their  lives  spared,  their  sentences 
being  commuted  to  transportation.  They  were  sent,  as  a  rule, 
to  New  Caledonia.  The  sufferings  of  many  of  them,  both  in 
the  prisons  of  Versailles  and  on  the  voyage,  were  very  great, 
very  little  provision,  indeed  often  little  humanity,  being 
displayed  by  their  custodians.  Among  those  carried  to  New 
Caledonia  was  an  unfortunate,  hysterical,  crazy  school-teacher 
named  Louise  Michel,  who  had  upheld  the  cause  of  the 
Commune  at  the  Paris  clubs  and  other  meeting-places,  and  was 
usually  called  the  Red  Virgin.  A  detraquee,  as  the  French  say, 
more  to  be  pitied  than  blamed,  even  in  her  violent  moments, 
she  became  at  other  times  a  dreamer  in  some  far-away  Utopia, 
a  believer  in  universal  love,  fraternity,  and  peace.  And,  woman- 
like, when  the  time  of  punishment  and  suffering  arrived,  she 
tried  by  little  services  to  assuage  the  captivity  of  those  around 
her.  Another  notable  prisoner  sent  to  Noumea  was  Henri 
Rochefort,  who  in  1874  contrived,  with  Olivier  Pain,  Paschal 
Grousset,  Jourde,  and  two  others,  to  escape  from  captivity — 
reaching  Australia,  and  thence  America  and  Europe.  This  was 
facilitated  by  Edmond  Adam,2  who  was  able  to  send  Rochefort 
,£1000,  i?4<00  of  the  amount  being  paid  to  the  captain  of  an 
English  merchantman,  who  landed  the  fugitives  at  Sydney.  In 
1879  came  an  Amnesty  which  enabled  many  of  the  former 
insurrectionists  to  return  to  France. 

1  Official  Report  to  the  National  Assembly,  published  in  August  1872. 
2  See  page  14  ante. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   NATIONAL  ASSEMBLY — THEIRS,  FIRST    PRESIDENT 
OF   THE    REPUBLIC — THE    PRETENDERS 

The  Assembly  and  the  Government  at  Versailles — Bismarck's  Residence 
there— The  Chancellor,  Thiers,  and  Satan — The  Deputies  and  their 
President,  Grevy — Thiers  as  a  Parliamentary  Orator — He  declares  for 
a  Republic — Financial  Burdens  of  France— The  Rivet  Constitution — 
Thiers,  his  Paris  House  and  his  Collections — Financial  Changes — France 
and  Protection— Thiers  and  the  Assembly — The  Great  Loans— Expulsion 
of  Prince  Napoleon — The  Pretenders— The  Count  de  Chambord— The 
Count  de  Paris  and  his  Relatives — The  Duke  de  Chartres — The  Duke 
d'Aumale— The  Prince  de  Joinville — The  Duke  de  Nemours — The  Bona- 
partists — The  Last  Days  and  Death  of  Napoleon  III. 

When,  during  the  early  days  of  the  National  Assembly's 
sojourn  at  Bordeaux,  the  restless  condition  of  Paris  gave  cause 
for  serious  anxiety,  it  was  resolved  that  the  Legislature,  which 
could  not  long  continue  in  the  south  of  France,  should  trans- 
port itself,  not  to  the  capital,  as  that  might  be  dangerous,  but 
to  some  town  in  its  vicinity,  so  that  the  Government  officials 
might  go  easily  to  and  fro  as  occasion  required.  Some  deputies, 
who  deemed  that  course  unduly  audacious,  would  have  ventured 
no  nearer  to  Paris  than  Tours,  Orleans,  or  Blois ;  but  Versailles 
and  Fontainebleau  numbered  most  partisans,  Thiers  favouring 
the  latter  locality,  perhaps  because  he  remembered  the  march 
of  the  Parisians  on  Versailles  at  the  time  of  Louis  XVI.  How- 
ever, Versailles  was  chosen  by  a  majority  of  three  to  one,  and 
the  play-house  of  its  palace  became  the  scene  of  the  Assembly's 
deliberations.  Thiers  lodged  himself  at  the  Prefecture,  and 
offices  were  found  for  the  various  departments  of  State  at  the 
Palace  or  in  other  buildings  of  the  town.  Those  offices  were 
originally  intended  to  be  merely  branch  ones,  but,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  Commune,  they  became,  for  a  considerable  time, 

70 


BISMARCK  AT  VERSAILLES  71 

the  only  offices  which  the  departments  possessed.  Versailles — 
left  for  so  many  long  years  in  semi-somnolence,  only  waking 
up  on  occasional  Sundays  in  the  summer,  when  the  play  of  its 
fountains  attracted  Parisians  and  tourists  to  the  gardens  laid 
out  for  Louis  XIV. — had  witnessed  a  wonderful  revival  of  life 
ever  since  September  1870,  when  it  became  the  headquarters  of 
the  German  Army.  King  William  then  arrived  there,  and  it 
was  in  the  famous  Hall  of  Mirrors  at  the  Palace  that  he  was 
subsequently  proclaimed  German  Emperor.  Moltke  was  there 
as  well,  and  so  was  Bismarck. 

From  October  5,  1870,  until  March  6,  1871,  the  great 
Chancellor  resided  at  a  house  in  the  Rue  de  Provence,  which 
was  the  property  of  a  French  general  officer,  M.  de  Jesse.  A 
large  first-floor  room  was  used  by  him  both  as  his  study  and  as 
his  bed-chamber.  It  was  in  this  apartment  that  he  received 
Thiers,  when  the  latter,  fresh  from  his  foreign  mission,  came  to 
negotiate  an  armistice  during  the  Siege  of  Paris ;  it  was  there 
that  he  drew  up  the  proclamation  announcing  to  the  world  the 
incorporation  of  the  German  Empire,  there  that  the  capitula- 
tion of  Paris  was  signed,  and  there  that  the  peace  preliminaries 
were  negotiated  with  Thiers  and  Jules  Favre.  A  little  later, 
shortly  before  the  Chancellor's  departure  from  Versailles,  Mme. 
de  Jesse  came  to  inquire  on  what  day  she  would  be  able  to 
resume  possession  of  the  house.  Said  Bismarck,  in  his  most 
courteous  manner :  "  I  shall  leave  on  the  6th,  madame,  and  as 
you  are  here,  I  should  greatly  like  to  accompany  you  over  the 
house,  in  order  that  you  may  see  that  I  have  respected  your 
property. "  Excepting  that  the  floors  were  somewhat  grimy — a 
detail,  as  the  French  would  say — Mme.  de  Jesse  did  not  notice 
much  amiss  until  she  entered  the  principal  drawing-room. 
Once  there,  she  looked  in  vain  for  a  valuable  old  clock,  sur- 
mounted by  a  curious  figure  of  Satan,  which  had  formerly 
stood  on  the  mantel-shelf.  "  Mon  Dieu ! "  she  exclaimed, 
"  and  my  clock  ! "  But  Bismarck  reassured  her.  "  It  has  not 
been  lost  or  stolen,  madame ;  it  is  in  my  room.  Come  and  see. 
I  removed  it  there  because  I  admired  it  so  much.  Thiers  did 
not  like  it.  No,  he  didn't ;  though  he  is  supposed  to  appreciate 
good  bronzes.  When  he  was  here,  he  kept  on  glancing  at  the 
time-piece  and  muttering  :  '  Le  diable,  le  maudit  diable  ! '  It 
seemed  positively  to  horrify  him — nevertheless  we  signed  the 
preliminaries  of  peace  in  front  of  it." 


72  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

"  I  could  hardly  refrain,11  Mme.  de  Jesse  used  to  say,  when 
she  told  the  story,  "  I  could  hardly  refrain  from  retorting : 
i  Yes,  I  understand  :  it  was  the  Devil's  Peace.1 " 

Bismarck  admired  the  clock  so  much  that  he  greatly  wished 
to  purchase  it,  but  Mme.  de  Jesse  declined  every  offer.  At  the 
moment  of  the  Chancellor's  departure  the  pendulum  was 
removed,  and  to  this  day  the  clock  marks  the  hour  when  he 
left  the  house  where  the  triumph  of  Germany  was  consum- 
mated.1 

As  soon  as  Versailles  was  rid  of  the  Germans,  it  became 
crowded  with  Frenchmen.  Ministers  and  other  functionaries, 
generals  and  their  troops,  journalists  galore,  flocked  into  the 
town,  as  well  as  all  the  members  of  the  National  Assembly, 
who  were  in  many  instances  accompanied  by  their  wives  and 
families.  Thus  Versailles  still  remained  all  bustle  and  con- 
fusion, and  the  famous  Hotel  des  Reservoirs  was  as  crowded  as 
it  had  ever  been  while  it  accommodated  the  German  prince- 
lings and  grandees  who  attended  the  spiritualistic  seances 
which  our  old  acquaintance  Sludge,  otherwise  David  Dunglas 
Home,  gave  in  the  rooms  of  his  friend  and  patron  Lord  Adare, 
now  the  Earl  of  Dunraven.  The  new  Assembly,  however, 
although  it  ended  by  often  working  itself  into  a  more  or  less 
excited  state,  was  not  remarkable  for  liveliness.  An  over- 
whelming majority  of  its  members  were  men  of  mature  years — 
many  indeed  were  fast  descending  the  vale  of  life.  Robust 
young  Radical  Republicans  viewed  them  with  contempt:  "Sont- 
ils  vieux,  sont-ils  chauves,  sont-ils  laids,  sont-ils  betes?11  ("Aren't 
they  old,  aren^  they  bald,  aren^  they  ugly,  aren^  they  stupid?11) 
was  a  familiar  saying  at  the  time.  And,  certainly,  the  number 
of  bald  craniums  and  pallid,  wrinkled  faces  which  one  observed 
at  the  sittings,  particularly  on  the  President's  right,2  was 
remarkable. 

1  He  gave  the  gardener  a  gratuity  of  fifty  francs,  to  which  he  added 
another  forty,  to  compensate  Mme.  de  Jesse\  said  he,  for  the  loss  of  some 
guinea-fowls  belonging  to  her,  which  he  had  eaten.  "  I  feared  she  would 
not  like  it,"  he  added,  "  but  then  I  am  so  fond  of  guinea-fowl,  and,  besides, 
this  money  will  please  her." 

. 2  We  may  take  this  opportunity  to  explain  the  terms  Right,  Left,  etc. , 
so  often  employed  in  connection  with  continental  parliamentary  debates. 
It  islhe  constant  usage  for  Conservative  members  to  occupy  the  benches  on 
the  President's  right,  and  for  Liberals  to  occupy  those  on  his  left.  Accord- 
ing to  the  state  of  parties  there  may  be  numerous  subdivisions  of  the  Right 
and  Left.     For  instance,  the  most  Conservative  members  will  sit  on  the 


THE  NATIONAL  ASSEMBLY  73 

The  President,  elected  at  Bordeaux  by  519  votes  against 
17,  was  Jules  Grevy x — subsequently  Chief  of  the  State.  Born 
in  1807,  and  a  native  of  a  village  in  the  Jura  mountains,  he 
became  a  barrister,  defended  many  Republican  prisoners  in 
Louis  Philippe's  time,  sat  in  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  the 
Second  Republic,  was  chosen  as  batonnier  of  the  order  of 
advocates  in  Paris  during  the  Second  Empire,  and  was  elected 
to  the  latter's  Legislative  Body  in  1868.  Although  known  to 
be  a  Republican,  Grevy  was  highly  esteemed  for  his  integrity, 
even  by  the  Monarchists  of  1871,  whence  came  his  almost 
unanimous  election  to  the  presidency  of  the  Assembly.  Dis- 
carding the  practice  of  wearing  evening  dress  which  was 
followed  by  Morny  and  Schneider  in  the  Legislature  of  the 
Empire,  Grevy  exercised  his  presidential  functions  in  a  frock 
coat  and  virtually  sans  ceremonie,  though  he  invariably  pre- 
served a  sufficiently  grave  expression  of  countenance.  He 
displayed  great  impartiality  as  president,  which  was  a  task  of 
some  difficulty,  as  most  of  the  members  held  views  alien  to  his 
own.  At  the  same  time,  whenever  there  was  any  disturbance 
or  unseemly  behaviour,  he  showed  himself  remarkably  firm. 
He  did  not  have  occasion  to  deliver  many  speeches  to  the 
Assembly,  but  he  excelled  in  the  orations  which  he  pronounced 
whenever  a  member  died,  being  never  so  happy  as  when — if  he 
could  not  expatiate  on  the  political  record  of  the  departed — he 
could  at  least  extol  his  personal  character. 

We  shall  have  occasion  to  speak  of  the  oratorical  abilities 
of  some  of  the  speakers.  Here  we  will  only  say  a  few 
words  respecting  those  of  Thiers.  In  1871  his  voice  was  no 
longer  what  it  had  been.  At  the  outset  of  a  speech  it  often 
seemed  quite  distressingly  thin  and  weak  —  like  the  voice 
indeed  of  a  man  heavily  weighted  with  years.  But  presently 
it  became  so  clear  and  vigorous  as  to  be  heard  distinctly  in 

extreme  right,  the  ordinary  Conservatives  on  the  right  proper,  while  (the 
seats  generally  being  arranged  in  semi-circular  fashion)  the  Liberal-Conserva- 
tives will  occupy  the  more  central  places,  whence  the  expression  "  right- 
centre."  On  the  other  hand,  Socialists  and  such  like  will  sit  on  the  extreme 
left,  Radicals  and  Liberals  on  the  left  proper,  while  moderate  or  conservative 
Liberals  occupy  the  left  centre  positions.  As  we  may  have  to  use  the  terms 
"  Right,"  "  Left,"  etc.,  rather  frequently,  we  have  thought  it  as  well  to  give 
this  explanation. 

1  His  real  Christian  names,  it  has  been  said,  were  Francois  Judith  Paul ; 
but  he  detested  the  name  of  Judith,  and,  assuming  that  of  Jules  in  its  place, 
became  generally  known  by  it. 


74  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  remotest  "tribune"1  of  the  house.  The  tone  was  con- 
versational, the  matter  was  skilfully  divided  into  sections,  at 
the  end  of  each  of  which  came  a  brief  resume,  or,  perhaps,  just 
one  skilful  transitional  phrase,  covering  all  that  had  gone 
before,  and  linking  it  to  the  next  section  of  the  discourse. 
There  was  great  sobriety  of  gesture,  there  was  no  pomposity 
whatever ;  Thiers  did  not  "  speechify,,,  he  talked  to  you ; 
lucidity  was  the  chief  feature  of  his  style,  but  now  and  again 
some  arrow  barbed  with  irony  would  dart  from  his  bow,  and 
his  eyes  sparkled  behind  his  glasses  if  he  were  pleased  with  a 
hit  he  made. 

From  the  outset,  in  spite  of  his  almost  unanimous  election, 
he  had  considerable  difficulties  with  the  majority  of  the 
Assembly ;  he  wished  it  to  do  his  bidding,  and  the  Assembly, 
to  employ  a  vulgarism,  often  kicked.  Already  in  May  1871, 
a  week  or  so  after  the  final  treaty  of  peace  had  been  signed 
at  Frankfort,  and  before  the  Commune  had  fallen,  some  of 
the  Monarchists  began  to  think  of  displacing  him ;  and 
Marshal  MacMahon,  General  Changarnier,  and  even  Grevy 
were  sounded,  with  respect  to  their  acceptance  of  the  chief 
executive  post.  MacMahon  and  Grevy  immediately  repudiated 
the  proposals,  while  Changarnier,  a  vain,  slim,  corseted, 
and  antiquated  beau — who  feared  to  leap  lest  he  should  fall — 
prudently  adjourned  his  reply.  Aware  of  the  plotting  against 
him,  Thiers  was  compelled  to  lean  more  on  the  Republican 
Centre  and  the  Republican  Left,  than  he  had  hitherto  done. 
A  reception  he  held  at  the  time  was  numerously  attended  by 
moderate  Republicans,  whom  he  thanked  for  the  support  they 
gave  him.  He  added,  in  the  course  of  conversation,  in  that 
frank  way  which  he  could  assume  so  well :  "  As  you  are  aware, 
I  have  declared  myself  in  favour  of  the  maintenance  of  the 
Republic ;  and  if  I,  an  old  Monarchist,  have  done  so,  you  may 
be  sure  that  it  has  not  been  without  deep  reflection.  You 
may  be  at  ease.  I  have  no  idea  of  betraying  the  Republic. 
As  long  as  I  am  at  the  head  of  affairs  it  will  be  in  no  danger. 
Some  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  Right  have  shown  personal 
hostility  towards  me ;  I  regret  it,  but  why  has  it  happened  ? 
It  is  because  I  will  not  lend  myself  to  certain  combinations. 
Duke  Decazes,  as  is  well  known,  wished  me  to  send  him  as 

1  The  former  "boxes,"  etc.,  of  the  Versailles  play-house,  utilised  for  the 
accommodation  of  diplomatists,  journalists,  and  the  general  public. 


THIERS  AND  THE  ASSEMBLY  75 

Ambassador  to  Russia,  but  I  did  not  consider  it  a  suitable 
appointment  for  him.  Then  another  gentleman  asked  me  to 
restore  the  system  of  official  candidatures  at  the  elections  for 
the  present  vacancies  in  the  Assembly.  He  wished  this  to  be 
done  in  the  interest  of  one  of  his  relatives,  but  I  declined  to 
take  any  such  course.  That  is  why  he  and  others  attack  me. 
I  don't  do  what  they  ask,  not  because  they  ask  impossibilities, 
but  because  they  ask  things  which  might  lead  to  trouble,  and 
which  I  disapprove.  All  my  thoughts  are  bent  on  the 
restoration  of  order,  for  that  is  essential  to  us  all — order, 
moreover,  with  the  Republic,  which,  in  the  state  of  parties, 
is  equally  essential.  I  am  convinced  that  justice  will  be  done 
me  later  on.  I  am  an  honest  man,  and  at  my  age,  the 
only  desire  I  can  have,  is  to  be  favourably  remembered 
when  I  am  gone."  Those  words  made  a  deep  impression 
on  the  persons  present,  but  they  indisposed  the  Monarchists 
extremely. 

For  a  time  the  fall  of  the  Commune  and  the  steps  taken  by 
Thiers  and  his  colleagues  to  provide  for  the  burdens  cast  on 
France  by  the  war  and  the  insurrection,  strengthened  his 
position  with  the  Assembly.  Early  in  1871  the  financial 
situation  was  very  bad.  Quite  ^450,000,000  sterling  had  to 
be  found.  There  were  ^200,000,000  (with  interest  in  addition) 
to  be  paid  as  war  indemnity  to  Germany,  further  large  sums 
were  required  for  the  expenses  of  the  German  army  of 
occupation,  grants  of  considerable  magnitude  had  to  be  made 
to  relieve  the  distress  in  departments  which  had  been  invaded, 
it  was  necessary  also  to  repair  the  disasters  of  the  Commune, 
and  large  amounts  were  owing  on  account  of  the  military 
expenses  of  France  during  the  war.  Under  these  circumstances 
Thiers  and  his  Finance  Minister,  Pouyer-Quertier,  launched 
a  first  loan  of  i?l 00,000,000  sterling  to  provide  for  more 
pressing  requirements.  It  met  with  wonderful  success,  and  the 
Germans  received  a  first  payment  of  <£40,000,000.  About  the 
same  time  financial  bills  were  presented  to  the  Assembly  with 
the  object  of  restoring  budgetary  equilibrium,  and  an  annual 
sinking  fund  of  ^8,000,000  was  established,  so  as  to  ensure 
the  total  extinction  of  the  indebtedness  incurred  by  the  war 
in  a  maximum  period  of  forty  years.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
that  indebtedness  was  discharged  many  years  sooner. 

While  all  those  financial  measures  were  in  progress,  the 


76  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Monarchists  of  the  Assembly  could  not  get  rid  of  Thiers 
without  placing  themselves  in  serious  difficulties.  They  were 
conscious  of  the  position,  and  when  in  August  (1871)  it  was 
proposed  to  transform  Thiers's  title  of  Chief  of  the  Executive 
Power  into  that  of  President  of  the  Republic — an  alteration, 
which,  although  the  Republic  was  not  officially  proclaimed, 
implied  that  it  existed — the  Assembly  adopted  the  measure 
after  carefully  inserting  therein  that  it  was  a  sovereign 
Assembly  with  power  to  decide  the  form  of  government. 
As  this  signified  that  it  might  turn  the  Republic  into  a 
Monarchy  if  it  chose,  the  Royalists  were  satisfied  with  the 
arrangement,  while  the  Republicans  on  their  side  were  not 
displeased  to  find  the  Republic  implicitly  recognised  as  the 
de  facto  Government.  As  for  any  attempts  to  overthrow  it 
thereafter,  they  would  know  how  to  resist  them.  The 
ingenious  compromise  which  was  arrived  at,  took  the  name  of 
the  deputy  who  had  first  proposed  it,  becoming  known  as  the 
"Rivet  Constitution";  while  the  regime  it  established  was 
generally  styled  the  u  Loyal  Trial "  of  the  Republic. 

One  matter  connected  with  Thiers's  relations  with  the 
Assembly  about  this  period  has  not  yet  been  mentioned.  He 
was  voted  a  very  considerable  sum  of  money  to  indemnify  him 
for  the  destruction  of  his  Paris  residence  by  the  Commune, 
and  the  loss  of  the  many  art  treasures,  valuable  books,  papers, 
and  articles  of  furniture  which  the  house  had  contained. 
Most  of  the  property  having  been  conveyed  by  the  Communists 
to  the  Tuileries  shortly  before  that  palace  was  set  on  fire, 
perished  there  in  the  flames.  There  were  good  grounds  for 
awarding  a  State  indemnity  to  Thiers,  though,  as  other  private 
persons,  who  met  with  heavy  losses  during  the  Commune, 
received  little  or  nothing,  considerable  complaint  was  heard 
about  it.  Thiers's  Paris  house,  which  was  rebuilt  at  the 
expense  of  the  nation,  stood,  we  may  mention,  on  the  little 
Place  St.  Georges,  a  small  circular  square  halfway  up  the  Rue 
Notre  Dame  de  Lorette.  He  had  resided  there  for  many 
years,  and  in  his  spacious  cabinet  de  travail  he  had  collected 
a  large  number  of  bronzes,  mostly  of  the  period  of  the  Italian 
Renascence,  of  which  the  Louvre  then  possessed  only  few 
examples.  At  the  time  when  they  were  seized  by  the 
Commune,  Courbet  the  painter  estimated  those  bronzes  to  be 
worth  ^60,000;    but  artists  often  overestimate  the  value  of 


THIERS  AND  HIS  COLLECTIONS  77 

artistic  works  which  they  appreciate,  and  Thiers,  at  any 
rate,  had  not  expended  on  his  collection  more  than  a  quarter 
of  the  amount  suggested  by  Courbet.  Foremost,  perhaps,  in 
the  collection,  came  a  beautiful  "  Marine  Venus,"  a  Florentine 
bronze  of  the  sixteenth  century,  in  the  form  of  a  bas  relief 
representing  the  goddess,  delicate  and  slender,  resting  on  a 
goat-headed  monster,  and  attended  by  winged  loves,  one  of 
them  brandishing  a  torch  and  the  other  adjusting  an  arrow 
to  his  bow.  Again,  there  was  a  bronze  model  of  that  "  Virgin 
and  Child'1  which  Michael  Angelo  began  in  marble  and  left 
unfinished.  Very  fine  also  was  a  "  Horseman  on  a  Galloping 
Steed" — attributed  to  Leonardo  da  Vinci — and  remarkably 
expressive  was  the  statuette  of  "  An  Antique  Jester,"  dancing 
with  the  heavy  step  of  a  country  clown,  his  arms  wrapped  the 
while  in  his  mantle.  There  were  also  some  remarkable  bronze 
mule  heads  of  Roman  origin ;  besides  a  number  of  reduced 
modern  copies  (executed  at  Thiers's  expense)  of  several 
celebrated  statues  of  the  Italian  Renascence,  such,  for  instance, 
as  Andrea  del  Verrocchio's  "  Colleone." 

From  the  walls  of  the  study  hung  numerous  copies  in  water- 
colours  of  famous  frescoes  and  oil  paintings  by  great  Italian 
artists ;  while  in  one  and  another  room  of  the  house  were 
assembled  cabinets,  bronzes,  ivories,  engraved  rock  crystals  and 
jades,  from  Japan  and  China,  together  with  a  variety  of 
specimens  of  old  Persian  art.  At  the  time  of  the  Commune, 
Thiers  no  longer  possessed  the  great  collection  of  engravings 
which  he  had  formed  to  assist  him  in  his  historical  studies, 
portraits,  costumes,  views,  and  representations  of  events  during 
the  great  Revolution  and  the  First  Empire.  Nevertheless,  the 
loss  inflicted  on  him  by  the  Commune's  rascality  was  severe, 
and  he  felt  the  blow  keenly,  for  it  was  one  which  no  pecuniary 
indemnity  could  repair. 

In  finance  and  commerce  Thiers  favoured  Protectionism, 
though  he  was  not  such  a  thorough  Protectionist  as  his  colleague 
the  Rouen  cotton  -  spinner,  Pouyer  -  Quertier.  The  state  of 
the  French  Exchequer  in  1871,  and  the  necessity  of  procuring 
money  to  augment  the  resources  of  the  State,  compelled  some 
readjustment  of  the  country's  financial  system.  Besides,  a  very 
important  question  had  to  be  considered.  In  the  final  treaty 
of  peace  signed  with  Germany  at  Frankfort,  Bismarck  had 
inserted   a   provision   that    France  should  accord  to  the  new 


78  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Empire  "most  favoured  nation  treatment. "  France  was  con- 
sequently threatened  with  an  inundation  of  merchandise  from 
across  the  Rhine.  Now,  although  peace  was  signed,  the  French 
hatred  of  Germany  remained  intense.  As  you  walked  along 
the  Paris  boulevards  when  quietude  was  restored  after  the 
Commune's  overthrow,  you  might  frequently  perceive  notices 
to  the  effect  that  no  German  goods  were  sold  at  one  or  another 
establishment,  that  no  German's  portrait  would  be  taken  at 
some  particular  photographer's,  or  that  no  German  waiter,  or 
shopman,  or  clerk,  or  porter,  or  boot-blacker,  need  apply  to 
such  and  such  a  firm  for  employment. 

Under  such  circumstances  it  might  be  inferred  that  little 
danger  could  result  even  if  the  German  manufacturers  should 
inundate  France  with  their  goods,  as  French  people — all  brimful 
of  patriotism — would  certainly  refuse  to  buy  them.  That 
difficulty,  however,  might  be  overcome  by  offering  such  goods 
as  products  from  other  countries — even  as  the  first  Germans, 
who  settled  in  France  after  the  war,  carefully  described  them- 
selves as  Austrians,  Switzers,  or  even  Alsatians,  in  order  to 
escape  the  odium  which,  among  the  French,  attached  to  the 
sons  of  the  Fatherland.  Besides,  the  national  hatred  for  the 
Germans  would  necessarily  abate  in  time,  and  goods  from  across 
the  Rhine  would  find  ready  markets  by  reason,  notably,  of  the 
cheap  rates  at  which  it  would  be  possible  to  offer  them,  now 
that  Germany  was  to  obtain  "  most  favoured  nation  treatment." 
That  meant,  of  course,  that  she  would  pay  the  lowest  tariff  on 
any  particular  class  of  merchandise  which  was  specified  in  the 
many  treaties  of  commerce  which  the  Government  of  the 
Second  Empire  had  contracted  with  other  powers.  But  that 
would  prove  quite  disastrous.  It  was  hard  enough  to  have  to 
surrender  Alsace  and  Lorraine  to  Germany,  to  pay  her  a  huge 
war  indemnity,  and  to  provide  for  the  keep  of  her  army  of 
occupation,  which  was  to  remain  on  French  territory  until 
the  conditions  of  the  peace  had  been  executed.  But  to  suffer, 
in  addition  to  all  we  have  mentioned,  that  she  should  inundate 
France  with  merchandise  and  cripple  the  national  industries, 
would  be  excessive,  absolutely  intolerable.  Nevertheless,  that 
was  the  prospect,  unless  Germany  could  be  circumvented,  unless 
the  French  tariffs  could  be  so  increased  as  to  prevent  her  from 
exploiting  France  commercially.  They  could  not  be  increased, 
however,  as  long  as  existing  treaties  of  commerce  remained  in 


FRANCE  AND  PROTECTIONISM  79 

force.  Therefore  the  denunciation  of  those  treaties  became  a 
necessity. 

We  often  hear  of  the  power  of  the  dead  hand.  No  more 
remarkable  example  of  it  can  be  found  than  in  the  Protectionist 
system  prevailing  to-day  in  the  continental  countries  of  Europe. 
That  system,  and  all  the  tariff  wars  which  have  broken  out  in 
our  time,  may  be  traced  back  to  the  commercial  clause  of 
the  treaty  of  Frankfort  which  Bismarck  imposed  upon  France. 
The  mighty  Chancellor  died  in  1898,  but  his  dead  hand 
still  rules  the  commerce  of  the  European  continent.  Previous 
to  the  Franco-German  War,  the  tendency  of  Europe  towards 
Free  Trade  had  become  most  marked ;  and  commercial  treaties 
on  equitable  lines  linked  one  and  another  nation  together, 
favouring  their  commerce.  But  all  that  was  changed  by  the 
Frankfort  treaty,  by  its  commercial  clause,  and  by  the  huge 
war  indemnity  demanded  of  France. 

With  the  determination  to  prevent  German  enterprise  from 
crippling  French  industry  and  trade,  was  coupled  the  necessity 
in  which  France  found  herself  to  raise  money  for  the  expenses 
of  the  war.  Many  existing  home  taxes  were  increased,  several 
new  ones  were  devised — on  railway  tickets,  on  lucifer  matches, 
on  clubs,  on  billiard  tables,  on  tobacco,  on  carriages,  carriage- 
horses,  and  what  not  besides.  But  the  most  important  of  the 
Government's  proposals  was  the  taxation  of  raw  materials. 
There  were  heated  debates  in  the  Assembly  on  the  proposal, 
which  was  regarded  as  most  reactionary.  It  was,  indeed,  the 
negation  of  the  commercial  policy  pursued  by  France  for  eleven 
years  past.  At  last,  on  January  19,  1872,  a  vote  of  the 
Assembly  shelved,  if  it  did  not  absolutely  reject,  the  proposal. 

Thiers  became  highly  indignant.  He  declared  that  unless 
his  proposals  were  adopted  there  could  be  no  budgetary 
equilibrium,  and  that  he  could  not  and  would  not  retain 
power  unless  the  necessary  financial  resources  were  placed  at  his 
disposal.  On  the  morrow,  therefore,  he  addressed  the  following 
letter  to  Grevy  : — 

Monsieur  le  President — I  beg  you  to  transmit  to  the  National 
Assembly  my  resignation  of  the  office  of  President  of  the  Republic. 
I  need  not  add  that,  until  I  am  replaced,  I  will  watch  over  all  the 
affairs  of  the  State  with  my  customary  zeal.  The  Assembly,  how- 
ever, will  understand,  I  hope,  that  the  vacancy  should  be  as  brief 
as  possible.  The  Ministers  have  also  sent  me  their  resignations, 
which   I  have  been  obliged  to  accept.     Like  myself,  they  will 


80  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

continue  to  attend  to  the  despatch  of  business  with  the  greatest 
application,  until  their  successors  are  appointed.  Receive,  Monsieur 
le  President,  the  assurance  of  my  high  consideration, 

A.  Thiers. 

This  was  a  direct  challenge  to  the  Assembly,  which  became 
quite  alarmed.  It  had  no  candidate  ready  to  take  Thiers's 
place,  and,  besides,  in  the  existing  financial  situation  a  change 
of  Government  was  most  unadvisable.  Accordingly,  by  an 
almost  unanimous  vote,  the  Assembly  passed  a  resolution,  setting 
forth  that  it  had  merely  "  reserved  "  an  economic  question,  and 
that  its  vote  implied  neither  hostility  nor  distrust,  nor  refusal 
to  co-operate  with  the  Government.  Appealing,  then,  to  the 
patriotism  of  the  President  of  the  Republic,  it  declared  that  it 
did  not  accept  his  resignation.  This  resolution  was  carried  to 
Thiers  by  a  solemn  deputation  of  the  Assembly,  headed  by 
Vice-President  Benoist  d\Azy,  and  although  the  little  man  at 
first  complained  that  his  health  was  dreadfully  bad,  that  he 
was  terribly  exhausted  by  hard  work,  and  feared  that  he 
could  not  possibly  perform  anything  like  as  much  as  the 
Assembly  had  a  right  to  expect  of  him,  he  ended  by  saying 
that,  well,  after  all,  he  would  not  refuse  the  Assembly's  request 
and  would  therefore  withdraw  his  resignation. 

He  was  inwardly  delighted  with  the  success  of  his  manoeuvre. 
He  had  brought  the  Assembly  virtually  to  its  knees.  Un- 
fortunately, however,  from  that  moment  Thiers  inclined  too 
much  to  the  view  that  he  was  an  absolutely  necessary  man — an 
opinion  in  which  he  was  confirmed  when,  less  than  six  months 
afterwards,  he  virtually  repeated  his  "  resignation  "  experiment, 
with  much  the  same  success  as  before.  It  was  a  device  which 
anecdotiers  assert  originated  with  the  first  Leopold  of  Belgium. 
Whenever  his  subjects  gave  that  monarch  trouble,  by  creating 
an  uproar  or  refusing  to  do  as  he  thought  fit,  he  packed  his 
portmanteau,  sent  for  a  cab,  and  said  to  the  crowd  assembled 
outside  the  Palace :  "  Now,  unless  you  behave  yourselves 
properly,  I  am  off ! "  Thereupon,  as  Leopold  was,  all  considered, 
a  popular  as  well  as  an  able  ruler,  and  the  "  brave  Belgians " 
were  well  aware  that  "  the  more  things  change,  the  more  they 
remain  exactly  the  same,"  an  understanding  was  arrived  at 
between  them  and  their  King.  He  unpacked  his  portmanteau, 
and  they  paid  the  cabman  for  the  time  he  had  lost.  We  in  no- 
wise vouch  for  the  truth  of  that  little  tale,  but  it  illustrates 


FRANCE  AND  PROTECTIONISM  81 

the  tactics  which  Thiers  pursued  with  the  National  Assembly. 
Unluckily,  he  repeated  them  too  often,  and  a  day  came  when 
the  Assembly  took  him  at  his  word.  He  was  then  chagrined 
and  surprised,  the  more  so  as  his  successor,  MacMahon,  had  on 
several  occasions  refused  to  accept  his  post. 

However,  we  must  not  anticipate.  The  question  of  de- 
nouncing the  commercial  treaties  led  to  controversy,  but  as 
the  position  of  France  rendered  denunciation  imperative,  the 
Government  obtained  the  necessary  authorisation  from  the 
Assembly.  The  most  important  negotiations  were  those  con- 
ducted with  Great  Britain  respecting  a  modus  vivendi  pending 
the  expiration  of  the  treaties,  in  all  of  which  there  was  a  clause 
providing  that,  if  France  should  decide  to  tax  her  own  raw 
materials,  she  would  be  entitled  to  levy  compensatory  duties  on 
all  similar  materials  coming  from  abroad,  and  on  those  articles 
into  whose  manufacture  they  largely  entered.  Nevertheless, 
an  agreement  had  to  be  reached  on  several  points.  For  instance, 
the  very  term  "raw  materials"  (matieres  premieres)  had  to  be 
interpreted  to  the  satisfaction  of  both  sides,  the  exact  materials 
which  would  be  liable  to  duty  had  to  be  specified  in  like 
manner,  and  the  amount  of  the  duty  in  some  respects  had  also 
to  be  agreed  upon.  Thiers  afterwards  admitted  that,  if  the 
British  Government  had  not  given  way  on  several  points,  he 
would  have  been  unable  to  bring  negotiations  with  the  other 
Powers  to  a  successful  issue.  In  England  there  was  no  slight 
outcry,  manufacturers,  shippers,  and  others  roundly  complaining 
of  weakness  on  the  part  of  Gladstone's  Administration.  That 
charge  was  not  quite  justified,  for  there  was  an  acute  crisis  at 
one  stage  of  the  negotiations,  which  seemed  likely  to  collapse, 
but  the  spirit  of  compromise  prevailed  at  last. 

It  is  certain  that  the  British  Government,  by  eventually 
making  concessions,  rendered  France  a  great  service,  one  which 
helped  her  powerfully  to  repair  the  state  of  her  finances.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  some  British  interests  suffered,  it  must  be 
remembered  that,  had  the  Government  insisted  on  every  right 
it  might  claim  under  the  Cobden  Treaty,  the  final  outcome 
would  have  been  an  acute  commercial  war  with  France,  damaging 
to  British  trade  in  many  respects.  On  November  13,  1872, 
Thiers  was  able  to  announce  the  conclusion  of  a  treaty,  by 
which  compensatory  duties,  as  previously  mentioned,  would  be 
levied  on  goods  from  Great  Britain  after  the  first  day  of  the 


82  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

ensuing  month  of  December.  It  had  also  been  agreed  that  the 
treaty  of  1860  should  expire  on  March  1,  1873,  after  which 
date  Great  Britain  .would  simply  receive  "  most  favoured  nation 
treatment.""  As  it  happened,  however,  that  France  was  bound 
to  Austria  by  a  commercial  treaty  expiring  only  at  the  end  of 
1876,  the  full  application  of  the  Protectionist  regime,  in- 
augurated by  Thiers,  was  postponed  until  that  period. 

Let  us  now  go  back  a  little.  We  have  mentioned  the  first 
loan  contracted  by  France  for  the  purpose  of  defraying  part 
of  her  war  expenses.  Its  success,  although  remarkable,  was 
eclipsed  by  that  of  a  second  loan  contracted  in  July  1872,  when 
the  French  Government  applied  for  no  less  than  i?l  40,000,000. 
The  whole  world  was  amazed  by  the  response  to  that  applica- 
tion, for  as  much  as  ^1,800,000,000  was  offered — the  loan  being 
covered  thirteen  times  over !  As  Thiers  remarked,  this  was 
tantamount  to  an  offer  of  all  the  disposable  capital  which  the 
world  possessed.  It  was  striking  testimony  of  the  universal 
faith  in  the  recuperative  powers  which  France  was  already 
displaying,  and  it  imparted  renewed  courage  to  those  who  had 
undertaken  the  task  of  setting  her  house  in  order. 

There  remained  one  great  obstacle  to  the  national  quietude  : 
the  strife  of  parties.  The  Monarchists  of  the  Assembly  were 
still  hostile  to  Thiers.  In  spite  of  his  many  services  they 
grudged  him  the  preponderant  role  which  he  played  in  State 
affairs,  they  talked  of  his  "dictatorship,11  they  dreaded  his 
interference  in  debate,  wished  to  exile  him  from  the  Assembly, 
and  limit  his  intervention  to  "messages11  which  were  to  be 
read  at  the  tribune  by  a  Minister  or  the  Assembly^  President. 
In  principle  they  were  doubtless  right,  but  the  chief  motive  of 
their  campaign  against  Thiers  was  his  steady  evolution  towards 
Republicanism.  There  was  certainly  personal  ambition  in 
Thiers^  policy,  but  there  was  also  common  sense.  He  realised 
that  the  Republican  party  was  the  most  numerous  of  any,  and 
that  attempts  at  a  Restoration  might  well  lead  to  civil  war. 
Besides,  the  elevation  of  any  one  Pretender  to  the  throne  would 
have  excited  the  hostility  of  others,  whose  adherents  would  have 
joined  the  Republicans  in  opposing  the  new  rule.  As  Thiers 
remarked,  the  Republican  form  of  government  was  that  which 
divided  France  the  least.1  In  several  speeches  and  messages 
he  urged  the  Assembly  to  establish  the  Republic  as  a  definite 

1  M  La  R6publique,  c'est  le  gouvernement  qui  nous  divise  le  moins." 


THE  PRETENDERS  83 

regime ;  but  although  the  Royalists  gave  way  to  him  in  some 
degree,  they  encompassed  every  concession  with  reserves, 
perpetually  haunted  as  they  were  by  their  craving  to  place 
France  once  more  in  a  monarch's  hands. 

Thiers's  position  was  rendered  the  more  difficult  at  times  by 
the  claims  of  the  advanced  Republicans.  Gambetta  was  again 
taking  an  active  part  in  politics,  and  in  the  autumn  of  1872 
he  delivered  at  Grenoble  a  slashing  speech  in  which  he  openly 
attacked  the  Assembly,  denying  notably  the  constituent  powers 
which  it  claimed.  About  the  same  time,  Prince  Napoleon 
Jerome,  cousin  of  Napoleon  III.,  returned  to  France  for  the 
purpose,  it  was  asserted,  of  rallying  the  partisans  of  the 
Empire.  Thiers  immediately  had  him  arrested  and  expelled 
from  the  country,  to  the  great  satisfaction  of  the  Orleanists, 
whose  own  Princes,  by  the  way,  continued  to  reside  in  Paris 
or  at  Versailles,  where  they  conspired  in  all  freedom  for  the 
restoration  of  their  House.  With  respect  to  Gambetta,  Thiers 
was  content  to  refer  to  the  Grenoble  speech  as  a  "  regrettable 
incident,"  and  to  preach  the  doctrine  of  a  conservative  Republic, 
"  which  must  be  that  of  the  whole  nation,  and  not  of  any  one 
party."  The  time  had  come,  said  he,  in  a  message  to  the 
Assembly,  to  transform  what  was  still  a  provisional  into  a 
definitive  Government.  On  being  taken  to  task  by  one  of  the 
Assembly's  Committees,  he  added  frankly:  "I  am  convinced 
that  a  monarchy  is  impossible,  as  there  are  three  dynasties  for 
one  throne.  If  anybody  thinks  a  monarchy  possible,  let  him 
say  so.  If  there  is  a  majority  in  that  sense  in  the  Assembly, 
let  it  try  the  experiment,  and  I  will  withdraw."  On  a  second 
occasion  he  said :  "  I  have  little  desire  to  retain  power  if  I  am 
to  exercise  it  under  the  conditions  you  wish  to  impose  on  me. 
If  you  are  minded  to  be  ungrateful,  well,  be  ungrateful.  I  have 
the  country  on  my  side,  and  it  will  speedily  choose  between  the 
Assembly  and  myself.  Oh !  I  threaten  nobody.  I  respect  the 
law.  Yes,  it  is  I  who  respect  it.  If  you  wish  to  make  a  new 
revolution  I  won't  be  responsible."  Such  was  the  little  man's 
plucky  outspokenness. 

A  crisis  ensued,  but  the  Monarchists  were  not  yet  ready  for 
a  Coup  d'etat,  and  on  November  29,  1872,  a  compromise  was 
effected  by  the  appointment  of  a  committee  of  thirty  deputies, 
to  determine  and  regulate  the  respective  provinces  of  the  public 
authorities  and    the   conditions   of  ministerial   responsibility. 


84  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

The  labours  of  the  Committee  of  Thirty  were  of  great  duration. 
They  led  not  exactly  to  a  truce,  for  the  Assembly  never  wearied 
of  heckling  Thiers  and  his  colleagues,  but  to  an  adjournment  of 
the  vital  issue. 

As  Thiers  had  said,  there  were  then  three  dynasties  hungering 
for  one  and  the  same  throne.  The  representatives  of  only  one 
of  them — the  Orleanist  dynasty — had  returned  to  France.  The 
sole  representative  of  the  senior  Bourbon  branch,  the  Count  de 
Chambord,  King  Henry  V.  of  France  by  divine  right,  had 
preferred  to  remain  in  exile.1  The  Bonapartists,  on  their 
side,  were  compelled  to  exile,  as  Prince  Napoleon  had  dis- 
covered on  being  summarily  turned  out  of  France.  His 
cousin,  the  whilom  Emperor  Napoleon  III.,  was  spending  his 
last  days  at  Camden  IJlace,  Chislehurst;  his  wife,  the  ex-Empress 
Eugenie  being  with  him,  while  their  son,  the  young  Imperial 
Prince,  was  a  student  at  the  Woolwich  Military  Academy. 
However,  both  the  Bonapartists  and  the  Orleanists  were  very 
active,  large  sums  being  spent  in  propaganda  on  either  side. 
The  Legitimist  supporters  of  the  Count  de  Chambord  were 
less  profuse,  probably  because  they  had,  on  the  whole,  less 
means ;  but  on  their  side  was  found  the  bulk  of  the  Catholic 
clergy,  who,  besides  dedicating  France  to  the  Sacred  Heart  of 
Jesus,  had  vowed  to  restore  her  to  her  ancient  line  of  kings. 
They  disposed  of  considerable  influence  at  that  period.  Free 
thought  had  not  then  effected  in  France  the  strides  which  it  has 
made  in  more  recent  years.  The  education  of  the  young  was 
largely  in  clerical  hands,  and  the  feminine  mind,  particularly, 
was  swayed  by  the  teachings  of  the  priesthood. 

But  the  candidate  of  the  old  nobility  and  the  Church,  in 
addition  to  other  disadvantages,  was  a  man  difficult  to  deal 
with,  proud,  stubborn,  a  fervent  believer  in  his  hereditary  right 
and  its  essential  holiness,  and  consequently  averse  from  con- 
cessions which  his  more  discerning  partisans  deemed  necessary 
to  win  the  support  of  the  nation.  He  was  the  grandson  of  that 
Charles  X.  who  began  life  as  the  roue  Count  d'Artois,  fled  from 
France  at  the  Revolution,  succeeded  his  brother  Louis  XVIII. 
in  1824,  lost  his  throne  by  his  foolish  despotism  in  1830,  and 
died  six  years  later  in  exile  at  Goritz  in  Carniola.     Charles 

1  Early  in  July  1871  he  certainly  visited  the  chateau  of  Cluunbord  in 
Touraine,  but  speedily  quitted  France,  stating  in  a  manifesto  that  he  did  not 
wish  his  presence  to  supply  a  pretext  for  perturbation. 


THE  COUNT  DE  CHAMBORD  85 

had  two  sons,  first,  Louis  Antoine,  the  Dauphin  or  Duke 
d'Angouleme,  as  he  was  more  generally  called,  who  had  no  issue 
by  his  marriage  with  the  Princess  Marie  Therese,  daughter  of 
Louis  XVI. ;  and,  secondly,  Charles  Ferdinand,  Duke  de  Berri, 
a  dissolute  young  prince,  who,  subsequent  to  contracting  a 
private  marriage  with  an  English  girl,  publicly  espoused  Maria 
Caroline,  daughter  of  Francis  I.  of  Naples.  In  1819  a  daughter, 
Louise  Marie,  subsequently  Duchess  of  Parma,  was  born  to 
them ;  but  early  in  the  following  year  the  Duke  was  assassinated 
outside  the  Opera  Comique  by  a  fanatical  old  soldier  of  the  first 
Napoleon's,  named  Louvel,  who  declared  at  his  trial  that  he 
had  committed  the  crime  expressly  to  annihilate  the  race  of  the 
Bourbons,  to  whom  he  attributed  all  the  sufferings  of  the 
nation. 

It  seemed,  for  a  moment,  as  if  Louvel's  design  had  succeeded, 
for  Charles  X.  was  then  sixty-two  years  old  and  a  widower,  and 
the  Duke  d'Angouleme,  after  long  years  of  matrimony,  still 
remained  without  offspring.  But  it  was  soon  announced  that 
the  widowed  Duchess  de  Berri  was  enceinte,  at  which  tidings  the 
hopes  of  the  French  Legitimists  revived.  On  September  20, 1820, 
at  the  Palace  of  the  Tuileries,  she  gave  birth  to  a  son,  Henri 
Charles  Ferdinand  Marie  Dieudonne  d'Artois,  who  was  created 
Duke  de  Bordeaux  and  Count  de  Chambord.  Great  were  the 
rejoicings  among  the  Royalists.  The  poets  burst  into  song: 
Satan  had  inspired  LouvePs  crime,  but  Providence  had  been 
watching  over  France.  The  Lord  had  provided,  and  the  birth 
of  "the  child  of  the  miracle1'  ensured  the  succession  to  the 
throne.  Ten  years  later,  however,  young  Henri,  "  the  gift  of 
God,"  shared  the  exile  of  his  family ;  for  it  was  in  vain  that,  on 
the  abdication  of  Charles  X.,  the  Duke  d'Angouleme  renounced 
his  rights,  and  that  Chateaubriand  appealed  to  the  Chamber  of 
Peers  in  the  boy's  favour.  Louis  Philippe,  Duke  d'Orleans,  was 
speedily  called  to  the  throne,  and  the  senior  branch  of  the 
Bourbons  reigned  no  more. 

Although  the  Duchess  de  Berri,  mother  of  the  Duke  de 
Bordeaux  (or,  as  it  is  preferable  to  call  him,  Count  de  Chambord, 
that  being  the  name  by  which  he  was  known  during  the  greater 
part  of  his  life),  could  not  claim  to  be  a  beauty,  her  features 
being  irregular,  she  was  a  woman  of  considerable  charm  of 
person,  with  a  romantic  temperament  and  an  energetic  disposi- 
tion.   In  1832  she  attempted  to  stir  up  La  Vendee  and  Brittany 


86  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

in  favour  of  her  son,  but  was  compelled  to  go  into  hiding, 
whereupon  it  so  happened  that  Thiers,  then  Minister  of  the 
Interior,  received  an  anonymous  letter,  whose  writer  (a  scoundrel 
named  Deutz)  offered  to  reveal  the  Duchess's  place  of  conceal- 
ment in  return  for  a  sum  of  money.  He  fixed  an  appointment 
in  the  Allee  des  Veuves,  in  the  Champs  lillysees,  for  the  purpose 
of  arranging  the  affair,  and  Thiers,  having  availed  himself  of 
the  offer,  the  Duchess  was  seized  at  Nantes,  and  lodged  in  the 
fortress  of  Blaye  near  Bordeaux,  in  the  custody  of  the  future 
Marshal  St.  Arnaud. 

This  coup  de  main  frustrated  the  insurrection,  but  Louis 
Philippe's  Government  desired  to  obtain  a  still  more  decisive 
result,  one  which  would  destroy  the  Duchess's  prestige  as  a 
royal  mother  fighting  for  her  son,  degrade  her  almost  in  the 
eyes  of  many  of  her  partisans,  and  discourage  the  Legitimists 
generally  for  at  least  a  considerable  period.  It  was  suspected, 
if  not  actually  known,  that  she  had  contracted  a  secret  marriage 
since  the  Duke  de  Berri's  death,  and  a  time  came  when,  in  her 
captivity  at  Blaye,  she  could  no  longer  conceal  the  fact  that 
she  was  enceinte.  Later  she  gave  birth  to  a  female  child,  and 
to  save  her  reputation  was  obliged  to  confess  that  she  had 
secretly  espoused  an  Italian,  Count  Hector  Lucchesi  Palli,  of 
the  house  of  the  Princes  of  Campo  Franco.  Forthwith  she 
was  released  and  allowed  to  proceed  to  Sicily;  the  Govern- 
ment feared  her  no  longer,  her  prestige  was  indeed  gone. 

She  had  little  to  do  with  the  rearing  and  education  of  her 
son,  the  Count  de  Chambord ;  and  in  regard  to  his  chance  of 
ascending  the  French  throne  that  was  perhaps  unfortunate,  for 
the  Duchess,  whatever  her  failings,  was  more  open-minded, 
more  liberal,  less  bigoted  than  most  Bourbons  of  the  time.  It 
was,  however,  the  sanctimonious  Charles  X.  who  directed  the 
upbringing  of  his  grandson.  The  Duchess  de  Gontaut-Biron, 
General  the  Marquis  d'Hautpoul,  and  others  took  charge  of  the 
lad,  who  during  his  early  years  in  France  and  his  youth  in 
exile  was  trained  in  a  narrow  piety  and  a  devout  belief  in  the 
divine  right  of  kings.  When  his  grandfather  died  at  Goritz  in 
1836,  his  uncle,  the  Duke  d'Angouleme,  immediately  proclaimed 
him  as  "  Henry  the  Fifth,  King  of  France  and  Navarre,"  and 
from  that  hour  he  deemed  himself  the  elect  of  God. 

There  was  little  of  the  Bourbon  in  the  Count  de  Chambord's 
appearance.     His  eyes  were  blue,  with  the  glint  of  steel,  his 


THE  COUNT  DE  CHAMBORD  87 

hair  was  fair,  his  mouth  very  small,  and  his  nose  delicately 
aquiline.  The  brow  was  lofty,  the  expression  of  the  face 
both  strong  and  kindly.  His  best  known  portrait  shows  him 
with  a  full  beard,  but,  during  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  he 
wore  only  a  fair  moustache  and  a  "  royal,"  that  is,  a  little  tuft 
of  beard  falling  over  the  chin  from  the  under-lip,  and  shorter 
than  the  pointed  "  imperial."  His  feet  were  small,  his  hands 
short  and  plump.  Of  average  height  and  very  broad-chested, 
he  inclined  in  his  prime  to  stoutness,  but  he  was  neither 
grotesquely  obese  like  the  eighteenth,  nor  corpulent  like  the 
sixteenth,  Louis.  He  had  all  the  natural  taste  of  the  Bourbons 
for  hunting  and  shooting — a  taste  which  was  fostered  by  the 
necessity  of  finding  occupation  for  his  life  of  exile.  An  accident 
which  he  met  with  in  1841 — a  fall  from  his  horse  on  the  Kirch- 
berg  estate — did  not  interfere  with  his  taste  for  sport  though 
it  lamed  him  for  life,  in  such  wise  that  he  seemed  to  drag  one 
leg  when  he  walked. 

Five  years  after  that  mishap,  the  Count  married  at  Bruck 
in  Styria  the  Archduchess  Maria  Theresa  Beatrice  d'Este, 
eldest  daughter  of  Duke  Francis  IV.  of  Modena,  whose  bigotry 
and  despotic  views  were  notorious,  and  who  was  only  kept  on 
his  throne  by  the  power  of  Austrian  bayonets.  Trained  in 
her  father's  narrow  principles,  the  Countess  de  Chambord  was 
not  the  woman  to  impart  any  liberalism,  or  even  any  healthy 
energetic  ambition,  to  her  husband.  In  the  latter  part  of  her  life 
she  became  a  Valetudinarian,  and  this  compelled  the  Count  to 
quit  his  favourite  seat  of  Froschdorf  (usually  called  Frohsdorf  by 
the  French),  near  the  Leytha  mountains,  which  separate  Austrian 
from  Hungarian  territory,  and  reside  at  the  Villa  Bachmann,  a 
small,  inelegant,  and  inconvenient  abode  about  half  a  mile  from 
Goritz.1  The  mild  and  humid  climate  of  that  region,  not  far 
distant  from  Trieste  and  the  Adriatic,  suited  the  Countess's 
health,  but  it  was  not  adapted  to  the  Count's.  That,  however, 
like  a  devoted  husband,  he  concealed  from  his  wife,  though  he 
often  remarked  to  his  more  intimate  friends,  "  There  is  not  suffi- 
cient air  for  me  here ;  I  often  feel  as  if  I  should  stifle."  A  few 
devoted  partisans  of  his  cause  shared  his  exile,  some  continuously, 
like  the  Count  de  Blacas,  a  son  or  nephew  of  the  Duke  of  that 
name  who  had  served  the  Restoration  as  Minister  of  State; 

1  The  locality  is  also  called  Gorz  and  Gorizia,  Goritz  being  a  kind  of  com- 
promise between  those  appellations. 


88  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

others,  at  certain  periods,  like  General  de  Charette,  sometime 
commander  of  the  Papal  Zouaves. 

On  various  occasions  after  reaching  manhood,  the  Count  de 
Chambord  addressed  manifestoes  to  the  French  nation.  He 
denounced  his  usurping  cousins  of  Orleans,  whom  he  somewhat 
smartly  described  as  the  "  legitimate  Kings  of  the  Revolution  " ; 
he  also  denounced  the  Bonapartes,  whom  he  styled  "  Corsican 
adventurers  without  honour  or  principles " ;  he  also  spoke  out 
at  times  respecting  "  the  odious  treatment "  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 
by  the  Italian  revolutionaries ;  and  he  condoled  with  fugitive 
sovereigns  like  Francis  II.  of  Naples,  and  Robert,  the  boy  Duke 
of  Parma.  As  a  rule,  his  language  was  extremely  dignified, 
and  his  manifestoes  and  letters — which  there  are  good  grounds 
for  believing  were  invariably  composed  by  himself — indicated 
the  possession  of  no  little  literary  ability.  Naturally  enough, 
he  could  not  remain  indifferent  to  the  sufferings  experienced  by 
France  in  the  war  of  1870-71.  At  the  time  when  exaggerated 
reports  of  the  effects  of  the  German  bombardment  of  Paris  were 
current,  he  issued  a  stirring  factum,  lamenting  that  he  could 
not  offer  up  his  life  to  save  France  from  further  disaster,  and 
calling  on  all  the  kings  and  nations  of  the  earth  to  witness  his 
solemn  protest  against  the  most  bloody  and  deplorable  war 
that  had  ever  been.  "  Who  but  I,"  he  continued,  "  can  speak 
to  the  world  for  the  city  of  Clovis,  Clotilda,  and  St.  Genevieve, 
for  the  city  of  Charlemagne,  St.  Louis,  Philip-Augustus,  and 
Henry  IV.,  for  the  city  of  science,  art,  and  civilisation  ?  .  .  . 
Since  I  can  do  nothing  more,  my  voice  at  least  shall  rise  from 
the  depths  of  exile  to  protest  against  the  ruin  of  my  country. 
It  shall  cry  aloud  both  to  earth  and  to  heaven,  assured  of 
receiving  the  sympathy  of  man,  and  awaiting  all  from  the 
justice  of  God." 

Later,  the  newspapers  published  a  touching  letter  which 
the  Count  addressed  to  Mme.  de  Bouille,  whose  three  sons  had 
fallen  while  fighting  for  France  at  the  disastrous  engagement 
of  Loigny  (December  2,  1870).  Subsequently,  the  outbreak  of 
the  Commune  elicited  further  declarations  from  the  Count,  the 
most  important  of  which,  couched  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  a 
friend,  contained  the  following  passages : — 

You  live,  you  say,  among  men  of  all  parties,  who  are  anxious  to 
know  what  is  my  desire  and  my  hope.  .  .  .  Say  that  I  entreat 
them,  in  the  name  of  the  dearest  and  most  sacred  interests,  in  the 


THE  COUNT  DE  CHAMBORD  89 

name  of  all  mankind  which  beholds  our  misfortunes,  to  forget  dis- 
sensions, prejudices,  and  enmities.  Caution  them  against  the 
calumnies  which  are  spread  abroad  for  the  purpose  of  creating  a 
belief  that,  discouraged  by  the  immensity  of  our  woes,  and  despair- 
ing of  the  future  of  my  country,  I  have  renounced  the  happiness  of 
working  to  save  it.  It  will  be  saved  whenever  it  ceases  to  confound 
license  with  liberty,  when  it  ceases  to  seek  security  under  haphazard 
governments,  which,  after  a  few  years  of  fancied  safety,  leave  it  in 
deplorable  difficulties.  .  .  .  Let  us  confess  that  the  desertion  of 
principle  has  been  the  real  cause  of  our  disasters.  A  Christian 
nation  cannot  with  impunity  tear  all  the  venerable  pages  from  its 
history,  sever  the  chain  of  its  traditions,  inscribe  negation  of  the 
rights  of  God  at  the  head  of  its  Constitution,  and  banish  every 
religious  idea  from  its  laws.  .  .  .  Under  such  conditions  disorder 
must  prevail,  there  will  be  oscillations  between  anarchy  and 
Caesarism,  two  equally  disgraceful  forms  of  government,  equally 
characteristic  of  the  decay  of  heathen  nations,  and  destined  to 
become  the  lot  of  all  communities  that  are  forgetful  of  their  duty. 
.  .  .  Hence  it  is,  my  dear  friend,  that,  notwithstanding  some 
remaining  prejudices,  the  good  sense  of  France  longs  for  the 
re-establishment  of  the  Monarchy.  ...  It  perceives  that  order  is 
requisite  to  ensure  justice  and  honesty,  and  that  apart  from  the 
hereditary  Monarchy  it  has  nothing  to  hope  for.  .  .  .  Oppose  most 
earnestly  the  errors  and  prejudices  which  creep  too  readily  into  the 
noblest  hearts.  It  is  said  that  I  desire  absolute  power.  Would  to 
God  that  such  power  had  never  been  so  readily  accorded  to  those 
(the  Bonapartes)  who  in  troublous  times  came  forward  as  saviours ! 
Had  it  been  otherwise,  we  should  not  now  be  lamenting  the  coun- 
try's misfortunes.  You  are  aware  that  what  I  desire  is  to  labour 
for  the  regeneration  of  the  country,  to  give  scope  to  all  its  legitimate 
aspirations,  to  preside  at  the  head  of  the  whole  House  of  France 
over  its  destinies,  and  to  submit  in  all  confidence  the  acts  of  the 
Government  to  the  careful  control  of  freely-elected  representatives. 
It  is  asserted  that  hereditary  Monarchy  is  incompatible  with  the 
equality  of  all  before  the  law.  But  I  do  not  ignore  the  lessons  of 
experience  and  the  conditions  of  a  nation's  life.  How  could  I 
advocate  privileges  for  others — I,  who  only  ask  to  be  allowed  to 
devote  every  moment  of  my  life  to  the  security  and  happiness  of 
France,  and  to  share  her  distress  before  sharing  her  honour  ?  It 
is  asserted  that  the  independence  of  the  Papacy  is  dear  to  me,  and 
that  I  am  determined  to  obtain  efficacious  guarantees  for  it.  That 
is  true.  The  liberty  of  the  Church  is  the  first  condition  of  spiritual 
peace  and  order  in  the  State.  To  protect  the  Holy  See  was  ever 
our  country's  honourable  duty,  and  the  most  certain  cause  of  her 
greatness  among  the  nations.  Only  in  the  periods  of  her  greatest 
misfortunes  has  France  abandoned  that  glorious  protectorate.  Rest 
assured  that  if  I  am  called  by  the  nation,  it  will  be  not  only  because 
I  represent  right,  but  because  I  am  order  and  reform — because  I  am 
the  essential  basis  of  the  authority  requisite  to  restore  what  has 
perished,  and  to  govern  justly  and  lawfully  so  as  to  remedy  the 


90  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

evils  of  the  past  and  pave  the  way  for  the  future.  ...  I  hold  in 
my  hand  the  ancient  sword  of  France,  and  in  ray  breast  is  the  heart 
of  a  king  and  a  father  recognising  no  party.  I  am  of  none,  nor  do 
I  desire  to  return  and  reign  by  means  of  party.  I  have  no  injury  to 
avenge,  no  enemy  to  exile,  no  fortune  to  retrieve,  except  that  of 
France.  It  is  in  my  power  to  select,  in  whatever  quarter  they  be, 
men  anxious  to  associate  themselves  with  that  great  undertaking. 
I  shall  only  bring  back  religion,  concord,  and  peace.  I  desire  to 
exercise  no  dictatorship  save  that  of  clemency,  for  in  my  hands, 
and  in  my  hands  alone,  clemency  will  still  be  justice.  Thus  it  is, 
my  dear  friend,  that  1  despair  not  of  my  country,  nor  shrink  from 
the  magnitude  of  the  task.  It  is  for  France  to  speak  and  for  God 
to  choose  the  hour.1  Henri. 

May  8,  1871. 

That  was  eloquent  language — precise,  however,  on  only  two 
points,  and  vague,  far  too  vague  for  our  practical  modern  times, 
on  others.  The  two  points  in  question  were,  first,  "  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  Papacy  .  .  .  the  protectorate  of  France  over  the 
Holy  See,"  and,  secondly,  the  invitation  which,  in  the  phrase 
expressive  of  a  desire  to  preside  "  at  the  head  of  the  whole 
House  of  France  "  over  the  country's  destinies,  was  extended  to 
the  Orleans  Princes  to  renounce  their  pretensions  and  submit 
to  their  cousin's  divine  right.  The  candid  statement  respect- 
ing the  duty  of  France  to  the  Holy  See  was  perhaps  necessi- 
tated by  the  support  which  the  French  clergy  were  already 
giving  to  the  Legitimist  cause,  but,  in  regard  to  the  nation 
generally,  it  was  a  blunder.  The  Republicans  made  no  little 
capital  out  of  it.  What,  was  France,  on  scarcely  emerging  from 
her  disasters,  to  restore  the  monarchy  just  for  the  pleasure 
of  going  to  war  with  Italy,  in  order  to  revive  the  temporal 
power  of  Pius  IX.  ?  Would  that  not  also  imply  another  war 
with  Germany,  for  would  not  Germany  certainly  be  on  Italy's 
side  ?  The  idea  of  such  a  policy  was  insensate.  Many  folk, 
even,  who  were  religiously  minded,  shrank  from  it,  realising 
that  the  restoration  of  the  hereditary  monarchy,  under  such 
circumstances,  would  be  a  national  calamity.  Many  Imperial- 
ists even  regretted  that  Napoleon  III.  had  propped  up  the 
Papacy,  and  thereby  alienated  Italian  public  opinion.  The 
perilous  nature  of  the  question  became  manifest  a  year  or  two 
later,  when,  on  the  Kulturkampf  arising  between  Germany  and 
Rome,  even  the  reactionary  Administration  of  the  Duke  de 

1  "  La  parole  est  a  la  France  et  l'heure  a  Dieu." 


THE  ORLEANS  PRINCES  91 

Broglie  was  reluctantly  compelled  to  admonish  the  French 
episcopacy  and  suspend  clerical  newspapers,  in  obedience  to  the 
injunctions  which  Prince  Bismarck  privately  addressed  to  Duke 
Decazes. 

On  the  question  of  Rome  the  bulk  of  the  country  was 
quite  unwilling  to  follow  the  Pretender,  who,  by  revealing  his 
aspirations  in  that  respect,  dealt  his  cause  its  first  serious  blow. 
Further,  for  a  time  the  Orleans  Princes  evinced  little  desire 
to  make  their  peace  with  the  Count  de  Chambord,  on  which 
account  they  and  their  partisans  were  attacked  with  great 
violence  by  the  Legitimist  and  Clerical  journals,  La  Gazette  de 
France,  IS  Union,  UUnivers,  Le  Monde,  and  others,  one  of 
them  describing  the  Orleanist  party  as  "  a  mere  residue  of  old 
prefects,  old  employees,  old  peers,  a  threadbare  aristocracy, 
whose  names  were  no  longer  of  any  use  even  on  the  pro- 
spectuses of  fraudulent  public  companies."" 

The  Orleanist  chief  was  the  Count  de  Paris,  a  Prince  whose 
destiny  resembled  that  of  the  Count  de  Chambord  in  various 
respects.  Each  was  the  son  of  a  man  who  had  met  a  violent 
death — the  Count  de  Chambord's  father  being  assassinated, 
while  the  Count  de  Paris'  perished  in  a  carriage  accident  at 
Neuilly.  As  for  the  Princes  themselves,  both  were  born  at  the 
Tuileries,  both  were  driven  into  exile  in  their  childhood,  both 
died  without  having  reigned.  Before  dealing  in  some  detail 
with  the  Count  de  Paris  and  his  immediate  relatives,  the 
position  will  be  made  clearer  by  mentioning  that  Louis 
Philippe  d'Orleans,  King  of  the  French,  had,  by  his  marriage 
with  Marie  Amelie,  daughter  of  Ferdinard  IV.  of  Naples,  five 
sons  and  three  daughters,  whose  names  here  follow  in  the  order 
of  their  birth:  Ferdinand,  Duke  d'Orleans;1  Louise,  who  by 
her  marriage  with  Leopold  I.  became  Queen  of  the  Belgians,2 
and  mother  of  the  present  King  Leopold  II. ;  Marie,  who 
became  by  marriage  Duchess  of  Wurtemberg;3  Louis,  Duke 
de  Nemours;4  Marie-Clementine,  Duchess  de  Beaujolais,  and 

1  Born  in  1810,  died  in  1842  at  Neuilly.  We  refer  to  his  marriage  and 
children  in  our  narrative. 

2  Born  in  1812,  died  in  1850.     Was  extremely  popular  in  Belgium. 

3  Born  in  1813,  died  in  1839.  Distinguished  herself  in  art,  notably  by 
her  statue  of  Joan  of  Arc,  now  at  the  Louvre. 

4  Born  in  1814,  died  in  1896.  He  married  Victoria,  Princess  of  Saxe- 
Coburg-Gotha,  by  whom  he  had  two  sons  :  (1)  Gaston,  Count  d'Eu,  who 
married  Princess  Isabella  of  Brazil,  and  has  three  sons  now  in  the  Austrian 


92  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

by  marriage  Princess  of  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha ;  1  Francois,  Prince 
de  Joinville;2  Henri,  Duke  cTAumale;3  and  Antoine,  Duke 
de  Montpensier.4 

Ferdinand,  Duke  d'Orleans,  the  eldest  of  those  children,  and 
heir  to  the  throne,  became  a  young  man  of  ability,  but  of 
expensive  tastes  and  amorous  disposition.  His  "  intrigues  "  with 
women  were  numerous.  He  was  the  lover  of  the  beautiful 
Countess  Le  Hon,  until  displaced  in  her  good  graces  by  M.  de 
Morny  (half-brother  of  Napoleon  III.),  with  whom,  on  that 
account,  he  fought  a  duel.  In  1837,  being  then  twenty-seven 
years  of  age,  Ferdinand  married  Princess  Helen  of  Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin,  by  whom  he  had  two  sons,  Louis  Philippe  Albert, 
Count  de  Paris,  born  August  24, 1838,  and  Robert  Philippe  Louis, 
Duke  de  Chartres,  born  November  9,  1840.  Two  years  later 
Ferdinand  was  killed  by  jumping  out  of  his  carriage,  the  horses  of 
which  had  run  away ;  and  when  the  Revolution,  which  overthrew 
the  Orleans  dynasty,  broke  out,  the  Count  de  Paris,  in  whose 
favour  King  Louis  Philippe  abdicated,  was  only  in  his  tenth 
year.  Nevertheless,  an  effort  was  made  to  induce  the  deputies 
to  recognise  the  boy  as  sovereign — General,  later  Marshal, 
Magnan  attempting  to  carry  him  and  his  mother  to  the 
Chamber — but  the  plan  failed,  and  the  monarchy  fell.  It  might 
possibly  have  survived  had  the  advice  of  Thiers  been  adopted, 

army ;  and  (2)  Ferdinand,  Duke  d'Alencon,  who  married  Sophia  of  Bavaria, 
sister  of  the  Empress  Elizabeth  of  Austria.  The  Duchess  Sophia  perished 
in  the  terrible  Fete  de  Charite  fire  in  Paris  in  1897,  leaving  her  husband  with 
three  children :  (a)  Emmanuel,  Duke  de  Vendome,  now  serving  in  the 
Austrian  army,  and  married  to  Henrietta  of  Belgium,  daughter  of  the  late 
Count  of  Flanders  and  sister  of  Albert,  King  of  the  Belgians ;  (6)  Louise, 
married  to  Prince  Alphonse  of  Bavaria;  and  (c)  Blanche,  still  unmarried. 
The  Duke  d'Alencon  died  in  1910. 

1  Born  in  1817,  died  in  1906.  By  her  marriage  with  Prince  Augustus  of 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha  she  had  a  son,  Ferdinand,  King  of  Bulgaria. 

1  Born  in  1818,  died  in  1900.  He  married  Princess  Francisca  of  Brazil 
(sister  of  the  Emperor  Dom  Pedro  II.),  by  whom  he  had  (1)  a  daughter, 
Francoise,  still  living,  and  married  to  Robert,  Duke  de  Chartres,  younger 
son  of  Ferdinand,  Duke  d'Orleans,  and  brother  of  the  Count  de  Paris  ;  (2) 
a  son,  Pierre  Philippe,  Duke  de  Penthievre,  born  in  1845,  still  living,  and 
unmarried. 

8  Born  in  1822,  died  in  1897.  We  deal  with  his  career  and  refer  to  his 
marriage  and  children  (who  predeceased  him)  in  our  narrative. 

4  Born  in  1824,  died  in  1890.  Married  in  1846  Luisa,  Infanta  of  Spain 
(sister  of  Queen  Isabella  II.),  by  whom  he  had,  first,  a  daughter,  Isabel,  who 
married  the  Count  de  Paris  (see  our  narrative),  and  afterwards  a  son,  Antonio, 
who  married  the  Infanta  Eulalia  of  Spain,  by  whom  he  had  two  sons. 


THE  ORLEANS  PRINCES  93 

for  he,  in  lieu  of  abdication,  wished  the  King  to  quit  Paris  under 
escort  at  the  first  moment  of  danger,  and  return  thither  at 
the  head  of  50,000  men,  whom  Marshal  Bugeaud  would  have 
commanded.  However,  as  Thiers  subsequently  related,  his  advice 
was  scorned,  and  he  was  only  able  to  apply  his  plan  for  quelling 
a  Parisian  revolution  twenty-three  years  afterwards,  that  is  at 
the  time  of  the  Commune. 

The  royal  family  went  into  exile.  The  King,  then  already 
seventy-five  years  old,  had  not  long  to  live.  Still  he  settled 
down  for  a  time  at  Orleans  House,  Twickenham,  which  he 
quitted  for  the  estate  of  Claremont,  near  Esher,  placed  at  his 
disposal  by  Queen  Victoria.  It  was  there  that  he  died  in  1850. 
Orleans  House  had  then  passed  to  his  son,  the  Duke  d'Aumale, 
whose  brother,  the  Prince  de  Joinville,  occupied  the  neighbour- 
ing property  of  Mount  Lebanon,  while  York  House,  also  at 
Twickenham,  became  the  residence  of  the  young  Count  de 
Paris.  The  last  named,  before  coming  to  England,  had  spent 
some  time  in  Germany  with  his  mother,  and  he  subsequently 
travelled  in  the  East.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  American  Civil 
War  he  sailed  for  the  United  States,  and  was  attached  for  a 
while  to  General  McClellan's  staff.  The  ultimate  outcome  of 
his  experiences  at  that  time  was  a  six- volume  history  of  the 
American  War,  published  between  1874  and  1883.  On  May 
30, 1864,  the  Count  married  (at  Kingston-on-Thames)  his  cousin, 
Isabel,  daughter  of  the  Duke  de  Montpensier,  by  whom  he  had 
two  sons  and  four  daughters,  the  elder  of  the  sons  being  the 
present  Duke  d'Orleans — now  "  Head  of  the  House  of  France  " — 
who  was  born  at  Twickenham  on  February  6, 1869,  and  married, 
in  1896,  Maria  Dorothea  Amelia,  Archduchess  of  Austria,  who 
is  two  years  his  junior.  There  has  been  no  offspring  of  the 
marriage,  and  in  the  event  of  the  demise  of  the  present  Duke 
d'Orleans  without  posterity,  his  brother  Ferdinand,  Duke  de 
Montpensier,  born  at  the  Chateau  d'Eu  on  September  9,  1884, 
would  become  head  of  the  House  and  "  King  of  France." } 

1  The  daughters  of  the  Count  de  Paris  are :  First,  Marie  Amelie,  born 
at  Twickenham  in  1865,  and  formerly  Queen-Consort  of  Portugal.  She 
married  King  Carlos  in  May  1886  when  he  was  Crown  Prince.  Secondly 
Helene  Louise,  born  at  Twickenham  in  1871,  and  married,  in  1895,  to 
Emmanuel  of  Savoy,  Duke  of  Aosta.  Thirdly,  Marie  Isabelle,  born  at 
Eu  in  1878,  and  married  in  1899  to  the  Duke  de  Guise,  son  of  her  father's 
brother,  the  Duke  de  Chartres.  Fourthly,  Louise,  born  at  Cannes  in  1882, 
and  married  in  November  1907  to  Prince  Charles  de  Bourbon,  who,  though 


94  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

The  Count  de  Paris  was  a  man  of  considerable  ability  and 
culture.  Besides  the  historical  work  we  have  mentioned,  he 
'wrote,  in  1869,  a  volume  on  the  English  Trades  Unions,  which 
showed  that  he  had  a  good  knowledge  of  social  economy.  He 
possessed,  however,  little  or  none  of  the  energy  requisite  on  the 
part  of  a  pretender.  The  coups  de  tete  in  which  he  indulged 
now  and  again  in  the  course  of  his  career,  were  such  as  are  not 
infrequently  observed  in  men  of  weak  character.  They  usually 
had  disastrous  effects  for  the  Count  or  his  relatives.  For  the 
rest,  his  general  appearance  was  pleasing.  He  was  unaffected 
in  his  manners,  and  affable,  despite  some  hesitancy  of  speech. 
Deeply  attached  to  his  beautiful  consort,  who  survives  him,  he 
knew,  in  default  of  the  splendour  of  a  regal  career,  all  the  joys 
of  a  happy  family  life.  In  public  affairs,  although  he  was  the 
head  of  his  House,  he  was  long  overshadowed  by  his  uncles,  the 
Duke  d'Aumale,  the  Prince  de  Joinville,  and  even  the  Duke  de 
Nemours.  He  did  not  usually  initiate  or  guide  the  policy  of  his 
party.  Save  for  the  occasional  coups  de  tete  to  which  we  have 
referred,  he  allowed  himself  to  be  led.  Had  he  ascended  the 
throne  he  might  have  been  a  true  constitutional  sovereign, 
one  willing  to  follow  the  famous  dictum  laid  down  by  Thiers 
in  Restoration  days:  "Le  Roi  regne,  mais  ne  gouverne 
pas."" 

The  Count  de  Paris'  younger  brother,  Robert  Philippe 
Louis,  Duke  de  Chartres,  evinced  in  his  earlier  years  a  great 
deal  more  vigour  and  decision  of  character,  though,  by  reason 
of  his  junior  position,  there  was  but  little  opportunity  for  him 
to  display  it  in  public  affairs.  He  married  his  cousin,  Francoise, 
daughter  of  the  Prince  de  Joinville,  by  whom  he  had  four 
children  :  Marie  Amelie,  later  Princess  Waldemar  of  Denmark;1 
Henri,  who  became  a  young  man  of  somewhat  violent  and  erratic 
character,  yet  displayed  real  ability  as  a  writer  and  an  explorer;2 

grandson  of  "  King  Bomba  "  (Ferdinand  II.)  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  has  become  a 
naturalised  Spaniard  and  an  officer  in  the  Spanish  army.  This  wedding, 
which  took  place  at  Wood  Norton  in  Worcestershire,  was  the  occasion  of  no 
little  display,  which  in  various  respects  verged  on  the  ridiculous. 

1  Born  at  Ham^Surrey,  in  1865,  she  was  married  to  Prince  Waldemar  of 
Denmark,  brotherof  ourQueen  Alexandra,  in  1885.  They  have  a  son,  Prince 
Erik. 

2  Prince  Henri  d'Orleans  was  born  at  Ham  in  1867  and  died  at  Saigon  in 
1901.  Though  an  Englishman  by  birth  he  was  a  thorough  Anglophobist. 
In  1897  he  fought  a  notorious  duel  with  the  Count  of  Turin.  During  the 
Dreyfus  affair  he  sided  prominently  with  the  Anti-Semites. 


THE  ORLEANS  PRINCES  95 

Marguerite,  now  Duchess  de  Magenta ; l  and  Jean,  now  Duke 
de  Guise.2  In  his  youth  the  Duke  de  Chartres  studied  at  the 
Military  School  of  Turin,  but  he  first  saw  active  service  with 
the  Federals  during  the  American  Civil  War.  When  hostilities 
broke  out  between  France  and  Germany  he  was  thirty  years  of 
age.  At  the  fall  of  the  Empire  he  repaired  to  France,  and, 
under  the  name  of  Robert  le  Fort,  obtained  employment,  with 
the  provisional  rank  of  captain,  on  the  staff  of  the  19th  Corps 
d'Armee,  a  part  of  Chanzy's  forces.  After  the  repeal  of  the 
Laws  of  Exile  in  1871,  he  secured  a  definite  position  in  the 
French  army,  and  was  promoted  seven  years  later  to  a  colonelcy. 
But  in  1883,  both  he  and  the  Duke  d'Aumale  were  removed 
from  active  service  by  the  Government  of  the  Republic.  It 
was  a  severe  blow  for  them,  for  they  were  extremely  attached 
to  their  profession,  and  the  Duke  de  Chartres,  for  his  part,  was 
still  barely  in  the  prime  of  life. 

The  Duke  d'Aumale  was  undoubtedly  the  ablest  of  the 
Orleans  Princes  of  those  days.  Entering  the  army  in  1837, 
when  he  had  only  just  completed  his  fifteenth  year,  he  served 
like  his  brothers,  Orleans  and  Nemours,  under  Bugeaud  in 
Algeria,  where,  from  the  outset,  he  displayed  diligence,  activity, 
and  enterprise.  But  he  had  not  yet  sown  his  wild  oats,  and 
when,  after  promotion  to  a  colonelcy,  he  returned  to  Paris,  he 
entangled  himself,  although  not  yet  one-and-twenty,  first  with 
a  notoriety  of  the  Opera  house,  Heloise  Florentin,  and  im- 
mediately afterwards  with  an  actress  of  the  Varietes,  Alice  Ozy, 
in  whose  good  graces  he  succeeded  Bazancourt,  the  novelist, 
much  as  his  own  father  succeeded  Pharamond  on  the  throne. 
This  demoiselle  a  la  mode  often  drove  over  to  the  suburb  of 
Courbevoie,  where  the  Duke  commanded  the  17th  Light 
Infantry,  and  whenever  she  was  present  to  witness  any  parade 
of  the  regiment,  the  amorous  young  Colonel  would  order  the 
band  to  play  the  Algerian  air :  "  O  Kadoudja,  ma  maitresse." 
Matters  becoming  serious,  it  was  decided  to  send  him  back  to 
Algeria,  where  he  speedily  forgot  the  fair  Alice  3  and  repeatedly 

1  Born  at  Ham  in  1869,  she  became,  in  1896,  the  wife  of  Patrice  de 
MacMahon,  Duke  de  Magenta,  eldest  son  of  the  famous  Marshal  President 
of  that  name. 

2  Born  in  Paris  in  1874,  he  married,  in  1899,  his  cousin  Isabelle,  daughter 
of  the  Count  de  Paris.  They  have  two  daughters,  Isabelle,  born  in  1900,  and 
Francoise,  born  in  1902. 

3  She  played  in  Le  Chevalier  du  Guet,  Les  Enragis^  and  other  popular 


96  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

distinguished  himself  in  the  field.  His  capture  of  Abd-el- 
Kader's  smala  in  1843 — which,  as  will  be  remembered,  was 
commemorated  by  Horace  Vernet  in  a  famous  painting — has 
occasionally  been  derided  by  radical  critics,  but  it  was  a  notable 
exploit,  for,  apart  from  the  large  number  of  women,  girls,  and 
lads  in  the  Arab  camp,  there  were  (as  the  Emir  himself 
subsequently  admitted  to  General  Daumas)  5000  armed  men, 
whereas  the  Duke  d'Aumale  made  the  attack  with  only  500. 

The  Duke  was  made  a  brigadier  (marechal-de-camp)  for 
that  feat,  and  appointed  to  the  command  of  the  province  of 
Constantine.  After  leading  an  expedition  to  Biskra,  he  returned 
to  France  for  a  while,  a  marriage  having  been  arranged  for  him 
with  the  Princess  Maria  Caroline,  daughter  of  the  Prince  of 
Salerno,  one  of  the  Neapolitan  Bourbons.  The  Duke,  it  so 
happened,  was  a  very  wealthy  young  man,  having  inherited  a 
fortune  of  ^800,000  and  vast  estates  (including  Chantilly)  from 
his  grand  uncle  and  godfather,  Louis  Henri,  last  Duke  de 
Bourbon  and  Prince  de  Conde,  who,  one  night  in  August  1830, 
was  found  dead,  hanging  by  the  neck  from  the  fastenings  of  a 
window  of  his  Chateau  of  St.  Leu.  Several  pocket  handkerchiefs 
tied  together,  had  served,  in  lieu  of  a  rope,  for  the  perpetration 
of  that  deed.  Was  it  a  case  of  suicide  or  one  of  crime  ?  The 
law-courts  affirmed  that  it  was  suicide,  but  crime  was  suspected 
by  the  public  generally.  The  genuineness  of  the  Duke's  will 
was  also  disputed,  and  although  the  document  was  upheld  by 
the  tribunals,  there  were  certainly  some  suspicious  circumstances 
connected  with  it.  Writers  of  repute  have  often  contended  that 
it  was  a  forgery,  devised  by  the  Duke's  mistress,  Sophie  Dawes, 
Countess  de  Feucheres,  who,  it  is  asserted,  contrived  it  in  order 
to  secure  a  goodly  share  of  the  vast  wealth  belonging  to  her  aged 
lover.1     To  her  also  the  Duke's  death  has  been  attributed. 

With  respect  to  the  will,  she  was  too  artful,  it  is  said,  to 
concoct  one  leaving  her  the  bulk  of  the  ducal  property,  for  she 

plays  of  the  time.  Among  her  many  lovers  were  Alex.  Dumas  the  elder, 
and  Francois  Victor  Hugo,  then  no  older  than  the  Duke  d'Aumale.  When 
her  liaison  with  the  latter  ceased,  Alice  Ozy  consoled  herself  with  the  second 
Perregaux,  the  son  of  the  financier,  who  had  been  at  one  time  the  employer, 
and  later  the  partner,  of  Jacques  Laffitte.  Protected  in  turn  by  Perregaux 
and  other  men  of  wealth,  Alice  amassed  a  fortune,  bought  herself  a  chateau, 
and  survived  until  an  advanced  age  as  a  Lady  Bountiful  and  a  pattern  of 
repentance  and  piety. 

1  He  was  seventy-four  years  old. 


THE  ORLEANS  PRINCES  97 

foresaw  that  such  a  will  would  be  immediately  upset,  whereas, 
if  she  contented  herself  with  an  adequate  slice  of  the  estates, 
and  attributed  the  remainder  to  a  Prince  of  the  blood  royal,  a 
member  of  that  new  Orleans  dynasty  which  had  just  ascended 
the  throne,  there  was  every  prospect  that  the  document  would 
be  upheld.  The  Duke  de  Bourbon  had  no  direct  heir,  his  only 
son  was  that  Duke  d'Enghien  who  was  so  foully  put  to  death 
under  the  First  Empire.  What  could  be  more  natural,  then, 
than  that  he  should  bequeath  the  bulk  of  his  wealth  to  his  young 
godson,  the  then  boyish  Duke  d'Aumale  ?  Against  that  proposi- 
tion, however,  must  be  set  the  fact  that,  although  the  Duke  de 
Bourbon  had  served  as  sponsor  to  the  Duke  d'Aumale  at  his 
birth  in  January  1822  (Louis  XVIII.  being  King),  he  was  an 
uncompromising  Legitimist,  and  viewed  with  the  utmost  horror 
and  detestation  the  Revolution,  which,  a  month  before  his  death, 
had  dispossessed  King  Charles  X.,  and  given  the  throne  of 
France  to  Louis  Philippe  d'Orleans  and  the  next  highest  rank 
in  the  land  to  the  latter's  sons.  Such  being  the  position,  would 
he  not  have  revoked  any  bequests  to  the  Duke  d'Aumale,  even 
if  he  had  previously  intended  to  favour  him  ?  Given  the  Duke 
de  Bourbon's  stern,  rigid  nature,  it  seemed  inconceivable  that 
he  should  devise  the  bulk  of  his  wealth  to  the  son  of  a  monarch 
whom  he  shunned  and  called  an  usurper. 

Such  are  some  of  the  points  urged  against  the  authenticity 
of  the  will.  But,  as  we  have  said,  the  document  was  upheld, 
and  the  Duke  d'Aumale,  then  eight  years  old,  became  the 
wealthiest  member  of  his  family.  At  the  same  time,  Mme.  de 
Feucheres  benefited  by  it  to  no  small  extent — if  she  were  guilty 
she  had  taken  very  good  care  of  herself — for  the  will  bequeathed 
to  her  first  a  sum  of  ^80,000,  next  the  chateaux  and  parks  of 
St.  Leu  and  Boissy,  the  estate  of  Mortefontaine,  the  forest  of 
Montmorency,  and  a  variety  of  other  property.  She  hastened 
to  sell  St.  Leu,  the  scene  of  her  protector's  tragic  end,  and  the 
chateau  was  demolished  and  the  estate  broken  up.  Meantime, 
however,  the  Legitimists  (not  the  Orleanists)  had  raised  a  sub- 
scription for  a  monument  in  memory  of  the  Duke  de  Bourbon, 
and  it  was  erected  on  the  very  site  of  the  chateau  where  he  met 
his  death.  At  the  end  of  an  avenue  of  cypresses  you  see  a  column 
guarded  by  two  angels  and  surmounted  by  a  cross,  which  occupies, 
in  mid-air,  the  exact  spot  where  the  old  Prince  was  found  hang- 
ing.    His  remains  are  interred  beneath  the  pile. 

H 


98  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Such  was  the  origin  of  the  Duke  d'Aumale^s  great  wealth, 
which  was  augmented  by  his  marriage  with  the  Princess  Maria 
Caroline,  for,  through  her,  he  came  into  possession  of  large 
estates  in  Calabria  and  Sicily,  notably  at  Cosenza  and  Zucco — 
at  which  last-named  locality,  situate  near  Trapani,  he  had  exten- 
sive vineyards,  yielding  some  dry  but  full-flavoured  wines,  both 
red  and  white  (the  latter  a  kind  of  superior  Marsala),  for  which, 
in  the  course  of  years,  he  found  some  market  in  Paris,  the  bottle 
labels  bearing  both  the  Duke's  name  and  his  arms.1 

In  1845,  after  the  birth  of  a  son — Louis  Philippe,  created 
Prince  de  Conde  2 — the  Duke  d'Aumale  returned  to  Algeria,  and 
in  September  1847,  he  succeeded  Bugeaud  as  Governor  of  the 
colony.  Three  months  later  his  rule  was  marked  by  a  notable 
event.  That  redoubtable  Arab  leader,  Abd-el-Kader,  having 
surrendered  to  Lamoriciere,  was  brought  to  him  to  make  his 
submission.  But  two  months  afterwards  the  Revolution  in 
Paris  swept  the  Orleans  Monarchy  away.  The  Duke  d'Aumale, 
whose  brother,  the  Prince  de  Joinville,  was  with  him  at  the  time, 
had  supreme  command  of  80,000  French  troops,  among  whom, 
it  is  certain,  he  was  personally  very  popular.  For  that  reason 
it  has  often  been  contended  that,  had  he  chosen,  he  might  have 
carried  those  men  to  France,  and  have  restored  his  father's  rule. 
Whether  that  were  possible  or  not,  he  abstained  from  attempt- 
ing it.  He  bade  the  army  farewell  in  a  brief  proclamation,  in 
which  he  said :  "  Submissive  to  the  national  will,  I  am  leaving 
you ;  but  from  the  depths  of  exile  my  every  wish  will  be  for  the 
prosperity  and  glory  of  France,  which  I  should  have  liked  to 
have  served  longer. "  Then  he  relinquished  his  authority  to 
General  Cavaignac  (who  soon  became  chief  of  the  Executive 
Power  in  France)  and  embarked  with  the  Prince  and  Princess 
de  Joinville  for  Gibraltar,  whence  he  proceeded  to  England. 

For  a  few  years  he  travelled,  then  settled  down  at  Twicken- 
ham, where,  in  1854,  his  second  son,  Francois  Louis,  Duke  de 
Guise,  was  born.     His  years  of  exile  during  the  Second  Empire 
j      were  spent  chiefly  in  literary  work,  often  of  high  merit.3     He 

1  The  white  variety  was  by  far  the  better  wine,  and  secured,  we  remember, 
one  of  the  highest  awards  for  vintages  of  its  class  at  the  Vienna  Exhibition  of 
1873. 

3  He  died  of  typhoid  fever  at  Sydney,  New  South  Wales,  in  1866. 

8  His  chief  writings  were  his  excellent  Histoire  des  Princes  de  ConcU,  1869- 
1895  ;  his  Institutions  Militaires  de  la  France,  1868  ;  his  Zouaves  et  Chassmrs- 
a-pied,  1855  ;  and  his  Septidme  Canvpagm  de  Ctsar  en  Gaule. 


THE  ORLEANS  PRINCES  99 

was  a  brilliant  polemist,  and  the  Lettre  sur  Vhistoire  de  France, 
which  he  wrote  in  1861,  in  reply  to  provocation  offered  by  Prince 
Napoleon  Jerome,  was  a  masterly  exposure  of  the  Imperial 
regime.  Its  publisher  was  sentenced  by  the  judges  of  the 
Empire  to  a  year's  imprisonment  and  the  payment  of  i?200  fine. 
A  little  later,  on  the  Duke  being  attacked  by  Prince  Napoleon 
in  the  Senate,  he  sent  him  a  challenge,  but  the  mock  soldier, 
whom  the  Parisians  had  christened  "  Plon-Plon,"  was  afraid  of 
a  real  soldier's  steel. 

At  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  the  Duke  offered  his  sword  to  the 
National  Defence,  first  to  Trochu,  and  later  to  the  Delegates 
at  Tours.  Both  declined  his  services,  which  was  perhaps  re- 
grettable, for  France  disposed  of  few  generals  of  value.  How- 
ever, the  raison  d'etat  prevailed.  At  the  first  elections  of  1871, 
the  Duke  was  elected  to  the  National  Assembly  by  the  depart- 
ment of  the  Oise  (Chantilly — 52,222  votes),  but  he  only  took  his 
seat  after  the  repeal  of  the  Exile  Laws  in  June  that  year.  In 
December  a  great  honour  was  conferred  on  him :  he  became  a 
member  of  the  French  Academy,1  and  in  the  ensuing  month  of 
March,  he  was  reinstated  in  the  army  with  the  rank  of  General 
of  Division.  Great  was  his  delight,  but  at  that  same  moment  a 
heavy  blow  fell  upon  him.  He  had  lost  his  elder  son  in  1866, 
his  wife  in  1869,  and  now  the  young  Duke  de  Guise — a  bright 
youth  of  eighteen  years — was  snatched  away  by  death.  "  God 
has  extinguished  the  last  light  of  my  home,"  the  Duke  wrote  to 
a  friend  shortly  afterwards.  He  was  then  only  fifty  years  of 
age,  and  might  have  remarried,  but  he  never  did  so.  In  later 
years  his  name  was  associated  with  that  of  a  very  charming 
and  well-remembered  actress  of  the  Comedie  Francaise.  We 
shall  refer  to  that  liaison  when  speaking  of  the  Duke  and 
General  Boulanger. 

Let  us  now  pass  to  the  Duke's  brother,  the  Prince  de  Joinville, 
who  also  returned  to  France  in  1871,  and  was  elected  a  member 
of  the  National  Assembly.  A  sailor  prince,  with  a  good  know- 
ledge of  his  profession  under  the  old  conditions,  and  evincing  at 
various  times  considerable  gallantry  in  action,  he  had  been 
popular  in  France  during  his  father's  reign,  less,  however,  on 
account  of  the  above  reasons,  than  on  account  of  his  voyage  to 
St.  Helena  to  bring  the  remains  of  the  first  Napoleon  to  France 

1  At  his  formal  reception  in  1873,  it  was  his  old  tutor  Cuvillier-Fleury  who 
addressed  him  on  behalf  of  the  Academy. 


100  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

and  of  his  bold  opposition  to  the  obnoxious  policy  of  the  Guizot 
Administration,  which  wrecked  the  Monarchy.1  In  1870  he 
offered  his  services  to  the  National  Defence,  repaired  to  France 
under  the  name  of  "  Colonel  Lutteroth,"  applied  personally  to 
Cremieux,  Glais-Bizoin,  and  Fourichon  at  Tours,  and  afterwards 
appealed  to  Generals  d'Aurelle  and  Martin  des  Pallieres ;  but 
the  only  result  was  his  subsequent  arrest  by  Ranc  (acting  under 
Gambetta's  orders),  and  an  injunction  to  quit  France.  Before 
that  happened,  however,  the  Prince  was  for  a  few  days  with  the 
rear-guard  of  the  Loire  Army  in  its  retreat  on  Orleans,2  when 
he  not  only  saved  some  wounded  men,  but  (although  attired  as 
a  civilian)  joined,  on  December  4,  a  naval  contingent  which  was 
in  charge  of  a  battery  established  on  Mount  Bedhet,  in  advance 
of  the  city.  The  commander  of  this  battery  wished  to  order 
him  away,  but  when  he  had  mentioned  that  he  was  an  old  naval 
officer,  he  was  allowed  to  stay  and  assist  in  directing  the 
men  and  working  the  guns.  The  men,  at  first,  were  rather 
amused  by  the  presence  of  this  "  civilian,*"  and  when  the  German 
fire  directed  on  the  battery  became  more  severe,  and  shells  began 
to  explode  all  around  it,  they  asked  him  if  he  did  not  feel 
afraid.  "  What  do  you  say  ? "  the  Prince  inquired,  raising  his 
hand  to  his  ear,  whereupon  a  gunner  shouted  the  question  afresh. 
"  Afraid  ?  "  was  the  Prince's  retort,  "  well,  no.  You  see,  I  am 
nearly  stone  deaf  (which  was  true),  and  as  I  don't  hear  it,  it 
doesn't  frighten  me.11  The  fire  of  the  battery  was  kept  up  until 
nine  at  night,  in  order  to  allow  various  small  detachments  of  the 
French  to  cross  the  Loire,  and  one  of  the  last  shells  which  took 
its  flight  through  the  darkness  towards  the  German  positions 
came  from  a  gun  which  the  Prince  himself  pointed.  He  retired 
with  the  men  into  Orleans,  where  he  somewhat  imprudently 
lingered  until  the  Germans  had  entered.  Had  they  taken  him, 
they  might,  perchance,  have  sent  him  to  Wilhelmshohe  to  keep 
Napoleon  III.  company,  but  he  eventually  sought  the  Bishop — 
the  famous  Dupanloup — and  with  his  assistance  was  able  to 
escape  from  the  city. 

1  He  had  literary  talent  like  most  of  his  family,  and  published  a  two- volume 
work,  Questions  de  marine  et  ricits  de  guerre*  as  well  as  some  recollections, 
Vieux  Souvenirs*  1894. 

2  Abbe*  Cochard's  Les  Prussiens  a  Orleans,  1871 ;  letter  from  the  Prince  to 
the  author.  Also  P.  Lehautcourt's  Campagne  de  la  Loire,  Vol.  I.  :  Coulmiers 
et  OrUans,  Paris,  1893,  and  Le  Prince  de  Joinville  pendant  la  campagne  de 
France,  Orleans,  18T3. 


THE  ORLEANS  PRINCES  101 

Very  bald,  and  wearing  a  full  grey  beard,  the  Prince  de 
Joinville  looked,  in  1871,  a  good  deal  older  than  he  really  was. 
The  expression  of  his  face  suggested  bonhomie,  there  was  no 
affectation  about  him.  Like  his  brothers,  D'Aumale  and 
Nemours,  he  was  of  the  average  height,  but  with  more  laisser- 
aller  in  his  bearing.  On  the  other  hand,  the  best  physical 
characteristics  of  a  general  officer  appeared  in  D'Aumale's  still 
fairly  slim  but  muscular  figure,  his  well-set  shoulders,  erect 
carriage,  quick,  agile  step,  and  energetic,  if  somewhat  thoughtful, 
face.  He  was,  too,  an  accomplished  horseman  and  a  good  shot, 
an  extremely  active  man,  a  genuine  hard  worker ;  and  if,  as  a 
general,  he  preserved  a  demeanour  which  commanded  respect, 
he  evinced  in  private  life  frank  and  urbane  manners. 

His  brother,  the  Duke  de  Nemours,  was  of  a  different  type. 
He  also  had  been  trained  to  the  profession  of  arms,  but  the 
great  event  in  his  career  had  been  the  futile  attempt  to  make 
him  King  of  the  Belgians,  in  preference  to  Leopold  of  Saxe- 
Coburg  (1831).  He  was  pretentious  both  in  his  manners  and 
his  physique.  If  D'Aumale  looked  fit  and  trim  like  an  officer 
groomed  well  but  rapidly  by  a  deft  brosseur,  Nemours  had  the 
elaborate  appearance  of  a  coxcomb,  who  has  spent  hours  before 
his  looking-glass,  in  the  hands  of  his  valet  de  chambre.  His 
great  object  in  life  was  to  cultivate  a  resemblance  to  Henri  of 
Navarre,  none  of  whose  qualities  he  in  any  way  possessed.  But 
his  hair  was  cut,  his  moustache  turned  up,  his  beard  trimmed 
with  the  most  sedulous  care,  in  order  that  the  beholder  might 
imagine  he  was  confronted  by  some  reincarnation  of  "  Le  Roi 
galant 11 — though,  indeed,  the  latter  never  took  anything  like  the 
same  care  of  his  personal  appearance.  Thus  Nemours  was  like 
a  caricature  of  the  great  king,  or,  better  still,  he  suggested  one 
of  those  "  official "  portraits  which  embellish  nature.  Neverthe- 
less, he  was  extremely  vain  of  the  resemblance  which  he  thus 
cultivated — far  vainer,  indeed,  than  Prince  Napoleon  ever  was  of 
his  natural  likeness  to  the  great  Emperor.  For  the  rest,  the 
opinions  of  Nemours  were  reactionary.  To  say  that  he  was  the 
least  popular  of  Louis  Philippe's  sons  would  be  but  half  the 
truth.     He   was    really   most    unpopular.1     As,    however,   his 

1  When  in  1871,  photographs  of  the  Orleans  Princes  made  their  appearance 
in  the  shop  windows  (from  which  Napoleon  III.  and  his  family  were  for  some 
time  excluded),  you  usually  perceived  the  Count  de  Paris  flanked  by  his  uncles 
D'Aumale  and  Joinville.  But  no  portrait  of  Nemours  was  exhibited,  because, 
as  a  shopkeeper  once  remarked  to  us,  "  nobody  would  ever  think  of  buying  it." 


102  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

talents  tended  to  intrigue,  he  exerted  himself  in  parliamentary 
and  social  circles,  after  his  return  to  France,  to  further  the 
cause  of  a  monarchical  restoration.  He  was  the  least  fortunately- 
circumstanced  of  the  Princes,  and  on  that  account,  he  appears 
to  have  taken  a  prominent  part  in  the  negotiations  for  the 
restoration  of  the  Orleans  property  confiscated  by  Napoleon  III., 
and  the  payment  of  a  national  indemnity  for  such  of  the  property 
as  could  not  be  recovered. 

As  a  matter  of  principle  it  was  right  and  fit  that  restitution 
should  be  made.  But  the  question  was  raised  in  an  impolitic 
manner,  at  a  moment  when  the  resources  of  France  were  being 
strained  to  the  utmost  to  provide  for  the  German  indemnity 
and  other  war  expenses.  Patriotism  required  that  the  Princes 
should  wait  until  a  more  convenient  season,  they  were  by  no 
means  penniless,  and  a  little  consideration  for  the  country's 
terrible  circumstances  would  have  tended  to  their  popularity. 
They  were  in  a  hurry,  however.  On  one  hand,  they  were  some- 
what surprised  at  finding  themselves  in  France  again — it  seemed 
"too  good  to  last,11  and  they  were  minded,  therefore,  to  seize 
their  opportunity  with  all  despatch.  On  the  other  hand,  funds 
were  required  for  political  propaganda.  Those  considerations 
prevailed,  and  the  result  was  a  stupendous  blunder,  of  which 
the  Republicans  eagerly  availed  themselves.  Thiers  lent  himself 
to  the  affair,  indeed,  took  it  under  his  wing — whether  out  of 
friendship  for  the  Princes,  or  to  curry  favour  with  the  Orleanist 
majority  of  the  Assembly,  is  uncertain ;  but  in  any  case  no 
greater  disservice  was  ever  rendered  to  the  Orleanist  cause. 
The  Assembly  ratified  the  demand,  and,  in  December  1872,  the 
Princes  secured  nearly  a  couple  of  millions  sterling.  They 
showed  no  gratitude  to  Thiers  for  his  assumption  of  responsi- 
bility. Both  the  Duke  d'Aumale  and  the  Duke  de  Nemours 
contributed  to  the  little  man's  overthrow,  working,  for  once,  in 
concert,  though,  later,  when  the  Fusion  of  Orleanists  and 
Legitimists  was  negotiated,  D'Aumale  hung  back,  unwilling  to 
make  his  submission  to  the  Count  de  Chambord,  whereas  Nemours 
was  prepared  to  accept  even  the  White  Flag. 

Such  then  were  the  Princes  of  the  dynasty  whose  chances  of 
reascending  the  French  throne  seemed,  after  the  Franco-German 
War,  to  be  more  considerable  than  those  of  either  the  Legitimists 
or  the  Bonapartists.  Yet  the  last  named  were  very  active. 
Already,  in  August  1871,  at   the  time  of  the  whilom  Fete 


THE  EX-EMPEROR  103 

Napoleon,  the  agents  of  the  exiled  Emperor  distributed  money 
among  the  Paris  hospitals  and  charities.  Ajaccio  in  Corsica — 
the  birthplace  of  the  Bonapartes — actually  celebrated  the  fete 
in  accordance  with  previous  usage,  the  Municipal  Council  voting 
money  for  the  poor,  and  the  clergy  celebrating  a  special  mass  at 
the  cathedral.  Yet  less  than  a  twelvemonth  had  elapsed  since 
Sedan  !  The  chief  imperialist  agent  in  France  was  now  Rouher, 
the  once  powerful  "  Vice-Emperor,'"  who  certainly  displayed 
great  energy  and  devotion.  In  1872,  the  Imperial  family  again 
had  numerous  newspapers  in  its  pay — some  completely,  others 
to  more  or  less  extent.  In  Paris  were  found  VOrdre,  Le  Pays, 
UEsperance  du  Peuple  and  Le  Gaidois,  as  well  as  Le  Con- 
stitutionnel.  In  the  provinces  there  were  Le  Courrier  du  Havre, 
Le  Journal  de  Bordeaux,  Le  Nivernais,  V Independant  de  VAube, 
UAdour,  Le  Courrier  de  Bayonne,  VAmi  de  VOrdre  of  Caen,  Le 
Patriote  of  Perpignan,  and  many  others.  Again,  there  were  all 
sorts  of  pamphlets  and  almanacks,  which  hawkers  circulated 
among  the  peasantry  to  remind  them  of  the  "  good  times  "  they 
had  enjoyed  under  the  sway  of  the  sovereign  who,  from  what  he 
did  to  promote  their  welfare,  had  often  been  called  the  "  Emperor 
of  the  Peasants. " 

All  that  propaganda  which  became  even  more  extensive  a 
few  years  later,  when  the  young  Imperial  Prince  attained  his 
majority,  cost  money ;  but  the  question  where  the  money  came 
from  has  never  been  properly  elucidated.  The  accounts  of  the 
Imperial  Civil  List,  in  the  liquidation  of  which  Rouher  exerted 
himself  on  behalf  of  the  exiled  family,  were  extremely  involved, 
and  little  or  nothing  was  obtained  from  that  source  during  the 
ex-Emperor's  lifetime,  though  the  Empress  Eugenie's  personal 
claims  to  considerable  property  were  established,  in  part  then, 
and  in  part  subsequently.  It  would  really  seem,  therefore,  that, 
in  spite  of  frequent  denials  from  the  time  of  Sedan  onward, 
Napoleon  III.  (as  asserted  in  documents  issued  by  the  National 
Defence  Government)  had  really  provided  himself  |with  a  nest 
egg  before  his  downfall.  The  story  ran  that  he  had  lodged 
large  sums  in  Great  Britain  and  Holland.  Certain  it  is  that, 
from  the  quelling  of  the  Commune  in  1871,  until  the  Emperor's 
death  in  January  1873,  some  millions  of  francs  were  spent 
on  propaganda  for  his  cause.  Subsequently,  in  the  Imperial 
Prince's  time,  there  were  well  organised  Bonapartist  Committees 
and  subscription   funds,  representing  considerable  amounts  of 


104  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

money;  but  the  earlier  agitation  was  financed  almost  entirely 
by  Napoleon  III.  himself. 

At  the  moment  when  France  and  the  world  were  gasping 
with  horror  at  the  excesses  of  the  Commune,  the  ex-Emperor 
seems  to  have  been  convinced  that  he  would  be  restored  to  the 
throne,  and  all  his  efforts  were  directed  towards  hastening  that 
event.  But  the  complaint  from  which  he  suffered,1  and  the 
organic  lesions  it  had  produced,  were  making  steady  progress. 
He  had  taken  little  physical  exercise  whilst  he  was  a  prisoner 
of  war  at  Wilhelmshohe,  and  thus  his  sojourn  there  had  proved 
restful  and  beneficial ;  but  after  his  arrival  in  England,  on 
directing  his  thoughts  to  the  prospect  of  his  restoration,  he 
began  to  exert  himself  in  various  ways.  The  story  runs  that 
his  plan  was  not  to  make  any  descent  on  France  from  England. 
When  the  time  was  near  for  his  partisans  to  proclaim  him,  he 
meant  to  cross  over  to  the  Continent,  and  visit,  among  other 
spots,  the  estate  of  Arenenberg,  above  Lake  Constance,  his  home 
in  early  days.  Then,  all  being  ready,  he  intended  to  cross 
Switzerland  and  enter  France.  But  there  was  one  important 
matter:  it  was  necessary  that  he  should  be  able  to  ride.  He 
deemed  it  requisite,  imperative,  that  he  should  present  himself 
to  the  nation  on  horseback. 

When  he  arrived  in  England,  he  had  not  been  in  the  saddle 
since  the  fatal  day  of  Sedan.  It  was  largely  because  he  had 
abstained  from  horse-riding  that  his  symptoms  had  become  less 
acute,  less  painful.  Perhaps,  however,  he  did  not  attribute  the 
apparent  improvement  of  his  health  to  that  cause.  In  any 
case,  as  his  hopes  of  restoration  revived,  he  again  put  his  powers 
of  horsemanship  to  the  test.  He  began  by  riding  now  and  then 
in  secluded  lanes  around  Chislehurst.  At  first,  no  ill-effect  was 
observed,  but  when  he  proceeded  to  indulge  more  freely  in  the 
exercise,  all  the  old  trouble  returned,  with,  indeed,  more  intensity 
than  ever.  Baron  Corvisart,  who  had  attended  him  during  the 
war,  and  his  old  friend,  Dr.  Conneau,  were  with  him,  and  in  July, 
1872,  they  induced  him  to  consult  Sir  Henry  Thompson  and 
Sir  William  Gull,  who,  agreeing  with  their  French  colleagues 
that  the  case  must  be  one  of  vesical  calculus,  wished  the 
Emperor  to  submit  to  complete  examination.  He  refused  to 
do  so,  even  as  he  had  refused  to  act  on  the  advice  of  Baron 

1  For  a  full  account  of  the  earlier  stages  of  the  Emperor's  illness  see  our 
Court  of  the  Tuileries,  1852-1870. 


THE  EX-EMPEROR  105 

Larrey  in  1865,  or  of  the  medical  men  consulted  in  1870  prior 
to  the  war.  But  the  severity  of  his  symptoms  increased.  He 
had  naturally  relinquished  horse-riding,  and  he  now  also  found 
it  necessary  to  give  up  carriage  exercise — in  fact,  the  moment 
came  when  he  could  no  longer  walk.  On  October  31  he  was 
seen  at  Chislehurst  by  Sir  James  Paget  and  Sir  William  Gull. 
The  former — like  Thompson — advised  an  early  examination,  in 
order  that  the  question  of  the  presence  of  a  calculus  might  be 
finally  determined.  Yet,  once  again,  the  Emperor  refused 
compliance.  For  several  weeks  afterwards,  however,  he  was 
confined  to  his  room,  suffering  severely,  and  at  last,  towards 
the  end  of  December,  Sir  Henry  Thompson  was  again  consulted, 
whereupon,  he,  Sir  W.  Gull,  and  the  French  doctors  declared 
unanimously  that  immediate  examination  was  imperative.  It 
was  decided  also  that  as  the  local  sensibility  had  become  extreme, 
the  patient  must  be  placed  under  chloroform,  and  steps  were 
therefore  taken  to  secure  the  services  of  Mr.  Clover,  then  the 
most  experienced  administrator  of  anaesthetics  in  England. 
The  examination  took  place  on  January  2  (1873),  and  speedily 
revealed  the  presence  of  a  large  calculus — subsequently  found 
to  be  about  3  inches  in  length  and  &{  inches  in  breadth,  with 
a  weight  of  fully  1  \  ounces. 

On  the  same  day,  in  the  afternoon,  the  Emperor  having  at 
last  placed  himself  unreservedly  in  the  hands  of  the  doctors,  to 
whom  his  only  request  was  that  they  would  proceed  with  all 
despatch,  the  operation  of  lithotrity  was  performed  by  Sir 
Henry  Thompson  in  the  presence  of  Sir  W.  Gull,  Baron 
Corvisart,  M.  Conneau,  Mr.  Foster,  and  Mr.  Clover.  The  stone 
was  freely  crushed  and  considerable  debris  were  removed.  But 
the  pain  and  irritation  increased  during  the  next  few  days,  and 
a  second  operation  became  necessary.  The  Emperor  supported 
it  fairly  well,  and  though,  on  the  night  of  January  7,  his 
condition  was  scarcely  favourable,  he  was  found  on  the  ensuing 
night  to  be  materially  better.  He  slept  soundly,  and  at  9.45 
on  the  morning  of  January  9,  his  condition  seemed  so  satis- 
factory— the  pulse  then  being  84,  strong  and  regular,  and  the 
local  symptoms  showing  decided  improvement — that  it  was 
resolved  to  perform  what  would  have  been  the  third  and  final 
operation  that  same  day.  Mr.  Clover  felt  that  there  would  be 
no  risk  in  placing  the  Emperor  under  chloroform  at  once. 
However,  a  postponement  until  noon  was  agreed  upon.     But 


106  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

when,  towards  half- past  ten  o'clock,  Sir  Henry  Thompson 
returned  to  the  patient's  room,  to  ascertain  how  he  might  be 
progressing,  he  was  startled  to  find  that  a  great  change  had 
supervened.  Sir  Henry  at  once  summoned  his  colleagues,  who 
all  recognised  that  the  Emperor  was  sinking  fast.  Restoratives 
were  administered  in  vain.  The  Emperor's  last  effort  was  to 
exchange  a  kiss  with  the  Empress,  who  had  been  kneeling  by 
the  bedside,  and  almost  immediately  afterwards,  at  a  quarter  to 
eleven  o'clock,  he  expired.1  We  have  written  so  much  about 
him  in  an  earlier  work,  to  which  this  present  volume  is,  in  a 
way,  a  sequel,  that  neither  appreciation  of  the  qualities  which 
he  undoubtedly  possessed,  nor  criticism  of  his  private  lapses  or 
his  mistakes  as  a  ruler,  seems  to  be  necessary  here. 

The  news  of  the  death  caused  a  profound  sensation  in  France, 
but,  while  the  Orleanists  were  frankly  jubilant,  most  of  the 
Republicans  pretended  to  regard  the  event  as  of  no  importance. 
Edmond  About — now  a  Republican — wrote  in  Le  XlXieme 
Steele:  "The  Empire  was  dead,  the  Emperor  has  just  died." 
Another  journal  remarked  :  "The  Empire  is  now,  indeed,  peace 
— the  peace  of  the  grave."  The  Bonapartist  organs  became 
quite  infuriated  by  some  of  the  hostile  comments,  and  heaped 
vituperation  on  their  adversaries,  calling  them  "miserable 
cowards,"  "  ungrateful  rabble,"  "  carrion  crows,"  "  red-necked 

1  The  Imperial  Prince  was  at  Woolwich  at  the  time,  and,  although  promptly 
summoned,  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  reach  Chislehurst  before  his  father's 
death.  A  post  mortem  examination  of  the  remains,  conducted  by  Dr.  Burdon 
Sanderson,  showed  that  the  kidneys  were  involved  in  the  inflammatory  effects 
resulting  from  the  vesical  calculus,  to  a  degree  which  had  not  been  previously 
suspected,  and  which,  if  suspected,  could  not  have  been  ascertained.  There 
was  excessive  dilatation  of  the  ureter  and  the  pelvis,  tending  on  the  left  to 
atrophy  of  the  glandular  substance  of  the  organ  besides  sub-acute  inflammation 
of  the  uriniferous  tubes.  It  was  found  that  about  half  the  calculus  had  been 
removed.  There  was  no  disease  of  the  heart,  nor  of  any  other  organ,  except- 
ing the  kidneys.  The  brain  and  its  membranes  were  in  a  natural  state. 
There  were  very  few  clots  in  the  blood.  No  trace  of  obstruction  by  coagula 
was  found  in  the  heart,  the  pulmonary  artery  or  the  venous  system.  Death 
took  place  by  failure  of  the  circulation,  attributable  to  the  general  constitutional 
state  of  the  patient.  The  disease  of  the  kidneys,  of  which  that  state  was  the 
expression,  was  of  such  a  nature,  and  so  advanced,  that  it  would  in  any  case 
have  shortly  determined  a  fatal  result.  The  calculus,  it  was  held,  had  been 
in  the  vesica  several  years.  The  report  to  the  above  effect  was  signed  by 
Burdon  Sanderson,  Conneau,  Corvisart,  Thompson,  Clover,  and  Foster  ;  but 
Sir  W.  Gull  dissented  from  it  on  a  few  points,  notably  as  regards  the  age  of 
the  calculus.  Now,  however,  that  the  history  of  the  Emperor's  case  is  much 
better  known  than  it  was  at  the  time  of  his  death,  it  is  certain  that  Gull  was 


THE  EX-EMPEROR  107 

vultures,"  and  "  wretches,  who  for  eighteen  years  had  servilely 
bared  their  necks  beneath  the  Emperor's  heel."  Some 
Imperialists,  while  personally  regretting  the  Emperor,  felt  that 
his  death  might  really  prove  helpful  to  their  cause.  There  had 
already  been  dissensions  in  the  party,  one  section  holding  that 
there  was  a  greater  chance  of  restoring  the  Empire  with  the 
Imperial  Prince,  than  with  Napoleon  III.,  on  the  throne.  At 
present  only  the  Prince  remained,  and  his  record  being  a  clean 
one  —  for  no  responsibility  for  the  past,  either  for  the  Coup 
d'Etat  or  for  Sedan,  attached  to  him  —  it  seemed  to  some 
that  the  outlook  was  really  brighter  than  it  had  been  before. 
Against  that  view,  had  to  be  set  the  fact  that  the  Prince  was 
not  yet  seventeen  years  of  age,  and  that  the  Empress  Eugenie 
who,  in  the  event  of  an  early  restoration,  would  become  Regent, 
lacked  popularity  on  account  of  her  extreme  clerical  views. 
Thus  some  held  that  the  Bonapartist  party  might  well  split  into 
two  sections,  one  under  the  Empress  and  the  Imperial  Prince, 
the  other  under  the  free-thinking  Prince  Napoleon  Jerome. 

That  view — which  subsequent  events  did  not  quite  justify, 
for  Prince  Napoleon's  following  never  became  large,  and  besides, 
he  transformed  himself  for  a  while  into  a  professed  Republican 
— appealed  to  Thiers,  who  regarded  the  Emperor's  death  as  a 
most  favourable  event  for  the  Republic.  "It  finally  released 
the  nation,"  said  he,  "from  the  imaginary  loyalty  to  which 
Napoleon  III.  had  fancied  himself  entitled  by  the  last  Plebiscitum 
in  his  favour.  It  severed,  moreover,  the  army's  connection  with 
the  Empire,  relieving  those  officers  who  had  risen  to  high  rank 
in  imperial  times  of  any  sense  of  duty  to  their  whilom  sovereign." 
In  that  connection  it  may  be  mentioned  that  all  officers  on 
active  service  were  prohibited  from  attending  the  obsequies  at 
Chislehurst. 

On  the  whole,  the  opinion  that  the  Imperial  cause  might 
have  a  better  chance  now  that  it  would  be  championed  by  a 
young  Prince  with  a  perfectly  clean  slate,  seems  to  have  been 
the  most  sensible.  After  the  Imperial  Prince  had  attained  his 
majority,  considerable  efforts  were  made  on  his  behalf,  and  at 
one  moment  the  party  of  the  "  Appeal  to  the  People,"  as  the 
Bonapartists  called  themselves,  seemed  to  be  gaining  real 
strength.  But  collapse  came  after  1879,  when  the  young  Prince 
was  killed  in  South  Africa. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE    ELYS^E    PALACE — PARISIAN    LIFE — FALL    OF 
THIERS — MACMAHON,    PRESIDENT 

Thiers's  Daily  Life— The  Story  of  the  Elysee— First  Receptions  there—"  The 
Judgment  of  Paris"  —  A  Thrifty  Housewife  —  The  Dosne  Family — 
"Madame la  Baronne" — Barthelemy  St.  Hilaire — Parisian  Gaieties — "  La 
Fille  de  Mme.  Angot "  and  other  Pieces— Scandals  of  the  Time— The 
Tragedy  of  the  Rue  des  ficoles — The  Unwritten  Law  and  Alex.  Dumas 
fils — Divorce  in  France — The  Assembly  and  Thiers — Resignation  of 
Grevy — Prince  Napoleon's  Petition — The  Barodet  Election — The  Duke 
de  Broglie  and  Thiers — Thiers  resigns — MacMahon  elected — His  Hesita- 
tion and  Acceptance — His  Origin,  Character,  and  Career — The  Battle  of 
Worth — The  Marshal  at  Sedan— Madame  de  MacMahon — The  Republic 
Threatened. 

Already,  in  January  1872,  as  the  government  was  carried 
on  under  all  sorts  of  difficulties  at  Versailles,  Thiers  desired  the 
National  Assembly  to  remove  to  Paris.  When,  however,  some 
Republican  deputies  submitted  the  question  to  the  house,  it  was 
decided,  from  fear  of  the  Parisians,  that  Versailles  should  still 
remain  the  official  capital.  At  the  same  time,  a  good  many 
deputies — whose  numbers  increased  as  time  elapsed — resided  in 
Paris,  travelling  every  day  to  Versailles  and  back  by  "parlia- 
mentary trains."  Moreover,  as  Paris  remained  on  her  best 
behaviour — she  was,  indeed,  more  intent  on  amusing  herself  than 
on  conspiring  against  the  Assembly,  however  obnoxious  that 
body  might  be — the  President  of  the  Republic  was  indirectly 
authorised  to  hold  receptions  in  the  metropolis,  on  condition 
that  he  should  not  sleep  there,  the  result  being  that,  on  the 
occasions  in  question,  the  little  man  had  to  travel  back  to 
Versailles  at  what  was  a  very  late  hour  for  a  man  of  his  years. 

As  a  rule,  he  rose  at  five  o'clock  in  the  summer,  and  at  six 
in  the  winter.  At  eight  o'clock  came  an  interlude,  he  shaved, 
and  sat  down  to  a  light  meal,  some  eggs  or  a  little  cold  meat, 

108 


THE  £LYS£E  PALACE  109 

followed  by  stewed  fruit.  Then  work  was  resumed  until  noon, 
when  there  came  dejeuner  en  famille.  Thiers  was  very  fond  of 
Provencal  dishes,  particularly  of  fish  in  the  Marseillese  style, 
but  far  above  bouillabaisse  and  quiches  aTanchois  he  set  brandade  de 
morue  (cod  dressed  in  a  particular  way  and  grilled),  of  which  he 
could  never  partake  sufficiently.  There  is  a  story  that,  for  some 
reason  or  other,  it  was  forbidden  him  by  the  doctors  during  his 
last  days,  and  that  his  friend,  Mignet,  taking  compassion  on  him, 
used  to  bring  him,  in  secret,  parcels  of  delectable  cold  cod-steaks. 
After  dejeuner,  Thiers  would  lie  down  on  his  little  hard  camp- 
bedstead,  and  indulge  in  a  siesta,  which  was  naturally  brief  when- 
ever he  had  to  attend  the  Assembly.  Very  often,  however,  after 
quitting  the  deputies,  he  would  indulge  in  a  nap  before  dinner, 
or  allow  himself  some  forty  winks  after  the  repast.  His  wife 
and  his  sister-in-law,  Mile.  Dosne,  watched  over  him  with  the 
greatest  care  ;  and  even  on  official  occasions  when,  after  exerting 
himself  during  the  day,  he  forgot  the  time,  or  felt  disposed  to 
prolong  his  evening,  one  or  the  other  of  those  ladies  would 
remind  him  that  it  was  fit  he  should  wish  the  company  good- 
night. He  usually  did  so  with  a  very  good  grace,  and  was 
triumphantly  led  off  to  bed. 

He  was  not,  however,  the  most  matutinal  man  in  France,  for 
his  alternate  enemy  and  friend,  Dufaure,  who  served  under  him 
as  Minister  of  Justice,  went  to  bed  early  in  the  evening  and 
rose  shortly  after  midnight.  Some  folk  were  not  aware  of  that 
habit,  and  we  remember  that  during  MacMahon's  presidency, 
when  some  entertainments  lasted  far  into  the  night,  the  sight 
of  Dufaure,  then  nearly  eighty  years  old,  walking  gaily  through 
the  salojis  about  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  created  no  little 
astonishment  among  the  uninitiated.  "  Do  you  not  feel  tired 
— at  your  age  ?  "  somebody  inquired  of  him  on  one  such  occasion. 
"  Tired  ?  "  replied  Dufaure  with  a  chuckle,  "  oh,  no,  I  have  only 
just  got  up." 

Thiers's  Parisian  receptions  were  held  at  the  Elysee  Palace, 
which,  in  MacMahon's  time  became  (as  had  been  the  case 
between  1848  and  1851)  the  residence  of  the  President  of  the 
Republic,  and  has  remained  so  ever  since.  The  history  of  the 
palace  is  somewhat  interesting.  Pretty,  but  rather  meretricious, 
retaining  in  parts  the  architectural  stamp  of  the  Regency,  it 
was  built  in  1718  for  Henri  Louis  de  la  Tour  d'Auvergne,  Count 
d^vreux,  colonel-general  of  the  French  cavalry,  and  was  there- 


110  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

fore  originally  known  as  the  Hotel  d'Evreux.  The  Count,  for 
the  sake  of  a  dowry  of  some  millions  of  livres,  had  "  misallied  " 
himself  by  marrying  the  daughter  of  an  upstart  financier  named 
Crozat,  when  she  was  only  twelve  years  old.  This  juvenile  bride 
was  currently  known  in  society  by  the  nickname  of  "  the  little 
bar  of  gold  "  ("  le  petit  lingot  d'or  ").  She  became  very  pretty, 
but  the  marriage  was  never  consummated.  Indeed,  it  resulted  in 
a  separation,  followed,  after  the  Countess's  death,  by  a  judicial 
decree  declaring  the  union  null  and  void,  and  then  by  endless 
lawsuits  respecting  the  Crozat  property. 

The  child-Countess's  dowry  had  largely  provided  for  the 
building  of  the  Hotel  d'Evreux,  which,  on  the  death  of  her 
nominal  husband,  was  bought  by  the  royal  favourite,  Mme.  de 
Pompadour,  for  about  eight  hundred  thousand  livres.  The  house 
already  had  some  fine  grounds,  but  they  were  not  found  sufficiently 
extensive  by  la  Marquise,  who,  regardless  of  remonstrances,  seized 
and  annexed  a  large  slice  of  the  Champs  ^lysees.  She  objected, 
moreover,  to  the  groves  of  that  popular  promenade,  which,  said 
she,  interfered  with  her  view  of  the  Seine  and  the  Invalides,  and 
a  large  number  of  fine  trees  were  therefore  felled.  She  gave 
several  costly  fetes  at  the  Hotel  d'Evreux,  as  is  mentioned  by 
the  anecdotiers  of  the  time.  That  was  the  period  of  Watteau, 
when  shepherds  and  shepherdesses  were  all  the  fashion,  and  on 
one  occasion  the  Marchioness  introduced  into  an  entertainment 
a  flock  of  real  sheep,  all  carefully  washed  and  combed,  with 
pink  and  apple-green  ribbons  about  their  necks,  and  satin-clad 
shepherds  with  gilded  crooks  in  attendance  on  them.  When  the 
doors  of  the  gallery  where  the  flock  had  been  gathered  were 
flung  open,  the  royal  favourite's  guests  went  into  transports  of 
delight.  But  all  at  once  the  ram  of  the  flock,  on  perceiving 
his  reflection  in  a  large  mirror,  imagined  that  he  was  confronted 
by  an  impertinent  rival,  amorous  of  his  ewes,  and  without  a 
moment's  hesitation  he  charged  the  offending  image,  smashed 
the  mirror  with  his  gilded  horns,  and  then  ran  amuck  among 
the  furniture  and  the  guests.  The  ladies  tried  to  flee,  but 
many  of  them  slipped  on  the  polished  parquetry  floor  and 
sprawled  there  with  their  little  red-heeled  shoes  in  the  air,  while 
the  gentlemen  roared  till  their  sides  split,  at  the  unforeseen  and 
indecorous  spectacle. 

Madame  de  Pompadour  bequeathed  the  Hotel  d'Evreux  to 
Louis   XV.,   and,  until   the   completion   of   the    monumental 


THE  £lYS£e  PALACE  111 

depository  on  the  present  Place  de  la  Concorde,  it  became  a 
storeplace  for  all  the  superfluous  royal  furniture.  In  1774,  it 
was  sold  to  the  famous  court  banker  Beaujon — he  who  gave  his 
name  to  a  whole  district  of  Paris — and  eight  years  later  it  was 
acquired  by  Louis  XVI.,  who,  in  1790,  passed  it  on  to  the 
Duchess  de  Bourbon.1  That  lady  rearranged  the  grounds  in  the 
Chantilly  style,  and  by  reason  of  the  proximity  of  the  Champs 
Elysees  christened  the  property  "  Elysee-Bourbon,"  otherwise 
"  the  Bourbon  Paradise. " 

But  the  terrible  days  of  the  Revolution  were  impending,  and 
the  Duchess  did  not  care  to  remain  in  Paris.  So  she  let  the 
property  to  a  speculator  named  Hovyn,  who  turned  the  grounds 
into  a  combination  of  Vauxhall  and  Ranelagh.  As  such  they 
remained  for  several  years,  for,  on  being  put  up  to  auction  as 
"  national  property,"  they  were  purchased  by  Hovyn's  daughter 
for  a  bagatelle.  The  mansion  served  for  a  short  time  to  house 
the  National  Printing  Works,  and  was  afterwards  partitioned 
into  cheap  lodgings  for  true  patriots,  who  became  entitled  to 
free  admission  to  the  grounds.  They  could  lunch,  dine,  and  sup 
under  the  elms  and  beeches  there,  disport  themselves  on  an 
artificial  lake,  attend  concerts,  balls,  and  theatrical  performances, 
and  even  risk  their  luck  at  a  gaming-table  installed  in  a  pavilion, 
while  out  of  doors  coloured  lights  glowed  along  the  paths  lead- 
ing to  the  bowers  of  love,  and  lively  music  called  one  to  the 
dance. 

In  1805  Mile.  Hovyn  sold  the  Elysee  to  Murat,  on  whose 
accession  to  the  Neapolitan  throne  it  became  the  property  of 
Napoleon.  It  was  there  that  the  great  Captain  planned  the 
campaign  which  ended  at  Waterloo,  and  there,  too,  he  after- 
wards signed  his  abdication.  Alexander  of  Russia,  Francis  I.  of 
Austria,  and  the  Duke  of  Wellington  sojourned  there  in  turn, 
but,  in  1816,  Louis  XVIII.  bestowed  the  palace  on  his  nephew, 
the  Duke  de  Berri.  It  was  there  that  the  Duke  and  Duchess 
formed  their  fine  gallery  of  paintings  (particularly  rich  in 
examples  of  the  Dutch  and  Flemish  schools)  which  were  after- 
wards sold  to  Prince  Anatole  Demidoff,  and  became  the  nucleus 
of  his  renowned  collection.  At  the  Revolution  of  1830,  the 
Elysee  was  declared  Crown  property,  and  eighteen  years  later 

1  The  wife  of  the  Duke  mentioned  on  p.  96.  She  reclaimed  it  at  the 
Restoration  in  1815,  but  a  compromise  was  arrived  at,  and  the  Hotel  de 
Monaco  was  allotted  to  her  instead. 


112  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

it  was  assigned  to  Louis  Napoleon,  President  of  the  Republic, 
who  there  planned  his  Coup  d'Etat.  After  he  had  transferred 
his  quarters  to  the  Tuileries,  the  Elysee  served  to  accommodate 
several  of  the  Sovereigns  who  visited  Paris  during  the  Second 
Empire.  At  the  time  of  the  German  Siege,  the  ill-fated 
Clement  Thomas,1  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  National  Guard, 
made  the  Elysee  his  headquarters. 

Although,  as  already  mentioned,  it  was  originally  built  in 
the  days  of  the  Regent  d'Orleans,  it  was  repeatedly  enlarged 
and  modified.  Both  Beaujon  and  the  Duchess  de  Bourbon  did 
much  in  that  respect  towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  so  did  Napoleon  III.  at  the  outset  of  his  reign.  On  the  left, 
the  palace  at  one  time  adjoined  the  Sebastiani  mansion,  which, 
in  1847,  became  notorious  as  the  scene  of  the  murder  of  the 
Duchess  de  Praslin  by  her  unfaithful  husband.  Under  Napoleon 
III.  that  "  house  of  crime "  was  demolished,  and  the  Aue  de 
FElysee,  running  from  the  Champs  ]^lysees  to  the  Faubourg  St. 
Honore,  was  laid  out,  so  as  to  detach  the  palace  from  all  other 
buildings.  On  its  right-hand  side,  too,  that  of  the  Avenue 
Marigny,  its  dependencies  were  rebuilt  in  a  more  regular  style, 
while  in  front  were  erected  the  low,  terrace-roofed  buildings  and 
the  columned  entree  (Thonneur  facing  the  Faubourg  St.  Honore. 
That  alone  greatly  altered  the  outer  appearance  of  the  palace, 
and  its  internal  arrangements  have  undergone  many  modifications 
during  the  present  regime. 

Thiers's  earliest  receptions  at  the  Elysee  were  distinguished 
by  one  democratic  feature.  No  invitations  were  issued,  anybody 
who  was  anybody  was  welcome ;  indeed,  we  believe  that  some 
trades-people  of  the  neighbourhood  slipped  in,  with  the  view  of 
feasting  their  eyes  on  the  celebrities  of  the  time.  It  was  some- 
thing like  the  White  House  custom — with  a  difference :  there 
was  no  attempt  to  dislocate  the  little  man's  wrist  by  repeatedly 
shaking  hands  with  him,  though  he  offered  his  hand  readily 
enough  to  anybody  he  knew. 

Under  the  conditions  we  have  mentioned,  we  attended  several 
of  Thiers's  receptions,  simply  walking  over  to  the  palace,  as  we 
lived  well  within  a  stone's  throw  of  it.  A  few  policemen  were 
stationed  near  the  gateway  leading  into  the  courtyard,  a  couple 
of  infantrymen  stood  atop  of  the  steps  of  the  main  building, 
and  in  the  lofty  vestibule  you  found  seven  or  eight  servants  in 

1  See  ante,  p.  51. 


THE  £LYS£E  PALACE  113 

plain  black  liveries,  including  a  couple  of  ushers  who  wore  silk 
stockings  and  had  steel  or  silver  chains  about  their  necks.  One 
of  the  men  relieved  you  of  your  hat  and  overcoat,  while  another 
entered  your  name  in  a  register  placed  on  a  green  baize  table. 
Then,  passing  through  portals  hung  with  Flanders  tapestry,  you 
crossed  an  empty  white-walled  and  red-carpeted  room  assigned 
to  the  presidential  aides-de-camp,  who  were  never  there,  and 
entered  the  so-called  Landscape  Saloon,  where,  as  in  both  of  the 
Tapestry  Drawing-rooms — Beauvais  and  Gobelins — the  company 
was  assembled.  Thiers,  in  evening  dress,  but  with  his  coat  closely 
buttoned,  and  a  diamond  star  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  on  his 
breast,  seemed  to  be  here,  there,  and  everywhere  at  the  same  time, 
for  he  flitted  from  one  room  to  another  and  back  again  with  a 
juvenile  agility  which  confused  you  and  made  you  wonder  at 
times  whether,  indeed,  he  had  not  several  "  doubles " — such  as 
the  old-  time  Kings  occasionally  provided  when  they  went  into 
battle.  The  President  by  no  means  neglected  his  lady  guests. 
At  one  moment  you  saw  him  speaking  deferentially  to  Countess 
Arnim,  wife  of  the  German  Ambassador ;  at  another  he  would 
be  smiling  with  Princess  Lise  Troubetskoi ;  at  another  positively 
flirting  with  the  charming  wife  of  the  Danish  Minister;  and 
between  whiles  he  lent  ear  to  some  rapid  confidential  com- 
munication from  Leon  Renault,  the  singularly  handsome  but 
very  unreliable  Prefect  of  Police  of  those  days,  or  exchanged 
impressions  with  Goulard,  his  Minister  of  the  Interior. 

The  ladies,  or  at  least  the  most  highly  placed  of  them, 
preferred  to  congregate  in  the  Gobelins  drawing-room,  where 
there  were  several  splendid  Louis  Quinze  sofas,  on  which  they 
seated  themselves,  spreading  out  their  fascinating  toilettes — 
"  cooked  salmon  "  was  a  favourite  hue  of  those  days — and  forming 
a  circle,  as  it  were,  around  the  Orleans  Princes,  Paris,  Nemours, 
and  Joinville.  The  Countess  de  Paris,  then  in  all  the  pride  of  her 
beauty,  was  to  be  seen  seated  beside  Mile.  Dosne,  sister  to  Mme. 
Thiers,  on  whose  other  hand  you  might  perceive  that  shrewd, 
quick-witted,  fine-featured  lady,  the  Princess  Clementine,  mother 
of  the  present  ruler  of  Bulgaria.  Mme.  Thiers,  wearing  a  little 
black  lace  cap,  and  usually  gowned  in  black  also,  though  she 
made  concessions  to  the  fashions  of  the  time  with  respect  to  the 
cut  and  trimming  of  her  dresses,  followed  her  husband's  example 
in  going  hither  and  thither,  speaking  to  her  guests  the  while 
with  a  kind  of  anxious  solicitude.     One,  however,  who  seldom, 

i 


114  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

if  ever,  stirred  from  the  ladies1  circle,  was  the  violet -robed 
Papal  Nuncio — Mgr.  Chigi,  we  think. 

The  room  was  large  and  very  lofty,  lighted  by  a  great 
chandelier,  and  several  candelabra,  the  latter  standing  on  the 
white  marble  mantelpiece,  the  wall  in  front  of  which  was 
panelled,  so  to  say,  by  a  huge  mirror.  But  at  the  farther  end 
there  was  a  semicircular  pilastered  "  bay,"  in  which  was  hung 
a  magnificent  Gobelins  tapestry,  representing  the  Judgment 
of  Paris. 

One  evening,  when  the  sofas  below  this  tapestry  were  un- 
occupied, we  drew  near  to  examine  it  more  closely,  and  an  old 
gentleman  with  short  white  whiskers  remarked  to  us  that  it 
was  very  fine  work  indeed.  "  Certainly,"  we  answered,  "  and  the 
subject  seems  very  appropriate  to  the  present  time.11  "  Indeed  ! 
Why  so  ? "  was  the  inquiry.  "  Well,r>  we  ventured  to  reply, 
"  Monsieur  le  President  de  la  Republique  has  stated  that  there 
are  three  candidates  for  one  throne,  and  here  are  three  ladies 
who  are  candidates  for  one  apple.'1  Our  interlocuteur,  as  the 
French  say,  smiled.  "Well,  we  all  know  who  obtained  the 
apple,1''  he  resumed,  "  but  who  will  be  given  the  throne  ?  "  "  I 
don't  know — only  Monsieur  Thiers  can  tell  us.11  "  No,  no,  the 
President  has  nothing  to  do  with  it.  It  is  not  for  him  to 
bestow  the  apple — or  the  crown.  That  is  the  Assembly's  affair. 
When  you  devise  an  allegory  it  should  coincide  exactly  with 
the  facts  you  wish  it  to  illustrate.  Paris  is  the  Assembly. 
Juno  is  the  Legitimist  party ;  of  that  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
Venus  —  ah,  diablel  who  is  Venus?11  That  was  a  difficult 
question,  but  we  attempted  a  jocular  reply :  "  Remembering 
the  Empress  Eugenie,  Venus  might  be  the  Empire,  but,  then, 

the  Countess  de  Paris  is  seated  yonder,  and  " "  And,11  was 

our  acquaintance^  retort,  "  les  absentes  ont  toujours  tort.  You 
are  right.  But,  in  any  case,  I  doubt  if  the  apple  will  go  to 
Venus  this  time,  it  may  well  be  secured  by  Minerva,  for  la  plus 
sage  has  now  a  much  better  chance  than  even  la  plus  belle." 
"  But  who  then  is  Minerva  ? 11  we  inquired.  "  You  ask  me  too 
much.  That  is  a  question  which  troubles  many  people,  but 
which  only  time  can  answer.  When  the  identity  of  Minerva  is 
disclosed  the  future  of  France  will  be  settled.11 

At  this  point  the  conversation  was  interrupted,  for  another 
gentleman  approached,  saying :  "Ah,  my  dear  Monsieur  Mignet, 
how  are  you  ?  "     We  then  realised  that  we  had  been  conversing 


THE  JUDGMENT  OF  PARIS  115 

with  the  eminent  historian,  Thiers's  life-long  friend.  Pleased 
with  his  little  jest,  he  repeated  it  to  the  newcomer,  and  before 
long  the  remark  went  round:  "Monsieur  Mignet  has  just 
expressed  his  views  of  the  situation.  He  says  that  the  Judgment 
of  Paris  will  be  given  this  time  in  favour  of  Minerva.  In  your 
opinion  whom  does  Minerva  represent?"  He  did  not  forget 
the  incident,  for  when  we  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  properly 
introduced  to  him  on  another  occasion,  he  exclaimed,  with  that 
shrewd  half-smile  of  his,  "  We  have  met  before,  is  it  not  so  ? 
Tell  me,  have  you  succeeded  in  identifying  Minerva  ?  No  ? 
Well,  it  is  too  soon  for  you  to  complain.  I  have  been  seeking 
her  myself  for  nearly  seventy  years,  but  I  have  not  found  her  yet." 
One  afternoon,  during  the  winter  of  1872,  we  had  occasion 
to  call  at  the  Elysee  in  the  company  of  a  French  artist.  We 
had  attended  a  reception  there  the  previous  evening,  and  on 
entering  by  the  porte  cThonneur  a  suspicion  which  had  occurred 
to  us  more  than  once  previously  was  suddenly  confirmed,  for 
three  or  four  of  the  servants  whom  we  had  seen  in  the  vestibule 
the  night  before,  were  lounging  near  the  gate,  clad  in  the 
seedy  frock-coats  and  carrying  the  stout  walking-sticks  which 
were  invariably  associated  at  that  time  with  the  police -spy 
calling.  It  was  obvious  enough  that  they  were  indeed  "  plain- 
clothes officers,"  and  were  requisitioned  on  free  reception  nights 
to  check  the  entries  in  the  registers,  and  turn  undesirable 
visitors  away.  Our  business  that  afternoon  lay  with  the 
Commissary  of  the  Palace,1  who  received  us,  we  remember,  in 
a  room  where  several  tables  were  littered  with  silver  plate, 
centre  and  side  pieces,  epergnes,  spoons,  and  forks,  which  had 
been  used  at  a  dinner  preceding  the  reception  on  the  previous 
night.  During  our  conversation,  a  servant  came  to  inform  the 
Commissary  that  Mme.  Thiers  desired  to  speak  to  him,  where- 
upon he  hurried  away,  leaving  us  in  the  company  of  the  State 
valuables  and  sundry  boxes  of  cigars,  to  the  latter  of  which — 
not  the  former — he  courteously  invited  us  to  help  ourselves  in 

1  It  may  be  explained  that  the  writer  long  assisted  his  father,  at  that 
period  Paris  representative  of  the  Illustrated  London  News,  and  that  on  the 
occasion  in  question  it  was  proposed  to  make  a  sketch  of  the  Gobelins 
drawing-room  to  serve  as  the  background  of  an  illustration  depicting  Thiers 
and  the  Orleans  Princes  on  a  reception  night.  Such  a  drawing  could  not 
be  made  while  a  reception  was  in  progress.  It  was  then  only  possible  to  jot 
down  surreptitiously  a  few  thumbnail  sketches  of  the  ladies'  toilettes, 
coiffures,  and  so  forth.  We  find  that  the  illustration  we  have  referred  to 
appeared  in  the  Illustrated  London  News  for  December  7,  1872. 


116  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

his  absence.  When  he  returned,  he  lighted  a  cigar  himself, 
and  informed  us  that  Mme.  Thiers  and  her  sister  Mile.  Dosne 
invariably  returned  to  Paris  on  the  morrow  of  a  reception,  in 
order  to  lunch  off  the  remains  of  the  dinner  or  supper  of 
the  previous  night.  "The  journey  costs  them  nothing,"  the 
Commissary  continued,  "  for  they  travel  at  the  expense  of  the 
State,  and  when  they  have  lunched  they  carry  all  the  food 
which  still  remains  uneaten  to  Versailles.  Oh,  that  is  quite 
correct — judge  for  yourselves." 

On  looking  into  the  courtyard  from  the  window,  we  saw 
several  of  the  palace  servants  loading  Mme.  Thiers's  brougham 
with  baskets  and  parcels. 

"  Ah  ! "  said  the  Commissary  with  a  sigh,  "  there  go  all  the 
pates,  the  cold  fowls,  the  pastry,  the  fruit,  and  everything  else 
that  was  not  consumed  last  night." 

"  Mme.  Thiers  is  evidently  a  thrifty  woman,1''  we  remarked. 

"Well,  yes"  (with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders).  "But,  ah, 
what  a  change !  I  was  employed  for  nearly  twenty  years  in  the 
State  palaces  under  the  Empire,  but  I  never  saw  the  Empress 
carrying  broken  victuals  about  with  her.  How  the  Republicans 
would  have  jeered  at  her  if  she  had  ! " 

Again  did  the  Commissary  sigh,  as  if,  indeed,  he  were  being 
personally  robbed  of  all  the  good  things  which  were  about  to 
leave  for  Versailles.  His  feelings  could  be  understood,  but  his 
remarks  were  not  justified.  Mme.  Thiers  simply  discharged 
the  obvious  duty  of  a  good  housewife.  Her  husband  received 
but  a  tithe  of  the  Civil  List  lavished  upon  the  Empire. 

It  is  now  quite  time  for  us  to  say  something  more  about 
the  President's  wife.  Mile.  Elise  Dosne  married  Thiers  a  few 
years  after  the  establishment  of  the  Orleans  Monarchy.  She 
was  then  about  seventeen  years  of  age.  Her  father,  protected 
by  the  Duchess  d'Angouleme,  had  become  a  stockbroker  after 
marrying  Mile.  Sophie  Matheron,  the  daughter  of  a  wholesale 
silk  and  trimmings  merchant  of  the  Faubourg  Montmartre  in 
Paris.  Another  Mile.  Matheron  had  married  a  young  banker 
named  Lognon,  a  name  to  which  she  so  strongly  objected  that, 
by  official  permission,  it  was  changed  to  the  high-sounding  ap- 
pellation of  Charlemagne.1     Mme.  Dosne,  the  stockbroker's  wife, 

1  The  General  Charlemagne,  who  was  largely  associated  with  Thiers  in 
his  last  years,  was  the  offspring  of  the  above  union,  and  Mme.  Thiers 'i 
nephew. 


MADAME  THIERS  117 

was  a  masterful  woman,  domineering,  shrewd,  and  ambitious. 
Scandal-mongers  used  to  say  that  Thiers's  marriage  with  her 
daughter  was  in  some  respects  an  anticipation  of  the  Goncourts' 
story,  Renee  Mauperin,  alleging  that  he  had  become  the  favoured 
lover  of  Mme.  Dosne  in  order  to  win  the  hand  of  the  youthful 
Elise.  However,  not  a  shred  of  real  evidence  in  support  of 
that  assertion  has  ever  been  adduced.  Thiers  doubtless  in- 
gratiated himself  with  Mme.  Dosne  in  the  hope  of  winning  her 
daughter,  but  that  kind  of  thing  is  done  every  day.  Nor  is  it 
at  all  uncommon  for  a  son-in-law  to  assist  his  wife's  parents, 
though  it  is  not  given  to  everybody  to  raise  them  to  great 
wealth  as  Thiers  raised  the  Dosnes.  As  Under-Secretary  of 
State  for  Finances  he  was  able  to  appoint  his  father-in-law 
Receiver-General  for  the  Treasury,  first  in  Finistere,  and  later 
in  the  department  of  Le  Nord,  the  last  being  an  extremely 
lucrative  position,  by  the  help  of  which  Dosne  became  a  share- 
holder in  the  famous  Anzin  mines,  and  a  governor  of  the  Bank 
of  France. 

Some  of  the  malicious  tittle-tattle  of  the  time  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  Mme.  Dosne  presided  for  a  while  over  Thiers's 
drawing-room.  But  that  was  the  outcome  of  her  self-assertive- 
ness  which  Thiers  did  not  check,  because  he  knew  her  ability 
and  found  her  useful  in  many  ways.  His  young  wife  had  not 
the  experience  necessary  to  rule  a  political  salon.  Moreover  a 
certain  timidity  was  combined  with  her  slight  physique.  At 
the  same  time,  in  her  earlier  years,  as  well  as  in  her  last  days, 
she  was  always  extremely  ladylike,  and  it  could  not  be  said 
that  she  was  out  of  place  in  any  salon.1  But  she  lacked  her 
mother's  pushfulness,  and  if  she  took  any  position  in  the  society 
of  Louis  Philippe's  reign  that  was  due  almost  entirely  to  Mme. 
Dosne's  endeavours.  There  is  a  story  that  when,  after  certain 
bickerings,  a  reconciliation  was  patched  up  between  Thiers  and 
some  of  his  colleagues,  Mme.  Dosne  insisted  that  the  arrange- 
ment should  embody  a  clause  giving  Mme.  Thiers  the  entree  to 
the  famous  Broglie  salon. 

Marshal  Soult,  it  is  said,  was  fond  of  calling  Mme.  Thiers 
"  the  Baroness,"  but  that  was  because  he  considered  that  every- 
body of  any  note  ought  to  have  a  title.     While  he  was  Prime 

1  She  possessed  considerable  culture  and  artistic  taste.  It  was  she  who 
personally  collected  the  valuable  china  and  faience  adorning  some  of  the 
rooms  of  the  house  on  the  Place  St.  Georges. 


118  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Minister  he  never  met  Thiers  at  the  council  without  inquiring 
after  "Madame  la  Baronne" —  a  proceeding  which  greatly 
irritated  his  colleague,  who  one  day  retorted :  "  Why  do  you 
always  say  Madame  la  Baronne,  why  don't  you  say  Madame 
Thiers  ?  We  are  not  barons,  though  you  may  be  a  duke ! " 
"  Tant  pis,  tant  pis"  replied  Soult.  "  Why  tant  pis ? "  ex- 
claimed Thiers.  "  We  might  have  been  dukes,  Guizot  and  I, 
had  we  chosen ;  only  we  didn't  choose."  That  upset  his  Grace 
of  Dalmatia  to  such  a  degree  that  he  beat  a  hasty  retreat. 
Thiers's  disregard  for  titles  was  genuine  enough.  "  A  bourgeois 
I  was  born,"  he  said  one  day,  "  a  bourgeois  I  shall  live,  and  a 
bourgeois  I  shall  die.1' 

Thiers's  position  with  respect  to  his  own  relatives  has  been 
previously  explained.  Of  those  on  his  mother's  side,  the  only 
one  who  occasionally  visited  him  after  his  great  success  in 
life  was  M.  Gabriel  de  Chenier.  Count  de  la  Tour  digest, 
who  married  Helene  de  Chenier,  broke  off  all  relations  after 
the  Duchess  de  Berri  affair.  On  the  other  hand,  the  little 
man  had  many  devoted  friends,  Mignet,  Remusat,  Goulard, 
and  particularly  Barthelemy  St.  Hilaire.  Most  accounts  of  the 
last  named  tell  you  that  he  lost  his  parents  at  an  early  age  and 
was  brought  up  by  an  aunt.  But  he  was  of  illegitimate  birth, 
and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  his  so-called  aunt,  Mile,  de 
St.  Hilaire,  was  really  his  mother.  A  most  capable  and 
scholarly  man,  famous  for  his  translations  of  Aristotle  (five- 
and-thirty  volumes)  and  his  writings  on  Buddhism,  Mahomet, 
and  the  School  of  Alexandria,  he  owed  much  to  the  early  help 
of  Victor  Cousin,  which  he  requited  with  over  thirty  years  of 
unflagging  devotion.  Cousin,  however,  being  determined  to 
get  even  with  him,  bequeathed  him  a  fortune,  besides  making 
him  his  literary  executor.  St.  Hilaire  afterwards  devoted  him- 
self to  Thiers,  and,  on  the  latter's  elevation  to  power  in  1871, 
became  Secretary-General  of  the  Presidency,  in  which  office  he 
disposed  of  great  authority  and  influence.  We  shall  meet  him 
again  in  another  section  of  this  book. 

Great  as  was  the  strife  of  parties  throughout  Thiers's 
Presidency,  it  had  little  effect  on  the  life  of  Paris.  After  the 
quelling  of  the  Commune  there  came,  indeed,  a  kind  of  carnival, 
a  hankering  for  amusement  and  jollity,  such  as  under  the 
Directory  followed  the  excesses  of  the  Terror.  The  ruins  left 
by  the  conflagrations  of  the  Bloody  Week  were  either  unheeded 


PARISIAN  GAIETIES  119 

by  the  passing  throng,  or  else  regarded  as  unfortunate  re- 
minders of  things  which  were  best  forgotten.  By  the  time 
1872  arrived  Paris  was  firmly  determined  to  enjoy  herself,  and 
bounteous  entertainment  was  provided  by  those  who  undertook 
to  minister  to  her  pleasures.  Music  and  dancing  halls  were 
crowded,  and  there  came  a  wonderful  revival  in  things  theatrical. 
Already  in  1871  Dumas  Jils  had  produced  his  Visite  de  Noces 
and  Princesse  Georges,  and  Meilhac  and  Halevy  their  farcical 
masterpiece  Tricoche  et  Cacolet ;  but  1872  brought  La  Fille  de 
Mme.  Angot  and  Le  Roi  Carotte,  both  of  which  carried  Paris 
by  storm.  The  first  named  was  essentially  a  piece  for  the 
times,  as  it  dealt  with  a  situation  akin  to  that  in  which  one 
was  living,  though,  indeed,  the  admirable  music  by  Charles 
Lecocq  would  certainly  have  assured  its  success  under  any 
conditions.  There  was  trouble  with  the  Censorship  before  this 
sprightly  opera  cornique  was  produced.  Only  after  profound 
consideration  did  "  Anastasie,r>  as  the  Censorship  is  nicknamed, 
authorise  the  Conspirators''  song,  and  the  chorus  running : — 

Ce  n'etait  pas  la  peine,  assure'ment, 
De  changer  de  gouvernement. 

One  duet,  though  it  will  be  found  in  the  published  partition, 
was  absolutely  prohibited  on  the  stage.  It  ran  in  part  as 
follows : — 

Pitou.  La  Republique  a  maint  defaut — 
Mile.  Lange.  Elle  vous  deplait,  mais,  peut-etre, 
Comme  vous  me  jugiez  tantot, 
La  jugez-vous  sans  la  connaitre. 
Supposez  quelle  ait  mon  air  doux, 
Mon  bon  coeur,  ma  voix  sympathique — 
Pitou.  Ah  !  vous  avez  une  maniere  a  vous 
De  faire  aimer  la  Republique  ! * 

Those  lines  were  deemed  distinctly  "  dangerous,"  and 
although  Thiers  was  President  and  favoured  the  Republic,  the 
Censorship,  having  the  fear  of  the  National  Assembly  before 
its  eyes,  would  not  allow  them  to  be  sung  in  public. 

There  was  also  some  "  political  intention  "  in  Le  Roi  Carotte, 
in  the  production  of  which  Victorien  Sardou  allied  himself  with 

1  Pitou.  "The  Republic  has  many  defects."  Mile.  Lange.  "She  does 
not  please  you,  but,  perhaps,  even  as  you  judged  me  just  now,  you  judge 
her  also  without  knowing  her.  Supposing  she  had  my  gentle  mien,  my 
good  heart,  and  sympathetic  voice — "  Pitou.  "Ah!  you  have  a  way  of 
your  own  to  make  one  love  the  Republic." 


120  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Offenbach.  Devout  Royalists  were  seriously  disturbed  at  the 
thought  of  anybody  presuming  to  bestow  the  name  of  "  King 
Carrot "  on  a  representative  of  the  real  authority.  But  most 
people  merely  laughed  at  this  gay  extravaganza  which  achieved 
scarcely  less  success  than  Lecocq's  more  polished  work.  During 
the  next  few  years  Offenbach  gave  us  La  Jolie  Parfumeuse  and 
Les  Cent  Vierges  (1873-4),  and  Lecocq  produced  Girqfle-Girofla 
(1874)  and  La  Petite  Mariee  (1875).  Those  were  the  days  too 
when  Mme.  Judic  fascinated  everybody  in  La  Timbale  d?  Argent 
(1874),  when  Mme.  Theo,  who  could  not  sing  but  who  always 
looked  most  pretty  and  enticing,  rose  by  sheer  charm  to 
celebrity,  and  when  that  far  more  able  vocalist,  the  statuesque 
Mme.  Peschard,  commanded  a  salary  of  £3500  a  year,  even  at 
as  small  a  house  as  the  Bouffes,  which  could  only  seat  some  six 
hundred  spectators. 

We  had  a  surfeit  of  gay  and  tuneful  music  at  that  period. 
Able  comedies  followed,  while  Labiche,  Meilhac,  Halevy,  Blum, 
and  others  were  always  ready  with  new  vaudevilles,  which  set 
one  laughing  to  one's  heart's  content.  Moreover,  Paris  was 
again  regaled  with  all  sorts  of  scandals  and  curious  lawsuits. 
General  Trochu  prosecuted  Le  Figaro  for  libel ;  ex-Queen 
Isabella  of  Spain,  who  pretended  that  she  was  above  the  juris- 
diction of  the  French  laws,  was  condemned  to  pay  some  £6000 
to  M.  Mellerio,  the  jeweller — the  price  of  a  wedding  gift  she 
had  made  to  her  daughter,  the  Princess  de  Girgenti ;  while  the 
Princess  de  Beauffremont,  nee  de  Chimay,  demanded  a  judicial 
separation  from  her  husband — a  long  and  very  involved  affair, 
full  of  scandalous  revelations  about  the  Prince,  and  resulting 
ultimately  in  the  Princess's  flight  from  France  with  her  children, 
and  her  marriage  with  another  Prince,  George  Bibesco.  There 
were  also  many  cases  in  which  adventurers  figured — a  crop  of 
either  spurious  or  impecunious  nobles,  who,  descending  on 
Paris,  had  swindled  people  on  all  sides.  However,  the  chief 
scandal  of  thef  period  was  the  so-called  M  Tragedy  of  the  Rue 
des  Ecoles." 

On  Sunday  April  21,  1872,  a  young  man  of  good  family, 
named  Arthur  Le  Roy  Dubourg,  dark,  thick-set,  and  fairly 
handsome,  with  heavy  moustaches,  entered  No.  14  in  the  Rue 
des  Ecoles,  and  on  gaining  admittance  to  an  apartment  in 
which  he  knew  his  wife  to  be  secreted  with  a  lover,  rushed  upon 
her  and  stabbed  her  with  a  sword-stick,  inflicting  on  her,  in 


THE  UNWRITTEN  LAW  121 

fact,  no  fewer  than  fifteen  ghastly  wounds.  His  fury  had  been 
increased  by  the  circumstance  that  the  lover  had  escaped  in  his 
shirt  through  the  window  and  thence  over  an  adjoining  roof. 
Rushing  downstairs,  Dubourg  apprised  the  house-porter  of  his 
deed,  and  then,  jumping  into  a  cab,  drove  away  to  surrender 
himself  to  the  police.  Before  he  was  transferred  to  the  Pre- 
fecture, however,  he  complained  of  feeling  extremely  hungry, 
and  on  repairing  to  a  restaurant  with  the  officer  to  whose 
charge  he  had  been  committed,  he  indulged  in  a  meal  of  five 
courses,  washed  down  with  burgundy,  and  followed  by  a  hearty 
smoke. 

His  victim  was  removed  to  the  Hopital  de  la  Pitie,  where 
she  died  soon  afterwards.  Nevertheless,  Dubourg  was  released 
on  bail,  while  the  lover,  a  young  man  of  slender  means  called 
the  Count  de  Precorbin,  and  employed  at  the  Prefecture  of  the 
Seine,  was  arrested  and  kept  for  some  time  in  strict  confine- 
ment. In  June,  Dubourg  stood  his  trial  at  the  Paris  Assizes, 
and  the  story  of  his  marriage  was  then  fully  unfolded  to  the 
public.  It  had  been  one  of  those  "  family  arrangements r'  so 
often  devised  among  the  French,  and  stupidly  commended  by 
many  English  writers,  despite  the  fact  that  since  divorce  has 
been  re-established  in  France,  there  has  been  a  far  greater 
annual  number  of  divorces  there  than  in  any  other  European 
country.  The  bride's  family  was  of  Scotch  origin,  and  named 
M'Leod.  The  Dubourgs  had  been  introduced  to  it  by  a 
matchmaking  friend,  the  Countess  de  Toussaint.  Only  a 
fortnight  elapsed  between  the  presentation  of  Arthur  Dubourg 
to  Denise  M'Leod,  who  was  then  nineteen  years  old,  and  the 
marriage  which  had  been  "  arranged  "  by  their  relatives.  She 
at  the  time  was  already  in  love  with  young  M.  de  Precorbin, 
and,  as  was  to  be  expected,  the  union  turned  out  disastrously. 
The  young  wife  immediately  conceived  the  greatest  antipathy 
for  her  husband,  and  before  long  they  ceased  to  see  each  other 
excepting  at  meals.  Indeed,  only  six  months  had  elapsed  when 
Mme.  Dubourg  begged  her  husband  to  assent  to  a  judicial 
separation,  confessing,  in  support  of  her  request,  that  she  had 
wronged  him.  But  he  refused,  took  her  to  Switzerland,  and, 
with  the  assent  of  her  parents,  consigned  her  to  a  lunatic 
asylum.  It  was  there,  apparently,  that  she  gave  birth  to  a 
child,  of  which  there  is  reason  to  believe  the  husband  was 
really  the  father. 


13«  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Dubourg  served  as  a  Captain  of  Mobiles  during  the  Franco- 
German  War,  and,  at  the  close  of  that  period,  after  an  ex- 
change of  affectionate  letters  (the  wife  may  have  simulated 
affection  in  order  to  procure  her  release),  they  again  resided 
together  in  Paris.  But  Dubourg  soon  became  suspicious,  and 
taking  his  wife  to  lodge  at  the  house  of  one  of  his  former 
mistresses,  he  employed  that  woman  to  worm  out  of  her  the 
secret  of  her  attachment  for  young  Precorbin.  That  done  he 
sent  his  wife  to  stay  by  herself  at  a  third-class  maison  meublee, 
and  employed  some  private  detectives  to  track  her  to  a  rendez- 
vous with  her  lover.     The  sequel  has  been  told. 

Dubourg's  trial  was  a  highly  sensational  affair.  The  court 
was  crowded  with  fashionably -dressed  women,  aristocratic 
ladies  as  well  as  harlots,  and  the  proceedings  became  the  more 
dramatic  by  reason  of  the  prisoner's  frequent  outbursts  of  grief. 
Indeed,  towards  the  close,  while  the  judge  was  summing  up, 
Dubourg  suddenly  drank  off  some  ether,  which  had  been  handed 
to  him  to  inhale,  and  fell  fainting  on  the  floor.  It  became 
necessary  to  remove  him  from  the  court,  and  the  verdict  was 
given  in  his  absence.  He  was  found  guilty,  but  extenuating 
circumstances  were  admitted  in  his  favour,  and  he  therefore 
escaped  with  a  sentence  of  five  years'  solitary  confinement. 

The  press  had  already  discussed  the  affair  at  great  length, 
but  Alexandre  Dumas  fits  now  rushed  into  the  fray  with  a 
pamphlet  entitled  V Homme -Femme,  in  which  he  expounded 
his  views  on  the  social  position  of  woman,  and  held  that  a  man 
whose  wife  became  unfaithful  had  clearly  a  right  to  kill  her. 
Ten  large  editions  of  that  pamphlet  were  exhausted  in  a  fort- 
night. Then  Emile  de  Girardin  answered  Dumas  in  a  brochure, 
which  he  sarcastically  called  V Homme  suzerain,  la  femme 
vassale.  Others  took  up  the  question.  "Kill  her,"  and 
"Don't  kill  her,'1  became  the  stock  phrases  of  the  time,  and 
vaudevillistes  turned  the  controversy  to  account  in  song  and 
jest.  At  last,  Girardin  produced  an  involved  play  called  Les 
Trois  Amants,  which  was  doubtless  levelled  against  wife- 
murder,  though  it  seemed  more  like  a  denunciation  of  duelling ; 
and  Dumas  followed  suit  with  his  well-known  Femme  de 
Claude.  Nor  did  the  matter  rest  there,  for  Girardin  gave  yet 
another  play  on  the  subject,  Une  Heure  tfoubli,  apparently 
a  new  version  of  Beaumarchais'  La  Mere  coupable,  like 
which  it  terminated  in  mutual  forgiveness.     As  for  Dumas, 


THE  UNWRITTEN  LAW  123 

he,  as  we  all  know,  long  harped  on  the  subject  and  its  various 
issues  in  his  plays,  his  prefaces,  and  his  pamphlets. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  question  of  the  so-called  "  unwritten 
law,"  of  which  we  hear  so  much  every  now  and  then,  originated, 
so  far  as  present  day  generations  are  concerned,  in  the  long 
controversy  following  the  Dubourg  affair.  Before  that  time  it 
had  been  held  in  France  that  if  a  husband  suddenly,  un- 
expectedly, surprised  his  wife  in  flagrante  delicto  his  action  was 
excusable  if,  in  his  fury,  he  wreaked  summary  vengeance  on  her 
or  her  paramour.  But  it  had  never  been  contended  that  a 
man  was  justified  in  premeditating  such  a  deed,  in  deliberately 
facilitating  the  offence  of  which  he  complained,  for  the  express 
purpose  of  taking  the  vengeance  he  desired.  Yet  that  is 
exactly  what  Dubourg  did.  It  is  true  that  the  jury  held  him 
to  be  guilty,  even  though  it  admitted  extenuating  circum- 
stances in  his  favour ;  but  unfortunately  the  ensuing  controversy 
led,  for  several  years,  and  in  all  parts  of  France,  to  the  repeated 
acquittal  of  both  men  and  women  who  took  the  law  into  their 
own  hands  whenever  they  had  reason  to  complain  of  a  wife 
or  a  mistress,  a  husband  or  a  lover.  Revolvers,  swords,  daggers, 
crowbars,  vitriol,  were  repeatedly  employed  with  impunity,  a 
tender-hearted  jury  promptly  acquitting  the  offender  amid  the 
applause  of  a  "sympathetic  audience.r>  It  must  be  admitted 
that  until  1884  there  was  no  divorce  law,  and  that  judicial 
separation  was  inadequate  relief  in  cases  of  marital  infidelity, 
cruelty,  and  so  forth.  Yet  never  was  a  divorce  law  more 
required  than  in  France,  by  reason  of  the  very  circumstances 
under  which  so  many  French  marriages  are  contracted.  The 
existence  of  such  a  law  nowadays *  has  not  altogether  stamped 
out  the  practice  of  personal  vengeance  in  cases  of  adultery,  or 
prevented  the  acquittal  of  the  perpetrators  of  such  so-called 

1  The  results  of  the  French  Divorce  Law  may  be  judged  by  the  following 
figures.  In  1884  the  following  divorces  were  granted: — For  adultery, 
husbands'  petitions,  245 ;  wives'  petition,  97.  For  cruelty,  neglect,  in- 
compatibility of  temper,  etc.,  1477.  By  reason  of  sentences  for  felony,  60. 
Total  for  1884,  1879.  In  1904  (twenty  years  afterwards)  the  figures  were  as 
follows  : — For  adultery,  husbands'  petitions,  2304 ;  wives'  petitions,  1507. 
For  cruelty,  neglect,  incompatibility  of  temper,  etc.,  10,597.  By  reason  of 
sentences  for  felony,  284.  Total  for  1904,  14,692.  There  are  also  some 
thousands  of  judicial  separations  annually,  largely  among  religious  people 
who  do  not  apply  for  divorce,  as  it  is  condemned  by  the  Church.  During  the 
last  few  years  certain  dramatists  and  novelists  have  promoted  some  reaction 
against  divorce,  on  purely  moral  grounds,  in  certain  sections  of  society. 


124  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

crimes  pajsiormels,  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  in  most  of  these 
cases  which  now  come  into  court  the  question  is  one  of  lover 
and  mistress,  there  being  far  fewer  instances  of  personal 
vengeance  for  infidelity  among  married  people. 

During  the  winter  of  1872,  the  relations  of  Thiers  and 
the  National  Assembly  gradually  became  more  critical.  The 
negotiations  between  the  President  and  the  Committee  of 
Thirty,  respecting  the  drafting  of  a  Constitution,  were  often 
most  difficult.  When  Thiers  wished  some  particular  question, 
such  as  the  formation  of  an  Upper  or  Second  Chamber,  to  be 
finally  solved,  the  Committee  held  that  it  was  more  urgent  to 
regulate  the  conditions  of  ministerial  responsibility,  its  object, 
of  course,  being  to  diminish  the  power  of  Thiers,  prevent  him 
from  participating  in  the  Assembly's  debates,  and  shut  him  up 
in  the  Palais  de  la  Presidence,  or,  as  he  remarked  one  day  in 
the  tribune,  the  Palais  de  la  Penitence — an  intentional  lapsus 
linguae  which  was  greeted  with  no  little  laughter.  Again,  the 
majority  of  the  Assembly  was  always  finding  fault  with  the 
radicalism  of  Thiers's  Ministry,  though  he  made  repeated 
changes  in  it  with  the  hope  of  pacifying  the  malcontents. 
Jules  Simon  was  the  only  man  of  the  Fourth  of  September  now 
left  in  the  Administration,  which  was  joined,  late  in  1872,  by 
Leon  Say,  to  whom  Thiers's  old  friend,  Goulard,  surrendered  the 
Ministry  of  Finances,  passing  himself  to  the  Home  Department. 
Say  was  distinctly  a  "  moderate  *  man,  Goulard  was  almost  a 
Royalist,  and  there  was  certainly  no  "  Radicalism  "  about  their 
colleagues,  Lambrecht,  Remusat,  Victor  Lefranc,  Berenger,  and 
Fortou.  The  last  named,  indeed,  proved,  before  very  long,  as 
reactionary  a  Minister  as  could  be  found  in  France. 

At  last,  early  in  1873,  an  entente  was  arrived  at  between 
Thiers  and  the  Committee  of  Thirty,  and  on  March  4  the 
former  expounded  to  the  Assembly  his  views]  on  the  proposed 
Constitution.  It  was  a  very  conservative  address,  marked,  too, 
by  a  distinct  attack  on  the  Radicals  (on  Gambetta  particularly), 
and  the  majority  seemed  well  satisfied  with  it.  Indeed,  on 
March  17,  when  the  Government  announced  that,  thanks  to 
its  various  financial  measures,  it  had  been  able  to  conclude 
a  convention  with  Germany  by  which  the  last  German  detach- 
ments would  finally  evacuate  French  territory  on  the  5th  day 
of  September,  the  Assembly  declared  by  a  formal  vote  that 
Thiers  had  "  deserved  well  of  his  country."" 


THIERS  AND  THE  ASSEMBLY  125 

But  trouble  was  brewing.  The  Bonapartists  were  active. 
Prince  Napoleon  Jerome  had  petitioned  the  Assembly  for  the 
right  to  return  to  France.  "  We  are  proscribed,"  said  he,  in  a 
manifesto,  "  because  we  are  feared.'"  There  was  truth  in  that 
assertion ;  but,  from  the  standpoint  of  principle,  Thiers^ 
treatment  of  the  Prince  could  not  be  defended.  The  Orleans 
family  was  allowed  all  liberty  to  reside  in  France  and  conspire 
there,  so  why  should  not  the  Bonapartists  enjoy  the  same 
privilege?  However,  another  important  incident  supervened. 
On  March  24,  there  was  a  debate  respecting  the  appointment 
of  the  municipalities  for  the  chief  cities  of  France,  which,  on 
account  of  their  Radical  proclivities,  were  to  be  deprived  of 
their  elected  representatives.  The  immediate  question  was  one 
of  Lyons  and  the  excesses  which  had  certainly  occurred  there 
during  the  Communist  rising  in  1871.  A  Republican  deputy, 
M.  Le  Royer  (subsequently  President  of  the  Senate),  declared 
the  report  of  a  committee,  which  had  examined  the  above 
matters,  to  be  mere  "baggage,11  whereupon  the  Marquis  de 
Gramont  retorted  that  Le  Royer  was  "impertinent.11  A 
"row11  immediately  began.  Grevy,  the  President  of  the 
Assembly,  intervened,  but  neither  side  would  give  way,  and  the 
majority  openly  upheld  the  cause  of  M.  de  Gramont.  Grevy, 
usually  so  calm  and  judicial  in  the  chair,  considered  himself 
slighted,  lost  his  temper,  put  on  his  hat  and  walked  out  of  the 
house,  exclaiming,  "  If  I  do  not  satisfy  you  as  President,  say 
so ! "  Soon  afterwards  he  sent  in  his  resignation.  The  Assembly 
re-elected  him  by  a  majority  of  118  votes,  but,  remembering  the 
virtual  unanimity  with  which  he  had  been  chosen  at  Bordeaux, 
he  was  not  satisfied  with  that  figure,  and  persisted  in  resigning. 
Two  candidates  for  the  office  then  came  forward — Buffet,  one 
of  the  Orleanist  leaders,  who  had  served  the  Empire  with 
Emile  Ollivier,  and  Martel,  a  very  Conservative  Republican. 
Thiers  patronised  the  latter,  but  the  Radicals  refused  to  vote 
for  him,  as  they  considered  that  he  had  not  shown  sufficient 
clemency  to  the  Paris  Communists  while  he  was  President  of 
the  Committee  of  Pardons.  Buffet  was  therefore  chosen  by  a 
majority  of  19  votes,  and  being  far  less  exacting  than  Grevy, 
gleefully  took  his  seat.  This  was  a  real  defeat  for  Thiers; 
in  fact,  it  was  the  beginning  of  the  end. 

Eight  by-elections  were  due  during  the  ensuing  Easter 
recess.     There  was,  notably,  a  vacancy  at  Paris  and  another 


126  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

at  Lyons.  At  the  suggestion  of  Thiers  M.  de  Remusat,  the 
Foreign  Minister,  who  held  no  seat  in  the  Assembly,  became 
a  candidate  in  the  capital.  He  was  a  distinguished  man, 
perhaps  rather  too  much  of  a  dilettante,  too  disdainful  and 
sarcastic,  also,  to  succeed  in  active  political  life ;  but  he  had 
co-operated  with  Thiers  in  the  Liberation  of  the  Territory,  and 
it  was  imagined  that  Paris  would  elect  him.  He  was  opposed, 
however,  by  a  Radical  named  Barodet,  originally  a  schoolmaster, 
and  recently  Mayor  of  Lyons,  a  post  he  had  lost  by  the  new 
law  on  the  municipalities  of  the  great  cities.  Further,  the 
Monarchists  patronised  a  third  candidate,  Colonel  Stoffel,  who 
had  been  military  attache  at  Berlin  in  imperial  times.  Never- 
theless, Barodet  triumphed  with  180,000  votes,  to  the  great 
consternation  both  of  Thiers  and  the  majority  of  the  Assembly. 
This  was  the  answer  of  Paris  to  the  reactionary  measure  which 
had  deprived  the  great  centres  of  French  life  and  thought  of 
the  municipal  franchise.  Moreover,  the  Radicals  were  generally 
victorious  in  the  provinces,  notably  at  Marseilles  and  Lyons, 
in  which  last  city  M.  Ranc  was  returned. 

The  Monarchists  attacked  the  Government  furiously.  Jules 
Simon  had  to  go,  Goulard  also.  Even  Fortou  and  Berenger 
were  not  spared.1  Now,  it  was  Thiers's  intention  that  im- 
mediately after  the  recess  the  Assembly  should  proceed  with 
the  constitutional  measures  which  had  been  agreed  upon 
between  himself  and  the  Committee  of  Thirty,  and  a  slight 
portion  of  which  were  in  fact  already  voted.  But  the  Royalists, 
who  felt  that  their  hour  had  arrived,  resolved  to  anticipate  him, 
compel  him  to  do  their  bidding  or  resign.  When,  therefore, 
on  May  19,  M.  Auguste  Casimir-Perier,  who  had  succeeded 
Goulard  at  the  Home  Office,  brought  forward  a  bill  providing 
for  the  election  of  a  Senate  and  a  Chamber  of  Deputies,  the 
Orleanist  leader,  the  Duke  de  Broglie,  retorted  by  asking  leave 
to  interpellate  the  Government  respecting  its  policy.  The 
debate  on  the  interpellation  was  fixed  for  May  23,  when  Broglie 
roundly  accused  the  Administration  of  weakness,  and  demanded 
a  firm  rule,  such  as  would  reassure  the  country.  Dufaure  replied, 
and  Thiers,  in  accordance  with  the  new  regulations  of  the 
partly -voted  Constitution,  sent  a  message  requesting  the 
Assembly's  permission  to  address  it.     It  met  again  at  half-past 

1  Jules    Simon    was    replaced    at   the   Ministry  of    Education    by    M. 
Waddington. 


FALL  OF  THIERS  127 

nine  the  next  morning,  when  Thiers  spoke  for  two  hours, 
adhering  to  his  formula  of  a  Conservative  Republic,  and  declaring 
that  a  dictatorship  was  the  only  alternative.  Further,  he 
vigorously  attacked  the  Duke  de  Broglie,  who  had  called  him 
a  protege  of  the  Radicals,  saying  that  Broglie  was  the  protege 
of  a  party  whose  patronage  would  have  been  scorned  by  his 
(the  Duke's)  father — that  is,  the  party  of  the  Empire.  It 
happened,  indeed,  that  Broglie  undoubtedly  owed  his  seat  in 
the  Assembly  to  Bonapartist  votes.  Finally,  Thiers  openly 
declared  that  he  should  regard  the  vote  which  would  ensue  as 
the  formal  condemnation  or  approval  of  his  political  career. 

In  the  afternoon  various  resolutions  were  submitted  to  the 
house.  The  order  of  the  day,  pure  and  simple,  was  rejected 
by  362  to  348  votes ;  and  the  resolution  which  triumphed  was 
one  submitted  by  a  rabid  Legitimist  and  Clerical  advocate, 
named  Edmond  Ernoul.  It  set  forth  that  the  Assembly 
demanded  a  resolutely  Conservative  policy  in  order  to  reassure 
the  country,  and  regretted  that  the  recent  changes  in  the 
Ministry  had  not  given  satisfaction  to  Conservative  interests. 
This  was  carried  by  360  to  344  votes.  Next,  despite  the  angry 
protests  of  the  Republican  members,  it  was  decided  to  hold  an 
evening  sitting,  in  order  that  the  Government  might  acquaint 
the  Assembly  with  its  intentions,  respecting  which  there  was 
little,  if  any,  doubt.  The  leaders  of  the  movement  against 
Thiers  were  anxious,  however,  to  hurry  things  forward,  fearing 
that,  if  time  for  reflection  were  granted,  they  might  lose  some 
adherents  and  fail  in  their  designs.  At  eight  o'clock  came 
Thiers's  formal  resignation,  followed  by  the  announcement  that 
the  Ministry  also  withdrew.  In  vain  did  the  Republicans 
endeavour  to  prevent  the  inevitable,  by  submitting  a  motion 
that  the  President's  resignation  should  not  be  accepted.  The 
attempt  was  defeated  by  363  to  348  votes.  Then  came  the 
crowning  incident.  General  Changarnier  proposed  that  Marshal 
MacMahon  should  be  elected  to  the  Presidency  of  the  Republic. 
At  that  moment  721  of  the  750  members  of  the  Assembly  were 
present,  but  the  Republicans  unanimously  decided  that  they 
would  not  take  part  in  the  vote,  and  some  others  followed  their 
example,  with  the  result  that  only  392  members  participated  in 
the  election — the  figures  being  :  For  Marshal  MacMahon,  390 ; 
against  him,  2. 

From  the  very  outset  the  Monarchists  had  been  determined 


128  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

to  bring  about  the  resignation  of  Thiers,  and  it  was  so  con- 
fidently felt  that  such  would  be  the  result  of  the  battle 
that  already  on  May  22,  the  very  day  before  the  Duke  de 
Broglie's  interpellation,  the  Presidency  of  the  Republic  was 
offered  to  the  Duke  d'Aumale.  The  latter  expressed  his 
willingness  to  accept  it,  but  when  the  Orleanists  approached 
the  Legitimists  and  the  Bonapartists,  whose  co-operation  was 
required  to  ensure  success,  they  encountered  peremptory  refusals, 
and  the  battle  went  forward  without  any  agreement  as  to  who 
should  be  set  in  Thiers's  place.  MacMahon  was  certainly 
thought  of,  but  he  had  refused  the  Presidency  when  he  had 
been  sounded  on  previous  occasions,  and  it  was  possible  that  he 
would  adhere  to  that  refusal.  The  accounts  of  what  actually 
happened  under  those  circumstances  are  conflicting;  but  it 
would  seem  that  the  Marshal  certainly  knew  something  of  what 
was  brewing,  though  he  was  not  formally  approached  prior  to 
his  election. 

It  was  felt,  indeed,  on  the  side  of  the  majority,  that  he 
might  again  refuse  any  offers,  but  that  if  he  were  confronted 
by  a  fait  accompli  in  the  shape  of  his  election,  he  might 
well  accept  it.  That,  at  any  rate,  was  the  view  of  General 
Changarnier  who  submitted  the  Marshal's  name  to  the  house. 
Changarnier,  as  a  soldier,  was  well  aware  that  though  a  military 
man  may  occasionally  hesitate  when  he  is  sounded  about  an 
appointment,  he  takes  it  without  demur,  as  a  matter  of  duty, 
when  it  is  purely  and  simply  signified  to  him.  The  majority 
relied,  then,  largely  on  MacMahon's  sense  of  discipline.  Nothing 
could  be  so  simple : — The  Assembly  was  sovereign,  it  appointed 
him  President,  it  was  his  duty,  as  a  soldier,  to  take  the  post. 
We  do  not  say,  however,  that  influences  were  not  at  work  to 
incline  him  to  the  desired  course. 

>^When  a  deputation  of  the  Assembly  went  to  the  Marshal's 
residence  to  inform  him  of  his  election  he  was  absent,  being,  in 
fact,  with  Thiers.  He  already  knew  of  the  vote  and  his  first 
impulse  was  to  decline  the  proposed  honour,  as  he  had  pledged 
himself,  he  said,  never  to  take  Thiers's  place.  Thiers  retorted, 
however,  that  he  had  never  accepted  any  such  pledge,  and 
finally  MacMahon,  following  the  messenger  who  had  been  sent 
for  him,  returned  to  his  residence  and  received  the  deputation. 
Again  he  showed  some  hesitation,  but  after  listening  to  Buffet 
and  others  he  ended  by  accepting  the  proffered  office,  y 


Marshal  MacMahon 


t        (         I  C       I 

•       c     •     *•     t 

•      *   *    O      0 


•  •  -J 


MARSHAL  MACMAHON  129 

He  was  a  distinctly  honest  and  sincere  man,  but  he  was  not, 
he  could  not  be,  a  Republican.  His  origin,  career,  marriage, 
connections,  and  friendships  all  militated  against  it.  Neverthe- 
less, though  he  believed  in  and  upheld  the  principle  of  authority, 
he  did  so  only  within  certain  limits,  and  was  not  afraid  to 
express  dissent  when  authority  threatened  to  become  tyranny. 
For  instance,  when,  after  the  famous  Orsini  conspiracy  in 
1858,  the  Government  of  the  Second  Empire  submitted  a 
so-called  Law  of  Public  Safety  to  the  Legislature,  General 
MacMahon,  as  he  was  then,  voted  against  it,  regarding  its 
provisions  as  unconstitutional,  and  deeming  it  wrong  that 
France  should  be  odiously  punished  for  the  crime  of  a  few 
Italians.  He  was  the  only  member  of  the  Imperial  Senate  who 
had  the  courage  to  express  that  view. 

Born  on  June  13,  1808,  at  Sully  Saint  Leger,  in  Saone-et- 
Loire,  Burgundy,  Marie  Edme  Patrice  Maurice  de  MacMahon, 
belonged  to  a  family  which  claimed  descent  from  Mahon,  a 
brother  of  Brian  Boru,  King  of  Ireland,  slain  at  Clontarf  in 
1014.  According  to  some  accounts  the  family  property  was 
confiscated  by  Cromwell,  according  to  others  by  William  III. 
In  any  case,  in  the  eighteenth  century  we  find  a  certain  John 
Baptist  MacMahon,  born  at  Limerick  in  1715,  settling  in 
Burgundy  after  studying  medicine  at  Reims  and  taking  his 
degree  as  a  doctor  there  in  1739.  He  practised  at  Autun, 
where  one  of  his  principal  patients  was  a  wealthy  old  nobleman, 
Jean  Baptiste  de  Morey,  Governor  of  Vezelay,  married  to  a 
young  and  charming  wife,  Charlotte  de  (or  le)  Belin,  daughter 
and  heiress  of  the  last  Marquis  d^guilly.  M.  de  Morey  died 
in  1748,  and  two  years  later  his  widow  married  John  Baptist 
MacMahon,  who  thereupon  obtained  letters  of  naturalisation 
and  nobility  from  the  French  Crown.1  In  1761,  Mme.  de 
MacMahon  having  inherited  a  fortune,  deemed  to  be  the 
largest  in  Burgundy,  from  an  uncle,  Claude  Lazare  de  Morey, 
transferred  it  in  its  entirety  to  her  husband,  the  deed  being 
drawn  by  Maitre  Changarnier,  notary  at  Autun,  and  grand- 
father of  the  general  of  that  name.  John  Baptist  MacMahon 
long  sat  in  the  States  of  Burgundy,  and  died  at  Paris  in  1775, 
his  widow  surviving  until  1787.  The  fortune  was  divided 
among  the  surviving  children  of  the  union,  two  daughters  and 

1  The  family  arms  are  three  leoparded  lions,  gules,  armed  and  langued 
azure,  on  a  field  or  ;  with  the  motto  Sic  nos  sic  sacra  tuemur. 

K 


130  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

two  sons.  One  of  the  former  became  Marchioness  cTUrr,  the 
other  Marchioness  de  Rengrave.  The  eldest  son,  Charles 
Laure,  Marquis  de  MacMahon,  distinguished  himself  under 
Lafayette  in  the  American  War  of  Independence,  became  a 
Chevalier  of  the  order  of  St.  Louis,  and  a  Peer  of  France  in 
1827.  Three  years  later  he  died  unmarried.  His  younger 
brother,  Maurice  Francois,  Count  de  MacMahon  and  Baron 
de  Sully,  rose  to  be  Lieutenant-Colonel  of  Lauzun's  famous 
Hussars  of  the  Guard.  In  1791,  he  was  somewhat  seriously 
wounded  in  the  Nancy  riots,  and,  being  taken  a  prisoner  by  the 
populace,  narrowly  escaped  lynching.  He  afterwards  emigrated, 
served  for  a  while  under  Conde  and  later  with  the  Anglo- 
Dutch  forces,  returning  to  France  in  1803,  when,  sharing  his 
brother's  residence  at  Sully,  he  occupied  himself  with  the 
management  of  their  estates.  He  obtained,  at  the  Restoration, 
the  rank  of  Lieutenant-General  and  of  Grand  Cross  or  Cordon 
Rouge  of  the  order  of  St.  Louis,  but  during  the  Hundred  Days 
he  was  arrested  and  cast  into  prison  as  a  Bourbonist.  He 
married  Mile.  Pelagie  de  Riquet  de  Caraman,  a  great  grand- 
daughter of  Riquet,  the  famous  engineer  of  the  Canal  du  Midi, 
and  this  lady  presented  him  with  no  fewer  than  seventeen 
children.  Nine  of  them,  four  sons  and  five  daughters,  survived 
their  childhood.  The  sons  were  Charles,  Marquis  de  MacMahon, 
born  in  1791 ; 1  Joseph,  Count  de  MacMahon,  born  in  1805 ; 2 
the  future  Duke  de  Magenta,  Marshal  of  France  and  President 
of  the  Republic,  born  (as  we  stated  on  the  previous  page)  in 
1808 ;  and  Eugene,  Count  de  MacMahon,  born  in  1810.3  The 
daughters  were  as  follows :  Adele,  who  married  the  Marquis  de 
Nieul ;  Fanny,  who  married  the  Count  de  Sille ;  Cecile,  who 
married  the  Marquis  de  Roquefeuille ;   Natalie,  who   married 

1  He  died  in  1845,  leaving  by  his  marriage  with  Marie,  daughter  of  the 
Marquis  de  Rosambo,  a  son  and  two  daughters.  One  of  the  latter  married 
Count  d'Oilliamson,  the  other  Count  Eugene  de  Lur-Saluces.  The  son, 
Charles  Henri  Paul,  Marquis  de  MacMahon,  born  in  1828,  was  killed  while 
riding  in  a  steeplechase  in  September,  1863.  By  his  marriage  with  Henriette 
Radegonde  de  Perusse  des  Cars,  daughter  of  the  Duke  des  Cars,  he  left  a 
son,  Charles  Marie,  Marquis  de  MacMahon,  who  married  Marthe  Marie, 
daughter  of  the  Marquis  de  Vogue*  of  the  Institute  and  sister  of  the  Count 
de  Vogue,  aide-de-camp  to  Marshal  MacMahon,  killed  at  Worth.  Charles 
Marie,  Marquis  de  MacMahon,  died  in  1894. 

2  He  married  Eudoxie,  daughter  of  Count  de  Montaigu,  and  died  in  1865, 
leaving  no  posterity. 

3  He  married  Mile.  Natalie  de  Champeaux  and  died  without  posterity  in 
1866. 


MARSHAL  MACMAHON  131 

the  Baron  de  Consegues ;  and  Elisa,  who  became  a  nun  of  the 
Sacre  Cceur  at  Autun.1 

Mme.  de  MacMahon,  the  mother  of  the  nine  children  we 
have  just  enumerated,  died  in  1819.  Her  son,  the  future 
Marshal  and  President,  was  then  only  eleven  years  old.  He 
had  hitherto  been  taught  by  a  tutor  at  Sully,  but  he  was  now 
sent  to  the  Petit  Seminaire  at  Autun,  next  to  a  school  at 
Versailles,  and  ultimately  to  the  Lycee  Louis-le-Grand  in  Paris. 
He  made  such  rapid  progress  with  his  studies  that  at  seventeen 
years  of  age  he  obtained  admission  to  the  Military  School  of 
St.  Cyr,  which  he  quitted  two  years  later,  ranking  as  the 
thirteenth  among  250  students.  Appointed  a  Sub-Lieutenant, 
he  entered  the  Staff  College,  which  he  left  at  the  expiration  of 
three  years  with  the  rank  of  Lieutenant.  He  was  the  fourth 
of  the  twenty  students  so  promoted.  He  obtained  his  first 
cavalry  instruction  with  the  4th  Hussars,  in  which  his  elder 
brother,  Joseph,  was  a  Captain.  As  aide-de-camp  to  General 
Achard  he  was  at  the  siege  of  Antwerp  in  1832,  and  after- 
wards served  for  several  years  in  Algeria,  becoming  in  turn  a 
Major  of  light  infantry,  Lieutenant-Colonel  of  the  Foreign 
Legion,  and  Colonel  of  a  Line  regiment,  until  he  was  promoted 
in  1848  to  the  rank  of  General  of  Brigade.  He  figured  in 
most  of  the  fighting  in  Algeria  during  his  long  sojourn  there, 
and  often  distinguished  himself  in  action,  notably  at  the 
assault  of  Constantine. 

On  March  14,  1854,  he  married  Mile.  Elisabeth  Charlotte 
Sophie  de  la  Croix  de  Castries,  daughter  of  the  Count,  later 
Duke,  de  Castries,2  and  was  still  in  France  when  in  1855 
Canrobert  returned  from  the  Crimea,  leaving  his  command 
there  to  Pelissier.  Another  divisional  general  being  needed  by 
the  French  forces,  MacMahon  was  chosen,  but  his  departure 
was  delayed  for  a  little  while,  it  appears,  owing  to  his  wife's 
condition  at  the  time,  Napoleon  III.  remarking  to  him :  "  Don't 
hurry.  Wait  till  we  have  a  little  MacMahon."  The  little 
MacMahon  duly  appeared3  and  the  proud  father,  repairing 

1  Only  one  of  the  above-named  sisters  of  Marshal  MacMahon  left  issue, 
that  is  Mme.  de  Roquefeuille,  who  had  a  large  family. 

2  Like  her  husband  she  had  Irish  blood  in  her  veins,  her  grandmother,  on 
her  father's  side,  having  been  a  Miss  Elizabeth  Coghlan. 

3  Maurice  Armand  Patrice  de  MacMahon,  now  Duke  de  Magenta,  born 
in  1855,  formerly  an  officer  in  the  Chasseurs-a-pied.  He  has  two  brothers, 
Eugene,  born  in  1857,  Marie  Emmanuel,  born  in  1859,  and  a  sister,  Marie, 
born  in  1862,  and  married  since  1887  to  Count  Henri  d'Alwin  de  Piennes. 


132  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

to  the  Crimea,  was  entrusted  with  the  task  of  carrying  the 
Malakoff  works  at  the  final  assault  of  Sebastopol  (September  8, 
1855).  We  all  know  that  he  accomplished  it  right  brilliantly. 
France  rewarded  him  with  the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour;  England's  Sovereign  created  him  a  Knight  Grand 
Cross  of  the  Order  of  the  Bath. 

He  was  chosen  for  high  command  at  the  time  of  the  Italian 
War  of  1859,  when  his  share  in  the  victory  of  Magenta  procured 
him  the  title  of  Duke  and  the  baton  of  Marshal  of  France. 
Two  years  later  he  represented  Napoleon  III.  at  the  coronation 
of  William  of  Prussia,  afterwards  first  German  Emperor,  whose 
prisoner  he  was  destined  to  become  ;  and  in  1864  he  returned  to 
Algeria,  this  time  as  the  successor  of  Pelissier  in  the  governor- 
ship of  the  colony.  No  little  unrest  had  been  stirred  up  there 
by  his  predecessor's  misrule;  but  under  MacMahon  quietude 
generally  prevailed,  and  if  insurrectionary  tendencies  occasionally 
appeared  they  were  swiftly  and  efficiently  checked. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Franco- German  War,  the  Marshal 
was  one  of  the  few  men  to  whom  Napoleon  III.  confided  his  plan 
of  campaign.  Becoming  Commander  of  the  1st  Army  Corps 
he  endeavoured  to  prevent  the  dissemination  of  the  French 
forces,  as  is  shown  by  several  of  his  telegrams  to  the  Imperial 
headquarters  at  Metz.  Other  despatches  sent  to  General  Ducrot 
prove  that  he  was  opposed  to  the  occupation  of  Wissemburg, 
where  the  first  French  defeat  occurred  (August  4,  1870).  The 
plans  which  MacMahon  formed  for  the  engagement  known  in 
France  as  Reichshoffen  and  elsewhere  as  Worth,  were  in  some 
respects  well  conceived,  though  they  cannot  be  entirely  placed 
to  his  credit,  for  the  views  of  General  Frossard  who,  acting  for 
the  French  War  Office,  had  some  years  previously  planned  an 
engagement  on  this  same  point,  were  partially  adopted.  For  the 
rest,  MacMahon's  scheme  recalled  that  which  had  served  him 
at  Magenta  in  1859.  The  positions  occupied  by  the  French 
were  of  a  nature  to  give  them  a  distinct  advantage  over  an 
enemy  of  equal  strength,  and  to  place  them  on  terms  of  equality 
with  somewhat  more  numerous  antagonists.  But  there  were 
fatal  miscalculations.  A  request  of  MacMahon's  that  General 
de  Failly's  Army  Corps  should  be  placed  under  his  orders  had 
been  granted,  but  delay  and  misunderstanding  in  his  communica- 
tions with  Failly  ensued.  Moreover,  the  Marshal  anticipated 
that  the  battle  would  be  fought  on  August  7,  whereas  the 


MARSHAL  MACMAHON  133 

German  advance  proved  more  rapid,  in  such  wise  that,  less  by 
actual  design  on  the  part  of  the  Crown  Prince  of  Prussia  and 
Blumenthal,  his  chief  of  Staff,  than  by  a  series  of  fortuitous 
circumstances,  the  two  armies  came  face  to  face  on  August  6. 
The  French,  altogether  outnumbered  by  their  foes,  were  severely 
defeated,  and  their  retreat  at  last  became  a  rout.  For  long 
hours,  however,  they  resisted  with  desperate  gallantry,  and  if 
their  losses  amounted  to  6000  killed  and  wounded,  and  9000 
men  made  prisoners,  the  enemy  purchased  his  victory  dearly, 
his  roll  of  killed  and  wounded  giving  a  total  of  489  officers  and 
10,153  men.  The  great  misfortune  of  the  French  was  that, 
although  the  battle  began  at  daybreak  on  August  6  and  was 
not  over  until  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  although  during 
all  that  time  it  was  possible  to  communicate  with  General  de 
Failly  by  telegraph,  no  attempt  was  made  to  do  so.  Failly  had 
orders  to  join  MacMahon,  but  his  chief  arrangements  had  been 
made  for  the  7th,  and  it  was  only  by  a  chance  telegram  sent  by  a 
railway  station-master  that  he  eventually  heard  of  the  battle  and 
the  defeat.  If,  on  the  morning  of  the  6th  he  had  been  urged 
to  accelerate  his  movements,  his  Army  Corps  might  have  reached 
the  scene  of  action  during  the  afternoon,  too  late,  no  doubt,  to 
avert  defeat,  but  in  time,  at  all  events,  to  protect  MacMahon's 
retreat,  and  possibly  even  to  prevent  it.  Thus,  although  French 
critics  have  generally  striven  to  cast  most  of  the  responsibility 
for  the  disaster  of  Worth  on  General  de  Failly  (an  unpopular 
man)  we  have  always  felt  that  if  he  deserved  blame  for  the 
slowness  of  his  movements,  MacMahon  on  his  side  deserved 
blame  for  not  attempting  to  accelerate  them  when  he  found 
himself  confronted  by  such  overwhelming  odds. 

The  Marshal  rallied  his  forces  at  Chalons.  At  a  Conference 
held  there  with  the  Emperor,  Prince  Napoleon,  General  Trochu, 
and  M.  Rouher,  he  distinctly  favoured  the  proposed  retreat  on 
Paris ;  but  the  raison  d'lZtat  prevailed,  and  he  was  compelled  to 
make  that  attempt  to  relieve  Bazaine,  then  shut  up  under  Metz, 
which  led  the  army  to  Sedan,  where  it  was  overwhelmed.  It  is 
difficult  to  say  what  plans,  if  any,  had  been  formed  by  the 
Marshal  for  that  battle.  He  seems  to  have  thought — as  he  had 
done  at  Worth — that  the  bulk  of  the  German  forces  was  still 
some  distance  away,  and  that  the  French  would  obtain  a  day's 
rest.  But  the  rapidity  of  the  German  movements  prevented  all 
respite.     MacMahon  was  at   least   spared    the  humiliation  of 


134  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

signing  the  surrender  by  which  everything  ended.  About  six 
o'clock  on  the  morning  of  September  1,  while  on  his  way  to 
inspect  the  arrangements  made  by  General  Ducrot  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Balan  and  La  Moncelle,  he  halted  his  horse 
on  a  hillock  at  a  distance  of  little  more  than  three  hundred  yards 
from  the  enemy's  position,  which  he  was  examining  through  his 
field-glasses,  when  a  German  shell  exploded  near  him.  Accord- 
ing to  a  very  circumstantial  account,  the  crupper  of  his  horse 
was  carried  away  by  a  splinter  of  the  projectile  while  he 
himself  was  badly  wounded  in  the  hip  and  fell  fainting  to  the 
ground.  Nevertheless,  he  had  no  sooner  recovered  consciousness 
than  he  wished  to  mount  the  horse  of  an  orderly  and  tried  to  do 
so.  But  the  pain  of  his  wound  was  too  great,  and  after  he  had 
been  carried  to  a  place  of  some  safety,  a  stretcher  was  procured 
and  he  was  removed  to  Sedan.  The  command  of  the  army  was 
assumed  first  by  Ducrot  and  then  by  WimpfFen,  the  last  of  whom 
had  to  sign  the  capitulation.  The  Marshal's  convalescence  was 
spent  at  the  chateau  of  Pourru-aux-Bois  near  Sedan,  and  he 
afterwards  went  to  Wiesbaden  as  a  prisoner  of  war,  returning 
to  France  in  March  1871  to  take  the  command  of  the  army  of 
Versailles  against  the  Commune. 

He  cannot  be  accounted  a  great  general.  Despite  his  victory 
at  Magenta  he  was  more  fitted  for  subordinate  than  supreme 
command.  It  is  doubtful  whether  he  possessed  sufficient 
capacity  to  handle  a  really  large  force.  On  the  other  hand  he 
was  extremely  brave,  careless  of  danger,  unmoved  in  the  most 
trying  situations.  When  Colson,  his  chief  of  Staff,  and  Vogue, 
his  aide-de-camp  and  relative,  were  struck  down  before  his  eyes 
at  Worth,  he  remained  impassive,  merely  remarking :  "  There 
are  two  fine  deaths."  Very  good-natured  and  frank,  he  talked 
freely  with  his  friends,  expressing  himself  in  fluent,  picturesque, 
if  occasionally  ungrammatical  language.  But  in  the  presence 
of  strangers  he  often  became  almost  tongue-tied,  or  spoke  in  the 
most  awkward  manner  possible.  Fairly  tall  and  slim,  he  had 
a  thoroughly  military  bearing  and  a  prepossessing  appearance 
generally.  In  his  younger  days  he  had  been  considered  quite 
handsome.  At  the  time  when  he  became  President  of  the 
Republic  he  was  sixty-five  years  old,  with  dark,  quick  eyes,  a 
very  ruddy  face,  and  scanty  snow-white  hair,  a  few  wavy  locks  of 
which  strayed  over  his  cranium.  His  moustache  and  the  tuft 
on  his  chin  were  as  white  as  his  hair,  and  the  contrast  between 


MARSHAL  MACMAHON  135 

that  whiteness  and  the  ruddiness  of  his  cheeks  rendered  his 
appearance  very  striking. 

His  wife,  the  Duchess  de  Magenta,  was  at  that  time  an 
energetic  and  clever  woman  of  middle  age,  with  dark  hair, 
bright  eyes,  and  a  very  full  figure.  Of  the  Castries  family  to 
which  she  belonged,  and  particularly  of  her  accomplished  and 
beautiful  sister,  the  Countess  de  Beaumont,  we  shall  have 
occasion  to  speak  hereafter.  The  particulars  we  have  already 
given  will  have  sufficed  to  show  that  the  MacMahons  were 
aristocrats,  and  that  Republicanism  was  foreign  to  them.  Thus 
the  Marshal's  election  was  viewed  with  anxiety  by  all  the 
Republican  elements  in  France.  He  was  not  young  enough,  he 
had  not  sufficient  ambitious  audacity,  to  play  the  part  of  a 
Bonaparte;  but  might  he  not  become  a  Monk,  might  he  not 
attempt  to  impose  a  King  on  France  or  restore  the  Empire  ? 
It  seemed  certain  that  perilous  days  were  in  store  for  the 
country. 

"I  fall  with  my  flag  in  my  hand,11  said  Thiers  after 
MacMahon's  election.  "I  have  surrendered  my  place  to  men 
who  intend  to  embark  on  all  sorts  of  adventures.  The  situation 
is  serious.  I  shall,  however,  resume  my  seat  as  a  member  of  the 
Assembly.  I  shall  not  forget  the  mandate  I  hold  from  the 
country.11  Gambetta,  for  his  part,  impressed  upon  his  followers 
the  advisability  of  remaining  strictly  within  the  law  whatever 
it  might  be ;  for  he  well  realised  that  the  semi-Orleanist,  semi- 
Legitimist  Administration  which  now  took  office,  would  be  only 
too  glad  of  the  slightest  opportunity  to  prosecute,  imprison,  and 
thus  rid  themselves  of  all  Republicans  who  might  be  likely  to 
resist  the  attempts  to  restore  monarchical  rule. 


CHAPTER  V 

UNDER  MACMAHON — THE  ROYALIST  FUSION — THE 
WHITE  FLAG  —  THE  THRONE  LOST  —  BAZAINE 
AND    HIS   TRIAL 

The  Duke  de  Broglie  and  his  Colleagues — Beule — Ernoul — Nobbling  the 
Press — Freethinkers  and  their  Funerals — Ranc's  Flight  from  France — 
The  Shah  in  Paris — Thiers  in  Retirement — The  Fusion  of  Orleanists  and 
Legitimists — The  White  Flag  and  the  Tricolour — The  Count  de  Paris 
visits  the  Count  de  Chambord — The  Committee  of  Nine — General 
Changarnier — Chesnelong's  Mission — The  White  Flag  again — Mac- 
Mahon's  Position — The  Septennate — The  Count  de  Chambord  at  Ver- 
sailles— MacMahon's  Refusal  to  see  him — The  Liberation  of  the  Terri- 
tory— The  Case  of  Marshal  Bazaine — Baraguey  d'Hilliers  and  the  Court 
of  Inquiry — The  Trial  at  Trianon — Bazaine's  Appearance — His  Conduct 
at  Metz — Boyer,  his  "  Ame  Damnee  " — Incidents  of  the  Trial — Gambetta 
as  a  Witness — Lachaud,  Bazaine's  Counsel — The  Sentence  and  its 
Commutation— The  Marshal's  Imprisonment  and  Escape— His  last 
Years. 

The  Duke  de  Broglie  had  led  the  debate  which  had  resulted 
in  Thiers's  overthrow,  and  it  was  to  him  that  MacMahon,  after 
vainly  appealing  to  M.  Auguste  Casimir-Perier,  entrusted  the 
formation  of  his  first  Ministry,  The  Duke  had  then  nearly 
completed  his  fifty-second  year.  In  1871  Thiers  had  appointed 
him  French  Ambassador  in  London,  but  he  had  thrown  up  the 
post  to  return  and  direct  the  Orleanist  campaign  at  Versailles. 
The  Duke's  family  was  of  Italian  origin,  Broglio  being  the 
original  spelling  of  the  name,  which  was  altered  to  Broglie  in 
France  where,  however,  it  is  pronounced  as  bro-i-e,  that  is  by 
people  in  society.  The  more  famous  of  the  earlier  Broglies 
were  military  men,  three  of  them  being  Marshals  of  France ; 
but  Leonce  Victor,  born  in  1785,  became  an  official  of  the  first 
Napoleon's  Council  of  State,  and  after  figuring  as  a  Peer  of 
France  during  the  Restoration 1  rose  to  a  high  position  as  a 

1  In  that  capacity  he  was  one  of  those  who  tried  Marshal  Ney,  for  whose 
conduct  he   found   excuses,  much   to  the   horror  and  amazement  of  his 

136 


THE  BROGLIE  MINISTRY  137 

statesman  under  Louis  Philippe.  In  1814  he  married  Albertine, 
daughter  of  the  famous  Mme.  de  Stael,  whose  father,  it  will  be 
remembered,  was  Necker,  the  plebeian  minister  of  Louis  XVI. 
Partly  on  that  account,  and  partly  because  the  young  lady  was 
a  Protestant,  the  Broglie  family,  quite  disregarding  the  fact 
that  her  father,  Baron  de  Stael-Holstein,  was  of  good  nobility, 
deemed  the  marriage  to  be  a  terrible  mesalliance,  with  the 
result  that  a  bitter  feud  raged  in  its  midst  for  several  years. 
That  it  does  not  willingly  allow  its  members  to  marry  as  they 
please,  has  been  shown  of  recent  times  by  certain  scandals. 

Young  Duke  Leonce  Victor  de  Broglie  defied  his  family, 
however,  and  married  Mile,  de  Stael ;  and  among  the  offspring 
of  the  marriage  was  MacMahon's  first  Prime  Minister.  Charles 
Victor  Albert,  Duke  de  Broglie  and  Prince  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  was  born  in  June,  1821.  At  the  age  of  four-and- 
twenty,  he  married  Mile.  Pauline  de  Galard  de  Brassac  de 
Beam,  who  died  in  1862,  leaving  several  children,  the  present 
Duke  de  Broglie,  his  brothers  and  sisters.  Under  his  father's 
auspices,  Duke  Albert  entered  the  diplomatic  service  of  Louis 
Philippe,  acting  as  secretary  to  the  embassies  at  Madrid  and 
Rome.  The  fall  of  the  Monarchy  threw  him  into  private  life, 
but  under  the  Second  Empire  he%  became  one  of  the  recognised 
Orleanist  leaders,  supporting  Catholic  interests  and  so-called 
Constitutional  Liberalism  in  various  journals  and  reviews,  and 
attracting  to  his  father's  mansion  in  the  Rue  de  Grenelle  St. 
Germain,  most  of  the  men  of  position  who  sighed  for  the  fall 
of  Napoleon  III.  and  the  accession  of  the  Count  de  Paris.  He 
became  a  member  of  the  French  Academy  at  the  age  of  one- 
and-forty,  when  he  had  only  written  some  essays  on  religious 
and  historical  questions,  and  two  volumes  of  a  more  important 
work  on  the  Church  and  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  fourth 
century.  Those  productions  scarcely  justified  the  honour 
accorded  to  him,  but  his  election  was  engineered  by  his  father, 
who  also  was  an  Academician,  in  '  conjunction  with  other 
Orleanist  Immortals.1  It  should  be  added  that  in  later  years 
M.  de  Broglie  proved  himself  a  writer  of  considerable  ability. 
Some  of  his  works,  based  largely  on  family  papers,  are  valuable 
contributions  to  French  and  German  history.     In  the  National 

colleagues.     But  although  he  voted  for  the  Marshal's  acquittal,  Broglie  be- 
came in  time  a  strong  and  virulent  anti-Bonapartist. 
1  Duke  Leonce  Victor  survived  until  1870. 


138  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Assembly  he  displayed  a  ready  gift  of  language,  but  his 
delivery  was  defective  owing  to  a  constant  zezaiement,  which 
transformed  such  words  as  jujube,  pigeon,  and  cheval,  into 
zuzube,  pizon,  and  zeval,  and  which  some  folk  attributed  to 
his  far  away  Italian  ancestry. 

In  forming  MacMahon's  first  Administration  the  Duke 
took,  besides  the  Vice-Presidency  of  the  Council,  the  post  of 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  for  which  he  was  only  fitted  by  the 
secretaryships  of  his  youth,  and  his  brief  and  not  particularly 
successful  stay  at  Albert  Gate.1  There  is  a  story  that  when 
he  submitted  the  list  of  his  colleagues  to  the  Marshal,  the 
latter,  who  found  everything  novel  in  the  post  now  conferred 
on  him,  remarked  that  the  names  were  exclusively  those  of 
deputies  belonging  to  the  Right  (the  Monarchial  parties),  and 
that  it  might  be  as  well  to  include  one  or  two  gentlemen  of  the 
Left  Centre,  that  is  the  moderate  Republican  group.  "Oh, 
no,"  the  Duke  de  Broglie  replied,  "  that  is  not  the  custom 
under  parliamentary  government.  All  the  Ministers  have  to 
be  selected  from  the  majority  J*  "Indeed,1'  said  MacMahon 
thoughtfully,  "then  if  the  majority  becomes  Republican  I  shall 
have  to  take  all  the  Ministers  from  the  Left.'"  The  Duke's 
only  rejoinder  was  a  pout.  The  idea  of  such  an  eventuality 
ensuing  was  singularly  displeasing  to  him  in  that  hour  of  his 
triumph. 

Among  the  colleagues  he  selected  were  General  du  Barail 
(Minister  of  War),  Magne  (Finances),  Beule  (Interior),  and 
Ernoul  (Justice).2  Francois  du  Barail  was  an  officer  of 
Algerian  training,  who  had  served  under  Bazaine  in  Mexico 
and  at  Metz  (a  point  to  be  remembered)  and  had  more  recently 
commanded  the  cavalry  of  the  Army  of  Versailles,  securing  the 
rank  of  Grand  Officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  for  his  services 
against  the  Commune.  Pierre  Magne  was  a  Bonapartist,  and 
the  most  empirical  of  the  financiers  of  the  Second  Empire, 
which  he  had  long  served  in  the  office  to  which  he  was  now 
called.  Charles  Ernest  Beule,  perpetual  secretary  to  the 
Academy  of  Fine  Arts,  had  been  connected  with  the  French 

1  He  subsequently  took  over  the  Home  Office,  and  relinquished  the  de- 
partment of  Foreign  Affairs  to  the  Duke  Decazes,  of  whom  we  shall  speak 
hereafter. 

2  Other  posts  were  held  as  follows  :  Deseilligny,  Public  Works  ;  Batbie, 
Education ;  La  Bouillerie,  Commerce  and  Industry  ;  and  Dorapierre 
d'Hornoy,  Marine. 


THE  BROGLIE  MINISTRY  139 

School  at  Athens,  where,  as  on  the  site  of  Carthage,  he  had 
made  some  interesting  archaeological  discoveries.  He  had 
written  upon  those  subjects,  and  also,  more  extensively,  on 
Roman  history,  sketching  notably  some  portraits  of  Augustus, 
Germanicus,  Titus,  and  Tiberius,  the  last  of  whom  he  had  com- 
pared with  Napoleon  III.  It  was  therefore  rather  surprising 
to  find  him  in  the  same  Ministry  as  Magne,  the  ex-worshipper 
of  the  Empress  Eugenie.  Yet  that  was  as  nothing  compared 
with  his  assumption  of  the  most  difficult  post  in  the  new  Ad- 
ministration— that  of  Minister  of  the  Interior,  for  which  he 
was  utterly  unfitted.  He  rued  it  bitterly.  A  year  later,  after 
a  brief  spell  of  office,  during  which  he  trampled  on  whatever 
Liberalism  he  had  professed  in  his  writings,  and  became  hateful 
and  contemptible  upon  all  sides,  he  put  an  end  to  his  spoilt 
and  embittered  life  by  suicide.  He  was  then  only  forty-eight 
years  old. 

Broglie's  Minister  of  Justice,  Edmond  Ernoul,  was,  it  will 
be  remembered,  the  actual  author  of  the  resolution  by  which 
Thiers  had  been  overthrown.  A  typical  mushroom  celebrity 
of  those  times,  he  had  sprung  up  at  Loudon  and  taken  to  the 
profession  of  the  law  at  Poitiers,  under  the  protection  of 
Bishop  Pie  of  that  city.  A  bigoted  Ultramontane  Catholic,  a 
fervent  upholder  of  Pius  IX. 's  "Syllabus,"  he  became  also  one 
of  the  leading  promoters  of  the  so-called  fusion  between  the 
Legitimists  and  Orleanists,  in  which  connection  he  repeatedly 
visited  the  Count  de  Chambord  and  stimulated  clerical  in- 
fluence. For  a  few  years  Ernoul  was  always  in  evidence  at 
Versailles.  There  were  few  men  more  prominent  than  he. 
But,  at  the  dissolution  of  the  Assembly,  he  dropped  out  of 
public  life.  We  believe  that  he  returned  to  Poitiers,  and  eked 
out  a  living  there  by  pleading  for  priests  and  nuns  when  they 
were  involved  in  unpleasant  law-suits  respecting  legacies.  By 
the  public  at  large,  however,  he  was  remembered  merely  as  a 
man  who  had  come  nobody  knew  whence,  and  had  gone  nobody 
knew  whither. 

In  the  Message  to  the  Assembly  which  Broglie  drafted  for 
MacMahon  directly  the  latter  assumed  office,  it  was  stated  that 
the  Government  would  be  resolutely  Conservative,  making 
social  conservation  the  particular  basis  of  its  home  policy.  Its 
officials  would  strictly  enforce  the  laws,  into  which  the  spirit  of 
Conservatism  would  be  duly  introduced.    The  Marshal  regarded 


140  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  post  in  which  the  Assembly  had  placed  him  as  that  of  a 
sentinel  appointed  to  watch  over  its  sovereign  power.  It  was  not 
long  before  the  country  learnt  what  Broglie  meant  by  resolute 
Conservatism.  First  thirty  or  forty  Republican  Prefects  were 
dismissed  and  replaced  by  Royalists.  Then,  early  in  June 
1873,  Gambetta  had  occasion  to  interpellate  Beule  respecting 
his  suppression  of  a  Radical  newspaper,  and  his  issue  of  a  certain 
circular  to  the  Prefects  and  Sub-Prefects  who  were  to  bribe, 
cajole,  or  threaten  the  press  in  order  to  create  a  favourable 
current  of  opinion — favourable,  that  is,  to  the  restoration  of  a 
Monarchy.  The  circular  being  a  highly  confidential  document, 
Beule  was  amazed  that  it  should  have  come  into  Gambetta1s 
possession.  He  floundered  sadly  in  trying  to  give  it  a  meaning 
different  from  the  correct  one,  and  passed  a  tres  mauvais  quart 
(Pheure  in  spite  of  all  the  support  accorded  him  by  the  majority 
of  the  Assembly.  The  attempts  to  nobble  the  press  were 
not  only  confined  to  French  journalists.  Numerous  foreign 
correspondents  were  approached,  it  being  thought  advisable 
to  influence  public  opinion  abroad  in  favour  of  the  new 
French  Government.  In  that  connection,  a  high  official  of  the 
Ministry  of  the  Interior,  whose  manners  and  language  were 
extremely  courteous  and  plausible,  was  so  kind  as  to  offer  us 
the  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  which  we  very  respectfully 
declined. 

But  another  example  of  resolute  Conservatism  was  soon 
forthcoming.  The  Prefect  of  Lyons  decreed  that  funerals  in 
which  no  religious  rites  were  to  be  observed  would  not  be 
allowed,  in  future,  between  the  hours  of  6  a.m.  and  7  p.m.  The 
Prefect's  superior,  Beule — long  a  professed  pagan — was  taken 
severely  to  task  about  this  impudent  decree,  by  a  Republican 
deputy,  M.  Le  Royer,  who  prefaced  his  remarks  on  the  subject 
by  a  declaration  which  startled  and  somewhat  shamed  the 
intolerant  majority  of  the  Assembly.  He  was,  said  he,  a 
Protestant,  a  direct  descendant  of  one  of  those  Huguenot 
families  which  had  been  driven  from  France  by  the  dragoons 
of  his  most  Christian  Majesty,  Louis  XIV.,  and  it  was  as  such 
that  he  protested,  with  all  the  energy  of  his  soul,  against  any 
interference  with  liberty  of  conscience.  Beule  wriggled,  and 
tried  to  excuse  the  Prefect's  order  by  asserting  that  a  formidable 
Lyonnese  society  of  freethinkers  was  bent  on  utilising  non- 
religious  funerals  as  pretexts  for  revolutionary  disturbances. 


THE  BROGLIE  MINISTRY  141 

The  plea  was  nonsensical,  and  before  long  the  obnoxious  decree 
had  to  be  withdrawn. 

Another  serious  affair  of  the  time  was  the  prosecution  of 
M.  Ranc,  a  somewhat  over-zealous  Radical  journalist,  who,  after 
being  mixed  up  in  various  conspiracies  in  Imperial  times  and 
transported  to  Lambessa,  whence  he  managed  to  escape,  had 
become  Gambetta,s  chef  de  surete  in  1870,  and  later  a  member 
of  the  National  Assembly,  in  which  capacity  he  voted  against 
the  peace  with  Germany,  and  then  resigned.  Shortly  afterwards 
he  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Commune  and  vainly  preached 
a  policy  of  conciliation  with  the  Versailles  Government. 
Directly  the  Commune  resorted  to  violent  courses,  such  as 
decreeing  the  arrest  of  the  Archbishop  and  other  hostages, 
Ranc  quitted  it,  and  retired  for  a  while  into  private  life.  But 
he  was  elected  deputy  for  Lyons  at  the  same  time  as  Barodet 
defeated  Remusat  in  Paris,  and  this  election,  although  it  was 
duly  validated,  drew  upon  him  the  hatred  of  the  majority  of 
the  Assembly.  The  Orleanists  were  particularly  irate,  for  had 
not  Ranc,  as  Gambetta's  chief  of  police,  dared  to  lay  sacrilegious 
hands  on  the  Prince  de  Joinville  during  the  war,  and  ordered 
him  to  leave  France !  Besides,  he  had  been  a  member  of  the 
Commune,  and  that,  even  in  1873,  was  still  a  suitable  pretext 
for  prosecution.  The  Republicans  of  the  Assembly  opposed  the 
proceeding  in  vain,  and  Ranc,  being  warned  in  time,  quitted 
the  country. 

It  has  been  said  that  he  did  so  disguised  as  a  priest,  but  his 
own  account  was  different.  He  resolved  to  make  his  way  to 
Belgium  by  a  circuitous  route.  On  referring  to  a  railway  time- 
table he  found  on  the  line  from  Mezieres  to  Longuyon  a  station 
named  Volosne-Torg  which  he  knew  fringed  the  Belgian  frontier. 
Moreover,  against  the  station's  name  in  the  time-table  was 
the  mention  halte,  signifying  that  the  train  he  proposed  to 
take  would  stop  there,  but  that  tickets  were  not  issued  for 
that  particular  locality.  It  followed  that  there  would  be  no 
gendarmes  waiting  about  the  station  to  pounce  upon  suspicious 
characters.  Ranc  therefore  took  a  ticket  for  Longuyon,  but 
directly  the  train  stopped  at  Volosne  he  sprang  out — "  on  the 
wrong  side  "  as  the  saying  goes — crossed  the  metals,  and  made 
his  way  to  a  little  bridge  spanning  the  rivulet  which  serves  as 
the  frontier.  The  station-master,  perceiving  him  and  fancying 
that  he  was  some  belated  traveller  blundering  in  his  hurry, 


142  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

cried,  "  Not  that  way ! "  but  Ranc  hastened  on,  opened  a  little 
wicket  gate  at  the  head  of  the  bridge,  crossed  over  and  set  foot 
on  Belgian  soil.  In  time,  like  many  other  exiles,  he  returned 
to  France,  and  for  many  years  played  a  notable  part  in  French 
politics  and  journalism.  He  passed  away  early  in  the  autumn 
of  1908. 

In  July,  1873,  the  arrival  in  Paris  of  Nassr-Eddin,  Shah 
of  Persia,  momentarily  diverted  attention  from  politics.  The 
Parisians  were  delighted  with  the  visit.  There  were  reviews, 
fetes,  fireworks,  displays  of  various  kinds.  It  seemed  almost 
like  a  return  to  old  times.  Everybody  went  to  see  the  Shah, 
and  he  was  taken  to  see  everything — the  Arc  de  Triomphe, 
the  Obelisk,  the  tomb  of  Napoleon,  the  Central  Markets,  the 
sewers,  and  the  corps  de  ballet.  And  all  the  folk  who  were  in 
power  or  in  the  ascendant,  were  presented  to  him.  Yet  he  was 
never  satisfied.  There  was  one  thing  wanting  to  complete  his 
happiness.  When  he  was  taken  to  the  Louvre  to  view  the 
Venus  of  Milo  by  torchlight,  he  just  glanced  at  it,  and  then 
exclaimed:  "Yes,  very  fine  big  woman,  very,  but — show  me 
Monsieur  Thiers.1''  When  Buffet,  President  of  the  Assembly, 
was  presented,  it  was  the  same  thing :  "  Yes,  a  fine  man,  very, 
but,  but — show  me  Monsieur  Thiers."  That  persistency  worried 
the  officials  of  the  new  regime,  who  invented  all  sorts  of  excuses 
— "  Monsieur  Thiers  was  not  in  Paris,""  "  Monsieur  Thiers  was 
indisposed,""  and  so  forth — a  device  which  recoiled,  however,  on 
themselves,  for  his  Asiatic  majesty  never  afterwards  wearied  of 
inquiring:  "And  Monsieur  Thiers,  will  he  soon  be  back?" 
"  What  day,  tell  me  ! "  or  "  Monsieur  Thiers,  is  he  well  again  ? 
when  will  he  be  well?"  And  so  on  ad  libitum.  Not  being 
disposed  to  invite  Thiers  to  meet  the  Shah,  the  officials  as  a 
last  resort  took  the  potentate  to  see  the  polar  bear  at  the 
Jardin  des  Plantes.  We  cannot  say,  however,  whether  that 
appeased  him. 

Thiers,  it  may  be  mentioned,  was  then  living  almost  in 
seclusion  in  a  flat  at  the  corner  of  the  Boulevard  Malesherbes, 
near  the  church  of  St.  Augustin.1  But,  as  the  summer  sun 
streamed  into  his  room,  he  soon  found  the  heat  there  unbear- 
able, and,  moreover,  the  clatter  of  the  thoroughfares  which 
met  at  this  point,  was  not  to  his  liking.     His  new  house  on 

1  If  we  remember  rightly  this  flat  belonged  to  General  Charlemagne, 
Mme.  Thiers's  nephew. 


THE  ROYALIST  FUSION  143 

the  Place  St.  Georges — replacing  the  former  one  demolished 
by  the  Commune — was  not  yet  ready  for  occupation,  and  for 
some  time  the  veteran  statesman  vainly  sought  a  suitable  abode. 
At  last  he  secured  the  so-called  Hotel  Bagration,  No.  45  in 
the  Faubourg  St.  Honore ;  and  in  that  stately  mansion — built 
by  the  mad,  prodigal  Marquis  de  Brunoy,1  and  inhabited  under 
the  First  Empire  by  Marshal  Marmont,  and  under  Louis 
Philippe  by  the  Russian  Princess  whose  name  it  took — he 
gathered  around  him  all  the  moderate  Republican  leaders  in 
view  of  the  great  political  battle  which  everybody  knew  to  be 
impending. 

The  Monarchists  were  now  particularly  active.  Shahs  might 
come  and  Shahs  might  go,  there  was  no  cessation  of  Royalist 
plotting.  If  Thiers  had  been  overthrown  and  MacMahon  set 
in  his  place,  it  was  solely  in  the  hope  that  the  latter  would 
serve  the  Restoration  projects  of  the  majority.  Did  he  not 
belong  to  an  old  Royalist  family  ?  Had  not  the  MacMahons 
sprung  from  a  race  of  ancient  kings  and  allied  themselves  with 
the  Caramans,  the  Des  Cars,  the  Eguillys,  the  Rengraves,  the 
Piennes,  the  Vogues,  the  Rosambos,  the  Lur-Saluces,  the 
Montaigus,  and  the  Castries  ?  Did  not  Mme.  de  MacMahon 
belong  to  the  last-named  ancient  house,  and  count  among  her 
ancestresses  ladies  of  such  famous  families  as  the  De  Thous,  the 
Harlays,  Seguiers,  Aguesseaus,  Lamoignons,  Sullys,  Villeroys, 
Estrees,  Broglies,  Crussols,  La  Fayettes  and  Pontarmes,  besides 
being  allied  to  the  royal  lines  of  Belgium,  Italy,  Saxony,  and 
Sweden  ?  She,  a  masterful  woman,  with  great  influence  over 
her  husband,  would  assuredly  remember  her  origin  and  prevail 
on  the  Marshal  to  remember  his  own.  When  all  was  ready  he 
would  not  hesitate,  he  would  acknowledge,  welcome,  and  install 
the  King  of  France  and  Navarre  on  the  throne  of  his  great 

1  He  was  the  only  son  of  the  famous  eighteenth  century  financier,  Paris 
de  Montmartel,  who  left  him  a  fortune  of  more  than  a  million  sterling.  At 
an  early  age  Brunoy  gave  signs  of  insanity ;  he  stabbed  his  tutor  at  table  in 
the  presence  of  twenty  guests ;  married  a  daughter  of  the  ducal  house  of 
Des  Cars,  and  quitted  her  for  ever  immediately  after  the  ceremony ;  brought 
his  father  and  mother  in  sorrow  to  the  grave,  then  buried  them  with  extra- 
ordinary pomp.  He  also  decorated  the  church  of  Brunoy  like  a  boudoir,  and 
being  affected  by  a  kind  of  religious  mania  organised  wonderful  religious 
processions,  in  which  appeared  hundreds  of  priests  and  monks  in  gold 
chasubles.  Some  incidents  of  his  career  suggest  that  of  Gilles  de  Rais. 
When  he  had  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  fortune,  he  was  placed  under 
interdict. 


144  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

ancestors.  Such  was  the  dream  in  which  fervent  partisans  of 
"  Le  Roy  "  indulged. 

Already,  in  July  1871,  at  the  time  of  the  brief  visit  paid  by 
the  Count  de  Chambord  to  the  famous  chateau  in  Touraine 
whence  he  derived  his  title,1  tjiere  had  been  an  attempt  to 
i  bring  about  a  meeting  between  him  and  the  Count  de  Paris, 
and  thereby  reconcile  the  houses  of  Bourbon  and  Orleans. 
The  negotiations  were  conducted  on  the  one  side  by  the  Prince 
de  Joinville,  under  the  name  of  Count  de  Lutteroth,2  and  on 
the  other  by  a  nobleman  rejoicing  in  the  name  of  Viscount  de 
Maquille,  who  was  at  the  head  of  certain.  Royalist  Associations 
in  central  France.  It  was  proposed  that  the  Count  de  Paris 
should  repair  to  Touraine,  but  the  Count  de  Chambord  desiring, 
said  he,  that  there  should  be  no  misunderstanding  respecting 
the  meaning  of  the  visit,  requested  that  it  might  be  adjourned 
until  he  had  formally  signified  his  views  on  the  Restoration  of 
the  Monarchy.  This  he  did  in  a  manifesto  dated  July  5,  in 
which,  while  announcing  his  immediate  departure  from  France, 
as  he  did  not  wish  his  presence  there  to  cause  any  perturbation, 
he  declared  that  if  he  ascended  the  throne  it  would  be  with 
the  White  Flag  of  his  ancestors. 

That  question  had  been  previously  discussed  by  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Royalist  parties,  among  whom  it  provoked  no 
little  friction,  for  the  Orleanists  adhered  to  the  Tricolour, 
feeling,  as  was,  indeed,  the  case,  that  the  country  would  never 
accept  the  ancient  standard  associated  with  centuries  of  bon 
plaisir  and  despotism.  The  renunciation  of  the  Tricolour 
would  have  appeared  to  the  masses  not  only  as  a  renunciation 
of  all  the  glories  of  a  flag  which  had  waved  victorious  through 
Europe,  but  also  as  a  renunciation  of  every  political  and  social 
conquest  of  the  great  Revolution,  a  humbling  of  the  National 
Rights  before  the  Divine  Right  of  the  King.  Even  if  the 
Orleanists  were  Royalists,  they  themselves  could  not  easily 
renounce  the  Tricolour,  a  flag  associated  with  their  Princes 
and  Constitutional  rule.  They  recalled  the  famous  song  in 
its  honour,  and  particularly  the  line :  "  D'Orleans,  toi  qui  Pas 
porte  "  :  while  to  the  nation  at  large  it  had  yet  a  deeper  signifi- 
cance, for  it  was  Freedom's  emblem  : — 

1  It  was  purchased  by  public  subscription  and  presented  .to  him  during 
his  childhood.  By  his  desire  it  was  utilised  for  ambulance  purposes  during 
the  Franco-German  War,  when  the  Count  also  sent  a  donation  of  £400  to 
the  Society  for  the  Relief  of  the  Wounded.  a  See  ante,  p.  100. 


THE  ROYALIST  FUSION  145 

A  rainbow  of  the  loveliest  hue, 

Of  three  bright  colours,  each  divine, 

And  fit  for  that  celestial  sign  ; 

For  Freedom's  hand  had  blended  them, 

Like  tints  in  an  immortal  gem. 

One  tint  was  of  the  sunbeam's  dyes  ; 

One,  the  blue  depth  of  Seraph's  eyes  ; 
One,  the  pure  Spirit's  veil  of  white 

Had  robed  in  radiance  of  its  light ; 
The  three,  so  mingled,  did  beseem 

The  texture  of  a  heavenly  dream.1 

Of  course,  the  extreme  section  of  the  small  Legitimist  party 
— which  counted  its  most  zealous  adherents  in  Brittany  and 
Vendee,  where  the  Church  had  contrived  to  foster  belief  in 
Divine  Right  even  among  the  peasants — held  that  Monseigneur 
le  Comte  de  Chambord  was  quite  right  in  refusing  to  accept 
the  flag  of  the  Revolution,  and  the  tourist  who  strayed  that 
summer  through  the  Vendean  Bocage,  might  still  occasionally 
hear  some  descendant  of  Larochejaquelain's  followers,  singing 
the  old  song  of  the  lost  cause  : — 

M'sieur  d'Charette  a  dit  a  ceux  d'Anc'nis  : 

Mes  amis, 
Le  Roi  va  nous  ramener  les  fleurs  de  lys, 
Le  Roi  va  nous  ramener  les  fleurs  de  lys  ! 
Prends  ton  fusil,  Gregoire, 
Prends  ta  gourde  pour  boire, 
Ton  chapelet  d'ivoire. 
Ces  messieurs  sont  partis 
Pour  aller  au  pays. 
M'sieur  d'Charette  a  dit  a  ceux  d'Anc'nis  : 

Frappez  fort,  frappez  fort ! 
Le  drapeau  blanc  garde  contre  la  mort, 
Le  drapeau  blanc  garde  contre  la  mort  ! 

All  that,  however,  was  merely  a  lingering  memory,  a  mere 
nothing  in  comparison  with  the  sentiments  which  prevailed  in 
nearly  every  other  part  of  France.  The  Legitimists,  pure  and 
simple,  mustered,  it  should  be  remembered,  but  ninety-six 
representatives  in  an  assembly  of  nearly  seven  hundred  and 
fifty  members.  Without  the  support  of  the  Orleanists  they 
were  therefore  powerless. 

Quitting  France,  the  Count  de  Chambord  repaired  to 
Switzerland,  leaving  most  Royalists  in  a  state  of  consternation 
on  the  subject  of  the  flag.     The  Count  de  Paris  did  not  follow 

1  Byron. 


146  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

up  the  proposals  that  he  should  visit  his  cousin,  and  it  seemed 
for  a  while  as  if  a  fusion  between  Legitimists  and  Orleanists 
was  impossible.  At  last  some  of  the  leading  men  of  the  two 
parties  came  together  again,  and  a  tentative  programme 
for  the  Restoration  of  the  Monarchy  eventually  received  the 
adhesion  of  some  280  members  of  the  Assembly.  In  February 
1872  the  Count  de  Chambord  went  to  Antwerp,  whither  a 
number  of  deputations  also  repaired.  No  understanding  was 
arrived  at,  however,  and  the  demonstrations  for  and  against 
the  Count — that  is  with  French  Legitimists  on  one  side,  and 
Belgian  Liberals  on  the  other — led  to  so  much  trouble  that  at 
the  end  of  the  month  he  had  to  quit  the  country.  Exactly  a 
year  later,  when  he  was  once  more  in  Switzerland,  Bishop 
Dupanloup  of  Orleans  approached  him,  and  tried  to  effect  an 
understanding  between  the  rival  sections  of  the  Monarchist 
party.  Nothing  particular  resulted ;  still  similar  attempts 
were  made  down  to  the  time  of  Thiers's  overthrow. 

That  was  the  signal  for  more  decisive  action ;  and  after  the 
Duke  de  Nemours,  the  most  Legitimist  of  the  Orleans  Princes, 
had  privately  paid  his  respects  to  the  Count  de  Chambord,  the 
Count  de  Paris  was  prevailed  upon  to  visit  his  cousin  with  the 
object  of  effecting  a  reconciliation.  This  was  regarded  as  the 
first  necessary  step,  after  which  other  matters,  such  as  the  flag 
and  the  constitution,  might  be  adjusted.  The  Count  de  Paris 
repaired,  then,  to  Vienna,  and  by  previous  arrangement  with 
his  aunt,  Princess  Clementine,  put  up  on  August  3  at  the 
Coburg  Palace  in  the  Seilerstatte,  whence  he  addressed  a  com- 
munication to  the  Count  de  Chambord,s  gentilhomme  de  service 
— then  Count  Henry  de  Vanssay — at  Froschdorf.  The  Count 
de  Chambord  replied  that  he  would  be  happy  to  receive  his 
cousin,  provided  that  the  latter  came  not  only  to  pay  his 
respects  to  the  head  of  the  House  of  Bourbon,  but  "also  to 
recognise  the  principle  of  which  he,  the  Count  de  Chambord, 
was  the  representative,  and  to  resume  his  place  in  the  family." 
That  answer  was  conveyed  to  the  Count  de  Paris  by  the 
Marquis  Scipion  de  Dreux-Breze,  son  of  Louis  XVI.'s  famous 
master  of  ceremonies  (Henri  Evrard  de  Dreux-Breze)  to  whom 
Mirabeau  addressed  his  historical  rebuke.1 

1  Apropos  of  that  famous  episode  it  is  generally  forgotten  that  Dreux- 
Breze"  was  a  mere  **  youngster "  at  the  time — just  in  his  27th  year.  He 
survived  till  the  close  of  the  Restoration. 


THE  ROYALIST  FUSION  147 

Marquis  Scipion  was  one  of  the  "  King's  "  chief  representa- 
tives in  France,  but  had  repaired  to  Froschdorf  to  be  with  him 
at  this  juncture.  The  Count  de  Paris  demurred  to  the  ex- 
pression "resume  his  place  in  the  family1'  and  therefore 
adjourned  his  answer  until  the  following  day,  when  he  informed 
Dreux-Breze  of  his  willingness  to  make  a  declaration  to  the 
effect  that  "he  had  come  to  recognise  the  principle  of  which 
Monsieur  le  Comte  de  Chambord  was  the  representative,  and 
to  assure  him  that  he  would  find  no  competitor  among  the 
members  of  his  family."  The  hair-splitting  was  delightful,  but, 
as  La  Fontaine  might  have  remarked,  "  Ce  sont  la  jeux  de 
princes.'1 

The  alteration  being  approved,  it  was  arranged  that  on 
being  ushered  into  the  presence  of  the  Count  de  Chambord  at 
Froschdorf  on  the  morrow,  August  5,  his  cousin  should  repeat 
the  formula  we  have  given  above.  He  did  so  in  a  clear  voice, 
and  in  the  presence  of  Dreux-Breze,  Count  de  Monti  de  Reze, 
and  Count  Adheaume  de  Chevigne.  The  "  King  "  then  offered 
his  hand,  and  led  the  Count  de  Paris  into  another  room,  where 
they  remained  alone  for  half  an  hour.  Next  the  Count  de 
Paris  was  presented  to  the  Countess  de  Chambord  and  the 
Count  de  Bardi,  one  of  the  Italian  Bourbons  and  a  nephew  of 
the  Pretender.  A  little  later  came  lunch,  to  which  the  whole 
company  sat  down  in  the  highest  spirits ;  and  on  the  following 
afternoon  the  Count  de  Chambord  paid  his  cousin  a  return  visit 
at  the  Coburg  Palace.  The  reconciliation  of  Bourbon  and 
Orleans  appeared  to  be  complete. 

The  French  Royalists  and  Clericals,  the  latter  particularly, 
were  wild  with  delight  directly  the  good  news  reached  France. 
Processions  and  pilgrimages  were  organised  to  stimulate  popular 
fervour  for  the  Royal  cause.  It  was  amid  cries  of  "Vive 
Henri  V. ! "  that  the  faithful  betook  themselves  to  Paray-le- 
Monial  to  offer  up  their  prayers  to  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus 
at  the  shrine  of  the  blessed  Marie  Alacoque,  the  nun  of  the 
Order  of  the  Visitation  in  whose  hysteria  that  extraordinary 
and  repulsive  devotion,  that  culte  cFabattoir,  originated.1 

The  position  still  remained  very  difficult,  however.  Many 
1  It  was  the  National  Assembly  of  1871  that  authorised  the  erection  of 
the  Church  of  the  Sacred  Heart  at  Montmartre,  and  declared  it  a  work  of 
public  utility.  It  was  intended  to  mark  the  repentance  of  France  for  her 
sins,  and  her  resolve  to  dedicate  herself  to  the  Divinity  henceforward. 
Times  have  changed. 


148  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

matters  of  detail — such  as  the  nature  of  the  Constitution  by 
which  the  King  would  govern  the  country,  and  that  annoying 
and  ever-recurring  question  of  the  flag — remained  to  be 
settled.  Moreover,  although  there  was  an  undoubted  Con- 
servative majority  in  the  Assembly,  a  purely  Royalist  one 
scarcely  existed.  For  instance,  the  declared  Legitimists  and 
Orleanists  were  little  more  than  360  in  number.  The  Bona- 
partists  would  certainly  not  help  them  to  bring  back  the  King ; 
and  it  was  only  by  winning  over  a  certain  number  of  the  Left 
Centre  section,  whose  Republicanism  was  at  times  little  more 
than  nominal,  that  a  Restoration  could  be  legally  effected.1 
A  Coup  d'Etat  might  be  possible,  but  that  would  not  accord 
with  the  Royalist  plans,  for  the  Monarchist  deputies  did  not 
desire  to  see  the  Assembly  swept  away.  Too  many  of  them 
might  then  subside  into  nothingness,  and  they  wished  to  retain 
their  seats  and  power,  and  organise  the  new  Monarchy  in  con- 
junction with  the  King.  To  effect  that  purpose  it  was  wise, 
then,  to  make  arrangements  which  might  win  over  a  certain 
number  of  waverers — arrangements  which  would  impart  some 
appearance  of  Liberalism  to  the  desired  regime. 

There  was  a  permanent  Committee  of  the  Assembly,  estab- 
lished, in  a  spirit  of  distrust,  in  Thiers's  time,  for  the  purpose 
of  watching  the  action  of  the  Executive,  and  protecting  the 
Assembly's  rights  and  interests  during  its  vacations.  This 
Permanent  Committee  was  composed  chiefly  of  Royalists  who 
made  it  their  business  to  favour  the  cause  of  the  Restoration, 
for  which  purpose  they  selected  from  their  number  a  Committee 
of  Nine,  composed  as  follows :  Extreme  Right  (i.e.  strict 
Legitimists)  MM.  de  Tarteron  and  Combier ;  Moderate  Right 
(Royalists  generally)  the  Baron  de  Larcy  and  M.  Baragnon ; 
Right  Centre  (Liberal  Royalists,  chiefly  Orleanists)  the  Duke 
d'Audiffret-Pasquier  and  M.  Callet;  and  the  so-called  Chan- 
garnier  Group  (composed  of  Royalists  of  various  shades  with 
distinctive  views  on  various  questions)  General  Changarnier, 
Count  Daru,  and  M.  Chesnelong.  Such  were  the  men  who 
undertook  to  bring  back  the  King. 

The  member  whom  they  chose  to  preside  over  their  delibera- 
tions was  Changarnier,  at  whose  residence  they  usually  met. 
It  was  he,  it  will  be  remembered,  who  had  proposed  MacMahon 

1  The  Left  Centre  included  109  members.  There  were  also  143  Re- 
publicans (Left),  77  Radicals  (Extreme  Left),  and  about  40  Bonapartists. 


THE  ROYALIST  FUSION  149 

for  the  Presidency  of  the  Republic,1  but  that,  of  course,  had 
been  done  to  further  the  cause  of  the  Restoration,  to  which  the 
General  now  applied  himself.     Born  towards  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  Nicolas  Changarnier  was  at  this  time  nearly 
eighty   years   of  age,  but   nobody   would   have  imagined    it. 
Short  and  slight  of  build,  he  wore  on  his  head  a  beautiful  curly 
flaxen  wig,  and  about  his  body  a  pair  of  stays  which  gave  him 
a  wasp-like  waist.     He  startled  people  by  his  juvenile  neckties, 
his  fashionable  light  brown  coats,  and  his  pearl  grey  trousers, 
which  were  strapped  to  his  boots.     As  a  military  man  he  had 
made  a  reputation  in  Algeria,  notably  by  his  retreat  with  a 
small  force  from  Constantine  after  a  vain  attempt  to  take  that 
town  in  1836.     As  a  politician  he  had  come  to  the  front  during 
the  Second  Republic,  when,  however,  he  was  thoroughly  fooled 
by  Louis  Napoleon,  who  had  him  arrested  at  the  Coup  d'etat. 
In   1870,  however,   Changarnier  made  his  submission  to  the 
Emperor,  went  with  him  to  the  Saarbruck  affair,  when  the 
Imperial  Prince  received  the  "  baptism  of  fire,1'  and  though  not 
exercising  any  actual  command,  remained  with  Bazaine  during 
the  siege  of  Metz — in  which  connection  we  shall  have  to  speak 
of  him  again.     His  personal  appearance  bespoke  his  character, 
he  was  insufferably  vain  and  pretentious,  profoundly  convinced 
that  he  was  the  greatest  military  and  political  authority  in  the 
world,  a  conviction  which  imparted  haughtiness  and  pomposity 
to  all  his  utterances.2    Contradiction  irritated  him  to  a  supreme 
degree,  and  to  see  him  raging  and  fuming  was  a  sight  for  the 
gods.      Curiously  enough,  although  the  Parliamentarians   of 
the  Second  Republic   had  bitterly  rued  their  trust   in   him, 
he   acquired  no  little  authority  among   the   majority  of  the 
Assembly  of  1871.     This  was  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  exceeding 
pushfulness  which  he  exhibited  until  his  very  last  days,  and  to 
the  circumstance  that  generals  were  rare  among  the  Royalist 
deputies ;  the  only  others,  indeed,  whom  we  recall,  being  the 
Duke  d'Aumale  and  a  certain  General   du  Temple,  who  was, 
however,  far  more  interested  in  the  welfare  of  the  Pope  than 
in  that  of  France. 

A  certain  member  of  the  Committee  of  Nine,  a  M.  Chesne- 

1  Curiously  enough,  MacMahon,  while  a  captain,  was  for  a  short  time 
aide-de-camp  to  Changarnier  in  Algeria. 

2  There  is  a  story  to  the  effect  that,  on  calling  on  Thiers  one  day,  he  sent 
in  a  visiting-card  on  which,  after  his  name  "  Le  General  Changarnier,"  he 
had  pencilled  the  words  :  "  who  is  not  yet  a  Marshal  of  France." 


150  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

long,  a  man  of  unctuous  manners,  who  had  made  a  large  fortune 
as  a  dealer  in  pigs,  and  hoped  to  die  a  Duke,  persuaded  his 
colleagues  that  he  was  the  best  person  whom  they  could  choose 
to  negotiate  with  the  Count  de  Chambord,  and  obtain  Liberal 
concessions  from  him.  The  moment  was  favourable,  for  the 
Count  had  just  issued  another  manifesto,  protesting  this  time 
against  the  rumours  that  he  wished  to  revive  the  ancien  regime. 
That  being  so,  he  would  doubtless  be  willing  to  enter  into 
suitable  political  arrangements.  As  for  the  question  of  the 
flag,  Chesnelong  had  conceived  the  brilliant  idea  of  a  com- 
promise between  the  Royal  Standard  of  former  times  and  the 
Tricolour,  that  is  to  say  the  white  section  of  the  latter  might, 
in  his  opinion,  be  delicately  sprinkled  with  jleurs-de-lys.  In 
the  autumn  of  1873,  then,  Chesnelong  repaired  to  Salzburg, 
where  the  Count  de  Chambord  was  staying.  Three  Royalist 
members  of  the  Assembly,  MM.  de  Carayon  La  Tour,  de 
Cazenove,  and  Lucien  Brun,  in  addition  to  M.  de  Dreux-Breze, 
were  with  the  Pretender  at  the  time.  Negotiations  followed, 
and  when  Chesnelong  returned  to  France  and  reported  progress 
to  the  Committee  of  the  Nine,  the  Restoration  was  regarded 
by  the  plotters  as  almost  accomplished.  However,  a  certain 
Savary,  who  had  accompanied  Chesnelong  as  secretary,  drew 
up  a  proces-verbal  of  the  whole  affair,  and,  without  submitting 
it  to  his  patron,  sent  it  to  the  press,  by  which  means  France 
was  informed  that  the  King  would  impose  no  charter  on  the 
country,  but  that  one  would  be  freely  discussed  and  decided 
between  his  Majesty  and  the  Assembly,  when  the  latter  had 
recognised  the  Royal  Hereditary  Right.  Further,  it  was 
stated  that  the  Tricolour  flag  would  be  maintained,  and  only 
be  modified  by  agreement  between  the  King  and  the  Legislative 
Power. 

Suddenly,  however,  another  proces-verbal  of  the  negotia- 
tions appeared,  and  seemed  to  indicate  that  the  Count  de 
Chambord  had  by  no  means  gone  so  far  as  the  Savary  report 
had  led  one  to  imagine.  Perplexity  ensued,  but  on  October 
27,  the  Count  himself  addressed  a  very  bitter  open  letter  to 
Chesnelong,  in  which  he  declared  that  he  would  not  renounce 
the  banner  of  Arques  and  Ivry,  and  protested  against  the 
conditions  which  it  was  attempted  to  impose  on  him  in 
advance.  Indeed,  he  regarded  the  preliminary  guarantees  he 
was  asked  for  as  an  insult  to  his  honour,  as  a  humiliation 


THE  ROYALIST  FUSION  151 

which  would  lessen  both  his  authority  and  his  prestige.  This 
letter  had  much  the  effect  of  a  bomb,  it  spread  dismay  among 
the  moderate  Royalists  at  the  moment  when  they  imagined 
that  victory  was  within  their  grasp. 

It  appears  that  at  the  interviews  with  Chesnelong,  the 
Count  had  really  declared  that  he  would  never  accept  the 
Tricolour,  though  he  was  content  that  it  should  be  retained 
until  he  took  formal  possession  of  power.  For  the  rest,  he 
"  reserved  to  himself  the  right  of  bringing  forward  a  solution 
compatible  with  his  honour,  and  of  a  nature  to  satisfy  the 
Assembly  and  the  nation."  That  solution,  according  to  those 
who  were  most  intimate  with  the  Count  at  that  period,  would 
appear  to  have  been  none  at  all.  He  relied,  says  M.  de  Dreux- 
Breze,  on  his  prestige,  on  the  enthusiasm  of  the  nation  at  being 
saved  from  great  peril  by  his  accession  to  the  throne,  which 
prestige  and  which  enthusiasm  would  before  long  induce  the 
country  to  accept,  purely  and  simply,  the  banner  of  its  King. 

He  clung  to  that  White  Flag,  nothing  could  induce  him  to 
relinquish  it.  In  his  letter  to  Chesnelong  he  asked  what  his 
great  ancestor  Henri  IV.  would  have  said  had  he  been  asked 
to  give  up  the  flag  of  Ivry.  He  forgot  that  the  Bearnais  made 
a  far  greater  sacrifice,  that  of  changing  his  religion,  in  order 
to  secure  the  throne.  When  even  Pope  Pius  IX.,  who  naturally 
desired  to  see  Royalty  restored  in  France,  wrote  to  the  Count 
suggesting  that  he  might  make  some  concession  on  the  question 
of  the  flag,  he  received  a  non  possumus  for  his  answer,  followed, 
however,  by  a  visit  from  M.  Henry  de  Vanssay  who  was  sent 
expressly  to  Rome  to  explain  why  the  Count  adhered  to  his 
original  views.  The  fact  seems  to  be  that  apart  from  all 
sentimental  considerations,  the  Pretender  felt  that,  if  he  gave 
way  on  that  point,  he  would  be  forced  to  give  way  on  many 
others.  He  wished  the  nation  to  take  him  purely  and  simply 
on  trust ;  he  thought  it  horrible  that  any  conditions  whatever 
should  be  imposed  on  him,  when  it  was  the  duty  of  his  subjects 
to  rely  on  his  magnanimity.  He  said,  somewhat  later,  to 
M.  de  Dreux-Breze,  "If  I  had  made  all  the  concessions, 
accepted  all  the  conditions  which  were  asked  of  me,  I  might 
have  recovered  the  crown,  but  I  should  not  have  remained  on 
the  throne  six  months." 

While  it  is  not  true  that  the  Countess  de  Chambord  pre- 
vailed on  her  husband  to  take  up  an    "  impossible "  position 


152  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

because  she  did  not  wish  to  reign,  it  is  certain  that  she 
impressed  on  him  the  necessity  of  maintaining  a  firm  attitude 
and  making  no  surrender  to  "  the  Revolution."  In  that  respect 
she  gave  rein  to  her  anti-Liberal  views,  and  her  marked  dislike 
for  the  Orleanist  party  and  its  Princes,  in  whom,  she  said,  she 
would  never  be  able  to  place  any  trust. 

In  their  embarrassing  position,  and  in  order  to  gain  time, 
the  Royalists  sought  various  expedients  of  a  nature  to  prevent 
the  definitive  constitution  of  the  Republic,  and  to  leave  the 
door  open  for  a  Restoration.  For  instance,  Changarnier 
suggested  a  kind  of  interregnum,  and  offered  the  Prince  de 
Joinville  the  position  of  Lieutenant-General  of  the  Kingdom, 
which,  however,  the  Prince  immediately  refused,  with  the 
approval  of  the  Count  de  Paris.  Then,  also  to  gain  time, 
rally  the  now  disunited  Monarchists,  and  reassure  the  country, 
which  was  becoming  more  and  more  anxious,  it  was  proposed 
to  re-adjust  MacMahon's  position.  He  had  been  appointed 
President  of  the  Republic,  but  for  how  long  nobody  could 
exactly  say,  and  this  alone  was  a  cause  of  much  unrest  in 
French  commerce,  industry,  and  business  generally.  The  first 
suggestion  was  that  the  Marshal's  powers  should  be  confirmed  for 
ten  years,  in  which  event  there  would  have  been  a  Decennate,  but 
that  being  regarded  in  some  quarters  as  too  long  a  period,  it  was 
agreed  that  one  of  seven  years  should  be  allotted.  The  Marshal 
himself  precipitated  this  solution,  demanding  that  the  duration 
of  his  powers  should  be  speedily  fixed,  for  he  was  beginning  to 
feel  the  uncertainty  of  his  position,  and  his  Ministers,  disturbed 
by  the  restless  state  of  the  country  and  the  complaints  of 
financiers,  manufacturers,  and  merchants,  supported  his  demand. 
Among  the  Royalists  generally,  however,  the  voting  of  a 
Septennate  was  intended  as  an  expedient.  Few  imagined  that 
the  Marshal  would  take  the  Septennate  seriously,  as  he  did ; 
most  inclined  to  the  view  that  arrangements  would  be  arrived 
at  by  which  the  King  would  before  long  secure  his  own. 

But  his  Majesty  in  partibus  was  also  becoming  anxious. 
He  did  not  wish  the  Restoration  to  be  delayed,  although 
he  retained  his  former  views  on  the  flag  and  other  matters. 
Perhaps,  by  repairing  to  France,  he  might  be  able  to  settle 
everything.  Passing,  therefore,  through  Switzerland,  he  reached 
Paris  on  the  evening  of  November  8.  Count  de  Sainte 
Suzanne  was  waiting  for  him  at  the  terminus,  and  after  driving 


THE  THRONE  LOST  153 

to  the  Tuileries,  in  order  that  the  Prince  might  view  the  ruins 
of  the  palace  where  his  ancestors  had  reigned,  and  where  he 
himself  had  first  seen  the  light,  they  betook  themselves  to 
No.  5  in  the  Rue  St.  Louis  at  Versailles — a  house  taken  by 
Count  Henry  de  Vanssay,  whose  wife  officiated  as  hostess. 
Count  de  Blacas  and  M.  de  Monti  de  Reze  were  also  in 
attendance. 

There  is  evidence  that  the  Count  de  Chambord  had  come 
to  France  in  the  hope  of  ensuring  by  his  presence  his  immediate 
accession  to  the  throne.  It  has  often  been  asserted  that  a  gala 
carriage  was  expressly  built  for  his  triumphal  entry  into  Paris ; 
and,  perhaps,  as  such  a  carriage  is  said  to  have  been  used  at 
the  wedding  of  Prince  George  of  Greece  and  Princess  Marie 
Bonaparte  in  1907,  there  may  be  truth  in  the  story.  We 
think,  however,  that  as  there  were  many  gala  carriages  at 
Trianon,  including  that  of  the  coronation  of  Charles  X. 
(restored  by  the  Empire  and  in  excellent  condition),  the  Count 
de  Chambord  can  personally  have  given  no  orders  for  the 
building  of  a  new  one.  That  must  have  been  due  to  some 
over-zealous  Royalists  acting  on  their  own  account.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Count  came  provided  with  a  general's  uniform, 
and  M.  de  Dreux-Breze,  who  had  previously  purchased  both 
a  general's  belt,  and  a  star  of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  in  which 
(as  in  Restoration  days)  the  central  eagle  was  replaced  by  a 
fleur-de-lys,  took  those  articles  to  Versailles,  in  order  that 
they  might  be  in  readiness,  as  well  as  several  lists  of  function- 
aries, new  prefects,  new  judges,  and  so  forth,  which  had  been 
prepared  a  considerable  time  previously,  in  order  that  the 
Monarchy  might  be  installed  almost  as  soon  as  it  was 
proclaimed.1 

The  Count  de  Chambord  wished,  in  the  first  place,  to  have 
a  secret  interview  with  Marshal  MacMahon,  to  whom  therefore 
he  despatched  his  counsellor  and  chamberlain  M.  de  Blacas. 
Dreux-Breze,  however,  foresaw  that  the  interview  would  not 
be  granted.  Indeed  MacMahon  immediately,  peremptorily, 
absolutely  refused  the  request.  He  states  in  one  of  the  few 
published  fragments  of  his  memoirs  that  he  would  have  been 
prepared  to  accept  the  Count  de  Chambord  as  his  sovereign 
if  the  Count's  rights  had  been  recognised  by  France,  but, 
having  been  elected  President  of  the  Republic  by  the  nation's 
1  All  this  is  admitted  by  Dreux-Breze  himself  in  his  writings. 


154  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

representatives,  he  could  not  himself  impose  another  form  of 
Government  on  the  country.  With  respect  to  the  flag  the 
Marshal's  views  are  well  known.  "If,"  said  he,  "the  White 
Flag  were  set  up  against  the  Tricolour,  the  chassepots  would 
go  off  of  their  own  accord.*" 

The  Count  de  Chambord,  on  his  side,  when  speaking  to  his 
followers,  declared  that  it  had  never  been  his  desire  to  impose 
his  will  on  MacMahon.  He  had  simply  wished,  said  he,  to 
confer  with  the  Marshal  generally,  and  if  the  latter  had 
regarded  the  position  as  hopeful  for  the  restoration  of  royalty, 
he  would  have  concerted  with  him  the  measures  which  might 
be  adopted.  We  feel,  however,  that,  without  tempting  the 
Marshal,  the  Count  intended  to  appeal  to  his  loyalty  and  his 
Royalist  family  traditions.  In  any  case  the  failure  of  M.  de 
Blacas'  mission  reduced  the  Count  to  despondency ;  all  his 
plans  had  hinged  on  an  interview  with  MacMahon,  and  that 
interview  being  refused,  he  could  do  nothing.  It  may  be 
added  that  there  is  no  truth  in  the  story  that,  feverishly 
impatient  respecting  the  result  of  the  mission,  he  waited  out 
of  doors,  near  the  Presidency,  while  M.  de  Blacas  was  with  the 
Marshal.  Nor  is  it  true,  as  asserted  by  M.  de  Falioux  in  his 
memoirs,  that  on  the  evening  when  the  Septennate  was  voted 
by  the  Assembly,  the  Count,  wrapped  in  his  mantle,  awaited 
the  issue  pacing  up  and  down  in  front  of  the  statue  of  his 
ancestor,  Louis  XIV.,  in  the  courtyard  of  the  palace  of  Versailles. 
On  each  occasion  he  remained  quietly  in  the  Rue  St.  Louis. 

After  refusing  to  see  the  Count,  MacMahon,  it  appears, 
informed  M.  de  Blacas  that  he  was  willing  to  take  all  necessary 
steps  to  ensure  his  security  during  his  sojourn  at  Versailles. 
At  the  same  time  he  made  no  inquiry  as  to  where  he  might  be 
staying.  In  that  connection  the  archives  of  the  Prefecture  of 
Police  disclose  the  fact  that  the  authorities  were  quite  aware 
of  the  Count's  presence  in  the  Rue  St.  Louis.  The  Septennate 
was  voted  on  the  evening  of  November  19,  seven  fervent 
Legitimists  declaring  against  it.  By  the  Republicans  it  was 
generally  accepted,  as  they  felt  that  it  at  least  maintained 
existing  institutions,  and  might  even  serve  as  a  check  to 
Royalist  enterprise.  Such,  indeed,  proved  to  be  the  case,  in 
spite  of  all  the  unrest  of  ensuing  years.  On  the  morrow  of  the 
vote  the  Count  de  Chambord  took  his  departure.  He  had 
arrived  at  Versailles  hoping  for  the  triumph  of  a  Bosworth 


THE  THRONE  LOST  155 

field,  but  he   had  encountered  the  bitterness  of  a  Culloden. 
He  never  again  set  foot  in  France. 

Let  us  now  go  back  a  little.  While  all  these  intrigues 
were  in  progress  a  great  event  had  happened.  Thanks  to  the 
skilful  measures  devised  by  Thiers  and  his  coadjutors,  the 
ready  response  of  the  national  purse,  and  the  help  tendered  in 
all  confidence  by  friendly  foreign  nations,  France  had  paid,  to 
the  uttermost  farthing,  the  great  war  indemnity  levied  upon 
her  by  the  Germans,  the  interest  which  had  to  be  added  to 
the  capital  sum,  and  the  cost  of  keeping  the  German  troops 
quartered  on  various  parts  of  her  territory.  One  district  after 
another  had  been  freed  of  that  burden,  the  necessary  instal- 
ments of  the  indemnity  being  frequently  paid  at  earlier  dates 
than  had  been  thought  possible.  At  last,  on  August  1,  the 
Germans  evacuated  Nancy  and  Belfort ;  then,  the  final  instal- 
ment being  discharged  on  September  5,  they  marched  home- 
ward from  Verdun,  and  France  was  free.  MacMahon's  message 
to  the  Assembly  in  that  connection  was  somewhat  meagre. 
His  Ministers  did  not  wish  to  trumpet  the  praises  of  Thiers : 
but  Xram^^m  was  right  when  on  an  historic  occasion  —  the£a*«$«f* 
early  departure  of  the  Germans  being  ascribed  to  the  good 
work  of  the  majority  of  the  Assembly — he  pointed  to  where 
the  little  man  sat,  and  exclaimed  in  stentorian  accents  :  "  There 
is  the  Liberator  of  the  Territory  ! " 

In  the  latter  part  of  1873,  amid  the  debacle  of  the  Royalists, 
a  severe  blow  fell  also  on  the  partisans  of  Imperialism  who  had 
already  lost  their  Emperor  at  the  beginning  of  the  year. 
Among  the  many  stirring  proclamations  issued  by  Gambetta 
during  the  war  with  Germany,  none  had  been  more  striking 
than  the  one  which  began  as  follows : — 

Frenchmen !  raise  your  souls  and  your  resolution  to  the  height 
of  the  terrible  perils  bursting  upon  the  country  !  It  still  depends 
on  us  to  outweary  evil  fortune,  and  to  show  the  world  what  a  great 
nation  is  when  it  is  determined  not  to  perish,  and  when  its  courage 
rises  even  in  the  midst  of  catastrophes.  Metz  has  capitulated.  A 
commander  on  whom  France  relied,  even  after  Mexico,  has  just 
deprived  the  country  in  danger  of  nearly  two  hundred  thousand 
of  its  defenders.  Marshal  Bazaine  has  betrayed.  He  has  become 
the  accomplice  of  the  invader.  Contemptuous  of  the  honour  of 
the  army  of  which  he  had  charge,  he  has  delivered  up,  without 
even  making  a  supreme  effort,  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
combatants,  twenty  thousand  wounded,  his  rifles,  his  guns,  his  flags, 
and  the  strongest  citadel  of  France — Metz,  a  virgin  until  his  time, 


156  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

unsullied  by  the  foreigner.1     Such  a  crime  is  even   beyond   the 
punishment  of  justice. 

When  the  war  was  over,  those  who  wished  to  bring  the 
Marshal  to  account  for  the  capitulation  met  with  strenuous 
opposition  in  high  places.  Bazaine  was  freely  called  a  traitor 
in  Radical  newspapers,  in  cafes  and  wineshops,  and  in  the 
streets,  but  for  most  members  of  the  National  Assembly  he 
remained  "a  great,  if  unfortunate,  warrior.'"  One  day,  soon 
after  the  Commune,  Changarnier  warmly  defended  him  in  the 
Assembly,  ascribing  the  attacks  upon  his  reputation  to  the 
jealousy  of  subalterns  anxious  to  increase  their  importance,  and 
Thiers,  who  was  present  on  the  occasion,  expressed  his  pleasure 
that  Changarnier  should  have  spoken  so  fittingly  of  "  one  of  our 
great  men  of  war." 

Thiers's  attitude  was  due  in  part  to  the  circumstance  that 
he  had  never  believed  in  the  advisability  of  prolonging  hostilities 
after  Sedan.  He  had  even  blamed  Gambetta's  proclamation 
about  Bazaine  at  the  time  when  it  was  issued,  and  with  charac- 
teristic obstinacy  he  repeatedly  refused  to  be  enlightened 
respecting  the  Marshal,  probably  because  he  did  not  wish  to 
have  to  change  his  views.  He  knew,  moreover,  that  the  army 
was  still  full  of  Bonapartist  officers,  and  shrank  from  any 
course  which  might,  to  his  thinking,  indispose  the  military 
element  towards  the  young  Republic.  As  for  Changarnier,  his 
defence  of  Bazaine  sprang  from  the  fact  that  he  had  been 
personally  concerned  in  the  capitulation  of  Metz,  having  been 
the  first  General  sent  to  the  German  headquarters  to  treat  for 
the  surrender,  and  having  exercised  no  little  authority  in 
preventing  Clinchant  and  other  officers  from  a  "  forlorn  hope  " 
sortie,  in  defiance  of  Bazaine  and  the  other  Marshals.  If,  then, 
Bazaine  were  placed  upon  his  trial,  the  role  which  he,  Chan- 
garnier, had  played  in  a  number  of  incidents  would  be  made 
public,  and  this  the  General  was  anxious  to  prevent. 

The  Parisians,  even  those  who  called  Bazaine  a  traitor,  had 
at  first  very  little  knowledge  of  the  real  facts  of  the  capitulation 
of  Metz.  They  had  formed  but  a  vague  idea  of  the  mysterious 
Regnier's  intervention  on  behalf  of  the  Empire,  and  the  missions 
of  General  Boyer  to  Versailles  and  England.  But  sudden 
enlightenment  came  with  the  publication  of  a  book  by  an 
officer  who  had  served  under  Bazaine  in  the  beleaguered  strong- 
1  Nunquam  polluta  was  the  city's  motto. 


BAZAINE'S  TRIAL  157 

hold.1  Quoted  by  the  press  throughout  France,  this  work 
influenced  public  opinion  generally,  though  Thiers  still  refused 
to  countenance  any  prosecution.  He  was,  indeed,  more  than 
ever  afraid  of  sowing  disaffection  in  the  army.  He  held  that 
Bazaine's  fellow  Marshals  and  a  number  of  Generals  would 
certainly  rally  round  him,  some  out  of  friendship,  others 
because  they  might  have  fears  respecting  their  own  responsi- 
bility in  the  Metz  affair.  As  military  pronunciamientos  might 
well  imperil  the  Republic,  it  was  best  to  let  the  Bazaine 
matter  rest. 

But  if  that  were  Thiers's  view,  an  important  circumstance 
prevented  it  from  prevailing.  The  French  Military  Code 
specifies  that  there  must  be  an  inquiry  into  every  capitulation 
which  takes  place.  There  had  been  several  capitulations  in 
1870-71 — those  of  Paris,  Toul,  Strasburg,  Schlestadt,  Neuf 
Brisach,  Verdun,  Peronne,  Thionville,  Montmedy,  Phalsburg, 
and  Mezieres,  besides  Metz — and  the  appointment  of  a  Court  of 
Inquiry  into  all  of  them  became  necessary.  The  law,  indeed, 
was  imperative  on  the  subject,  and  there  was  no  possibility  of 
making  any  exception  in  favour  of  Metz.  Bonapartists,  how- 
ever, were  at  first  pleased  to  see  that  the  presidency  of  this 
court  was  allotted  to  a  man  on  whose  sympathies  they  imagined 
they  could  rely.  This  was  the  venerable  Marshal  Baraguey 
d'Hilliers,  a  fine  old  one-armed  and  one-eyed  relic,  who  had 
served  France  since  the  days  of  the  first  Napoleon.  Age,  how- 
ever, had  not  weakened  him  morally.  He  still  retained  much 
of  the  inflexible  spirit  which  the  great  Captain  had  infused 
into  his  officers,  and  no  political  consideration  could  influence 
him  in  matters  of  military  duty.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that, 
to  the  amazement  of  Thiers  and  the  consternation  of  the 
partisans  of  Bazaine,  the  Court  of  Inquiry,  under  old  Baraguey's 
direction,  censured  the  capitulation  of  Metz  severely.  Its 
judgment,  delivered  in  August  1872,  set  forth  its  opinion  that 
Marshal  Bazaine  had  "  caused  the  loss  of  an  army  of  150,000 
men  and  the  stronghold  of  Metz,  that  the  entire  responsibility 
was  his,  and  that,  as  commander-in-chief,  he  had  not  done 
what  military  duty  prescribed."  Further,  the  court  blamed 
the  Marshal  "  for  having  held  with  the  enemy  an  intercourse 
which  only  ended  in  a  capitulation  unexampled  in  history," 
and  for  having  "  delivered  to  the  enemy  the  colours  which  he 
1  Metz,  campagne  et  ntgociatiom,  by  Colonel  d'Andlau. 


158  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

might  have,  and  ought  to  have  destroyed,  thereby  inflicting  a 
crowning  humiliation  on  brave  soldiers  whose  honour  it  was  his 
duty  to  protect." 

Such  a  judgment  could  have  but  one  result.  It  is  true,  as 
General  du  Barail  recalls  in  his  Souvenirs,  that  Bazaine  promptly 
applied  to  be  placed  upon  his  trial,  but  whether  he  had  applied 
or  not  a  prosecution  had  now  become  inevitable.  From  the 
foregoing  it  will  be  seen  that  Bazaine's  trial  was  in  no  sense  a 
political  move,  that  it  was  brought  about,  indeed,  simply  by 
the  military  laws,  applied  by  a  distinguished  old  Marshal  of 
France,  a  soldier  who  had  served  both  Empires  and  the  inter- 
vening Monarchies  with  high  credit  and  integrity.  The  long 
investigation,  which  preceded  the  actual  trial,  was  also  con- 
ducted by  an  officer  of  lofty  character,  General  Serre  de  Riviere, 
while  Pourcet,  who  prosecuted,  was  an  equally  high-minded,  as 
well  as  a  most  able  man. 

It  was  on  October  6,  1873,  that  the  trial  began  at  Trianon, 
lasting  until  December  10.  The  Court  was  composed  of  seven 
general  officers,  reinforced  by  three  supplementary  ones  in  case 
any  of  the  seven  should  fall  ill  or  die  during  the  proceedings, 
in  which  case  one  or  other  of  the  supplementary  judges  was  to 
step  into  the  vacant  place.  The  precaution  was  not  unadvisable 
as  several  members  of  the  tribunal  were  of  advanced  years — the 
youngest  being  the  Duke  d'Aumale  who  presided,  and  who  was 
then  in  his  fifty-second  year.  His  colleague,  Lallemand,  was 
little  older,  but  the  majority  were  well  past  sixty,  in  fact 
General  de  la  Motte-Rouge  had  entered  his  seventy-first  year, 
a  fact  which  his  still  abundant  and  carefully  dyed  hair  abso- 
lutely failed  to  conceal.  All  the  judges,  however,  were  officers 
of  ability,  men  of  reputation  in  their  time,  and  as  with  the 
exception  of  the  Duke  d'Aumale  they  had  all  served  the  Second 
Empire,  the  prisoner,  whose  imperialist  tendencies  were  well 
known,  could  not  claim  that  he  was  judged  by  a  politically 
hostile  court.1 

Bazaine  was  a  man  of  striking  appearance.  He  was  not, 
perhaps,  very  tall ;  but  the  floor  of  the  "  dock  "  in  which  he  sat 
being  higher  than  that  of  the  court  generally,  he  seemed  to 
tower  over  everybody  else  directly  he  stood  up.     His  corpulence 

1  One  of  them,  General  de  Chabaud-Latour,  certainly  belonged  to  an  old 
Royalist  family,  but  he  had  accepted  the  Empire,  and  held  command  under 
it.     He  was  an  authority  on  fortifications. 


BAZAINE'S  TRIAL  159 

was  amazing.  General  Guiod,  one  of  the  judges,  had  the 
reputation  of  being  the  fattest  officer  in  the  army,  but  his  adi- 
posity was  as  nothing  beside  the  Marshal's.  The  latter  had 
always  been  inclined  to  stoutness,  but  since  the  war  his  girth 
had  greatly  increased,  and  his  tunic  was  strained  to  the  utmost. 
One  wondered  if  this  man,  who  seemed  to  weigh  some  twenty 
stone,  would  have  been  able  to  get  into  the  saddle  had  occasion 
required,  or  whether,  if  he  ever  reassumed  command,  he  would 
have  to  drive  about  in  a  carriage,  as  Marshal  Pelissier — shorter 
but  equally  stout — was  compelled  to  do  even  during  the  siege 
of  Sebastopol.  A  large  bullet  head  was  set  on  Bazaine's  bulky 
frame.  On  either  side  of  the  small  but  well-formed  chin,  from 
which  depended  a  little  tuft  of  beard,  the  fleshy  cheeks  drooped 
over  a  big  bull  neck.  A  few  grey  locks  still  strayed  across  the 
cranium,  whose  baldness  lent  height  to  the  forehead.  The 
hair  on  either  side  was  cut  very  short.  The  dark  and  bushy 
eyebrows  remained  arched,  although  they  were  contracted,  three 
deep  vertical  lines  appearing  above  the  short,  aquiline  nose. 
The  lids  of  the  dark,  quick  eyes  seemed  to  be  swollen,  as  if  the 
glands  were  distended ;  the  "  crow's  feet "  were  most  pro- 
nounced. Probably  the  best  feature  was  the  mouth — small,  but 
with  fairly  full  lips,  the  upper  one,  which  an  unpretentious 
drooping  moustache  did  not  conceal,  having  the  curves  of 
Cupid's  bow,  while  the  under  one  was  somewhat  salient  and 
sensual.  The  jaws  were  powerful,  and,  on  the  whole,  the  lower 
part  of  the  face  suggested  a  certain  pride  and  doggedness, 
which  contrasted  with  the  somewhat  anxious,  puzzled  ex- 
pression imparted  to  the  upper  part  by  the  contraction  of  the 
brows.  The  hands  were  remarkably  fat  and  flabby;  and  on 
the  whole  the  Marshal's  appearance,  his  bulk  and  general  un- 
wieldiness,  suggested  little  possibility  of  his  ever  making  his 
escape  from  a  place  of  confinement  by  lowering  himself  with  a 
rope  from  a  height  of  a  hundred  feet  or  so,  though  this  is 
what  he  is  said  to  have  done  afterwards  at  the  He  Ste. 
Marguerite. 

The  trial  was  of  the  most  searching  character,  and  although 
a  few  points  were  not  fully  elucidated,  owing  to  the  reticence  of 
certain  witnesses,  concerned  for  their  own  share  of  responsi- 
bility, no  impartial  person  can  rise  from  a  perusal  of  the 
records  without  feeling  convinced  that  the  Marshal  was  guilty, 
that  he  had  indeed   failed  to  do  all  he  might  have  done  to 


160  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

escape  from  Metz,  that  he  had  repeatedly  and  grossly  deceived 
the  commanders  under  his  orders,  and  that  he  had  invariably 
subordinated  the  interests  of  his  country  to  those  of  the  Im- 
perialist party  to  which  he  belonged. 

We  cannot  attempt  here  to  analyse  the  records  tensive 
and  minute  as  they  are,  extending  to  thousands  of  p  We 

can  mention  only  a  few  points.     One  of  Bazaine's  ^nts 

was  that,  shut  up  in  Metz,  closely  invested  by  the 
Prince  Frederick  Charles  of  Prussia,  he  was  ignorai 
true  state  of  France  after  Sedan,  in  which  respect 
information  was  derived  from  the  Germans,  who  deho  y 

deceived  him.  That  Frederick  Charles  .and  Bismarck  bam- 
boozled him,  played  a  game  of  cat  and  mouse  with  him,  is  true 
enough.  It  was  peremptorily  established  at  the  trial,  however, 
that  in  spite  of  the  investment,  certain  means  of  communica- 
tion with  outside  existed,  and  that  he  took  no  steps  to  avail 
himself  of  them.  Deliberately  concealing  his  earlier  underha  1 
intercourse  with  the  Germans  from  his  Generals,  he  neverthe- 
less communicated  to  them,  as  real  and  authentic,  the  "  news  * 
which  he  derived  from  German  sources — news  which  pictured 
France  in  a  state  of  anarchy,  without  any  recognised  Govern- 
ment or  any  organised  forces,  news  which,  on  one  occasion, 
described  Paris  as  being  actually  occupied  by  the  invaders ! 
The  Military  Code  contains  a  strict  warning  to  officers  to  dis- 
credit intelligence  from  hostile  quarters ;  if  they  act  upon  it, 
they  do  so  at  their  peril.  But  Bazaine  did  not  hesitate.  He 
deliberately  applied  to  Prince  Frederick  Charles  for  "news," 
and  utilised  every  lie  which  that  Prince  impudently  retailed  to 
him,  to  incline  his  Generals  to  his  personal  views. 

He  was  in  part  incited  to  the  course  he  took  by  a  scoundrel 
named  Regnier,  who,  passing  through  the  German  lines,  pre- 
tended to  come  to  him  on  behalf  of  the  Empress  Eugenie, 
which  was  not  the  case,  though  there  are  grounds  for  believing 
that  Regnier  acted  originally  at  the  instigation  of  certain 
prominent  Bonapartists,  and  had  relations  also  with  Count 
Bernstorff,  the  German  ambassador  in  England.  But  a  time 
came  when  Bazaine  sent  his  aide-de-camp,  General  Boyer,  to 
the  German  headquarters  at  Versailles — Boyer,  his  ame  damnde, 
who,  as  shown  by  General  Douay's  correspondence,  had 
already  in  Mexico  dabbled  in  the  most  scandalous  transactions 
on  his  patron's  behalf.     And  Boyer,  who  ought  to  have  been 


BAZAINE'S  TRIAL  161 

placed  at  Bazaine's  side  in  the  dock,  repeated  on  his  return  to 

Metz  all  the  mendacious  stories  which  the  Germans  had  told 

him  at  Versailles.     France,  according  to  him,  was  in  a  state  of 

anarchy.     Yet    he   well    knew    the   truth.     Though    he   had 

travell   j  tunder  German  escort  to  Versailles,  he  had  obtained 

indep        mt  information  (notably  from  the  Mayor  of  Bar-le- 

Du  ;  he  was  aware  that  the  National  Defence  Government 

mised  throughout  the  country,  and  that  both  in  Paris 

rtie  provinces  it  was  making  every  eifort  to  hold  the 

it  bay.     But  it  was  not  Boyer's  desire  to  enlighten 

I  ds  Canrobert  and  Lebceuf  and  all  the  Generals  of  the 

army  respecting  the  true  state  of  affairs.     His  purpose  was  to 

aid  and  abet  his  patron  Bazaine  in  his  system  of  deceit  and  his 

plan  for  restoring  the  Empire.1 

The  negotiations  conducted  by  Regnier  and  Boyer  tended 
to  that  issue.  One  document  alone  suffices  to  establish 
F  zaine's  guilt  in  that  respect — the  memorandum  which  Boyer 
carried  on  his  behalf  to  Bismarck.  We  need,  indeed,  only 
quote  a  part  of  it : 

At  the  moment  when  society  is  threatened  by  the  attitude 
assumed  by  a  violent  party,  whose  tendencies  cannot  lead  to  a 
solution  such  as  well-minded  people  seek,  the  Marshal  commanding 
the  Army  of  the  Rhine,  inspired  by  a  desire  to  save  his  country, 
and  save  it  from  its  own  excesses,  questions  his  conscience,  and 
asks  himself  if  the  army  placed  under  his  orders  is  not  destined  to 
become  the  palladium  of  society.  The  military  question  is  decided, 
the  German  armies  are  victorious,  and  his  Majesty  the  King  of 
Prussia  cannot  attach  any  great  value  to  the  sterile  triumph  he 
would  obtain  by  dissolving  the  only  force  which  to-day  can  master 
Anarchy  in  our  unfortunate  country.  ...  It  would  re-establish 
order  and  protect  society,  whose  interests  are  identical  with  those 
of  Europe.  As  an  effect  of  that  action  it  would  supply  Prussia 
with  a  guarantee  for  the  pledges  she  might  at  present  require,  and 


1  Boyer,  a  mean  and  meagre-looking  little  man,  with  an  ugly  crafty  face, 
was  censured  by  the  court  for  the  contradictions  in  his  evidence,  and  for 
having  knowingly  and  wilfully  deceived  the  assistant  commanders.  He 
related  among  other  things  that  the  west  of  France,  influenced  by  religious 
passions,  was  ready  for  civil  war,  and  that  the  south  was  in  a  state  of  com- 
plete anarchy.  He  carefully  refrained  from  mentioning  that  this  informa- 
tion had  been  given  him  by  Bismarck  ;  he  made  no  allusion  to  the  fact  that 
the  latter  had  unwittingly  handed  him  six  French  newspapers  which 
showed  the  information  to  be  false ;  and  as  Marshal  Canrobert,  General 
Frossard,  and  others  declared  at  Bazaine's  trial,  they  never,  for  a  moment, 
doubted  the  veracity  of  Boyer's  statements. 


162  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

finally,  it  would  contribute  to  the  accession  of  a  regular  and  legal 
authority  (pouvoir)  with  which  relations  of  all  kinds  might  be 
resumed  without  shock,  and  legally.1 

That  the  regular,  legal  authority  with  which  intercourse 
might  be  "  resumed  "  was  that  of  the  Empress  Eugenie  acting 
as  Regent,  is  established  peremptorily  by  the  conditions  which 
Bismarck  stipulated  with  Boyer  at  Versailles,  and  which  were 
subsequently  rejected  by  a  council  of  war  held  at  Metz,  when 
Bazaine  was  at  last  compelled  to  show  his  hand.  The  fact  that 
Bismarck  gave  encouragement  to  the  idea  of  treating  with  the 
Empress,  and  even  suggested  a  course  by  which  this  might  be 
brought  about  and  the  army  of  Metz  utilised  for  restoring  the 
Regency,  in  no  degree  lessens  Bazaine's  responsibility  in  the 
matter.  Besides,  he  was  only  too  willing  to  be  tempted.  The 
Empress  as  Regent — not  however  for  her  husband  but  for  her 
young  son,  the  Imperial  Prince — and  he,  Bazaine,  as  High 
Constable  and  Protector  of  the  Empire — such  was  the  Marshal's 
secret  desire. 

From  a  military  point  of  view  his  conduct  was  at  times 
outrageous.  He  referred  to  surrender  in  some  of  his  very  first 
communications  with  Prince  Frederick  Charles,  when  no  such 
word  should  ever  have  escaped  his  pen ;  moreover  he  confided 
to  the  scoundrel  Regnier,  a  stranger  of  whom,  according  to  his 
own  admissions,  he  knew  nothing,  the  all-important  fact  that 
the  army's  provisions  would  only  last  until  October  18,  and 
Regnier  informed  the  Germans  of  it.  Further,  Bazaine's  own 
accounts  of  the  last  sorties  he  made — the  "foraging  sorties " — 
indicated  either  an  extremely  cynical  mind  or  a  supreme  un- 
consciousness of  his  responsibilities  as  a  commander.  An 
emissary  reached  Metz  from  Thionville  with  information  that 
large  stores  of  provisions  had  been  collected  there,  and  that 
a  coup  de  main  in  that  direction — Thionville,  still  held  by 
the  French,  was  between  sixteen  and  seventeen  miles  distant 
— had  considerable  chances  of  success.  But  Bazaine  never 
attempted  it.  When  he  was  reproached  on  the  subject  at  his 
trial  he  denied  that  he  had  ever  received  the  information. 
Proof  of  the  contrary,  however,  was  immediately  forthcoming. 
On  another  occasion  there  was  a  possibility  of  a  coup  de  main 
on  some  large  German  supplies,  but  that  also  was  neglected. 

1  The  French  phraseology  is  in  parts  so  amphibolous  and  inept  that  a 
translation  into  fair  English  is  difficult. 


BAZAINE'S  TRIAL  163 

The  Marshal  did  not  wish  to  obtain  the  means  of  prolonging 
the  resistance  of  his  army. 

The  question  whether  he  would  or  would  not  have  been 
successful  in  any  determined  effort  to  break  out  of  Metz,  had 
virtually  nothing  to  do  with  his  case.  The  plain  simple  issue 
was  that  he  failed  to  do  what  military  honour  and  duty 
required,  and  that  he  did  certain  things  which  military  honour 
and  duty  forbade.  In  that  respect  there  was  not  only  his 
intercourse  with  the  enemy  and  his  subordination  of  military 
to  political  interests,  but  there  was  his  disgraceful  surrender  of 
the  colours  of  his  army,  when  elementary  duty  prescribed  their 
destruction.1  Moreover,  he  actually  refused  the  honours  of 
war  which  the  Germans  were  ready  to  grant !  That  was  the 
crowning  affront  offered  by  this  Marshal  of  France  to  the  brave, 
if  unfortunate,  men  under  his  orders.  By  the  fault  of  their 
commander-in-chief  they  had  stood  what  was,  on  their  side,  an 
inglorious  siege ;  but  they  were  the  same  soldiers  who  had 
fought  so  bravely  at  Borny,  Mars-la-Tour,  Gravel  otte,  Rezon- 
ville,  St.  Privat ;  and  if  ever  defeated,  yet  valiant,  legions  had 
deserved  the  honours  of  war  they  were  surely  these  !  But  no  ! 
Dishonoured  himself,  Bazaine  was  unwilling  that  honour  should 
be  accorded  to  others. 

On  the  first  day  when  he  came  into  court  the  prisoner 
looked  flushed,  but  his  fat,  heavy  face  subsequently  assumed  a 
dull,  leaden,  unhealthy  hue.  On  the  main  issues  his  answers 
to  the  Duke  d'Aumale's  questions  were  never  satisfactory,  they 
degenerated  at  times  into  mere  excuses.  "  There  was  nothing 
left,"  he  said  at  one  moment,  referring  to  the  position  of  the 
country  after  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  whereupon  D'Aumale 
gravely  retorted,  "There  was  France."  That  summed  up 
everything.  The  Duke  presided  over  the  proceedings  with 
great  fairness  and  no  little  acumen.  Nothing  in  any  wise 
suggested  his  royal  status,  nobody  addressed  him  as  "  Altesse  " 
or  "  Monseigneur,"  he  was  simply  General  Henri  d'Orleans, 
President  of  the  Court.  He  and  Gambetta,  we  remember,  were 
very  courteous  towards  each  other  when  the  latter  gave  evidence : 
it  was  "  Monsieur  le  President "  on  one  side,  and  "  Monsieur  le 
Depute  "  on  the  other. 

1  A  good  many  flags  were  destroyed  by  indignant  officers,  Generals 
Jeanningros,  Lapasset,  and  Laveaucoupet,  Colonels  Pean,  Melchior,  Girels, 
etc. ,  but  fifty-three  remained,  and  these  were  handed  over  to  the  Germans. 


164  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Gambetta,  however,  struck  many  people  by  the  awkwardness 
of  his  manners.  There  was  a  gaucherie  about  him,  surprising 
in  one  accustomed  to  public  appearances  both  as  an  advocate 
and  a  politician ;  and  his  shiny,  ill-fitting  black  clothes,  which 
looked  as  though  they  had  come  from  some  slop-shop  at  the 
Temple  market,  by  no  means  enhanced  his  appearance.  Folk 
who  had  never  previously  seen  him  gazed  in  surprise.  What ! 
was  that  the  man  who  had  ruled  France  during  long  months 
of  war  and  suffering,  who  had  thrown  legion  after  legion  into 
the  field,  who,  by  his  energy  which  inspired,  and  his  language 
which  inflamed,  had  imparted  vigour  and  hope  to  a  lost  cause  ? 
Was  that  the  "Dictator,"  the fou furieuw,  who  had  refused  to 
despair  of  his  country?  It  seemed  incredible.  Still  slim  of 
figure  as  he  was,  he  looked  quite  little  in  comparison  with  the 
ponderous  and  glowering  Bazaine. 

The  prisoner  was  defended  by  an  advocate  of  world-wide 
repute,  but  one  whom  it  astonished  many  to  find  acting  as  his 
counsel.  Let  us  suppose,  if  it  is  possible  to  do  so,  a  British 
Field-Marshal  arraigned  on  charges  similar  to  those  preferred 
against  Bazaine.  Would  there  not  be  profound  surprise  if  he 
were  defended  by  some  Old  Bailey  barrister,  some  man  whose 
life  had  been  spent  in  vain  efforts  to  snatch  murderers  from 
the  hangman  ?  Lachaud,  Bazaine's  advocate,  was  one  of  that 
type,  one  whose  clients  had  been  chiefly  candidates  for  the 
guillotine  or  the  galleys;  and  it  was,  indeed,  somewhat  of  a 
shock  to  find  him  figuring  in  a  case  so  different  from  those  in 
which  he  usually  appeared,  and  for  such  a  client  as  a  Marshal 
of  France. 

At  the  same  time  Charles  Lachaud  was  an  exceedingly 
worthy  and  able  man.  At  the  age  of  two-and-twenty  he 
had  made  a  name  at  the  bar  for  all  time  by  his  defence  of 
Mme.  Lafarge,  the  French  Mrs.  Maybrick,  accused  of  poisoning 
her  husband.  Lachaud's  efforts  at  least  saved  Mme.  Lafarge's 
life  ;  she  was  reprieved,  and  we  are  inclined  to  think,  as  Lachaud 
himself  always  stoutly  declared,  that  she  may  really  have  been 
innocent.  From  that  time,  1840,  until  early  in  1882,  when  he 
was  stricken  with  paralysis,  Lachaud  figured  in  innumerable 
"  famous  cases.""  Among  the  many  murderers  he  defended  were 
Dr.  Lapommeraye,  the  French  Palmer,  and  Tropmann,  the 
assassin  of  the  Kinck  family.  He  also  often  pleaded  in  cases 
of  theft  and  embezzlement,  but  it  was   particularly  in  murder 


BAZAINE'S  TRIAL  165 

cases  that  his  powers  became  most  manifest.  A  native  of 
Southern  France,  but  with  light  hair  and  a  bright  complexion, 
he  had  a  voice  of  wonderful  flexibility  and  power,  combined 
with  undoubted  histrionic  gifts.  He  once  told  us  that  on 
rising  to  speak  for  a  client,  he  singled  out  that  member  of  the 
jury  in  whose  demeanour  during  the  earlier  proceedings  he  had 
observed  most  hostility  towards  the  prisoner.  It  was  especially 
for  that  juryman  that  he  spoke,  piling  argument  on  argument, 
and  making  every  possible  effort  to  wring  from  him  some 
involuntary  sign  of  approval.  Lachaud  usually  identified  him- 
self with  his  client's  cause.  At  times  he  waxed  indignant,  and 
protests  then  poured  from  his  lips  in  tones  of  thunder;  at 
others  he  was  all  pathos,  all  softness,  affecting  his  hearers  to 
tears.  But  apart  from  those  melodramatic  gifts,  he  was  an 
expert  dialectitian,  a  most  resourceful  advocate,  never  at  a  loss 
for  a  rejoinder,  a  fresh  argument,  quick  too  in  detecting  the 
slightest  contradiction  in  evidence  and  turning  it  to  account. 
Thus  his  memory  still  abides  as  that  of  one  of  the  greatest 
criminal  advocates  the  French  bar  has  known. 

His  appearance  was  somewhat  peculiar.  He  was  stout,  with 
a  large  head,  and  fairly  long  curly  hair.  The  full  round  face 
was  clean-shaven,  the  brow  broad  and  lofty,  the  nose  slender 
and  aquiline,  the  mouth  admirably  shaped,  the  lips,  which 
fairly  quivered  when  he  spoke,  being  wreathed,  in  moments  of 
repose,  in  a  smile  at  once  engaging  and  malicious.  But  a 
strangeness  was  imparted  to  his  appearance  by  his  eyes;  he 
squinted  as  much  as  any  man  can  squint,  and  you  never  knew 
at  whom  or  what  he  might  really  be  looking.  However  great 
his  gifts,  he  was  scarcely  the  man  for  the  Bazaine  trial.  It 
was  no  case  of  addressing  an  impressionable  jury,  but  of  dealing 
with  military  matters,  of  which  he  knew  little,  before  a  tribunal 
of  experienced  officers,  to  whom  such  matters  were  familiar. 
As  we  have  said,  therefore,  his  selection  by  Bazaine  surprised 
many  people.  Some  folk  remarked,  indeed,  that  it  seemed  as  if 
the  Marshal  were  convinced  that  he  would  be  found  guilty  and 
had  consequently  chosen  the  ablest  advocate  to  address  an 
appeal  ad  misericordiam  tribunalis.  But  Lachaud,  though  his 
private  character  had  won  him  friends  in  all  parties,  was  a 
staunch  Bonapartist,  and  it  was  this  circumstance,  more  than 
any  other,  which  led  to  his  selection.  Assisted  by  his  son, 
Georges,  then  a  young  man  with  fair  "  Dundreary  "  whiskers, 


y. 


166  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Lachaud  certainly  did  his  best  for  his  client,  and  more  than 
that  could  not  be  asked  of  him. 

General  du  Barail  asserts  in  his  Souvenirs  that,  if  Bazaine 
was  tried  at  all,  it  was  purely  and  simply  because  he  asked  to 
be  tried ;  but  although  Thiers  had  fallen  from  power  since  the 
report  of  the  Court  of  Inquiry,  and  although,  with  MacMahon 
at  the  Elysee,  the  military  element  was  now  preponderant  in 
France,  it  would,  we  think — in  the  state  of  public  opinion — 
have  been  impossible  to  override  the  law  and  prevent  the  trial, 
however  powerfully  Bazaine  might  be  protected.  That  he  was 
treated  with  great  leniency  before  and  during  the  trial  is  certain. 
The  house  in  which  he  was  lodged  in  the  Avenue  de  Picardie 
at  Versailles  was  a  mere  nominal  prison,  he  was  accorded 
every  mark  of  deference,  he  received  and  gave  the  salute  as  if 
no  charge  whatever  hung  over  him.  On  the  other  hand,  as 
Du  Barail  mentions,  while  everybody  was  convinced  that  the 
proceedings  would  end  in  a  sentence  to  death,  it  was  also  held 
that  the  sentence  would  never  be  carried  out. 

The  Court  having  convicted  him  and  condemned  him  to 
military  degradation,  death,  and  payment  of  the  costs  of  the 
trial,  immediately  addressed  an  appeal  for  mercy  to  Marshal 
MacMahon,  and  the  supreme  penalty  was  commuted  to  one  of 
twenty  years'  detention.  Further,  not  only  were  the  costs  of 
the  proceedings  defrayed  by  the  secret  service  fund  of  the  War 
Office,  instead  of  being  levied  on  Bazaine's  estate,  but  he  was 
also  spared  "  the  formalities  "  of  military  degradation.  Twenty- 
one  years  later  when  a  young  Jewish  officer  was  convicted — 
wrongfully  convicted,  as  we  know — of  selling  to  Germany 
certain  trumpery  secrets  de  Polichhiette,  specified  in  a  notorious 
Bordereau,  there  was  no  question  of  sparing  him  "the 
formalities  "  of  military  degradation ;  they  were  carried  out  in 
all  their  terrible  severity  in  the  courtyard  of  the  £cole  Militaire. 
Yet  they  were  not  enforced  in  the  case  of  the  Marshal  of 
France,  who  had  surrendered  the  strongest  fortress  of  his 
country  with  an  army  of  170,000  men,  53  eagles,  1665  guns, 
278,280  rifles  and  muskets,  22,984,000  cartridges,  3,239,225 
projectiles,  and  412,734  tons  of  powder  ! 

It  may  readily  be  granted  that  old  associations,  the  general 
composition  of  the  army  at  that  period,  the  state  of  parties 
and  of  the  country,  rendered  it  difficult  if  not  impossible  for 
MacMahon  to  carry  out  the  original  sentence  of  death.     More- 


BAZAINE'S  TRIAL  167 

over  his  responsibility  for  leniency  in  that  respect  was  largely 
covered  by  the  Court's  unanimous  appeal  in  the  prisoner's 
favour.  At  the  same  time  if  Marshal  Ney  deserved  death,  and 
we  will  not  say  that  he  did  not,  Marshal  Bazaine  deserved  it 
even  more.  The  former,  at  any  rate,  did  not  betray  his  trust  to 
the  advantage  of  a  foreign  foe,  whereas  the  latter  did.  Like 
Ney,  Bazaine  had  risen  from  the  ranks  to  the  highest  dignity 
in  his  country's  army,  but  how  different  were  their  careers ! 
Although  Bazaine  won  his  baton  in  Mexico  he  returned  from 
that  country  to  France  with  a  most  unenviable  reputation,  that 
of  an  unscrupulous  man,  with  sordid  instincts,  one,  too,  who  set 
his  own  personal  advantage  before  anything  else.  At  the  outset 
of  the  Franco-German  War  he  was  subordinated  to  the  Emperor, 
who,  knowing  his  man,  had  not  previously  confided  his  plan  of 
campaign  to  him  as  he  had  done  to  MacMahon ;  and  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  when  the  Republican  deputies  demanded 
and  obtained  the  deposition  of  the  Emperor  from  the  chief 
command,  it  was  Bazaine  who,  virtually  at  the  dictation  of 
those  same  Republicans,  was  set  in  the  Emperor's  place.  They 
positively  clamoured  for  the  appointment,  both  in  the  Legislative 
Body  and  in  the  press — and  this  although,  only  a  few  years 
previously,  they  had  denounced  as  much  as  they  dared  (given 
the  press  regime  of  the  time)  Bazaine's  proceedings  in  Mexico. 
Thus  the  responsibility  for  what  happened  at  Metz  belongs  in 
part  to  those  Republicans  by  whom  Bazaine's  appointment  in 
lieu  of  the  detested  Emperor  was  regarded  as  a  glorious  victory  I 
Prior  even  to  the  siege  of  Metz  the  Marshal's  conduct  of  affairs 
was  open  to  the  gravest  criticism.  He  was  largely  responsible 
for  the  failure  of  the  battle  of  Rezonville,  when  he  retreated 
before  inferior  forces  at  a  moment  when  he  might  have  crushed 
them — a  decisive  blunder  which  influenced  the  whole  of  the  war. 
Again,  at  St.  Privat,  he  abandoned  Canrobert  and  the  6th  Army 
Corps  to  the  three  hundred  guns  and  the  hundred  thousand 
rifles  of  the  Germans,  when,  at  a  word  from  him,  the  whole 
Imperial  Guard  with  ten  regiments  of  cavalry  and  a  powerful 
artillery  force  might  have  hastened  to  Canrobert's  support,  and 
modified  the  issue  of  the  battle.  All  that  was  something  like 
a  forewarning  of  what  eventually  happened. 

Spared  the  penalty  of  death  and  the  ordeal  of  degradation, 
Bazaine  found  further  leniency  in  the  captivity  to  which  he  was 
condemned.     He  was  sent  to  the  He  Ste.  Marguerite,  the  chief 


168  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

of  the  LeVins  islands,  off  the  coast  of  Provence,  and  lodged  in 
the  fort,  where,  for  seventeen  years,  the  man  with  the  Iron 
Mask  was  kept  in  rigorous  confinement.  But  General  du 
Barail,  Minister  of  War,  did  not  desire  that  Bazaine's  confine- 
ment should  be  rigorous.  He  wrote  to  Marchi,  the  governor : 
"  You  are  to  treat  the  prisoner  with  the  greatest  consideration 
("  les  plus  grands  egards  "),  in  a  word  you  must  act  as  a  homme  du 
monde,  not  as  the  director  of  a  prison.'1  From  the  windows  of 
his  apartment  the  Marshal  had  a  lovely  outlook :  the  blue  sea, 
the  blue  sky,  the  picturesque  coast  of  Provence,  as  well  as  the 
island's  garden  with  its  maritime  pines,  its  myrtles,  and  its 
wealth  of  semi-tropical  plants.  In  his  rooms  he  could  receive 
his  friends,  even  retain  them  to  dinner.  Ste.  Marguerite  was 
no  He  du  Diable,  Bazaine  no  "dirty  Jew."  He  was  favoured 
even  with  a  congenial  companion,  his  aide-de-camp,  Colonel 
Villette,  a  tall,  spare,  lanky  man,  with  a  face  and  moustaches 
strikingly  suggestive  of  Gustave  Dore's  presentment  of  Don 
Quixote.  Villette,  be  it  said,  was  devoted  to  Bazaine  and 
championed  him  more  than  once  in  a  style  which  was  quite  as 
quixotic  as  his  appearance. 

A  change  of  ministry  in  France  brought  no  change  in  the 
light  captivity  imposed  on  Bazaine.  General  de  Cissey,  after 
again  becoming  Minister  of  War,  wrote  to  the  prisoner  address- 
ing him  as  "  Monsieur  le  Marechal *  (though  he  no  longer  had 
the  faintest  right  to  any  such  title)  and  informing  him  that  his 
detention  would  shortly  be  commuted  to  banishment,  and  that 
it  might  perhaps  be  possible  to  pay  him  a  pension.  Bazaine, 
however,  did  not  wait  for  those  further  favours.  In  the  early 
hours  of  August  9, 1874,  he  contrived  to  effect  his  escape  under 
circumstances  which  were  never  adequately  explained,  although 
judicial  proceedings  ensued.  We  know  that  his  removal  from 
the  island  was  effected  by  the  instrumentality  of  his  wife,  a 
Mexican  lady  nSe  de  Pena  y  Azcarate,  and  her  nephew  Senor 
Alvarez  Rull.  They  at  least  provided  the  necessary  vessel  for 
the  flight.  But  the  story  that  Bazaine  lowered  himself  from  a 
window  of  the  fort  by  means  of  a  rope,  thus  descending  a  height 
of  a  hundred  feet,  is  one  that  taxes  belief,  when  we  remember 
that  he  was  then  sixty-three  years  old  and  of  surprising  bulk. 
However,  no  absolute  proofs  to  the  contrary  having  been 
furnished,  the  story  has  been  generally  accepted,  and  it  must  be 
acknowledged  that  Bazaine's  natural  vigour  was  shown  by  the 


BAZAINE'S  FATE  169 

fact  that  he  survived  his  escape  for  many  years  in  spite  of  dire 
adversity.  His  aide-de-camp,  Villette,  and  a  few  others,  were 
subsequently  tried  for  aiding  and  abetting  his  escape,  and  were 
sentenced  to  comparatively  brief  terms  of  imprisonment. 
Marchi,  the  governor  of  the  fortress,  was  exonerated. 

Though  there  was  a  loud  outcry  among  the  French 
Republicans  generally,  the  Government,  and  indeed  the  whole 
official  world,  were  really  well  pleased  to  be  rid  of  the  prisoner. 
He  repaired  to  Madrid,  where  we  once  caught  sight  of  him, 
shabby  and  much  less  corpulent  than  of  yore.  On  one  or  two 
occasions,  we  believe,  he  offered  his  services  to  certain  foreign 
powers,  but  did  not  obtain  employment.  His  leisure  was 
employed  at  one  time  in  writing  a  work  on  his  share  of  the  war 
of  1870,  which  appeared  at  Madrid  in  1883,  supplementing  the 
book  UArmee  du  Rhin  which  he  had  issued  in  France  in  1872 
— that  is  prior  to  his  trial.  Those  apologies  pro  domo  sua, 
though  of  considerable  value  in  parts,  throwing  light  on  interest- 
ing points  of  detail,  were  unconvincing,  however,  with  respect 
to  the  chief  issues  on  which  he  was  tried.  As  time  elapsed,  he 
became  very  poor,  and  applied  for  help  in  various  directions. 
He  had,  we  think,  several  children,  of  whom  at  least  two — a 
son,  Alphonse,  and  a  daughter,  Eugenie,  to  whom  the  Empress 
became  godmother — are  living.  In  October  1907,  Mile.  Bazaine 
was  the  victim  of  a  murderous  attack  on  board  a  German 
steamer  going  from  Vera  Cruz  to  Hamburg,  her  assailant  being 
a  cabin  attendant  who  seems  to  have  subsequently  thrown  him- 
self into  the  sea.  Another  near  relation  of  the  former  Marshal, 
one  who  changed  his  name,  rose  of  late  years  to  the  rank  of 
General  in  the  French  army,  in  which  he  has  always  been  much 
respected.  As  for  Bazaine  himself,  he  passed  away  in  Spain  in 
1888. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    SEPTENNATE — PARIS     SALONS    AND    CLUBS — THE 

REPUBLICAN     CONSTITUTION    AND    ELECTIONS  

THE    GREAT    CHURCH    CRUSADE 

The  Bonapartist  Activity  and  l^mile  Ollivier — Ministerial  Changes — A  Last 
Effort  of  the  Royalists — The  Ultramontane  Agitation — Danger  of  War 
with  Germany — Count  Arnim  and  Bismarck — The  Prince  of  Wales  and 
the  French  Royalists— Inauguration  of  the  new  Opera  House — Death  of 
Millet,  the  painter — Parisian  Society— The  Aristocracy — The  Fashionable 
Salons — Some  influential  Ladies — Mmes.  de  Behague,  de  la  Ferronays, 
Adolphe  de  Rothschild,  de  Blocqueville,  de  Beaumont,  and  Edmond 
Adam — The  Chief  Clubs  of  Paris — The  Republic's  Constitution—  Senators 
and  Deputies — Buffet's  Administration — The  General  Elections — Dufaure 
as  Premier — Jules  Simon,  his  early  Life  and  his  Difficulties  as  Prime 
Minister — The  Crusade  in  favour  of  Pius  IX. — Simon's  Fall  from  Office. 

The  year  1874  opened  with  numerous  Bonapartist  demon- 
strations, which  showed  that  the  partisans  of  the  Empire 
were  becoming  more  active  now  that  the  attempts  to  place 
the  Count  de  Chambord  on  the  throne  had  failed.  Noisy 
scenes  followed  the  religious  services  on  the  anniversary  of  the 
death  of  Napoleon  III.,  and  in  March,  when  the  young  Imperial 
Prince  attained  his  majority,  a  large  number  of  his  supporters 
went  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Chislehurst.  Prince  Napoleon  Jerome 
abstained  from  going,  however.  He  seemed  to  be  playing  for 
his  own  hand,  posing  as  a  democrat  and  denouncing  the 
"  reactionary  and  clerical "  rule  of  the  Broglie  Ministry.  There 
were  violent  disputes  between  him  and  Rouher,  who  led  the 
Imperialist  party  in  the  Assembly,  with  the  result  that  at  the 
elections  for  the  General  Councils  in  the  spring,  Prince  Charles 
Bonaparte  was  put  up  as  a  rival  candidate  in  Corsica  and 
inflicted  a  severe  defeat  on  the  son  of  old  Jerome.  Somewhat 
later,  at  an  election  for  the  Assembly  in  the  Nievre,  Baron  de 
Bourgoing,  a  former  equerry  to  the  Emperor,1  was  returned  by 

1  See  our  Court  of  the  Tnileries. 
170 


BONAPARTIST  ACTIVITY  171 

so  large  a  majority — some  5000  votes — that  the  Republican 
party  became  alarmed.  Its  leaders  denounced  the  Bonapartist 
intrigues  to  the  Assembly,  Gambetta  accusing  Magne,  the 
Finance  Minister,  of  peopling  the  Bureaucracy  with  Imperialists. 
There  was  an  angry  debate  in  which  Rouher  intervened  and 
drew  on  himself  a  virulent  retort  from  Gambetta,  who  declared 
that  he  would  not  allow  "the  scoundrels  who  had  ruined 
France"  to  sit  in  judgment  on  the  Revolution  by  which  the 
Empire  had  been  overthrown.  On  the  following  day,  at  the 
Gare  St.  Lazare  in  Paris,  when  Gambetta  was  about  to  take 
the  train  to  Versailles,  a  young  man  named  Henri  de  Ste. 
Croix,  the  son  of  one  of  Magne's  treasury  receivers  (who  had 
married  the  widowed  Duchess  de  Rovigo),  attempted  to  assault 
the  popular  orator.  But  the  latter  sent  for  the  police,  and 
the  brawl,  though  sensational  enough,  ended  without  actual 
violence.  Later  came  an  inquiry  into  the  Nievre  election, 
which  showed  how  widespread  and  determined  was  the 
Bonapartist  propaganda.  Rouher  denied  that  there  was  any 
actual  Committee  for  an  Appeal  to  the  People — such  an 
organisation,  being  illegal,  might  have  been  prosecuted — but 
the  investigations  indicated  that  something  akin  to  an  organisa- 
tion of  the  kind  existed,  and  the  Royalists  joined  the  Repub- 
licans in  striving  to  curb  the  Bonapartist  intrigues. 

It  was,  by  the  way,  in  the  midst  of  all  this  agitation  that 
M.  Emile  Ollivier,  who  had  been  Napoleon  III.'s  chief  Minister 
at  the  time  when  war  was  declared  in  1870,  endeavoured  to 
prevail  on  the  French  Academy  to  accord  him  the  honours  of  a 
solemn  reception,  he  having  been  elected  a  member  shortly 
before  the  war  and  circumstances  having  led  to  the  postpone- 
ment of  his  formal  admission  and  the  speeches  usual  on  such 
occasions.  The  Academy  assented  in  principle  to  Ollivier's 
request,  but,  in  accordance  with  usage,  he  was  required  to 
submit  a  draft  of  the  address  which  he  proposed  to  read  at  his 
installation.  When  this  draft  came  before  the  Academy  it 
was  found  to  contain  a  glowing  panegyric  of  Napoleon  III., 
and  Guizot,  the  veteran  statesman  and  historian,  who  was  one 
of  the  Immortals,  protested  energetically  against  any  such 
eulogium,  even  threatening  to  resign  if  it  were  allowed  to  pass.1 
1  Guizot  then  took  comparatively  little  part  in  politics  owing  to  his 
advanced  age,  but  lived  mostly  in  retirement  at  Val  Richer,  solacing  himself 
till  his  last  hours  with  the  pursuit  of  literature.  He  died  in  September  1874, 
that  is  some  eight  months  after  the  incidents  recorded  above. 


173  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

The  other  Academicians  being  for  the  most  part  Orleanists, 
naturally  adopted  Guizot's  view,  and  as  Ollivier  refused  to 
modify  his  draft,  his  "solemn  reception'1  was  adjourned  sine 
die.  He  has,  we  believe,  of  later  years  taken  a  not  inconsider- 
able part  in  the  Academy's  work,  but  has  never  been  formally 
admitted  as  a  member.  The  incident  is,  we  think,  the  only  one 
of  its  kind  in  the  Academy's  annals.  Although  there  was  no 
love  lost  between  M.  Ollivier  and  Rouher,  whom  he  replaced 
in  the  Emperor's  favour  in  1870,  and  although  Rouher  was 
again  in  1874  the  chief  champion  of  the  Imperialist  cause,  it  is 
a  curious  and  significant  circumstance  that  Ollivier  should  have 
endeavoured  to  make  a  Bonapartist  demonstration  at  the 
Academy  at  that  particular  period,  when,  indeed,  the  propaganda 
in  favour  of  the  Restoration  of  the  Empire  reached  high-water 
mark.  Although  in  these  later  days  it  is  only  among  those 
who  are  called  "intellectuals"  that  any  particular  interest  is 
taken  in  the  speeches  delivered  at  the  Academical  receptions, 
one  can  well  understand  how  great  would  have  been  the 
sensation  throughout  France  if  Ollivier — almost  forgotten 
now  in  spite  of  all  his  writings  pro  doma  sua,  but  then 
regarded  with  particular  abhorrence  by  Republicans,  who 
wrongly  deemed  him  to  be  the  author  of  the  war  of  1870 
— had  publicly  made  a  speech  in  praise  of  Napoleon  III. 
only  four  years  after  Sedan.  The  mere  idea  of  delivering 
such  an  oration  must  be  regarded  as  part  and  parcel  of  the 
conspiracy  to  overthrow  the  Republic  and  place  the  Imperial 
Prince  on  the  throne. 

Meantime,  the  Duke  de  Broglie  and  MacMahon's  other 
Ministers  were  endeavouring  to  organise  the  Septennate 
according  to  their  particular  notions.  They  wished  to  modify 
the  electoral  laws  and  suppress  universal  suffrage.  Nobody 
was  to  be  allowed  to  vote  unless  he  were  twenty-five  instead  of 
twenty-one  years  of  age,  or  unless  he  had  resided  for  three  years 
in  the  locality  where  he  recorded  his  vote.1  The  result  would 
have  been  the  disfranchisement  of  some  3,000,000  electors. 
There  was  also  a  plan  for  creating  not  a  Senate  but  a  Grand 
Council,  with  powers  which  would  have  reduced  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies  to  the  lowest  possible  level.     The  Bonapartists, 

1  An  exception  was  made  in  favour  of  those  who  were  natives  of  the 
said  locality,  in  which  case  six  months'  residence  was  to  be  regarded  as 
sufficient. 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SEPTENNATE  173 

however,  who  called  themselves  the  party  of  the  Appeal  to  the 
People,  and  who  were  for  ever  demanding  a  Plebiscitum,  could 
not  be  expected  to  support  measures  that  interfered  with  the 
supremacy  of  universal  suffrage,  which  the  Republicans  also 
upheld,  and  in  the  result  the  Duke  de  Broglie,  after  two  or 
three  adverse  votes  in  the  Assembly,  fell  from  power  on  May 
16,  1874. 

In  this  emergency,  MacMahon  formed  a  kind  of  scratch 
Administration  in  which  Magne  (Finances),  Duke  Decazes 
(Foreign  Minister),  and  Fortou  (now  of  the  Interior)  still 
figured,  General  de  Cissey  becoming  the  nominal  Premier. 
The  Marshal-President  was  somewhat  irate  both  with  the 
Assembly  generally  and  with  the  leaders  of  the  contending 
factions,  whose  disputes  invariably  revolved  around  the  one 
absorbing  question — Shall  France  be  a  Republic  or  a  Monarchy  ? 
For  his  part,  MacMahon  with  his  imperative,  soldierly  dis- 
position answered  that  question  curtly  enough:  "Je  m'en 
Ache,"  said  he,  "  and  besides  I  know  nothing  about  it.  What 
I  ask  is  that  my  powers  shall  be  defined  and  organised.  /  have 
been  appointed  for  seven  years,  and  I  intend  to  carry  out  the 
contract.  If,  however,  I  can  find  no  cabinet  to  organise  the 
Septennate  I  shall  either  resign  or  take  some  very  energetic 
steps.r'  Words  to  that  effect  were  spoken  by  him  at  various 
audiences  which  he  gave  to  the  leaders  of  the  majority,  and 
every  day  made  it  more  evident  that  the  Marshal,  whom  the 
Royalists  had  elected  as  a  stop-gap,  took  his  position  as  Chief 
of  the  State  in  all  seriousness. 

Soon  after  the  formation  of  the  Cissey  Ministry,  M. 
Auguste  Casimir-Perier  (father  of  the  President  of  that  name) 
submitted  a  proposal  to  proceed  with  the  Constitutional  laws 
on  the  basis  formerly  arrived  at  by  Thiers  and  the  first  Com- 
mittee of  Thirty.  To  this  the  moderate  Royalists  retaliated 
by  asking  that  the  existing  provisional  state  of  affairs  should 
be  maintained,  while  the  ultra  Royalists  burnt  their  ships  by 
formally  demanding  the  restoration  of  the  Monarchy,  with 
MacMahon  as  Lieutenant- General  pending  the  enthronement 
of  the  King.  Their  spokesman  on  this  occasion  was  the  most 
prominent  member  of  the  famous  La  Rochefoucauld  family,  of 
which  there  were  then  five  branches,  represented  by  the  Duke 
de  la  Rochefoucauld,  the  Duke  de  Doudeauville,  the  Duke 
de  Bisaccia,   the  Duke  de  la   Roche   Guyon,  and   the   Duke 


174  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

(TEstissac.1  The  nobleman  to  whom  we  refer  was  Count  Marie 
Charles  Gabriel  Sosthene  de  la  Rochefoucauld,  Duke  de 
Bisaccia  (a  Neapolitan  title),  who  sat  in  the  Assembly  for  the 
department  of  the  Sarthe,  and  had  acted  for  a  brief  period  as 
Ambassador  in  London.  He  was  the  younger  brother  of  the 
Duke  de  Doudeauville  and  second  son  of  the  notorious  Sosthene 
de  la  Rochefoucauld,  who,  after  contributing  largely  to  the 
Restoration  of  the  Bourbons  in  1814,  distinguished  himself  as 
Superintendent  of  Fine  Arts  by  lengthening  the  skirts  of  the 
corps  de  ballet  at  the  Opera  House,  and  veiling  by  means  of 
vine  leaves  the  nudity  of  the  statues  at  the  Louvre.  M.  de 
Bisaccia's  mother  was  Elisabeth  Helene  de  Montmorency-Laval, 
daughter  of  the  Duke  de  Montmorency,  Governor  of  the  Count 
de  Chambord  in  the  latter's  early  childhood,  and  he  married 
first  Yolande  de  Polignac,  who  died  in  1855,  and  secondly 
Marie,  daughter  of  the  Prince  de  Ligne,  President  of  the 
Belgian  Parliament.  Connected  with  all  those  exalted  houses 
the  Duke  de  la  Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia  (as  he  was  usually 
called)  naturally  held  fervent  Royalist  views,  but  his  attempt 
to  force  on  a  Restoration  in  spite  of  the  many  previous  rebuffs 
encountered  signal  failure.  His  demand  was  rejected  by  a 
majority  of  sixty  votes,  while  by  a  majority  of  one  M.  Casimir 
Perier's  proposal  to  proceed  with  the  Constitutional  laws  was 
declared  to  be  "  urgent." 

The  Count  de  Chambord,  embittered  by  this  fresh  defeat, 
issued  (July  1874)  yet  another  manifesto  which  rendered 
matters  even  worse  than  they  had  been  previously,  for,  as  it 
repudiated  every  elementary  principle  of  Constitutional  Govern- 
ment, it  alienated  the  Orleanist  members  of  the  Assembly,  and 
virtually  put  an  end  to  the  Royalist  alliance.  MacMahon's 
authority  thus  gained  additional  support,  and  he  himself 
strengthened  his  position  by  his  public  utterances,  notably 
during  the  tours  he  made  that  summer  in  Brittany  and 
Northern  France,  when,  although  the  clergy  and  others 
addressed  him  in  language  which  clearly  revealed  monarchical 
aspirations,  he  rightly  counselled  union  and  quietude,  declaring 
his  intention  to  uphold  the  existing  regime  and  put  down  all 
disorder  as  long  as  he  remained  in  office. 

1  The  last  Duke  de  la  Rochefoucauld  (Francis  Ernest  Gaston)  died  with- 
out issue,  as  did  the  Duke  de  Doudeauville  (Augustin  Stanislas).  The  line 
of  the  Bisaccias  still  continues,  however,  and  is  now,  we  think,  the  senior 
branch  of  the  house. 


THE  DANGER  OF  WAR  175 

The   clergy   were   complicating    matters    by   their    foolish 
attempts   to  promote  French  intervention  in  favour  of  Pope 
Pius  IX.,  whose  temporal  power  they  wished  to  see  restored. 
Their  partisans  in  the  Assembly  neglected  no  occasion  to  attack 
the  Italian  and  German  Governments,  and  the  position  of  the 
Foreign  Minister  was  most  unenviable.     French  diplomacy  had 
been  for  some  time  already  under  the  control  of  Duke  Decazes, 
the  son  of  one  of  the  more  Liberal  ministers  of  Louis  XVIII. 
Born  in  1819,  Louis  Charles  Elie  Amanien,  Duke  Decazes  in 
France  and  Duke  of  Gluckstferjf  in  Denmark,1  did  not  show 
himself  to  be  a  statesman  of  the  highest  ability,  but,  surrounded 
as  he  was  by  difficulties  throughout  his  period  of  office  (1873- 
1877),  he  at  least  contended  with  them  and  helped   to  save 
France  from  another  war.     A  Royalist  himself  he  nevertheless 
often  found  himself  compelled  to  oppose  the  Royalists  around 
him,  for  the  superior  interests  of  France  did  not  coincide  with 
their   aspirations.      At   the   same  time,  however,   his   private 
sympathies   often    prevented    him    from    imparting   sufficient 
energy  to  that  opposition,  and  the  others  availed  themselves 
of  this  circumstance  to  carry  on  campaigns  which  repeatedly 
involved  France  in  trouble.     At   one   moment,   for   instance, 
they  wished   the  Government  to   intervene   decisively   in   the 
affairs  of  Spain,  which  were  in  great  confusion.     King  Amadeo, 
the  Italian  Prince,2  called  to  the  Spanish  throne  in  1870,  had 
abdicated  in  1873,  a  Republic  had  been  constituted  under  the 
leadership  of  Castelar,  and  while  a  Carlist  insurrection  raged 
in  the  north,  a  semi-socialist  rebellion  broke  out  in  the  south 
and    south-east,    Carthagena    becoming    the    scene    of    great 
excesses    and    desperate    fighting.        Eventually,    the    fall   of 
Castelar  and  the  accession  of  Serrano  prepared  the  way  for  the 
restoration  of  the  Spanish  monarchy  without  open  interference 
on   the    part    of    France.      Nevertheless,   at    one    period    the 
intervention  of  MacMahon's  Government  was  urgently  solicited 
by  the  French  Royalists.     More  dangerous  for  France,  however, 
was    the    political    campaign    in    the   Pope's    favour,   for    it 
threatened  to  embroil  her  with  both  Italy  and  Germany.     It 
certainly  alienated  the  former  power,  and  sowed  the  seeds  of 
the  present  Triple  Alliance — indeed  Italy  already  adhered  to 

1  He  married  Mile.  Severine  de  Lowenthal  who  bore  him  a  son,  the 
present  Duke  Decazes  (Jean  Elie),  born  in  April  1864. 

2  Duke  of  Aosta,  son  of  Victor  Emanuel  II.  and  brother  of  Humbert  I. 
of  Italy. 


176  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

that  formed  by  the  German,  Russian,  and  Austrian  Emperors 
in  1872. 

At    the    conclusion   of    the    peace    between    France    and 
Germany,  the  latter  had  sent  to  Paris,  as  her  ambassador,  the 
head  of  a  famous  Pomeranian  house,  Count  Harry  von  Arnim, 
a  tall,  good-looking,  blotelt-bearded,  and  broad-shouldered  man, 
with  a  handsome  aristocratic  wife,  distinguished  for  her  taste 
in   dress.     They  speedily  made  their  way  in   French   society, 
cultivating  from  preference  that  of  the  Royalist  salons,  and 
before  long  Arnim  more  or  less  openly  abetted  the  intrigues 
which   led  to   the   downfall   of  Thiers.      He   had   previously 
served  at  Rome,  and  according  to  his  own  account  had  then 
foreseen  the  struggle  between  Germany  and  the  Catholic  Church, 
which  followed  the  French  war.     It   is  the  more  surprising, 
therefore,  that   he   should   have   assisted,  with   influence   and 
encouragement,  the  plottings  of  the  French  Monarchists,  with 
whose  aspirations  in  favour  of  the  Holy  See  he  was  naturally 
acquainted.     His  proceedings  so  displeased   Bismarck  that  in 
1874   he   was   recalled   from   France.     A    bitter   duel   ensued 
between  him  and  the  powerful   Chancellor.     Arnim,  in  order 
to  justify  himself,  issued  abusive  pamphlets  and  published,  either 
personally   or   through   Dr.   Landsberg  (long   a   Paris   corre- 
spondent  of  the   Austrian   press)    a    number    of    diplomatic 
documents,  by  which  acts  and  the  withholding  of  other  State 
papers  he  drew  upon  himself  a  series  of  sentences  to  fine  and 
imprisonment  for  high  treason,  lese-majesU  and  similar  offences. 
He  had  found  a  refuge  in  Switzerland,  however,  and  was  able 
to  carry  on  the  war  until  his  death,  which  occurred  at  Nice 
in  1880,  just  as  he  had  applied  for  a  revision  of  his  case. 

His  indiscretions,  coupled  with  the  infatuated  policy  of 
the  French  Royalists  and  Clericals,  contributed  in  1875  to  a 
great  war  scare.  Bismarck,  who  beheld  with  amazement  the 
rapid  recovery  of  France  from  her  recent  disasters,  and  felt 
that  she  was  resolved  to  embark  on  la  revanche  as  soon  as  she 
had  regained  sufficient  strength,  desired  to  anticipate  events 
and  crush  her  once  again  before  she  was  prepared  for  the 
struggle.  In  that  respect  the  conduct  of  the  French 
Monarchists  alone  offered  abundant  pretexts  for  quarrelling, 
though  the  one  selected  was  the  reorganisation  of  the  French 
army.  Indeed,  the  word  went  forth  throughout  Germany  that 
France   was    preparing    to   attack    the    Fatherland,   and   the 


THE  DANGER  OF  WAR  177 

rumour  found  credit  on  all  sides.  We  then  happened  to  be 
staying  in  the  Palatinate  as  the  guest  of  a  member  of  the 
Reichstag,  one  of  the  chief  German  viticulturists ;  and  we  well 
remember  how  our  host  convened  several  of  his  colleagues  and 
other  notabilities  to  discuss  the  great  war  question  with  us. 
Our  statements  that  France  had  no  such  intentions  as  were 
imputed  to  her,  our  estimates  of  the  still  existing  inefficiency 
of  her  military  organisation,  were  received  with  incredulity. 
Officers  of  high  rank,  politicians  of  position,  shook  their  heads 
gravely,  and  refused  to  be  reassured.  As  we  all  know,  however, 
the  danger  to  peace  lay  on  the  German,  not  the  French  side. 
Fortunately,  war  was  averted  by  the  representations  of  Russia 
and  Great  Britain,  as  we  shall  show  when  sketching  the  history 
of  the  Franco-Russian  Alliance. 

A  visit  which  the  Prince  of  Wales  (subsequently  our  King 
Edward  VII.)  paid  to  France  in  the  autumn  of  1874  provoked 
some  little  bitterness  of  feeling  among  the  French  Republicans. 
It  would  appear  that  the  Prince,  at  the  time  when  the  Duke 
de  la  Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia  was  Ambassador  in  London,  had 
promised  to  visit  him  whenever  he  next  went  to  France ;  and, 
this  now  occurring,  the  Prince  became  the  Duke's  guest  at  his 
chateau  of  Esclimont  in  Eure-et-Loir,  a  fine  towered  and 
turreted  Renaissance  structure,  carefully  restored  in  1864. 
The  Prince  shot  over  the  coverts  there,  and  then  visited  in 
turn  the  Duke  de  Luynes  at  Dampierre,  the  Duke  de  la 
Tremo'ille  at  Rambouillet,  the  Duke  d'Aumale  at  Chantilly, 
and  the  Prince  de  Sagan  and  the  Duke  de  Mouchy  at  their 
respective  seats.  Zealous  Republicans  were  disturbed  by  this 
intercourse  between  the  heir  apparent  to  the  British  crown  and 
leading  French  Monarchists,  and  some  bitter  remarks  appeared 
in  the  more  popular  Parisian  journals.  They  were  levelled, 
however,  much  less  at  the  Prince  than  at  the  Royalist  leaders, 
one  newspaper  remarking :  "  A  few  months  ago  the  Duke  de  la 
Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia  tried  to  bring  back  the  King  with  the 
help  of  the  National  Assembly.  He  failed,  and  so  now  he 
hopes  to  bring  him  back  with  the  help  of  the  Prince  of  Wales. 
He  is  not  likely  to  succeed,  but  these  are  the  usual  tactics  of 
the  Royalist  party.  In  1815,  the  Bourbons  came  back  in  the 
baggage  train  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and  with  that  pre- 
cedent before  them,  we  can  understand  that  they  should  now  be 
anxious  to  secrete  themselves  in  the  Prince  of  Wales's  valise. * 

N 


178  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

It  was  perhaps  somewhat  unfortunate  that  the  Prince's  visits 
to  his  French  Royalist  friends  should  have  occurred  at  a  time 
when  party  strife  was  so  acute,  but  the  incident  was  soon  for- 
gotten, and  early  in  the  ensuing  year  the  most  popular  man  in 
Paris  was  an  Englishman,  that  is  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London, 
Alderman  Stone.  In  this  connection  it  must  be  mentioned 
that  the  Opera  House  in  the  Rue  Le  Peletier,  erected  as  a 
"  temporary "  building  in  1821  had  been  destroyed  by  fire  in 
1873.  Ever  since  1860  it  had  been  intended  to  replace  it  by 
a  large  pile,  more  worthy  of  such  a  city  as  Paris,  and  in  the 
following  year,  the  designs  of  Charles  Gamier  having  been 
adopted,  the  building  of  the  new  house  was  begun.  With  the 
close  of  1874  came  the  absolute  completion  of  this  wonderfully 
ornate  structure,  the  largest  of  its  kind  in  Europe,  profusely 
embellished  with  thirty-three  distinct  varieties  of  marble,  an 
infinity  of  bronze  work  and  gilding,  and  a  wonderful  assemblage 
of  artistic  work  to  which  fifteen  distinguished  painters — Paul 
Baudry  pre-eminent  among  them — and  seventy-five  sculptors, 
including  Carpeaux,  Barrias,  Carrier  -  Belleuse,  Cain,  Aime 
Millet,  and  Falguiere — had  contributed. 

The  inauguration  in  January  1875  was  the  first  really  great 
social  function  which  the  Septennate  witnessed.  The  Marshal 
President  and  the  Duchess  de  Magenta  drove  in  state  from  the 
Elysee ;  and  conspicuous  among  the  audience  were  several 
throneless  royalties — the  Orleans  Princes,  Isabella  of  Spain, 
Francis  of  Naples  and  his  consort,  blind  George  of  Hanover 
and  his  daughter.  The  Corps  Diplomatique  was  also  present, 
together  with  many  of  the  celebrities  of  Parisian  society ;  but 
the  guest  of  the  evening  was  undoubtedly  London's  representa- 
tive, whose  visit  the  Parisians  appreciated  enthusiastically — 
recalling,  as  they  did,  the  Mansion  House  Fund  and  the  gifts 
to  their  poor  and  hungry  ones  at  the  close  of  the  German  Siege. 
Quite  triumphal  was  Milor  Maire's  procession  up  the  Rue  de  la 
Paix  to  the  Opera  House.  Lamps  and  torches  illumined  it, 
the  City  Trumpeters  went  in  front,  a  military  escort  surrounded 
and  followed.  And  at  the  foot  of  Garnier's  grand  staircase, 
the  manager,  Halanzier,  received  his  Lordship  with  honours 
usually  reserved  for  crowned  heads.  All  the  way  up  those 
resplendent  stairs,  he  preceded  him,  going  backward  step  by 
step,  and  carrying  aloft  a  lighted  candelabrum.  In  this  courtly 
manner  was  Lord  Mayor  Stone  conducted  to  his  box  on  the 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SEPTENNATE  179 

right  hand  of  that  occupied  by  the  Marshal  President,  and 
directly  the  assembled  spectators  perceived  his  tall  striking 
figure — he  was  wearing,  of  course,  his  robes  and  his  chain  of 
office — they  rose  from  their  seats  and  acclaimed  him. 

Paris  was  still  admiring  her  new  Opera  House,  particularly 
the  grand  staircase  and  Baudry's  paintings,  when  two  masters 
of  art  passed  away,  in  rapid  succession  and  almost  obscurely,  at 
Barbizon  near  Fontainebleau.  One  was  Millet,  the  painter  of 
"The  Angelus"  and  "The  Gleaners,"  the  other  Barye,  the 
sculptor  of  the  "  Seated  Lion,"  the  "  Lion  and  the  Serpent," 
"  Theseus  and  the  Minotaur,"  and  many  other  groups  of  extra- 
ordinary power.  Much  has  been  written  about  Millet,  but  we 
doubt  if  any  one  has  related  amid  what  curious  circumstances 
he  died.  Viscount  Aguado's  staghounds  had  been  hunting  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Barbizon,  and  the  stag,  making  for  the 
village  and  jumping  into  the  gardens  which  separated  Martinus's 
studio  from  Millet's  turned  to  bay  near  the  window  of  the  very 
room  where  Millet  lay  in  the  last  agony.  A  scene  of  great 
uproar  and  confusion  ensued,  but,  although  Martinus  hastened 
to  warn  the  huntsmen  of  his  neighbour's  condition,  it  was  im- 
possible to  call  off  the  hounds,  who  were  beyond  control,  while 
on  the  other  hand  Baron  Lambert,1  who  was  present,  hesitated 
to  shoot  the  stag  for  fear  lest  the  report  might  give  a  yet 
greater  shock  to  the  dying  painter.  Such  action  was  deemed 
to  be,  however,  the  only  solution  of  the  difficulty,  and 
Lambert's  aim  being  good  the  stag  was  promptly  despatched. 
But  at  the  same  moment  a  weeping  woman  came  forth  from 
Millet's  little  house,  and,  more  by  her  gestures  than  her  words, 
apprised  the  saddened  throng  that  all  was  over.  The  great 
artist  had  passed  away  amid  the  baying  of  the  hallali. 

Paris  was  full  of  gaiety  during  the  latter  part  of  that 
winter,  in  fact  until  the  advent  of  Lent.  The  political  turmoil 
of  the  period  did  not  interfere  with  social  life,  it  rather  added 
zest  and  spice  to  it.  You  found  drawing-room  conspiracies, 
boudoir  cabals  upon  all  sides.  The  Bonapartist  aristocracy  no 
longer  possessed  quite  the  means  of  former  times,  but  many 
Royalist  houses  which,  under  the  Empire,  had  entertained  very 
little  were  now  well  to  the  front.  Paris  was  invaded  also  by 
an  infinity  of  Counts  and  Barons  who  had  formerly  dwelt  in 
the  provinces,  but  had  hastened  to  the  capital  in  the  hope  of 
1  See  our  Court  of  the  Tuileries,  1852-1870. 


180  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

witnessing  the  King's  restoration.1  While  they  included  a 
good  many  adventurers,  they  also  numbered  folk  of  genuine 
old  nobility,  but  in  either  case  it  often  happened  that  their 
means,  adequate  enough  for  provincial  requirements,  were  in- 
sufficient to  meet  the  exigencies  of  la  vie  Parisienne.  Still  they 
endeavoured  to  make  a  brave  show,  drawing  on  their  capital  to 
supply  the  deficiencies  of  their  incomes,  selling  a  farm  here  and 
a  wood  there,  and  even  mortgaging  at  times  the  ancestral 
manor.  It  was  all  bound  to  end  badly,  as  it  did,  particularly 
as  a  few  years  later,  in  the  hope  of  retrieving  their  damaged 
fortunes,  many  of  these  same  titled  folk  invested  what  remained 
to  them  in  Bontoux  and  Feder's  "  Union  Generale "  Bank, 
which  the  Pope  blessed,  and  which  was  to  have  ruined  the 
Jewish  for  the  benefit  of  the  Catholic  aristocracy — a  con- 
summation thwarted,  as  we  shall  hereafter  relate,  by  the 
"machinations"  of  a  rival  financier,  who  raked  in  most  of 
the  shekels  and  left  a  hundred  noble  families  in  the  direst  of 
straits. 

But  in  1875,  and  indeed,  until  the  end  of  the  Septennate, 
the  cry  was  Apres  nous  le  deluge !  The  most  aristocratic  salons 
of  the  period  were  those  of  the  Prince  de  Nemours,  known  later 
as  the  Duke  d"Alencon,  the  Princess  de  Sagan,  the  Baroness 
Alphonse  and  the  Baroness  Nathaniel  de  Rothschild,  the 
Duchesses  de  Bisaccia,  de  Fitz-James,  and  de  Maille,  the 
Dowager  Duchess  de  Doudeauville,  the  Marchionesses  de 
Trevise  and  de  Mortemart,  the  Countesses  de  la  Ferronays,  and 
de  Behague.  Among  those  where  les  elegances  of  Parisian  life 
were  more  particularly  cultivated  were  the  drawing-rooms  of 
the  Duchesses  de  Castries  and  de  la  Tremoille,  Countess  d'Argy, 
the  Marchioness  de  Boisgelin,  and  the  Baroness  de  Cambourg 
(all  Royalist  salons),  together  with  those  of  the  Countess  de 

1  Apropos  of  the  French  nobility  it  may  be  mentioned  that,  apart  from 
the  titles  of  pre-revolutionary  days,  Napoleon  I.  created  9  princes,  32  dukes, 
388  counts,  and  1090  barons.  Under  the  Restoration  titles  were  conferred 
as  follows  :  17  dukes,  70  marquises,  83  counts,  62  viscounts,  215  barons,  and 
785  esquires.  Further,  3  dukes,  19  counts,  17  viscounts,  and  59  barons  were 
created  by  Louis  Philippe,  while  5  dukes,  35  counts,  and  a  considerable 
number  of  barons  were  added  to  the  list  by  Napoleon  III.  A  good  many 
spurious  titles  came  to  the  front  after  1870,  and  one  of  MacMahon's  Ministers 
of  Justice,  M.  Tailhand,  actually  found  it  necessary  to  issue  a  circular  in- 
forming all  judges,  mayors,  deputy  mayors,  and  other  functionaries  who 
called  themselves  marquises,  counts,  or  barons,  that  they  must  prove  their 
right  to  such  titles  or  cease  to  use  them  in  their  official  signatures. 


PARISIAN  DRAWING-ROOMS  181 

Pourtales,  the  Baroness  de  Poilly  and  the  Viscountess  de 
Tredern,  nee  Haussmann,  which  were  patronised  by  the 
partisans  of  the  young  Imperial  Prince.  The  most  musical 
drawing-rooms  of  the  time  were  those  where  the  Princess  de 
Brancovano,  the  Marchioness  d'Aoust,  the  Countesses  Greffulhe 
and  de  Chambrun,  and  the  Baronesses  Hirsch  and  Erlanger 
presided. 

All  the  arts  had  the  entree  to  the  mansions  of  the  Princess 
Mathilde,  the  Baronesses  Adolphe  and  Nathaniel  de  Roths- 
child, Countess  Pillet-Will,  Countess  de  Beaumont -Castries, 
and  Mesdames  Andre  and  Ernest  Mayer.  Politics  and  litera- 
ture flourished  in  the  salons  of  the  Duchess  d'Harcourt,  the 
Duchess  d*Ayen,  the  Countess  de  Rainneville,  the  Countess  de 
Segur,  the  Princess  de  Broglie,  the  Viscountess  de  Janze,  Mme. 
Turr,  Mme.  Arnaud  de  FAriege  and  Mme.  Edmond  Adam. 
Some  salons  seemed  to  be  more  particularly  patronised  by 
gay  young  people.  Such  were  those  of  the  Duchesses  de 
Luynes,  de  Feltre,  and  d'Albufera,  the  Marchioness  de  Lillers, 
the  Princesses  de  la  Tour  d'Auvergne  and  de  Leon,  the 
Countesses  de  la  Rouchefoucauld  and  Potocka ;  while  other 
drawing-rooms,  like  those  of  the  Marchioness  de  Blocqueville, 
the  Duchesses  d'Avaray  and  de  Marmier,  the  Baronesses  Malet 
and  Schickler,  and  Mme.  Lacroix,  appeared  to  be  mostly 
favoured  by  staid  and  even  elderly  folk.  At  times  you  fancied 
yourself  in  some  annexe  to  the  French  Academy,  at  another 
amidst  an  antiquated  Chamber  of  Peers ;  while  anon  you  were 
confronted  by  the  pomp  and  presence  of  royalty,  and  elsewhere 
you  found  youth,  beauty,  and  all  the  taste  and  refinement  suited 
to  the  home  of  a  real  leader  of  fashion. 

The  ladies  who  ruled  the  more  important  sections  of  the 
Parisian  world  in  those  days  were  not  invariably  of  noble  birth. 
At  times  they  had  merely  acquired  a  title  by  marriage,  or 
afterwards.  One  who  by  dint  of  perseverance  achieved  a 
high  position  in  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain,  the  Countess  de 
Behague,  had  sprung  from  a  family  of  artisans  and  married  a 
plebeian  cattle  raiser.  He  acquired  great  wealth,  and  wealth 
procured  him  a  Papal  title.  His  wife,  an  enterprising  and 
energetic  woman,  thereupon  undertook  to  force  the  doors  of 
society,  and  by  sheer  pertinacity  she  did  so,  and  even  brought 
society  to  her  feet.  She  first  contrived  to  marry  her  daughter 
to  an  impecunious  noble,  the  Count  de  Geffroy,  and  he  dying, 


182  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

she  found  her  a  second  husband  in  the  person  of  the  Marquis 
d'Aramon.  That  gave  the  Behagues  the  entree  into  certain 
circles,  and  the  magnificence  of  their  entertainments  contri- 
buted to  bring  about  the  wished-for  result.  When  Mme.  de 
Behague  had  accomplished  what  she  desired,  nobody  could 
display  greater  haughtiness  and  disdain  than  she  did.  "My 
dear,"  one  of  her  lady  friends  said  to  her  on  some  occasion,  "  I 
should  very  much  like  to  bring  Count  Blank  and  introduce  him 
to  you  at  your  next  reception.'1  "  Oh,  not  this  year,  my  list  is 
full,"  Mme.  de  Behague  retorted,  "  next  winter,  if  you  like." 
You  had  to  wait  for  your  entree  into  the  Behague  salons  as  you 
might  wait  for  your  election  to  certain  clubs. 

Another  lady  of  plebeian  stock  who  attained  a  commanding 
position  in  the  society  of  the  time  was  the  Countess  de  la 
Ferronays.  She  was  simply  nee  Gibert,  and  her  grandfather 
had  been  a  tradesman.  She  contrived,  however,  to  marry  a 
nobleman  of  ancient  lineage,  who  long  attended  the  Count  de 
Chambord  in  his  exile.  M.  de  la  Ferronays  died  under  curious 
circumstances.  He  and  the  Pretender  were  driving  one  winter 
afternoon  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Froschdorf  when  silence 
suddenly  fell  between  them.  When  after  a  moment  the  Count 
de  Chambord  asked  his  companion  a  question,  he  failed  to 
obtain  any  answer,  and,  on  glancing  at  him,  he  perceived  that 
he  was  lying  back  in  the  carriage  motionless.  The  Prince  at 
once  called  to  the  coachman  to  stop,  sprang  out,  took  some 
snow  and  rubbed  his  attendant's  face  and  hands  with  it.  To 
no  purpose,  however;  M.  de  la  Ferronays  had  expired,  the 
sudden  rupture  of  a  blood-vessel  being  the  cause  of  this 
unexpected  death. 

His  widow  became  perhaps  the  most  ultra-Royalist  of  the 
ladies  of  the  time.  The  manners  of  the  old  regime,  the 
etiquette  of  Versailles,  or  at  least  a  close  imitation  of  it, 
reigned  at  her  residence  on  the  Cours-la-Reine.  She  believed 
fervently  in  the  divine  right  and  sanctity  of  monarchs,  and  in 
order  to  obtain  the  entree  to  her  salons  you  had  at  least  to 
feign  a  similar  belief.  She  would  not  have  admitted  Queen 
Isabella  of  Spain  to  her  entertainments,  but  she  treated  Don 
Carlos  as  a  most  honoured  guest  on  the  few  occasions  when  he 
was  staying  in  Paris.  Again,  she  altogether  disregarded  the 
Count  de  Paris  and  his  uncles  until  the  Fusion  of  the  Legiti- 
mists and  the  Orleanists  was  completed.     Then  she  was  pleased 


PARISIAN  DRAWING-ROOMS  183 

to  smile  on  them.  For  her,  however,  the  Count  was  never  the 
"  Count  de  Paris,"  she  recognised  no  such  Orleanist  title,  she 
regarded  him  as  "  Monseigneur  le  Dauphin.1'  When  he  became, 
after  the  Count  de  Chambord's  death,  Head  of  the  House  of 
France,  she  at  once  proffered  an  allegiance  which  was  willingly 
accepted;  and  anxious  as  she  was  to  further  the  interests  of 
the  Royal  family,  she  resolved  to  find  a  suitable  husband  for 
"the  King's"  eldest  daughter,  the  Princess  Marie  Amelie. 
The  young  Crown  Prince  (late  King)  of  Portugal  came  on  a 
visit  to  Paris  not  long  afterwards,  and  Mme.  de  la  Ferronays 
having  captured  him,  placed  a  large  portrait  of  the  Princess  in 
one  of  her  salons  in  the  hope  that  it  might  attract  his  attention. 
It  did,  and  the  result  was  a  marriage,  which  had  serious  conse- 
quences for  the  Orleans  family.  We  shall  have  to  speak  of 
it  hereafter.  Early  in  1908  the  union  was  cruelly  dissolved  by 
the  crime  of  a  band  of  assassins,  a  crime  by  which  Queen 
Amelie  lost  both  her  husband  and  her  eldest  son. 

Mme.  de  la  Ferronays,  in  her  eagerness  to  revive  old-time 
customs,  gave,  we  remember,  at  one  time  several  soirees  devoted 
to  the  dances  of  pre-revolutionary  days.  The  original  music 
was  revised  by  Theodore  de  Lajarte,  and  a  number  of  young 
men  and  girls  of  aristocratic  families  were  taught  the  dances 
by  Mile.  Laure  Fonta,  an  expert  in  the  Terpsichorean  art.  It 
was  thus  that  Queen  Marie  de  Medici's  "  Courante,"  the  Valois 
"Pavane,"  the  Reims  "Gavotte,"  and  divers  minuets  were 
performed  at  the  mansion  in  the  Cours-la-Reine.  When  Mme. 
de  la  Ferronays  wished  to  revive  some  of  the  dinner  customs  of 
the  Louis  XIV.  period  she  was  less  successful.  One  of  her 
ideas  was  to  replace  the  usual  modern  formula  signifying  that 
dinner  is  ready — "Madame  la  Comtesse  est  servie" — by  the 
old-time  phrase,  "Les  viandes  sont  appretees"  (the  meats  are 
ready),  but,  on  the  very  first  occasion  of  this  attempted  revival, 
the  majordomo  blundered  sadly.  Opening  the  dining-room 
doors  he  announced  in  a  loud  voice:  "Madame  la  Comtesse, 
les  viandes  sont  avancees."  Now,  in  such  a  connection,  the 
word  avancees  naturally  means  "  high,"  and  the  statement  that 
"  the  meats  were  high  "  naturally  provoked  a  titter  among  the 
guests.  The  unlucky  majordomo  had  got  "mixed,"  as  the 
saying  goes.  It  would  seem  that  another  familiar  formula, 
"les  voitures  sont  avancees'  (the  carriages  are  waiting)  had 
crossed  his  mind,  and  as  he  confused  it  with  the  words  he  was 


184  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

to  speak,  a  dreadful  quid  pro  quo  had  ensued.  Mme.  de  la 
Ferronays  could  not  conceal  her  annoyance,  but  the  Duke  de 
Madrid  (Don  Carlos),  who  happened  to  be  the  guest  of  the 
evening,  endeavoured  to  console  her  by  remarking:  "Ah, 
madam,  one  cannot  revive  the  good  old  times  without  reviving 
the  good  old  servants  also,  and  that  is  unfortunately  im- 
possible. "  In  his  sleeve  the  Duke  doubtless  laughed  like  the 
others.  Never  was  there  a  man  who  cared  less  for  etiquette 
and  ceremony  than  that  hard  fighter  Don  Carlos,  who,  what- 
ever his  piety  (bigotry  if  you  like)  and  belief  in  his  sovereign 
rights,  was  in  his  prime  the  only  Bourbon  Prince  of  the  period 
evincing  some  of  the  healthy  virile  characteristics  of  the 
great  man  of  the  race,  Henri  of  Navarre. 

But  let  us  pass  to  another  salon  of  the  Septennate,  that  of 
the  Baroness  Adolphe  de  Rothschild,  who  died  of  recent  years 
at  an  advanced  age,  leaving  munificent  bequests  to  numerous 
French  and  Swiss  charities.  Born  in  1830,  she  was  a  daughter 
of  Anselm  Solomon  de  Rothschild  of  Vienna,  the  well- 
remembered  Baron  Ferdinand  being  her  brother,  and  Baronesses 
Willy  and  Louise,  and  Miss  Alice  de  Rothschild  of  Waddesdon 
Manor,  her  sisters.  In  1850  she  married  her  cousin  Adolphe, 
son  of  the  founder  of  the  Frankfort  Bank  ;  and  soon  afterwards 
repaired  with  him  to  Naples,  where  he  established  another 
branch  of  the  great  cosmopolitan  financial  house.  Baron  and 
Baroness  Adolphe  became  great  friends  of  Francis  II.  and  his 
consort  Marie  Sophie,  the  last  King  and  Queen  of  Naples,  and 
when  the  latter  were  driven  from  their  throne  they  rendered 
them  many  services.  A  little  later  the  Queen — enceinte  already 
at  the  time  of  the  famous  siege  of  Gaeta — gave  birth  to  a 
daughter  amid  the  barren  splendour  of  the  Farnese  Palace  at 
Rome,  whereupon  Baroness  Adolphe  hastened  to  her  and 
provided  both  cradle  and  layette  for  the  child,  who  died, 
however,  prematurely.  The  Rothschild  house  at  Naples  was 
then  closed,  and  Baron  and  Baroness  Adolphe  settled  in  Paris, 
in  a  remarkably  kfine  mansion  adjoining  the  Pare  Monceau. 
They  gave  some  wonderful  entertainments  there  already  in  the 
time  of  the  Empire,  but  they  did  not  often  figure  at  the 
Tuileries,  as  they  preferred  the  House  of  Bourbon  to  that  of 
Bonaparte. 

The  Pare  Monceau  mansion  was,  we  think,  one  of  the  very 
last  in  Paris  where  a  halberdier  stood  on  duty  on  the  threshold 


PARISIAN  DRAWING-ROOMS  185 

of  the  vestibule,  while  on  reception  evenings  either  side  of  the 
white  marble  staircase  was  lined  with  footmen  in  royal  blue 
and  crimson.  The  exiled  Neapolitan  Bourbons  were  long 
honoured  guests  at  the  mansion.  Francis  II.  was  invariably 
treated  there  as  a  reigning  sovereign,  though  the  Baroness's 
more  particular  friendship  was  for  the  Queen.  It  is,  we  believe, 
quite  certain  that  the  ex-rulers  of  Naples  repeatedly  received 
important  financial  help  from  Baron  and  Baroness  Adolphe. 
On  that  account  we  have  always  regarded  the  picture  of  them 
and  their  financial  straits  which  Daudet  limned  in  his  Kings 
in  Exile  as  being  exaggerated. 

After  royalty,  music  claimed  the  honours  of  Baroness 
Adolphe's  salons :  Patti,  Nilsson,  Marie  Van  Zandt,  and  many 
other  famous  vocalists  frequented  them.  The  Baroness's 
summer  residence  was  the  handsome  chateau  de  Pregny,  over- 
looking the  lake  of  Geneva.  Its  charming  grounds  with  their 
grottoes  and  aviaries — the  latter  replete  with  birds  of  many 
kinds — were  her  peculiar  care.  George  V.,  when  Duke  of  York, 
and  his  brother,  the  late  Duke  of  Clarence,  were  on  one 
occasion  guests  at  Pregny.  The  Baroness  resided  there  perma- 
nently after  losing  her  husband  in  1900.  Tall  and  fair,  he  was 
perhaps  more  of  a  society  man  than  any  other  Rothschild  of  his 
period.  Very  good-humoured  and  a  brilliant  conversationalist, 
he  possessed  considerable  artistic  taste,  and  was  often  to  be 
found  in  one  or  another  Parisian  studio.  He  was  also  a 
"  doggy  "  man,  a  great  admirer  of  French  poodles.  His  wife's 
good  heart  was  exemplified  by  her  long  life  of  munificence,  but 
she  was  also  a  woman  of  ready  and  often  mordant  wit,  one 
whose  mots  flashed  at  times  through  Paris.  It  was  she  who, 
referring  to  the  prolonged  political  inactivity  of  Prince  Victor 
Napoleon,  the  present  head  of  the  Bonapartes,  once  described 
him  as  "  an  eaglet  whose  whole  life  is  spent  in  moulting.""  At 
another  time,  when  a  number  of  short-lived  French  ministries 
were  following  each  other  in  rapid  succession,  somebody  re- 
marked in  her  hearing :  "  It  is  a  perfect  St.  Bartholomew.1' 
"  At  all  events,"  retorted  the  Baroness,  "  you  cannot  call  it  a 
Massacre  of  the  Innocents.''''  At  an  earlier  period,  soon  after 
the  Franco-German  War,  when  Thiers,  one  evening  at  the 
Iillysee,  was  despondently  denouncing  the  folly  of  warfare, 
adding :  "  After  all,  what  have  we  ever  gained  by  Napoleon's 
victories    and    conquests  ? "    the    Baroness    answered    archly : 


186  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

"  Why,  Monsieur  Thiers,  we  have  gained  your  History  of  the 
Consulate  and  the  Empire.''''  The  little  man  hardly  liked  it, 
but  the  retort  was  overheard  and  circulated  through  Paris  on 
the  morrow. 

Very  different  from  the  Rothschild  salons  were  those  of  the 
Marchioness  de  Blocqueville  on  the  Quai  Malaquais.  The 
stately  old-fashioned  mansion  of  brick  with  stone  dressings 
was  furnished  soberly,  historical  and  family  portraits  chiefly 
adorning  the  walls  of  the  reception  rooms.  The  daughter  of 
Napoleon's  general,  Davout,  Duke  d'Auerstadt,  and  the  widow 
of  Francois  de  Coulibceuf,  Marquis  de  Blocqueville,  the 
mistress  of  the  house  presided  over  what  became  par  excellence, 
after  Mme.  d'Haussonville's  death,  the  academical  salon  of 
Paris.  Every  Monday  (Mme.  de  Blocqueville's  day)  all  the 
sections  of  the  Institute  of  France  were  represented  there. 
There  was  no  aristocratic  pretentiousness,  nor  any  revolutionary 
sans  facon ;  the  general  tendency  of  the  opinions  held  there 
was  liberal ;  the  manners  were  simply  those  of  good  society. 
Though  men  of  mature  age  predominated,  young  ones  were 
welcomed,  and  if  the  tone  of  the  house  was  somewhat  serious  an 
element  of  brightness  was  to  be  found  there,  the  Marchioness 
contriving  to  attract  to  her  receptions  a  bevy  of  charming 
women  interested  in  literature  and  art.  She  had  written  a  few 
books,  notably  a  work  on  her  father,  but  she  was  no  pedant,  no 
bluestocking.  Her  essential  quality  was  tact,  and  it  used  to  be 
said  that  there  was  not  another  drawing-room  in  Paris  where  a 
young  man  could  acquire  better  lessons  in  genuine  politeness 
and  good  behaviour. 

There  was  a  slight  suggestion  of  artistic  bohemianism  about 
the  drawing-room  of  the  Countess  Jeanne  de  Beaumont- 
Castries,  the  sister  of  Mme.  de  MacMahon.  Her  house  stood 
at  the  corner  of  the  Rue  Marbeuf  and  the  Avenue  de  PAlma, 
and  was  supposed  to  be  an  imitation  of  an  English  cottage. 
It  was  of  brick-work  with  a  wooden  porch  and  a  carved  oak 
staircase  conducting  to  a  landing,  along  one  wall  of  which 
stretched  a  huge  canvas  by  Count  Lepic,  representing  a  modern 
seaside  scene  full  of  animation.  On  one  side  of  this  landing 
you  found  the  Countess's  studio,  for,  besides  being  a  brilliant 
musician  she  was  a  sculptor  of  talent,  as  was  evidenced  by  her 
medallion  of  Mme.  Krauss  of  the  Opera  and  her  busts  of 
Coligny  and  Joan  of  Arc.     On  the  other  side  of  the  landing 


PARISIAN  DRAWING-ROOMS  187 

we  have  mentioned  there  was  a  dining-room  hung  with  old 
tapestry,  and  a  huge  monumental  hall  which  served  as 
the  principal  salon  de  reception.  It  was  hung  with  modern 
paintings,  among  them  being  a  fascinating  portrait  of  the 
Countess  by  Carolus  Duran. 

Mme.  de  Beaumont  had  been  renowned  for  her  beauty 
under  the  Empire,  when  her  husband,  jealous,  it  seemed,  of 
every  man  who  dared  even  to  look  at  her,  had  challenged,  in  a 
semi-insane  fashion,  all  whom  he  supposed  to  be  her  admirers, 
including,  on  one  occasion,  Prince  Metternich,  the  Austrian 
Ambassador.1  Under  the  Septennate,  Mme.  de  Beaumont  was 
still  beautiful,  famous  particularly  for  the  contour  of  her 
shoulders,  but  her  artistic  temperament  had  wrought  a 
considerable  change  in  her  nature,  inclined  her  to  a  liberalism 
of  views  which  one  did  not  expect  to  find  in  a  daughter  of 
the  Castries,  a  granddaughter  of  the  French  Harcourts.  She 
did  not  renounce  her  birth,  her  name,  her  relatives,  or  her  old 
associations,  but  she  realised  the  great  changes  taking  place  in 
French  society,  and  she  was,  at  that  time  at  all  events,  the 
only  woman  of  the  authentic  old  noblesse  who  went  forward, 
as  it  were,  to  welcome  the  new  ideas,  and  threw  her  doors  open 
to  the  democratic  breeze  which  was  sweeping  across  the 
country.  In  that  respect  she  was,  of  course,  quite  unlike  her 
elder  sister,  Mme.  de  MacMahon — an  able  and  large-hearted 
woman,  but  one  in  whom  the  principle  of  authority  was 
paramount — or  her  brother,  the  last  Duke  de  Castries,  a  very 
gallant  but  extremely  aristocratic  gentleman,  long  famous  and 
honoured  for  his  scrupulous  rectitude  on  the  French  turf.  Of 
course,  no  political  flag  ever  waved  over  the  Countess  de 
Beaumont's  abode.  It  was  neutral  ground  to  which  politicians 
of  virtually  every  shade  could,  if  they  were  interested  in  art, 
literature,  or  music,  obtain  access  without  particular  difficulty. 
Under  what  exact  circumstances  Gambetta  first  appeared  there, 
we  cannot  say ;  but  he  had  many  relations  in  the  art  world, 
and  artists  were  welcome  at  Mme.  de  Beaumont's.  In  any  case 
Gambetta  became  a  frequent  visitor  at  the  "  cottage,"  and  on 
several  occasions  he  there  formed  relations  with  personages 
whom  he  could  not  well  have  met  elsewhere,  and  exchanged 
views  with  them  on  important  political  matters.  In  that  re- 
spect Mme.  de  Beaumont's  hospitality  proved  very  advantageous 
1  See  our  Court  of  the  Tuileries,  1852-1870. 


188  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

to  the  popular  leader.  It  was,  of  course,  rather  piquant  to 
find  him  frequenting  her  house  when  one  remembered  her 
near  relationship  to  the  Duchess  de  Magenta  and  the  Marshal 
President.  Scores  of  people  were  certainly  aware  of  Gambetta's 
friendship  with  the  Countess,  but,  although  it  lasted  until  his 
death,  we  doubt  if  it  was  known  publicly,  during  his  life  at  all 
events. 

On  the  other  hand,  everybody  was  acquainted  with  his 
frequent  presence  in  the  salons  of  the  statuesque  Mme.  Arnaud 
de  TAriege  and  the  ever  active  Mme.  Edmond  Adam,  who,  as 
feminine  leaders  of  Republican  society,  were  the  first  to  be 
styled  Les  Pre'cieuses  Radicates  by  the  Royalist  press.  The 
daughter  of  an  officer  of  the  first  Napoleon,  Mme.  Adam, 
"  Juliette  Lamber "  in  literature,  had  first  married  a  country 
doctor  with  whom  her  life  was  most  unhappy,  but  after  his 
death  she  became  the  wife  of  Edmond  Adam,  a  wealthy,  broad- 
minded,  generous  man,  occupying  a  fairly  high  position  at  the 
French  bar.  During  the  German  Siege  of  Paris,  he  served  for 
a  time  as  Prefect  of  Police.  Later,  he  befriended  Henri 
Rochefort,  providing  him  with  money  at  the  time  of  his  escape 
from  New  Caledonia.  Already,  in  his  lifetime,  but  more 
particularly  after  his  death,  Mme.  Adam  made  her  drawing- 
room  one  of  the  leading  Republican  rendezvous.  She  was 
already  known  in  literary  circles  by  several  stories  and  sketches, 
and  one  or  two  books  of  some  social  import,  such  as  her 
Idees  Anti  -  Proudhoniennes  sur  V Amour,  la  Femme,  et  le 
Mariage.  It  was  not  until  1879,  and  consequently  after 
MacMahon's  time,  that  she  established  "  La  Nouvelle  Revue," 
but  she  had  then  already  been  for  some  years  in  the  front  rank 
politically. 

Of  an  independent  character  and  somewhat  authoritarian 
disposition,  she  was  over  fond  of  laying  down  the  law  in  her 
drawing-room,  selecting  and  directing  the  conversation  much 
as  the  famous  Mme.  Geoffrin  did  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
She  was  scarcely  witty,  but  she  possessed  a  fund  of  anecdotical 
information  which  led  you  to  take  interest  in  what  she  said. 
Her  temperament  was  enthusiastic,  somewhat  sentimental ;  she 
was  impulsive  in  her  likes  and  dislikes,  and  brought  all  her 
powers  of  sarcasm  to  bear  on  those  to  whom  she  took  an 
aversion.  With  her  more  intimate  gentlemen  friends  she 
affected  a  kind  of  camaraderie,  calling  them  at  times  by  their 


PARISIAN  DRAWING-ROOMS  189 

Christian  names  and  seldom  employing  the  word  "  Monsieur.1' 
A  Pagan  in  respect  to  religion,  she  claimed  to  belong 
philosophically  to  the  neo-platonic  school  of  Alexandria.  In 
politics  she  was  somewhat  of  a  Girondist.  At  the  same  time 
she  was  a  good  patriot,  warmly  devoted  to  what  seemed  to  her 
the  best  interests  of  France  and  the  Republic.  Among  the 
men  who  admired  her  and  to  whom  she  was  attached  were 
General  Chanzy,  General  de  Galliffet,  Ferdinand  de  Lesseps, 
M.  de  Freycinet,  and  such  minor  lights  as  Lepere,  Andrieux, 
and  Pittie  who  became  the  head  of  Grevy's  military  household. 
Her  pet  aversion  was  Jules  Ferry.  In  literature  she  favoured 
the  school  of  George  Sand  and  patronised  Deroulede,  who 
threatened  at  one  time  to  become  the  French  Kipling.  She 
abhorred  Zola,  and  frequently  exerted  herself  against  him,  he, 
on  his  side,  professing  profound  disdain  for  her.  It  is  certain, 
however,  that  for  several  years  she  exercised  great  literary  as 
well  as  political  influence  in  Paris. 

The  revival  of  Parisian  life  under  the  Septennate  was 
marked  not  only  by  the  opening  of  many  new  drawing-rooms. 
Clubland  flourished  afresh,  several  new  cercles  were  established, 
and  the  membership  of  the  older  ones  rapidly  increased. 
Sport  reviving,  the  Jockey  Club  was  again  a  good  deal  en 
evidence.  It  dated  from  1833,  when  it  was  established  through 
the  initiative  of  a  gentleman  of  English  origin,  M.  de  Bryon, 
who  gathered  the  other  thirteen  original  members  around  him 
on  the  top  floor  of  a  little  house  near  the  Tivoli  gardens.  But 
the  Club  soon  migrated  to  the  Rue  Drouot,  owing  to  the 
influential  support  which  it  obtained  from  such  leaders  of 
Parisian  life  as  the  Dukes  of  Orleans  and  Nemours,  the  Prince 
de  la  Moskowa,  Prince  DemidofF,  Lord  Henry  Seymour,  Count 
de  Cambis,  Charles  Lafitte  (Major  Fridolin),  MM.  Delamarre, 
de  Normandie,  de  Rieussec  and  others.  Its  race  meetings  were 
first  held  on  the  Champ  de  Mars,  where,  indeed,  they  continued 
until  1857,  when  the  course  was  transferred  to  Longchamp  in 
the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  Already  in  1835,  however,  the 
Chantilly  course  was  established  by  the  Orleans  Princes,  and 
the  Prix  du  Jockey  Club  or  "  French  Derby "  (original  value 
J^OO)  was  inaugurated  there — the  first  winner  being  a  horse 
named  Frank,  the  property  of  the  eccentric  Lord  Henry 
Seymour,  whose  folly  and  prodigality  won  for  him  in  Paris  the 
singular  nickname  of  "  Milord  Arsouille." 


190  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Gradually  increasing  in  importance,  the  Jockey  Club  moved 
from  the  Rue  Drouot  to  larger  premises  in  the  Rue  de  Grammont, 
and  eventually  in  1863  it  took  possession  of  a  new  building  in 
the  Rue  Scribe.  Count  Cavour,  who,  during  a  sojourn  in  Paris 
in  the  fifties,  became  a  temporary  member  of  the  "  Jockey,11  was 
greatly  impressed  by  its  non-political  character,  as  he  mentions 
in  one  of  his  published  letters.  Any  member  attempting  to 
raise  a  political  discussion,  received,  said  he,  a  warning  from 
the  Committee,  and  on  repeating  the  offence  was  expelled. 
And  he  commented  on  the  fact  that  he  had  found  the  Prince 
de  la  Moskowa,  the  son  of  Marshal  Ney,  hobnobbing  with  such 
a  fervent  Royalist  as  the  Marquis  de  la  Rifaudiere,  who  had 
fought  any  number  of  duels  "  for  the  honour  of  the  Duchess 
de  Berri.11  In  a  sense  the  Jockey  Club  has  always  retained 
a  non-political  character,  that  is,  members  of  the  rival  French 
aristocracies — Legitimist,  Orleanist,  and  Bonapartist — have 
freely  met  there,  but  few  Republicans  have  ever  belonged  to  it. 
Even  they  have  only  been  Republicans  nominally. 

At  the  time  of  Marshal  MacMahon^  Presidency  the  club 
counted  about  seven  hundred  members,  inclusive  of  a  few 
foreign  royalties,  among  them  the  Prince  of  Wales,  later 
Edward  VII.  The  great  majority  were  sportsmen  and  men 
of  pleasure.  A  certain  number  of  aristocratic  names  figured 
in  the  list,  but  they  were  seldom  those  of  the  more  famous 
French  houses.  The  army,  however,  was  represented  by 
numerous  general  officers,  while  the  diplomatic  world  supplied 
a  fairly  strong  contingent,  and  there  were  a  certain  number  of 
financiers,  including  the  Rothschilds,  though,  even  at  that 
period,  Jewish  candidates  were  by  no  means  favoured.  Notoriety 
or  eccentricity  debarred  many  men  of  wealth  and  birth  from 
admission.  The  members,  who  regarded  themselves  as  so  many 
arbitri  elegantarium,  had  set  up  a  certain  standard,  and  all  who 
fell  short  of  it  or  went  beyond  it  were  pitilessly  blackballed  at 
the  elections.  More  than  one  young  scion  of  nobility  found 
himself  excluded  simply  because  the  cut  of  his  whiskers,  the 
style  of  his  phaeton,  the  pattern  of  his  trousers,  or  the  manner 
in  which  he  wore  his  eye-glass,  displeased  a  few  members.  It 
should  be  added  that,  despite  its  prominent  position  in  connec- 
tion with  the  turf,  the  "  Jockey  "  has  never  been  a  gambling  club. 
Baccarat  has  never  been  played  there.  In  MacMahon's  time 
virtually  the  only  card  games  patronised  were  whist  and  bezique. 


SOME  PARISIAN  CLUBS  191 

The  most  genuinely  aristocratic  of  the  Paris  clubs  was 
L'Union,  to  which  several  higher  members  of  the  Corps 
Diplomatique  and  other  distinguished  foreigners  belonged.  The 
general  membership  was,  however,  small,  and  no  Frenchman 
had  a  chance  of  election  unless,  in  addition  to  holding  strongly 
Conservative  opinions,  he  had  a  good  fortune,  a  great  name,  and 
a  connection  with  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain.  Most  of  its 
members  were  over  fifty  years  of  age,  and  quietude  reigned  in 
its  rooms.  It  was  a  haven,  where  those  privileged  to  cross  its 
portals  might  rest  and  meditate  on  the  past,  careless  of  the 
frivolity  and  excitement  that  reigned  elsewhere. 

The  Cercle  Agricole,  whose  members  were  generally  called 
"the  potatoes,''1  was  a  shade  more  Liberal  than  the  Union, 
though  it  was  installed  in  that  aristocratic  district,  the  noble 
Faubourg.  While  most  of  the  members  belonged  to  the 
nobility,  there  were  also  a  good  many  untitled  landowners  in 
the  club,  and  these  more  particularly  constituted  the  Liberal 
element.  There  was  little  card  play,  but  the  reading-room  was 
generally  full,  and  the  dinners  were  well  attended.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  whilom  Cercle  Imperial,  at  the  corner  of  the 
Avenue  Gabriel  and  the  Rue  Boissy  d'Anglas,  had  become  the 
Temple  of  Baccarat.  Whereas  the  very  latest  "  potatoes  *  went 
to  bed  at  one  in  the  morning,  the  Cercle  des  Champs  Elysees 
(as  the  Imperial  was  now  called)  kept  open  virtually  until  dawn. 
For  eight  months  in  the  year  play  was  incessant  there,  and  the 
gains  and  losses  were  often  extremely  large.  The  club  had 
altogether  ceased  to  be  a  Bonapartist  stronghold.  A  good 
many  members  of  Imperial  times  still  remained,  but  a  crowd 
of  financiers,  speculators  of  all  kinds,  interspersed  with  down- 
right adventurers,  had  invaded  both  the  salons  and  the  famous 
terrace  where  you  could  sit,  smoke,  and  watch  le  tout  Paris  on 
its  way  to  and  from  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  There,  by  the  way, 
the  number  of  well-appointed  equipages  and  the  display  of 
feminine  finery  recalled  the  gayest  days  of  the  Empire.  But  it 
was  no  longer  the  fashion,  as  it  had  then  been,  to  drive  round 
the  lakes.  A  few  great  ladies,  anxious,  it  was  said,  to  escape 
the  presence  of  the  women  of  the  demi-monde,  who  flaunted  their 
rouge  and  their  pearl  powder  in  the  Bois,  decided  one  day  that 
they  would  henceforth  drive  in  the  Avenue  des  Acacias.  Some 
friends  joined  them,  and  others  imitating  the  example,  le  tour 
du  Lac  was  speedily  abandoned  by  everybody.     Thus  the  purpose 


192  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

of  the  innovators  was  defeated,  the  demi-monde  was  with  them 
as  before.  Indeed,  ces  dames,  as  might  have  been  expected,  had 
been  among  the  first  to  follow  the  noble  Faubourg  to  the  new 
and  more  select  drive. 

The  world  of  the  salons,  the  clubs  and  the  Bois  still  clung 
to  the  hope  that  France  would  soon  have  a  monarch.  Although 
the  Republic  was  now  definitely  constituted  it  was  only  the 
masses  that  took  it  au  serieux.  It  was  in  February  1875  that 
an  unwilling  vote  in  favour  of  the  Republican  regime  was  wrung 
from  the  Versailles  Assembly,  which,  as  no  further  excuse  for 
delay  remained,  was  then  at  last  compelled  to  deal  with  the 
Constitutional  problem.  Even  at  that  stage,  however,  it  con- 
trived to  shirk  any  express  proclamation  of  the  Republic.  A 
proposal  to  that  effect,  submitted  by  the  eminent  economist 
Laboulaye,  was  defeated  by  a  majority  of  24  votes,  and  it 
was  only  by  a  majority  of  one  that  a  formula  proposed  by 
another  member — M.  Henri  Wallon,  a  former  professor  at  the 
Sorbonne  and  author  of  several  esteemed  historical  volumes — 
was  adopted.  It  did  not  even  set  forth  that  the  Republic  was 
the  government  of  France,  it  merely  left  that  fact  implied ;  for 
it  ran  as  follows.  "  The  President  of  the  Republic  is  elected 
by  a  majority  of  the  votes  cast  by  the  Senate  and  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies  sitting  together  as  a  National  Assembly.  He  is 
appointed  for  seven  years  and  can  be  re-elected." 

In  defining  the  powers  of  the  future  Senators  and  Deputies, 
the  Assembly  did  its  utmost  to  place  a  curb  upon  the  latter. 
The  Senators  were  to  share  all  legislative  powers,  they  were 
also  to  have  the  right  of  refusing  authority  to  declare  war  or 
to  ratify  treaties  of  peace  and  commerce,  and  that  of  controlling 
the  general  policy  of  the  Government.  Further,  the  Senators 
were  to  join  the  Deputies — so  as  to  form  a  National  Assembly 
— not  only  whenever  a  new  President  of  the  Republic  had  to 
be  elected,  but  also  when  any  proposal  to  revise  the  Constitution 
might  be  submitted.  On  those  occasions  the  direction  of  the 
debates  of  the  Assembly  was  to  be  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the 
President  and  the  officials  of  the  Senate.  The  Chamber  of 
Deputies  might  impeach  the  President  of  the  Republic  or  his 
Ministers,  but  the  Senate  alone  was  to  judge  them.  Further, 
if  the  President  of  the  Republic  should  wish  to  dissolve  the 
Chamber  he  might  not  do  so  without  the  Senate's  permission. 
He  secured,  however,  important  prerogatives  by  the  new  Con- 


THE  CONSTITUTION  193 

stitution.  He  could  summon,  prorogue,  and  adjourn  the 
Legislature  as  he  might  see  fit.  He  had  authority  to  propose 
legislation  and  to  intervene,  through  his  Ministers,  in  the 
debates  on  proposed  laws.  All  civil  and  military  appointments 
were  made  by  him.  He  disposed  of  the  military,  naval,  and 
police  forces.  The  right  of  pardoning  and  of  commuting 
sentences  was  also  vested  in  him. 

The  Chamber  of  Deputies  was  to  be  composed  of  532 
members,1  and  the  Senate  of  300.  To  ensure  the  existence  of 
a  Conservative  element  in  the  latter  body  it  was  to  include 
75  irremovable  members.  No  Senator  was  to  be  under  40  and 
no  Deputy  under  25  years  of  age.  Until  1884,  the  Constitution 
of  Versailles  remained  unchanged,  but  it  was  then  decided 
to  gradually  abolish  the  life  senatorships,  lots  being  drawn 
each  time  that  an  "  irremovable "  died,  in  order  to  determine 
which  department  should  elect  a  Senator  for  the  vacant  seat — a 
list  being  kept  of  those  departments  entitled,  by  reason  of  their 
population,  to  an  additional  representative.  Since  1884  the 
Senators  have  been  elected  for  nine  years,  but  every  third  year 
a  third  of  the  Assembly  is  renewed.  The  Senators  are  chosen 
by  list  voting  in  each  department  or  colony,2  and  the  senatorial 
electors  are  the  deputies,  the  departmental  and  district 
councillors,  and  delegates  chosen  by  the  municipal  councils  of 
the  various  constituencies.  The  Deputies,  on  the  other  hancT,  | 
are  elected  by  universal  suffrage.  Each  arrondissement  or 
district  elects  one  Deputy,  but  when  its  population  exceeds 
100,000,  it  is  entitled  to  elect  an  additional  Deputy  for  every 
additional  100,000  inhabitants  or  fraction  of  that  number.3/ 
It  should  be  mentioned,  however,  that  from  June  1885  until 
February  1889  there  was  a  system  of  list  voting,  by  which 
each  elector  voted  for  all  the  deputies  of  his  department, 
and  though  this  system  was  then  extremely  prejudicial 
to  the  Republic,  there  is  nowadays  a  growing  desire  to  , 
revive  it,  and  it  may  soon  be  tried  again  in  a  modified 
form.  With  respect  to  the  relative  political  importance  ( 
of  the  two  Legislative  bodies,  it  may  be  pointed  out  that 
1  There  are  nowadays  597.  V 

3  The  Colonies  electing  Senators  are :  Algeria,  3 ;  Guadeloupe,  Pondi- 
chery,  Martinique,  and  Reunion,  1  each. 

8  The  Colonies  send  deputies  to  the  Chamber  as  follows :  Algeria,  6 ; 
Cochin  China,  1 ;  Guadeloupe,  2 ;  French  Guiana,  1 ;  French  India,  1 ; 
Martinique,  2 ;  Reunion,  2 ;  Senegal,  1. 

o 


194  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

in  spite  of  all  the  National  Assembly's  stipulations  in  favour 
of  the  Senate,  the  latter's  moral  authority  has  declined.  We 
think  that  no  French  Ministry  would  nowadays  retire  in  con- 
sequence of  any  adverse  vote  in  the  Senate. 

When  the  Constitution  of  1875  had  been  voted  (it  was,  by 
the  way,  the  thirteenth  since  1789)  the  Cissey-Fortou  Ministry 
resigned  office.  The  Royalists  were  anxious  that  there  should 
be  a  strong  Administration  during  the  last  months  of  the 
Assembly's  life,  for  it  had  agreed  to  lay  down  its  powers  prior 
to  the  elections  for  the  new  Legislature,  which  were  to  take 
place  early  the  following  year.  Pressure  was  therefore  brought 
to  bear  on  MacMahon  to  recall  the  Duke  de  Broglie,  but  the 
attempt  failed,  as  did  another  to  induce  the  Duke  d'Audiffret 
Pasquier1  to  assume  office.  The  negotiations  were  laborious, 
and  on  one  occasion  when  a  politician  whom  the  Marshal 
President  had  summoned,  asked  for  two  days1  delay  to  think 
over  the  proposals  made  to  him,  MacMahon  retorted,  "Two 
days !  why  I  was  barely  granted  two  minutes  to  decide  if  I 
would  accept  the  Presidency  ! " 

At  last  a  Prime  Minister  was  found  in  M.  Buffet,  who  had 

presided  not  unsuccessfully  over  the  Assembly  since  Jules  Grevy's 

resignation.     Grevy,  as  we  said,  had  been  content  to  preside  in 

a  frock  coat,  but  Buffet  reverted  to  evening  dress  a  la  Duke  de 

Morny.     Some  considered  him  rather  rough  in  his  manners,  and 

inclined  to  be  partial,  but  there  was  little  justification  for  that 

charge.     If  he  was  prompt  and  energetic  in  quelling  disturbances, 

it  was  because  he  deemed  it  essential  to  assert  the  presidential 

authority,  that  being  the  only  means  of  preventing  the  Assembly, 

compounded  of  so  many  hostile  factions,  from  degenerating  into 

a  bear  garden.     With   his   assumption  of  the   Premiership  a 

Republican  element  entered  into  the  Administration,  for  while 

Cissey  still  remained  at  the  War  Ministry  and  Decazes  at  the 

department  for  Foreign  Affairs,  Leon  Say  took  the  portfolio  for 

Finances,  Dufaure  the  Ministry  of  Justice,  and  Wallon — "  the 

1  Edmond  Armand  Gaston,  Duke  d'Audiffret-Pasquier,  born  in  1823,  and 
adopted  by  his  grand-uncle,  Chancellor  Pasquier  (pronounced  Pa-ki-^),  had 
distinguished  himself  by  his  reports  and  speeches  on  the  onerous  contracts 
entered  into  during  the  war  of  1870.  He  was  probably  the  most  Liberal- 
minded  of  all  the  Dukes  who  figured  so  largely  in  the  affairs  of  the  time.  He 
succeeded  Buffet  as  President  of  the  Assembly,  and  became  afterwards  the 
first  President  of  the  Senate.  He  was  not,  however,  a  success  in  either  post. 
A  lean  little  man  with  mutton-chop  whiskers,  he  had  a  somewhat  impatient, 
choleric  temper,  which  did  not  fit  him  for  presidential  functions. 


POLITICAL  CHANGES  195 

Father "  of  the  new  Constitution — that  of  Public  Instruction. 
Buffet  himself  became  Minister  of  the  Interior.  The  new 
Administration's  mission  was  to  prepare  the  country  for  the 
general  elections,  and  it  was  hoped  that  it  would  induce  it 
to  patronise  Conservative  candidates.  MacMahon  issued  a 
proclamation  calling  upon  all  electors  who  were  in  favour  of 
social  order,  to  rally  round  his  Government,  and  thereby  ensure 
to  it  the  strength  and  respect  which  were  needful  for  the  general 
security.  On  the  other  hand  the  Republican  leaders,  Thiers  and 
Gambetta,  counselled  moderation.  The  result  showed  that  the 
majority  of  the  country  was  weary  of  all  the  intrigues  and 
subterfuges  which  had  marked  the  National  Assembly's  long 
career.  Owing  to  its  tactics  with  respect  to  the  "  irremovables," 
there  was  not  a  Republican  majority  in  the  new  Senate,  but  the 
popular  party  mustered  no  fewer  than  148  members  of  various 
shades  against  152  Legitimists,  Orleanists,  Bonapartists,  and 
Clericals.  Thiers  was  elected  to  the  new  body;  Buffet,  the 
Prime  Minister,  who  was  a  candidate  in  the  Vosges,  was  defeated. 
A  little  later,  when  the  elections  for  the  Chamber  of  Deputies 
took  place,  the  first  decisive  polls  (421  in  number)  resulted  in 
the  return  of  295  Republicans  of  different  shades.  Further 
Republican  successes  attended  the  second  polls  necessitated  in 
111  constituencies  by  the  failure  of  any  candidate  to  secure  a 
majority  over  all  competitors  at  the  first  ballots.  Buffet,  a 
candidate  in  four  constituencies,  was  defeated  in  every  one  of 
them,  Gambetta  was  returned  in  four  out  of  five  and  decided  to 
sit  for  Belleville.  The  fall  of  Buffet's  Administration  became 
inevitable,  and  MacMahon,  accepting  the  country's  verdict, 
though  it  was  not  in  accordance  with  his  own  convictions,  chose 
Dufaure,  the  recent  Minister  of  Justice,  to  form  a  new  Govern- 
ment. 

Born  near  Cognac  in  1798  and  an  advocate  by  profession, 
Dufaure  was  an  old  parliamentary  hand  who  had  sat  in  the 
Legislatures  of  the  Orleans  Monarchy,  the  Second  Republic,  and 
the  Second  Empire.  He  had  been  Minister  of  Public  Works  as 
far  back  as  the  time  when  railways  were  first  introduced  into 
France,  an  innovation  which  he  had  done  his  best  to  encourage. 
He  had  even  served  Louis  Napoleon  for  a  short  time  as  Minister 
of  the  Interior,  but  had  afterwards  returned  to  the  Opposition 
ranks.  When  Thiers  became  Chief  of  the  Executive  in  1871, 
Dufaure  was  his  first  Minister  of  Justice.     His  Republicanism 


196  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

was  distinctly  Conservative  ;  his  associations  with  Orleanist  times 
had  made  him,  also,  somewhat  of  a  doctrinaire.  He  was  fond  of 
repeating  the  Italian  proverb  Chi  va  piano  va  sano,  e  chi  va  sano 
va  lontano,  remarking  that  it  was  because  he  had  always  kept 
it  before  his  mind  that  he  had  attained  his  great  age  (he  was 
seventy-eight  when  he  became  chief  Minister)  with  his  faculties 
unimpaired.  He  was  certainly  physically  and  intellectually  "  a 
grand  old  man."  But  at  the  same  time  he  was  too  slow,  too 
cautious,  too  much  wedded  to  the  past  to  suit  the  new  Chamber 
of  Deputies,  whose  disposition  was  indicated  by  the  election  of 
Gambetta  as  President  of  the  Budget  Committee.  Dufaure 
failed  also  with  the  Senate,  and  at  the  end  of  the  year  (1876), 
being  defeated  in  both  houses,  he  resigned  office. 

MacMahon  was  at  a  loss  whom  to  take  as  his  successor.  In 
his  dilemma  he  consulted  the  President  of  the  Senate,  and  Duke 
d'Audiffret-Pasquier,  to  whose  Liberalism  we  have  referred,1 
advised  him  to  send  for  Jules  Simon.  He  did  so,  and  Simon 
formed  the  new  Administration.  We  have  spoken  of  him 
previously  in  our  narrative.2  He  was  (1877)  in  his  sixty-third 
year.  His  early  life  had  been  full  of  difficulties  bravely  sur- 
mounted.3    A  Deputy  of  the  Republican  Opposition  under  the 

1  See  footnote  p.  194,  ante.  2  See  pp.  9,  13,  28,  40,  ante. 

3  In  that  respect  we  will  quote  a  very  interesting  letter  written  by  him. 
We  may  say  that  we  ourselves  had  the  advantage  of  knowing  M.  Simon  and 
of  being  received  in  his  grenier — as  he  called  his  flat  at  No.  10  Place  de  la 
Madeleine— thanks  to  our  acquaintance  with  one  of  his  sons  : — 

"  You  ask  me  for  a  few  particulars  about  some  episodes  of  my  young  days 
of  which  I  one  day  spoke  to  you.  When  I  was,  I  think,  about  thirteen,  my 
family  found  itself  quite  ruined  and  unable  to  provide  for  the  cost  of  my 
education.  I  was  then  in  the  third  class  at  the  College  of  Lorient.  There 
was  talk  of  teaching  me  a  clockmaker's  calling.  But  I  set  out  on  foot  from 
Lorient  with  six  francs  in  my  pocket,  and  from  that  day  until  I  was  appointed 
professor  of  the  class  of  philosophy  at  the  Lycee  of  Caen,  I  received  nothing 
(from  my  family?)  but  those  six  francs.  I  went  from  Lorient  to  Vannes 
where  I  taught  spelling  and  Latin  to  pupils  whom  I  charged  3  francs,  and 
even  30  sous  a  month,  starting  at  six  o'clock  .  .  .  and  beginning  again  at 
four  in  the  afternoon,  and  thereby  earning  my  bread,  and  the  cost  of  my 
education  at  the  college.  I  thus  passed  through  the  second  and  rhetoric 
class.  When  I  was  in  the  philosophy  class  the  General  Council  (of  the 
department)  voted,  I  think,  a  sum  of  200  francs  which  enabled  me  to  go  to 
Rennes  and  pay  my  examination  fees.  The  Rennes  Lycee  also  offered  me  a 
purse  (scholarship)  but  I  wished  to  finish  at  the  college  of  Vannes  where  I 
was  liked  .  .  .  and  even  respected— throughout  the  town.  There,  then,  is 
my  story,  for  when  once  I  had  entered  the  l£cole  Normale  (in  Paris)  my 
career  went  on  of  itself — one  year  as  professor  at  Caen,  one  year  at  Versailles, 
the  next  year  professor  at  the  Ecole  Normale,  then  professor  at  the  Sorbonne 


JULES  SIMON'S  MINISTRY  197 

Empire,  he  became  a  member  of  the  National  Defence  and  took 
a  prominent  part  in  bringing  about  Gambetta's  resignation  at 
Bordeaux.  Elected  to  the  National  Assembly  by  the  depart- 
ment of  the  Marne,  he  was  soon  afterwards  appointed  Minister 
of  Public  Instruction  by  Thiers.  Amiable,  but  energetic  in 
exercising  his  authority,  he  promptly  restored  his  department  to 
a  state  of  order,  and  planned  a  scheme  for  compulsory  education. 
But,  in  1873,  he  was  compelled  to  retire,  owing  to  a  speech  in 
which  he — rightly — attributed  the  liberation  of  the  territory  to 
Thiers,  a  statement  which  the  Assembly,  in  its  petty  jealousy, 
deeply  resented.  Though  no  longer  in  office,  Simon  continued 
to  exercise  great  influence  in  debate,  repeatedly  demanding 
a  Republican  constitution  and  the  Assembly's  withdrawal. 
Nevertheless,  by  reason  of  his  spiritualist  philosophy,  which 
sufficed  to  create  a  gap  between  him  and  such  men  as  Gambetta, 
and  the  moderate  character  of  his  political  ideals,  he  secured  in 
1876  election  both  as  an  irremovable  Senator  and  as  a  member 
of  the  French  Academy. 

His  appointment  as  Premier  by  MacMahon  marked  a  further 
slight  advance  in  the  regime's  character,  for,  although  in  his 
ministerial  programme  Simon  declared  himself  to  be  both 
"  profoundly  conservative  and  profoundly  republican,"  his  views 
were  rather  more  advanced  than  those  of  Dufaure.  But  he 
speedily  found  himself  in  serious  difficulties.  He  represented, 
as  it  were,  a  policy  of  conciliation  between  the  Right  and  the 
Left  of  the  Chamber.  The  religious  question — the  position  of 
the  Pope  and  the  relations  of  France  with  Italy — to  which  we 
referred  in  an  earlier  part  of  this  chapter,  had  now  become 
acute.  There  was  a  perfect  crusade  of  prelates  in  favour  of 
Pius  IX.  The  Right,  composed  of  Monarchists  of  various 
kinds,  supported  it ;  the  Left,  which  comprised  the  Republicans 
of  different  categories,  wished  to  see  it  stopped.  Simon, 
respectful  of  religion  and  the  Church,  yet  fairly  Liberal  in  his 

when  I  was  four-and-twenty,  a  deputy  of  the  Constituent  Assembly,  and  a 
Councillor  of  State  in  '49.  When  I  resigned  in  1852  (after  Louis  Napoleon's 
Coup  d'Etat)  I  was  scarcely  richer  than  I  had  been  when  I  started  from 
Lorient  in  1827,  and  I  again  gave  lessons  in  Latin  until  the  success  of  my 
book,  Le  Devoir,  extricated  me  from  that  position,  without,  however, 
enriching  me,  as  you  are  aware  .  .  .  Do  you  know  I  was  so  exhausted  when 
I  entered  the  Ecole  Normale  that  for  some  years  it  was  thought  I  should  not 
live.  Yet  I  ask  myself  whether  the  affection  with  which  I  nowadays 
encompass  my  children  is  better  for  them  than  the  poverty-stricken  child- 
hood, reduced  to  its  own  resources,  in  which  no  trial  was  spared  me." 


198  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

social  and  political  aspirations,  found  himself  between  two 
stools.  Moreover,  he  did  not  enjoy  a  free  hand.  The  Marshal 
President,  though  a  practising  Catholic — he  was,  we  may 
mention,  the  last  President  of  the  Republic  who  ever  invoked 
the  name  and  blessing  of  God  in  a  proclamation — was  by  no 
means  so  fervent  in  his  religious  views  as  to  desire  to  jeopardise 
the  interests  of  France  by  any  foolhardy  attempt  to  restore  the 
territorial  sovereignty  of  the  Pope.  But  pressure  was  repeatedly 
brought  to  bear  on  him  by  his  nearest  connections,  his  wife,  his 
other  relatives,  and  various  old-time  friends.  That  pressure 
was  felt  by  Simon,  whose  position  thus  became  the  more 
involved.  The  license  of  the  French  prelates  at  last  exceeded 
all  bounds.  Urged  on  by  the  Nuncio,  Mgr.  Czacky,  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Paris,  the  Bishops  of  Nevers,  Nimes,  Poitiers  and 
others  issued  rnandements  which  were  virtually  so  many  calls  to 
arms.  The  fashionable  Lenten  preachers  in  Paris — Father 
Monsabre  at  Notre  Dame,  Father  Ollivier  at  St.  Germain 
l'Auxerrois,  Abbe  Combalot  at  St.  Roch,  Abbe  Dunand  at 
Ste.  Clotilde,  Father  Lescceur  at  the  Madeleine,  Abbe  Feret  at 
Notre  Dame  des  Victoires,  Abbe  Vernhes  at  St.  Augustin,  and 
others — joined  the  campaign  with  more  or  less  fervour.  Had 
the  Church  had  its  way  it  would  have  ruined  France  in  1877, 
have  laid  her  open  to  fresh  invasion  and  fresh  dismemberment, 
even  as  it  would  have  repeatedly  done  the  same  in  later  years — 
regardless  as  it  ever  is  of  the  welfare  of  nations  provided  that 
it  can  effect  its  purposes — selfish,  grasping,  and  un- Christian 
purposes,  in  our  opinion,  though  its  partisans  claim  them  to 
be  "  for  the  greater  glory  of  God."  Never,  in  all  the  history 
of  Christianity  has  any  regime  been  attacked  so  unremittingly 
by  the  Church,  as  the  Third  French  Republic  has  been.  But 
even  the  worm  will  turn,  and  those  who  sow  the  storm  may 
reap  the  whirlwind. 

Amid  the  agitation  which  prevailed  in  1877,  the  Count  de 
Chambord  thought  fit  to  intervene.  "Every  enemy  of  the 
Church  is  an  enemy  of  France,"  he  wrote  in  a  letter  to  a  friend, 
magnanimously  overlooking  the  fact  that  Pius  IX.,  so  exacting 
with  respect  to  his  own  pretensions,  had  not  hesitated  to  sneer 
at  his,  the  Count's,  failure  to  secure  the  throne  of  France, 
remarking :  "  Tout  9a  pour  une  serviette,"  a  very  irreverent 
manner  of  designating  the  white  flag.  However,  the  language 
of  the  Bishop  of  Nevers  became  so  violent  that  Martel,  Minister 


JULES  SIMON'S  MINISTRY  199 

of  Justice  and  Worship  under  Simon,  wrote  the  prelate  a  letter 
of  reprimand  on  MacMahon's  behalf.  But  that  did  not  satisfy 
the  Republican  Deputies.  On  May  4  there  came  an  important 
debate  in  which  Gambetta  figured  prominently.  Simon  knew 
that  the  popular  leader  was  right  in  his  denunciation  of  the 
agitation  into  which  the  clerical  party  had  plunged  the  country, 
and  he  therefore  bowed  to  a  vote  of  the  Chamber  declaring 
that  the  Ultramontane  demonstrations  were  a  danger  to  peace. 
MacMahon  must  have  known  that  such  was  the  case.  Never- 
theless, he  was  angered  by  his  Administration's  surrender  to 
Gambetta,  and  it  thus  came  to  pass  that  on  the  morning  of 
May  16  Jules  Simon  received  a  letter  in  which  the  Marshal 
virtually  dismissed  him  from  his  office. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  SIXTEENTH  OF  MAY — GAMBETTA  AND  THIERS — 
THE  GREAT  EXHIBITION — MACMAHONS  DEFEAT 
AND    FALL 

The  Marshal's  Coup  de  Tete  and  his  New  Ministry— Oscar  de  Fortou  and 
his  Functionaries — Dissolution  of  the  Chamber — Gambetta's  Position — 
His  Life  with  his  Aunt— His  Sojourn  at  San  Sebastian— A  Glance  at  his 
Amours — His  Return  to  France  and  his  Home  in  Paris — The  Parisian 
Press  —  Gambetta's  Organ,  La  BApublique  Franqaise —  His  Fortune 
and  his  Political  Leadership— He  calls  on  MacMahon  to  submit  or 
resign — Last  Days  and  Death  of  Thiers — General  Elections — Fall  of 
Broglie  and  Fortou— The  Rochebouet  Cabinet— The  Marshal  submits— 
Leo  XIII.  succeeds  Pius  IX. — The  great  Paris  Exhibition— Gaieties  and 
Songs  of  the  Period— MacMahon  at  the  6lysee— Mme.  de  MacMahon 
and  her  Charities — The  Duval  and  Cora  Pearl  Scandal— Crimes  of  the 
Time— The  great  Military  Commands — The  Marshal  Resigns. 

Just  as  the  regime  established  under  Louis  Philippe's  sovereignty 
is  so  often  called  the  "  Monarchy  of  July,"  from  the  circum- 
stance that  it  originated  in  the  Revolution  of  July  1830,  so 
the  period  which  followed  MacMahon's  dismissal  of  Jules 
Simon  is  known  historically  as  the  Sixteenth  of  May,  that 
having  been  the  date  of  the  dismissal  in  question.  This  so- 
called  Sixteenth  of  May  period  lasted  until  November  20  in 
the  same  year,  when  the  successors  of  Simon's  Administration 
resigned.  Although  the  Sixteenth  of  May  has  often  been 
called  a  "  Coup  d'Etat,"  it  was  less  that  than  a  coup  de  tete  on 
MacMahon's  part.  According  to  Count,  then  Viscount, 
Emmanuel  d'Harcourt,  the  Marshal's  Chief  Secretary,  pressure 
had  been  brought  to  bear  on  him  by  persons  who  asserted  that 
Simon  was  deliberately  preparing  the  accession  to  power  of  the 
Radicals  headed  by  Gambetta.  MacMahon's  first  impulse 
after  the  Chamber's  vote  on  the  Ultramontane  demonstrations 
was,  it  seems,  to  resign  office,  but  he  abstained  from  doing  so 

200 


THE  SIXTEENTH  OF  MAY  201 

chiefly  on  account  of  the  outlook  abroad,  and  the  possibility  of 
France  becoming  involved  in  war,  for  apart  from  the  bad  effects 
of  the  clerical  intrigues  on  the  relations  of  the  Republic  with 
Germany  and  Italy,  the  Eastern  question  had  become  acute, 
agitation  and  revolt  in  the  Balkans  leading  to  war  between 
Turkey  and  Russia,  whose  troops  were  now  on  the  point  of 
crossing  the  Danube.  Moreover,  the  circumstance  that  a  great 
Paris  Exhibition — the  first  to  be  held  under  the  Republic — was 
being  prepared  for  the  ensuing  year  also  helped  to  dissuade  the 
Marshal  from  resignation.  In  lieu  thereof  he  dismissed  Simon, 
with  the  intention  of  dissolving  the  Chamber  and  appealing  to 
the  constituencies,  in  the  hope  that  fresh  elections  might  result 
in  the  return  of  a  Conservative  majority.  Simon  subsequently 
stated  that  the  pressure  which  resulted  in  his  overthrow  was 
exercised  largely  by  two  men,  one  the  notorious  Bishop 
Dupanloup  of  Orleans,  who  long  contrived  to  keep  Littre  out 
of  the  Academy,  and  virtually  quitted  it  when  the  great  lexico- 
grapher was  at  last  elected ;  while  the  other  was  an  energetic 
functionary  of  strong  Imperialist  views,  M.  Ernest  Pascal,  then 
Prefect  at  Lyons.  Simon  did  not  accept  his  dismissal  without 
attempting  to  expostulate,  but  MacMahon  retorted  that  he 
had  made  all  possible  concessions  to  the  legislative  majority, 
and  could  no  longer  retain  a  Ministry  which  followed  in 
Gambetta's  wake.  The  Duke  d'Audiffret-Pasquier,  President 
of  the  Senate,  who  had  originally  recommended  Simon  for  the 
Premiership,  was  equally  unsuccessful  when  he  also  tried  to 
dissuade  MacMahon  from  the  course  he  was  adopting. 

The  two  men  to  whom  the  Marshal  entrusted  the  compo- 
sition of  his  new  Administration  do  not  appear  to  have  known 
of  his  intention  to  summon  them  or  to  have  taken  any  direct 
part  in  effecting  Simon's  overthrow.  They  were  the  Duke  de 
Broglie  and  M.  Oscar  Bardy  de  Fortou.  The  former  may  well 
have  had  reason  to  believe  that  a  crisis  was  impending,  but, 
according  to  Viscount  d'Harcourt,  he  had  not  once  called  at 
the  Elysee  since  Simon's  assumption  of  office.  Fortou,  for  his 
part,  had  been  staying  for  some  time  at  his  native  place, 
Riberac,  in  southern  France,  where  his  wife  was  lying  ill,  and 
she  had  just  become  convalescent  and  he  was  on  the  point  of 
taking  her  to  Arcachon  when  a  telegram  from  MacMahon 
summoned  him  to  Paris.  In  the  Cabinet,  which  he  and  Broglie 
speedily  formed,  the  Duke  Decazes,  the  Viscount  de  Meaux, 


202  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

MM.  Caillaux,  Brunet,  Paris,  General  Berthaud,  and  Admiral 
Gicquel  des  Touches  found  places. 

Fortou,  born  in  1836,  was  at  this  time  in  the  prime  of  life. 
An  advocate  by  profession,  he  had  long  practised  at  the  bar  of 
Riberac,  and  in  1869  had  offered  to  stand  as  a  candidate  for 
the  Legislative  Body  of  the  Empire.  The  Government  patron- 
ising, however,  the  son  of  M.  de  La  Valette,  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  Fortou  withdrew,  and  it  followed  that,  on 
being  elected  to  the  National  Assembly  of  1871,  he  had  no 
embarrassing  political  antecedents.  A  hard  worker,  he  attracted 
the  notice  of  Thiers,  and  became  one  of  his  Ministers  of  Public 
Works.  But  he  soon  set  himself  on  the  side  of  the  broom- 
handle,  in  such  wise  that,  when  Thiers  was  swept  away,  Broglie 
made  him  Minister  of  Education.  He  next  became  Buffet's 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  to  which  post  he  now  returned. 

Fortou  was  a  man  of  the  middle  height,  with  a  somewhat 
dapper  figure,  on  which  he  prided  himself,  being  always  care- 
fully attired  in  a  tightly  buttoned  frock-coat  and  light  trousers. 
His  hats  shone  brilliantly,  and  his  neckties  and  gloves  were  of 
the  most  delicate  hues.  He  had  a  small,  bald,  shiny  head, 
fringed  with  short,  curly,  black  hair.  His  full,  brush -like 
beard  ranged  in  colour  from  black  to  brown,  but  his  moustache 
was  streaked  with  grey.  A  straight  and  pointed  nose  projected 
from  his  long,  brown  face,  and  he  gazed  at  you,  through  folding 
glasses,  with  tired  eyes,  whence  crows1  feet  radiated  conspicu- 
ously. The  brow  was  somewhat  bumpy,  the  lips  denoted 
sensuality,  and  disclosed  the  whitest  and  sharpest  of  teeth 
whenever  they  parted,  as  was  not  unfrequently  the  case,  in  a 
carnivorous  smile,  suggesting  that  of  the  tiger  of  the  familiar 
"  Limerick "  after  he  had  accommodated  the  Nigerian  lady 
with  a  ride.  At  the  tribune  Fortou  spoke  in  a  somewhat 
resonant  voice,  with  a  slight  southern  accent,  while  resting  his 
left  hand  on  his  hip,  and  emphasising  his  words  in  a  hammering 
or  pounding  fashion  with  his  right  hand.  His  language  was 
clear,  haughty,  often  defiant. 

Such  was  the  Gascon  upstart — a  blending  of  viveur,  sports- 
man, lawyer,  and  politician — who,  like  some  reincarnation  of 
the  Duke  de  Morny,  stepped  upon  the  scene  with  the  intention 
of  subduing  France  and  reducing  the  Republic  to  a  mere 
terminological  status.  He  claimed  to  be  an  expert  physio- 
gnomist, able  to  judge  men  at  a  glance,  and  the  quality  was 


THE  SIXTEENTH  OF  MAY  203 

essential  to  one  in  his  position,  for  the  first  duty  which  fell  on 
him  was  to  remove  Republican  officials  and  replace  them  by 
men  on  whom  he  could  personally  rely.  Yet  it  may  be  doubted 
if  Fortou  possessed  the  qualification  he  claimed,  for  he  pro- 
vided the  ship  of  State  with  a  very  extraordinary  crew.  He 
made  over  two  hundred  appointments  during  the  first  fortnight 
or  so  of  his  administration,  allotting  the  numerous  prefectures 
and  sub-prefectures  chiefly  to  members  of  the  petty  provincial 
noblesse,  the  appearance  of  whose  names  on  official  decrees  and 
orders  seemed  like  some  sudden  resurrection  of  the  past. 
There  were  Marquises,  Counts,  Viscounts,  and  Barons  galore. 
Their  names  were  Le  Tendre  de  Tourville,  Delpon  de  Vissec, 
Raffelis  de  Brosses,  Bohy  de  la  Chapelle,  Falcon  de  Cimier, 
Toustain  du  Manoir,  Villeneuve  d'Esclapon,  Poulain  de  la 
Foresterie,  de  Bastard,  de  Riancey,  de  Nervo,  de  Behr,  de 
Casteras,  de  Callac,  de  Foucault,  de  Viaris,  de  Fournes,  de 
Puyferrat,  de  Watrigant,  de  Beauvallon,  de  Chevalard,  de  la 
Rigaudie,  de  la  Morandiere,  and  so  forth.  These  reputed 
descendants  of  the  Crusaders  provided  themselves  with  the 
finest  possible  uniforms,  all  glittering  with  silver  embroidery, 
and  arrived  at  their  posts  with  their  horses,  carriages,  hounds, 
body-servants,  cooks,  and  wives,  the  latter  being  naturally* 
accompanied  by  multitudinous  trunks  replete  with  Parisian 
finery.  The  cooks  were  soon  in  great  request,  for  the  16th 
of  May  period  was  emphatically  one  of  feasting  throughout 
France.  While  all  subordinate  officials  who  remained  steadfast 
in  their  Republican  opinions  were  speedily  dismissed,  all  who 
were  willing  to  do  the  bidding  of  M.  le  Prefet  or  M.  le  Sous 
Prefet,  and  aid  and  abet  those  noble  personages  in  persecuting 
Republicans  and  influencing  the  electorate  in  a  Conservative 
sense,  were  dined  and  wined  and  otherwise  entertained  with 
profuse  liberality.  It  was  a  very  gay  Carnival  indeed  for  some 
folk,  but  they  made  the  mistake  of  imagining  that  it  would 
last  for  ever.  Unfortunately  for  them,  in  the  ensuing  month 
of  December,  all  but  four  of  the  functionaries  appointed  by 
Fortou  were  in  their  turn  dismissed,  and  the  multitudinous 
officials  whom  he  or  his  creatures  had  revoked  came  back  to 
their  own  again.' 

But  we  are  anticipating.  The  Republican  party  lost  no 
time  in  protesting  against  MacMahon's  coup  de  tete.  It 
prepared  for  action  at  a  meeting  held  on  the  very  evening  of 


/ 


204  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

May  16,  and  on  the  following  day  the  Chamber  of  Deputies 
passed  a  resolution  setting  forth  that  it  would  give  its  con- 
fidence solely  to  a  Ministry  possessed  of  real  freedom  of  action 
and  willing  to  govern  in  accordance  with  Republican  principles. 
MacMahon  retorted  on  the  18th  by  proroguing  the  Chamber 
for  a  month.  When  it  again  met  there  was  a  great  parlia- 
mentary battle,  Gambetta  leading  the  attack  against  Fortou, 
whose  Administration  was  censured  by  a  formal  vote.  But  the 
Marshal  President  had  now  applied  to  the  Senate  for  the 
necessary  authorisation  to  dissolve  the  Chamber,  and  the 
Senate  granting  it  by  149  to  130  votes,  the  dissolution  was 
decreed  on  June  25.     Thus  the  battle  began. 

The  Republicans  were  led  by  Thiers  and  Gambetta.  Thanks 
to  the  latter's  influence  the  former's  leadership  was  now 
accepted  by  the  advanced  sections  of  the  party,  and  in  spite 
of  his  great  age,  the  veteran  statesman  evinced  no  little  eager- 
ness for  the  fray.  Gambetta,  on  his  side,  was  no  longer  the 
man  of  the  war  period,  the  fou  furieuw  denounced  by  Thiers, 
the  uncompromising  autocrat  of  Bordeaux,  whom  his  colleagues 
of  the  National  Defence  had  deemed  it  necessary  to  depose,  for 
experience  had  taught  him  that  nothing  really  useful  could  be 
effected  by  haste  or  violence,  and  that  patience  and  perseverance 
must  be  severely  practised.  Thus,  without  renouncing  his 
ideals,  he  had  largely  modified  his  tactics,  in  such  wise  as  to 
win  the  reputation  of  a  Rtpublicain  de  gouvemement. 

Now  and  again  he  still  "  let  himself  go,"  as  the  saying  runs, 
but  for  the  most  part  he  sought  to  keep  his  feelings  under 
control.  Nature  had  implanted  in  him  passion,  impetuosity, 
and  a  certain  fitfulness  of  mood.  It  is  not  generally  known 
that  soon  after  the  declaration  of  war  In  1870,  being^in  very 
indifferent  health,  he  betook  himself  lb  Switzerland,  staying  at 
the  Chateau  des  Uretes^ear  Clarens,  as  the  guest  of  its  owner, 
M.  Dubochet,  Chairman  of  the  Paris  Gas  Company  and  a 
director  of  the  Eastern  Railway  Line,  with  whom  he  had 
become  acquainted  some  years  previously.  One  of  his  com- 
panions on  this  occasion  was  his  friend  Andre  Lavertujon,  by 
whom  we  know  that  he  never  for  a  moment  anticipated  the 
defeat  of  the  Imperial  armies.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  for 
ever  repeating  his  conviction  that  France  would  give  Germany 
"a  sound  drubbing."  He  refused  to  believe  the  news  of  the 
first  reverses,  and  it  was  only  when  the  situation  became  really 


GAMBETTA  205 

serious  that  he  was  willing  to  return  to  Paris.  That  his 
optimism  continued  during  the  remainder  of  the  War  is  well 
known.  As  head  of  the  Government  at  Tours  and  Bordeaux, 
he  always  believed  in  ultimate  success,  however  severe  and 
numerous  might  be  the  blows  which  fell  on  the  armies  he 
raised.  But  after  he  had  voted  against  the  preliminaries  of 
peace  and  resigned  his  seat  in  the  National  Assembly,  profound 
depression  came  upon  him.  He^wa^^sii.qmte-JUin-dQwn^— not 
only  suffering_from  laryngitis,  but  exhausted  by  his  terrific 
expenditure  of  energy  during  the  last  stages  of  the  War. 

He  therefore  repaired  TxTSan-Sehastian  accompanied  by  his 
private  secretary,  Sandrique,  and  his  aunt,  Mile.  Massabie. 
She  was  his  mother's  sister,  and  had  resided  with  him  in  Paris 
almost  ever  since  his  call  to  the  bar.  Their  home  was  at  first 
a  modest  flat  on  the  fourth  floor  of  a  dingy  house  in  the  Rue 
Bonaparte,  and  their  joint  means  were  scanty,  for  Gambetta 
received  very  little  money  from  his  father,  and  was  not  at  first 
particularly  successful  in  obtaining  briefs,  while  Mile.  Massabie 
only  disposed  of  a  very  slender  private  income.  She  was, 
however,  most  devoted  to  her  nephew,  and  believed  firmly  in 
his  future.  France  is  a  land  where  the  humblest  may  attain 
to  the  highest  positions.  Gambetta  himself  was  an  example 
of  it,  as  were  Thiers,  Jules  Simon,  and  others  of  that  period. 
Particularly  numerous  in  art,  too,  have  been  the  celebrities  sprung 
from  the  ranks  of  the  French  people  :  Rude  and  Gamier,  both 
of  them  blacksmiths1  sons  ;  Baudry,  whose  father  made  wooden 
shoes  ;  Carpeaux,  whose  father  was  a  stone-mason  ;  Millet,  who 
sprang  from  artisans ;  Courbet,  who  was  of  peasant  stock ; 
Gerome,  the  son  of  a  journeyman  goldsmith ;  Theodore 
Rousseau,  whose  parentage  also  was  lowly.  Of  many  famous 
scientists,  literary  men,  and  military  men,  might  the  same  be 
said ;  and  Gambetta,  who  in  his  younger  days  was  fond  of 
recalling  that  circumstance,  in  some  degree  based,  on  the  rise 
of  talent  in  literature,  art,  science,  war,  and  statesmanship,  that 
theory  of  the  accession  to  power  and  position  of  new  social 
strata  (nouvelles  couches  sociales)  which  he  set  forth  in  one  of 
his  most  famous  speeches. 

The  first  notable  improvement  in  his  own  position  resulted 
from  his  election  as  a  member  of  the  Legislative  Body  in  1869, 
whereupon  he  and  Mile.  Massabie  quitted  the  Rue  Bonaparte 
for  No.  12  Avenue  Montaigne,  in  the  Champs  IiHyse'es  quarter. 


206  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

In  spite  of  its  situation,  however,  the  house  was  a  very  modest 
one,  and  the  chief  advantages  of  the  young  deputy's  new  flat 
were  that  it  contained  six  rooms  and  was  on  the  second  instead 
of  the  fourth  floor,  an  important  consideration  as  regards 
Mile.  Massabie,  for  she  was  lame,  and  her  lameness  increased 
with  advancing  years  though,  like  the  good  housewife  she  was, 
she  still  and  ever  insisted  on  doing  all  marketing  herself.  The 
manage  was,  so  to  say,  one  of  the  halt  and  the  blind,  for  if 
Aunt  Massabie  were  lame,  her  nephew,  as  we  previously 
related,  had  lost  an  eye.  In  that  connection  let  us  add  that  in 
1867,  as  the  condition  of  the  damaged  organ  seemed  likely  to 
affect  the  sight  of  the  other,  it  was  removed  by  Dr.  Fieuzal,  a 
famous  oculist  of  the  time,  and  replaced  by  a  glass  eye,  whereby 
Gambetta's  appearance  was  considerably  improved.  Neverthe- 
less, that  side  of  his  face  remained  drawn,  and  became  before 
long  lifeless,  almost  paralysed. 

It  being  impossible  for  him  to  take  his  aunt  out  of  Paris 
in  the  balloon  by  which  he  quitted  the  city  in  October  1870, 
she  remained  there  throughout  the  German  Siege.  With  her 
devoted  nature,  she  suffered  perhaps  more  from  the  separation 
than  from  any  physical  privation  or  hardship.  At  all  events, 
when  the  siege  was  over,  she  vowed  that  nothing  but  death 
should  ever  part  her  from  her  Leon  again.  He  took  her,  then, 
to  San  Sebastian,  where  he  rented  some  rooms  in  a  house  over- 
looking the  bay — La  Concha,  as  it  is  called — and  led  a  very 
quiet  life,  his  only  visitors  being  Ranc,  Spuller,  and  one  or  two 
other  intimates.  Rising  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  (as  was 
his  habit  throughout  his  life),  he  usually  spent  some  time  on 
the  shore,  delighting  in  the  view  of  the  sea,  and  then  strolled 
through  the  town,  wearing  a  short  jacket  and  a  soft  felt  hat, 
with  a  silk  scarf,  in  lieu  of  collar,  about  his  neck.  At  eleven 
o'clock  he  sat  down  outside  the  Cafe  de  la  Marina,  drank  a 
little  vermouth,  smoked  a  cigar,  and  afterwards  returned  home 
to  dejeuner.  There  is  a  legend  that  he  spent  most  of  his  time 
in  fishing,  but  he  indulged  in  that  recreation  on  only  a  few 
occasions,  such  as  when  he  took  a  boat  to  the  island  of  Sta. 
Clara  at  the  entrance  of  the  bay,  and  tried  to  capture  a  few 
specimens  of  the  curious  rock -boring  mollusc  known  on  our 
coasts  as  the  piddock.  It  may  be  taken  at  low  tide,  but,  in 
order  to  effect  a  capture,  it  is  generally  necessary  to  break  the 
rock  in  which  it  artfully  conceals  itself. 


GAMBETTA  207 

Again,  it  is  not  correct  that  Gambetta  had  any  Egeria — 
apart  from  "Tatan"  Massabie — with  him  at  San  Sebastian. 
His  connection  with  "Leonie  Leon"  began  somewhat  later,1 
and  an  interlude  had  supervened  in  his  intercourse  with  a 
beautiful  vocalist.  Even  as  his  letters  to  Leonie  Leon  exist,  so 
are  there  several  addressed  to  that  earlier  inamorata,  letters 
beginning  at  times  Ma  chere  Mont,  at  others  Ma  chere  Reine, 
and  signed,  for  the  most  part,  Lonlon.  There  is  one  which 
well  exemplifies  the  usual  irony  of  life,  for  it  promises  ever- 
lasting faithfulness  in  glowing  language.  Gambetta  himself 
had  written  the  following  verses,  which  show  that  he  did  not 
believe  in  constancy,  besides  supplying  ample  proof  that  how- 
ever great  he  might  be  as  an  orator,  he  was  a  very  indifferent 
poet : 

Ah,  pourquoi  done  t'ai-je  promis 

De  t'aimer,  Ninon,  pour  la  vie  ? 

Un  pareil  serment  e'est  folie 

Quand  les  coeurs  sont  tant  insoumis. 

Au  temps  printanier  des  pervenches, 
A  The  lire  ou  le  soir,  calme  et  doux, 
Allume  les  e'toiles  blanches, 
Lampes  d'amour  des  guilledous, 

On  croit  s'adorer  des  annees, 
On  a  le  cceur  pres  du  bonnet ; 
Sitot  les  persiennes  fermees, 
Adieu  l'amour  que  Ton  jurait ! 

Mile.  "  Mout "  would  appear  to  have  quitted  Paris  before 
the  German  Siege  began,  and  to  have  been  near  the  young 
Dictator  at  Tours  and  Bordeaux  while  he  was  directing  the 
National  Defence.  Later,  the  intercourse  was  momentarily 
resumed  in  Paris,  but,  as  already  mentioned,  the  pair  were  not 
together  at  San  Sebastian.  At  one  moment,  Gambetta  quitted 
that  retreat  for  Madrid,  where  he  spent  a  few  days  with 
Castelar,  whom  he  had  known  in  France,  and  the  Spanish 
statesman  subsequently  related  that  almost  the  first  words 
which  Gambetta  addressed  to  him  were  words  of  complaint 
respecting   "the   shameful    manner   in   which    he    had    been 

1  There  are  a  good  many  inaccuracies  in  M.  Francis  Laur's  little  work  Le 
Cceur  de  Gambetta.  The  very  frontispiece  of  the  book  is  wrongly  dated 
"  1875,"  for  it  depicts  Mile.  Leon  in  attire  such  as  no  woman  ever  wore  at 
that  date,  but  which  was  the  current  fashion  in  Paris  and  elsewhere  in  1868- 
1869,  that  is,  long  before  Leonie  Leon  ever  met  Gambetta. 


208  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

abandoned  by  several  old  friends  on  whom  he  believed  he  could 
rely."  He  appeared,  indeed,  quite  disheartened,  and  even 
spoke  of  settling  permanently  in  Spain. 

He  was  led  to  return  to  France  by  peculiar  circumstances. 
Among  the  French  residents  at  San  Sebastian  was  an  old 
Republican  named  Victor  Herzman,  who  was  very  desirous  that 
Gambetta  should  again  take  part  in  the  affairs  of  his  country. 
Accompanied,  therefore,  by  a  M.  Edouard  Dupuy,  who  kept  a 
French  hotel  in  the  town,  Herzman  called  on  Gambetta  at  a 
moment  when  certain  complementary  elections  for  the  National 
Assembly  were  impending.  That  very  day  Gambetta  had  re- 
ceived a  telegram  from  Marseilles  asking  him  to  become  a 
candidate  there,  and  the  Bordeaux  Republicans  had  proffered  a 
similar  request,  to  which,  however,  he  was  unwilling  to  accede. 

"  I  can't  go  ! "  he  said  to  Herzman.  "  We  protested,  my 
friends  and  myself,  against  that  Assembly,  and  we  deny  that  it 
possesses  any  constituent  powers  at  all.  Remember  that  if  it 
should  select  a  king,  it  would  be  incumbent  on  us,  after  taking 
part  in  its  deliberations,  to  bow  to  its  decision.  By  refraining 
from  doing  so,  and  stubbornly  adhering  to  our  protests,  we 
reserve  all  our  rights  for  the  future."" 

To  that  view  he  seemed  to  cling  in  spite  of  all  that  Herzman 
could  plead.  Nevertheless,  the  latter's  words  produced  some 
effect,  and  a  curious  incident,  which  occurred  the  same  day,  led 
to  a  complete  reversal  of  Gambetta's  decision.  A  needy  and 
suspicious-looking  individual,  who  had  just  taken  a  room  in  the 
same  house  as  himself,  came  to  him  begging  for  assistance  on 
the  ground  that  he  had  fled  from  France  owing  to  his  participa- 
tion in  the  Commune.  Gambetta,  after  questioning  the  man, 
did  not  believe  his  story,  but  suspected  that  he  was  a  police 
spy  sent  to  watch  him.  On  the  following  morning,  then,  he 
informed  Edouard  Dupuy  that  he  was  returning  to  France  at 
once.  He  did  so,  and  at  a  public  meeting  held  at  Bordeaux  on 
his  arrival  there  he  delivered  a  very  able  and  pacific  speech, 
which  had  no  little  influence  on  public  opinion,  and  began  to 
rehabilitate  him  among  folk  who  held  that  he  had  hitherto 
carried  extremist  and  bellicose  views  too  far.  His  text  was 
briefly  this :  "  Unto  each  day  its  task  : — France  had  experienced 
terrible  disasters.  They,  and  the  condition  of  the  nation 
generally,  were  largely  due  to  ignorance.  The  nation  had  to 
be  built  up  afresh  in  all  respects,  and  to  accomplish  this,  the 


GAMBETTA  209 

very  first  thing  was  to  develop  its  education."  Re-elected  a 
member  of  the  National  Assembly  both  by  Paris  and  by 
Marseilles,  Gambetta  now  became  the  Radical  leader  in  the 
Legislature,  his  efforts  tending  to  transform  the  Republican 
groups  into  a  real  parti  de  gouvernement  and  to  influence  the 
country  generally  in  favour  of  a  Republican  regime.  Neverthe- 
less, for  a  little  while  longer,  he  went  at  times  somewhat  farther 
in  his  speeches  than  was  necessary  or  advisable,  and  Thiers  and 
his  Administration  paid  the  penalty  of  such  indiscretions. 

Gambetta  was  now  again  residing  in  the  Avenue  Montaigne. 
The  flat  there  comprised  a  room  where  his  secretary  worked, 
another  where  he  worked  himself,  a  dining-room,  where  he 
entertained  old  friends  at  lunch  on  Sundays,  a  drawing-room, 
a  bed-room  which  he  occupied,  another  for  Aunt  Massabie,  and 
a  kitchen.  Each  apartment  was  very  small,  the  furniture  was 
very  simple,  there  were  no  signs  of  luxury,  the  only  decorations 
in  the  drawing-room  being  Henner's  painting  of  Alsace,  a  few 
canvases  depicting  battle  scenes,  a  large  photograph  of  Rude's 
famous  bas-relief,  "  Le  Chant  du  Depart,1'  and  the  portraits  of  a 
few  friends.  For  some  time,  the  only  work  of  art  in  Gambetta's 
workroom  was  a  bronze  bust  of  Mirabeau,  which  stood  on 
the  mantelshelf.  In  April  1872,  however,  a  deputation  of 
Alsatians  and  Lorrainers  presented  him  with  a  remarkable 
group  in  bronze — the  work  of  Bartholdi  of  Colmar — in  which 
Alsace  was  depicted  as  a  squatting  woman,  with  the  corpse  of 
her  brother  resting  on  her  knees,  while  with  outstretched, 
threatening  hands,  she  directed  the  attention  of  a  clinging 
child  to  some  one  whom  she  saw  afar — as  if,  indeed,  she  were 
calling  on  that  child  to  avenge  the  wrong  as  soon  as  he  might 
come  to  manhood. 

On  returning  to  active  life,  Gambetta  merely  had  his  salary 
as  a  deputy  to  live  upon.  As  delegate  of  the  National  Defence 
he  had  contracted  debts,  some  of  which  were  worrying  him. 
To  further  his  policy,  however,  he  contrived,  with  the  co- 
operation of  some  friends,  to  establish  a  daily  newspaper,  en- 
titled La  Rtpublique  Francaise.1  This  venture  certainly  seemed 
advisable,  all  the  parties  and  leaders  of  the  time  having  one  or 
several  organs,  more  or  less  directly  under  their  control.     For 

1  The  first  idea  was  to  call  the  journal  La  Revanche,  but  that  seemed 
somewhat  premature ;  and  a  second  idea  to  entitle  it  Le  Patriote  was  re- 
jected because  it  seemed  too  particularist  in  character. 


210  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

instance,  there  was  IS  Union,  which,  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the 
extreme  Legitimists,  was  often  more  Royalist  than  the  King 
himself.  Its  editor,  the  venerable  M.  de  Laurentie,  was  the 
father  of  French  journalists  at  that  time,  having  been  born  on 
the  very  day  of  Louis  XVI.'s  execution  in  1793.  Then  there 
was  La  Gazette  de  France,  the  oldest  newspaper  extant,  and  the 
inspired  organ  of  the  Count  de  Chambord,  its  editor  being  M. 
Gustave  Janicot,  who  received  his  cues  direct  from  the  Count's 
authorised  representative.  VUnivers,  in  the  hands  of  the 
famous  Louis  Veuillot,  gave  the  Pretender  a  respectful  but 
independent  support,  based  on  the  hope  that  he  would  consent 
to  be  guided  by  the  Jesuits.  Le  Monde,  another  clerical  organ, 
with  a  large  staff  of  priests,  followed  in  part  the  lead  of  Bishop 
Dupanloup,  and  in  part  that  of  its  largest  shareholder,  the 
Duke  de  La  Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia. 

Le  Journal  de  Paris,  edited  by  Edmond  Herve,  represented 
the  Count  de  Paris.  Le  Soleil,  a  halfpenny  paper,  was  started 
by  the  Duke  d'Aumale  for  circulation  among  the  peasantry 
and  working  classes,  some  30,000  copies  of  each  issue  being 
distributed  gratis.  Le  Francais  was  the  organ  of  the  Duke  de 
Broglie,  and  U Assemble" e  Nationale  that  of  the  Duke  d'Audiffret 
Pasquier,  while  Le  Constitutional  had  become  the  journal  of 
M.  Magne.1  Le  Figaro,  for  the  time  being,  supported  the 
Legitimists ;  La  Patrie,  once  Napoleon  III.'s  favourite  journal, 
had  become  temporarily  an  Orleanist  print ;  and  the  same  had 
happened  with  Le  Moniteur  universel.  Paris-Journal  was  a 
copy  of  the  Figaro,  quieter  in  tone  and  choicer  in  its  language, 
but  quite  as  anti- Republican.  Last  on  the  list  of  the 
Monarchist  organs  came  Le  Journal  des  DSbats,  from  which 
those  extremely  moderate  Republicans,  Leon  Say  and  St.  Marc- 
Girardin,  had  been  compelled  to  retire  by  the  conversion  of 
the  editor,  M.  John  Lemoinne,  to  Royalist  views. 

The  Bonapartists,  on  their  part,  disposed  of  La  Presse, 
under  Viscount  de  la  Gueronniere;  VOrdre,  under  Clement 
Duvernois,  who  was  succeeded  by  Dugue  de  la  Fauconnerie ;  Le 
Pays  under  the  Cassagnacs,  father  and  son ;  and  Le  Gaulois 
edited  by  Edmond  Tarbe,  that  being  before  the  time  when  it 
fell  into  the  hands  of  an  Orleanist  syndicate,  who  placed  the 
intriguing,  tuft-hunting  Arthur  Meyer  at  the  head  of  it. 

On   the  Republican  side,  the  chief  papers  were  Le  Bien 
1  See  ante,  pp.  138,  139,  171. 


THE  PARIS  PRESS  211 

Public,  owned  by  Thiers  and  edited  by  Henri  Vrignault ;  Le 
Temps  conducted  by  Nefftzer  and  supporting  Republicanism 
rather  on  grounds  of  expediency  than  of  affection ;  La  Liberty 
belonging  to  lilmile  de  Girardin  and  flighty  and  erratic  in  its 
views ;  UlSve'nement,  a  kind  of  Republican  Figaro ;  Le  Dix- 
neuvieme  Siecle,  directed  by  Edmond  About,  who  had  forsaken 
the  cult  of  literature  for  that  of  the  demon  politics ;  Le  Siecle, 
then  the  powerful  anti-clerical  organ  of  the  French  licensed 
victuallers';"  Le  National  and  L*  Opinion  Nationale,  which  were 
equally  anti-clerical ;  Le  Rappel,  which,  under  Francois  Victor 
Hugo,  Paul  Meurice  and  Auguste  Vacquerie,  verged  on  Red 
Republicanism ;  and  VAvenir  National  which,  under  Edmond 
Portalis,  expounded  even  more  extreme  views.  Finally  there 
was  the  daily  satirical  journal  Le  Charivari,  which,  as  directed 
by  Pierre  Veron,  also  worked  for  the  Republican  cause. 

It  might  be  thought  that  among  such  a  crowd  of  daily 
newspapers  a  new  one  would  have  small  chance  of  support,  but 
Gambetta's  powerful  personality  commanded  success,  and,  from 
the  very  outset,  prosperity  attended  La  Republique  Francaise. 
The  original  capital,  scraped  together  with  difficulty,  was,  we 
believe,  only  ^5000,  but  it  was  afterwards  increased  consider- 
ably, a  large  number  of  the  shares  being  allotted  to  Gambetta 
in  return  for  his  patronage  and  services.  He  became  the 
salaried  political  director  of  the  new  paper,  the  actual  editor- 
ship being  allotted  at  first  to  his  friend  Eugene  Spuller,1  and 
later  to  Challemel  -  Lacour,  an  able  and  scholarly  writer,  who, 
however,  while  Prefect  at  Lyons,  had  blundered  somewhat  in 
dealing  with  the  Communist  rising  there,  he  being  hardly 
the  man  to  contend  with  such  a  situation.  He  subsequently 
became  French  Ambassador  in  London.  Among  the  leader- 
writers  on  La  Republique  Francaise,  were  Ranc  and  Allain- 
Targe.  Antonin  Proust  dealt  with  foreign  affairs.  Floquet 
was  an  occasional  contributor  on  topics  of  the  day.  Isembert 
was  the  chief  sub-editor,  Thomson  (since  a  Minister  and 
Governor  of  Algeria)  assisting  him.  One  feature  of  the  paper 
in  its  earlier  days  was  a  "portrait  gallery,"  that  is,  a  series 
of  biting  articles  on  prominent  anti  -  Republicans,  written 
chiefly  by  Challemel -Lacour,  Ranc,  and  Dyonis  Ordinaire. 
They  were  stopped,  however,  at  the  fall  of  Thiers,  in  order  to 
avoid  a  prosecution. 

1  See  ante,  pp.  f,  15,  $06. 


212  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

When  the  paper  was  first  started — in  November  1871 — its 
offices  were  in  the  Rue  du  Croissant,  whither  Gambetta  re- 
paired regularly  every  evening ;  but,  before  long,  the  venture 
proved  so  successful  that  a  house  was  purchased  in  the  Chaussee 
d'Antin  at  a  cost  of  i?22,000 ;  and  the  printing  works,  the 
editorial  and  publishing  offices,  and  the  political  directorate 
were  concentrated  there.  A  suite  of  rooms  was  fitted  up  for 
Gambetta's  accommodation,  and  he  was  allowed  the  use  of  a 
brougham,  hired  from  the  Paris  General  Cab  Company  at  a 
cost  of  £26  a  month.  A  legend  then  sprang  up  about  the 
ex-dictator's  "  mansion  "  and  "  stylish  equipages,11  but  the  facts 
were  simply  as  we  have  mentioned.  Although  Gambetta's 
share  in  the  proprietary  of  La  Ripublique  Francaise  became 
valuable,  and  yielded  a  considerable  income,  his  means  did  not 
increase  so  largely  as  they  might  have  done,  as,  for  purposes  of 
propaganda,  a  popular  one  sou  journal  reflecting  his  policy — 
La  Petite  Ripublique — was  soon  established,  and  consumed,  we 
believe,  a  large  amount  of  money,  in  spite  of  its  extensive 
circulation.1 

In  the  Chaussee  d'Antin,  Gambetta  continued  to  lead  a 
very  simple  life.  He  had  a  valet,  a  young  man  called  Francois, 
who  had  been  in  his  service  at  Tours  during  the  war ;  but  there 
was  nothing  pretentious  about  his  little  establishment.  Mile. 
Massabie  did  not  follow  her  nephew  to  his  new  abode — perhaps 
on  account  of  his  intercourse  with  Leonie  Leon,  who  was  often 
in  the  Chaussee  d'Antin — and  he  may,  perhaps,  have  missed  the 
old  lady's  southern  cuisine^  those  savoury  ragouts,  and  those 
cassoulets  of  beans  and  smoked  goose  of  which  he  was  extremely 
fond.2     That  he  was  partial  to  the  pleasures  of  the  table  can- 

1  It  was  long  thought  that  Gambetta's  millionaire  friend,  M.  Dubochet  of 
the  Paris  Gas  Company,  would  leave  him  a  large  legacy,  for  Dubochet  had 
often  expressed  the  view  that  the  head  of  a  political  party  ought  to  be  a  man 
of  means.  There  was,  too,  a  story  to  the  effect  that  one  day  when  Gambetta 
was  admiring  Dubochet's  estate,  the  charmingly  situated  Chateau  des 
Cretes,  his  friend  told  him  with  a  smile  that  it  would  one  day  belong  to 
him.  However,  when  Dubochet  died,  it  was  found  that  he  had  be- 
queathed his  property  to  his  natural  heirs,  his  nephew,  M.  Guichard,  and 
his  niece,  Mme.  Arnaud  de  TAriege.  The  value  of  the  deceased's  estate  was 
very  great,  and  M.  Guichard  and  his  sister,  opining  that  their  uncle  had 
merely  neglected  to  alter  a  will  made  many  years  previously,  offered 
Gambetta  a  large  sum  of  money — according  to  some  accounts,  £80,000.  He 
declined  the  gift,  however,  in  a  very  friendly  way. 

2  Mile.  Massabie  eventually  became  paralysed,  and  was  removed  to  the 
residence  of  Gambetta's  parents  at  Nice,  where  she  died.     That  residence, 


GAMBETTA'S  SPEECHES  213 

not  be  denied,  and,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  that  very  par- 
tiality was  the  immediate  cause  of  his  death.  We  remember 
that  in  the  days  when  all  Paris  was  humming  a  popular  ditty, 
"L'Amant  d' Amanda,"  originally  sung  by  Libert  at  one  of 
the  Cafes -Concerts  in  the  Champs  Elysees,  there  appeared  a 
rather  amusing  parody  of  the  song,  with  this  refrain  : — 

Voyez  ce  beau  mangeur-la, 
C'est  Gambetta,  c'est  Gambetta  ! 
Voyez  ce  beau  mangeur-la, 

C'est  Gambetta, 

C'n'est  qu'ca  ! 

If,  as  we  previously  said,  there  was  still  some  violence 
and  extravagance  in  the  speeches  which  Gambetta  made  in 
various  parts  of  France  during  Thiers's  presidency  (his 
journalistic  enterprise,  his  peregrinations  and  utterances  prompt- 
ing Sardou  to  write  his  famous  political  comedy  Rabagas — 
1872)  the  accession  of  MacMahon  and  the  dangers  to  which 
the  Republic  then  became  exposed  inclined  him  more  and  more 
to  moderate  courses.  He  contributed  powerfully  to  the  voting 
of  the  Constitution  in  1875,  urging  his  party  to  accept  com- 
promises, agreeing  to  the  creation  of  a  Senate,  much  as  he 
disliked  such  an  institution,  even  preaching  resignation  and 
patience,  and  founding,  already  then,  what  eventually  became 
known  as  the  Opportunist  school  of  politics.  Nevertheless,  he 
could  remain  firm  if  he  felt  that  the  position  required  it, 
and  when  the  clerical  agitation  became  dangerous  he  spoke  out 
freely.  The  famous  speech  which  he  delivered  at  Romans  in 
1876  was  prophetic.  He  foresaw  on  that  occasion  all  the 
reactionary  efforts  which  the  Church  put  forth  again  and  again 
in  later  years,  efforts  which,  as  we  know,  have  compelled  the 
Republic  to  dissolve  the  religious  orders,  close  the  clerical 
schools,  and  separate  Church  and  State.  And  however  power- 
ful the  clerical  party  might  be  under  the  aegis  of  MacMahon, 
Gambetta  attacked  it  boldly,  declaring  that  Clericalism  was  the 
enemy,  that  in  Clericalism,  and  in  that  alone,  the  real  social 
peril  which  threatened  the  country  was  to  be  found. 

In  the  following  year,  when  MacMahon  had  dissolved  the 
Chamber,  Gambetta  again  evinced  energy  and  daring.  Repair- 
built  in  1872,  was  declared  by  Gambetta's  enemies  to  have  been  erected  with 
all  the  money  he  had  stolen  during  the  war,  but  it  was  a  modest  place  cost- 
ing no  more  than  some  £1200  out  of  his  father's  careful  savings. 


214  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

ing  to  the  north  of  France,  he  delivered  speeches  at  Amiens, 
Abbeville,  and  Lille,  which  brought  repeated  prosecutions  upon 
him.  He  braved  them  scornfully,  still  exhorting  the  country 
to  re-elect  all  the  deputies — 363  in  number — who  had  declared 
against  the  Broglie-Fortou  Government,  and  prophesying,  with 
superb  confidence,  that  those  363  would  become  at  least  400. 
So  great  was  his  influence  at  this  time  that,  Prince  Napoleon 
Jerome  having  been  one  of  the  363,  he  prevailed  on  the 
Republican  party  to  overlook  the  Prince's  name  and  antecedents, 
and  support  his  candidature.  At  last,  confident  as  he  was  of 
victory,  Gambetta  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  that  when  France 
had  made  her  sovereign  voice  heard,  it  would  be  necessary  to 
submit  or  resign  (se  soumettre  ou  se  de'mettre)^  a  reference  to 
the  position  awaiting  MacMahon,  which  drew  on  the  Republican 
champion  yet  another  prosecution.  Nevertheless,  he  pursued 
his  crusade  as  energetically  as  ever. 

Thiers  also  was  exerting  himself  as  much  as  his  age  allowed. 
His  house  in  Paris,  the  Hotel  Bagration,  had  long  been  one  of 
the  chief  centres  of  opposition  to  MacMahon's  reactionary 
ministries,  although  he  had  taken  little  active  part  in  actual 
parliamentary  matters.  From  the  time  of  his  fall,  indeed,  he 
intervened  only  once  in  debate,  this  being  in  March  1874, 
when  important  additions  to  the  fortifications  of  Paris  were 
proposed.  In  the  following  winter,  Thiers  proceeded  to  Italy, 
but  returned  to  Versailles  in  time  to  vote  for  the  Constitution 
of  1875.  At  the  subsequent  general  elections,  Belfort  returned 
him  as  a  senator,  and  Paris  as  a  deputy,  the  latter  post  being 
the  one  he  selected.  At  the  advent  of  the  Fortou-Broglie 
Ministry,  he  signed  the  manifesto  of  the  363,  that  being 
virtually  his  last  public  act,  though,  as  the  recognised  leader  of 
the  Republican  party,  he  took  a  large  part  privately  in  direct- 
ing the  campaign.  As  it  progressed,  he  became  restless,  excited, 
perhaps  even  a  little  anxious,  although  he  was  by  nature  an 
optimist,  fond  of  quoting  from  Chenier's  Jeune  Captive,  the 
lines : 

L'illusion  feconde  habite  dans  mon  sein, 
J'ai  les  ailes  de  l'esperance. 

It  was  virtually  certain  that  if  MacMahon  should  be  defeated 
at  the  elections  and  should  then  prefer  to  resign  rather  than 

1  There  is  a  story  that  the  expression  was  suggested  to  him  by  Mme. 
Edraond  Adam. 


LAST  DAYS  AND  DEATH  OF  THIERS        215 

submit,  he,  Thiers,  would  be  reappointed  President  of  the 
Republic,  and  he  may  well  have  looked  forward  to  that 
eventuality.  He  was  now,  however,  eighty  years  of  age,  and 
the  state  of  unrest  in  which  he  lived  was  trying  to  his  health. 
There  were  no  outward  signs  of  a  collapse,  he  looked  as  well 
as  ever  on  the  occasions  when  he  appeared  in  public  at  St. 
Germain-en-Laye,  where  he  decided  to  spend  the  summer,  and 
thus  the  newspaper  reports  of  his  health  were  most  favourable. 
On  Saturday,  September  1,  one  of  the  Paris  satirical  journals 
appeared  with  a  cartoon  which  depicted  the  great  little  man 
giving  a  helping  arm  to  poor  old  Father  Time,  who  was 
portrayed  in  the  last  stage  of  decrepitude,  no  longer  able  even  to 
carry  his  scythe,  of  which,  therefore,  his  companion  had  kindly 
relieved  him.  It  was  an  effective  cartoon,  and  Thiers  may  well 
have  smiled  at  it.  He  possessed,  be  it  said,  a  sense  of  humour, 
and  laughed  freely  at  caricatures  of  himself,  even  when  they 
were  malicious. 

But  the  end  was  near.  On  Monday,  September  3,  after 
devoting  his  morning  to  the  chief  points  which  it  was  proposed 
to  set  out  in  a  manifesto  to  the  country  on  behalf  of  the  whole 
Republican  party,  he  was  suddenly  taken  ill  at  dejeuner,  and 
an  attack  of  apoplexy  supervened.  Drs.  Lepiez  and  Barthe 
made  every  effort  to  save  him,  but  without  avail ;  he  expired 
that  evening  at  ten  minutes  to  six  o'clock.  The  sensation 
throughout  France  was  profound.  There  was  only  one  course 
for  MacMahon  and  his  Ministers  to  follow.  The  great  services 
which  Thiers  had  rendered  to  the  country  on  the  morrow  of 
the  War  could  not  be  overlooked,  and  a  State  funeral,  there- 
fore, was  immediately  decreed.  But  this  implied  that  all  the 
arrangements  would  be  in  the  hands  of  the  Government,  that 
those  who  had  deliberately  and  persistently  warred  against 
Thiers  and  overthrown  him  would  be  found  hypocritically 
lamenting  his  loss  and  heaping  praise  on  his  memory  at  his 
graveside.  Mme.  Thiers  therefore  declined  the  State  obsequies, 
and  the  funeral  became  a  great  Republican  demonstration. 
The  religious  ceremony  was  celebrated  at  Thiers's  parish 
church,  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette ;  and  at  the  interment  in  the 
cemetery  it  was  Jules  Grevy  who  spoke  for  Republican  France. 
From  that  hour  Grevy  virtually  became  his  party's  candidate 
for  the  Presidency. 

The  death  of  Thiers  was  a  great  blow  for  the  cause,  and 


216  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

undoubtedly  influenced  the  elections  for  the  new  Chamber  of 
Deputies,  which  took  place  a  month  later.  Thiers  had 
commanded  a  large  following  of  men  of  strictly  moderate 
views,  men  scarcely  inclined,  as  yet,  to  follow  Gambetta's  lead ; 
and  their  votes  were  naturally  influenced  by  the  ex-President's 
sudden  demise.  Moreover,  Fortou's  functionaries,  after  persecut- 
ing Republicans  right  and  left,  prosecuting,  suspending,  and 
suppressing  newspapers  all  over  the  country,  were  bringing  all 
possible  pressure  to  bear  on  the  electorate,  intrigue,  bribery, 
and  corruption  being  rife  upon  every  side.  It  happened,  then, 
that  the  363  did  not  become  400  as  Gambetta  had  predicted. 
Nevertheless,  the  Republican  candidates  polled  568,000  more 
votes  than  they  had  done  in  1876,  and  2,551,000  more  than 
were  secured  by  the  Royalists.  Thus  the  Republican  majority 
in  the  Chamber  was,  all  told,  still  one  of  about  120  members. 
Fortou  and  Broglie  naturally  fell  from  power,  the  new  Chamber 
appointing  a  Committee  of  Inquiry  into  their  electoral 
proceedings. 

The  ensuing  elections  for  the  departmental  General  Councils 
emphasised  the  Republican  victory.  Nevertheless,  MacMahon 
was  still  unwilling  to  bow  to  the  country's  decision.  He  replaced 
his  defeated  advisers  by  a  "  Cabinet  of  Affairs,'"*  none  of  whose 
members  belonged  to  the  Legislature.  The  new  Premier  was 
General  Gaetan  de  Grimaudet  de  Rochebouet,  an  officer  born 
at  Angers  in  1813,  who  had  participated  in  Napoleon  IIL's 
Coup  d'Etat,  and  had  commanded  the  artillery  of  the  Imperial 
Guard.  He  had  seen  a  great  deal  of  service  in  Algeria,  at  the 
siege  of  Rome,  in  the  Crimea,  in  northern  Italy,  and  with  the 
army  of  Metz,  and  was  reputed  to  be  an  energetic  and  even  a 
dangerous  man.1  Ominous  rumours  respecting  his  intentions 
circulated  in  the  Republican  ranks — indeed,  an  attempt  at  a 
Coup  d'Etat  was  apprehended.  Thus  the  Chamber  decided  on 
the  very  first  day  by  315  to  204  votes  that  it  would  enter 
into  no  relations  with  the  new  Ministry,  and  it  emphasised  its 
views  by  reappointing  Gambetta  as  President  of  the  Budget 
Committee.  It  is  difficult  to  say  whether  a  Coup  d'Etat  was 
really  intended.  Under  Fortou's  Administration,  MacMahon 
had  repeatedly  declared,  in  speeches  in  Normandy  and  elsewhere, 

1  Rochebouet  took  the  post  of  Minister  of  War.  His  colleagues  were 
Welche  (Interior),  Faye  (Education),  Dutilleul  (Finances),  De  Banneville 
(Foreign  Affairs),  Ozenne  (Agriculture),  Rear-Admiral  Roussin  (Marine),  and 
Graef  (Public  Works). 


ROCHEBOUfiTS  MINISTRY  217 

that  the  Constitution  was  not  threatened.  Nevertheless,  certain 
military  preparations — either  for  offensive  or  defensive  purposes 
— were  now  made,  and  the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience  to 
orders,  on  which  Rochebouet  insisted  in  his  relations  with  his 
officers,  also  helped  to  agitate  the  country.  However,  even  if 
unconstitutional  designs  existed — Rochebouet  in  later  years 
repeatedly  denied  them — they  were  abandoned,  and  the 
"  Cabinet  of  Affairs  "  resigned.  MacMahon  then  attempted  to 
form  a  semi-Orleanist  Ministry  headed  by  Batbie,  but  failing 
in  that  endeavour,  he  decided  to  make  peace  with  the  Chamber, 
and  commissioned  Dufaure1  to  form  a  new  Administration. 
"  Monsieur  Dufaure  is  at  least  a  sensible  man,'"  remarked  the 
Marshal  on  this  occasion  ;  "  he  is  religious  and  upright,  and  he 
won't  lead  me  into  any  disaster.  But  on  the  day  when  he  goes 
I  shall  go  as  well." 

The  new  year,  1878,  opened  with  an  event  of  great  im- 
portance. Pope  Pius  IX.  died,  and  the  Holy  College  was 
assembled  for  the  election  of  his  successor.  We  went  to  Rome 
at  that  moment  for  an  English  newspaper,  provided  with 
powerful  introductions;  and  some  time  before  the  decision  of 
the  Conclave,  we  were  able  to  indicate  that  Cardinal  Pecci 
might  well  be  chosen,  although  his  position  as  Camerlengo  of 
the  deceased  Pontiff  was  currently  held  to  militate  against  his 
chances.  In  that  respect,  however,  the  question  was  chiefly 
whether  certain  precedents  should  be  set  aside  in  the  superior 
interests  of  the  Church.  They  were,  and  after  merely  three 
days'  discussion,  Cardinal  Pecci  became  Leo  XIII.2  The  Church 
abandoned  none  of  her  rights  or  claims,  but  a  new  era  began 
with  respect  to  her  mode  of  procedure — one  of  careful,  at  times 
artful,  diplomacy  in  lieu  of  the  blusterous  but  futile  fulminations 
of  Pius  IX.  The  Clerical  excesses  in  France  were  somewhat 
checked  by  the  change,  although  the  priestly  party  never  fully 
obeyed  the  mot  oVordre  which  came  from  the  Vatican. 

For  a  while,  a  kind  of  general  truce  ensued  with  the  opening 
of  the  Paris  Exhibition  of  1878.  This  was  the  most  important 
world-show  held  since  the  great  Imperial  Carnival  in  1867. 
There  had  been  a  notable  and  interesting  international  exhibition 

1  See  ante,  p.  195. 

2  It  is  less  difficult  at  times  than  the  ordinary  journalist  imagines  to  fore- 
tell who  will  be  the  next  Pope.  In  the  case  of  Leo  XIII.,  Ruggiero  Bonghi, 
Raffaello  de  Cesare,  and  Mgr.  Pappolettere  had  confidently  predicted  his 
pontificate. 


218  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

at  Vienna  in  1873,  but  it  had  proved  only  partially  successful, 
owing  to  a  cholera  scare  for  which  there  was  little  or  no  justi- 
fication. The  Paris  show  attracted  the  greater  attention,  as 
it  was  the  first  held  since  the  war  with  Germany,  and  testified 
abundantly  to  the  country's  wonderful  recovery  from  its 
disasters.  The  idea  of  holding  this  exhibition  emanated  from 
Mme.  de  MacMahon,  and  it  was  largely  at  her  instigation  that 
M.  Kranz,  a  senator  and  a  moderate  Republican,  was  appointed 
General  Commissioner.  At  the  fall  of  Jules  Simon,  the  Duke 
de  Broglie  wished  to  dismiss  Kranz,  but  the  latter  was  upheld 
in  his  position  by  the  influence  of  Mme.  la  Marechale,  who, 
regardless  of  his  political  views,  pronounced  him  to  be  the  right 
man  in  the  right  place. 

Among  those  present  at  the  inauguration  of  the  Exhibition 
were  the  Prince  of  Wales  (Edward  VII.),  the  Crown  Prince 
(later  King)  of  Denmark,  and  the  Duke  of  Aosta  (sometime 
King  of  Spain).  Germany  did  not  exhibit ;  nevertheless,  the 
pavilions  and  adjuncts  of  the  Exhibition  now  overflowed  the 
Champ  de  Mars,  which  had  been  deemed  an  amply  sufficient 
site  in  1867.  The  palace  and  gardens  of  the  Trocadero  sprang 
up  as  if  by  enchantment.  There  were  solemnities  and  gaieties 
innumerable.  Paris  sang,  danced,  and  crowded  to  witness  every 
display  as  enthusiastically  as  she  had  done  in  the  year  of  the 
Empire's  apogee.  Wherever  you  went  you  heard  the  popular 
refrains  of  the  time.  There  was  notably  "  LTAmant  d1  Amanda," 
to  which  we  previously  referred,  and  which  became  "all  the 
rage,"  with  its  idiotic  chorus,  mere  play  on  words,  running : — 

Voyez  ce  beau  garcon  la, 

C'est  l'amant  d'A — 

C'est  l'amant  d'A — 
Voyez  ce  beau  garcon  la, 

C'est  l'amant  d'A- 
manda ! 

And,  apropos  of  the  opera  Paul  et  Virginie,  there  was  an 
equally  silly  and  therefore  popular  ditty,  which  began : — 

Je  me  nomme  Po-Pol, 
Je  demeur'  a  l'entresol, 
De  Virginie  je  suis  fol, 
Aussi  je  m'pousse  du  col — 

while  often  enough  you  heard  some  song  recalling  the  war 
period.     A  famous  one  of  the  kind  celebrated  the  unavailing 


THE  EXHIBITION  OF  1878  219 

charge  of  the  French  cuirassiers  at  Worth,  or,  as  it  is  said  in 
France,  Reichshoffen : — 

lis  r^culaient,  ces  heros  invincibles, 

A  Reichshoffen  la  mort  fauchait  leurs  rangs — 
Les  ennemiSj  dans  les  bois  invisibles, 

Comme  des  loups,  poursuivaient  ces  geants. 
Depuis  le  jour,  au  front  de  la  bataille, 

France  !  ils  portaient  ton  drapeau  glorieux  ; 
lis  sont  tombes,  vaincus  par  la  mitraille, 

Et  non  par  ceux  qui  tremblaient  devant  eux  ! 
Voyez  la-bas,  comme  un  eclair  d'acier, 
Ces  escadrons  passer  dans  la  fumee, 
Ils  vont  mourir,  et  pour  sauver  l'armee, 

Donner  le  sang  du  dernier  cuirassier  !     (bis.) 

Again  there  was  a  song  called,  if  we  remember  rightly, 
"  Les  Ecoliers  alsaciens,"  which  showed  an  old  schoolmaster  of 
the  conquered  province  secretly  teaching  the  French  language 
to  the  little  children  under  his  care.  But  the  tramp  of  soldiers 
is  heard  outside  the  school,  and  the  refrain  follows : — 

La  patrouille  allemande  passe — 

Baissez  la  voix,  mes  chers  petits  ; 

Parler  francais  n'est  plus  permis 
Aux  petits  enfants  de  1' Alsace. 

These  references  will  show  that  although  Paris  had  become 
gay  again  in  1878,  the  thought  of  "La  Revanche "  was  still  an 
abiding  one. 

Among  the  chief  fetes  of  the  time  was  that  given  at  the 
palace  of  Versailles.  It  was  not,  however,  in  any  way  as 
splendid  as  that  offered  to  Queen  Victoria  in  1855,  nor  did 
anything  like  the  orderliness  of  that  occasion  prevail.  The 
crush  on  the  grand  staircase — there  were  16,000  guests — became, 
indeed,  terrific,  and  many  women  only  emerged  from  the  meUe 
with  their  hair  down  and  their  costly  gowns  in  tatters.  The 
verdict  of  the  more  aristocratic  invites  was  that  the  "new 
social  strata,"  largely  represented  on  this  occasion,  possessed 
little  or  no  manners.  Paris  was,  of  course,  crowded  with 
foreigners  and  provincials,  and  the  theatres  reaped  golden  gains. 
The  famous  Cloches  de  Corneville,  first  produced  in  the  previous 
year,  was  still  running  at  the  Folies  Dramatiques ;  Round  the 
World  in  Eighty  Days,  was  drawing  crowds  to  the  Porte  St- 
Martin;  Le  Petit  Due,  thanks  to  Jeanne  Granier,  kept  the 
Renaissance  full  every  night ;  Orphte  aux  Enfers  triumphed  yet 


220  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

once  again  at  the  Theatre  Lyrique ;  Nmiche  was  all  the  rage  at 
the  Varietes,  and  Babiole  at  the  Bouffes.  The  Comedie-Francaise 
was  naturally  to  the  fore  with  Augier's  play  Les  Fourchambault ; 
the  Gymnase  held  a  success  with  Le  B6b6 ;  but  the  Opera  relied 
principally  on  its  staircase  and  its  foyer  to  attract  the  exhibition 
crowds — performing  VAfricaine,  indeed,  with  a  frequency  which 
became  quite  odious. 

We  can  recall  the  Bal  des  Artistes  dramatiques  that  year. 
The  chief  vocalists  and  actresses,  Krauss,  Carvalho,  Rosine 
Bloch,  Sarah  Bernhardt,  Croizette  and  Reichemberg  were — as 
usual — absent,  but  others  attended,  such  as  Heilbronn,  Samary, 
Judic,  Granier,  and  La  Beaugrand  (the  premiere  danseuse  of 
"  Coppelia "),  as  well  as  quite  a  crowd  of  women  belonging 
partly  to  the  stage  and  partly  to  the  demi-monde.  Leonide 
Leblanc,  Gabrielle  Elluini,  Caroline  Letessier,  Amelie  Latour, 
Prelly,  Valtesse,  Angele,  and  the  famous  Margot — "  the  unique 
Margot"  as  she  was  called — were  all  there,  shimmering  with 
diamonds,  and  mostly  in  eighteenth  century  costumes,  which 
were  all  the  rage  at  that  particular  moment.  The  men,  who 
laughed  with  those  women,  were  mostly  scions  of  nobility,  or 
rich  young  fellows  of  the  financial  world ;  and  the  brilliance 
and  the  gaiety  of  the  scene  were  quite  as  great  as  in  Imperial 
days.  So  far  as  amusement  was  concerned,  Paris  had  indeed 
become  herself  again.  The  masses  seemed  quite  as  merry 
as  the  richer  folk. 

Life  at  the  Elysee  Palace  was  naturally  full  of  animation 
at  this  time.  The  Marshal's  position  compelled  him  to  enter- 
tain on  a  large  scale,  though  personally  he  much  preferred  a 
quiet  and  unostentatious  life.  In  fact,  he  always  seemed  to  be 
somewhat  ill  at  ease  in  society.  He  never  appeared  in  uniform 
unless  obliged  to  do  so.  His  usual  attire  was  a  dark  blue 
frock-coat  with  a  velvet  collar,  and  dark  grey  trousers.  His 
favourite  recreation  was  riding ;  but  both  before  and  after  his 
Presidency  he  might  often  be  seen  sauntering  about  the 
Boulevards  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  and  a  cigar — he  was 
a  great  smoker — between  his  lips.  One  of  his  most  marked 
characteristics  was  his  fondness  for  children.  In  1859,  when  he 
made  his  triumphal  entry  into  Milan,  he  caught  up  a  little  girl 
who  offered  him  a  bouquet,  set  her  on  his  holsters,  and  thus 
rode  with  her  through  the  town.  That  pleasing  trait  of  his 
character  became  yet  more  evident  in  advancing  years. 


THE  MACMAHONS  AT  THE  £LYS£e  221 

The  establishment  kept  up  at  the  Elysee  was  fairly  large. 
The  palace  furniture  was  mostly  provided  by  the  State,  but 
many  accessories  were  supplied  by  the  Marshal  himself.  There 
was  a  civil  cabinet  and  a  military  one.  At  the  head  of  the 
former  was  Viscount  Louis  Emmanuel  d'Harcourt,  to  whom  we 
previously  referred,  a  good-looking,  amiable  man  with  a 
smiling  face,  long  moustaches  and  a  full  beard.  Born  in  1844 
he  was  the  younger  son  of  George  Trevor  Douglas  Bernard, 
Marquis  d'Harcourt  (sometime  ambassador  in  England)  by 
his  marriage  with  Mile,  de  Beaupoil  de  Ste.  Aulaire.  This 
was  the  senior  branch  of  the  French  Harcourts,  the  Duke 
d'Harcourt  belonging  to  a  junior  line.  Viscount  Emmanuel, 
as  he  was  usually  called,  was  assisted  at  the  Elysee  by  M.  de 
Tanlay.  At  the  head  of  the  Marshal's  military  cabinet  was 
the  General  Marquis  d'Abzac  de  Mayac,  who  belonged  to 
an  old  fighting  family  of  south-western  France.  His  coad- 
jutor was  Colonel  Robert.  There  was  also  a  chaplain  to  the 
Presidency,  Abbe  Bonnefoy,  a  curate  of  the  Madeleine,  who 
afterwards  became  Bishop  of  La  Rochelle. 

Unlike  her  sister,  the  Countess  de  Beaumont,  Mme.  de 
MacMahon  upheld  the  traditions  of  her  family,  and  kept  its 
motto,  "  Fidele  au  Roi  et  a  PHonneur,"  well  in  view.  Under  the 
Empire  she  had  only  appeared  at  the  Tuileries  when  she  was 
absolutely  compelled  to  accompany  her  husband  to  some  State 
ceremony  there.  She  never  attended  the  Empress's  Mondays. 
Whatever  her  principles  might  be,  she  was  distinctly  an 
able  woman.  Her  manners  were  very  simple,  and  so  was  her 
attire,  her  gowns  being  generally  of  some  dark  hue.  We 
recollect,  however,  that  at  one  great  reception  of  the  time  she 
presented  a  striking  appearance  in  a  long  robe  a  traine  of  black 
velvet  with  a  broad  red  sash  falling  from  her  waist,  and  a  large 
spray  of  red  geraniums  in  her  black  hair.  She  never  made  any 
display  of  jewellery,  even  the  little  she  wore  was  of  small  value. 
In  spite  of  her  embonpoint,  her  appearance  was  distinguished, 
and  she  well  knew  how  to  hold  her  position.  She  was  an 
excellent  mother,  most  solicitous  respecting  her  sons  and  her 
daughter,  and  attentive  to  their  studies.  The  boys,  before  the 
family  moved  to  the  Elysee,  attended  the  college  of  Versailles. 
At  the  time  of  the  Franco-German  War,  Mme.  de  MacMahon 
had  been  a  leading  member  of  the  Committee  of  the  French 
Red  Cross  Society  for  the  Relief  of  the  Wounded,  and  had 


222  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

done  no  little  good  work  in  that  connection.1  In  1874  she 
established  a  society  for  providing  poor  children  with  clothes, 
and  in  the  following  year  organised  a  very  successful  subscrip- 
tion for  the  benefit  of  the  sufferers  from  the  inundations  in 
southern  France.  At  religious  and  other  ceremonies  she 
frequently  collected  money  for  charitable  purposes.  She  was, 
for  instance,  until  her  death,  a  prominent  figure  at  the  annual 
mass  celebrated  at  the  Madeleine  for  all  soldiers  and  seamen 
killed  in  the  service  of  France,  on  which  occasions,  wearing  the 
Red  Cross  badge  on  her  arm,  she  would  go  round  the  church 
collecting  for  the  society's  benefit. 

The  MacMahons  usually  spent  a  part  of  the  summer  and 
the  autumn  at  the  chateau  of  La  Forest  in  the  Loiret,  not  very 
far  from  Montargis.  There  was  some  fairly  good  shooting 
there.  The  chateau,  built  originally  in  the  time  of  St.  Louis, 
was  given  by  Philippe-le-Hardi  to  his  tutor  and  chamberlain, 
Pierre  de  Machault.  In  1840,  it  came  into  the  possession 
of  the  Castries  family  and  passed  by  inheritance  to  Mme.  de 
MacMahon.  We  believe  also  that  the  Marshal's  private 
residence  in  Paris — 70  Rue  de  Bellechasse — had  formed  part 
of  his  wife's  dowry. 

There  were  a  good  many  notable  scandals  and  crimes  in 
Paris  during  MacMahon's  presidency.  It  was  at  this  period, 
if  we  remember  rightly,  that  young  Duval,  the  son  of  the 
wealthy  founder  of  the  popular  "Bouillon""  restaurants, 
attempted  to  commit  suicide  on  the  door-mat  of  the  notorious 
courtesan  Cora  Pearl.2  She  had  beggared  him  and  then 
tossed  him  aside,  whereupon  he  shot  himself  and  was  removed 
to  a  hospital  in  an  alarming  condition.  News  of  the  occurrence 
reached  us  an  hour  or  so  afterwards,  and  in  the  company  of  a 

1  When  the  war  broke  out  the  society's  only  means  was  an  income  of 
£5:6:3.  By  August  25,  1870,  its  receipts  had  risen  to  nearly  £112,000. 
By  October,  it  had  expended  over  £100,000  in  organising  thirty-two  field 
ambulances.  Its  total  outlay  throughout  the  war  was  over  half  a  million 
sterling,  and  110,000  men  were  succoured  and  nursed  in  its  many  field, 
town  and  village  ambulances.  At  the  end  of  hostilities,  it  still  had 
£120,000  in  hand,  for  money  and  gifts  in  kind  never  ceased  to  reach  its 
numerous  branches.  It  has  done  a  vast  amount  of  good  in  subsequent 
French  campaigns  :  Tunis,  Tonquin,  Madagascar,  China,  etc,  ;  and  it  nowa- 
days counts  55,000  members,  with  302  committees  of  men  and  252  committees 
of  ladies. 

9  We  may  be  in  error  as  to  the  year  when  this  occurred ;  if  so  we  ask 
pardon.  In  a  life  crowded  with  experiences,  it  is  sometimes  difficult  to 
recall  the  exact  date  of  an  occurrence  of  secondary  importance. 


SCANDALS  AND  CRIMES  223 

fellow-journalist  we  hastened  to  Cora  Pearl's  residence,  which 
we  expected  to  find  in  a  state  of  more  or  less  commotion.  But 
the  only  signs  that  anything  tragical  had  occurred  were  a  few 
splashes  of  blood  on  a  wall ;  and  Cora  Pearl,  far  from  evincing 
any  emotion,  sat  in  her  salon  chatting  with  two  or  three  women 
of  her  class.  All  was  laughter  and  indifference.  The  courtesan 
blurted  out,  crudely  and  shamelessly,  that  her  victim  was  a 
young  fool,  and  that  she  had  sent  him  about  his  business, 
because  he  had  no  money  left,  and  could  be  of  no  further  use 
to  her.  Not  a  word  of  regret  respecting  the  attempted  suicide 
passed  her  lips.  It  was  regarded  by  herself  and  her  friends  as 
a  slight  annoyance,  which  might  really  become  a  splendid 
advertisement.  In  fact,  one  of  the  women  present  remarked 
to  Cora :  "  Well,  I  should  like  to  see  a  man  shoot  himself  for 
me.     Quelle  reclame,  ma  chere ! " 

We  looked  at  Cora  Pearl,  that  notorious  Englishwoman, 
who  had  preyed  for  so  many  years  on  the  spendthrifts  of 
Parisian  society,  and  we  realised  that  she  might  well  need  an 
advertisement.  Rouged,  powdered,  and  bewigged,  she  was  aged 
and  emaciated,  a  mere  shadow  of  the  woman  who,  a  good 
many  years  previously,  had  shared  Prince  Napoleon  Jerome's 
Pompeian  villa  in  the  Champs  Elysees.  She  had  certainly 
spoken  correctly  in  calling  Duval  "a  young  fool.,,  It  was 
hard  to  understand  how  he  could  ever  have  cared  for  her,  and 
have  taken  his  dismissal  so  tragically.  Yet,  as  we  know,  such 
things  often  happen.  Cora  figured  in  the  demi-monde  for  a 
good  many  years  longer,  made  several  more  victims,  wrote 
some  more  or  less  bogus  memoirs,  and  died — well,  we  are 
hardly  certain  if  she  is  dead  now.  As  for  young  Duval  he 
happily  recovered,  renounced  the  life  which  he  had  previously 
led  and  became  a  worthy  and  useful  member  of  society.  But 
for  one  who  escapes  from  such  shipwreck  as  befell  him,  how 
many  are  there  who  sink,  irretrievably,  to  the  depths  ? 

Apart  from  mere  scandals,  there  were  some  horrible  crimes 
in  those  days.  The  "angel  maker " — one  of  the  artisans  of 
the  depopulation  of  France — flourished  exceedingly,  living  on 
the  babes  she  took  to  nurse,  but  allowing  them  to  fade  away, 
and  thus  making  little  angels  of  them — whence,  of  course,  her 
name.  Even  as  in  the  last  years  of  the  Empire,  so  now  again 
several  remarkable  cases,  abounding  in  horrible  revelations 
respecting  the  baby  trade,  came  before  both  the  Paris  and  the 


224  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

provincial  courts  like  fresh  warnings  of  what  would  happen  in 
comparatively  few  years  if  the  law  should  not  step  in  to  render 
such  crime  impossible  .  .  .  and  yet,  more  than  twenty  years 
later,  there  was  still  abundant  justification  for  what  Zola 
wrote  on  the  subject  in  his  novel  FtcondiU.  Back  to  the 
earlier  years  of  the  Republic  one  may  also  trace  the  rise  of 
the  Parisian  Apache  gangs;  for  with  the  youthful  Gelinier 
and  the  "  Band  of  the  Velvet  Caps,"  joint-stock  crime  already 
flourished  under  the  Septennate. 

There  were  some  particularly  odious  murders  at  that  time. 
There  was  the  case  of  a  certain  Billoir  who  killed  his  mistress, 
cut  her  up  and  flung  the  pieces  into  the  Seine,  where,  as  an 
ultra-realistic  witness  horribly  put  it,  "  they  floated  about  like 
chunks  of  diseased  pork."  We  well  remember  Billoir's  trial, 
and  can  recall  how  Hortense  Schneider — once  "La  Belle 
Helene  "  and  "  La  Grande  Duchesse  " — attended  every  sitting 
of  the  court,  carrying  her  dropsical  pug  dog,  whom  she  gorged 
with  biscuits  and  bonbons,  while  the  most  abominable  evidence 
was  being  given.  All  that,  of  course,  was  Men  Parisien.  But 
there  was  also  the  tragedy  of  the  Rue  Poliveau,  in  a  lodging 
house  of  which  street  the  mutilated  body  of  an  old  milkwoman 
was  discovered.  The  murderers  were  two  young  men  named 
Lebiez  and  Barre.  They  had  been  school -fellows  in  the 
provinces  and  had  come  to  Paris,  each  with  his  respective 
mistress,  a  servant  girl  and  a  dressmaker.  Barre,  after  serving 
as  a  lawyer's  clerk,  had  become  a  speculator  and  an  agent 
d'affaires,  really  living,  however,  on  his  old  father,  whose 
remittances  he  squandered,  in  such  wise  that  he  eventually 
found  himself  on  the  verge  of  ruin.  Lebiez,  for  his  part,  was 
a  medical  student  and  a  Revolutionary.  He  gave  so-called 
lectures  on  the  Darwinian  theories,  which  were  interspersed 
with  political  matter,  and  eventually  he  tried  to  resuscitate 
the  notorious  journal  Le  Pere  Duchesne,  in  conjunction  with  an 
eccentric  young  advocate  named  Hippolyte  Buffenoir.  But 
the  venture  failed,  and  Lebiez  was  in  as  impecunious  a  position 
as  Barre  when  the  latter  suggested  that  they  should  murder 
the  old  woman,  who  possessed,  so  he  had  discovered,  some  JP400 
of  savings.  She  was  enticed  to  Barrels  abode,  and  there 
cowardly  despatched.  Like  Billoir,  Barre  and  Lebiez  were 
guillotined.  The  last  one's  final  words  at  the  place  of  execution 
are  worth  recalling.    "  Adieu,  messieurs,"  said  he  to  the  officials 


FALL  OF  MACMAHON  225 

with  the  utmost  politeness,  as  the  headsman's  assistants  seized 
him.  There  was,  perhaps,  more  in  those  words — a  Dieu — than 
he  quite  realised  at  the  moment  when  he  uttered  them. 

With  the  close  of  the  Exhibition  year  came  a  great  political 
crisis.     There  were  many  battles  in  the  Chamber  between  the 
Republicans  and  the  defeated  Royalists;   and  an  altercation 
between  Gambetta  and  Fortou  led  to  a  duel  with  pistols,  in 
which,  however,  neither  was  injured.     But  the  chief  question 
of  the  time  was  really  a  military  one.     General  Borel,  Dufaure's 
first  Minister  of  War,  had  been  succeeded  by  General  Gresley, 
a  highly  competent  officer,  who  had  organised  Lebrun's  Army 
Corps  in  1870,  and  fought  with  it,  very  gallantly,  at  Bazeilles. 
Now   the    Republican    party   which   supported    the    Dufaure 
Ministry— -faute  de  inieux — desired  to  see  some  change  effected 
in  the  great  military  commands.     It  distrusted  the  military 
element,   and    particularly   certain    generals   at    the   head   of 
various  Army  Corps.     It  held,  too,  that  in  some  instances  the 
terms  for  which  those  generals  had  been  appointed  had  expired, 
or  nearly  so,  and  ought  not  to  be  renewed.     General  Gresley 
was  won  more  or  less  to  that  view.     On  the  other  hand  the 
officers  against  whom  the  campaign  was  directed  were  mostly 
old  friends  of  MacMahon's,  men  whom  the   Marshal  desired 
neither  to  replace  nor  to  displace — that  is,  shift  them  from  one 
to  another  Army  Corps.     He  maintained,  moreover,  that  their 
periods   of  command   would   not   actually   expire  for    several 
months,  and  he  jealously  resisted  any  political  interference  in 
the  affair.     He  pointed  out  that  it  was  precisely  on  account  of 
his  determination  to  allow  no  politics  in  the  military  and  naval 
services  that,  in  spite  of  all  personal  friendship,  he  had  removed 
General  Ducrot  and  Admiral  La  Ronciere  le  Noury  from  active 
command,  they  having  infringed  that  important  rule.     But  he 
flatly  refused  to  remove  officers  who  had  not  infringed  it,  and 
of  whose  efficiency  he  had  the  highest  opinion.     From  that 
refusal  the  crisis  arose. 

The  Dufaure  Ministry,  being  closely  pressed  by  the  Chamber, 
asked  that  Generals  Bataille,  Bourbaki,  du  Barail,  de  Lartigue, 
and  de  Montaudon  should  be  placed  on  half-pay,  and  that  five 
other  generals  should  be  transferred  from  the  corps  they  had 
hitherto  commanded  to  others.  MacMahon,  however,  persisted 
in  his  refusal,  and  bitterly  reproached  Gresley  for  making  such 
a  demand,  declaring   that   it   had   been   understood,  on   the 

a 


226  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

General's  assumption  of  office,  that  he — the  President — should 
not  be  called  upon  to  make  any  such  sacrifice.  The  struggle 
was  keen  but  brief.  The  Ministers  spoke  of  withdrawing,  and 
the  Marshal  retaliated  by  forwarding  his  resignation  to  the 
Senate.  He  felt  that  the  question  of  the  great  commands  had 
been  raised  solely  to  provoke  that  resignation,  and  discourage- 
ment and  disgust  came  upon  him  when  he  reflected  that  this 
was  his  reward  for  endeavouring  to  observe  the  strictest  con- 
stitutionalism since  the  advent  of  the  Dufaure  Ministry. 
Thus,  on  January  28,  1879,  on  the  eve  of  a  great  ball  for 
which  many  preparations  were  being  made  at  the  l5lysee,  he 
addressed,  as  we  have  said,  a  letter  of  resignation  to  the  Senate 
— a  letter  not  devoid  of  dignity,  in  which  he  recalled  his  fifty- 
three  years  of  services,  and  declared  emphatically  that  the 
proposed  changes  in  the  great  commands  would  be  detrimental 
to  the  army,  and  therefore  detrimental  to  France. 

Gambetta's  influence  was  undoubtedly  an  important  factor 
in  the  incidents  which  led  to  MacMahon's  resignation ;  but, 
curiously  enough,  only  a  few  years  afterwards,  in  connection 
with  the  appointments  of  officers  like  GallifFet  and  Miribel, 
Gambetta  devoted  all  his  energy  to  the  defence  of  principles 
virtually  identical  with  those  which  the  Marshal  had  en- 
deavoured to  uphold.  In  his  case,  the  question  of  the  great 
commands  was,  as  he  divined,  a  mere  pretext  to  compel  his 
retirement.  From  the  Republican  point  of  view  that  retire- 
ment was,  of  course,  necessary,  as  with  the  Marshal  at  the  head 
of  the  State  there  could  be  no  expansion  of  the  regime.  It 
may  be  noted  that  he  adopted  in  turn  both  of  the  alternatives 
which  Gambetta  had  set  forth  in  his  speech  at  Lille  in  1877. 
After  the  collapse  of  the  Fortou  and  Rochebouet  Ministries  he 
"  gave  in " ;  and  over  the  question  of  the  great  commands  he 
"  went  out." 


Jules  Grew 


«   ►  e    o 


CHAPTER  VIII 


GREVYS  PRESIDENCY  AND  GAMBETTA  S  PREDOMI- 
NANCE—  STATE,  CHURCH,  AND  EDUCATION  — 
EGYPT    AND    TUNIS 

Jules  Grevy,  his  Character,  Qualities,  Hobbies,  and  Daily  Life  — His 
Brothers,  Albert  and  Paul— His  Daughter  and  his  Son-in-law,  Daniel 
Wilson — The  Official  Household  and  Intimates  of  the  Elysee — Grevy's 
Political  and  Constitutional  Attitude — His  First  Ministry  :  M.  William 
Waddington— Early  Phases  of  the  Trouble  in  Egypt— Grevy's  Second 
Ministry :  M.  Charles  de  Freycinet — Jules  Ferry  and  the  Educational 
War  with  the  Church — "Clause  Seven" — Expulsion  of  the  Jesuits  and 
Others— Negotiations  with  the  Pope — Gambetta,  his  Mistress  and  Holy 
Church — Grevy's  Third  Ministry  :  Jules  Ferry — The  Religious  Orders 
prevail — Educational  and  Other  Reforms — Foreign  Affairs — The  French 
Descent  on  Tunis — A  Protectorate  established — Resentment  of  Italy — 
Her  Relations  with  France — Gambetta 's  Intrigues  in  Italy— The  Triple 
Alliance  first  established — Attitude  of  Great  Britain — Ferry's  Rashness 
denounced — Gambetta's  List  Voting  Project  and  Dictatorial  Designs — 
General  Elections  of  1881 — Withdrawal  of  Ferry — Gambetta's  Views  on 
Tunis. 

Jules  Grevy  was  now  elected  President  of  the  Republic  by  a 
large  majority  of  votes.  He  was  at  this  time  seventy-two  years 
of  age.  The  grandson  of  a  justice  of  the  peace  who  had  held 
office  during  the  great  Revolution,  and  the  son  of  a  soldier  of 
that  period — one  who  had  cast  his  sword  aside  and  turned  to 
the  plough  rather  than  serve  the  Empire  -  making  General 
Bonaparte — Grevy  had  never  swerved  from  the  Republican 
principles  which  he  had  derived  from  those  two  forerunners, 
and  his  reputation  for  rectitude  was  universal.  Some  account 
of  his  earlier  career  has  been  given  previously,  and  we  have 
related  how  he  resigned  the  Presidency  of  the  National 
Assembly  in  1873. x  In  March  1876,  under  the  new  Consti- 
tution, he  became  President  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  and 

1  See  ante,  pp.  73,  125. 
227 


228  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

was  re-elected  to  that  post  at  each  ensuing  session.  Now  he 
was  finally  elevated  to  the  supreme  magistracy,  that  Presidency 
of  the  Republic  which  he  had  deemed  a  superfluous  office  in 
1848,  when  he  had  proposed,  as  an  amendment  to  the  Consti- 
tution, that  there  should  be  no  President  at  all,  but  merely  a 
Chief  Executive  Minister.  That  view  he  apparently  held  no 
longer,  for  he  evinced  no  hesitation  in  accepting  the  post  to 
which  he  was  called. 

His  fortune,  at  this  time,  was  not  particularly  large,  though 
he  had  benefited  by  his  profession  as  an  advocate,  and  had  been 
able  to  extend  the  family  property  which  he  held  near  his 
native  place,  Mont-sous- Vaudrey  in  the  Jura.  It  was  an  estate 
of  some  forty  acres,  well  wooded  and  traversed  by  a  little  river, 
the  Cuisance.  The  house  was  a  simple,  rectangular  building, 
with  two  storeys  above  its  ground  floor,  and  stabling  in  which 
six  horses  could  be  accommodated.  During  his  Presidency, 
M.  Grevy  embellished  the  place  in  various  respects,  but  even 
after  his  death  its  value  was  estimated  at  less  than  =£12,000. 
In  Paris,  before  he  became  Chief  of  the  State,  he  resided  in  a 
third-floor  flat  in  the  Rue  Volney  (previously  St.  Arnaud), 
where  the  furniture  was  extremely  plain,  though  the  decora- 
tions included,  besides  a  bust  of  himself  by  Carpeaux,  some 
very  good  bronzes  and  marble  statuettes,  and  a  few  choice 
paintings — purchased  mostly  at  the  Hotel  des  Ventes  in  the 
Rue  Drouot,  where  Grevy  had  often  attended  the  great  art 
sales  of  the  Second  Empire's  last  years. 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  that,  although  he  was  often 
denounced  as  a  bourgeois  and  a  Philistine,  Grevy  was  not 
destitute  of  some  artistic  perception.  It  may  be  said  also  that 
he  was  a  man  of  scholarly  attainments,  thoroughly  well  versed 
in  Greek  and  Latin,  and  familiar  with  the  history  of  antiquity, 
as  his  conversation  often  showed,  though  there  was  never  much 
indication  of  the  classicist  in  his  public  speeches.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  his  study  of  ancient  eloquence  had  disgusted 
him  with  it.  Its  verbiage,  he  once  remarked,  was  excessive,  and 
its  exaggeration  deplorably  untrue  to  life.  Briefly,  it  was  a 
style  for  the  modernist  to  shun.  Personally,  he  could  not 
extemporise  with  the  polish  of  Jules  Favre  or  the  impetuosity 
of  Gambetta.  His  more  important  speeches  were  always 
carefully  prepared  in  advance.  His  "  hobbies ■  were  billiards, 
chess,  and  shooting,  and  he  was  a  proficient  player  at  both 


GR^VY  AND  HIS  FAMILY  229 

games,  as  well  as  a  first-rate  marksman.  The  billiard-room 
at  the  Elysee  became  at  one  time  the  most  important  apart- 
ment of  the  palace,  and  "  Monsieur  le  President "  was  often  to 
be  seen  there,  playing  for  "  a  hundred  up  V  in  his  shirt-sleeves, 
now  against  Lord  Lyons,  the  British  Ambassador,  now  against 
Le  Royer,  President  of  the  Senate,  or  against  M.  Andrieux, 
Prefect  of  Police.  At  other  times  his  adversary  might  be 
General  Pittie,  chief  of  the  Elysee  Military  Cabinet,  or 
Ludovic  Halevy,  or  Anatole  de  la  Forge  (the  defender  of  St. 
Quentin  during  the  Franco-German  War)  or  else,  as  a  pis  atter, 
Albert  Grevy,  who  became  for  a  time  Governor  of  Algeria, 
chiefly  because  he  happened  to  be  "his  brother's  brother," 
though  he  was  certainly  a  man  of  ability,  one  from  whose  rule 
the  French  trans-Mediterranean  colony  has  reaped  of  late  years 
substantial  advantages,  for  he  notably  encouraged  the  Algerian 
colonists  to  plant  vines.1 

President  Grevy  had  played  chess  and  billiards  from  his 
youth  onward.  Late  under  the  Empire,  he  still  frequented  the 
famous  Cafe  de  la  Regence  for  the  former  game ;  and  when  the 
Grand  Cafe  was  established  on  the  Boulevard  des  Capucines,  its 
billiard-tables  secured  his  patronage.  He  often  played  there 
with  Maubant,  the  actor  of  the  Comedie  Francaise,  while  other 
favourite  antagonists  were  M.  de  Nanteuil  and  M.  de  Feuloya, 
the  latter  of  whom  thought  nothing  of  staking  <£200  or  so  on 
his  prospects  of  winning  a  short  game.  But  billiards  and 
chess  were  not  the  only  recreations  at  the  Elysee  in  Grevy's 
days.  Apart  from  the  amusement  which  the  President  him- 
self derived  from  a  certain  pet  duck,  often  to  be  seen  waddling 
behind  him  along  the  garden  paths,  there  were  frequent 
fencing  parties  in  the  palace  conservatory.  Grevy  himself 
did  not  fence,  but  his  son-in-law,  Daniel  Wilson,  was  particu- 
larly fond  of  that  exercise,  and  many  well-known  amateurs, 
such  as  Ta vernier,  Dollfus,  and  Aurelien  Scholl,  together  with 
several  first-rate  professional  swordsmen,  attended  the  Elysee 
gatherings. 

M.   Wilson,  whom  we  have  just  mentioned,  married  the 

1  President  Grevy  had  a  second  brother,  Paul,  a  very  capable  artillery 
general,  who  also  became  a  senator  for  the  Jura.  He  fought  at  Sedan  and 
was  taken  prisoner  there,  but,  having  escaped,  reached  Paris,  where  he 
served  during  the  German  Siege,  notably  at  the  battle  of  Champigny. 
During  his  brother's  presidency  he  commanded  the  artillery  of  the  army  of 
Paris. 


230  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

President's  only  daughter,  Mile.  Alice  Grevy — a  bright  and 
intelligent  young  person,  little  known  to  the  Parisians,  but 
very  popular  at  Mont-sous- Vaudrey — in  October  1881.  On 
his  father's  side,  Wilson  was  of  English  origin,  while  on  his 
mother's  he  was  the  grandson  of  Cazenave  the  Revolutionary, 
who  sat  both  in  the  National  Convention  and  in  the  Council  of 
the  Five  Hundred.  Born  in  Paris  in  1840,  Wilson  figured  for 
a  time  among  the  jeunesse  doree  of  the  capital,  his  name  being 
connected  with  more  than  one  lively  social  episode  of  the 
middle  years  of  the  Second  Empire,  when,  according  to  some 
accounts,  he  scattered  his  money  broadcast.  Suddenly  settling 
down,  however,  he  became,  in  1869,  an  Opposition  member  of 
the  Corps  Legislatif,  to  which  Grevy  also  belonged,  and  thus 
their  acquaintance  originated.  It  was  cemented  during  the 
Franco-German  War  (when  Wilson  commanded  a  battalion  of 
Mobilises)  by  the  intercourse  which  then  sprang  up  between 
the  Grevys  and  Wilson's  sister,  Mme.  Pelouze,  a  charming  and 
distinguished  woman,  good-looking,  extremely  fair,  and  also 
very  English  in  manners  and  appearance,  yet  a  true  French- 
woman, patriotic,  and  with  a  taste  for  politics. 

Her  husband  was  the  son  of  Theophile  Pelouze,  the  great 
chemist,  to  whom  the  world  is  largely  indebted  for  beetroot 
sugar.  Pelouze,  who  became  wealthy,  purchased  from  the 
heirs  of  the  Dupin  family  the  famous  chateau  of  Chenonceaux  in 
Touraine,  associated  with  the  memories  of  Diana  of  Poitiers, 
Catherine  de'  Medici  and  Louise  de  Vaudemont,  wife  of  the  last 
Valois;  and  on  his  son's  death,  this  historic  estate  passed 
entirely  to  his  daughter-in-law  and  became  her  favourite 
residence.  During  the  war  of  1870,  however,  she  sought  for  a 
while  a  refuge  at  the  Hotel  de  Bordeaux  at  Tours,  where  the 
Grevys  also  were  staying,  and  an  intimacy  sprang  up  between 
them.  Wilson,  moreover,  soon  after  Grevy's  accession  to  the 
Presidency,  became  for  a  time  Under-Secretary  for  Finances,  a 
post  which  gave  him  many  opportunities  for  calling  at  the 
Elysee,  and  enabled  him  to  come  forward  as  a  suitor  for  Mile. 
Alice  Grevy's  hand.  When  he  had  married  her  he  installed 
himself  in  the  palace,  and  though  he  no  longer  held  any 
ministerial  office,  being  simply  a  deputy,  he  contrived  to  play  an 
important  part  in  both  political  and  administrative  affairs,  his 
influence  steadily  increasing  year  by  year. 

The  President  naturally  had  an  official  household.     At  the 


GR^VY  AND  HIS  FAMILY  231 

head  of  the  military  department  was  General  Francis  Pittie,  an 
officer  of  culture  who  produced  a  novel,  a  volume  of  verse,  and 
numerous  review  articles,  and  also  acquitted  himself  creditably 
of  diplomatic  missions  in  Spain  and  Russia.  At  the  head  of 
the  Civil  Cabinet  was  the  amiable  M.  Duhamel,  who  was 
assisted  by  M.  Fourneret.  But  to  none  of  these  did  solicitors 
pay  court  with  anything  like  the  eagerness  with  which  they 
approached  M.  Wilson,  whose  private  room  was  incessantly 
besieged.  He  not  only  dabbled  more  and  more  in  affairs  of 
State,  but  conducted  from  the  palace  a  variety  of  private 
business,  industrial  and  commercial  enterprises,  as  well  as  a 
newspaper  called  La  Petite  France  du  Centre,  besides 
largely  inspiring  a  coterie  of  Parisian  journalists — Edmond 
About  of  Le  XIXe  Steele,  Jourde  of  the  older  Siecle, 
Jenty  of  La  France,  and  Carle  of  La  Paix — writers  who, 
under  the  pretext  of  upholding  the  President  of  the  Republic, 
repeatedly  made  it  their  business  to  attack  Gambetta. 

The  weakness  which  Grevy  displayed  in  regard  to  his  son- 
in-law  ultimately  led  to  his  downfall,  as  we  shall  see.  It  may 
be  urged  that  the  President  was  no  longer  young,  that  the 
circle  of  his  private  friends  was  very  small,  that  his  daughter 
was  his  only  child  and  that  he  desired  to  keep  her  near  him. 
Nevertheless,  it  was  unfortunate  that,  on  granting  her  hand  to 
M.  Wilson,  he  did  not  arrange  that  they  should  reside  else- 
where than  at  the  Elysee.  It  is,  of  course,  quite  true  that,  as 
a  man  of  high  personal  integrity,  the  President  was  not  in 
the  habit  of  suspecting  others  of  objectionable  intentions  or 
actions.  He  placed  all  confidence  in  those  about  him,  imagin- 
ing that  he  was  justified  in  doing  so,  but  unhappily  the 
consequences  were  disastrous.  Matters  might  perhaps  have 
been  different  had  Grevy  been  a  more  worldly  and  a  younger 
man. 

We  have  said  that  the  circle  of  his  intimates  was  very 
limited.  Of  course,  the  usual  Elysee  receptions  took  place  under 
his  Presidency,  and  now  and  again  an  official  ball  or  dinner 
was  given ;  but  if  every  recurring  New  Year's  Day  brought  an 
average  of  7000  civil  functionaries,  military  men  and  others  to 
the  palace,  for  the  purpose  of  paying  their  respects  to  "  Monsieur 
le  President,'1  the  life  led  there  as  a  rule  was  very  homely  and 
quiet,  at  least  so  far  as  Grevy  was  concerned.  If  he  were  fond 
of  playing  billiards  or  chess,  if  it  pleased  him  to  spend  a  little 


232  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

time  in  watching  a  fencing  bout,  or  a  few  days  in  shooting 
over  the  coverts  of  St.  Germain,  Marly,  or  Rambouillet,  he 
seldom  kept  late  hours.  With  him  ten  o'clock  usually  meant 
bed-time  and  "  lights  out." 

He  had  a  square,  strong  forehead,  and  very  expressive  eyes. 
For  many  years  he  kept  his  upper  lip  and  chin  shaven,  growing 
but  a  fringe  of  beard,  which,  so  to  say,  encircled  his  face,  and 
gave  him  a  somewhat  old-fashioned,  austere  appearance;  but 
in  1881  he  grew  a  moustache,  and  allowed  his  beard  to  overrun 
his  cheeks  and  chin,  thereby  altering  his  appearance  to  such  a 
degree  that  he  could  no  longer  be  recognised  by  many  who  had 
known  him  virtually  all  his  life.  He  was  inclined  to  stoutness, 
but  held  himself  very  erect,  and  could  display  a  good  deal  of 
dignity,  such  as  Gambetta  was  never  able  to  show.1  In  public 
he  invariably  spoke  with  measured  deliberation,  rarely  raising 
his  voice  even  amid  the  most  tempestuous  scenes  when  he  was 
President  of  the  Assembly  or  the  Chamber,  and  his  sentences 
were  usually  short  and  crisp.  He  could  be  epigrammatic  at 
times,  and  was  not  destitute  of  humour,  though  that  was  more 
frequently  reserved  for  his  private  conversation. 

Grevy  exercised  great  influence  over  some  of  the  ministers 
who  held  office  under  him ;  but  he  was  often  unlucky  in 
advising  or  accepting  the  selection  of  some  particular  politician 
for  office.  He  initiated  or  favoured  a  variety  of  Republican 
coalitions,  which  proved  absolutely  unworkable,  and  when  once 
some  such  coalition-ministry  had  been  got  together,  he  con- 
sidered his  duty  finished,  and  retired  within  himself,  as  it  were, 
leaving  everything  henceforth  to  the  hybrid  team  he  had 
formed,  making  no  effort,  as  he  might  have  done,  by  a  little 
timely  intervention,  to  direct  its  course  or  to  prevent  it  from 
parting  company.  He  exaggerated  the  formula  of  Thiers's 
younger  days,  "  The  King  reigns  but  does  not  govern  " ;  and, 
on  various  occasions,  the  strict  and  narrow  constitutionalism 
within  which  he  confined  himself  placed  the  bark  of  the 
Republic  in  jeopardy.  It  was  then  still  a  ship  with  a  crew, 
certainly,  but  with  no  real  pilot  at  the  helm. 

It  was,  seemingly,  the  example  of  MacMahon's  Presidency 
which  induced  Grevy  to  abstain  so  much  from  interference  in 
great  questions  of  State.    Moreover,  he  was  confronted  by  various 

1  Detaille  caught  their  contrasting  attitudes  very  happily  in  his  official 
painting  of  the  presentation  of  new  colours  to  the  French  army  in  1880. 


GRAVY'S  PRESIDENCY  233 

difficulties.  Although  the  Republican  party  now  predominated, 
it  was  divided  in  the  Legislature  into  three  distinct  groups : 
the  Left  Centre,  the  Republican  Leftj-  and  the  Republican 
Union.  Dufaure  may  be  taken  as  a  personification  of  the  first, 
Waddington  as  one  of  the  second,  while  Gambetta  represented 
theihird.  It  was  in  Gambetta's  power  to  rally  many 
members  of  the  Republican  Left  to  his  own  party,  but  he  was 
at  first  quite  unwilling  to  assume  ministerial  office,  wishing 
apparently  to  see  which  way  the  wind  might  blow,  and  pre- 
ferring the  position  of  President  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
in  which  he  exercised,  without  direct  responsibility,  the  very 
greatest  influence,  becoming,  indeed,  like  Morny  under  the 
Empire,  the  "  power  behind  the  throne,1'  for  this  was  before  the 
days  of  M.  Wilson's  complete  ascendancy  at  the  Ely  see. 

That  Grevy  was  in  some  degree  jealous  of  Gambetta's 
commanding  position  is  quite  certain,  though  most  of  the  more 
or  less  trenchant  anecdotes  on  the  subject  may  be  regarded  as 
apocryphal.  Grevy's  views,  also,  were  more  moderate  than 
Gambetta's  at  this  stage,  and  he  therefore  entrusted  the  forma- 
tion of  his  First  Ministry  to  M.  Waddington,  a  somewhat 
Conservative  Republican  of  English  origin,  and  one  who  on 
that  account,  and  in  connection  with  his  management  of 
French  foreign  affairs  and  his  position  at  one  time  as  Am- 
bassador in  London,  became  suspect  to  many  patriotic  Parisians. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to  believe,  however,  that  he 
ever  acted  in  any  way  contrary  to  the  interests  of  France. 
Indeed,  men  of  foreign  origin  like  himself  and  Gambetta 
generally  display  a  more  fervent  patriotism  than  others,  in 
order  that  none  may  doubt  their  allegiance  to  the  country 
which  they  have  adopted,  or  where,  by  chance,  they  may 
have  been  born  and  reared.  That  M.  Waddington  desired  to 
see  good  relations  prevailing  between  France  and  Great  Britain 
was  certainly  the  case ;  but  things  which  in  these  present 
entente  cordiale  days  are  regarded  as  only  natural,  were  then 
looked  upon  as  crimes. 

The  position  was  difficult  certainly.  Serious  trouble  in 
Egypt  had  been  impending  ever  since  1876,  when  Goschen  and 
Joubert,  acting  for  Great  Britain  and  France,  had  inquired 
into  the  deplorable  state  of  the  Egyptian  finances,  consequent 
upon  the  reckless  extravagance  of  Khedive  Ismail,  and  also, 
in  some  degree,  on  the  trouble  with  which  Sir  Samuel  Baker 


234  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

and  General  Gordon  had  successively  contended  in  the  Soudan. 
At  the  Berlin  Congress  of  1878,  following  the  Russo-Turkish 
War,  Bismarck  had  hinted  to  Lord  Beaconsfield  that  Great 
Britain  should  occupy  Egypt.  Waddington,  then  French 
Foreign  Minister  under  Dufaure,  stipulated,  however,  that  the 
Congress  should  in  no  way  discuss  the  Egyptian  question,  in 
which  he  held  that  France  had  a  predominant  interest,  far 
exceeding  that  of  any  other  power.  That  interest  was,  in 
some  degree,  of  a  sentimental  character,  but  in  the  main  it  was 
financial,  some  d£l £0,000,000  of  French  capital  being  invested 
in  Egypt.  But  Great  Britain,  apart  from  the  large  invest- 
ments of  her  own  subjects  and  her  purchase  of  Khedive  Ismail's 
Suez  Canal  shares,  had  also  certain  strategical  interests  which 
were  of  the  highest  importance.  The  Suez  Canal  might 
be  the  work  of  France,  but  it  was  also  "  the  short  cut "  to 
India,  and  it  was  therefore  impossible  for  Great  Britain  to 
allow  France  to  exercise  unchecked  control  over  Egypt  on 
account  of  that  country's  financial  liabilities.  The  question 
was,  then,  one  for  settlement  between  the  two  most  inter- 
ested powers.  The  friendly  advice  which  they  first  proffered 
to  the  Khedive  was  disregarded  by  him,  and  in  1879  after 
Waddington  had  become  Grevy's  first  Prime  Minister,  Ismail  had 
to  abdicate  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son,  Tewfik.  An  Anglo- 
French  control  of  the  Egyptian  finances  ensued — Sir  C.  Rivers 
Wilson  and  Mr.  Evelyn  Baring  (now  Lord  Cromer)  acting  on 
behalf  of  Great  Britain,  and  M.  de  Blignieres  on  behalf  of 
France.  This  course  was  fully  approved  by  Gambetta,  who 
regarded  it  as  sound  policy.  It  certainly  seemed  to  promise 
well,  for  a  time  at  all  events. 

Those  were,  perhaps,  the  most  important  events  that  ensued 
in  the  sphere  of  foreign  politics  during  Waddington's  Adminis- 
tration. In  home  affairs,  his  Ministry  was  less  successful.  It 
secured  an  amnesty  for  some  of  the  participators  in  the  in- 
surrection of  the  Commune,  and  also  the  return  of  the  Legisla- 
ture from  Versailles  to  Paris,  the  Senate  again  meeting  at  the 
Luxembourg,  and  the  Chamber  at  the  Palais  Bourbon,  as  in 
the  days  of  the  Second  Empire ;  but  its  policy,  generally,  was 
too  moderate,  too  cautious,  to  please  the  parliamentary 
majority.  It  certainly  tried  to  deal  with  the  Education 
problem,  an  admittedly  urgent  one,  but  its  attitude  towards 
the  amnesty  question  was  regarded  as  being  far  from  liberal, 


FERRY,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  EDUCATION  235 

while  it  was  attacked  for  its  opposition  both  to  elected  muni- 
cipalities in  the  great  French  cities  and  to  anything  approach- 
ing genuine  freedom  of  the  press.  Thus  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies  made  little  pretence  of  hiding  the  displeasure  with 
which  it  regarded  the  Ministry's  proceedings,  and  finally,  in 
December  1879,  it  resigned. 

Grevy's  Second  Ministry  was  formed  by  M.  de  Freycinet, 
Gambetta's  coadjutor  during  the  Franco-German  War.1  No 
member  of  the  "Left  Centre,"  that  is,  no  Conservative  Re- 
publican, figured  in  the  new  Administration,  which  was  selected 
exclusively  from  the  "Republican  Left.'"  At  the  same  time 
some  members  of  the  Waddington  Cabinet  continued  in  office, 
notably  Jules  Ferry,  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruction.  We 
have  spoken  of  him  previously  in  reference  to  his  connection 
with  the  Government  of  National  Defence.2  An  energetic  and 
ambitious  man,  a  lawyer  by  profession,  he  had  first  acquired 
popularity  by  denouncing  Baron  Haussmann's  financial  methods 
during  the  rebuilding  of  Paris,  and  secondly  he  had  fallen  into 
odium  on  account  of  the  sufferings  of  the  Parisians  during  the 
German  Siege — he  then  being  responsible  for  the  rationing  of 
the  population.  But  his  energy  had  been  demonstrated  at 
that  time  by  the  manner  in  which  he  had  saved  his  colleagues 
from  overthrow  by  a  Red  Republican  insurrection  (October  31, 
1870)  ;  while  later,  had  he  been  adequately  seconded,  he  might, 
perhaps,  have  checked  in  some  degree  the  rising  of  the  Com- 
mune. Born  in  1832,  in  Eastern  France,  Ferry  was  related  by 
marriage  to  Colonel  Charras,  Senator  Scheurer-Kestner  and 
Charles  Floquet,  his  wife  being  a  granddaughter  of  Kestner, 
one  of  the  largest  and  wealthiest  manufacturers  of  chemical 
products  in  Europe. 

Freycinet's  Cabinet  secured  the  voting  of  an  enlarged 
amnesty  for  the  Communists  (which  enabled  some  thousands  of 
them  to  return  to  France),  and  gave  official  sanction  to  the 
French  National  Fete  of  July  14,  in  commemoration  of  the 
taking  of  the  Bastille  in  1789;  but  in  the  sphere  of  home 
affairs  it  was  Ferry's  department  which  played  the  leading  part. 
Gambetta's  famous  exclamation,  "Clericalism,  that  is  the 
enemy  ! "  3  was  not  forgotten  in  those  days.  The  intrigues  and 
encroachments  of  the  Church,  its  attempts  to  re-establish  the 

1  See  ante,  p.  25.  2  See  ante,  pp.  13,  14. 

3  See  ante,  p.  213. 


236  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Temporal  Power  with  the  help  of  France,  and  at  the  risk  of 
plunging  that  country  into  war  with  Germany  and  Italy,  its 
efforts  to  restore  a  monarchy  in  France  with  exactly  the  same 
object  in  view,  were  ever  present  in  men's  minds ;  and  it  had 
become  evident  that  a  permanent  danger  existed  in  the  large 
share  of  control  which  the  Church  exercised  over  the  educational 
system  of  the  country.  As  long  as  it  should  continue  to  train 
thousands  of  children  in  the  belief  that  a  monarchy  was  prefer- 
able to  a  republic,  that  the  latter  regime  was  odious  in  the 
sight  of  God,  who  had  commanded  obedience  to  Kings  and 
Princes,  and  that  the  first  and  paramount  duty  of  every 
Christian  was  to  restore  the  temporal  power  of  the  Papacy, 
there  could  be  no  real  social  peace  in  France.  The  Republican 
Government  was  not  the  aggressor,  the  attacks  came  from  the 
Church  and  its  royalist  allies — the  French  Church,  let  us  say, 
for  Leo  XIII.  the  new  Pope  was,  in  his  shrewd  way,  already 
advising  caution — and  thus  the  steps  which  Ferry  initiated 
were  simply  measures  of  defences  He  began  by  securing  the 
exclusion  of  members  of  the  clergy  from  the  Upper  Council  of 
Public  Instruction,  while  a  second  measure  reserved  the  right 
of  granting  university  degrees  to  the  State  Faculties  alone. 
But  in  attempting  to  reorganise  the  educational  system  gener- 
ally, he  set  forth  in  a  clause  of  his  proposals — one  which 
became  famous  as  /' 'Article  Sept — that  "nobody  should  hence- 
forth be  able  to  direct  any  public  or  private  educational 
establishment  of  any  kind,  or  even  to  exercise  the  teaching 
profession,  if  he  belonged  to  any  unauthorised  religious  associa- 
tions. ^  This  clause  was  directed  chiefly  against  the  Jesuits, 
who  had  been  largely  responsible  for  the  clerical  intrigues  of 
recent  years.  The  Chamber  voted  the  stipulation,  but  the 
Senate  rejected  it  (148  to  129;  March  9,  1880),  whereupon 
the  Chamber,  while  accepting  the  position,  adopted  a  resolution 
(324  to  155)  calling  upon  the  Government  to  enforce  the 
laws  which  already  existed  against  unauthorised  religious 
communities. 

The  Government  complied  with  that  resolution  by  issuing 
decrees  which  summoned  the  Jesuits  to  close  their  scholastic 
establishments,  and  granted  the  other  unauthorised  religious 
associations  a  delay  of  three  months  to  solicit  an  authorisation 
to  pursue  their  callings.  When  the  time  expired  the  Jesuits 
refused  to  obey,  and  were  expelled  from  their  establishments — 


FERRY,  THE  CHURCH  AND  EDUCATION     237 

there  being  in  Paris  several  exciting  scenes,  while  fierce  warfare 
was  waged  between  the  reactionary  and  the  democratic  news- 
papers, the  whole  tending  to  general  perturbation.  During 
the  parliamentary  recess,  indeed,  some  of  the  Ministers  became 
alarmed  at  their  own  energy,  and  attempted  to  negotiate  with 
the  Pope  in  order  to  secure  the  submission  of  the  unauthorised 
orders  to  the  laws  of  the  country.  Even  Gambetta  seems  to 
have  lent  himself — in  some  degree — to  this  view,  in  spite  of  his 
vaunted  anti -clericalism.  He  had  one  or  two  interviews  with 
the  Papal  Nuncio,  in  part  at  the  suggestion  of  his  mistress, 
Leonie  Leon,  who,  in  spite  of  the  irregularity  of  her  life, 
professed  great  piety,  and  whom  the  Church  did  not  hesitate 
to  employ  at  this  moment  in  accordance  with  its  old-time 
practice  of  turning  sexual  weakness  to  account  for  its  own 
benefit.  In  connection  with  the  relations  of  France  and  the 
Papacy,  Leonie  Leon  even  made  a  journey  to  Rome,  like  some 
chosen  Delilah  of  the  Church,  which  wished  to  see  its  enemy 
Samson  delivered  into  its  power.  That  wish,  however,  what- 
ever hopes  Mile.  Leon  may  have  entertained  of  her  lover's 
eventual  "  con  version, "  was  never  realised. 

The  negotiations  with  Leo  XIII.  fell  through,  chiefly  because 
the  more  zealous  Republicans  disapproved  of  them,  holding 
that  certain  proposed  "declarations  of  obedience "  which  the 
religious  orders  were  to  furnish,  would  never  be  truly  acted 
upon ;  and  the  Ministry,  being  divided  on  the  question,  decided 
to  resign,  and  was  replaced  by  one  under  Ferry  himself 
(September  1880).  A  renewal  of  energy  was  then  expected  by 
the  democrats,  but  the  existing  laws  did  not  give  the  new 
Administration  sufficient  weapons  against  the  religious  orders, 
whose  resistance,  moreover,  was  largely  upheld  by  judges  of 
clerical  proclivities,  appointed  under  the  Second  Empire  or 
in  MacMahon's  time,  in  such  wise  that  although  numerous 
communities  were  dissolved  by  force,  they  contrived  to  reorganise 
their  establishments  in  one  or  another  way.  An  agitation  for 
suspending  judicial  irremovability  and  replacing  notoriously 
anti-Republican  judges  by  men  prepared  to  accept  the  existing 
regime  and  its  institutions,  then  sprang  up,  and  was  ultimately 
successful.  But,  none  the  less,  thanks  to  the  blunders  or 
supineness  of  successive  governments  and  legislatures,  the 
religious  orders  contrived  to  escape  their  threatened  fate,  and 
the  number  of  pupils  in  their  schools  steadily  increased  during 


238  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  ensuing  ten  years,  whereupon  it  at  last  became  urgent  to 
revert,  more  energetically  and  more  completely,  however,  to 
the  policy  which  Ferry  had  initiated,  but  which  many  of  his 
contemporaries,  although  good  Republicans,  had  shrunk  from 
following.  Throughout  their  campaign  the  Clericals  had  been 
largely  aided  by  men  like  Jules  Simon,  who,  in  spite  of  the 
teachings  of  experience,  still  believed  in  the  possibility  of  a 
cordial  understanding  between  the  Church  and  the  Republic. 
Had  Ferry^s  policy  prevailed  in  his  time,  France  might  have 
been  spared  much  unrest  and  danger,  and  the  Church  itself 
might  have  benefited  by  avoiding  the  eventual  application  of 
far  more  drastic  measures. 

At  the  same  time,  Ferry  achieved  as  Prime  Minister  some 
notable  successes  in  the  educational  sphere.  In  1881,  ele- 
mentary education  became  gratuitous  in  France.  About  the 
same  time  also  secular  secondary  education  was  established  for 
girls.  In  other  respects  the  Ministry  was  a  most  progressive 
one.  It  refused  to  authorise  political  clubs,  but  it  gave  France 
the  right  of  public  meeting  without  any  of  the  governmental 
restrictions  inherited  from  the  Empire.  In  the  same  year, 
1881,  it  established  freedom  of  the  press.  Nobody  henceforth 
had  to  secure  an  official  permission  to  start  a  newspaper  or  to 
deposit  a  sum  of  money  as  a  guarantee  of  the  good  behaviour 
of  the  intended  print.  The  free  circulation  of  newspapers  and 
books  without  any  hampering  restrictions  was  also  conceded ; 
and  except  in  the  case  of  libels  on  private  individuals,  it  was 
decided  that  all  press  offences  should  be  tried  by  jury,  and  that 
the  plea  of  "  being  true  in  substance  and  in  fact "  should  be 
admitted,  together  with  evidence  in  support  of  it. 

Nevertheless,  Jules  Ferry  remained  unpopular.  Slanders  of 
one  and  another  kind  dogged  his  footsteps.  A  masterful  man, 
conscious  of  his  own  ability,  he  was  perhaps  more  inclined  to 
domineer  than  to  adopt  conciliatory  courses.  His  manners, 
moredj^er,  lacked  urbanity,  and  his  personal  appearance,  with 
his  long  misshapen  nose,  which  nature  had  intended  to  be 
aquiline,  his  flabby  cheeks,  and  his  bushy,  mutton-chop  whiskers, 
suggesting  those  of  some  waiter  at  a  Boulevardian  cafe,  was 
scarcely  prepossessing.  But  a  far  greater  sin  than  any  of  those 
lay  at  his  door.  He  was  presumptuous  enough  to  enlarge  the 
territory  of  France  by  a  bold  coup  de  main. 

His  Foreign  Minister  was  Barthelemy  St.  Hilaire,  formerly 


TUNIS  AND  THE  POWERS  239 

secretary  to  Thiers.1  The  storms  at  home  seemed  likely  to 
have  their  counterpart  in  storms  abroad.  There  was  trouble 
between  Turkey  on  the  one  hand  and  Greece  and  Montenegro 
on  the  other,  in  such  wise  that  the  everlasting  Eastern  question 
might  become  acute  again  at  any  moment.  The  position  in 
Egypt  was  also  becoming  worse  than  ever,  Arabi  and  other 
malcontents  rising  against  the  Khedive's  authority,  and  ac- 
quiring a  power  which  rapidly  increased.  French  opinion 
remaining  suspicious  of  England  in  those  Egyptian  matters, 
and  English  opinion  being  likewise  suspicious  of  France,  the 
resources  of  diplomacy  were  at  times  sorely  taxed.  But,  so  far 
as  France  was  concerned,  the  more  particular  trouble  was  Tunis. 
It  had  been  maturing  for  some  years.  The  Bey,  Mohamed  es 
Sadok,  having  become  financially  involved  like  Khedive  Ismail, 
though  to  a  smaller  extent,  an  international  commission  had 
been  established  and  had  found  itself  confronted  by  several 
rival  claims  emanating  from  French,  British,  and  Italian 
subjects.  In  the  midst  of  the  disputes  which  ensued,  and 
which  were  unduly  embittered,  perhaps,  by  the  attitude  of 
M.  Roustan,  the  French  agent  in  Tunis  (who,  however,  it  may 
be  freely  admitted,  was  wrongfully  accused  by  wild  writers  like 
Henri  Rochefort,  of  corrupt  mercenary  motives),  some  raids 
were  made  on  Algerian  territory  by  Tunisian  tribesmen,  where- 
upon, in  spite  of  the  Bey's  appeals  to  Turkey,  the  French 
Government  decided  on  immediate  punishment,  and  despatched 
both  military  and  naval  expeditions  with  that  design.  The 
tribes  were  chastised,  the  town  of  Sfax  was  bombarded,  and 
Tunis  city  occupied,  the  result  being  a  treaty  which  placed  the 
Bey's  dominions  under  the  protectorate  of  France.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  Ferry  would  have  absolutely  annexed  the  Tunisian 
territory,  had  he  remained  much  longer  in  office  with  the 
support  of  the  Legislature. 

He  certainly  felt  that  he  had  license  and  justification  for 
what  he  did,  notably  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  Lord  Salisbury 
had  assured  France,  at  the  time  of  the  Berlin  Congress,  that 
Great  Britain  was  willing  that  she  should  take,  in  regard  to 
Tunis,  whatever  course  might  be  necessitated  by  the  interests 
of  Algeria.  Such,  at  least,  was  always  the  contention  of 
Barthelemy  St.  Hilaire.  But  whatever  compensations  Great 
Britain  might  have  offered  to  France,  when  intent  herself  on 
1  See  ante,  p.  118. 


240  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

annexing  Cyprus,  there  was  another  power  to  be  considered — 
Italy,  which  had  many  colonists  and  considerable  financial  and 
commercial  interests  in  Tunis.  If  the  French  coup  de  mam 
somewhat  startled  English  public  opinion,  which  was  not  in 
the  secret  of  the  gods,  it  quite  infuriated  the  Italians,  besides 
impelling  Turkey  to  throw  a  force  of  nearly  20,000  men  into 
the  adjacent  regency  of  Tripoli. 

The  relations  of  Italy  and  France  had  been  strained  ever 
since  the  Franco-German  War,  when  the  former  power,  intent 
on  securing  Rome,  had  refrained  from  hastening  to  the  help  of 
the  state  to  which  she  owed  both  Lombardy  and  Venetia.  The 
Republic's  foreign  policy  in  the  matter  of  protective  commercial 
tariffs  had  further  embittered  the  intercourse,  and  Italy's  only 
friend  appeared  to  be  the  German  Empire,  which  had  profited 
by  her  neutrality  in  1870.  For  a  time  Italy  followed,  at  a 
respectful  distance,  in  the  wake  of  the  alliance  of  the  three 
Emperors,  established  at  Berlin  in  1872,  but  she  next  dropped 
into  a  state  of  almost  complete  isolation,  which,  in  or  about 
1879,  became  positively  dangerous  on  account  of  the  Italia 
irredenta  agitation,  which  was  fostered,  regardless  of  the  country's 
position,  by  extremists  of  the  Garibaldian  school.  Count 
Andrassy,  the  Austrian  Minister,  was  at  last  compelled,  indeed, 
to  warn  the  Italian  Government  that  Austria  would  have  to 
take  measures  for  her  self- protection  if  that  agitation  were  not 
checked.  The  Italian  Government  replied  (1879)  that  it  was 
not  responsible  for  the  agitation,  and  in  the  exchange  of 
views  which  ensued,  the  way  was  paved  for  the  entry  of  Italy 
into  an  alliance  with  the  two  Empires  of  Central  Europe — their 
formal  compact  with  Russia  having  virtually  come  to  an  end 
by  reason  of  the  Russo-Turkish  War,  though  on  a  few  points 
the  three  Empires  were  still  in  agreement.  Italy,  then,  was 
already  drawing  nearer  to  the  central  powers  when  the  establish- 
ment of  the  French  protectorate  over  Tunis  impelled  her  to 
throw  herself  into  their  arms,  in  such  wise  that  the  famous 
Triple  Alliance  of  Germany,  Austria,  and  Italy,  which  still 
continues,  was  first  signed  in  1882.1  This,  then  was  an  early 
effect  of  "  the  Tunisian  adventure." 

1  It  was  renewed  in  1887,  and  again  in  1892.  Originally  the  duration  of 
the  contract  was  limited  to  five  years,  but  in  1892  it  was  extended  to  a  period 
often  years,  the  next  renewal  having  taken  place  in  1902.  Another  term  of 
ten  years  was  then  agreed  upon  in  such  wise  that  the  existing  agreements 
should  remain  in  force  until  1912.     The  r61e  of  Italy  in  the  alliance  may 


TUNIS  AND  THE  POWERS  241 

On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  remembered  that  Italy  was 
already  and,  to  all  appearance,  irremediably  estranged  from 
France,  and  that  although  French  abstention  in  regard  to 
Tunis  might  have  prevented  Franco-Italian  relations  from 
becoming  more  bitter  than  they  were — in  which  respect  some 
risk  had  to  be  taken — it  would  certainly  not  have  improved 
them  in  any  degree  whatever.  This  was  fully  recognised  by 
Gambetta,  who  despaired  of  effecting  any  good  understanding 
between  the  two  states  unless  it  were  by  some  revolutionary 
or  coercive  means,  and  who,  for  some  time,  although  not  yet  in 
office,  exerted  his  secret  power  or  influence  to  aid  and  abet 
the  growth  of  a  new  Italian  revolutionary  party,  which,  he 
held,  would  place  the  young  Kingdom  in  such  a  divided  and 
distracted  state  that  any  intervention  on  its  part  in  a  new 
Franco-German  War  would  become  impossible.1  Gambetta's 
action  in  this  respect  well  exemplifies  what  we  previously  wrote 
concerning  the  ultra-patriotism  of  Frenchmen  of  foreign  origin. 
Gambetta,  currently  denounced  by  inimical  French  journalists 
as  "  the  Genoese,"  even  as  Waddington  was  sneered  at  as  "  the 
Englishman,"  hesitated  at  nothing,  however  unscrupulous,  in 
order  to  prevent  the  land  of  his  forerunners  from  becoming  a 
danger  to  the  land  of  his  birth.  A  man  of  old  French  ancestry 
might  have  hesitated  to  adopt  such  devices  as  were  practised 
by  this  scion  of  Liguria.2 

The  Triple  Alliance  was,  as  we  have  shown,  the  outcome  of 
the  Tunisian  protectorate.  But  French  opinion  did  not  wait 
for  that  banding  together  of  more  or  less  hostile  powers. 
France  had  virtually  achieved  her  first  conquest  since  her 
reverses  in  1870,  and  Ferry  was  roundly  denounced  for  it.  He 
had  waged  war  without  declaring  it,  he  had  expended  money 
without  asking  for  it,  he  had  annexed  territory  without  authority 
to  do  so,  all  the  talk  of  a  protectorate  being  a  mere  blind. 
Briefly,  the  Minister  was  guilty  of  every  crime,  and  it  was 
necessary   to   depose   him   as   soon   as   possible.     It   must   be 

nowadays  be  more  passive  than  active,  but  whatever  right  of  withdrawal  the 
three  contracting  parties  may  have  reserved  to  themselves,  it  is  unlikely  that 
Italy  would  take  the  initiative  of  formally  bringing  the  alliance  to  an  end. 
(Statements  of  the  Marquis  Cappelli,  ex-Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  Italy.) 

1  See  La  France  et  Fltalie,  1881-1889,  by  M.  Billot,  ex-French  ambassador 
to  the  Italian  Court,  Paris,  1905. 

2  Gambetta's  father  was  a  native  of  Celle-Ligure,  near  Savona,  province 
of  Genoa. 


242  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

remembered  that  little  more  than  ten  years  had  elapsed  since 
the  conclusion  of  peace  with  Germany.  The  idea  of  la  Revanche 
still  predominated  in  France,  the  danger  of  a  new  German 
invasion  was  still  and  ever  present.  There  had  been  more  than 
one  war  scare,  the  worst  and  most  justified,  in  1875,  as  we 
previously  said;  and  it  was  requisite  that  French  statesmen 
should  invariably  observe  great  circumspection.  The  strength 
of  France  must  not  be  frittered  away  in  any  rash  colonial 
enterprises,  it  must  remain  entire,  ever  available,  so  as  to 
contend  with  the  great  peril  which  might  come,  at  any  moment, 
from  beyond  the  Vosges !  This  was  really  the  national  sentiment, 
which  provoked  so  much  dissatisfaction  with  the  Tunisian  affair, 
and  which  proved  so  powerful  a  factor  in  preventing  France, 
despite  the  views  of  some  of  her  ablest  statesmen,  from  co- 
operating with  Great  Britain  in  the  occupation  of  Egypt. 
England  became  hated  for  her  action  in  that  respect,  a  terrible 
jealousy  sprang  up  in  the  French  heart,  the  jealousy  of  one 
who  sees  another  doing  a  thing  in  which  he  would  have  liked 
to  participate,  but  which  is  for  him  impossible,  as  he  is  forced 
to  keep  incessant  watch  and  ward  over  a  great  peril,  which  the 
other,  for  his  part,  has  no  reason  to  fear. 

Looking  back,  while  we  can  understand  the  feelings  which 
swayed  the  French  in  regard  to  Tunis,  we  hold  that  there  was 
some  justification  for  Ferry's  policy.  It  was  bold,  but  it  was 
scarcely  rash.  There  was  reason  to  believe  both  that  the 
British  Government  would  assent  to  it,  and  that  Germany 
would  regard  it  with  equanimity.  Those  were  still  the  days  of 
Bismarck,  who  was  unwilling  to  risk  the  loss  of  a  single  button 
from  the  tunic  of  a  Pomeranian  infantryman  by  meddling  in 
any  business  in  which  Germany,  according  to  his  views,  had  no 
interest.  The  Mediterranean  ambition  of  Germany  is  a  growth 
of  these  latter  days.  From  the  French  action  in  Tunis,  more- 
over, Germany  certainly  derived  some  advantage,  for  it  finally 
brought  Italy  into  line  with  her  and  Austria,  and,  however 
defective  the  Italian  army  may  then  have  been,  Italy  might 
none  the  less  prove  a  factor  of  importance  in  the  event  either 
of  a  new  war  or  of  diplomatic  complications  in  which  Germany 
might  be  concerned.  On  the  other  hand,  in  return  for  Italy's 
accession  to  the  alliance  of  the  central  powers,  Germany  gave 
nothing  save  expressions  of  sympathy  in  regard  to  Tunis.  If 
any  Italians  imagined  that  the  great  Empire  would  arise  to 


TUNIS  AND  THE  POWERS  248 

drive  France  out  of  her  new  Protectorate,  they  were  speedily 
undeceived. 

With  respect  to  Great  Britain,  while  she  did  not  wish  to 
see  the  Mediterranean  become  a  French  lake,  she  had  no  desire 
to  make  it  an  English  one.  Her  chief  concern  was  to  keep 
the  great  waterway  open.  Her  influence  was  at  that  time 
absolutely  paramount  in  Morocco,  thanks  to  the  energy  and 
acumen  of  Sir  John  Drummond  Hay.  Further,  she  held 
Gibraltar,  Malta,  and  Cyprus,  and  she  was  drawing  towards  the 
occupation  of  Egypt.  Thus  she  could  well  suffer  Tunis  to  pass 
under  the  protectorate  of  France,  provided  that  the  private 
rights  of  her  subjects  were  not  infringed.  There  was  naturally 
considerable  diplomatic  correspondence  over  the  affair,  and  many 
years  elapsed  before  all  questions  of  general  or  private  commercial 
rights  were  finally  adjusted.  Indeed,  it  was  only  in  1896  and 
1897  that  M.  Hanotaux  at  last  signed  treaties  with  Italy  and 
England,  revising  the  Protectorate's  commercial  regime.  It  may 
be  added  that  the  state  of  the  country  has  vastly  improved 
under  French  control.  The  Bey,  Mohamed  es  Sadok,  died  in 
1882,  when  his  brother,  Sidi  Ali,  succeeded  him.  Ali's  son, 
Mohamed,  is  now  the  titular  sovereign.  Since  1884,  there  has 
always  been  a  surplus  of  receipts  over  expenditure,  and  yet  the 
ports  of  Tunis,  Bizerta,  Susa,  and  Sfax  have  been  greatly 
improved,  while  various  railways  have  been  constructed  and 
many  roads  laid  out.  Again,  extensive  plantations  of  vines  and 
olive-trees  have  been  made,  schools  have  been  built,  and  an 
extensive  trade  in  phosphates  has  been  developed.  France, 
which  rebuked  Ferry  for  his  rashness  over  the  Tunisian  affair, 
now  regards  her  protectorate  with  pride. 

Ferry  was  well  aware  of  his  unpopularity.  General  elections 
were  due  that  year,  1881,  and  it  was  the  Minister's  declared 
intention  to  resign  directly  the  new  Legislature  assembled. 
The  position  in  regard  to  home  politics  was  somewhat  critical, 
as  Gambetta  particularly  desired  to  modify  the  electoral  system 
then  in  force.  By  this  system  each  constituency  or  division  of 
a  department  elected  its  particular  deputy ;  and  in  lieu  of  this 
Gambetta  wished  to  establish  so-called  "  list-voting,""  that  is 
to  say,  if  a  department  were  entitled  to  elect  ten  deputies,  each 
elector  of  that  department  would  be  entitled  to  vote  for  ten 
candidates,  as  had  been  the  case  at  the  election  of  the  National 
Assembly  in  1871,  when,  indeed,  list-voting  was  put  in  force. 


244  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

It  was  thought  that  in  certain  directions  the  votes  of  the 
towns  would  swamp  those  of  the  rural  districts,  and  this,  it  was 
held,  would  be  a  distinct  advantage  for  the  Republican  cause, 
as  Republicanism  predominated  far  more  among  townspeople 
than  among  the  peasant  classes.  It  was  claimed  also  that 
the  electoral  machinery  would  be  much  simplified,  and  that 
expenses  would  be  considerably  lessened  by  the  change.  The 
truth  appears  to  be  that  Gambetta  desired  it  because,  in  the 
existing  state  of  public  opinion,  it  might  favour  the  chances 
of  candidates  belonging  to  his  own  particular  division  of  the 
Republican  party,  and  that  all  the  prattle  about  the  enlighten- 
ment of  the  towns  and  the  ignorance  of  the  villages,  and  the 
dangers  to  which  the  latter  might  conduce,  was  a  mere  device 
for  the  occasion.1  Although  Grevy  held  that  the  suggested 
change  would  be  most  unfair,  Ferry  was  induced  to  bring 
forward  a  bill  proposing  it,  and,  thanks  to  Gambetta's  support, 
the  Chamber  passed  this  bill  in  May,  1881.  When,  however, 
it  came  before  the  Senate,  it  was  rejected,  much  to  Gambetta's 
disgust. 

The  elections  took  place  in  the  autumn  under  the  old 
system.  Gambetta,  accused  on  many  sides  of  dictatorial 
designs,  met  with  some  very  decided  rebuffs  in  the  more 
democratic  divisions  of  Paris,  and  for  a  moment  quite  lost  his 
temper.  Nevertheless,  he  pinned  his  faith  to  the  list-voting 
scheme,  and  toured  Normandy  in  its  favour.  In  many  directions, 
however,  the  attempts  made  by  himself  or  his  partisans  to 
exercise  pressure  on  the  electorate  resulted  disastrously.  They 
tended,  indeed,  to  encourage  a  belief  in  the  great  man's 
dictatorial  ambition,  and,  broadly  speaking,  it  was  in  those 
constituencies  where  the  Gambettists  were  the  less  en  Evidence 
that  they  achieved  the  most  success.  It  must  be  frankly 
admitted  that  Gambetta  overreached  himself  at  this  period. 
He  had  often  stirred  France  to  its  depths  by  truly  national 
appeals,  but  France  hesitated  to  follow  him  when  he  appealed 
to  it  solely  pro  domo  sua. 

He  had  become  very  corpulent  at  this  time,  aged  already 
in   a   variety  of  ways,  too   fond  of  lingering  at  table  after 

1  Candidates  were  also  to  have  had  the  privilege  of  offering  themselves 
in  as  many  departments  as  they  pleased,  and  in  the  event  of  such  a  man  as 
Gambetta  doing  so  a  veritable  plebiscitum  would  have  ensued.  That  was 
Bonapartist  practice  and  did  not  commend  itself  to  many  Republicans,  who 
were  opposed  to  the  excessive  ascendancy  of  any  one  man. 


GAMBETTA  AND  LIST- VOTING  245 

dtfeuner,  and  far  too  partial  to  cigars.  Miserably  poor  in  his 
youth,  he  had  not  been  able  to  resist  the  pleasures  of  the 
affluence  he  enjoyed  as  President  of  the  Chamber.  He  was 
taunted  with  his  cook,  a  celebrated  chef,  who  had  quitted 
the  Duke  de  Noailles  to  enter  his  service ;  and  Henri  Rochefort 
christened  him  "  the  Pasha,"  attacking  his  life,  habits,  appear- 
ance, manners,  and  policy  with  a  bitter,  biting  verve  which  day 
by  day  became  more  and  more  merciless.  It  was,  in  a  way, 
the  eternal  war  between  les  gras  et  les  maigres,  Rocheforfs 
leanness  effectively  contrasting  with  Gambetta's  increasing 
rotundity.  The  famous  journalist  might  well  have  remembered, 
however,  that  if,  after  his  escape  from  New  Caledonia,  he  had 
been  able  to  emerge  from  exile  in  London  and  Switzerland, 
and  return  to  France,  it  was  largely  by  reason  of  the  influence 
which  Gambetta  had  exercised  in  promoting  the  amnesties  in 
favour  of  the  partisans  of  the  Commune.  Unfortunately, 
Henri  Rochefort,  with  all  his  brilliant  gifts,  has  proved  himself 
to  be  the  most  "  irresponsible "  writer  of  his  times.  It  may 
well  be  doubted  if  there  has  been  a  single  public  man  in 
France  whom  he  has  not  attacked  or  denounced  in  one  or 
another  fashion  since  he  first  began  to  write  on  political 
questions  during  the  latter  years  of  the  Second  Empire.  He 
still  survives,  a  shadow  of  his  former  self,  and  regarded  by  all 
sensible  folk  as  undeserving  of  attention.  However,  he  exercised 
real  influence  in  Gambetta's  time,  and  his  attacks  often  proved 
detrimental  to  the  Gambettist  cause. 

The  elections  of  1881  showed  that  there  was  no  danger  of 
the  ignorant  and  reactionary  villages  submerging  the  en- 
lightened and  Republican  towns,  for  only  90  Conservative — 
otherwise  Royalist  or  Bonapartist — candidates  were  returned ; 
whereas  the  successful  Republicans  were  467  in  number.  But 
Gambetta's  particular  party,  the  Republican  Union,  only 
mustered  206  members,  while  there  were  169  deputies  of  the 
Republican  Left  (from  which  Ferry's  Ministry  had  been  chiefly 
derived),  40  Conservative  Republicans  (Left  Centre),  and  46 
Extreme  Republicans — the  last  forming  a  new  Radical  party, 
which  had  adopted  Gambetta's  original  but  now  discarded 
programme  in  favour  of  the  separation  of  Church  and  State, 
the  abolition  of  the  Senate,  and  the  imposition  of  a  progressive 
income  tax.  Under  these  circumstances  it  was  anticipated 
that  Gambetta,  on  taking  office  as  he  was  expected  to  do,  on 


246  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

account  of  Ferry's  projected  retirement,  would  form  a  ministry 
from  his  own  party  and  the  Republican  Left,  but  on  Leon 
Say  and  Freycinet  declining  to  join  him,  he  selected  a  cabinet 
solely  from  the  Republican  Union,  to  the  exclusion  of  every 
other  group. 

He  did  not  ask  Ferry  to  join  him,  for  though  they  were 
in  agreement  on  many  questions,  the  ex-Prime  Minister  might 
have  proved  somewhat  of  an  incubus  by  reason  of  the  Tunisian 
business.  There  was,  indeed,  no  little  trouble  over  Ferry's 
withdrawal.  The  new  Chamber  wished  to  censure  him,  but 
did  not  dare  to  do  so,  on  account  of  Gambetta's  influence. 
When  the  Tunisian  adventure  was  discussed,  some  thirty 
conflicting  resolutions  were  put  and  lost  successively.  The 
mere  "order  of  the  day,'"  which  Gambetta  desired,  was  also 
rejected.  At  last,  without  either  censuring  or  approving 
Ferry's  policy,  the  Chamber  decided  to  accept  the  situation 
which  that  policy  had  created,  voting  that  it  was  resolved  to 
execute  in  its  entirety  the  (Tunisian)  treaty  which  the  French 
nation  had  subscribed  on  May  12,  1881.  This  compromise 
was  effected  by  Gambetta's  personal  intervention.  In  adopting 
it,  the  Chamber  ignored  Ferry's  so-called  "  crime  "  but  accepted 
its  fruits.  The  voting  was  as  follows  :  there  were  355  members 
for  the  resolution,  and  68  against  it,  while  124  abstained  from 
recording  their  opinions.  It  may  be  added  that  the  resolution 
fully  reflected  Gambetta's  views.  He  said  in  conversation  at 
that  time :  "  France  cannot  retreat,  it  would  be  pusillanimity 
to  do  so,  and  might  even  re-act  on  our  position  in  Algeria. 
But  France  cannot  go  further  than  she  has  done.  Italy  still 
disputes  the  validity  of  the  treaty.  Turkey,  as  the  Bey's 
nominal  suzerain,  protests  against  it,  and  there  are  15,000 
Turkish  regulars  in  Tripoli.  There  must  be,  then,  neither 
withdrawal  nor  annexation,  but  a  protectorate  only." 


CHAPTER  IX 

"THE    GREAT    MINISTRY" — GAMBETTAS   LAST    YEARS 
AND    DEATH 

The  Members  of  Gambetta's  Administration — The  Newfoundland  Dog  and 
the  Wrecker  of  Ministries— Gambetta  and  Art—"  Senators  "  Coquelin 
and  Meissonier — The  French  Navy — The  Army :  Campenon,  Miribel, 
Boulanger,  and  Galliffet — A  Host  of  Incompetent  Generals — Foreign 
Affairs — Gambetta,  the  Prince  of  Orange,  and  the  Prince  of  Wales — 
Gambetta's  Travels — The  new  Position  in  Russia — France,  England,  and 
Egypt — The  Bonapartists — Constitutional  Revision  and  Gambetta's  Fall 
— Mistakes  of  his  Policy — The  Second  Freycinet  Ministry — The  Great 
Union  Generate  Smash — The  Schools  and  the  Clerical  Right  of  Entry — 
Freycinet  and  Egypt— The  Franco-British  Alliance — Gambetta's  Last 
Speech — His  Mother's  Death — Triumph  of  the  Anti-English  Policy  and 
Fall  of  Freycinet— The  Duclerc  Cabinet— Gambetta's  Retreat  at  Ville 
d'Avray — His  Mistress,  Leonie  Leon,  and  her  sad  Story — Their  projected 
Marriage — Gambetta's  Accident — The  Fatal  Lunch — The  Medical  Treat- 
ment and  the  suggested  Operation — Gambetta  Dies — His  Obsequies — 
Death  of  Chanzy — La  Revanche  Dead  also. 

After  the  rejection  of  the  list-voting  bill  by  the  Senate  in  the 
summer  of  1881,  Gambetta  had  remarked  :  "I  won't  undertake 
to  govern  the  country  when  the  means  of  doing  so  are  refused 
me.  I  am  offered  power  but  it  is  only  to  entrap  me.  Well,  I 
won't  be  entrapped,  I  won't  take  power  at  all."  Nevertheless, 
his  assumption  of  office  after  the  general  elections  had  been 
generally  foreseen.  When  the  new  Chamber  met,  he  was  at 
first  re-elected  to  its  Presidency,  317  votes  being  given  in  his 
favour,  and,  this  support  appearing  adequate,  he  accepted  the 
duty  of  forming  an  administration  directly  the  Ferry  Cabinet 
fell.1  In  anticipation  of  the  change,  some  foolish  newspapers 
supporting  him  had  repeated,  ad  nauseam,  that  the  government 
he  meant  to  constitute  would  be  a  really  "  Great  Ministry,"  not 
only,  indeed,  one  of  "all  the  talents,"  but  one  including  the 

1  M.  Henri  Brisson  then  became  President  of  the  Chamber,  securing  347 
votes,  or  30  more  than  Gambetta  had  obtained. 

247 


248  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

most  influential  men  of  the  chief  Republican  groups.  This 
intention  was  defeated  by  the  defection  of  Leon  Say,  Freycinet, 
and  others,  and  although  the  much  heralded  name  of  "  Great 
Ministry"  was  immediately  bestowed  on  the  cabinet  which 
Gambetta  recruited  among  his  immediate  adherents,  this  was 
done  simply  in  a  spirit  of  derision,  for  the  majority  of  the  men  who 
now  suddenly  stepped  to  the  front  were  scarcely  known  to  fame. 

The  important  Ministry  of  the  Interior  was  assigned  to  a 
young  Breton  advocate  and  deputy,  named  Waldeck-Rousseau, 
whose  father  had  been  somewhat  prominent  during  the  Republic 
of  1848,  but  who  personally  had  done  little  to  distinguish  him- 
self, except  by  pleading  in  matrimonial  separation  cases  in 
the  law-courts.  Very  energetic,  but  also  extremely  frigid  and 
peremptory  in  his  manners,  Waldeck-Rousseau  had  few  friends. 
Gambetta,  however,  had  remarked  his  ability,  notably  in  the 
parliamentary  discussions  on  the  irremovability  of  the  judicial 
bench — the  suspension  of  which  was  advocated  by  Waldeck- 
Rousseau,  in  order  that  the  many  Bonapartist  and  Royalist 
judges  might  be  replaced  by  men  loyal  to  the  Constitution. 
As  it  happened,  Waldeck-Rousseau  had  a  great  future  before  him, 
and  though  in  later  years  he  long  deserted  politics  for  the  bar,  he 
at  last  became  Prime  Minister  of  France,  with  the  difficult  task  of 
pacifying  the  country  after  all  the  unrest  it  had  suffered  through 
the  Dreyfus  case  and  the  intrigues  of  the  Roman  Church. 

The  Ministry  of  Commerce  and  the  Colonies  in  Gambetta's 
Ministry  was  assigned  to  M.  Maurice  Rouvier,1  who  since  then 
has  repeatedly  figured  in  the  history  of  the  Republic,  and  the 
Under-Secretary  chosen  for  Rouvier's  department  was  the  son  of 
a  furniture-maker  named  Faure.  Felix  Faure,  as  this  son  was 
called,  ultimately  became  President  of  the  Republic.  The  new 
Minister  of  Justice  was  an  advocate  named  Jules  Cazot, 
subsequently  President  of  the  Court  of  Cassation  ;  his  Under- 
Secretary  of  State  being  another  advocate,  Martin-Feuillee,  who 
also  rose  to  a  high  position.  The  post  of  Public  Instruction 
and  Worship  was  allotted  to  Paul  Bert,  who  as  a  physiologist 
has  left  a  distinguished  name  in  science.2  Paul  Bert's  views 
on  educational  reform  were  sound,  but,  as  he  was  a  convinced 
freethinker,  his  appointment  to  the  department  of  Worship  as 

1  Born  at  Aix,  in  Provence,  in  1842. 

2  He  ultimately  became  French  Resident  in  Indo-China  and  died  at  Hanoi 
in  1886. 


THE  GREAT  MINISTRY  249 

well  as  Education  was  tantamount  to  a  formal  declaration  of 
war  against  the  Roman  Church.  Cochery,  who  became  Minister 
of  Posts  and  Telegraphs  and  retained  that  office  in  various 
administrations,  Raynal,  who  took  the  portfolio  of  Public 
Works,  and  Allain  Targe,  who  secured  that  of  Finances,  were 
all  men  who  figured  prominently  in  politics  and  worked  hard 
to  consolidate  the  Republic — not  men  of  the  first  flight  certainly, 
nevertheless  able  and  zealous  functionaries. 

For  the  Ministry  of  Agriculture,  Gambetta  chose  a  certain 
M.  Deves,  who  acquired  no  little  celebrity  of  a  somewhat  amus- 
ing description  at  the  time  when  the  enfant  terrible  of  the 
French  Parliament,  the  man  who  held  (and  still  holds)  the  record 
as  an  overthrower  of  ministers,  was  M.  Clemenceau,  now  Premier 
of  the  Republic.  If  Clemenceau  had  always  had  his  own  way, 
the  ministerial  changes  under  the  present  regime  would  have 
proved  even  more  frequent  than  has  been  the  case.  But  while 
he  set  himself  the  task  of  throwing  one  minister  after  another 
overboard,  there  was  a  deputy  who  made  it  his  duty  to  plunge 
into  the  waves  after  the  sinking  man  and  to  do  his  utmost  to 
rescue  him.  This  deputy  was  Deves,  who  thereby  became  known 
as  the  parliamentary  "  Newfoundland  Dog."  On  several  occasions 
he  contrived  to  save  one  or  another  Administration  threatened  by 
the  insatiable  Clemenceau.  A  born  conciliator,  ever  expert  in 
finding  a  via  media,  in  devising  a  compromise  when  an  absolutely 
hostile  vote  was  impending,  M.  Deves,  whatever  his  failings,  had 
his  merits  also.     He  himself  often  held  ministerial  positions. 

Before  Gambetta^s  time,  the  Department  of  Fine  Arts  had 
been  invariably  attached  to  some  other  Ministry  and  managed 
by  an  Under-Secretary  of  State,  but  the  great  man  formally 
instituted  a  Ministry  of  Fine  Arts  and  assigned  it  to  his  friend, 
M.  Antonin  Proust,  the  distinguished  art  critic.  It  may  be 
said  that  Gambetta  had  a  genuine  love  and  a  catholic  apprecia- 
tion of  art,  with  numerous  close  friends  in  the  art  world  : 
Mercie,  Jules  Breton,  Jean  Paul  Laurens,  Falguiere,  Philippe 
Burty,  Gustave  Dore,  and  others.  He  fervently  admired  the 
work  of  Millet,  and  we  can  recall  a  very  able  article  written 
by  him  for  La  Rtpublique  Francaise  in  which  he  lauded 
"  L'Angelus  "  to  the  skies.  We  remember,  too,  an  interesting 
little  speech  of  his  extolling  the  work  of  Corot.1     To  Courbefs 

1  It  was  delivered  at  Ville  d'Avray  on  the  occasion  of  the  inauguration  of 
a  monument  to  Corot's  memory. 


250  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

art  he  was  less  partial,  saying  of  it,  on  one  occasion,  "The 
handiwork  could  not  be  better,  but  there  is  no  sign  of  soul." 

However,  Gambetta's  interest  in  artistic  matters  was  not 
confined  to  painting  and  sculpture.1  Theatrical  art  likewise 
appealed  to  him ;  he  formed  a  friendship  with  Mounet-Sully, 
and  the  elder  Coquelin  became  one  of  his  particular  intimates. 
We  do  not  think  that  Coquelin  ever  gave  him  any  leqons  de 
maintien  such  as  the  anecdotiers  assert  were  given  by  Talma 
to  Napoleon.  In  any  case,  if  they  were,  Gambetta  profited 
little  by  them.  While  it  was  the  stage  which  attracted  the 
statesman  to  the  comedian,  it  was  politics  which  attracted 
the  comedian  to  the  statesman.  "Would  Coquelin  become  a 
senator,  and,  if  he  did,  would  he  some  day  succeed  Grevy  as 
President  of  the  Republic  ?"  That  was  a  question  which 
amused  Paris  for  many  months,  varied,  however,  at  times,  by 
another  one :  "  Of  Meissonier  the  painter  and  Coquelin  the 
actor,  which  had  the  better  chance  of  a  senatorship  ? "  Meis- 
sonier's  political  ambition  was  perhaps  more  genuine  than 
Coquelin's,  but  in  neither  case  did  success  ensue.  Meissonier 
had  passed  away,  we  think,  before  Leighton  became  a  Peer  of 
the  United  Kingdom  with  a  right  to  vote  in  the  House  of 
Lords,  a  consummation  which  would  have  filled  the  painter 
of  "  1805  "  with  the  keenest  envy.  As  for  Coquelin,  he,  to  the 
great  advantage  of  the  French  stage,  survived  for  many  years, 
his  death  taking  place  in  January,  1909. 

This  digression  has  carried  us  from  our  subject — Gambetta's 
Ministry  of  Arts.  It  lasted  some  six  weeks,  when  the  legality 
of  its  creation  merely  by  Presidential  decree  instead  of  by  a 
Legislative  decision  was  impugned  in  the  Chamber  by  M.  Ribot, 
whereupon  suppression  ensued. 

Let  us  now  pass  to  the  Ministry  of  Marine,  which  Gambetta 
allotted,  not  to  an  admiral,  but  to  a  ship's  captain,  Gougeard, 
an  officer  of  merit  and  bravery,  whose  chief  claim  to  distinc- 
tion, however,  resided  less  in  any  services  afloat  than  in  those 
which  he  had  rendered  on   land   in    1870-71,   with  Chanzy's 

1  There  was  an  amusing  affair  at  the  Salon  of  1879.  A  certain  Mile. 
Salvini  employed  a  sculptor  named  Granet  to  model  a  bust  of  Gambetta, 
which  was  cast  in  bronze  and  exhibited  as  her  work  under  her  artistic 
pseudonym  of  "  Salvadio."  It  was  huge,  theatrical,  and  hideous,  and  when 
Gambetta  saw  it  at  the  Salon,  he  at  once  requested  the  authorities  to  remove 
it,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  a  libellous  presentment  of  his  physiognomy.  The 
request  was  at  once  acceded  to,  the  law  being  entirely  on  his  side. 


THE  GREAT  MINISTRY  251 

Army  of  the  Loire.  Gougeard,  indeed,  had  figured  con- 
spicuously and  heroically  at  the  great  defeat  of  Le  Mans.1  He 
had  also  this  merit :  he  was  a  Republican,  and  there  was  really 
no  Admiral  of  that  time  of  whom  the  same  might  be  said, 
most  of  those  in  office  dating  from  the  Second  Empire. 
Indeed,  although  Republicanism  now,  at  last,  largely  permeates 
the  cadres  of  the  French  army,  it  has  never  penetrated  to  a 
similar  degree  among  the  naval  officers.  Various  circumstances 
account  for  this.  An  extremely  large  proportion  of  the  naval 
officers  are  of  the  Breton  race,  which  clings  to  old-time  ideals 
and  the  Catholic  faith.  The  seaman,  moreover,  is  usually  more 
inclined  to  religion  than  is  the  landsman,  and  until  recent 
years  no  real  attempt  was  ever  made  in  the  French  service  to 
combat  the  superstitions  engendered  largely  by  the  dangers  of 
the  seaman's  calling.  Chiefly  educated,  moreover,  in  establish- 
ments belonging  to  the  religious  orders,  the  young  Frenchmen, 
sprigs  of  the  Breton  nobility  and  bourgeoisie,  who  took  to 
the  naval  profession,  carried  their  clerical  training  into  the 
service,  and  thus,  even  under  the  most  free-thinking  of  Marine 
Ministers,  such,  for  instance,  as  M.  Camille  Pelletan,  the  navy 
was  crowded  with  the  most  clerical  of  officers,  men  who 
solemnly  dedicated  their  ships  to  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  or 
the  Blessed  and  Victorious  St.  Michael.  But  quite  apart  from 
ultra-religious  tendencies,  there  was  reason  in  Gambetta's  time 
to  doubt  even  the  Republican  allegiance  of  most  of  the  naval 
officers ;  and  thus,  in  addition  to  Gougeard's  practical  ideas  on 
navy  reform,  the  soundness  of  his  Republicanism  commended 
him  to  the  attention  of  Gambetta,  though  the  latter  was 
prepared  to  waive  many  points  of  political  doctrine,  and  even 
to  overlook  the  most  reactionary  antecedents  among  the  men 
he  appointed,  with  the  object  of  securing  the  greatest  practical 
efficiency  in  the  army  and  the  navy. 

His  Minister  of  War  was  General  Campenon,  a  tall  and 
vigorous  man,  sixty-three  years  old,  with  brush-like  hair  and 
moustache,  and  a  stentorian  voice.2  A  Staff  Corps  officer 
throughout  his  career,  he  was  well  versed  in  military  organisa- 
tion. He  had  been  for  some  time  intimate  with  the  Prime 
Minister,  having  been  introduced  to  him  by  the  latter's  close 

1  See  ante,  p.  20. 

2  Jean   Baptiste  Campenon,  born  in  1819,  had  served  in  the  Crimea, 
Algeria,  Italy,  China,  and  with  the  Army  of  Metz,  1870. 


252  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

friend,   General   Thoumas,  the   author   of  that   authoritative 
work  Les  Transformations  de  VArmeefranqaise. 

Under  Campenon,  the  very  important  post  of  Chief  of  the 
Staff  was  given  to  General  de  Miribel,  who  had  previously 
served  in  the  same  capacity  under  Rochebouet,  at  the  time  when 
MacMahon  was  said  to  have  meditated  a  Coup  d'Etat.1  For 
that  reason,  MiribePs  reappointment  raised  a  storm  of  protests 
among  zealous  Republicans.  Some  regarded  it  as  a  positive 
indication  of  Gambetta's  dictatorial  desires,  others  urged  that 
it  was  at  least  a  most  unwise  appointment,  Miribel  being  a 
known  reactionary.  Even  now,  however,  it  is  a  matter  of  some 
doubt  whether  the  selection  of  Miribel  was  really  GambettaY 
own  personal  act,  for  General  Campenon  publicly  claimed  all 
responsibility  for  it,  and  one  of  his  biographers  has  asserted 
that  he  made  it  a  positive  condition  of  his  own  acceptance  of 
office.  On  the  other  hand,  several  anecdotiers  allege  that 
Gambetta  personally  telegraphed  for  Miribel  (who  was  then 
commanding  some  infantry  at  Lyons),  and  that,  on  certain 
friends  pointing  out  to  him  the  inadvisability  of  employing  the 
general,  he  retorted :  "  I  am  going  to  take  him,  and  perhaps  I 
shall  even  make  him  my  Minister  of  War."  It  has  also  been 
asserted  more  than  once,  that  Miribel,  on  reaching  Paris, 
consulted  the  Orleanist  leader,  the  Duke  de  Broglie,  before  he 
would  accept  the  proffered  post.  That  he  was  an  officer  of  high 
attainments  is  certain,  but  the  brief  duration  of  the  Great 
Ministry  prevented  him  from  then  effecting  much  in  the  way  of 
army  reorganisation. 

The  passionate  interest  which  Gambetta  took  in  the  army 
dated,  of  course,  from  his  dictatorship  in  1870,  since  when  he 
had  neglected  no  opportunity  of  cultivating  an  intercourse  with 
prominent  officers.  He  controlled,  and  often  inspired,  a  widely 
read  military  journal,  JOArmee  franqaise^  edited  by  Edouard 
Taizon,  an  ex-officer  and  a  native  of  Lorraine.  His  official 
functions  also  brought  him  into  relations  with  military  men. 

1  Marie  Francois  Joseph,  Baron  de  Miribel,  born  September  14,  1831,  at 
Montbonnot  in  the  Isere,  was  originally  an  artillery  officer.  A  brigadier  in 
1875,  he  became  a  general  of  division  in  July  1880.  He  served  at  Sebastopol, 
Magenta,  Solferino,  and  in  Mexico,  before  becoming,  in  1868,  French 
military  attache"  in  Russia.  He  held  an  infantry  command  during  the 
German  Siege  of  Paris,  and  in  1877  was  chief  of  the  French  mission  at  the 
German  army  manoeuvres.  Rochebouet  afterwards  made  him  Chief  of  the 
Staff,  as  stated  above. 


GAMBETTA  AND  THE  ARMY  253 

In  1880,  at  an  entertainment  which  he  gave  as  President  of  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  on  the  occasion  of  the  presentation  of 
new  colours  to  the  army,  he  delivered  a  patriotic  little  speech 
to  some  of  the  principal  officers,  who  gathered  round  him  in 
one  of  the  smaller  salons  of  his  official  residence.  Among 
those  present  were  Marshal  Canrobert  and  Generals  Chanzy, 
Campenon,  Billot,  Farre,  Ferron,  Forgemol,  Lewal,  and 
Galliffet.  The  text  he  took  was  "Malheureux,  oui,  traitres 
jamais ! "  the  reference  being,  of  course,  to  the  disasters  of 
1870 ;  but,  naturally,  Gambetta's  remarks  did  not  apply  to  the 
specific  case  of  Bazaine,  whose  trial  and  sentence  he  always 
regarded  as  the  vindication  of  his  own  policy  during  the  war- 
period. 

One  young  general,  who  first  emerged  from  the  crowd,  as  it 
were,  during  his  Prime  Ministership,  was  much  disliked  by  him. 
This  was  Boulanger,  whom  Campenon  selected  for  a  mission  to 
the  United  States  at  the  time  of  the  Centenary  of  American 
Independence.  Boulanger  TmcT  an  excellent  record,  and  had 
come  to  the  front  very  rapidly,  being:  made  a  general  de  brigade 
when  only  forty-three  years  old.  Nevertheless,  Gambetta  did 
notjike  hini.  but  remarked:  "He  has  two  eyes,  and  yet  he 
never  looks  anybody  in  the  face,  whereas  I  always  try  to  do  so, 
though  I  have  only  one  eye  at  my  service.11  On  the  other 
hand,  Gambetta  conceived  a  genuine  regard  for  Galliffet, 
whom  he  appointed  to  be  a  member  of  the  Upper  Council  of 
the  War  Department,  a  nomination  which,  even  more  than 
MiribePs,  excited  the  wrath  of  the  extreme  Radicals.1  "  What ! 
the  butcher  of  the  Commune,  the  brute  who  had  set  old  men, 
feeble  women,  and  mere  children  against  the  wall  of  Pere 
Lachaise  cemetery  and  shot  them  down,  was  being  called  to 
high  office !  It  was  abominable ! "  Loud  were  the  protests 
of  the  Communists  who,  thanks  to  the  amnesty,  had  returned 
from  exile. 

Sarcasm,  irony,  derision  had  been,  hitherto,  the  chief 
weapons  employed  against  Gambetta.  Jovial  "Reds11  had 
lustily  sung  in  chorus  : — 

Le  voila, 

Gambetta  ! 

Ah,  ah, ah  ! 

1  The  other  appointments  to  this  Council  were  those  of  Marshal  Can- 
robert, and  Generals  Chanzy,  Gresley,  Carteret-Trecourt,  and  Saussier. 


254  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

or  else  hummed  a  pastkhe  of  the  old-time  ditty,  "Dis-moi, 
soldat,"  beginning : — 

Permets,  Leon,  permets  qu'un  camarade 

Qui  te  connut  au  vieux  quartier  Latin, 
Qui  te  connut  maigre,  et  dans  la  pommade, 

Rappelle  un  temps  oublie,  c'est  certain. 
Nous  vivions  deux  dans  la  meme  chambrette  : 

Frisette,  alors,  en  jouant  la  vertu, 
Nous  adorait  tous  les  deux  en  cachette — 

Dis-moi,  Leon,  dis-moi,  t'en  souviens-tu  ? 

Mild  banter  of  that  kind  no  longer  sufficed,  however.  The 
only  muse  that  now  celebrated  the  whilom  "great  tribune'" 
was,  frankly,  la  muse  obscene,  and  sarcasm  was  followed  by 
damnatory  invective.  The  circumstance  that  Canrobert,  "  the 
bombarder  of  the  Boulevards "  at  Louis  Napoleon's  Coup 
d'Etat,  was  chosen  as  one  of  Galliffefs  colleagues,  increased  the 
exasperation  of  the  Faubourgs.  But  Gambetta  remained 
unmoved.  He  defended  Galliffet,  even  vouching  in  private 
conversation  for  the  general's  Republicanism,  and  declaring 
that  his  only  ambition  was  "  to  retake  Strasburg  and  to  see  a 
statue  of  himself  erected  there." 

It  is  well  known  that  M.  de  Galliffet1  rendered  great 
services  to  the  French  army  both  during  Gambetta's  ministry 
and  afterwards,  becoming,  as  it  were,  a  kind  of  grand-master  of 
the  cavalry  as  well  as  an  inspector-general  of  high  capacity. 
He  prevented  the  undue  promotion,  or  secured  the  retirement 
of  many  undeserving  officers.  His  letters  to  Gambetta,  before 
the  latter  even  became  Prime  Minister,  were  remarkable  for 
the  severe  strictures  they  contained.  According  to  M.  de 
Galliffet,  in  or  about  1880,  there  were  but  twenty-five  really 
capable  generals  in  the  whole  French  army,  and  all  the  others 
ought  to  have  been  cashiered.  General  the  Marquis  d'Espeuilles 
was  "  an  antiquated  old  fool  and  an  idler,"  Arnaudeau  was  "  so 
incapable  as  to  be  ridiculous,"  Grandin  was  "an  imbecile,  a 
bundle  of  indifference  and  scepticism  in  league  with  the  enemies 
of  the  government,"  Carrelet,  Sereville,  and  d'Elchingen  2  were 
of  "great   mediocrity ,"   Latheulade,    Montarby,    Oudinot,   de 

1  For  an  account  of  his  early  career,  etc.,  see  our  Court  of  the  Tuileries, 
1852-1870. 

2  A  grandson  of  Marshal  Ney.  He  committed  suicide  in  an  empty  house 
to  avoid  a  prosecution  similar  to  proceedings  taken  against  various  officers 
in  Germany  in  1907-8. 


GAMBETTA  AND  THE  ARMY  255 

Dampierre,  Feline,  and  de  la  Rochere  were  "  very  bad,"  while 
de  Quelen  was  "  archi-bad."  As  for  General  L'Hotte,  he  was 
of  "  the  old  style,  opposed  to  all  progress,""  and  Colonel  (later 
General)  Kaulbars,  the  Russian  representative  at  the  French 
manoeuvres,  had  been  struck  by  "the  limited  range  of  his 
intelligence."  Many  other  generals  of  division  were  "  as  weak 
as  could  be " ;  and,  it  was  added,  the  foreign  officers  present 
at  the  manoeuvres  openly  vented  "their  astonishment  at  the 
physical,  moral,  and  intellectual  incapacity  of  the  heads  of  the 
French  army !  *  Some  ten  years  later,  in  1890,  M.  de  Galliffet 
expressed,  through  the  medium  of  M.  Joseph  Reinach,  very 
similar  opinions  on  several  generals  then  in  command.  We  do 
not  say  that  he  flias  always  43ee»  infallible  in  such  matters,  but 
events  have  frequently  confirmed  his  dicta.1  Still,  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  the  Miribel  and  Galliffet  appointments 
weakened  Gambetta's  Cabinet  politically,  deprived  it  of  a  good 
deal  of  Republican  support,  for  the  loss  of  which  there  was  no 
such  compensation  as  the  adhesion  of  the  more  liberally  inclined 
Conservatives,  for,  when  the  day  of  reckoning  came  in  the 
Legislature,  the  Bonapartists  and  Royalists  voted  to  a  man  for 
Gambetta's  overthrow. 

He,  himself,  in  addition  to  the  Premiership,  took  the 
Ministry  for  Foreign  Affairs.  He  was,  of  course,  without 
diplomatic  training,  but  during  the  war  of  1870,  when  M.  de 
Chaudordy  directed  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  National 
Defence  Delegation,  he  had  had  some  personal  intercourse, 
at  Tours,  with  the  representatives  of  the  Powers,  notably 
with  Lord  Lyons.  Afterwards,  at  Grevy's  accession,  when  he 
acquired,  as   President   of  the   Chamber,2  the   influence  of  a 

1  Admiral  Courbet,  one  of  the  best  French  naval  officers  of  the  Third 
Republic,  also  wrote  very  severely  of  some  of  his  colleagues,  notably  Cloue, 
Bergasse,  and  Peyron. 

2  It  must  be  said  that  he  was  not  a  good  parliamentary  President.  He 
lacked  Grevy's  strict  impartiality  and  composure.  A  somewhat  noisy 
deputy  in  his  day,  addicted  to  interrupting  other  speakers,  and  careless 
whether  his  language  were  parliamentary  or  not,  he  visited,  as  President, 
the  slightest  offences  with  punishment  which  was  often  foolishly  severe.  It 
is  true,  of  course,  that  the  Bonapartists  were  extremely  turbulent  at  times. 
On  one  occasion  Gambetta  had  to  send  for  the  guard  to  remove  Paul  de 
Cassagnac  from  the  Chamber.  Another  day,  we  remember,  when  he  hastily 
took  up  a  hat  to  put  it  on  as  a  sign  that  the  sitting  was  suspended  until  the 
uproar  ceased,  the  hat  proved  to  belong  to  one  of  the  secretaries,  and  was  of 
such  huge  dimensions  that  it  descended  over  the  President's  nose,  both  to 
his  confusion  and  to  the  intense  amusement  of  the  Chamber,  which  there- 


256  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

power  behind  the  throne,  exercising,  as  he  himself  put  it, 
"  la  dictature  de  la  persuasion,"  many  ambassadors  placed 
themselves  in  contact  with  him,  meeting  him  not  only  more  or 
less  officially  but  also  in  semi-privacy,  notably  at  the  house  of 
the  Countess  de  Beaumont,  Mme.  de  MacMahon's  sister. 

With  royalty,  his  personal  acquaintance  was  very  limited. 
Save,  perhaps,  on  some  official  occasions,  he  only  met,  we  think, 
a  few  Russian  Grand  Dukes,  and  a  couple  of  heirs  apparent. 
One  of  these,  one,  too,  whom  he  speedily  dropped  on  account  of 
incompatibility  of  temperament,  was  Henry  William,  Prince  of 
Orange — elder  son  of  William  III.  of  Holland — who,  shut  off 
from  any  healthy  life  in  his  native  country,  disgusted  also  with 
the  parsimonious  treatment  meted  out  to  himself  and  his 
younger  brother  by  the  old  profligate — and,  in  that  respect, 
prodigal — King  their  father,  inheriting,  moreover,  a  soupqon  of 
insanity  from  his  grandmother,  the  daughter  of  the  Emperor 
Paul  of  Russia,  infinitely  preferred  the  life  of  a  Parisian 
Boulevardier  to  that  of  Prince  Royal  of  the  Netherlands,  and 
vowed  that,  even  if  his  august  parent  should  presently  quit  the 
scene,  he  should  continue  to  reside  in  Paris,  instead  of  returning 
home  to  reign  over  the  land  of  dams,  dykes,  and  Dutchmen. 
With  a  fairly  good  physique  and  a  frank,  open  manner,  this 
Prince  with  the  sempiternal  white  hat  and  grey  frock-coat, 
appealed  to  one,  in  spite  of  his  waywardness,  a  good  deal  more 
than  did  some  of  the  other  royalties  who  then  made  Paris  the 
home  of  their  exile,  such,  for  instance,  as  certain  junior 
Neapolitan  Bourbons,  who  frequented  shady  clubs  and  cheap 
restaurants,  and  often  rode  about  atop  of  some  omnibus  at  the 
cost  of  three  half-pence  per  journey,  because  they  could  not 
borrow  a  cab  fare.  Yet  some  of  them  have  survived  to  batten 
on  unfortunate  Spain,  and  to  figure  with  all  pomp  and  cere- 
mony at  a  i?30,000  wedding  at  Wood  Norton,  whereas  the 
Prince  of  Orange,  after  taking  his  mistress  to  a  fete  at  the 
Opera  one  night,  when  he  was  already  ailing,  contracted 
pneumonia  and  speedily  died.1 

upon  ceased  squabbling,  its  good  humour  having  been  restored  by  this 
comical  incident. 

1  He  had  largely  inherited  his  father's  amorous  nature.  On  one  occasion 
an  enraged  Parisian  husband  accused  his  wife  of  lunching  en  tSte-a-tSte  with 
the  Prince  in  a  private  room  at  the  Cafe  d'Orsay.  A  scandalous  "judicial 
separation  "  case  ensued  (Affaire  Santerre,  1879-80).  A  quaint  feature  of 
the  affair  was  that  the  husband,  while \  waiting  "  to  surprise  the  guilty 


GAMBETTA,  DIPLOMACY,  AND  ROYALTY    257 

Gambetta,  as  we  have  reason  to  know,  was  concerned  at 
that  demise,  not  that  he  had  a  favourable  opinion  of  the  Prince, 
but  he  knew  that  the  latter's  younger  brother,  Alexander,  had 
but  precarious  health — indeed,  he  died  in  1884 — and  the 
question  of  the  Dutch  succession  often  made  the  French  states- 
man thoughtful.  Germany's  ambition — her  destiny,  in  her  own 
opinion — lay  westward.  After  Alsace  would  come  Holland ; 
then  Flanders,  otherwise  Belgium,  that  also  being  regarded  as 
Germanic  land,  and  with  Flanders  there  would  be  Antwerp,  of 
course.  However,  at  the  death  of  his  elder  son,  William 
III.  of  Holland  took  a  second  wife,  the  Princess  Emma  of 
Waldeck-Pyrmont,  by  whom,  in  Gambetta's  time,  he  already 
had  a  daughter,  Wilhelmina,  now  Queen  of  Holland.  It  then 
seemed  quite  possible  that  this  child  might  be  followed  by 
others.1 

Gambetta's  other  acquaintance  in  royal  spheres  was  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  later  Edward  VII.  They  lunched  together 
(perhaps  more  than  once),  and  although,  so  far  as  we  know, 
His  Majesty's  opinion  of  the  French  statesman  has  never  been 
recorded,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe,  without  accepting 
any  of  the  anecdotes  textually,  that  Gambetta  was,  on  his 
side,  most  favourably  impressed  by  the  sound  views  as  well 
as  the  affability  and  friendly  feeling  for  France  of  the  Prince, 
who  was  then,  in  a  sense,  serving  the  requisite  apprenticeship 
for  a  career  of  fruitful  diplomacy.  It  was,  by  the  way,  the 
Prince  of  Wales  who  bestowed  on  the  Prince  of  Orange,  to 
whom  we  have  just  referred,  that  nickname  of  "  Citron  "  which 
achieved  so  much  popularity.  The  occasion,  we  have  been  told, 
was  a  lunch  or  dinner  given  by  ex-Queen  Isabella  of  Spain, 
at  which  Henry  William,  out  of  sorts  that  day,  distinguished 
himself  by  the  tartness  of  his  remarks.  "  Mais  ce  n'est  pas  une 
orange,  c'est  un  citron ! "  the  Prince  of  Wales  exclaimed  to 
the  general  amusement,  and  thus  the  nickname  originated. 

Gambetta  was  not  an  untravelled  man.     In   fact,  he  had 

couple,"  partook  of  a  poulet  chasseur.  As  one  of  the  newspapers  put  it : 
"  Othello  thirsted  for  vengeance,  Monsieur  S.  hungered  for  chicken."  While 
he  was  partaking  of  it  his  wife  made  her  escape,  it  was  alleged,  disguised  in 
the  white  vest  and  trousers  of  a  cook's  assistant.  It  was  often  said  in  Paris 
that  the  Prince  of  Orange  was  not  really  the  lady's  lover,  but,  being  a 
bachelor,  took  responsibility  on  himself  in  order  to  screen  another  Prince 
who  was  a  married  man.  Henry  William  died  while  the  legal  proceedings 
were  in  progress. 

1  William  III.  of  Holland  survived  till  1890,  but  left  no  other  issue. 


258  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

travelled  a  good  deal  more  than  many  French  political  leaders. 
We  doubt  if  he  ever  made  a  stay  of  any  length  in  Germany, 
and  it  is  certain  that  he  never  met  Bismarck,  even  if  an 
interview  between  them  was  ever  contemplated,  which  is,  at 
least,  a  doubtful  point.  Again,  they  were  never  in  direct 
correspondence.  Some  indirect  communications  appear  to 
have  passed  through  the  medium  of  a  French  officer ;  and  it 
is  true  that  an  officious  French  wine  merchant  named  Cheberry, 
a  man  of  some  position  and  wealth,  who  supplied  Bismarck 
with  burgundy,  used  to  claim  that  he  had  conveyed  messages 
from  the  French  to  the  German  statesman  and  vice  versa. 
That  is  virtually  all  that  can  be  said  on  the  subject  without 
launching  into  the  dangerous  sea  of  hypothesis.  Gambetta's 
acquaintance  with  Germany  dated  from  1866,  when  he  was 
acting  as  a  junior  secretary  to  Cremieux,  the  advocate. 
Clement  Laurier1  was  the  latter's  principal  secretary,  and 
having  to  proceed  to  Constantinople  in  connection  with  the 
winding-up  of  Baron  Stern's  bank  there,  he  took  Gambetta 
with  him.  They  passed  through  Germany  and  Austria, 
descended  the  Danube  from  Belgrade  to  the  Black  Sea,  whence 
Constantinople  was  reached ;  and  their  business  finished,  they 
returned  home  via  the  Archipelago,  Athens,  Naples,  and 
Marseilles.  All  that  was  little  more  than  globe-trotting,  but  it 
gave  the  future  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  some  idea  of  other 
countries.  Again,  he  was  in  Italy  on  several  occasions,  his  first 
visit  to  Rome  being  also  made  in  Laurier's  company  0  He  made, 
too,  a  tour  in  Belgium,  and  visited  Switzerland  frequently. 

His  travels  in  France  were  extensive.  During  the  war  and 
his  political  campaigns  he  gradually  became  acquainted  with 
every  part  of  the  country,  his  journeys  and  speeches  being  even 
more  numerous  than  those  of  Louis  Napoleon  when  the  restora- 
tion of  the  Empire  was  contemplated.  Most  of  Gambetta's 
speeches  in  the  provinces  dealt  with  questions  of  home  policy, 
for  he  laid  it  down  as  an  axiom  that  while  Frenchmen  should 
always  keep  la  Revanche  in  mind,  they  ought  never  to  speak 
of  it.  On  one  occasion,  however,  at  Cherbourg  in  August 
1880,  he  gave  rather  more  rein  to  his  patriotic  feelings  than 
was  prudent,  thereby  provoking  both  the  strictures  of  the 
German  press  and  the  publication  of  a  French  brochure: 
Gambetta,  c'est  la  Guerre,  which  circulated  far  and  wide. 
1  See  ante,  p.  25. 


GAMBETTA'S  ADMINISTRATION  259 

On  becoming,  however,  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  in 
November  1881,1  he  was  intent  on  a  pacific  policy.  The  most 
important  of  recent  European  events  had  been  the  assassination, 
on  March  18,  of  the  Emperor  Alexander  II.  of  Russia  by  the 
Nihilists.  Although  that  ruler  had  helped  to  prevent  a  fresh 
German  invasion  of  France  in  1875,  he  had  remained  more  or 
less  bound  to  Germany  by  various  ties  and  sympathies.  His 
son  Alexander  III.  did  not  exhibit  the  same  pro-German 
tendency,  being  more  of  a  Slav  in  disposition  and  aspirations 
if  not  in  blood,  and  having  also  as  his  consort  a  Danish 
Princess,  who  remembered  Schleswig-Holstein.  Such  circum- 
stances were  not  unimportant  factors  in  the  general  situation, 
and  might  have  been  turned  to  account  by  French  Diplomacy. 
However,  General  Chanzy,  then  ambassador  at  St.  Petersburg, 
threw  up  his  post  on  account  of  Gambetta's  religious  and 
educational  programme,  and  M.  de  Chaudordy  was  appointed 
in  his  stead.  In  like  way,  and  for  much  the  same  reason, 
M.  de  St.  Vallier  resigned  the  Berlin  embassy,  and  was  replaced 
by  Baron  de  Courcel.  Such  changes  at  Gambetta,s  accession 
to  office  were  perhaps  unfortunate ;  still  official  Germany 
retained  a  purely  observant  attitude,  and  even  the  German 
newspapers  put  some  restraint  on  their  hostility. 

A  matter  of  concern  already  at  that  time  was  the  presence 
of  many  Russian  Nihilist  refugees  in  Switzerland,  but  this 
gave  rise  to  no  acute  anxiety  during  Gambetta's  administration. 
Trouble  was  already  brewing,  however,  in  or  near  the  French 
possessions  in  the  Far  East,  and  the  Tonquin  question  was 
soon  to  become  acute.  Nevertheless,  Gambetta  decided  to 
make  no  move  in  that  direction  until  a  colonial  army  was 
formed.  The  most  important  affairs  with  which  he  had  to  deal 
concerned  England  and  Egypt.  There  was,  first  the  matter 
of  a  new  Anglo-French  Commercial  Treaty  which  had  been 
dragging  on  for  some  time  past,  the  negotiations  having  been 
suspended  at  one  moment  owing  to  the  insufficient  concessions 
offered  by  France.  They  again  failed,  from  the  same  cause, 
during  Gambetta's  Ministry.  He  showed  himself,  however, 
most  anxious  to  co-operate  with  Great  Britain  in  Egypt,  and 
to  prevent  Turkish  intervention  there.     In  these  matters,  his 

1  His  friend  Spuller  (see  ante,  p.  2)  became  his  Chef-de-cabinet,  J.  J. 
Weiss  was  appointed  Director  of  Political  Affairs,  and  young  M.  Arnaud 
de  l'Ariege  acted  as  private  secretary. 


260  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

conferences  in  Paris  with  Lord  Lyons,  and  Challemel-Lacour,s 
interviews  in  London  with  Earl  Granville,  resulted  in  the 
agreement  of  the  two  Powers. 

In  home  affairs,  Gambetta  was  confronted  by  many 
difficulties.  The  Chamber  gave  his  Cabinet  a  very  frigid 
reception.  Republican  groups,  jealous  of  one  another,  felt 
that  they  might  now  allow  more  rein  to  mutual  dislike  than 
they  had  done  in  the  past,  for  Bonapartism  seemed  to  be  dead, 
and  the  Royalist  prospects  grew  fainter  daily.  "  The  Republic 
has  every  luck,"  exclaimed  the  Duke  de  Broglie  in  the  summer 
of  1879,  when  he  heard  that  the  young  heir  of  the  fallen 
Empire  had  been  killed  in  Zululand,  "  the  Imperial  Prince  is 
dead,  and  the  Count  de  Chambord  still  lives  on ! "  By  his 
cousin's  death,  Prince  Napoleon  Jerome  became  Head  of  the 
House  of  Bonaparte,  but  many  Imperialists  shrank  from  his 
leadership.  He  offended  them  grievously  by  writing  an  open 
letter  in  approval  of  Jules  Ferry's  decrees  against  the  Jesuits 
and  other  religious  orders  in  1880.  In  the  following  year, 
Rouher,  the  whilom  "  Vice-Emperor,"  and  since  the  war  the 
chief  Parliamentary  leader  of  the  Bonapartists,  withdrew  in 
disgust  from  public  life,  and  it  was  in  vain  that  Prince  Napoleon 
issued  manifestoes,  his  adherents  gradually  fell  away  from  him, 
transferring  their  allegiance  to  his  son,  Prince  Victor. 

If  Gambetta's  Ministry  had  lasted,  it  might,  perhaps,  have 
effected  some  remarkable  changes,  for,  according  to  M.  Joseph 
Reinach,  among  the  reforms  it  intended  to  propose  were  several 
which  were  carried  out  by  subsequent  Cabinets  and  Chambers, 
but  which  could  not  be  discussed  in  Gambetta's  time  owing  to 
his  speedy  overthrow.  The  first  thing  which  angered  the 
Chamber  was  a  circular  issued  by  Waldeck-Rousseau  to  the 
Prefects,  stating  that  all  applications  and  recommendations  for 
appointments  and  other  favours  must  henceforth  be  transmitted 
by  them  to  the  Ministry.  This  interference  with  the  influence 
which  the  deputies  often  brought  to  bear  in  such  matters  was 
deeply  resented  by  them.  The  cry  went  up  :  "  We  told  you  so, 
this  is  the  beginning  of  dictatorship  ! "  But  it  was  Gambetta's 
campaign  for  the  revision  of  the  Constitution  on  certain  specific 
lines  which  did  most  harm.  He  once  more  insisted  on  his 
list-voting  scheme,  and  he  wished  to  get  rid  of  the  irremovable 
senators,1  and  reduce  the  authority  of  the  Senate  in  matters 
1  See  cmte,  p.  193. 


GAMBETTA'S  ADMINISTRATION  261 

of  finance  to  the  same  level  as  that  of  the  House  of  Lords. 
Thereupon,  his  Administration  became  known  as  a  "  Ministere 
de  Coup  d'Etat,"  and  was  violently  attacked,  not  only  by  the 
Royalist,  Bonapartist,  and  Extreme  Republican  journals,  but 
also  by  the  organ  of  the  Elysee,  La  Paix,  inspired  by  Wilson, 
and  La  France,  behind  which  stood  M.  de  Freycinet — that 
whilom  coadjutor,  whom  Gambetta  now  contemptuously  styled 
a  nolonU  in  regard  to  strength  of  character,  and  a  mere  filter 
in  regard  to  intelligence  ! 

The  struggle  which  took  place  amidst  a  severe  financial 
crisis,  of  which  we  shall  speak  presently,  was  involved,  but  short 
and  decisive.  Briefly,  there  was  some  willingness  to  revise  the 
Constitution,  though  not  in  the  manner  which  Gambetta  desired. 
Deputy  Barodet  of  the  Extreme  Left  proposed  complete 
revision,  and  a  Committee  of  the  Chamber  submitted  a  counter- 
proposal to  Gambetta's.  Barodefs  suggestion  having  been 
rejected,  and  Andrieux,  ex-Prefect  of  Police  and  Envoy  in 
Spain,  having  spoken  for  the  Committee's  proposals,  Gambetta 
defended  his  own  scheme,  protesting  his  patriotism  and  denying 
all  dictatorial  designs.  But  he  was  constantly  interrupted,  even 
laughed  at  by  the  deputies,  and  it  became  evident  that  his 
former  hold  over  the  majority  was,  at  least  temporarily,  gone. 
Indeed,  all  the  more  advanced  Republicans  combined  with  the 
Bonapartists  and  Royalists  to  overthrow  him,  in  such  wise  that 
he  was  defeated  by  268  votes  against  218  given  in  his  favour. 

It  follows  that,  counting  from  November  14,  1881,  to 
January  26,  1882,  the  date  of  the  hostile  vote,  Gambetta's  long 
awaited  Administration,  of  which  such  great  things  had  been 
predicted  and  expected,  lasted  only  seventy-three  days.  He 
destroyed  himself,  he  committed  political  suicide,  by  his  stubborn 
adherence  to  his  list-voting  policy — an  adherence  which  became 
so  wilful  that  he  would  listen  to  no  arguments,  though  this 
policy  was,  in  reality,  the  very  negation  of  that  doctrine  of 
Opportunism  which  he  had  long  preached.  It  is  evident,  indeed, 
that  the  opportune  moment  for  an  important  Constitutional 
change  has  not  arrived  when  parties  are  so  divided  respecting 
it ;  and,  as  we  shall  show  hereafter,  when  at  the  time  of 
Boulanger's  ascendancy  a  trial  of  list-voting  was  made,  the 
consequences  were  such,  that  from  that  date  onward,  the  bulk  of 
the  nation  iias--remained  opposed  to  any  such  system. 

Having  destroyed  his  political  power  and  much  of  his  in- 


262  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

fluence  also  by  his  own  wilfulness,  Gambetta  sent  his  resignation 
to  Grevy,  who  could  but  accept  it.  In  spite  of  the  newspaper 
attacks  inspired  by  his  son-in-law,  the  President  was  not,  we 
think,  so  hostile  to  Gambetta  as  some  writers  have  contended. 
At  any  rate,  he  expressed  in  later  years  his  regret  that  the 
Ministry  had  not  lasted  longer,  for  it  had  hoped  to  achieve 
great  things,  and  many  of  its  projects  had  his  full  approval.  In 
any  case,  after  Gambetta's  overthrow,  Grevy  found  himself  in  a 
sea  of  troubles. 

Although  the  Ministry  fell  so  soon  and  accomplished  so 
little,  we  have  dwelt  upon  it  because  it  marks  an  epoch  in 
the  Republic's  history  and  is  also  one  of  the  chief  events  in 
Gambetta's  life.  If  failure  resulted,  this  was  largely  because 
few,  if  any,  men  can  be  everything.  A  man  may  prove  himself 
a  great  orator,  as  great  as  Mirabeau,  he  may  also  possess  in  even 
a  greater  degree  than  Danton  the  energy,  the  patriotism,  the 
sacred  flame,  requisite  in  a  nation's  leader  at  time  of  deadly 
peril ;  yet  by  reason  precisely  of  his  masterful  nature,  his 
predilection  for  command,  he  may  be  the  most  unsuitable  chief 
for  a  liberty-loving  democracy  in  time  of  peace.  In  matters  of 
home-policy,  Gambetta  went  too  far  in  seeking  to  impose  him- 
self on  his  contemporaries,  in  insisting  on  his  own  ideas  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  others.  And  there  were  flaws  also  in  his 
doctrine  of  Opportunism.  We  are  reminded  of  the  famous 
caricature  of  the  period  of  the  First  Revolution,  which  showed 
a  cook  surrounded  by  the  feathered  denizens  of  the  farmyard, 
of  whom  he  inquired  :  "  Now,  my  dears,  with  what  sauce  would 
you  like  to  be  eaten  ? "  "  But  we  don't  want  to  be  eaten  at 
all ! "  was  the  reply.  In  Gambetta's  case,  he  virtually  exclaimed : 
"  My  dears,  I  promise  you  we  won't  eat  you  until  there  is  a 
favourable  opportunity  to  do  so."  Thus,  although  he  cut  off 
his  ultra-democratic  tail,  tried  to  attract  Society,  and  even  won 
a  few  aristocratic  military  men  and  others  to  his  side,  his 
endeavours  in  that  respect  were  mostly  wasted.  Those  whom 
he  sought  to  conciliate  remained  full  of  suspicion,  while  the 
old  and  tried  Republicans  protested  against  what  seemed  to 
them  to  be  sheer  apostasy.  Again,  although  his  exaltation  of 
the  army  was  inspired  by  genuine  patriotism,  and  in  accordance 
with  the  national  aspirations — for  la  Revanche  was  still  a  leading 
feature  of  the  country's  creed — it  yielded  pernicious  fruit.  It 
was  in  his  time  that  Paul  Deroulede  and  others  established  the 


LTJNION  GENERALE  263 

notorious  "  League  of  Patriots,"  and  from  the  excessive  army- 
worship  which  was  thus  fostered,  sprang,  first,  Boulanger,  and 
in  later  years  the  vain-glorious  men  whose  sabres  clattered 
through  the  halls  of  justice,  drowning  for  a  while  the  voices  of 
innocence  and  truth. 

On  falling  from  power,  Gambetta  hastened  to  the  Riviera, 
thence  to  Genoa.  M.  de  Freycinet  now  again  became  Prime 
Minister,  and  assumed  the  direction  of  Foreign  Affairs.1  At 
this  moment  Paris  was  in  the  throes  of  a  severe  financial  crash. 
A  banking  house,  called  L'Union  Generale,  had  been  established 
there  in  1876,  with  the  object  of  furthering  "the  interests  of 
all  good  Catholics,"  its  original  prospectus  setting  forth  that 
the  promotors  had  received  for  themselves  and  their  enterprise 
"the  special  autograph  blessing  of  our  most  Holy  Father, 
Pope  Leo  XIII."  Some  members  of  the  French  aristocracy, 
including  the  Marquis  de  Biencourt  and  the  Marquis  de  Plceuc, 
a  former  Sub-Governor  of  the  Bank  of  France,  were  at  the  head 
of  the  venture.  Its  capital  was  at  first  only  £1 60,000,  but  on 
the  transformation  of  the  concern  into  a  limited  liability 
company  in  1878,  the  capital  was  raised  to  a  million  sterling. 
M.  de  Ploeuc  and  others  withdrew  about  this  time,  and  the 
management  was  assumed  by  a  man  named  Bontoux,  originally 
an  engineer,  who  had  become  manager  of  the  Austrian  Sudbahn, 
but  had  been  ruined  by  the  Viennese  "  Krach "  in  1873.  He 
afterwards  came  to  France  with  introductions  from  the  Count 
de  Chambord,  and  wormed  his  way  into  Royalist  society,  securing 
also  the  support  of  some  wealthy  religious  orders,  which  either 
purchased  shares  or  deposited  large  sums  of  money  with  the  Union 
Generale  Bank.  Devout  folk  of  all  ranks,  from  the  highest  to 
the  lowest,  did  the  same,  even  Pope  Leo  confiding  ^120,000  to 
Bontoux  for  investment.  The  hope  was  that  the  Union  Generale 
would  become  a  great  international  Catholic  machine  de  guerre, 
which  would  destroy  the  Jewish  financial  autocracy  through- 
out Europe,  and  provide  both  the  Holy  See  and  the  Legitimist 
cause  in  several  countries  with  the  requisite  sinews  of  war. 

The  bank's  capital  was  increased  to  two  millions  sterling  in 

1  This  was  the  Fifth  Ministry  of  Grevy's  Presidency.  Freycinet's 
colleagues  were  Leon  Say  (Finances),  Ferry  (Education),  Goblet  (Interior 
and  Worship),  General  Billot  (War),  Admiral  Jaureguiberry  (Marine),  Varroy 
(Public  Works),  Tirard  (Commerce),  de  Mahy  (Agriculture),  Cochery  (Post 
Office),  and  Humbert  (Justice).  The  last  named  was  the  father  of  the 
Humbert  who  married  **  La  Grande  Therese,"  famous  for  her  frauds. 


264  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

1879,  to  four  millions  in  April  1880,  and  to  six  millions  in 
November  1881,  there  being  successive  issues  of  shares,  which 
were  offered  at  a  premium  of  £1  in  1880  and  of  £\k  in  1881 
— £%0  being  the  face  value.  In  the  last-named  year,  the 
money  on  deposit  at  the  bank  amounted  to  about  half  a 
million,  and  the  institution's  gains  were  supposed  to  be 
enormous.  At  the  Bourse  the  share  price  was  ultimately 
forced  up  to  ^120,  or  six  times  the  face  value.  But  Bontoux 
had  been  speculating  recklessly.  He  had  a  branch  house  at 
Rome,  he  was  financing  the  Brazilian  railways,  running  the 
Bucharest  Gas- Works,  the  Land  Bank  of  Vienna  and  Pesth,  and 
the  Bohemian  Railway  Bank ;  and  on  being  attacked  by 
financial  rivals  at  the  Paris  Bourse,  he  only  forced  up  and 
maintained  the  quotations  for  Union  shares  by  buying  them 
himself,  in  large  quantities,  through  the  medium  of  men  of 
straw.  His  extraordinary  operations  were  taken  by  Emile 
Zola  as  the  text  of  the  well-known  novel  V Argent.  The 
crash  which  ultimately  resulted — just  as  the  Union  was  trying 
to  float  a  loan  for  the  Servian  Government — proved  terrific. 
Several  members  of  the  French  nobility  were  quite  ruined, 
others  had  to  shut  up  their  mansions  and  live  in  retirement  for 
many  years.  Innumerable  poor  folk  saw  the  savings  of  a  life- 
time swept  away  ;  while,  as  for  his  Holiness  Leo  XIII.,  he  from 
that  day  forward  would  never  invest  a  lira  in  any  financial 
enterprise,  but  jealously  hoarded  the  great  bulk  of  the  Peter's 
Pence  at  the  Vatican.  Bontoux  and  his  acolyte  Feder  were 
arrested,  and  each  was  sentenced  to  five  years1  imprisonment. 
It  is  from  that  time  that  the  rise  of  anti-Semitism  in  France 
may  be  dated  ;  for  it  was  held  that  the  great  Catholic  financial 
house  had  been  crushed  by  the  jealous  Jews.  It  is  true  that 
various  Jew  financiers  participated  in  the  Bourse  campaign  by 
which  Bontoux  and  his  bank  were  overthrown,  but  the  Union's 
most  determined  adversary,  the  man  who  so  raked  in  the  spoils 
as  to  add  a  second  huge  fortune  to  the  one  he  already 
possessed,  was  a  Protestant,  a  sugar-refiner  named  Lebaudy, 
whose  lunatic  son  now  wanders  about  the  world,  styling  himself 
"  Emperor  of  the  Sahara." 

The  second  Freycinet  Ministry  soon  found  itself  in 
difficulties.  It  included  some  able  men,  but  they  were  ill- 
assorted.  On  assuming  office,  the  Premier  expressed  his  great 
deference  for  the  Chamber,  and  it  was  agreed  that  all  revision 


FREYCINET,  GAMBETTA,  AND  EGYPT       265 

of  the  Constitution  should  be  adjourned.  "Man  does  not 
live  by  politics  alone,"  M.  de  Freycinet  sententiously  remarked  ; 
"  there  are  other  matters  requiring  attention.'"  Ferry,  indeed, 
again  dealt  with  educational  questions,  and  compulsory 
elementary  education  in  government  and  municipal  schools 
became  secular  as  well.  Still  the  clergy  were  not  entirely 
driven  from  those  schools.  The  Conservative  parties  demanded 
on  their  behalf  a  right  of  entry  daily,  out  of  ordinary  school- 
hours,  for  the  purpose  of  imparting  religious  instruction,  one 
deputy  protesting  that  "  schools  without  God  would  be  schools 
against  Him."'1  Ferry,  however,  would  only  grant  the  clergy 
the  right  of  entry  on  Sundays  and  Thursdays.  In  other  State 
departments  serious  difficulties  soon  arose.  For  instance,  Leon 
Say  protested  against  the  national  extravagance,  and  particularly 
against  the  Prime  Minister's  huge  schemes  for  Public  Works ; 
the  question  of  reforming  the  judicial  bench  also  led  to 
unpleasantness  in  the  Cabinet ;  while  that  of  giving  Paris  a 
Chief  Mayor  resulted  in  general  resignation,  which  Grevy,  how- 
ever, would  not  accept.  Thus  the  Administration  lingered  on, 
though  matters  went  daily  from  bad  to  worse. 

There  was  some  trouble  in  Algeria  and  with  Spain  over  the 
depredations  committed  in  Spanish  African  possessions  by  Bou 
Amema,  a  native  leader  who  defied  the  French ;  but  far  more 
serious  events  occurred  in  connection  with  Egypt.  The  Porte's 
despatch  of  Dervish  Pasha  to  that  country  was  followed  by  a 
massacre  at  Alexandria.  The  rebellious  Arabi  Pasha  became 
momentarily  supreme.  A  Conference  of  the  Powers  was  agreed 
on,  but  when  immediate  action  against  Arabi  became  impera- 
tive, France  refused  to  participate,  and  the  British  bombarded 
Alexandria  (July  11,  1881)  and  landed  troops  on  their  own 
responsibility.  The  relations  of  the  two  countries  suffered  by 
the  frequent  irresolution  and  the  sudden  changes  of  attitude 
which  Freycinet  displayed  during  the  affair.  It  was  "  first  he 
would,  and  then  he  wouldn't,"  and  so  on  alternately.  The 
truth  appears  to  be  that  he  was  afraid  of  acting  in  conjunction 
with  England  alone,  and  preferred  to  cling  to  "  the  European 
concert,"  which  (in  the  form  of  the  Conference  of  the  Repre- 
sentatives of  the  six  Great  Powers,  assembled  at  Constanti- 
nople1)   had    invited    Turkey    to    restore    order    in    Egypt. 

1  Great  Britain  was  represented  by  Lord  Dufferin  and  France  by  the 
Marquis  de  Noailles. 


266  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Freycinet  at  last  signed,  however,  an  agreement  with  Great 
Britain  for  the  protection  of  the  Suez  Canal,  and  on  July  18 
he  applied  to  the  Chamber  for  a  vote  of  credit  for  the  defence 
of  certain  French  interests.  It  should  be  added  that  France 
then  had  two  agents  in  Egypt,  one  of  whom,  the  financial 
representative,  M.  de  Blignieres,  favoured  co-operation  with 
England,  whereas  the  other,  Baron  de  Ring,  Consul-General, 
hated  the  English,  and  even  encouraged  Arabia  revolt.  There 
was  also  a  strong  party  in  Paris  hostile  to  any  Franco-British 
alliance,  and  convinced  that  England  might  be  kept  out  of 
Egypt,  to  the  advantage  of  French  interests,  by  playing  off 
"  the  European  concert "  against  perfidious  Albion's  ambition. 
One  of  the  leaders  of  that  party  was  M.  Clemenceau.  It  had 
seven  newspapers,  some  of  large  circulation,  at  its  disposal.1 
Further,  in  the  Cabinet  itself,  M.  de  Freycinet  was  confronted 
by  some  more  or  less  Anglophobist  colleagues. 

On  the  vote  of  credit  coming  before  the  Chamber,  the 
Ministry  was  attacked  and  co-operation  with  England  was 
urged  first  by  £douard  Lockroy  (who  had  married  Victor 
Hugo's  daughter-in-law,  the  widow  of  his  son  Charles)  and 
secondly  by  M.  Francis  Charmes,  at  that  period  a  rising  young 
politician.2  Freycinet  replied  that  the  Government  preferred 
to  acquaint  all  the  Powers  with  its  views  and  intentions, 
rather  than  take  any  action  that  might  afterwards  meet  with 
international  disapproval.  In  speaking,  however,  of  the  agree- 
ment between  France  and  England  for  the  protection  of  the 
Suez  Canal,  he  suddenly  grew  energetic,  and  declared  that 
France  would  do  her  duty,  with  or  without  the  approbation  of 
the  other  Powers.  Thereupon  Paul  de  Cassagnac,  the  Bona- 
partist  firebrand,  somewhat  astonished  by  this  sortie,  exclaimed  : 
"  Don't  play  the  braggart  after  acting  the  coward  ! " — which 
interjection  provoked  a  terrific  uproar.  However,  Freycinet's 
declaration  was  a  surprise  to  most  members  of  the  Chamber, 
though  they  warmly  applauded  it  as  soon  as  they  had  mastered 
their  astonishment.  "I  know  where  I  am  going,'"  the  Prime 
Minister  exclaimed,  as  he  reached  his  peroration.  "  I  am  going 
forward  with  the  English  alliance,  but  at  the  same  time  treat- 

1  Le  Petit  Journal  (then  600,000  copies  a  day),  U Intransigeant  (100,000), 
La  France  (35,000),  Le  Steele  (50,000),  La  Bataille  (20,000),  Le  Radical  (15,000), 
and  La  Justice  (also  about  15,000  copies  per  diem.) 

2  He  is  now  a  Senator,  an  Academician,  and  Editor  of  the  famous  Jisviie 
den  Deux  Mondes. 


FREYCINET,  GAMBETTA,  AND  EGYPT       267 

ing  the  other  Powers  with  all  the  consideration  that  is  due  to 
them.  There  is  no  occasion  to  boast  of  such  a  policy,  but  I  trust 
that  the  country  and  the  Legislature  will  recognise  that  it  is 
inspired  by  wisdom  and  prudence.1' 

A  little  later,  after  the  Royalist  Duke  de  la  Rochefoucauld  - 
Bisaccia  and  M.  Delafosse,  a  Bonapartist,  had  protested  that 
they  would  not  grant  a  sou  for  any  Egyptian  expedition, 
Gambetta  suddenly  appeared  at  the  tribune.  He  began  by 
declaring  that  he  would  vote  the  funds  the  Government  applied 
for,  though  he  deemed  them  insufficient.  He  disclaimed  all 
desire  to  recriminate,  and  added :  "  You  tell  us  that  you  have 
always  borne  the  Anglo-French  alliance  in  mind.  I  congratu- 
late you,  for  at  one  moment  I  trembled  for  the  future.  I  give 
you  all  my  applause,  trusting  you  will  firmly  persevere  in  your 
new  line  of  policy."  Then,  after  deprecating  Turkish  inter- 
vention, and  declaring  that  France  and  England,  by  a  policy  of 
mutual  goodwill,  might  successfully  cope  with  every  possible 
difficulty,  he  referred  to  Germany's  attitude,  denouncing  those 
who  introduced  Prince  Bismarck's  name  into  every  controversy,  ' 
as  being  over-suspicious.  At  last,  having  scouted  the  pre- 
tensions of  Arabi  and  his  adherents  to  be  regarded  as  the 
National  party  of  Egypt,  he  turned  decisively  to  the  question 
of  the  English  Alliance.  "Unfortunately,"  said  he,  "there 
are  members  of  this  Chamber  who  have  deliberately  entertained 
the  idea  of  war  with  Great  Britain.  Without  any  true  feelings 
of  patriotism  they  have  openly  spoken  of  the  possibility  of  such 
a  conflict ;  and  not  merely  have  they  spoken  of  it,  but  they 
have  enlarged  on  it  in  print,  in  the  columns  of  a  scurrilous 
press,  and  if  our  neighbours  across  the  Channel  had  not 
sufficient  common  sense  to  treat  such  statements  as  they 
deserve,  France  might  indeed  be  precipitated  into  a  terrible 
adventure."  "Gentlemen,"  Gambetta  added,  "when  I  con- 
sider the  situation  of  Europe,  I  notice  that  during  the  last  ten 
years  there  has  always  been  a  Western  policy  represented  by 
France  and  England ;  and  allow  me  to  say  I  know  of  no  other 
alliance  that  is  capable  of  proving  of  some  assistance  to  us  in 
the  most  terrible  emergencies  we  have  to  fear.  I  say  this  with 
profound  conviction,  looking  clearly  into  the  future."  That 
allusion  stirred  the  Chamber  deeply,  for  it  seemed  to  imply 
that  if  France  stood  true  to  England,  the  latter  would  support 
her  should  Germany  invade  her  territory.     But  after  expressing 


268  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

how  fervently  he  treasured  the  honour  and  glory  of  his  country, 
Gambetta  continued :  "  Ah,  remember  my  words !  make  any 
sacrifice  rather  than  forego  the  friendship  and  alliance  of 
England.""  And,  lest  his  audience  should  imagine  that  he 
thought  more  of  Great  Britain  than  of  his  native  country,  he 
explained  why  both  should  co-operate  in  Egypt.  "  That,"  said 
he,  "  which  most  impels  me  to  the  English  alliance,  to  joint 
co-operation  in  the  Mediterranean  and  in  Egypt,  is — under- 
stand me  plainly — my  extreme  fear  that  otherwise,  in  addition 
to  causing  a  baleful  rupture,  you  will  hand  over  to  England, 
and  for  ever,  too,  territories,  rivers,  and  passages  where  we  now 
have  as  much  right  as  she  has  to  live  and  trade.  It  is  there- 
fore with  no  idea  of  humbling,  lowering,  or  lessening  French 
interests  that  I  favour  the  English  alliance,  it  is  because  I  feel 
that  those  interests  can  only  be  efficaciously  protected  by  that 
union  and  co-operation.  If  a  rupture  occurs  all  will  be  lost ! 
So,  gentlemen,  I  will  vote  the  funds  that  are  asked  of  us.  I 
will  vote  them  because  the  Government  tells  us  it  has  returned 
to  the  English  alliance,  and  because  it  signed  yesterday,  on 
behalf  of  France,  a  new  convention  with  Great  Britain.  I  vote 
this  money — I  think  it  will  prove  insufficient — but  I  vote  it, 
being  convinced  that  in  doing  so  the  Chamber  will  not  merely 
ratify  a  financial  demand,  but  a  line  of  future  policy,  signifying 
the  maintenance  of  Anglo-French  influence  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean, the  salvation  of  Egypt  from  Mohammedan  fanaticism, 
from  chimerical  ideas  of  revolution,  and  the  mad  enterprises  of 
an  undisciplined  soldiery.  That  is  why  I  shall  vote  the  funds, 
and  why  all  my  friends  will  vote  with  me."" 

Such  was  the  last  speech  Gambetta  ever  made,  his  legacy  to 
France.  That  same  afternoon,  his  mother  died  at  St.  Mande 
in  the  outskirts  of  Paris,  and  an  hour  after  addressing  the 
Chamber  the  afflicted  statesman  was  wringing  his  hands  beside 
her  corpse.1  The  remains  were  removed  to  Nice  and  interred 
there.  As  for  the  result  of  the  debate,  in  spite  of  a  most 
virulent  speech  by  the  then  Anglophobist  Clemenceau,  who 
denounced  the  English  as  wolves  and  birds  of  prey,  as  folk  who 
"  bled  Egypt  like  vampires,'1 2  the  funds  which  the  Government 
solicited  were  granted  by  340  to  66  votes. 

1  She  had  come  from  the  south  on  a  visit,  and  was  suddenly  stricken 
with  paralysis. 

2  Long  afterwards  Clemenceau  met  Edward  VII.  at  Marienbad. 


FREYCINET,  GAMBETTA,  AND  EGYPT       269 

But,  once  again,  Freycinet  hesitated,  changed  his  mind, 
tacked  now  in  this,  now  in  that  direction.  So  far,  moreover, 
Turkey,  which  had  been  requested  by  the  Constantinople 
Conference  to  intervene  in  Egypt,  had  not  even  recognised  that 
Conference,  and  when  it  finally  did  so,  and  accepted  the 
principle  of  intervention,  it  was  too  late  for  any  such  course  to 
be  taken,  for  Great  Britain  had  now  made  up  her  mind  to 
restore  order  herself  and  refused  to  make  room  for  Turkish 
troops.  Freycinet,  on  his  side,  was  visited  with  due  punish- 
ment for  his  pusillanimity.  He  at  least  wished  to  protect  the 
Suez  Canal,  with  or  without  British  co-operation,  but  when,  on 
July  29,  he  applied  for  a  special  credit  in  that  respect, 
Clemenceau  urged  that  it  should  not  be  granted,  and  the 
Ministry  was  overthrown  by  416  out  of  491  votes.  Thus  the 
policy  of  distrust  and  hatred  of  England  prevailed  through  the 
weakness  of  the  Prime  Minister,  whom  the  Chamber  would 
have  followed  had  he  showed  any  energy^— as  witness  the 
favourable  vote  of  July  19 — and  thus  England  became  the  sole 
protector  of  Egypt,  to  the  intense  chagrin  of  many  Frenchmen, 
who  repented  of  their  folly  when  it  was  too  late. 

President  Grevy's  Sixth  Ministry  now  assumed  office.  The 
Premier  was  Duclerc,1  a  former  Vice-President  of  the  National 
Assembly,  who,  after  starting  in  life  as  a  printer  and  journalist, 
had  become  an  authority  on  financial  questions,  having  often 
been  consulted  in  that  respect  by  Thiers  and  MacMahon.  A 
financier  was  needed  at  the  head  of  French  affairs  at  that 
moment,  for  the  national  expenditure  perpetually  increased, 
although  there  was  a  deficit  of  twenty-eight  millions  sterling. 
Duclerc,  however,  finally  decided  to  place  a  colleague,  M. 
Tirard,  at  the  Finance  Ministry,  simply  exercising  some  control 
over  him.2  The  foreign  policy  of  the  new  Cabinet  was  chiefly 
directed  towards  the  liquidation  of  affairs  in  Egypt,  where 
Arabi  and  his  partisans  were  finally  overthrown  by  the  British 
forces  (Tel-el-Kebir,  September  1882).  About  this  time  there 
was  some  improvement  in  the  relations  of  France  with   the 

1  Charles  Theodore  Eugene  Duclerc,  born  at  Bagneres  de  Bigorre  in 
1812,  died  in  Paris  in  1888. 

2  Freycinet's  colleagues,  Billot,  Jaureguiberry,  de  Many,  and  Cochery 
retained  office  (see  ante,  footnote  p.  263).  Deves  became  Minister  of  Justice. 
Other  appointments  were  P.  Legrand  (Commerce),  Herisson  (Public  Works), 
Duvaux  (Education),  and  Armand  Fallieres  (Interior).  We  observe  that  the 
newspapers  of  the  time  described  M.  Fallieres  as  a  Rtpublicam  sans  fyittete. 


270  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Vatican,  to  which  Lefebvre  de  Behaine  was  appointed  am- 
bassador. The  Cabinet's  home  policy  was  largely  of  Gambettist 
tendencies — Gambetta  himself  being  appointed  President  of 
the  Commission  on  Army  Recruiting.  Trouble  sprang  up 
during  the  autumn.  The  Bonapartists  became  active,  finally 
casting  off  their  allegiance  to  Prince  Napoleon,  and  rallying 
round  his  son  Victor.  Then  came  a  series  of  riots  at  Lyons 
and  Montceau-les-  Mines,  the  former  attended  by  explosions 
of  dynamite,  and  prompted  by  a  new  school  of  revolutionaries, 
the  Anarchists,  among  whose  leaders  in  France  was  a  Russian 
Nihilist,  Prince  Kropotkin,  previously  resident  at  Geneva. 
He  was  arrested  towards  the  end  of  the  year,  tried  with 
fifty  others,  and  sentenced  to  five  years'*  imprisonment.  Early 
in  December  France  lost  two  distinguished  men,  Louis  Blanc, 
the  historian  of  the  First  Revolution,  and  Lachaud,  the 
advocate ;  and  public  opinion  was  also  concerned  by  the 
news  of  a  curious  accident  which  had  befallen  Gambetta  on 
November  27. 

He  had  spent  September  at  the  Chateau  des  Crdtes  in 
Switzerland,  and  after  returning  to  France  had  betaken  himself 
to  a  little  place  he  owned  on  the  slopes  of  Ville  d'Avray.  It 
was  called  Les  Jardies,  but  it  was  not  really  Balzac's  unfinished 
house  of  that  name,1  being,  indeed,  simply  one  which  the  great 
novelist's  gardener  had  occupied,  and  it  was  very  small.  Gam- 
betta had  been  attracted  to  Ville  d'Avray  by  Lemerre  the 
"  Parnassian  "  publisher  (who  had  purchased  Corot's  villa  there), 
and  the  spot  so  charmed  him,  that  already  in  1878  he  rented 
for  a  time  a  little  house  in  the  Rue  de  la  Cote  d' Argent. 
Later  he  purchased  the  gardener's  house  at  Les  Jardies,  with 
some  land,  for  about  i?1400.  He  added  to  the  house  a 
drawing-room  roofed  with  zinc,  and  made  a  few  other  embellish- 
ments, but  it  remained  an  unhealthy  place,  being  very  badly 
drained.  The  great  man  stayed  there  for  rest  and  relaxation, 
and  also  walking  exercise,  which  Dr.  Siredey,  his  medical  man, 
had  recommended.  We  met  him  more  than  once  following 
some  avenue  that  led  through  the  adjacent  woods.  He  was 
generally  accompanied  by  young  M.  Arnaud  de  l'Ariege,  his 
secretary,  or  else  some  friend.  We  never  saw  him  in  the 
company  of  his  mistress  Leonie  Leon,  though  she  often  visited 
him  at  Les  Jardies. 

1  See  Leon  Gozlan's  Balzac  en  ParUouflM,  and  Balzac  chez  lui. 


GAMBETTA  AND  MLLE.  LfiON  271 

Her  father  was  a  colonel  in  the  French  army,  who  became 
involved  in  some  dishonourable  affair  during  the  Second 
Empire,  and  shot  himself  rather  than  face  a  court-martial. 
Two  daughters  were  left,  unprovided  for  and  unprotected. 
The  elder  one  was  seduced  and  gave  birth  to  a  boy — in  after 
years  wrongly  suspected  to  be  Gambetta's  son.  The  younger 
girl,  Leonie,  was  likewise  seduced,  that  is  by  a  married  function- 
ary of  the  Empire,  whose  employment  she  had  entered  as 
governess  to  his  children.  Her  liaison  with  Gambetta  origin- 
ated late  in  1871  or  early  in  1872.  He  took  a  small  flat  for  her 
in  the  Rue  Bonaparte,  Paris,  and  often  visited  her  there.  She 
was  also  frequently  at  his  rooms  in  the  Chaussee  d'Antin.  Judg- 
ing by  his  letters,  he  loved  her  fervently  as  well  as  passionately, 
and  the  time  came  when,  feeling  that  he  could  not  possibly 
live  without  her,  he  desired  to  make  her  his  wife.  She,  how- 
ever, professing  great  piety,  which  was  doubtless  genuine,  replied 
that  if  she  was  to  be  united  to  him,  it  must  be  by  a  religious 
marriage  as  well  as  the  civil  ceremony  prescribed  by  law.  On 
that  matter,  Gambetta  found  it  impossible  to  meet  her  wishes. 
He  might  be,  as  he  once  put  it,  a  devotee  of  Joan  of  Arc,  but 
he  was  also  a  disciple  of  Voltaire,  and  his  participation  in  a 
religious  marriage  would  mean  a  denial  of  all  that  he  had  ever 
preached  or  practised.  On  her  side,  Mile.  Leon  held  that  a 
marriage  without  religious  rites  would  leave  all  the  stain  of  her 
past  upon  her,  and  that  this  stain  could  only  be  wiped  away  by 
a  marriage  sanctified  by  God. 

At  the  outset,  however,  she  deprecated  the  idea  of  any 
marriage  at  all.  She  felt,  very  sensibly,  that  the  whole  story 
of  her  past  might  become  public,  and  that  Gambetta's  position 
and  prospects  might  thereby  be  irremediably  damaged.  She 
even  suggested  in  one  of  her  letters  that  his  interests  would  be 
best  served  if  he  married  Mile.  Dosne,  the  sister  of  Mme. 
Thiers.  We  do  not  know  if  that  suggestion  was  intended 
seriously.  There  are  certainly  many  instances  of  ambitious  or 
money-seeking  young  men  marrying  old  women,  and  of  old 
women  choosing  fresh -faced  boys  for  their  husbands.  But 
Gambetta  was  no  hobbledehoy,  he  was  a  man  of  forty,  with  a 
full-blooded  Southern  temperament,  and  had  no  idea  of  marry- 
ing any  old  woman  whatever,  even  though  she  possessed  the 
wealth,  influence,  and  worth  of  character  of  Mile.  Dosne.  If 
Gambetta  had  desired  to  take  a  wife  of  mature  years,  he  might 


272  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

have  turned  his  attention  to  the  widowed  and  statuesque  Mme. 
Arnaud  de  l'Ariege,  who,  with  wealth  and  a  high  position,  still 
combined  a  far  more  prepossessing  appearance  than  had  ever 
fallen  to  the  lot  of  Mile.  Dosne.  Besides,  did  not  the  news- 
papers again  and  again  prophesy  the  Arnaud  -Gambetta 
marriage  ?  And  when  the  cultured  and  still  charming  Mme. 
Edmond  Adam  had  in  her  turn  become  a  widow,  was  not 
her  marriage  with  Gambetta  frequently  forecast  by  the 
quidnuncs?  That  seemed  to  them  a  very  suitable  match, 
for  Mme.  Adam  was  Gambetta's  junior  by  two  years.  But 
no,  Mile.  Leon  cannot  have  wished  her  lover  to  marry  any 
lady  who  was  still  young  or  prepossessing.  If  she  suggested 
Mile.  Dosne,  it  may  well  have  been  because  the  latter  was  a 
woman  of  whom  she  could  not  possibly  have  become  jealous. 
But,  when  all  is  said,  there  was  no  need  for  Gambetta 
to  make  either  a  wealthy  or  an  influential  match.  Thanks 
to  his  own  energy,  his  means  became  ample,  and  his  influence 
enormous. 

Moreover,  he  had  set  his  heart  on  marrying  his  mistress, 
who  was  certainly  a  captivating  woman,  and  one,  too,  of  some 
culture,  if  we  may  judge  her  by  her  letters.  The  battle  over 
the  question  of  a  religious  marriage  continued,  then,  between 
them.  She,  who  was  devout  and  constantly  frequented  the 
clergy,  necessarily  had  her  father  confessor,  and  it  follows  that 
she  must  have  told  him  of  the  position.  In  her  long  resistance 
to  her  lover's  proposal  of  a  civil  marriage  only,  she  must  have 
been  guided,  upheld  by  a  powerful  influence,  for  her  letters 
show  that  she  fully  shared  Gambetta's  love,  and  she  would  not 
have  found,  we  think,  in  herself  alone,  the  strength  to  with- 
stand his  suggestions.  Behind  the  feverish  little  drama  enacted 
by  this  man  and  woman  there  lurk  many  possibilities,  probabili- 
ties even.  Ah,  what  a  victory  for  Rome  and  the  Holy  Cause, 
if  only  the  proud  Dictator,  he  who  had  denounced  the  Church 
as  the  enemy,  the  real  social  peril,  had  been  forced  to  humble 
himself  before  the  altar,  and  receive  the  nuptial  benediction 
from  one  of  those  God-fearing  priests,  whom  he  had  so 
blasphemously  attacked ! 

There  are  indications  that  the  contest  between  Gambetta 
and  Leonie  had  ended  in  the  autumn  of  1882,  and  that  they 
had  reached  an  agreement  as  to  the  form  their  marriage  should 
assume.     It  seems  evident  that  victory  rested  with  the  lover 


GAMBETTA'S  LAST  DAYS  273 

and  not  with  the  Church.  Matters  might  possibly  have  taken 
a  different  course  if  Mile.  Leon  had  not  already  been  Gambetta's 
mistress.  Men  consent  to  many  things  for  the  sake  of  attaining 
their  heart's  desire.  At  all  events,  the  marriage  was  resolved 
upon,  and  both  Gambetta's  father  and  his  sister,  Mme.  Leris, 
acquiesced  in  it. 

On  Monday,  November  27,  1882,  Leonie  Leon  was  with 
Gambetta  at  Ville  d'Avray.  General  Thoumas x  called  during 
the  morning,  but  would  not  stay  to  dejeuner,  as  he  had  an 
invitation  at  Versailles.  He  went  off,  indeed,  without  seeing 
Mile.  Leon,  who  was  upstairs  completing  her  toilet.  Gambetta, 
left  to  himself,  thought  of  indulging  in  a  little  revolver  practice, 
as,  indeed,  had  been  his  wont  occasionally  since  his  duel  with 
Fortou  in  1877.  At  this  time  his  valet-de-chambre  was  no 
longer  Francois  Robelin,  the  Mobile  guard  of  1870,  who,  as  an 
ex-soldier,  had  been  accustomed  to  clean  his  master's  weapons, 
and  see  that  they  were  in  proper  condition.  Francois  had 
married,  and  a  young  fellow  called  Paul  had  lately  entered 
Gambetta's  service.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that  he  ever 
attended  to  his  employer's  firearms,  or  even  knew  of  their 
existence.  That  morning,  then,  on  Gambetta  taking  a  revolver 
with  the  intention  of  loading  it,  he  found  that  one  chamber 
had  remained  charged,  and  that  the  revolving  breach  was  stiff. 
He  wished  to  unload  the  chamber  in  question,  and  was  using 
more  pressure  than  was  advisable  to  make  the  weapon  act, 
when  it  suddenly  went  off,  the  bullet  that  had  remained  in  it 
traversing  that  part  of  Gambetta's  right  hand  which  palmists 
call  "  the  mount  of  Venus,"  and  coming  out  a  little  above  the 
wrist. 

The  injured  man  was  attended  in  the  first  instance  by  two 
local  doctors,  MM.  Gille  and  Guerdat,  and  next  by  M.  Lanne- 
longue,  a  very  distinguished  surgeon.  His  spirits  remained 
good,  he  felt  confident  of  recovery,  read  the  newspapers,  and 
repeatedly  evinced  an  interest  in  political  affairs.  Indeed,  the 
wound  healed  in  a  satisfactory  manner,  and  although  Gambetta 
experienced  at  times  a  "funny  feeling"  in  the  injured  hand, 
he  was  soon  able  to  use  it.  On  the  morning  of  December  8, 
he  was  apparently  in  a  very  favourable  state,  his  temperature 
being  36*7  degrees  (Centigrade),  with  a  pulse  of  72  beats. 
Owing,  however,  to  his  habit  of  body,  and  generally  sluggish 
1  See  ante,  p.  252. 


274  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

condition  at  the  time  of  the  accident,  the  doctors 1  had  hitherto 
kept  him  on  a  strict  fluid  diet,  and  as  he  now  felt  a  craving 
for  a  nice  lunch,  he  partook,  it  appears,  of  a  boiled  egg9  half-a- 
dozen  oysters,  and  a  little  woodcock.  This  repast,  a  mere 
nothing  for  a  man  in  good  health,  proved  fatal  in  Gambetta's 
case,  owing  to  his  general  condition.  Bad  symptoms  speedily 
developed.  Professor  Charcot  saw  him  on  December  10,  and 
there  was  then  already  some  talk  of  perityphlitis.  On  the 
11th,  the  patient  was  much  worse,  but  on  the  13th  he  felt 
better,  and  insisted  on  leaving  his  bed.  On  the  16th,  in  the 
absence  of  the  principal  medical  man,  he  even  ordered  a  carriage, 
and  wilfully  drove  out,  catching  cold,  with  the  result  that  his 
temperature  rose  to  39 '6  degrees  (Centigrade),  and  that  his 
pulse  marked  88  beats.  He  was  much  worse  that  night,  and 
Lannelongue  and  Sired ey,  who  were  sent  for,  found  him  vomiting 
and  extremely  feverish.  Symptoms  nowadays  associated  with 
appendicitis  displayed  themselves,  but  although  there  was  much 
talk  among  the  medical  men,  little  or  nothing  was  done  by 
them.  Lannelongue,  who  first  divined  the  truth,  wished  to 
perform  an  operation,  but  his  suggestion  was  rejected  both  on 
December  23  and  December  28,  when  Charcot,  Trelat,  Verneuil, 
Siredey,  Gille,  and  Fieuzal  met  him  in  consultation.  They  held 
that  an  operation  would  yield  no  favourable  result,  and  yet  if 
one  had  been  performed  at  an  early  stage  Gambetta's  life  might 
possibly  have  been  saved,  even  as  King  Edward's  was  under 
somewhat  similar  circumstances. 

As  it  happened,  the  fatal  course  of  the  illness  remained 
unchecked.  There  was  now  perforation  of  the  intestines, 
albuminuria  and  erysipelas  appeared,  the  temperature  sank,  the 
pulse  quickened  to  120,  and  milk  with  the  admixture  of  a  little 
kirsch  was  the  only  nourishment  the  patient  could  take.  But 
at  last,  on  December  31,  he  could  retain  nothing,  neither 
brandy,  rum,  coffee,  nor  champagne,  and  he  became  so  cold 
that  hot-water  bottles  were  freely  applied  to  warm  him.  It 
was  all  in  vain.  He  passed  away  only  a  few  minutes  before 
the  year  also  expired.  It  was  but  the  forty -fourth  of  his 
strenuous  life.2 

1  There  were  several  in  attendance  on  him  more  or  less  at  this  time  : 
Gille,  Guerdat,  Lannelongue,  Siredey,  Fieuzal,  and  two  hospital  house- 
surgeons,  Berne  and  Martinet. 

3  The  autopsy  revealed  traces  of  previous  inflammation,  which  had  con- 


GAMBETTA'S  DEATH  275 

The  whole  world  was  stirred  by  the  news  of  that  unexpected 
death.  It  was  felt  that  a  great  man,  a  masterful  man,  had 
departed.  Not  a  faultless  man,  certainly,  but  one  who,  in  a 
short  life,  had  accomplished  great  things,  and  of  whom  still 
greater  things  had  been  expected  in  the  fulness  of  time. 
The  French  Royalists,  Bonapartists,  and  Radical  Extremists 
triumphed  noisily  and  brutally,  heedless  of  the  spectacle  which 
they  thereby  offered  to  astonished  Europe.  And  the  funds 
now  rose  at  the  Bourse,  large  orders  pouring  in  from  Germany 
and  Austria,  for  the  knell  of  Gambetta's  death  was  also,  in 
Germanic  estimation,  the  knell  of  la  Revanche.  That  view  was, 
perhaps,  a  true  one. 

The  grief-stricken  Leonie  Leon,  whom  the  great  man  was 
so  soon  to  have  married,  fled  from  Ville  d'Avray,  bewailing  her 
perished  happiness,  and  hid  herself  in  a  garret  in  Paris,  while 
the  little  house  where  her  lover  lay  in  the  embrace  of  death 
was  invaded  by  his  mourning  admirers  and  partisans.  It  was 
some  time  before  Mme.  Leris,  Gambetta's  sister,  could  discover 
Leonie's  whereabouts,  and  press  upon  her  the  acceptance  of 
some  pecuniary  help.  Before  long  her  young  nephew,  to  whom 
Gambetta  had  been  so  much  attached,  died,  while  she  herself 
for  several  years  led  a  restless,  roving  life,  in  which  she  was 
incessantly  pursued  by  the  memory  of  the  past. 

All  honour  was  paid  to  the  remains  of  the  man  who  had 
not  despaired  of  France  in  her  blackest  hour.  For  two  days 
they  lay  in  state  at  the  Palais  Bourbon ;  then,  on  January  6, 
1883,  a  procession  two  and  a  half  miles  long  followed  them 
to  Pere  Lachaise  cemetery,  where — prior  to  their  removal  to 
Nice,  in  accordance  with  the  express  instructions  of  Gambetta's 
father — they  were  provisionally  deposited  in  a  vault  belonging 
to  the  city  of  Paris.  And  there  a  sack  of  earth  was  cast  upon 
them  :  some  of  the  soil  of  the  lost  Lorraine,  sent  stealthily  from 
Metz,  the  v  covering  bearing  the  inscription  :  Lotharingia  memor, 
violaia  non  domita.  Those  words  were  vain,  however.  France, 
at  that  moment,  had  lost  not  only  Gambetta  but  also  her 
chief  captain,  the  best  general  that  had  led  her  forces  in  1870, 

traded  the  bowels,  of  purulent  infiltrations  and  of  a  slight  degree  of  peritonitis, 
which  had  supervened  in  the  final  stage  of  the  illness.  The  report  declared 
that  an  operation  would  only  have  hastened  death,  and  Lannelongue,  it 
must  be  admitted,  signed  it.  If  he  subsequently  expressed  very  different 
views  it  was,  we  presume,  on  account  of  the  progress  effected  by  surgical 
science. 


276  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  appointed  warden  of  her  Eastern  frontier,  her  destined 
commander  in  the  struggle  by  which  she  hoped  to  recover 
her  ravished  provinces.  For,  two  days  before  Gambetta's 
obsequies  in  Paris,  Chanzy  died  at  Chalons-sur-Marne.  He 
was  not  yet  sixty  years  of  age.  It  seemed,  then,  as  if  the 
Berlinese  speculators  were  right :  Doubtless  the  idea  of  la 
Revanche  was  not  yet  dead,  but  the  possibility  of  its  realisation 
appeared  to  have  departed. 


I 


CHAPTER  X 

JULES  FERRY  AND  THE  FRENCH  COLONIAL  EMPIRE — 
THE  EXPULSION  OF  THE  PRINCES — BOULANGER 
AND  GERMANY — THE  WILSON  SCANDAL  AND 
GREVY'S    FALL 

A  Napoleonic  Manifesto — Grevy's  Seventh  Ministry  :  Fallieres — Thibaudin, 
the  Princes,  and  the  Army — Grevy's  Eighth  Ministry  :  Jules  Ferry — 
His  Programme — French  Finances — Death  of  the  Count  de  Chambord — 
The  King  of  Spain  and  the  Parisians — Ferry  and  Colonial  Expansion — 
France  in  Africa — Madagascar  and  the  French  Protectorate — The  Con- 
quest of  Tonquin — The  Retreat  from  Langson — Ferry's  Fall — Grevy's 
Ninth  Ministry  :  H.  Brisson — Death  of  Victor  Hugo — Emile  Zola  and 
Alphonse  Daudet— The  Elections  of  1885— GreVy's  Tenth  Ministry: 
Freycinet — General  Boulanger  and  his  Career — The  Count  de  Paris' 
Indiscretion  and  his  Daughter's  Marriage — The  Expulsion  of  the  Princes 
— Boulanger  and  the  Duke  d'Aumale — Grevy's  Eleventh  Ministry : 
Rene  Goblet — Boulanger  and  Germany — The  Dangerous  Schnoebele 
Affair — Grevy's  last  Ministry :  Maurice  Rouvier — Boulanger  at  Clermont- 
Ferrand — "  A  Music  Hall  General " — The  Great  Decorations  Scandal 
— Generals  Caffarel  and  D'Andlau — Boulanger  in  Hot  Water — M.  Daniel 
Wilson  implicated — Demand  for  Grevy's  Resignation — The  Two  His- 
torical Nights— The  President's  Pitiful  Fall. 

Gambetta's  death  was  almost  immediately  followed  by  a 
Ministerial  crisis,  provoked  by  the  action  of  the  Bonapartist 
Pretender,  Prince  Napoleon,  who,  against  the  advice  of  his 
foremost  supporters,  issued  a  long  manifesto  to  the  nation.  It 
was  couched  in  short  phrases  in  obvious  imitation  of  the 
imperatoria  brevitas  of  Napoleon  I.,  and  some  of  its  contents 
were  surprising,  for  although  the  Prince  was  a  notorious  Free- 
thinker he  now  posed  as  a  champion  of  the  Church,  accusing 
the  Government  of  atheistical  persecution,  besides  charging  it 
with  cowardice  and  ineptitude  in  Egypt,  and  with  serving  the 
interests  of  private  speculators  in  Tunis.  This  manifesto  was 
placarded  on  the  walls  of  Paris  and  other  cities,  as  the  Press 

277 


278  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Laws,  indeed,  allowed,  but  the  Government  arrested  the  Prince 
on  the  charge  of  infringing  them,  and  obtained  a  vote  of 
approval  from  the  Chamber,  to  which  it  presently  submitted  a 
Bill  to  enable  it  to  expel  the  various  Pretenders  from  France 
should  certain  contingencies  arise.  M.  Floquet,  however, 
introduced  another  measure  for  their  immediate  expulsion, 
while  deputies  Ballue  and  Lockroy  proposed  the  exclusion  of 
all  Princes  from  the  army.  Not  to  be  beaten,  Clemenceau,s 
organ,  La  Justice,  suggested  that  expulsion  from  the  country 
should  be  extended  to  every  great  capitalist  and  Jewish 
financier.  At  this  time  opinion  was  greatly  divided  as  to  the 
propriety  of  expelling  the  Princes.  Some  deputies  regarded 
that  course  as  contrary  to  Republican  principles,  while  others 
did  not  wish  to  give  the  Government  carte  blanche  in  such  a 
matter.  Confusion  ensued,  the  more  so  as  Prime  Minister 
Duclerc  fell  ill  and  could  no  longer  guide  his  colleagues.  The 
result  was  the  resignation  of  the  Ministry,  to  which  there 
succeeded  one  under  M.  Fallieres,  who  took  charge  of  the 
department  of  Foreign  Affairs.1  Two  days  later,  however, 
while  he  was  addressing  the  Chamber,  he  also  was  suddenly 
taken  ill  and  fainted  in  the  tribune.  All  sorts  of  rumours 
spread.  Apoplexy  and  very  serious  mental  trouble  were  talked 
of,  but  although  M.  Fallieres  was  removed  from  the  scene  for 
a  short  time,  his  vigorous  constitution  triumphed,  and  he 
then  returned  to  public  life,  which  led  him  at  last  to  the 
Presidency  of  the  Republic.  However,  all  the  weight  of  the 
debates  on  the  expulsion  of  the  Princes  fell  on  M.  Deves,  now 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  and  General  Thibaudin,  the  Minister 
of  War. 

Thibaudin  2  was  an  officer  of  some  merit  who  had  fought  in 
Algeria  and  Italy,  and  under  Bazaine  in  1870  when  he  had 
also  escaped  from  captivity  in  Germany,  and  commanded,  under 
the  assumed  name  of  Comagny,  a  brigade  of  Bourbaki's  Army 
of  ,the  East.  The  Chamber  and  the  Senate  being  unable  to 
come  to  any  agreement  on  the  expulsion  question,  the  Fallieres 
Administration  resigned,  but  Thibaudin  retained  office  as 
Minister  of  War,  for  he  had  discovered  that  a  law  passed  in  the 

1  This  was  Grevy's  Seventh  Ministry.  It  included  most  of  the  members 
of  the  previous  administration  ;  but  General  Billot  and  Admiral  Jaureguiberry 
withdrew  like  Duclerc,  not,  however,  on  account  of  illness,  but  because  they 
were  unwilling  to  act  against  the  Orleans  Princes. 

-  Jean  Thibaudin,  born  in  1822  in  the  Nievre. 


FERRY'S  SECOND  CABINET  279 

time  of  Louis  Philippe  (1834),  would  at  least  enable  him  to 
remove  that  King's  son,  the  Duke  d'Aumale,  his  grandson,  the 
Duke  de  Chartres,  and  his  great-grandson,  the  Duke  d'Alencon, 
from  active  service  in  the  army.  This,  in  spite  of  the  protests 
of  the  Royalists,  was  effected  by  a  decree  at  the  advent  of  Jules 
Ferry's  second  Ministry  (the  eighth  under  Grevy),  on  February 
21,  1883.  As  for  Prince  Napoleon,  the  Chamber  of  Indictments 
quashed  the  charge  against  him,  holding  that  he  had  kept 
within  the  letter  of  the  law  in  placarding  his  manifesto. 

Ferry's  second  Cabinet  lasted  till  April  1885,  and  therefore 
proved  the  longest  of  this  period  of  French  history.  Ferry 
himself  at  first  took  the  portfolio  for  Education,  but  when 
failing  health  compelled  Challemel-Lacour  to  abandon  the 
department  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Ferry  assumed  charge  of  it. 
Waldeck  -  Rousseau  now  returned  to  the  Interior,  Raynal 
became  Minister  of  Public  Works,  and  Meline  of  Agriculture * 
— the  last  named,  who  rose  to  the  Premiership  in  later  years, 
being  at  that  time  a  close  personal  friend  of  Ferry's,  whose 
fortunes  he  followed  with  the  object  of  advancing  his  own. 
They  both  sat  in  the  Chamber  for  the  department  of  the 
Vosges.  It  was  under  this  Administration  that  the  rivalry  of 
the  various  sections  of  Republicans  became  most  marked,  much 
to  the  detriment  of  the  regime's  good  name,  and  even  of  its 
prospects  of  survival.  Those  whom  Ferry  led  were  styled  the 
Opportunists,  their  opponents  being  known  as  Radicals.  The 
former,  following  Gambetta's  later  views,  formed  an  authori- 
tarian but  progressive  party,  with  a  programme  limited  to 
the  completion  of  educational  reform,  certain  alterations  in 
the  military  recruiting  system,  the  authorisation  of  trades' 
unions  and  syndicates,  the  conversion  of  the  Rentes  to  alleviate 
financial  pressure,  the  reorganisation  of  the  judicial  bench,  and 
partial  revision  of  the  Constitution.  The  Radical  Opposition, 
however,  demanded  an  Income  Tax,  the  separation  of  Church 
and  State,  and  a  thorough  revision  of  the  Constitutional  Law. 
The  rivalry  of  the  two  parties  was  embittered  by  all  sorts  of 
personal  questions ;  Ferry,  in  particular,  being  as  much  hated 
by  his  opponents  as  in  the  days  of  the  Tunisian  adventure. 

1  Other  posts  were  allotted  as  follows  :  Martin  Feuillee,  Justice  ;  Tirard, 
Finances ;  Charles  Brun  and  later  Admiral  Peyron,  Marine ;  Herisson, 
Commerce  ;  and  Cochery,  Post  Office.  Felix  Faure  became  Under-Secretary 
of  State  for  the  Colonies. 


280  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

The  fact  is  that  he  was  too  proud,  and  too  candid  also  in  his 
expressions  of  opinion,  besides  leading  a  private  life  of  close 
dignity  and  refusing  to  purchase  support  in  any  way  whatever. 

All  that  displeased  a  good  many  people,  but  he  was  really 
a  most  able  man,  one  of  the  few  great  statesmen  the  Third 
Republic  has  produced,  and,  in  spite  of  all  opposition,  he  and 
his  colleagues  secured  the  adoption  of  some  important  measures. 
Raynal,  the  Minister  of  Public  Works,  negotiated  with  the 
Railway  Companies  a  convention  applying  to  lines  which  covered 
13,000  kilometres,  and  compelling  the  Companies  to  construct 
many  which  could  yield  very  little  revenue  for  several  years, 
but  which  would  open  up  neglected  parts  of  France,  and  prove 
also  of  strategical  importance.  In  return  the  Companies  were 
guaranteed  against  compulsory  State  purchase  of  their  under- 
takings. That  purchase,  however,  was  what  the  Radicals  aimed 
at,  and  they  roundly  denounced  the  Convention.  As  regards 
the  judicial  bench,  its  irremovability  was  now  suspended,  and 
500  anti-Republican  judges  or  magistrates  were  removed  from 
their  posts.  Again  the  Radicals  protested,  this  time  chiefly 
because  extremists  of  their  own  party  were  not  promoted  to 
the  vacancies.  Further,  Waldeck-Rousseau  piloted  through 
the  Legislature  a  law  authorising  professional  syndicates  and 
trades'*  unions,  and  another  inflicting  the  punishment  of  trans- 
portation on  criminal  recidivists,  notably  those  of  that  degraded 
class,  so  numerous  in  Paris,  which  lived  on  unfortunate  women. 
Further,  a  law  was  passed  rendering  all  sittings  of  Municipal 
Councils  public,  and  thus  preventing  both  secret  jobbery  and 
intimidation. 

Another  important  measure  adopted  at  this  period  (1884) 
was  the  Divorce  Law,  the  demand  for  which  had  been  increasing 
for  several  years.  There  had  been  no  legislation  of  the  kind 
since  the  restoration  of  the  Bourbons  in  1815,  and  only  judicial 
separation  could  be  obtained  in  the  event  of  matrimonial  un- 
happiness.  The  new  Divorce  Law  was  not  initiated  by  the 
Ferry  Cabinet,  though  the  latter  gave  it  support.  The  agita- 
tion in  its  favour  had  long  been  led  by  M.  Alfred  Naquet,  a 
hunchback,  but  none  the  less  a  distinguished  scientist  and  a 
very  able  politician.1  He  at  last  proved  successful  in  his 
endeavours,  piloting  the  measure  to  port  in  spite  of  the  greatest 
opposition. 

1  Alfred  Naquet,  born  at  Carpentras  in  1834,  died  1907. 


FERRY'S  SECOND  CABINET  281 

Less  successful  were  the  attempts  of  the  Ferry  Cabinet  to 
bring  about  equality  of  military  service  among  all  classes  of 
Frenchmen >  for  they  were  defeated  in  the  Senate  ;  but  a  limited 
Revision  of  the  Constitution  was  effected  in  August,  1884.  It 
applied  chiefly  to  the  mode  in  which  the  Senate  was  recruited, 
providing,  notably,  that  as  each  of  the  seventy-five  irremovable 
Senators,  hitherto  elected  by  the  Assembly,  died  off,  he  should 
be  replaced  by  a  Senator  elected  for  the  usual  term  by  one  or 
another  department  entitled  to  additional  representation. 

The  greatest  conflicts  between  the  Government  and  its 
opponents  were  those  relating  to  the  national  finances  and 
the  colonial  expeditions  of  that  period.  The  finances  were 
in  a  deplorable  state,  and  loans  frequently  had  to  be  floated. 
Tirard,  the  Finance  Minister,  seemed  to  have  very  little  capacity 
for  his  post.  However,  the  French  Five  per  cent  Rentes  were 
converted  into  Four  and  a  half  per  cents  in  April,  1883.  It 
then  appeared  that  there  were  over  1,800,000  titres  de  Rente 
of  that  class  in  existence,  the  amounts  each  titre  represented 
varying  from  %  to  4500  francs,  and  the  great  number  for  %  3, 
5, 10,  and  20  francs  of  Rente,  indicating  to  what  a  huge  extent 
the  poorer  classes  of  the  community  invested  their  savings  in 
the  National  Funds.1 

The  colonial  policy  of  Ferry's  Administration  was  without 
doubt  its  principal  feature,  but  as  that  policy  led  to  the 
Cabinet's  downfall  it  is  more  appropriate  to  glance  first  of  all 
at  some  intervening  events.  In  the  early  part  of  1883  Paris 
was  concerned  by  the  news  of  the  deaths  of  a  number  of  notable 
people,  both  Frenchmen  and  foreigners.  Gustave  Dore,  Wagner, 
Prince  GortschakofF,  Louis  Veuillot,  the  great  clerical  journalist, 
Karl  Marx,  and  Abd-el-Kader  passed  away  in  turn.  Then, 
about  the  end  of  June,  the  chief  French  Pretender,  the  Count 
de  Chambord  was  suddenly  taken  ill,  and  by  the  middle  of  July 
was  despaired  of.  During  recent  years  he  had  been  much 
interested  in  the  struggle  between  the  Roman  Church  and  the 
Republic.  In  1879  he  had  been  approached  by  Mgr.  Ferrata, 
a  colleague  and  ultimately  the  successor  of  Czacky,  the  Papal 
Nuncio  in  Paris,  on  the  subject  of  concentrating  all  the  opposi- 

1  We  find  that  in  1886  the  "Ledger  of  France"  registered  1,195,280 
titres  de  Rente  bearing  the  holders'  names,  209,583  "  mixed  "  titres,  that  is, 
bearing  the  holders'  names,  but  with  blank  coupons,  and  2,118,329  titres  to 
bearer.  All  the  Rentes,  4£,  4,  and  3  per  cents,  are  included  in  the  above 
figures. 


282  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

tion  to  the  Republic  on  the  pending  religious  questions — that 
is  to  say  the  French  Royalists  were  to  profess  adherence  to  the 
Republic,  and  swell  the  ranks  of  its  more  Conservative  adherents, 
in  order  both  to  prevent  the  Radicals  from  carrying  out  their 
designs  upon  the  Church,  and  to  obtain  an  entry  into  the 
Republican  party  with  the  view  of  undermining  and  overthrow- 
ing it.  But  the  Count  de  Chambord  would  consent  to  no  such 
tactics.  He  refused  to  authorise  the  adherence  of  his  partisans 
to  the  Republic  in  any  way  or  for  any  purpose,  writing,  indeed, 
in  a  most  indignant  strain  to  M.  de  Blacas  respecting  the  Papal 
suggestions.  One  result  of  this  affair  was  that  in  the  ensuing 
year,  1880,  Czacky,  the  Nuncio,  approached  Gambetta  (through 
a  clerical  journalist  who  first  saw  Ranc  on  the  subject),  with 
the  view  of  negotiating  some  understanding  on  clerical 
questions,  in  return  for  which  Gambetta  was  to  have  received 
the  support  of  Holy  Church.  However,  these  negotiations — in 
which,  as  previously  mentioned,  Mile.  Leon  afterwards  figured — 
remained  abortive. 

The  illness  of  the  Count  de  Chambord  naturally  revived  the 
hopes  of  the  Orleanists.  The  Count  de  Paris  very  properly 
proposed  to  pay  his  ailing  relative  a  visit.  But  on  hearing  of 
this  intention  the  Countess  de  Chambord,  who  detested  the 
Orleanist  Prince,  telegraphed  to  ex-King  Francis  of  Naples  (for 
some  years  an  exile  in  Paris)  urging  him  to  dissuade  the  Count 
de  Paris  from  his  journey.  King  Francis  saw  the  Duke  de 
Nemours — and,  we  think,  M.  Bocher,  the  Orleanist  homme 
d'affaires — on  the  subject,  and  afterwards  informed  M.  de  Breze 
of  what  he  had  done.  Nevertheless  the  Count  de  Paris  started 
for  Austria  on  July  2,  1883,  and  it  became  necessary  to  admit 
him  to  the  patient's  bedroom.  He  then  renewed  his  declarations 
of  allegiance,  but  this  did  not  prevent  him  from  being  disinherited 
(at  the  instigation  of  the  Countess  de  Chambord),  so  far  as  her 
husband's  worldly  possessions  were  concerned.  These,  when 
the  uncrowned  King  of  France  died  on  August  23,  went 
principally  to  the  Count  de  Bardi,  one  of  his  Italian  nephews. 
Moreover,  Mme.  de  Chambord's  vindictiveness  was  carried  so  far 
that  when  the  Count  de  Paris  wished  to  attend  her  husband's 
obsequies  he  was  informed  that  the  place  of  honour,  that  of 
chief  mourner,  would  be  taken  by  the  aforesaid  Italian  Bourbon. 
Thus  none  of  the  Orleans  Princes  attended  the  funeral  at  Goritz, 
the  Count  de  Bardi  being  simply  escorted  by  ex-Duke  Robert 


ALFONSO  XII.  OF  SPAIN 

of  Parma  and  three  Spanish  Bourbons  :  the  Pretender  Don 
Carlos,  his  father  Don  Juan,  and  his  brother  Don  Alfonso.1  In 
this  fashion  did  the  representatives  of  Divine  Right  and 
Legitimacy  visit  the  sins  of  Philippe  Iilgalite  and  Louis  Philippe, 
the  usurping  King  of  the  French,  on  their  descendants.  Never- 
theless the  Count  de  Paris  promptly  informed  the  world  that 
he  was  now  Head  of  the  House  of  Bourbon. 

In  September  that  same  year  King  Alfonso  XII.  of  Spain 
— father  of  the  present  sovereign — met  with  a  very  hostile 
reception  in  Paris.  His  government  had  lately  signed  a 
commercial  treaty  with  Germany,  and  he  had  afterwards  visited 
the  old  Kaiser  at  Berlin,  accepting  from  him  on  that  occasion 
the  honorary  colonelcy  of  a  regiment  of  Uhlans  stationed  at 
Strasburg.  The  idea  of  his  daring  to  visit  France  after  that 
acceptance  (for  both  "  Uhlans  "  and  "  Strasburg  "  awoke  the  most 
painful  memories  of  1870)  greatly  angered  the  Parisians.  That 
anger  was  fanned,  moreover,  not  only  by  extremist  journals, 
but  even  by  those  which  M.  Wilson,  President  Grevy's  son-in- 
law,  inspired.  They  declared,  indeed,  that  the  Government  was 
divided  on  the  subject  of  King  Alfonso's  reception,  and  that 
President  Grevy  was  by  no  means  anxious  to  meet  him.  There 
was  truth  in  both  of  those  statements,  but  it  was  a  great 
political  blunder  that  they  should  be  made  by  the  organs  of 
the  Elysee,  for  by  offending  King  Alfonso  the  risk  of  offending 
Kaiser  William — and  Bismarck  also — was  incurred. 

Apart  from  the  Uhlan  colonelcy  affair,  Alfonso  XII.  was  a 
most  unestimable  man.  His  profligate  tendencies,  inherited 
from  his  dissolute  mother,  Isabella  II. ,  were  the  scandal  of  his 
reign.  He  has  virtually  passed  into  history  as  "  Alfonso  the 
Pacifier,1-'  and  it  is  true  that  both  the  Carlists  and  the  Republicans 
were  subdued  during  his  sovereignty,  but  that  was  the  work  of 
his  ministers  and  generals,  and  he  had  no  share  in  it  personally, 

1  We  went  to  Goritz  on  that  occasion  (September  3,  1883).  There  was  an 
imposing  procession  in  which  monks  and  friars  figured  conspicuously.  The 
hearse  was  surmounted  by  a  royal  crown  ;  on  its  panels  appeared  the  lilies  of 
old  France.  There  were  many  representatives  of  the  French  Royalists, 
including  M.  de  Charette  and  some  of  his  former  Pontifical  Zouaves  with 
their  banner  of  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  M.  de  Blacas  bore. on  a  cushion 
the  collar  of  the  Order  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  of  which,  we  think,  the  Count  de 
Chambord  was  one  of  the  last  two  members  :  the  other  being  the  Duke  de 
Nemours,  who  had  received  it  in  childhood  from  Charles  X.  The  Countess  de 
Chambord  did  not  long  survive  her  husband.  She  passed  away  in  the  spring 
of  1886. 


284  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

preferring  by  far  the  gay  life  in  which  he  was  abetted  by  a 
grandee  of  his  Court,  and  which  so  undermined  his  constitution 
that  when  illness  fell  on  him  he  promptly  succumbed  to  it.  At 
the  same  time  it  was  impolitic  to  hoot  him  as  the  Parisians  did 
when  he  arrived  in  Paris  on  Michaelmas  Day  1883.  Silence 
and  indifference  would  have  been  a  sufficient  protest.  As  it 
happened,  Grevy  had  to  call  at  the  Spanish  embassy  and  tender 
the  most  humble  apologies  for  the  affront ;  and  General 
Thibaudin,  Minister  of  War,  who,  rather  than  participate  in  the 
King's  reception,  had  feigned  a  sudden  illness,  was  removed  from 
his  post  and  replaced  by  Campenon,  Gambetta's  former  Minister. 
Even  Wilson  had  to  renounce  officially  the  directorship  of  one  of 
his  newspapers,  though  he  continued  to  inspire  it  sub  rosd.  Of 
course  the  President's  apology  and  the  removal  of  Thibaudin 
greatly  angered  the  advanced  Republicans,  prompting  them  to 
yet  fiercer  attacks  on  the  Government,  regardless  of  the  fact 
that  its  position  in  regard  to  foreign  affairs  was  dangerous  enough 
already. 

This  was  due  chiefly  to  its  policy  of  colonial  expansion.  It 
is  difficult  to  find  a  parallel  for  Jules  Ferry  among  English 
statesmen.  Perhaps,  however,  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain  most 
resembles  him.  Ferry  was  the  friend  of  no  country  save  his  own. 
He  strove  for  her  advantage,  her  aggrandisement.  His  methods 
were  not  always  impeccable ;  he  blundered  at  times,  he  was  hasty 
at  others.  Although  as  a  native  of  eastern  France  he  could  not 
possibly  forget  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  he  may  have  realised  that  a 
struggle  on  the  Rhine  and  the  re-conquest  of  the  lost  provinces 
was  more  than  his  country  could  undertake  in  those  days,  how- 
ever great  her  desires  might  be  in  that  respect.  At  all  events 
he  perceived  that  there  were  other  fields  for  her  to  conquer,  that 
opportunities  presented  themselves  both  in  Africa  and  in  Asia 
— opportunities  which  if  missed  might  never  occur  again.  His 
ambition  to  give  France  a  colonial  empire  was  quite  legitimate 
and  praiseworthy.  If  we  were  Frenchmen  we  should  all  think  so  ; 
and  if  the  methods  which  Ferry  employed  were  not  always 
legitimate,  but  verged,  indeed,  at  times  on  the  unscrupulous,  it 
is  difficult  for  us  to  cast  stones  at  him,  that  is,  if  we  remember, 
as  we  should,  the  equivocal  pages  in  our  own  history. 

Ferry  never  held,  we  think,  the  post  of  Colonial  Minister, 
nevertheless  he  really  directed  the  policy  of  the  department,  and 
though  he  did  not  actually  initiate  the  conquests  and  annexa- 


FRENCH  COLONIAL  EXPANSION  285 

tions  of  France  in  tropical  climates,  he  gave  them  all  possible 
impetus  and  development.  His  policy  clashed  with  that  of 
Great  Britain  in  more  than  one  direction,  and  now  and  again 
there  was  no  little  friction  between  the  two  countries.  But 
however  much  we  may  have  been  irritated  (at  times  with  just 
reason),  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  policy  of  France's 
colonial  expansion  saved  the  civilised  world  from  a  stupendous 
calamity,  that  of  a  great  European  war,  in  which,  under  the 
circumstances  of  the  time,  several  powers  must  necessarily  have 
participated.  As  the  years  went  by  France  found  herself  more 
and  more  involved  in  colonial  expeditions  and  enterprises  ;  and 
these  exercised  a  restraining  influence  on  her  politicians  whenever 
the  hatred  of  Germany  flared  up,  threatening  to  precipitate  a 
new  struggle  for  Alsace-Lorraine. 

In  Africa  the  activity  of  France  was  manifested  on  several 
points.  At  first,  under  the  aegis  of  Faidherbe,  and  later,  thanks 
to  the  campaigns  of  such  officers  as  Borgnis-Desbordes,  Combes 
and  Gallieni,  the  limits  of  Senegal  were  thrust  back,  the  upper 
Niger  was  reached,  and  the  territories  now  known  as  Senegambia 
and  the  French  Soudan  were  subdued.  All  that  was  the  labour 
of  many  years  ;  indeed  the  native  ruler  Samory,  who  so  skilfully 
resisted  the  French,  was  not  finally  captured  until  1898,  but  no 
little  of  the  work  of  conquest  belonged  to  Ferry's  time.  Again 
the  hinterland  of  the  French  Ivory  Coast  possessions  was  secured 
— that  ultimately  resulting  in  the  Dahomey  war  of  1892,  which 
was  foreseen  long  years  previously.  Then,  from  1883  onward, 
there  were  the  expeditions  of  Savorgnan  de  Brazza,  Marche,  and 
Ballay  through  the  Gaboon  and  Congo  countries,  resulting  in 
annexation  on  numerous  points,  much  to  the  chagrin  of  the 
International  African  Association,  which  the  King  of  the 
Belgians  directed  with  the  vigorous  personal  assistance  of  H.  M. 
Stanley.  The  Congo  rivalry  led  to  some  trouble  already  in  the 
time  of  Ferry's  Administration.  In  April  1884,  however,  he 
signed  an  agreement  with  Strauch,  King  Leopold's  representa- 
tive, this  being  followed  the  ensuing  year  by  an  international 
congress  at  Berlin,  by  which,  while  the  Independent  Congo 
State  under  the  Belgian  sovereign's  sway  was  called  into  being, 
the  rights  of  France  to  her  new  possessions  were  formally 
recognised. 

Eastward  of  Africa,  France  had  long  contemplated,  by  virtue 
of  some  old  and  half-forgotten  treaties,  the  establishment  of 


286  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

a  protectorate  over  Madagascar.  She  proceeded  to  enforce  her 
claims  in  1883,  taking  the  first  pretext  which  came  to  hand. 
Bad  blood  was  engendered  between  France  and  England  on 
this  occasion.  The  latter  had  important  commercial  interests 
in  the  island,  but  gross  indignities  were  offered  to  British 
subjects,  and  a  great  deal  of  British  property  was  wilfully 
destroyed  by  Admiral  Pierre,  who  commanded  the  French 
expedition.  The  captain  of  a  British  war-vessel  was  insulted 
and  derided,  and  the  British  consul,  Mr.  Pakenham,  was  im- 
peratively and  inhumanly  ordered  to  depart  from  Tamatave, 
though  he  was  lying  there  extremely  ill.  He  died  as  the  result 
of  the  enforcement  of  that  command.  In  Palmerston's  days 
this  would  have  led  to  immediate  war,  and  the  annihilation  of 
France  as  a  naval  power.  In  1883,  however,  England  was 
under  the  sway  of  Gladstone's  second  Administration  and  seemed 
to  be  quite  exhausted  by  her  one  effort  in  Egypt.  A  missionary 
named  Shaw  obtained  an  indemnity  from  the  French,  but  in 
other  respects  they  did  virtually  as  they  pleased.  The  Queen 
of  Madagascar  was  compelled  to  submit,  and  in  1885  M.  Le 
Myre  de  Vilers  was  installed  in  the  island  as  Resident.  Five 
years  elapsed  before  the  British  would  acknowledge  the  French 
protectorate,  but  at  last  the  era  of  "  graceful  concessions " 
arrived,  and  in  1890  this  protectorate  was  recognised  by  the 
Marquess  of  Salisbury.  Then,  at  the  expiration  of  five  more 
years,  the  island  was  finally  conquered  and  annexed  by  the 
French,  whose  navy  at  the  time  was  in  so  deplorable  a  condition 
that  for  lack  of  transport  ships  of  their  own  they  had  to  hire 
suitable  vessels  from  English  firms.1  Without  insisting  on  this 
subject  of  Madagascar,  regard  for  the  truth  compels  us  to  say 
that  the  Republic  evinced  great  unscrupulousness  in  its  policy 
both  towards  the  natives  and  towards  ourselves.  In  that 
respect,  however,  the  French  claimed  that  they  had  done  no 
more  than  we  had  done  on  many  similar  occasions.  Perhaps 
they  were  right.  In  any  case  Madagascar  was  at  last  added  to 
the  Colonial  Empire  of  France. 

The  Tonquin  question,  which  became  the  most  acute  of  all  in 
Ferry's  time,  dated  in  reality  from  1861  to  1867,  when  Napoleon 

1  Jules  Ferry  desired  to  effect  the  absolute  annexation  of  Madagascar 
already  in  1885,  and  was  only  deterred  from  the  attempt  by  the  difficulty 
of  making  it  at  a  time  when  the  Tonquin  War  largely  absorbed  the  naval 
resources  of  France. 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  TONQUIN  287 

III.  conquered  and  annexed  the  southern  part  of  Cochin  China. 
It  was  inevitable  that  France  should  desire  to  extend  her  sway 
in  this  region,  and  establish  direct  communication  with  the 
southern  Chinese  provinces.  There  were  originally  some  treaties 
both  with  Cambodia  and  Annam,  but  these  did  not  suffice.  In 
1873  Jean  Dupuis  and  Lieutenant  Gamier  explored  the  banks 
of  the  Songkoi  or  Red  River,  and  the  latter  finally  seized  the 
town  of  Hanoi  and  the  whole  of  the  Tonquinese  delta.  The 
Annamite  authorities,  however,  obtained  the  help  of  some  of 
the  "  Black  Flags  "  (a  residue,  it  is  said,  of  the  Taeping  insur- 
gents who  were  crushed  by  Gordon's  "  Ever  Victorious  Army  "), 
and  in  an  engagement  with  this  band  Gamier  was  killed.  His 
annexations  in  Tonquin  were  restored  to  Annam  on  the  latter 
signing  a  treaty  opening  up  the  Songkoi  to  France,  and  giving 
her  the  control  of  Annamite  Foreign  Affairs.1 

China,  however,  claiming  suzerainty  over  Annam,  ultimately 
refused  to  recognise  this  treaty,  and  covertly  employed  the 
Black  and  Yellow  Flag  bands  to  resist  all  French  enterprise  in 
Tonquin,  whither  Annam's  disregard  of  the  treaty,  at  China's 
instigation,  led  to  the  despatch  of  a  small  force  under  Commander 
Henri  Riviere,  a  naval  officer,  whose  great  literary  gifts,  resulting 
in  the  production  of  some  remarkable  novels  and  stories,  had 
made  him  widely  known  in  France.  Riviere  was  besieged  in 
Hanoi  and  slain  on  making  a  sortie,  May  19  and  20,  1883. 
Ferry  thereupon  sent  out  Admiral  Courbet  with  a  squadron 
and  4000  troops,  commanded  by  General  Bouet,  with  or  under 
whom  were  Generals  Millot,  Briere  de  l'lsle,  and  Negrier.  Hanoi 
and  Haiphong  were  reoccupied  and  fortified  by  the  French. 
Sontay,  Bacninh,  and  Hunghoa  also  fell  into  their  hands. 
Briefly,  progress  was  made  in  various  directions  both  against 
the  Annamite  soldiery  and  the  Black  Flags  and  other  Chinese 
irregulars  who  opposed  the  invasion.  By  a  convention  signed 
at  Tientsin  China  at  last  renounced  her  suzerainty  over  Annam  ; 
but  in  June  1884  a  small  French  force  found  itself  opposed  at 
Bac-Le  by  some  Chinese  regulars,  and  Ferry's  Cabinet  there- 
upon adopted  summary  measures  against  the  Celestial  Empire. 
Admiral  Courbet  first  bombarded  Foochow,  sank  a  score  of 
Chinese  vessels  and  destroyed  the  arsenal ;  then  he  occupied 
Kelung  on  the  island  of  Formosa  (September  1884) ;  next  by 

1  This  was  during  the  Duke  de  Broglie's  administration  of  French  Foreign 
Affairs  in  1874.     The  treaty  was  negotiated  by  M.  Philastre. 


288  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

means  of  his  torpedoes  he  sank  five  war-ships  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Kiang  or  Blue  River,  and  he  was  finally  authorised  to 
blockade  all  the  Peehili  coast  and  occupy  the  Pescadores. 

Meantime  the  French  military  forces,  although  they  had 
been  more  than  once  well  reinforced,  only  advanced  through 
Tonquin  with  considerable  difficulty.  France  (like  ourselves 
on  more  than  one  occasion)  had  in  the  first  instance  underrated 
her  adversaries,  and  public  opinion  was  now  greatly  concerned 
respecting  the  duration  and  dangers  of  the  enterprise.  Both 
the  Republican  Extremists  and  the  Royalists  had  attacked  it 
from  the  outset ;  but  a  much  more  serious  symptom  was  the 
withdrawal  of  General  Campenon  from  the  War  Ministry  at 
the  end  of  1884.  He  had  not  initiated  the  Tonquin  expedition 
nor  had  he  really  directed  it ;  that  task  having  been  assumed  by 
the  Minister  of  Marine.  However,  he  wished  it  to  be  carried 
no  farther,  and  proposed  that  the  French  occupation  should  be 
confined  to  the  Tonquinese  delta.  Ferry's  desires  were  very 
different,  and  so  Campenon  withdrew  and  was  replaced  by 
General  Lewal,  an  officer  known  throughout  European  military 
circles  by  his  writings  on  tactics.1  The  Government  was  at 
this  moment  interpellated  in  the  Chamber,  and  Ferry,  after 
announcing  that  the  operations  would  henceforth  be  directed 
by  the  War  Office,  denied  that  he  had  any  intention  of  sending 
a  military  expedition  to  China — as  the  newspapers  had  rumoured 
— his  only  design  being,  he  said,  to  blockade  the  coast  of 
Peehili  so  as  to  compel  China  to  carry  out  her  engagements 
and  refrain  from  abetting  the  resistance  in  Tonquin,  the  entire 
and  absolute  possession  of  which  was  claimed  by  France.  In 
accordance  with  that  view  the  French  operations  were  directed 
towards  the  Chinese  frontier  of  Yunnan,  and  Briere  de  lisle, 
now  in  chief  command,  ordered  General  de  Negrier  to  advance 
upon  Langson.  That  was  done,  there  being  a  series  of  engage- 
ments in  which  the  Chinese  and  Tonquinese  were  defeated  ;  but 
Negrier  ultimately  found  himself  opposed  by  an  overwhelming 
force,  and  was  compelled  to  evacuate  Langson,  closely  followed 
by  the  enemy.  In  an  engagement  on  March  28,  1885,  he  was 
somewhat  seriously  wounded,  and  had  to  yield  the  command  of 
his  little  corps  to  Lieutenant-Colonel  Herbinger.  The  Chinese 
had  been  beaten  back  in  the  fight ;  nevertheless  Herbinger 
precipitated  the  French  retreat,  which  continued  in  great  dis- 
1  Jules  Louis  Lewal,  born  in  Paris,  1823. 


FALL  OF  JULES  FERRY  289 

order,  guns  and  treasure  being  cast  into  a  river  so  that  the 
withdrawal  of  the  troops  might  be  accelerated. 

It  was  a  serious  repulse,  that  was  all ;  but  just  as  some 
organs  of  the  British  press  foolishly  magnified  every  check  to 
the  British  arms  in  South  Africa  into  a  "great  disaster ,"  so 
was  the  Langson  affair  magnified  by  the  French  Opposition 
journalists  of  1885.  There  had  been  anxiety  respecting 
Negrier's  expedition  for  some  little  time  past,  and  when  its 
defeat  became  known  the  wildest  rumours  were  circulated,  a 
panic,  with  a  fall  of  three  francs  in  Rentes,  ensuing  at  the 
Bourse,  while  the  Ferry  Cabinet  was  attacked  on  all  sides.  It 
had  immediately  given  orders  for  large  reinforcements  to  be 
sent  to  Tonquin — in  addition  to  others  which  were  already  on 
their  way — but  when,  on  March  30,  the  Prime  Minister,  after 
officially  notifying  the  Chamber  of  the  position,  applied  for  a 
supplementary  credit  of  ^8,000,000  he  encountered  the  utmost 
hostility.  Clemenceau  led  the  attack  in  language  of  the  greatest 
violence,  followed  by  Ribot,  who  retained  more  self-possession, 
and  in  the  result  the  Government  was  rapidly  overthrown  by 
306  votes  to  149 — the  majority  including  the  86  Royalist  and 
Bonapartist  deputies.  Great  was  the  delight  among  Ferry's 
enemies.  Le  Figaro  chronicled  his  fall  in  this  choice 
language :  "  Beneath  a  storm  of  hootings,  amid  the  contempt 
of  his  own  majority,  with  his  posterior  kicked,  M.  Jules  Ferry 
has  passed  away  pitifully,  wretchedly,  like  a  bladder  that 
bursts.'" 

The  Government  was  accused  of  gross  deception,  of  having 
long  known  the  critical  state  of  affairs  in  Tonquin,  and  of 
having  concealed  it.  All  it  knew  of  the  situation,  however, 
was  what  it  had  learnt  from  its  military  and  other  representa- 
tives. It  may  have  been  somewhat  unduly  optimistic,  but  it 
had  always  sent  out  the  reinforcements  requested  of  it,  and  the 
chief  responsibility  undoubtedly  rested  not  with  the  Cabinet  at 
home  but  with  those  who  were  in  authority  on  the  scene  of 
action.  As  for  the  pusillanimous  fear  of  China  which  the 
Opposition  encouraged  in  France,  Ferry,  at  the  moment  of  his 
downfall,  actually  held  a  first  draft  of  a  treaty  which  he  was 
already  negotiating  with  Pekin.  He  felt,  however,  that  it  was 
unwise  to  divulge  it  even  for  the  purpose  of  saving  his  Ministry. 
Had  he  continued  in  office  he  had  intended  to  exact  from  China 
both  Formosa   and   the   Pescadores,   but   the   panic   in  Paris 


290  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

prevented  any  such  demand.  A  less  onerous  treaty  was  finally 
ratified  in  June  that  year ;  and  in  September  Annam  submitted 
to  the  French.  Nevertheless,  some  three  months  later  there 
were  French  deputies  who  proposed  the  evacuation  of  Tonquin, 
and  this  ridiculous  suggestion  was  only  defeated  by  a  majority 
of  one  vote.  It  may  be  added  that  throughout  the  Annamite- 
Tonquinese  struggle  Ferry  was  not  unmindful  of  Siam  and 
Burmah.  He  had  designs  on  both,  but  the  British  intervened 
by  conquering  Upper  Burmah  in  1885-86.  Siam  then  became 
a  buffer  State,  but  the  French  have  since  annexed  some  of  her 
territory — so  have  the  British — and  in  spite  of  all  Conventions 
the  Siamese  situation  remains  unsatisfactory. 

The  next  Ministry,  the  ninth  of  Grevy^s  time,  was  formed 
by  Henri  Brisson — a  genuine  democratic  Republican  with  a 
reputation  for  some  austerity — who  had  lately  acted  as  President 
of  the  Chamber.  A  native  of  Bourges  he  was  at  this  time  only 
fifty  years  of  age.  He  took  the  Presidency  of  the  Council  and 
the  Ministry  of  Justice,  giving  the  portfolio  of  War  to 
Campenon  and  that  of  Foreign  Affairs  to  the  inevitable 
Freycinet.1  The  first  memorable  event  with  which  this 
Ministry  was  associated  was  the  death  of  Victor  Hugo  on 
May  22,  whereupon  the  Pantheon  in  Paris  was  withdrawn 
from  Church  control  and  restored  to  the  destination  it  had 
received  during  the  first  Revolution  as  the  resting-place  of  the 
great  men  of  France.  State  obsequies  also  were  decreed  for 
the  departed  poet,2  and  a  procession  three  miles  long  marched 
through  Paris  behind  the  hearse.  As  at  the  funerals  of 
Felicien  David,  Herold,  and  Gambetta,  there  were  no  religious 
rites,  for  Hugo,  during  his  last  illness,  had  refused  "the 
ministrations  of  any  priest  of  any  religion  whatever."  He 
was,  indeed,  purely  and  simply  a  Deist. 

Born  in  1802  he  had  been  one  of  the  great  literary  figures 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  one,  too,  who  had  exercised  no  little 
political  influence,  and  whatever  might  have  been  the  inferiority 
of  his  later  work,  his  death  was  regarded  as  a  national  loss.  He 
had  long  been  a  triton  among  the  minnows,  and  no  triton  was 
left  now  that  he  was  gone.     France  seemed  to  be  without  a 

1  Other  members  of  the  Cabinet  were  :  Allain  Targe,  Interior  ;  Admiral 
Galiber,  Marine  ;  Goblet,  Education  and  Worship  ;  Clamageran,  and  later 
Sadi  Carnot,  Finances.     The  last-named  became  President  of  the  Republic. 

2  The  Chamber  at  first  shelved  the  question,  greatly  to  the  indignation  of 
the  public,  but  Grevy  and  Brisson  took  the  law  into  their  own  hands. 


HUGO,  DAUDET,  ZOLA  291 

great  poet.  There  was,  of  course,  the  polished  verse  of  Sully- 
Prudhomme,  the  severe  and  faultless  phrasing  of  Heredia,  the 
rapt,  Browning-like  obscurity  of  Mallarme's  young  muse,  the 
tearful  poetry  in  prose  of  Francois  Coppee — but  no  sign  of 
supreme  greatness  appeared  in  these  or  in  any  other  poet.  If 
the  legitimate  stage  flourished  it  was  no  longer  by  the  romantic 
drama  in  verse  of  Hugo's  school,  but  by  such  productions  as  the 
younger  Dumas,  Victorien  Sardou,  and  their  disciples  tendered. 
Fiction,  moreover,  was  very  different  from  what  it  had  been 
in  the  old  days  of  Notre  Dame  de  Paris  and  Les  MisSrables. 
Gustave  Flaubert  and  the  Brothers  Goncourt,1  proceeding  from 
Balzac,  had  fostered  the  cult  of  the  roman  d observation,  and 
the  robustness  and  outspokenness  of  Emile  Zola2  strove  for 
supremacy  with  that  combination  of  irony  and  sentiment  which 
distinguished  the  work  of  Alphonse  Daudet.  Above  them,  as  a 
master  of  style,  but  known  as  a  writer  of  short  stories,  not  as  a 
novelist,  young  Guy  de  Maupassant  was  rising  fast.  Born  in 
the  same  year,  1840,  both  Daudet  and  Zola  stood  at  the  height 
of  their  reputation  at  the  time  of  Hugo's  death,  and  were  then 
probably  the  most  widely  read  of  all  French  authors.  Daudet 
had  produced  Jack  in  1877,  Le  Nabob  in  1878,  Les  Rois  en 
Exit  in  1879,  and  Numa  Roumestan  in  1880.  Zola,  beginning 
his  famous  Rougon-Macquart  series  towards  the  close  of  the 
Second  Empire,  had  already  completed  thirteen  volumes  of  it, 
and  was  now  writing  the  fourteenth,  UCEuvre.  UAssommoir, 
which  made  him  famous,  had  been  the  great  literary  sensa- 
tion of  MacMahon's  Presidency.  Its  performance  as  a 
play  had  attended  Grevy's  accession.  And  since  then  there 
had  come,  inter,  alia,  Nana  (1880),  Pot  Bouille  (1882),  and 
Germinal,  which  last,  after  serial  publication  in  1884,  was 
issued  as  a  volume  shortly  before  Hugo's  death.  It  stands  in 
relation  to  Zola  much  as  Les  Miserables  stands  in  relation 
to  the  great  writer  to  whom  Zola  dedicated  his  youth,  and  who 
undoubtedly  influenced  his  whole  career,  however  vast  may  be 
the  difference  between  their  respective  work.  For  something 
of  the  Romanticist  ever  lingered  in  Zola  despite  all  his 
championship  of  Naturalism. 

From  Hugo  and  his  splendid  obsequies  the  Parisians  once 

1  Edmond,  the  elder  of  them,  was  still  alive  and  writing  when  Hugo  died. 

2  See  our  biography  :  Emile  Zola,  Novelist  and  Reformer,  London,  John 
Lane,  1904. 


202  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

more  had  to  turn  to  politics.  Gambetta,  as  we  know,  had 
failed  with  his  list-voting  scheme  but  he  had  bequeathed  it  to 
his  followers,  some  of  whom  still  hankered  for  it,  and  at  last 
after  many  postponements  and  much  hesitation  it  became  law 
in  June  1885.  We  shall  see  the  result  hereafter.  General 
elections  ensued  in  the  autumn,  and  the  Republic  suddenly  found 
itself  almost  in  jeopardy.  The  general  dissatisfaction  with  the 
Tonquin  affair  and  the  state  of  industry,  commerce,  and  the 
national  finances  chiefly  influenced  these  elections,  which  showed 
surprising  results  compared  with  those  of  1881.  In  that  year 
the  Republican  candidates  had  polled  5,128,442  votes,  now 
they  obtained  only  4,327,162.  Again,  the  Royalist  and 
Bonapartist  nominees,  who  had  secured  1,789,767  votes  in  1881, 
now  rejoiced  in  no  fewer  than  3,541,384.  It  should  be  said 
that  they  coalesced  on  this  occasion,  whereas  at  the  first  ballots 
the  Republicans  fought  each  other,  there  being  rival  Oppor- 
tunist and  Radical  lists  on  all  sides.  Great  was  the  emotion 
when  the  first  ballots  showed  that  176  Reactionaries  and  only 
127  Republicans  had  been  returned.  Fortunately  at  the 
second  ballots  the  Republicans  sank  their  differences  and  closed 
their  ranks,  and  as  the  elections  of  some  20  Monarchists 
were  quashed  for  bribery  and  corruption,  the  Chamber  ulti- 
mately consisted  of  about  180  Royalists  and  Bonapartists,  and 
400  Republicans.  As,  however,  180  of  the  latter  were  Radicals 
there  seemed  to  be  no  stable  majority.  The  necessary  credits 
for  the  Tonquin  war  were  only  obtained  with  great  difficulty, 
in  fact,  on  one  occasion,  when  the  Cabinet  applied  for  three 
millions  sterling,  only  three-quarters  of  a  million  were  granted. 
There  was  talk  of  financial  retrenchment  on  every  side,  and  as 
the  winter  approached  yet  greater  commercial  depression  than 
before  became  manifest.  It  was  amid  these  circumstances  that 
Grevy's  period  of  office  having  expired,  he  was  re-elected 
President  of  the^JRjej>ubircJbv  4d7  votes  against  6ft  ffiven"  to 
MTBrisson.     The  latter's  Cabinet  now  retired. 

Freycinet  ibrmed  the  Tenth  Ministry  of  Gravy's  time.  Its 
programme  was  conciliation  between  all  Republicans,,  ar»d  a 
genuine  attempt  to  re-establish  financial  equilibrium.  Among 
fEe  *men"  wfcuT now  came  to  the  front  were  Edouard  Lockroy, 
Victor  Hugo's  relative  by  marriage,  who  obtained  the  portfolio 
for  Commerce,  and  Rene  Goblet,  a  subsequent  Radical  Prime 
Minister,   who   secured   that  of   Education.     But    the    most 


BOULANGER'S  EARLY  CAREER      293 

momentous  appointment  of  all  was  Jha^of^Qen^r^JBoiilangex 
as  MimsteFbt  War.1     This  had  fateful  consequences. 

Georges  Ernest  Jean  Marie  Boulanger  was  born  at  Rennes" 
on  April  29, 1837.  His  mother  was  an  Englishwoman.2  Quit- 
ting the  military  school  of  St.  fiyr  in  1856  he  joined  the  First 
Algerian  "Tirailleurs1''  as  a  sub-lieutenant,  and  served  in 
Kabylia  under  Marshal  Randon.  In  the  Italian  War  of  1859 
he  received  a  severe  bullet  wound  in  the  chest  at  the  engagement 
of  Turbigo,  for  his  gallantry  on  which  occasion  he  was  decorated 
with  the  Legion  of  Honour.  He  was  afterwards  in  Cochin  China, 
where  he  received  a  lance  wound  in  the  thigh.  At  the  advent 
of  the  war  of  1870  he  became  a  Major,  and  in  November  that 
year  a  Lieutenant-Colonel.  Serving  under  Ducrot  during  the 
Siege  of  Paris,  he  was  again  badly  wounded — by  a  bullet  in  the 
shoulder — at  the  battle  of  Champigny,  in  spite  of  which  he 
insisted  on  remaining  in  command  of  his  regiment.  Promotion 
to  the  rank  of  Officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  ensued,  and  in 
January  1871,  Boulanger  obtained  a  full  colonelcy.  JJefou^ht 
against  the  Commune,  headed  some  of  the^first  of  the ;  Versailles 
troops  to~elrteT^e~c^ifeX~ah^Femg  yet  again  wounded,  this 
time  by  a  bullet  in  the  left  elbow,  was  solaced  for  that  injury 
by  promotion  to  a  Commandership  of  the  Legion  of  Honour. 

After  the  insurrection  the  military  promotions  accorded  in 
war-time  were  iniquitously  revised  by  order  of  the  reactionary 
National  Assembly,  and  Boulanger  was  thereupon  reduced  to 
the  rank  of  Lieutenant-Colonel,  but  in  1874  he  again  secured  a 
colonelcy,  and  six  years  later  became  a  General  of  Brigade — the 
youngest  in  the  French  army.  After  representing  France  in 
the  United  States  at  the  Centenary  of  American  Independence, 
he  was  apr^int^dJMay_18S2)  Director of. jjij?  Jnfa^ry  Pgpart- 
ment  at  the  War  Office,  and  busied  himself  particularly  with 
such  matters  as  military-school  organisation  ancf  rifle  practice. 
In  1884  he  was  made  a  General  of  Division,  and  appointed  to 
the  command  of  the  forces  of  occupation  in  Tunis. 

1  Other  posts  were  allotted  as  follows :  Sarrien,  Interior ;  Sadi  Carnot 
(the  future  President),  Finance ;  Admiral  Aube,  Marine  and  Colonies ; 
Baihaut,  Public  Works ;  Demole,  Education  ;  Develle,  Agriculture ;  Granet 
(a  friend  of  Boulanger's),  Post  Office. 

2  Her  name  was  Mary  Anne  Webb  Griffiths,  and  she  was  the  daughter 
of  a  brewer  and  town-councillor  of  Brighton.  Married  in  1829  to  Henri 
Boulanger,  a  notary  of  Rennes,  she  died  in  1894,  aged,  it  was  then  stated, 
92  years. — Annual  Register, 


294  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

So  far,  then,  his  record  had  been  excellent,  and  on  becoming 
Minister  of  War  he  speedily  acquired  popularity  by  his  frequent 
coTfiminatory  declarations  respecting  those  reactionary_offitiers 
who  openly  vented  their  dislike  for  the  Republic.  His  own 
Republicanism  was  onivojiestioned  by  those  ^vho  knew_ that 
wflile  n"e"-"was~  serving,  iTfewyears  previously,  with  the  Vllth 
Army  Corps,  under  the  Duke  d'Aumaie,  he  had  conducted 
himselftb wards  that'  Prince  with  the  utmost  obsequiousness: 

Grevy's  second  Presidency  was  inaugurated  by  a  political 
amnesty,  and  Sadi  Carnot,  the  Minister  of  Finances,  afterwards 
strove  to  secure  some  budgetary  equilibrium  by  the  issue  of  a 
new  loan.  No  less  than  seventy  millions  sterling  were  actually 
required,  but  the  Government's  demand  was  restricted  to  fifty- 
eight  millions.  The  Chamber,  however,  retorted  by  voting  a 
loan  for  twenty.  This  was  immediately  covered  several  times 
over ;  but  the  situation  was  in  no  wise  improved  by  the  foolish 
policy  of  the  Legislature.  A  few  months  later  France,  previously 
moved  to  no  small  degree  by  the  mysterious  murder  of  M. 
Barreme,  Prefect  of  the  Eure,  in  a  railway  carriage,1  and  by  a 
miner's  riot  at  Decazeville  in  the  Aveyron,  when  an  engineer 
named  Watrin  was  murdered  under  circumstances  of  the 
utmost  savagery,  which  confirmed  the  view  taken  in  Germinal 
of  the  possibilities  of  human  ferocity  when  men  are  goaded  to 
revenge  by  the  exactions  and  ill-treatment  of  capitalists — France, 
we  say,  was  startled  by  an  unexpected  sensation. 

The  Count  de  Paris,  now  Head  of  the  House  of  Bourbon, 
was  marrying  his  daughter,  the  Princess  Marie  AmeHe,  to  Pom 
Carlos,  Duke  of  Braganza  and  Crown  Prince  of  Portugal  The 
marriage  had  been  originally  promoted  by  Mmc'deLa,  Ferronays 
ne'e  Gibert,  whom  we  have  previously  mentioned.2  At  this 
time  the  Princess  was  in  her  twenty-first  year,  her  jianc6  being 
two  years  older.  The  mere  fact  of  this  marriage  did  not  parti- 
cularly  interest  French  Republicans,  apart  from  its  indication 
that  a  charming  and  accomplished  young  lady,  who  was  more 
or  less  their  compatriot,3  might  some  day  become  Queen  of 
Portugal.  But  the  indiscretion  of  her  father,  the  Count  de 
Paris,  the  least  politic  member  of  his  family,  one  who,  as  a  rule, 

1  £mile  Zola's  novel,  La  Bite  Humaine,  was  partly  based  on  that  affair. 
Q  See  ante,  pp.  182,  183. 

3  Her  mother  was  a  Spanish  Bourbon,  and  she  was  born  in  England— at 
Twickenham. 


EXPULSION  OF  THE  PRINCES  295 

only  emerged  from   long  periods  of  supineness  to  prove  his 
latent  energy  by  doing  precisely  the  wrong  thing,  imparted  to 
the    occasion   a   character  which  was   resented   by   the   great 
majority  of  Frenchmen.     That  Royalist  Committees  should  be 
formed  in  many  regions  to  organise  subscriptions  for  numerous 
beautiful  presents  to  the  bride,  was_^nlyjQatural,  but  that  her 
father,  living  JnJkh&jnidst  of  Republican  France,  should  avjul 
himself  of  this  wedding  to  assert,  even  indirectly,  his  Kingly 
claims  upon  the  country,  was  not  to  he  tolerated.     It  was  true 
that  Ih^TJctoBer™! 885,  ~tKe  Duke  de  Chartres,  brother  of  the 
Count  de  Paris,  on  marrying  his  daughter  to  Prince  Waldemar 
of  Denmark,  had  given  a  soiree  to  the  Royalist  aristocracy  at 
his  residence  in  the  Rue  Jean  Goujon,  and  that  the  Count  de 
Paris,  on  the  celebration  of  the  religious  ceremony  at  Eu,  had 
received  the  Danish  and  other  royal  personages  at  the  chateau 
there.     But  in  all  that  no  defiance  had  been  offered  to  the 
Republic.      Now,    however,    on  the    occasion    of  the    Princess 
Amelie's  wedding,  which  was  to  be  celebrated  at  Lisbon,  the 
Count  de  Paris  not  only  gave  a  soiree  cTadieu  at  his  Paris  resi- 
dence, the  Hotel  Galliera,  in  the  Rue  de  Varennes,  Faubourg 
St.    Germain, — previously   the    home    of  the   Duke    and    the 
benevolent  Duchess  of  that'  name — but  he  sent  invitations  to 
all  the  Ambassadors  of  the  great  Powers,  and  all  the  Ministers 
of  other  States,  as  well  as  to  the  Royalist  aristocracy.      The 
Corps  Diplomatique  was  amazed.     Every  embassy  knew  that  this 
soiree  was  to  be  made  a  great  Royalist  demonstration,  and  the 
Count  de  Paris'1  indiscretion  in  inviting  the  representatiyesjof 
the  Foreign^owers  was  manifest!"  Were  these  representatives, 
duly  accredited  to  the  French  Republic,  to  attend  a  ceremony 
designed  for  the  glorification  of  one  who  now  claimed  to  be 
King  of  France  and  Navarre  ?     The  answer  was  obvious.     Not 
an   Ambassador    nor    a   Minister    Plenipotentiary,    save    the 
Portuguese  representative,  attended  the  reception  at  the  Hotel 
Galliera.     Indeed,  one  ambassador,  and  not  the  least  important, 
had  no  sooner  received  his  invitation  than  he  conveyed  news 
of  it  to  President  Grevy.    Thus  the  folly  of  the  Count  de  Paris 
forced  the  Government  of  the  Republic  to  take  action. 

TThe  Premlel^TVTr^e'Treycmet,"  wa¥~!T1man  6T  mild  disposi- 
tion, arid  had  he  alone  been  concerned,  nothing  very  serious 
might  have  ensued.  _  JBut  strong  and  immediate  measures  were 
nrgpd  on   him  by  C)^pn(mi»  who  had  llready"  overthrown 


r 


296  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

several  ministries,  and  of  whom,  therefore,  Freycinet  was 
extrern eTvTaf rg.j<^ .  (rrevy  realised  that  something  ha3  to  be 
done,  but  owing  to  his  intercourse  with  foreign  Princes  allied 
to  the  Houses  of  Bourbon  and  Orleans,  he  did  not  wish  to 
carry  matters  to  extremes.  A  permissive  measure  of  expulsion 
in  certain  contingencies  was  again  suggested  by  him,  as  had 
been  the  case  on  a  former  occasion.  Clemenceau,  however, 
prevailed  so  far  that  a  bill  for  the  immediate  expulsion  of  the 
principal  Princes  was  laid  before  the  Chamber.  A  report  by 
M.  Camille  Pelletan  urged  the  expulsion  of  all  Bourbons  and 
Bonapartes,  but  eventually  there  came  a  compromise,  suggested 
by  M.  Brousse,  and  the  following  enactment  ensued.1 

Clause  I. — The  territory  of  the  French  Republic  is  and  remains 
forbidden  to  the  heads  of  the  families  that  have  reigned  over  France 
and  to  their  direct  heirs  by  order  of  primogeniture. 

II. — The  Government  is  authorised  to  expel  any  other  member 
of  those  families  by  a  decree  passed  by  the  Council  of  Ministers. 

III. — Whosoever,  infringing  this  interdiction,  may  be  found  in 
France,  Algeria,  or  the  colonies,  shall  be  punished  with  imprison- 
ment for  a  period  of  from  two  to  five  years. 

IV. — The  members  of  the  princely  families  who  may  be 
authorised  to  reside  temporarily  on  the  territory  of  the  Republic, 
shall  be  excluded  from  all  public  functions. 

Freycinet  spoke  with  great  cleverness  in  dealing  with  the 
question  before  the  Legislature.  He  pointed  out  that  the 
heads  of  the  Bourbon  and  Bonaparte  families  were  fatally 
condemned  to  be  and  to  remain  Pretenders.  Everything  com- 
pelled it,  their  birth,  their  training,  their  entourage.  The 
Expulsion  Law  was  finally  voted  on  June  22  (1886),  and 
promulgated  the  next  day,  whereupon  the  Count  de  Paris 
betook  himself  with  his  family  to  England,  ±*rmce  JNapoleon_to 
Switzerland,  and  his  son,  Prince  Victor  Bonaparte,  to  Belgium. 
(5h~arrivihg~arDover  the  Count  de  Paris  issued  a  proclamation 
declaring  that  a  Monarchy  was  the  most  suitable  government 
for  France. 

In  accordance  with  the  fourth  clause  of  the  new  law  the 
Duke  d'Aumale,  the  Duke  de  Chartres  and  the  Duke  d'Alencon, 
who  had  previously  been  removed  from  active  service,  were  now 

1  In  the  Chamber  it  was  adopted  by  a  majority  of  83  out  of  547  members 
who  voted  ;  in  the  Senate  Clause  I.  was  adopted  by  the  small  majority  of  15, 
but  at  the  final  vote  on  the  whole  measure  141  members  were  for  and  107 
against  it.     Many  Republicans  refused,  on  principle,  to  vote  a  loi  d'exception. 


EXPULSION  OF  THE  PRINCES  297 

struck  out  of  the  army  list.  Both  Chartres  and  Alencon 
vaTnly  appealed  to  the  Council  of  State,  whilst  Aumale 
addressed  a  letter  of  indignant  protest  to  President  Grevy. 
We  notice  that  an  able  French  writer  of  the  Gambettist  school, 
in  dealing  comparatively  recently  with  this  subject,  remarks 
that  the  Duke  d'Aumale's  letter  may  be  nowadays  regarded 
with  great  indulgence,  but  that  at  the  time  it  was  penned  it 
appeared  extremely  insolent.  Such  is  our  own  opinion.  It 
was,  however,  more  the  Duke  d'Aumale's  misfortune  than  his 
fault  if  he  was  drawn  intcTthis  aHair,  and  suffered  by  the  indis- 
cretion of  his  relative.  With  respect  to  the  part  he  played  in 
the  earlier  years  of  the  present  regime  he  certainly  helped  to 
effect  the  downfall  of  Thiers,  hut,  in  spite  of  many  solicitations 
ancLvarious  opportunities  he  made  no  attempt  to  overthrow 
the  Republic.  While  he  was  Commander  of  the  Vllth  Army 
CorpTaT^Belan^on  he  favoured  the  Clerical  party  in  that  region, 
insisted  on  being  addressed  as  "  Monseigneur  *  and  referred  to 
as  "  Royal  Highness,"  which  was  incompatible,  no  doubt,  with 
Republican  institutions.  It  was,  however,  virtually  the  utmost 
that  could  be  urged  against  him.  Although  he  was  byJarJJbe 
ablestjmember  of  his  family,  he  had,  we  think,  no  personal 
political  ambition.  He  stood  several  degrees  removed  from  all 
claim  to  the  French  Throne.  Moreover,  neither  wife  nor 
child  was  left  him.  Thus  it  was  unfortunate  that  the 
removal  of  his  name  from  the  Army  List  should  have  been 
insisted  upon ;  his  compulsory  retirement  from  active  service 
should  have  proved  sufficient  for  the  most  zealous  Republicans. 
But  certainly  his  letter  of  protest  was  couched  in  such  terms 
that  it  could  not  be  overlooked  in  that  hour  of  crisis.  It  was 
a  pity  that  personal  pride  4  id  not  allow  the  Duke  to  bend  "to 
the  storm.  In  thg_  result  he  was  expelled  from  France  by  virtue 
of  Clause  II.  of  the  new  law. 

Bo^ulanger,  as  Minister  of  War,  was  soon  interpellated  on 
the  subject.  He  replied  by  making  a  violent  attack  on  the 
Duke  d'Aujnale,  "  a jmmjvho  at  twenty-one  years  of  age,  when 
knowing-little^r .nothing,  had  nevertheless  been  made  a  general 
in  thfiJFrench  army,  simply  because  he  was  the  son  of  aiding  t  " 
There  was  some  truth  in  that;  and  Boulanger,  the  youngest 
general  of  the  Third  Republic,  had  certainly  seen  a  great  deal 
more  service  than  Aumale,  and  waited  more  than  twice  as 
many  years,  before  attaining  to  the  rank  he  held.    The  argument 


298  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

appealed  to  the  Deputies,  who,  by  351  votes  to  172,  approved 
of  the  War  Minister's  declarations.  Later,  the  Senate  followed 
suit  by  152  votes  to  79 ;  and  it  was  resolved  that  Boulaneer's 
speech  to  the  Chamber  should  be  printed  an(T~placarded 
throughout  the  36,QQ0Tcommune8  of  .trance.  MillntflO  Ills- 
name  had  been  little  known  beyond  a  few  coteries  of  politicians 
and  specialists ;  from  that  hour  it  became  famous,  or  notorious, 
if  that  expression  be  preferred.  ~ 

To  some  people  Boulanger's  violent  attack  oil -t ho  Duke 
d'Aumale  seemed  inexplicable,  by  reason  of  their  earlier  relations. 
But  we  were  given  to  understand  at  the  time  that,  as  so  often 
happens  in  France,  it  was  all  a  question  of  cherchez  la  femme. 
At  that  moment  Aumale  was  sixty-four  years  of  age,  but  he 
was  still  very  vigorous  and  energetic.  He  had  been  a  widower 
since  1869,  and  some  years  prior  to  his  expulsion  from  France 
in  1886,  his  name  (as  we  mentioned  once  before)  had  been 
discreetly,  yet  in  certain  circles  frequently  coupled  with  that 
of  one  of  the  most  charming  actresses  of  the  Comedie  Francaise. 
Now  Boulanger,  who  was  fifteen  years  younger  than  the  Duke 
d' Aumale,  had  cast  his  eyes  in  the  same  direction,  but  without 
the  success  he  had  expected.  Inde  irae.  That,  of  course,  was 
prior  to  the  General's  well-known  intrigue  with  Mme.  de 
Bonnemains.1 

His  attack  on  the  Duke  d' Aumale  was  followed  by  the 
publfSafion  of  some  of  his  obsequious  letters  to_that_Prince. 
He  at  first  denied  their  authenticity,  but  was  afterwards  com- 
pelled to  admit  it.  Yet  in  spite  of  such  equivocal  behaviour^ 
he  remained  the  favourTterth"e~liero,  of  the  masses.  When  he 
appeared,  mounted  on  ablack~  charger,  at  the  review  at 
Longchamp,  on  the  National  Fete  of  July  14,  he  was  acclaimed 
by  a  delirious  multitude.  France  had  found  a  man  at  last — ah, 
what  a  man,  indeed  ! 

During  the  autumn  a  bill  was  passed  by  the  Chamber, 
excluding  both  male  and  female  members  of  religious  associa- 
tions from  teaching  in  State  or  Municipal  schools ;  but  some 
members  of  the  Cabinet  were  not   on   good  terms  with  the 

1  Her  husband  (whom  she  quitted  for  Boulanger),  was  the  son  of  the 
General  de  Bonnemains,  who  commanded  one  of  the  divisions  of  cuirassiers 
at  the  battle  of  Worth.  We  met  young  M.  de  Bonnemains,  a  tall  and  hand- 
some man,  on  more  than  one  occasion.  We  remember  that  he  offered  us  for 
translation,  on  behalf  of  Guy  de  Maupassant,  the  latter's  story  Pierre  et 
Jean  ;  we  were  unable,  however,  to  undertake  the  work. 


GERMANY,  FRANCE,  AND  BOULANGER      299 

Parliamentary  majority,  and  finally,  on  December  3,  an  adverse 
vote  led  to  resignation.  M.  Rene  Goblet  formed  the  next 
Ministry,  the  eleventh  of  Grevy's  time.  The  chief  changes 
were  that  Freycinet  and  Carnot  retired,  and  that  Goblet  took 
the  portfolio  of  the  Interior  instead  of  that  of  Education,  which 
was  accepted  by  the  eminent  scientist  Berthelot,  while  M. 
Dauphin  became  Minister  of  Finances,  and  M.  Leopold  Flourens, 
brother  of  Gustave  Flourens  of  the  Commune,  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs.  He  proved  one  of  the  best  and  ablest  men 
that  ever  served  the  Republic  in  that  capacity,  displaying  under 
the  most  trying  and  dangerous  circumstances  a  prudence  and 
shrewdness  which  saved  the  world  from  another  great  war. 
Never  were  two  brothers  more  unlike  than  M.  Leopold  Flourens 
and  the  headstrong  and  unfortunate  Gustave. 

Boulanger,  who  still  remained  at  the  head  of  the  army,  had 
for  some  time  past  aroused  the  distrust  of  Germany.  He  had 
not  only  made  various  imprudent  speeches,  but  had  lent  himself 
to  the  bellicose  manifestations  of  the  League  of  Patriots  founded 
by  Pa^ll  Diroulede^ihe  poet-politician  who  had  won  celebrity 
by  his  Chants  du  Soldat.  The  ^German  press,  "the  reptile 
press"  of  those  days,  which  took  its  instructions  from  Prince 
Bismarck's  acolytes,  already  denounced  Boulanger  as  a  danger 
to  European  peace,  and  early  in  1887  troops  were  moved  hither 
and  thither  in  Alsace-Lorraine  with  so  much  fuss  and  publicity 
that  it  seemed  as  if  a  direct  warning  to  France  were  intended. 
In  February  the  Paris  Bourse  took  alarm ;  there  was  quite  a 
panic,  with  a  drop  of  three  francs  in  the  quotations  for  Rentes. 
The^FrencJLjGovernment-  was -SJilLat^that  period  in  great 
financial  difficulties,  nevertheless  the  Chambers  promptly  voted 
a  credit  of  several  millions  for  the  army  and  navy  ;  and  addi- 
tional resources  being  required,  it  was  resolved  to  levy  higher 
duties  on  foreign  corn,  cattle,  and  meat.  At  the  same  time, 
with  a  view  to  clearing  the  atmosphere,  it  was  suggested  by 
some  politicians  that  the  Prime  Minister  should  make  a  pacific 
declaration,  but  he  refused  to  do  so,  saying  that  his  opinions 
were  thoroughly  well  known.  However,  he  was  quite  willing 
tojforbid  Boulanger  to  despatch  any  additional  troops  to  the 
frontier,  as  he  wisheoTTo  3o  by  way "oT  replying  tcTtKeT German 
military  movements  in  Alsace. 

The  situation  seemed  to  be  improved  in  some  degree. 
Ferdinand  de  Lesseps  went  on  a  semi-official  or  officious  mission 


300  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

to  Berlin,  and  the  bellicose  Boulanger  lost  a  good  deal  of 
influence  with  the  more  moderate  Republicans,  owing  to  an 
impudent  letter  on  military  education  and  trammg  wEich  lie 
addressed ~to~ ^Parliamentary  Committee,  and  afterwards  tried 
tp^withdrjjjs^.  But  all  at  once  a  serious  frontier  incident  caused 
general  alarm.  There  was  a  Commissary  of  Police  named 
Schncebele  attached  to  the  railway  station  of  Pagny-sur-Moselle. 
The  German  authorities,  suspecting  him  of  intercourse  with 
some  Alsatian  malcontents  and  conspirators,  had  resolved  to 
arrest  him  if  he  crossed  the  frontier.  He  did  so,  not,  however, 
with  any  intention  of  plotting,  but  in  response  to  a  request  from 
a  German  police-commissary  named  Gautsch,  who  wished  to 
confer  with  him  respecting^some^jctf  the  frontier  regulations. 
Nevertheless  on  April  20,  Schncebele  |Wj  arrpfftpd  Ky-CL^w^n 
police-officers  and  removed  to  Metz. 

To,  most  Frpnrh  people,  t4is  seemed  direct  provocation  on 
the  part  of  Germany,  and  for  a  moment  the  question  of  war  or 
peace  trembled  in  the  balance.  Boulanger  and  the  Radical 
members  of  the  Cabinet  urged  that  an  apology  should  be 
immediately  demanded  in  terms  tantamount  to  an  ultimatum. 
But  M.  Flourens  pointed  out,  with  his  usual  good  sense,  that 
under  the  circumstances  in  which  Schncebele's  arrest  had  taken 
place  it  could  not  possibly  be  maintained  by  any  known 
principle  of  law.  Nevertheless,  disregarding  Goblet's  earlier 
prohibition,  Boulanger  now  sent  as  secretly  as  possible  some 
additional  detachmentsof  troops~  towards  the  frontier  and, 
remembering  the  intervention  of  Russia  during  the  war  scare 
of  1875,  hgjaddressedaletter  either  to  the  Russian  Emperor 
(Alexander  III.)  or  to  his  War  Minister  (there  have  been 
conflicting  statements  on  that  point)  in  which  he  solicited 
Russian  help.  Luckily,  Boulanger  having  boasted  of  his  action 
to  a  colleague,  the  missive  was  intercepted  in  the  post  by  the 
order  of  M.  Flourens ;  and  as  it  seemed  certain  that  the 
incident  would  be  speedily  divulged,  the  latter,  to  prevent 
serious  consequences,  decided  to  acquaint  the  German  Am- 
bassador in  France  with  all  particulars.  He  did  so  quite 
frankly,    but   at   the   same   time    pointed    out    that    General 

Boulanger  W^S  alpnT  rpgpnnsihlPj  fl"nH  virtually  threw  him  over. 

Thus  Flourens  saved  the  situation  yet  a  second  time. 

Finally  M.  Schncebele  was  released,  Bismarck  issuing  a 
diplomatic  note   which   betrayed  considerable  embarrassment. 


GERMANY,  FRANCE,  AND  BOULANGER      301 

He  also  stated  to  M.  Herbette,  then  French  Ambassador  at 
Berlin,  that  Schncebele's  arrest  was  justified  by  the  fact  that  they, 
the  Germans,  had  proof  of  his  connivance  with  an  Alsatian 
traitor,  but  that  as  he  had  ventured  on  German  soil  at  the 
invitation  of  a  German  official  that  invitation  was  tantamount 
to  a  safe  conduct  and  would  be  respected.  Thus,  M.  Schncebele 
having  been  released  and  transferred  by  the  French  authorities 
to  Lyons,  the  incident,  at  one  moment  pregnant  with  fateful 
consequences,  came  to  an  end  in  spite  of  all  the  noisy  demonstra- 
tions of  the  League  of  Patriots  and  the  riotous  protests  which 
some  extremists  initiated  against  certain  Wagner  concerts  in 
Paris. 

By  this  time  it  had  become  evident  to  many  sincere  and 
thoughtful  Republicans  as  well  as  Royalists,  that  Boulanger. 
was,  indeed,  a  national  danger.  <<wJtjvas  necessary  to  remove 
him  from  office  whatever  might  be  the  anger  of  the  mob.  In 
tTfe" month™oTT\Ta)Tan  occasion  at  last  presented  itself.  The 
estimates  for  the  ensuing  year  were  presented,  and  it  was  found 
that  on  an  amount  of  120  millions  sterling  the  Government 
only  proposed  a  saving  of  about  i?800,000.  This  was  rej^rdepl 
as  ridiculous,  and  165  Conservatives  combined  with  110  Re- 
publicans to  overffirow  jKe  Ministry.  The  Boulanger  (question 
largely  influenced  that  vote. , 

Now  came  the  Twelfth  and  last  Administration  formed 
under  Grevy's  Presidency.  The  extremists  made  a  desperate 
effort  to  maintain  Boulanger  in  officer  J3ay  by  day  Clemenceau 
irTXa  'Justice,  Rochefort  in  Vlntmmsigeaiit,  Lalou  or  Laur  in 
La  France  proclaimed  that  it  would  be  treason  to  TEe^ountry" 
to  remove  le  brave  general  from  thelVIinistry  of  War.1  How- 
ever1, after  GrevyhacTvainly  sought  a  Prime  Minister  in  Deves, 
Duclerc,  his  favourite  Freycinet,  and  Floquet,  now  President  of 
the  Chamber,  he  had  to  fall  back  on  M.  Maurice  Rouvier,2  who, 
disregarding  all  journalistic  fulminations,  formed  a  Cabinet 
from  which  Boulanger  was  excluded,  May  30,  1887.  Rouvier 
took  with  the  Premiership  the  then  extremely  important  post 
of  Minister  of  Finances.  He  kept  Flourens  as  Foreign  Minister, 
and  secured  Fallieres  for  Home  Affairs,  Mazeau  for  Justice, 

1  Amidst  this  Ministerial  crisis  occurred  the  destruction  of  the  Paris 
Ope>a  Comique  by  fire,  about  130  persons  perishing  in  that  terrible 
catastrophe. 

'2  See  write,  p.  248. 


302  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Spuller  for  Education  and  Worship,  Dautresme  for  Commerce 
and  Public  Works,  Barbe  for  Agriculture,  and  General  Ferron 
for  War.  The  last  -  named  was  grossly  insulted  by  the 
extremists  for  presuming  to  accept  office. 

Yet  he  was  a  very  able  officer,  one  whom  Galliffet,  that 
good  judge  of  military  merit,  had  particularly  distinguished, 
and  whom  Campenon  had  taken  as  chief  of  his  staff  when 
Minister  of  War.  Ferron  had  chiefly  seen  service  in  Algeria, 
the  Crimea,  and  the  colonies,  serving  in  New  Caledonia  during 
the  Franco-German  War.  He  was  more  particularly  known  as 
an  expert  engineer-officer.  He  dealt  fairly  but  fearlessly  with 
Boulanger.  The  latter  had  sometime  previously  authorised  the 
establishment  of  an  Officers'  Club  in  a  building  on  the  Place  de 
rOpeVa,  and  he  not  infrequently  visited  it,  there  being  a  good 
™ai??3Igf'"^s  aMfirAiim  mining  1,1m  iiimhrtraTs:  Demonstrations 
in  his  favour  were  often  made  outside  the  clubhand  they 
became  more  and  more  tumultuous  on  his  fall  from  power. 
Now  the  new  Government  did  not  desire  to  treat  him  with 
indignity.  They  acknowledged  that  he  had  a  distinguished 
military  record,  and  imputed  to  him  no  treasonable  designs. 
Their  chief  fear  was  with  respect  to  the  consequences  which 
might  result  from  the  "turbulent  and  tumultuous  patriotism  " 
which  he  so  often  displayed.  Moreover,  in  connection 
with  the  trial  at  Leipzig  of  some  Alsatian  enthusiasts 
opposed  to  German  rule,  Paris  witnessed  a  sensational 
meeting  of  the  League  of  Patriots ;  on  which  occasion 
Boulanger  was  acclaimed  as  the  personification  both  of 
the  French  army  and  of  the  war  of  revenge..  It  was  there- 
fore resolved  that  he  must  not  be  allowed  to  remain  in  the 
capital,  and  that  a  safe  post,  one  in  which  he  would  have  the 
least  opportunity  of  doing  harm,  must  be  found  for  him.  It 
could  not  be  called  a  disgrace  as  it  was  a  high  command,  such 
as  he  had  never  exercised,  but  it  was  far  away  both  from  Paris 
and  from  the  Vosges,  being  that  of  the  XIHth  Army  Corps  at 
Clermont-Ferrand,  the  old  capital  of  Auvergne.  In  order  to 
prevent  any  unseemly  demonstration  at  the  National  Fete 
of  July  14,  he  was  ordered  to  repair  to  his  post  before 
that  date.  He  did  so,  quitting  Paris  on  July  8,  Jbu£^ 
his  departure  became  the  occasion  of  yet  another  great 
demonstration.  Again,  when  the  National  Fete  arrived 
with  the  customary  review  of  the  Army  of  Paris,  President 


THE  RISE  OF  BOULANGISM  303 

Grevy  and  Ferron,  the  War  Minister,  were  grossly  insulted  both 
by  ignorant  and  foolish  patriots  and  by  hirelings  of  the 
Monarchist  parties,  which,  since  the  expulsion  of  the  Princes, 
had  decided  on  open  war  against  the  Republic.  The  Radicals, 
alarmed  by  the  snouts  of  "  A  bas  la  Republique  !  a  bas  Grevy  ! 
vive  Boulanger !  c'est  Boulanger  qull  nous  faut ! "  which  assailed 
their  ears  that  afternoon,  began  to  repent  of  their  infatuation, 
even  Clemenceau  declaring  that  the  General  must  be  kept  in 
his  place,  while  a  very  able  Radical  journalist,  Sigismond 
Lacroix,  started  quite  a  campaign  against  him. 

Shortly  afterwards  Jules  Ferry,  emerging  from  his  retire- 
ment, delivered  a  speech  at  Epinal  in  which  he  called  Boulanger 
a,  general  de  cafe  concert^  this  being  an  allusion  to  the  various 
songs  such  as  "  En  revenant  de  la  Revue,"  which  were  sung  in 
his  honour  by  Paulus  and  others  at  the  Paris  music-halls. 
Boulanger  challenged  Ferry  on  account  of  that  epithet,  but  no 
duel  was  fought  as  the  seconds  could  not  agree  respecting  the 
conditions.  However,  in  September  the  Count  de  Paris  issued 
yet  another  manifesto,  one  offering  a  kind  of  Napoleonic 
monarchy  to  France :  this  being  a  species  of  invitation  to 
Boulanger,  with  whom  the  Pretender  was  already  intriguing  in 
spite  of  the  General's  share  in  the  Law  of  Expulsion.  Once 
again,  too,  public  opinion  was  roused  against  Germany  owing 
to  an  affair  in  the  Vosges,  when  a  German  forest-keeper  shot  a 
French  sportsman  named  Brignon  dead,  and  wounded  another. 
However,  Germany  paid  some  compensation  to  Brignon's 
widow,  and  that  scare  subsided.1 

But  the  next  trouble  which  arose  in  France  proved  very 
serious.  It  was  discovered  that  General  Caffarel,  Under-Chief 
of  the  Staff  at  the  War  Office,  which  post  he  owed  to  Boulanger, 
had  been,  for  some  time  past,  in  close  relations  with  an  adven- 
turess named  Limouzin,  who  undertook  to  procure  "  decorations  " 
— the  Legion  of  Honour  and  foreign  orders  also — for  all  such 
persons  that  were  willing  to  pay  for  them.  Another  officer, 
General  Count  d'Andlau  (who  was  also  a  Senator),  was  like- 

1  To  avoid  interrupting  the  continuity  of  our  narrative,  let  us  mention  here 
that  in  October  188T  Great  Britain  and  France  arrived  at  arrangements 
respecting  the  New  Hebrides  and  the  neutrality  of  the  Suez  Canal.  In 
November  the  old  4|  per  cent  Rente  was  reduced  to  3  per  cent.  It  may 
also  be  mentioned  that  soon  after  taking  office  M.  Rouvier's  Administration 
induced  the  Chamber  to  vote  a  law  on  compulsory  military  service,  by  which 
the  exemptions  previously  granted  to  seminarists  were  abolished  (June  1887). 


304  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

wise  implicated  in  this  affair,  as  was,  too,  the  famous,  versatile 
and  much -married  Mme.  Rattazzi,  ne'e  Bonaparte -Wyse.1 
Caffarel  was  brought  before  a  military  court  of  inquiry,  which 
proposed  in  its  report  that  he  should  be  compulsorily  retired 
for  "offences  against  honour.'"  Meanwhile,  however,  several 
journalists  had  repaired  to  Clermont  Ferrand  to  interview 
Boulanger  on  the  matter,  on  account  of  his  earlier  connection 
with  Caffarel.  He  assured  them  that  the  whole  affair  was 
simply  a  manoeuvre  directed  against  himself  by  his  jealous 
successor,  General  Ferron.  That  assertion  was  reproduced  in 
the  press,  together  with  others  emanating  from  M.  Francis  Laur 
(the  author  of  Un  Amour  de  Gambetta),  to  whom,  it  appeared, 
Boulanger  had  declared  that  he  might  have  made  himself 
Dictator  on  two  occasions  already,  once  when  he  had  been 
solicited  to  do  so  by  ninety -four  general  officers,  and  once  at 
the  request  of  the  Monarchical  Deputies  and  Senators.  If 
that  were  so,  however,  why  had  the  general  not  acquainted  his 
ministerial  colleagues  with  such  treasonable  proposals  ?  Failure 
to  do  so  proved  disloyalty.  There  are  very  good  reasons,  how- 
ever, for  disbelieving  the  story  about  the  ninety-four  generals. 

For  his  remarks  concerning  his  superior  the  Minister  of  War, 
Boulanger  was  ordered  thirty  days'  close  arrest.  Some  thought 
this  too  severe,  others  far  from  severe  enough.  Jules  Ferry 
once  more  raised  his  voice,  asking  for  a  Government  that  could 
really  govern,  one  that  would  finally  extirpate  Caesarism,  and 
destroy  every  germ  of  that  disease  which,  twice  in  a  hundred 
years,  had  handed  France  over  to  dictatorship.  But  public 
attention  was  now  again  directed  to  the  decorations  scandal. 
In  the  proceedings  against  La  Limouzin,  General  d'Andlau  and 
Mme.  Rattazzi,2  yet  another  person  became  implicated,  and  this 
time  none  other  than  M.  Daniel  Wilson,  the  son-in-law  of  the 
President  of  the  Republic !  In  his  case,  certain  letters,  seized 
among  his  papers,  suddenly  disappeared,  others  being  substituted 

1  See  our  Court  of  the  Tuileries. 

3  They  were  condemned  by  default  to  imprisonment  and  fine.  General 
d'Andlau  fled  to  South  America.  It  was  also  discovered  in  these  proceedings 
that  La  Limouzin  had  been  a  particular  friend  of  General  Thibaudin,  as  his 
letters  to  her  testified.  The  above  were  not  the  only  generals,  who,  during 
the  earlier  period  of  the  Republic,  found  themselves  in  trouble  owing  to  their 
intercourse  with  adventuresses.  In  1880  General  de  Cissey,  ex-War  Minister 
and  commander  of  an  army  corps,  became  involved  in  a  serious  scandal  by 
reason  of  his  relations  with  a  so-called  Baroness  de  Kaulla  (the  separated  wife 
of  Colonel  Jung)  who  was  accused  of  being  a  foreign  spy. 


FALL  OF  GRtiVY  305 

for  them  with  the  connivance  of  the  Prefect  of  Police,  M. 
Gragnon,  and,  in  some  degree  apparently,  of  the  Chief  of  the 
Detective  Force,  M.  Taylor.  Gragnon  was  promptly  cashiered 
and  replaced  by  M.  Leon  Bourgeois,  who  since  those  days  has 
become  a  distinguished  statesman. 

Although  Wilson  was  formally  accused,  he  was  not  arrested  ; 
indeed  he  continued  to  reside  at  the  Elysee,  the  President 
protecting  him  and  absolutely  refusing  to  believe  in  his  guilt. 
The  Chamber  met,  however,  and  by  a  large  majority  ordered 
a  parliamentary  inquiry  into  the  alleged  "selling  of  public 
appointments  and  decorations. "  At  the  same  time  Clemenceau 
wished  to  interpellate  the  Cabinet,  and  when  Rouvier  asked  for 
an  adjournment  it  was  refused  by  317  votes  to  238.  Thereupon 
(November  19,  1887)  the  Ministry  resigned. 

It  was  Grevy's  resignation,  however,  which  the  majority 
really  demanded.  He  hesitated  for  several  days,  during  which 
he  appealed  to  politicians  of  many  schools  in  the  hope  of 
forming  a  Cabinet  which  would  enable  him  to  retain  his  position. 
In  vain.  Everybody  who  saw  him  declared  that  resignation 
could  be  his  only  course.  On  November  26,  however,  at  the 
urgent  request  of  certain  Radicals  or  pseudo-Radicals,  Boulanger 
came  secretly  to  Paris.  It  was  feared  by  the  extremists  that 
Jules  Ferry  might  now  secure  power,  and  it  was  thought  better 
to  retain  Grevy  in  office  with  the  help  of  Boulanger's  sword. 
On  the  night  of  November  28,  Clemenceau,  Camille  Dreyfus, 
Camille  Pelletan,  Pichon,  Perin,  Laisant,  Laguerre,  Millerand, 
Leporche,  and  Granet  met  Henri  Rochefort  of  LTntransigeant, 
Mayer  of  La  Lanteme,  and  Victor  Simond  of  Le  Radical  at 
the  Masonic  Headquarters  in  the  Rue  Cadet  to  discuss  the 
situation.  That  first  conference  failed,  as  both  Pelletan  and 
Perin  opposed  the  retention  of  Grevy.  However,  Granet, 
Laisant,  Laguerre,  Mayer,  and  Clemenceau  afterwards  repaired 
to  the  Cafe  Durand  near  the  Madeleine,  where  Rochefort  had 
already  joined  Boulanger  and  Paul  Deroulede.  After  conferring 
together  they  dispatched  delegates  to  Floquet  and  Freycinet, 
but  neither  was  willing  to  form  a  ministry  under  Grevy's  presi- 
dency or  with  Boulanger  at  the  War  Office.  On  the  following 
night  Boulanger,  Deroulede,  Clemenceau,  Rochefcrt,  Mayer, 
Laisant,  Granet,  and  Dreyfus  met  at  the  house  of  Laguerre, 
who  was  a  Boulangist  advocate  and  deputy.  He  and  Granet 
had  seen  Grevy  that  day,  and  he  had  told  them  that  if  he  were 


306  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

to  remain  in  office  it  must  be  with  a  Prime  Minister  of  great 
authority.  The  meeting  appealed  to  Clemenceau,  but  he 
shrewdly  declined  the  post  of  honour  and  peril.  Delegates 
were  then  sent  to  Andrieux,  ex-Prefect  of  Police,  but  he, 
though  willing  to  take  office  under  Grevy,  would  not  accept 
Boulanger  as  a  colleague.  Thus  the  negotiations  of  the  two 
so-called  "  Historical  Nights  "  came  to  nothing. 

Meantime  Grevy  had  personally  appealed  to  M.  Ribot,  who 
consented  to  act  provisionally  if  the  President  would  resign. 
He  wished,  however,  to  see  the  letter  of  resignation  before 
undertaking  to  read  it  to  the  Chamber.  This  condition  Grevy 
would  not  accept. 

There  was  great  agitation  in  Paris  at  the  time,  but  General 
Saussier,  the  Military  Governor  and  a  man  of  no  little  firmness, 
declared  that  any  rioter,  were  he  a  general  officer  or  anybody 
else,  would  be  shot  without  ceremony.  On  December  1,  huge 
crowds  gathered  on  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  awaiting  what 
might  happen  at  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  for  Grevy  had 
promised  a  message  already  on  November  26,  and  its  arrival 
was  expected.  None  had  yet  come,  however,  and  the  Chamber 
thereupon  adjourned  until  six  o'clock,  signifying  that  it  hoped 
to  receive  the  expected  message  at  that  hour.  A  little  later 
the  Senate  adjourned  till  eight  o'clock  in  the  same  way.  Grevy 
could  not  resist  the  unanimity  thus  displayed  by  both  branches 
of  the  Legislature.  He  therefore  reluctantly  sent  an  official 
announcement  that  he  was  preparing  his  letter  of  resignation. 
It  was  read  in  the  Chambers  on  December  %  Thus  fell  one 
who  was  personally  a  very  honest  and  had  long  been  a  most 
able  man,  but  who  was  now  eighty  years  of  age,  and  no  longer 
possessed  of  the  perspicacity  or  the  strength  of  character  which 
he  had  shown  in  former  times.  He  might  have  fallen  in  a  far 
more  dignified  manner  had  he  not  been  governed  by  his  indulg- 
ence and  solicitude  for  his  son-in-law.  As  it  was,  he  clung  to 
his  post  as  long  as  possible,  and  it  at  last  became  necessary 
to  wring  from  him  a  resignation  which  he  should  have  tendered 


directly  M.  Wilson  was  formally  accused. 


CHAPTER  XI 

carnot's  presidency — boulanger's  apogee 
and  afterwards 

The  Contest  for  the  Presidency — Carnot's  Election — His  Family  and  his 
Career — His  First  Ministry  :  Tirard — The  end  of  the  Decorations  Scandal 
— Wilson's  Acquittal  and  later  years — The  Legion  of  Honour — General 
Boulanger,  Prince  Napoleon  and  the  Sword  of  Marengo—  Boulanger  and 
the  Royalists — He  is  placed  on  Half-Pay  and  afterwards  Retired — The 
Aisne  Election — Arthur  Meyer  and  the  Duchess  d'Uzes — The  Boulangist 
Programme  —  The  General's  Popularity  and  the  Boulangist  Muse  — 
Floquet  and  the  Emperor  of  Russia— Fall,  of  Tirard's  Ministry— Floquet's 
Administration — The  Boulangist  Exchequer — The  Count  de  Paris'  Con- 
tributions—The Millions  of  the  Duchess  d'Uzes — Boulanger's  Election 
in  the  Nord — His  Demands  for  Revision  and  Dissolution — He  resigns — 
His  Duel  with  Floquet— His  Wife  and  his  Mistress — His  Great  Triple 
Election — His  Return  for  Paris — List  Voting  Abolished— Fall  of  Floquet 
and  Return  of  Tirard  to  Power — The  League  of  Patriots  suppressed — 
Boulanger's  Impending  Arrest — His  Flight  to  Brussels— He  goes  to 
London — A  Reception  at  Portland  Place — Boulanger  and  the  High 
Court— His  Interview  with  the  Count  de  Paris — The  Paris  Exhibition  of 
1889— The  Escapade  of  the  Duke  of  Orleans— Change  of  Cabinet— 
Boulanger  in  Jersey  and  Belgium — His  Mistress  dies  and  he  destroys 
himself. 

Jules  Ferry  ought  to  have  been  the  next  President  of  the 
Republic,  but  although  the  Radical  and  the  ultra-Patriotic 
leaders  had  been  foiled  in  their  endeavours  to  prop  up  Grevy 
with  the  help  of  Boulanger's  sword,  they  were  still  determined 
that  the  chief  state  office  should  not  be  accorded  to  the  man 
whom  they  so  freely  called  "  Famine  Ferry ,"  "  Tonquin  Ferry," 
and  "Ferry,  Bismarck's  Valet."  The  demonstration  on  the 
Place  de  la  Concorde  on  December  1  was  followed  by  a  more 
serious  affair  on  the  morrow.  Communists  and  Socialists 
allied  themselves  for  the  nonce  with  Deroulede  and  his  League 
of  Patriots.  Louise  Michel  led  a  band  of  Reds  singing  "  La 
Carmagnole"  along  the  Boulevards.     Eudes  and  Lisbonne  of 

307 


308  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  Commune,  Basly,  Camelinat,  Duc-Quercy  and  other  new 
leaders  of  the  proletariat  harangued  the  crowds,  and  tried  to 
provoke  a  march  on  the  H6tel-de-Ville ;  and  it  is  possible  that 
if  Paris  had  possessed  a  less  energetic  Military  Governor  than 
General  Saussier  some  temporary  revolutionary  success  might 
have  ensued. 

As  it  was,  the  violent  language  used  by  the  extremist 
leaders  and  newspapers  against  Ferry  intimidated  the  National 
Assembly,  or  Congress  of  both  Chambers,  which  now  met  to 
choose  a  new  President  of  the  Republic.  There  was  a  large 
majority  in  Ferry's  favour  among  the  Senators,  but  the  Deputies 
were  more  divided,  and  apprehended  a  conflict  with  the  populace. 
It  was  some  little  time  before  the  Radicals  could  agree  upon  a 
candidate  who  might  be  opposed  to  Ferry  with  a  prospect  of 
success.  Their  first  choice  lay  between  Freycinet  and  Floquet, 
both  of  whom  imagined  they  would  be  elected.  But  while 
Freycinet  had  refused  to  secure  the  appointment  of  Boulanger 
as  Minister  of  War,  Floquet — at  this  time — was  not  opposed  to 
it,  and  could  therefore  rely  on  the  support  of  the  Boulangist  as 
well  as  the  Radical  element.  Neither,  however,  commanded  a 
large  number  of  votes,  and  as  their  rivalry  threatened  to  increase 
Ferry's  chances,  Clemenceau  suggested  to  his  fellow  Radicals 
the  selection  of  an  outsider,  Brisson  or  Sadi  Carnot.  The 
latter  was  most  favoured,  and  the  choice  was  a  politic  one. 
Although  he  inclined  somewhat  to  Radicalism,  Carnot  was  in 
no  sense  an  extremist,  and  directly  his  name  was  brought 
forward  numerous  deputies,  in  addition  to  those  who  patronised 
his  candidature  from  hatred  of  Ferry,  resolved  to  support  him. 
At  the  first  ballot  he  secured  303  votes  against  212  given  to 
Ferry,  76  bestowed  on  Freycinet,  and  108  cast  for  General 
Saussier,  who,  although  not  a  candidate,  received,  malgrt  lui, 
the  support  of  the  Royalists  and  Bonapartists,  the  former 
acting  in  accordance  with  instructions  telegraphed  by  the 
Count  de  Paris  who  was  then  in  Spain.  Ferry,  on  finding  that 
he  only  took  second  place  in  the  voting,  at  once  hastened  to 
Carnot,  congratulated  him,  and  withdrew  his  own  candidature. 
Freycinet  acted  likewise,  and  thus,  at  the  second  ballot, 
Carnot  secured  616  votes  against  188  given  to  Saussier,  and 
was  thereupon  declared  elected. 

Born  at  Limoges  in  1837  and  now  therefore  fifty  years  of 
age,  he  was  the  grandson  of  the  renowned  Lazare  Carnot  of 


CARNOTS  FAMILY  AND  CAREER  309 

the  National  Convention  and  Committee  of  Public  Safety — 
the  man  who,  in  conjunction  with  Bouchotte,  raised  the  four- 
teen armies  with  which  the  First  Republic  resisted  the  invaders 
of  France,  and  who  became  known  as  "the  Organiser  of 
Victory. "  Carnot  served  also  under  Napoleon,  acting  both  as 
his  first  War  Minister — on  his  elevation  to  the  Consulship — 
and  as  his  last  Minister  of  the  Interior — during  the  Hundred 
Days.  Nevertheless  Carnofs  Republicanism  was  genuine,  and 
was  inherited  by  his  descendants.  His  son,  Louis  Hippolyte, 
reared  in  exile  after  the  Restoration  of  the  Bourbons,  returned 
to  France  at  the  Revolution  of  1830,  and  was  affiliated  for  a 
time  to  the  famous  St.  Simonian  sect.  In  1836  he  married  the 
daughter  of  a  General  Dupont  who  had  been  at  one  time  aide- 
de-camp  to  his  father ;  and  of  this  marriage  two  sons  were  born  : 
Marie  Francois  Sadi  and  Adolphe.  Hippolyte  Carnot  was 
afterwards  elected  a  deputy  for  Paris  and  at  the  Revolution  of 
1848  he  became  a  member  of  the  Provisional  Government  and 
Minister  for  Education.  He  was  among  those  who  resisted 
Louis  Napoleon's  Coup  d'Etat,  and  he  then  helped  to  save  several 
of  his  political  friends  from  arrest  and  imprisonment.  Both  his 
sons  entered  the  Ecole  Poly  technique,  and,  until  the  fall  of  the 
Empire,  Sadi  followed  the  profession  of  a  State  engineer, 
directing  no  little  road  and  bridge  work  in  Savoy.  He  married 
the  daughter  of  Dupont- White,  the  famous  political  economist 
and  precursor  of  Christian  Socialism,  one  of  whose  principal 
axioms  was  that  "  Society  has  the  right  to  compel  individuals 
to  act  rightly,  and  it  is  its  duty  to  protect  the  weak  from  the 
powerful.11  Dupont- White,  be  it  added,  was  among  those  whom 
Hippolyte  Carnot  saved  at  the  Coup  d'Etat  of  1851.  By  his 
marriage  with  Mile.  Dupont- White,  Sadi  Carnot  had  two  sons, 
one  of  whom  entered  the  artillery  service,  and  a  daughter  who 
married  M.  Cunisset. 

During  the  Franco-German  War  the  future  President  of  the 
Republic  devised  an  improved  mitrailleuse,  and  on  taking  a 
model  of  it  to  Tours,  he  there  met  Gambetta,  who  attached 
him  to  the  War  Ministry.  In  January  1871  he  became  special 
Commissary  of  the  Republic  in  the  departments  of  Seine 
Inferieure,  Eure,  and  Calvados ;  and  in  that  capacity  he  placed 
Havre  in  a  state  of  defence,  and  did  all  he  could  to  ensure  the 
re  victualling  of  Paris  by  way  of  the  Seine.  Peace  followed,  and 
he  was  elected  a  deputy  for  the  Cote  d'Or,  his  family  being  of 


310  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

ancient  Burgundian  stock,1  while  his  father,  who  had  acted  as 
mayor  of  one  of  the  districts  of  Paris  during  the  German  Siege, 
became  a  deputy  for  Seine-et-Oise.  They  both  followed  the 
example  of  Gambetta  and  Chanzy  in  voting  for  the  continua- 
tion of  the  War.  In  the  National  Assembly  Sadi  Carnot 
became  secretary  to  the  important  parliamentary  group  called 
the  Gauche  Republicaine.  When  Grevy  was  elected  President 
he  entered  the  Waddington  Ministry  as  Under-Secretary  for 
Public  Works,  a  post  which  he  retained  during  Jules  Ferry's 
first  Administration.  Under  Brisson  he  was  appointed  Minister 
for  that  department ;  and  served  subsequently  as  Minister  of 
Finances,  in  which  capacity  he  presented  a  very  frank  and  able 
budget,  rejecting  many  of  the  financial  expedients  hitherto 
employed,  and  proposing  to  liquidate  the  whole  situation  by 
means  of  a  large  loan.  The  Chamber,  however,  took  alarm  at 
its  figure,  and  Carnot's  proposals  being  rejected,  the  position 
went  from  bad  to  worse.  It  was  at  this  time  that,  as  M.  Rouvier 
afterwards  revealed,  Carnot,  careless  of  the  intrigues  at  the 
l^lysee,  stoutly  refused  to  further  the  interests  of  a  trading 
company  patronised  by  Grevy's  son-in-law  Wilson.  Such  then 
was  the  man  who  now  became  President  of  the  Republic. 
His  father,  who  was  still  alive,  a  fine  old  gentleman  of  eighty- 
seven,  hastened  to  congratulate  him  on  his  elevation.  "  You 
are  now  head  of  the  family,"  said  he,  u  you  are  Carnot.  You 
need  no  longer  use  your  Christian  name.  Sign  your  decrees 
Carnot,  tout  court.'''' 

With  dark  and  closely-cropped  hair,  surmounting  a  lofty 
brow,  long  moustaches  and  a  full,  squarely-trimmed  beard,  the 
new  President  had  an  energetic  and  intellectual  face,  with  an 
expression  of  some  dignity.  His  figure  was  slim  and  of  the 
average  height,  but  in  spite  of  his  training  at  the  Iilcole 
Poly  technique  his  gait  was  rather  awkward  as  he  was  inclined 
to  be  knock-kneed.  A  particular  feature  of  his  career  as 
President  was  the  frequency  of  his  journeys  to  one  or  another 
part  of  France.  He  surpassed  all  his  predecessors  in  that 
respect,  travelling,  indeed,  hither  and  thither  quite  as  often 
as  Gambetta  had  ever  done.  And  as  he  possessed  a  ready 
command  of  language,  and  showed  considerable  tact,  unbending 
whenever  occasion  required  it,  he  made  himself  personally 
popular  in  many  directions.  But  his  time  was  one  of  great 
1  Lazare  Carnot  was  born  at  Nolay  near  Beaune. 


CARNOTS  FIRST  MINISTRY  311 

unrest  and  turmoil,  social  as  well  as  political,  as  we  shall 
see. 

His  first  efforts  were  directed  towards  Republican  con- 
centration, with  which  object  he  entrusted  the  formation  of  a 
Ministry  to  M.  Tirard,  one  of  his  personal  friends.  Tirard, 
to  whom  we  previously  referred,  was  certainly  a  well-mean- 
ing man  but  one  of  moderate  abilities,  particularly  in  financial 
matters  in  spite  of  his  personal  success  in  trade.  Born  at 
Geneva  in  1827  he  had  become  a  State  official  at  the  time  of 
the  Republic  of  1848,  but  on  the  advent  of  the  Second  Empire 
he  retired  and  established  a  business  in  that  cheap  "  imitation  " 
jewellery  for  which  Paris  was  long  unequalled.  During  the 
German  Siege  he  was  chosen  as  mayor  of  the  Second  Arrondisse- 
ment  of  Paris,  and  becoming  popular  among  the  people  was 
afterwards  elected  a  member  of  the  Commune.  But  he  was  no 
firebrand,  his  efforts  were  entirely  directed  towards  conciliation 
between  the  Parisians  and  the  Government,  and  when  he  found 
a  compromise  impossible  he  withdrew  to  Versailles. 

In  forming  Carnot's  first  Ministry,  Tirard  wished  to  include 
members  of  every  Republican  group,  but  the  portfolios  he 
offered  to  Radicals  like  Goblet  and  Lockroy  were  declined,  and 
from  the  outset,  indeed,  the  Government  was  subjected  to 
Radical  as  well  as  Boulangist  attacks.  Flourens  remained  at 
the  head  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Fallieres  passed  from  the  Interior 
to  Justice,  the  former  department  being  allotted  to  Sarrien, 
while  Loubet  became  Minister  of  Public  Works,  and  de  Mahy 
(and  later  Admiral  Krantz),  Minister  of  Marine  and  the 
Colonies,  with  Felix  Faure  as  Under-Secretary.  For  the  War 
Office  Tirard's  choice  fell  on  General  Logerot,  an  officer  who 
had  seen  a  great  deal  of  service  in  Algeria,  the  Crimea,  and 
Italy,  and  who  had  particularly  distinguished  himself  at  the 
battle  of  Coulmiers  in  1870,  when,  although  severely  wounded 
in  the  leg,  he  had  remained  four-and-twenty  hours  in  the 
saddle,  commanding  his  men.  Logerot's  character  was  summed 
up  in  that  episode,1  and  at  a  time  when  such  a  man  as  Boulanger 

1  Francois  Auguste  Logerot,  born  at  Noyers,  Loir-et-Cher,  in  1825.  He 
was  a  first-rate  and  determined  rear-guard  officer.  We  remember  that  on 
one  occasion  during  the  retreat  of  Chanzy's  forces  his  regiment,  the  Second 
Zouaves  de  Marche,  held  the  Germans  in  check  for  six  hours,  falling  back 
barely  a  league  during  all  that  time,  when  it  lost  a  quarter  of  its  effective, 
including  sixteen  officers.  The  Logerots  were  essentially  a  military  family, 
two  of  General  Francois'  brothers  rose  to  the  same  rank  in  the  artillery.  The 
infantry  was  his  branch  of  the  service. 


312  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

had  to  be  dealt  with  a  resolute  Minister  of  War  was  absolutely 
requisite.1 

At  first,  however,  most  public  attention  was  given  to  the 
decorations  scandal.  An  attempt  to  prosecute  M.  Daniel  Wilson 
and  the  ex-Prefect  of  Police  on  a  charge  of  abstracting  and 
forging  documents  fell  through,  but  another  to  the  effect  that 
Wilson  had  been  guilty  of  fraud  in  promising  to  procure  the 
decoration  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  in  return  for  a  pecuniary 
payment  was  proceeded  with.  On  March  1,  1888,  he  was 
convicted  by  the  Paris  Correctional  Tribunal  and  sentenced  to 
two  years'  imprisonment,  five  years'  loss  of  civil  rights,  and  the 
payment  of  a  fine  of  =£120.  Thereupon,  however,  he  appealed, 
and  the  Appeal  Court  set  the  conviction  aside.  When  that 
great  encyclopedia  of  French  jurisprudence,  the  Repertoire 
Dalloz,  printed  the  court's  judgment  of  acquittal  it  added 
thereto  the  following  note,  which  explains  what  was  the  legal 
position  at  the  time  : — 

However  shameful  and  immoral  it  may  be  to  trade  on  one's 
influence  and  credit,  it  does  not  seem  possible  to  find  in  such  a 
proceeding  the  elements  of  fraud  (escroquerie)  if  the  influence  and 
credit  are  real  and  the  accused  has  seriously  employed  them  in 
furthering  the  application  he  has  been  charged  to  support.  The 
Court's  judgment  declares  that  the  influence  purchased  by  Crespin 
de  la  Jeanniere  (a  client  of  Wilson's)  was  powerful,  that  the 
promised  recommendations  and  applications  were  not  fanciful  but 
were  really  made,  that  proof  thereof  was  supplied  to  and  accepted 
by  Crespin,  and  that  therefore  he  was  not  deceived.  These  facts 
certainly  deprive  the  case  of  the  features  characteristic  of  fraud 
(escroquerie).  But  it  has  only  been  possible  for  the  court  to  arrive 
at  this  conclusion  by  adding  that  it  is  not  exact,  as  the  first  judges 
stated,  that  there  had  been  a  positive  promise  of  a  cross,  which  the 
accused  boastfully  asserted  he  could  supply.  Otherwise,  indeed, 
the  acquittal  of  the  accused  would  have  clashed  with  the  principles 
laid  down  by  the  Criminal  Chamber  of  the  Court  of  Cassation  in  the 
Ccelln  case,  that  is,  "  that  manoeuvres  tending  to  persuade  anybody 
that  one  can  procure  for  a  sum  of  money  the  cross  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour,  and  embracing  an  assertion  of  credit  which  does  not 
exist,  come  within  the  category  of  the  manoeuvres  foreseen  by 
Clause  405  of  the  Penal  Code." 

It  follows  then  that  in  the  opinion  of  the  judges  Wilson 
had  only  given  a  promise  to  try  to  procure  the  decoration  of 

1  The  other  members  of  Tirard's  Cabinet  were  Dautresme,  Commerce  ; 
Faye,  Education  and  Fine  Arts  ;  and  Viette,  Agriculture.  It  will  have  been 
observed  from  what  we  have  mentioned  above  that  three  future  Presidents  of 
the  Republic,  Loubet,  Faure,  and  Fallieres  served  in  this  Ministry. 


Sadi  Carnot 


THE  LEGION  OF  HONOUR  313 

the  Legion  of  Honour,  and  that  his  influence  being  real  there 
had  been  no  fraudulent  manoeuvre.  Briefly,  he  had  kept 
within  the  law  as  it  then  stood.  An  early  result  of  his  case 
was  an  alteration  of  the  law  so  as  that  it  might  cover  any 
similar  affairs  in  the  future.  It  cannot  be  said  that  every 
appointment  to  the  Legion  of  Honour  since  those  days  has 
been  unimpeachable,  but  absolute  corruption  has  undoubtedly 
been  kept  well  in  check.1 

From  another  point  of  view  it  may  be  pointed  out  that 
the  Legion's  very  name  indicates  that  nobody  guilty  of  any 
dishonourable  action  can  rightly  belong  to  it.  Its  regulations 
provide  for  non-admission,  suspension,  and  expulsion  in  the 
event  of  bankruptcy,  convictions  either  for  felony  or  for  certain 
misdemeanours  at  law,  as  well  as  for  actions  contrary  to  good 
morals  which  may  not  be  amenable  to  the  tribunals.  It  is 
unfortunately  true,  however,  that  a  one-sided  view  has  been 
occasionally  taken  with  respect  to  the  coU  passionnel  of  human 
life,  certain  incidents  in  some  men's  careers  having  been  airily 
overlooked  at  the  time  of  their  admission  to  the  order,  whereas 
in  the  case  of  nominees  of  the  other  sex  (and  women  are  now 
and  then  enrolled  in  the  Legion)  similar  incidents  have 
absolutely  debarred  them  from  admission.  When,  under  the 
Second  Empire,  Rosa  Bonheur,  the  great  painter,  was  nominated 
no  objection  could  arise,  but  when  it  was  suggested  that 
George  Sand,  the  great  novelist,  should  likewise  receive  the 
cross  of  honour,  the  Legion's  Council  was  ready  to  offer  the 
most  strenuous  opposition,  on  account  of  certain  notorious 
amatory  episodes  in  that  gifted  writer's  life.  In  like  fashion 
Rachel,  the  great  tragedienne,  would  have  been  ineligible, 
despite  all  her  genius,  even  if  women  had  been  admitted  to 
the  Legion  in  her  time. 

With  respect  to  the  strong  prejudice  existing  down  to  our 
own  period  against  the  inclusion  of  stage-players  in  the  order, 

1  On  June  1,  1907,  the  order  included  :  Military  members — 30  Grand 
Crosses,  176  Grand  Officers,  808  Commanders,  3,974  Officers,  and  25,276 
Chevaliers.  Civilian  members — 19  Grand  Crosses,  48  Grand  Officers,  278 
Commanders,  2,297  Officers,  and  12,279  Chevaliers.  Grand  total,  45,185 
members.  Since  1871  repeated  efforts  have  been  made  to  check  the  growth 
of  the  order,  which  has  long  been  the  most  numerous  in  the  world  ;  but  they 
have  always  failed,  one  or  another  circumstance  having  prevented  the  en- 
forcement of  stricter  regulations.  As  a  result  of  the  Entente  cordiale  the 
order  now  counts  nearly  500  British  members  of  various  ranks.  This  is  the 
most  numerous  of  all  the  foreign  contingents. 


4l 


314  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

it  must  be  acknowledged  that,  according  to  the  strict  letter  of 
the  statutes  drawn  up  under  Napoleon's  supervision,  they  were 
certainly  not  eligible  for  admission.  But  the  scope  of  the 
order  having  been  modified  and  enlarged  by  successive  Govern- 
ments, it  was  not  fair  that  distinguished  members  of  the 
theatrical  profession,  talented  exponents  of  dramatic  literature, 
should  still  remain  excluded.  The  difficulty  was  overcome  in 
one  way  or  another,  at  first  in  a  very  indirect  fashion — actors 
being  decorated  as  professors  of  their  art  or  State  officials,  by 
reason  of  their  connection  with  the  Conservatoire,  etc.,  but 
finally  there  has  been  in  some  instances  a  disposition  to  honour 
them  for  their  personal  histrionic  gifts.  It  may  be  added  that 
whenever  the  nomination  of  an  actor,  or,  indeed,  of  anybody 
else,  is  opposed  by  the  Council  of  the  Legion,  it  must  not 
necessarily  be  assumed  that  the  reasons  officially  assigned  for 
the  opposition  are  really  the  true  ones.  All  sorts  of  questions 
may  arise,  but  as  the  position  of  a  nominee  refused  by  the 
Council  may  well  become  delicate,  the  real  motive  of  exclusion 
is  often  left  unstated. 

It  might  be  imagined  that  after  M.  Wilson's  extraordinary 
adventure  and  an  acquittal  pronounced  under  such  circumstances 
as  we  have  stated  he  would  have  retired  into  private  life  for 
the  remainder  of  his  days.  But  he  did  not  even  resign  hjs  seat 
as  a  deputy.  He  still  disposed  of  great  influence  in  Touraine, 
where  his  sister  Mme.  Pelouze  had  her  property,  and  in  1893 — 
two  years  after  the  unfortunate  President  Grevy  passed  away 
at  Mont-sous- Vaudrey — he  was  once  more  elected  for  the 
arrondissement  of  Loches.  Unseated  by  his  colleagues  on  that 
occasion  for  exercising  undue  pressure  on  the  electorate,  he  was 
again  returned  in  1894,  and  in  1898  also.  It  was  only  in  1902 
that  he  finally  quitted  public  life,  in  which  his  position  had  so 
long  been  very  invidious. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  affairs  of  General  Boulanger.  Some 
of  his  intrigues  during  the  recent  presidential  crisis  were  well 
known  to  the  Government,  though  at  this  date  it  was  not 
aware  that  in  addition  to  his  close  intercourse  with  extreme 
Radicals  and  ultra-Patriots  he  had  established  direct  relations 
with  the  Bonapartist  and  Royalist  factions  also.  The  Bona- 
partists  had  been  first  in  the  field  in  their  endeavour  to  capture 
the  General  for  their  cause,  the  idea  emanating  from  one  of 
their  journalists,  a  certain  M.  George  Thiebaud,  who  prevailed 


BOULANGER'S  INTRIGUES 

so  far  with  Boulanger  that  already  early  in  1887  the  latter 
accompanied  him  under  the  name  of  Mft|for  Sf>lax  on  a  secret 
visit  to  Prince  Napoleon  Jerome  in  Switzerland.  It  does  not 
appear  that  there  was  then  any  absolute  proposal  that  Boulanger 
should  restore  the  Empire.  The  basis  of  the  negotiations  was 
that  Parliamentary  rule  was  collapsing  in  France,  that  the 
Constitution  needed  revision,  and  that  there  ought  to  be  a 
Plebiscitum  or  appeal  to  the  people.  For  the  rest  the  conver- 
sation between  the  General  and  the  Prince  covered  the  position 
of  France  in  regard  to  Germany  and  Alsace-Lorraine,  the 
Prince  naturally  holding  that  the  recovery  of  the  lost  provinces 
might  greatly  facilitate  the  restoration  of  the  Empire.  In  the 
course  of  the  visit  the  Prince  showed  Boulanger  his  interesting 
collection  of  Napoleonic  relics,  including  the  telescopic  spy -glass 
which  the  great  captain  used  at  Waterloo,  and  the  sword  he 
carried  at  Marengo.1  The  latter  particularly  interested 
Boulanger,  and  the  Prince,  observing  it,  said  to  him,  "Well, 
on  the  day  you  have  restored  Alsace-Lorraine  to  France  that 
sword,  I  promise  you,  shall  be  yours." 

The  General's  direct  intercourse  with  the  Royalists  dated 
from  the  second  of  the  "  Historical  Nights "  mentioned  in  our 
last  chapter.  Either  before  or  after  his  interviews  with  the 
Radical  leaders  he  was  approached  by  M.  de  Martimprey,  who 
urged  that  the  Republic  had  fallen  so  low  owing  to  the  decora- 
tions scandal,  that  it  was  absurd  to  prolong  its  agony,  and  that 
the  right  course  would  be  to  restore  the  monarchy — Boulanger 
playing  the  "  glorious  role  V  of  a  General  Monk.  One  of  the 
ex-Minister  of  War's  prominent  supporters,  a  certain  Count 
Dillon,  who  claimed  descent  from  the  Dillons  of  the  court  of 
Marie  Antoinette,  and  who  was  a  director  of  a  French  trans- 
atlantic cable  company,  was  present  on  this  occasion,  and  like- 
wise declared  himself  to  be  a  Royalist  at  heart.  Baron  de 
Mackau,  a  prominent  adherent  of  the  Count  de  Paris,  also  saw 
the  General,  who,  so  far  as  words  went,  acquiesced  in  the 
suggestions  made  to  him.  Mackau  then  communicated  with 
the  Marquis  de  Beauvoir,  the  Count  de  Paris'  official  represen- 
tative  in   France,  and   the    Marquis  wrote   the   Pretender   a 

1  We  remember  being  shown  those  relics  when  we  interviewed  Prince 
Napoleon  at  his  flat  in  the  Avenue  Montaigne  after  the  death  of  the  Imperial 
Prince.  There  was  also  a  travelling  valise  of  Napoleon  I.'s,  Kleber's  sword, 
the  pistols  carried  by  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  at  Waterloo,  and  a  singular 
massive  silver  shield  brought  to  France  from  the  Kremlin  in  1812. 


316  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

vaguely-worded  letter  respecting  a  general  officer  who  favoured 
the  restoration  of  the  monarchy — so  vague  a  letter  indeed,  that 
the  Count  de  Paris  imagined  at  first  that  it  must  refer  to  M.  de 
Galliffet.  However,  the  present  Duke  Decazes  (son  of  the 
former  Foreign  Minister)  soon  proceeded  to  London  with  full 
particulars. 

Those  matters  were  not  known,  it  would  seem,  to  General 
Logerot,  the  new  Minister  of  War,  when  he  took  office,  but  he 
was  acquainted  with  Boulanger's  various  acts  of  indiscipline, 
being  quite  aware  that  he  had  lately  made  three  journeys  to 
Paris  without  leave.  On  two  of  those  occasions  he  had  been 
disguised.  The  Minister  therefore  addressed  a  report  to  Presi- 
dent Carnot,  recommending  that  Boulanger  should  be  removed 
from  his  command  at  Clermont-Ferrand,  and  placed  on  half 
pay.  "  Approved.  The  President  of  the  Republic — Carnot  " 
was  appended  to  that  report  when  it  appeared  in  the  Journal 
Offwiel,  to  the  consternation  of  Boulanger's  supporters.  He, 
carried  away  by  anger,  did  not  even  wait  to  hand  over  his 
command  to  his  successor,  as  he  should  have  done,  but  hastened 
to  Paris,  where  a  Committee  of  Protest  gathered  around  him. 
Among  its  members  were  several  Republican  Extremists,  such 
as  Laur,  Laisant,  Deroulede,  Naquet,  Rochefort,  Mayer,  and 
Le  Herisse,  and  some  disguised  Royalists  and  Bonapartists,  such 
as  Dillon  and  Thiebaud.  Some  bye-  elections  were  then  pending 
in  the  Aisne  (Mezieres),  and  the  Bouches-du-Rhone  (Marseilles), 
and  it  was  resolved  that  the  General's  name  should  be  submitted 
to  those  constituencies.  Money  was  needed,  however,  and  a 
member  of  the  Committee  exerted  himself  to  find  it. 

This  was  M.  Arthur  Meyer,1  a  pushing  German  Jew,  at  the 
head  of  the  Royalist  newspaper  called  Le  Gaulois.  On  coming 
to  Paris  in  Imperial  times  Meyer  had  first  dabbled  in  theatrical 
journalism,  and  acted  as  " secretary'"  to  a  notorious  opera  bmiffe 
actress  known  as  Blanche  d'Antigny.  That  secretaryship 
apparently  qualified  him  for  another,  for  he  became  secretary 
to  the  Imperial  Plebiscitum  Committee  in  the  last  year  of  the 
Empire,  at  which  time  he  cultivated  the  patronage  of  such  men 
as  La  Gueronniere,  Janvier  de  la  Motte,  and  Count  Lagrange. 
After  the  war  of  1870  he  conspired,  after  a  fashion,  for  the 
Bonapartist  cause,  contrived  to  win  and  afterwards  lose  a  con- 

1  He  should  not  be  confounded  with  another  of  Boulanger 's  supporters, 
M.  Mayer  of  the  Lanterne. 


BOULANGER'S  FIRST  CANDIDATURE         317 

siderable  sum  of  money  at  the  Bourse,  then,  abandoning 
Imperialism  for  Royalism,  became  director  of  Le  Gaulois,  quitted 
it  to  establish  the  Musee  Grevin — the  Mme.  Tussaud's  of  Paris 
— and  finally  again  acquired  the  control  of  Le  Gaulois,  which 
he  now  made  far  more  Royalist  than  it  had  ever  been  in  the 
days  of  its  founder,  Edmond  Tarbe. 

Meyer  had  originally  met  Boulanger  at  a  dinner  given  in 
Paris,  it  is  said,  by  Sir  Charles  Rivers  Wilson,  long  Finance 
Minister  in  Egypt,  this  occurring  before  the  General  openly 
opposed  the  constituted  Government.  Meyer,  however,  was  a 
very  shrewd  man,  and  already  foresaw  certain  possibilities.  He 
spoke  of  them  to  Dillon,  whom  he  also  knew,  and  it  was  virtu- 
ally agreed  between  them  that  they  should,  as  far  as  possible, 
M  run  "  Boulanger  in  the  interests  of  the  Royalist  cause.  When 
it  was  decided,  then,  to  make  Boulanger  a  candidate  for  the 
Chamber,  Meyer  spoke  to  the  Marquis  de  Beauvoir  on  the 
question  of  funds,  but  the  Marquis  had  none  by  him,  and  the 
Count  de  Paris,  moreover,  had  as  yet  given  no  instructions. 
The  matter  being  urgent,  it  occurred  to  Meyer  to  approach  the 
wealthy  Duchess  d'Uzes.  This  lady,  nee  de  Mortemart,  was  the 
great-granddaughter  of  the  renowned  Veuve  Clicquot,  who 
amassed  a  colossal  fortune  by  the  sale  of  her  champagne.1  The 
Duchess  listened  favourably  to  Meyer's  proposals,  and  made 
an  immediate  advance  of  i?1000  to  cover  the  expenses  of 
Boulanger's  candidature  at  the  election  in  the  Aisne. 

At  this  moment,  however,  most  of  the  Radical  deputies  had 
rallied  round  the  Government,  for  the  programme  put  forward 
by  Boulanger's  Committee  displeased  them  in  several  respects. 
The  Administration  being  thus  strengthened,  Logerot  called 
upon  the  General  to  explain  the  use  which  was  being  made  of 
his  name  and  to  disavow  it,  and  as  only  an  equivocal  reply  was 

1  In  old  times  the  Dukes  d'Uzes  were  premier  Dukes  of  France.  Mme. 
Clicquot's  only  daughter  married  the  Count  de  Chevigne,  and  her  daughter 
espoused  Count  Louis  Samuel  Victorien  de  Rochechouart  de  Mortemart.  the 
issue  of  that  marriage  being  Marie  Adrienne  Anne  Victurnienne  Clementine, 
who  became  the  wife  of  Amable  Antoine,  Duke  de  Crussols  and  d'Uzes.  He 
died  leaving  the  Duchess  with  a  son,  now  holder  of  the  family  titles,  and 
two  daughters,  the  Viscountesses  d'Hunolstein  and  de  Galard.  We  may  add 
that  the  Rochechouarts  de  Mortemart  were  a  very  famous  house  of  old 
France,  but  no  family  ever  had  a  motto  more  likely  to  bring  the  claims  of 
long  descent  into  ridicule  : 

Ere  God  had  made  the  seas  to  roll 
Rochechouart  bore  waves  upon  his  scroll. 


318  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

received  from  him  the  Minister  resolved  on  more  drastic  action. 
Boulanger  had  been  guilty  of  a  breach  of  discipline  in  quitting 
his  command  before  his  successor's  arrival,  and  of  another  in 
allowing  himself  to  be  made  a  candidate  for  the  Legislature,  for 
though  he  held  no  command,  he  still  belonged  to  the  Army, 
and  by  the  Army  Law  he  was  ineligible  as  a  candidate.  To 
determine  the  position,  the  Minister  convoked  a  Court  of 
Inquiry  of  which  General  Fevrier  was  appointed  President. 
Boulanger's  Committee  thereupon  took  alarm,  and  tried  to  with- 
draw the  illegal  candidatures.  But  matters  had  gone  too  far, 
and  although  Boulanger  could  not  be  lawfully  elected,  he  headed 
the  poll  in  the  Aisne  with  45,000  votes.  At  Marseilles  he  was 
less  successful,  the  old  Revolutionary,  Felix  Pyat,  being  returned 
there  by  a  large  majority.  But  the  Court  of  Inquiry  now  met, 
and  decided  unanimously  that  Boulanger,  by  his  serious  infrac~ 
tions  of  discipline,  had  rendered  himself  liable  to  be  struck,  as 
unworthy,  off  the  Army  List.  The  Government  thought  it 
politic  to  take  a  more  lenient  course.  As  the  General's  length 
of  service  already  exceeded  thirty  years,  he  was  compulsorily 
retired,  thus  retaining  apparently  his  right  to  a  pension  (March 
27,  1888). 

One  result  of  all  this  was  to  render  him  eligible  as  a  deputy, 
of  which  circumstance  his  supporters  eagerly  availed  themselves. 
He  openly  became  the  leader  of  a  hybrid  party,  one  formed  of 
all  sorts  of  antagonistic  elements.  Though  we  feel  that  he  was 
really  fighting  for  his  own  hand,  he  seemed  to  be  playing  a 
quadruple  role.  To  the  Royalists  he  promised  the  Restoration 
of  the  Monarchy,  to  the  Imperialists  a  Plebiscitum,  to  the 
Patriots  the  recovery  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  to  the  Republican 
Extremists  a  democratic  Revision  of  the  Constitution.  All 
that  sub  roidr  of  course.  Publicly  his  programme  was  summed 
up  in  three  points :  Dissolution  of  the  existing  Legislature, 
revision  of  the  Constitution,  election  of  a  Constituent  Assembly. 
He  would,  indeed,  have  revived  a  regime  akin  to  that  of  1848, 
with  one  Chamber  only,  a  President  elected  by  the  whole  coun- 
try and  independent  of  that  Chamber — that  is  to  say,  disposing 
of  the  military,  naval,  and  police  forces,  and  all  the  public 
functionaries. 

Of  the  General's  popularity  in  many  directions  there  can  be 
no  doubt.  During  his  administration  at  the  War  Office  he 
had  certainly  done  his  utmost,  and  without  arriere  pen-ste,  we 


THE  BOULANGIST  MUSE  319 

think,  to  ensure  all  possible  creature  comforts  to  the  troops. 
Thus  the  men  were  grateful  to  him.  Among  the  officers 
many  of  the  younger  ones  favoured  his  cause,  eager  as  they 
were  for  a  promotion  which  a  war  for  the  recovery  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine  might  bring  them.  But,  fortunately  perhaps  for  the 
Republic  —  and  unlike  Louis  Napoleon  prior  to  the  Coup 
d'Etat — he  had  not  a  single  general  officer  on  his  side.  The 
thoughtless  masses  favoured  him  in  many  parts,  for  a  virulent 
and  unscrupulous  press  denounced  what  they  called  Republican 
corruption  on  all  sides.  Here  and  there,  too,  money  was  at 
work.  Portraits,  broadsheets,  pamphlets,  soon  flooded  the 
country.  As  for  the  songs  in  Boulanger's  favour  they  were 
innumerable,  and  in  France  there  is  nothing  like  a  good  song 
to  farther  a  man's  popularity  or  a  political  cause. 

Curiously  enough,  according  to  M.  Terrail-Mermeix's  little 
book  of  revelations,  Les  Coulisses  du  Boulangismey  the  first 
song  which  helped  the  Boulangist  party,  "En  rev'nant  de  la 
revue""  (1886),  was  not  expressly  written  with  that  object. 
Gamier  and  Delormel,  the  writers  of  the  words,  submitted 
three  versions  to  Paulus,  the  vocalist  who  made  the  song  so 
popular.     In  one  of  them  appeared  the  lines : 


Another  ran 


Je  venais  acclamer 

Le  brav'  General  Boulanger. 


Je  venais  acclamer 

Le  brav'  General  Negrier. 


While  a  third  contained  this  variation  : 

Je  venais  admirer 

Le  brav'  Commandant  Domine. 

Both  Negrier  and  Domine  were  very  popular  at  that  time 
in  connection  with  the  Tonquin  war,  but  Paulus  remarked :  "  Oh, 
the  first  version  will  do.  People  are  talking  a  good  deal  about 
General  Boulanger.  I  will  stick  to  him.,,  He  did,  and  the  song 
not  only  proved  a  powerful  factor  in  the  diffusion  of  Boulangism, 
but  its  sales  brought  Paulus,  Garnier  and  Delormel  a  net  profit 
of  i?2000.  At  the  time  when  it  was  still  all  the  rage  in  Paris, 
we  were  amazed  on  visiting  London  to  find  that  the  air  was 
very  popular  there  also,  but  we  presently  discovered  that  it  had 


320  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

been  utilised  for  a  song  in  honour  of  Queen  Victoria's  Jubilee, 
a  song  containing  two  admirable  lines — 

Then  shout  hooray 
For  Jubilation  Day, 

— which  have  ever  since  lingered  in  our  memory. 

But  apart  from  "  En  rev'nant  de  la  revue  "  there  were  many 
other  songs,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  in  honour  of  le 
brav*  gintral.     There  was  one  by  Gabillaud  with  the  popular 

refrain :  .  IH|||  ^ 

C'est  boulange,  boulange,  boulange, 
C'est  Boulanger  qu'il  nous  faut ! 

There  was  "  Le  General  Revanche,"  "  Francais,  buvons  a 
Boulanger,"  "  Le  voir  et  mourir,"  "  Les  Pioupious  d'Auvergne," 
and  the  Boulangist  "  Marseillaise  " — the  last-named  an  extra- 
ordinary production,  in  which  occurred  such  lines  as : 

Entendez-vous  les  cimetieres 

Fremir  au  cri  de  Boulanger  ? 
Ce  sont  nos  peres  et  nos  freres, 

Tous  les  martyrs  qu'il  faut  venger  ! 

Again  there  was  "  X  bas  Bismarck ! "  with  the  refrain  : 

Par  tout  le  sang  de  la  France  entiere, 

Par  le  passe,  par  les  morts  a  venger, 
Avec  le  Tsar,  pour  Dieu,  Frarce,  pour  la  Patrie  ! 

Mort  aux  Prussiens,  et  vive  Boulanger  ! 

But  perhaps  the  best  of  all  the  Boulangist  "  lyrics m  was 
Gabillaud's  "  II  reviendra,"  the  success  of  which  at  least  equalled 
that  of  Paulus's  original  song : 

II  reviendra 
Quand  le  tambour  battra, 
Quand  l'etranger  menac'ra 

Notre  frontiere ! 

II  sera  la, 
Et  chacun  le  suivra, 
Pour  cortege  il  aura 

La  France  entiere  ! 

At  the  last  stage,  when  Boulangism  was  declining  and 
suspicion  spreading,  a  satirical  and  sufficiently  significant 
"  note  *  was  sounded,  as  witness  this  quotation  from  yet  another 

song: 

Le  boulanger  de  notre  quartier, 
Est  l'plus  bel  homm'  du  monde, 


THE  BOULANGIST  MUSE  321 

II  a  z'un  oeil  bleu  singulier, 

Avec  un'  barbe  blonde. 
II  doit  gagner  des  milliers  de  francs, 

Et  meme  davantage, 
Car  des  farceurs,  depuis  quequ'  temps, 

Repet'nt  sur  son  passage  : 
Le  boulanger  a  des  ecus 

Qui  ne  lui  coutent  guere. 
D'ou  viennent-ils  ?    D'ou  viennent-ils  ? 

Via  le  mystere  ! 

Of  course  those  allusions  to  the  source  whence  the  General 
derived  his  means  would  have  been  regarded  by  patriots  as 
rank  trahison  at  the  time  when  it  seemed  possible  that  he 
would  become  master  of  France.  His  chances  were  favoured  by 
a  curious  circumstance.  Although  sincere  Radical  Republicans 
began  to  fear  his  ambition — even  Clemenceau,  his  old  school 
chum  at  Rennes,  at  last  drawing  away  from  him,  as  he  ought 
to  have  done  much  sooner — they  adhered  to  one  principle 
which  he  enunciated  in  his  own  programme,  that  of  the 
revision  of  the  Constitution.  They  did  not  appear  to  realise  that 
safety  for  the  Republic  resided  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
existing  order  of  things,  at  least  for  the  time  being.  They 
feared,  apparently,  that  if  the  opportunity  for  revision  were 
allowed  to  slip  it  might  not  occur  again  for  many  years. 
Floquet,  who  was  then  President  of  the  Chamber,  expressed 
that  view,  holding,  moreover,  that  revision  if  properly  effected 
would  pacify  the  country  and  check  the  Caesarian  tendencies 
which  Boulangism  was  assuming.  Tirard's  Ministry  was  of 
a  different  opinion,  and  Floquet,  desirous  of  supplanting  it 
and  of  showing  people  how  things  "ought  to  be  done," 
coquetted  with  the  extreme  Left  of  the  Chamber  in  order  to 
provoke  Tirard's  overthrow.  He  feared,  however,  that  his 
appointment  as  Prime  Minister  might  be  regarded  very 
adversely  in  Russia,  with  which  power  Frenchmen  generally, 
in  view  of  the  possibility  of  another  war  with  the  Germans, 
wished  to  remain  on  the  best  of  terms  ;  and  accordingly,  as  his 
position  brought  him  now  and  then  in  contact  with  the  Corps 
diplomatique,  Floquet  sounded  Baron  Mohrenheim,  the  Russian 
ambassador,  respecting  the  reception  which  his  assumption  of 
the  Premiership  might  meet  in  Russian-  official  circles.  For 
this  there  was  an  important  reason.  In  1867  when  Alexander  II. 
of  Russia  visited  Paris,  Floquet,  then  only  a  briefless  barrister, 


322  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

had  shouted  "  Long  live  Poland ! "  in  his  face,  while  he  was 
ascending  the  steps  of  the  Palais  de  Justice.  The  incident 
had  caused  great  unpleasantness  at  the  time,  notably  by  reason 
of  the  attempt  which  Berezowski,  a  Pole,  made  on  the  Czar's 
life  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  and  it  had  never  been  forgotten 
in  the  Russian  official  world.  Now,  however,  Floquet  offered 
the  amende  honorable  to  Alexander's  son  and  successor,  and  in 
return  Baron  Mohrenheim  was  good  enough  to  reassure  him 
respecting  the  reception  which  Russia  would  give  to  a  ministry 
formed  under  his  auspices. 

The  path  having  thus  been  cleared,  the  Radicals  advanced 
to  the  assault  of  Tirard's  Administration  by  supporting  a 
revisionist  proposal  which  emanated  from  a  Boulangist  deputy. 
Camille  Pelletan  and  Andrieux  spoke  in  its  favour,  and 
finally  came  the  inevitable  Clemenceau,  who  although  no  longer 
associating  with  Boulanger  nevertheless  played  his  game.  In 
the  result  Tirard  only  obtained  a  minority  of  votes  and  had 
to  resign  office  (March  30, 1888).  Once  again  then,  Clemenceau's 
crazy  destructiveness  prevailed.  He  had  overthrown  Gambetta, 
Jules  Ferry,  and  others,  now  he  also  overthrew  Tirard,  and  in 
doing  so  he  almost  placed  France  at  the  mercy  of  Boulanger, 
for  the  Floquet  Ministry  which  came  into  office  proved  one  of 
the  very  weakest  the  Republic  had  known.  And  Clemenceau 
reaped  no  personal  advantage  from  his  folly.  He  wished  to 
become  President  of  the  Chamber,  but  this  was  denied  him, 
Meline  being  elected  in  his  stead. 

Floquet  was  now  both  Premier  and  Minister  of  the  Interior, 
Goblet  took  charge  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Peytral  of  Finance, 
Lockroy  of  Education,  Legrand  of  Commerce  and  Industry, 
and  Fernouillat  of  Justice  and  Worship.  Admiral  Krantz 
retained  office  as  Minister  of  Marine,  and  Logerot  was  replaced 
at  the  War  Office  by  Freycinet — a  very  great  mistake,  for  all 
the  general  officers  were  opposed  to  Boulanger,  and  resented  the 
exclusion  of  one  of  their  profession  and  rank  from  the  chief 
military  post,  as  it  cast  suspicion  upon  their  loyalty  to  the 
Republic.  In  fact  nothing  was  better  calculated  to  throw  one 
or  another  malcontent  general  into  Boulanger's  arms. 

It  was  now  that  Boulangism  blossomed  forth  in  all  its 
beauty.  On  April  8  the  General  was  returned  at  a  bye-election 
in  the  Dordogne  with  Bonapartist  support,  polling  also 
numerous  votes  in   the  Aisne   and   the  Aude.      However,  he 


BOULANGEITS  APOGEE  323 

declined  the  Dordogne's  mandate  on  the  plea  that  he  had 
given  an  earlier  promise  to  the  electors  of  the  Nord.  The 
truth  was  that  he  and  his  partisans  were  working  a  virtual 
Plebiscitum  in  his  favour,  the  plan  being  that  his  name  should 
be  submitted  to  the  electors  as  often  and  in  as  many  con- 
stituencies as  possible.  In  that  way  not  only  would  he  and  his 
lieutenants  ascertain  how  far  he  was  supported,  but  repeated 
successes  at  the  polls  would  determine  an  even  greater  move- 
ment in  his  favour.  ^m. 
Such  a  campaign  could  not  be  prosecuted  without  money. 
The  earliest  supplies,  apart  from  the  Duchess  d,Uzes'>  advance 
of  i?1000  for  the  Aisne  election,  came  from  private  partisans 
who  spontaneously  sent  the  General  banknotes,  drafts,  and 
money-orders  to  such  an  extent  that  he  in  this  way  finally 
obtained  over  i?l 0,000.  Moreover,  a  Paris  publisher  named 
Rouff  paid  him  i?4000  for  the  privilege  of  putting  his  name  on 
a  popular  patriotic  work  called  V Invasion  Allemande,  not  a 
line  of  which  he  actually  wrote.  His  private  means  were 
modest.  He  was  worth  less  than  ,^3000  when  his  political 
campaign  was  really  started,  and  the  earlier  gifts  he  received 
from  private  supporters  were  small.  The  Count  de  Paris, 
however,  was  desirous  of  helping  him,  and  according  to  the 
Marquis  de  Beauvoir,  than  whom  there  could  be  no  better 
authority,  the  Pretender  spontaneously  offered  an  allowance  of 
<£>2200  a  month.  Of  that  amount  the  General  took  ^400 
for  his  personal  use,  i?600  being  devoted  to  the  current 
expenses  of  his  campaign,  and  c£1200  employed  in  "sub- 
sidising1' journalists.  There  was  still  nothing,  however,  for 
"  working  "  the  constituencies,  and  Boulanger  himself  declared 
that  three  million  francs  (i?l  20,000)  were  needed.  How  could 
so  large  a  sum  be  obtained  ?  Arthur  Meyer  again  appealed  to 
the  Duchess  dTJzes,  whose  first  idea  was  to  form  a  fund  to 
which  several  persons  would  contribute.  She  thought  that 
some  of  the  Count  de  Paris1  relatives  ought  to  subscribe  to  it, 
and  wrote  to  that  effect  to  his  brother,  the  Duke  de  Chartres. 
He,  however,  like  the  Duke  d'Aumale,  detested  Boulanger  (who 
had  struck  both  their  names  off  the  army  list),  and  declined  to 
contribute  a  sou,  even  although  there  was  the  prospect  of  being 
able  to  return  to  France  directly  the  General  should  acquire 
the  ascendancy.  The  authorisation  for  the  Duke  d^umale's 
return  given  at  a  later  period,  was,  of  course,  partly  due  to  his 


324  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

promised  bequest  of  Chantilly  to  the  French  Academy,  but  it 
was  also  suggested  by  important  political  considerations.  As 
his  detestation  of  Boulanger  was  notorious,  and  he  exercised 
great  influence  among  military  men  and  Conservatives  generally, 
Carnot  and  his  ministers  felt  that  an  authorisation  for  his 
return  would  be  a  most  politic  move. 

But  to  return  to  the  Duchess  d'Uzes,  she,  being  possessed 
of  great  wealth  and  desirous  of  contributing  to  the  restoration 
of  the  Monarchy,  answered  the  refusals  of  the  Duke  de 
Chartres  by  supplying  the  money  which  the  Boulangists  needed 
out  of  her  own  purse — that  is  to  say,  she  tendered  £1 20,000  to 
the  Count  de  Paris,  who  was  at  first  unwilling  to  accept  so 
large  a  sum.  But  the  Duchess  would  take  no  denial,  and  the 
money  was  entrusted  to  a  committee  of  five  members,  the 
Marquis  de  Beauvoir,  the  Marquis  de  Breteuil,  Count  Albert 
de  Mun,  M.  de  Martimprey,  and  Arthur  Meyer,  ta  be  expended 
in  accordance  with  the  requirements  of  the  Boulangist  cause. 
In  later  years  a  legend  sprang  up  that  the  money  had  not 
really  been  given  by  the  Duchess  d'Uzes  herself,  but  by  the 
famous  Jewish  financier,  Baron  Hirsch,  but  that  assertion  was 
surely  inspired  by  anti-Semitism.  There  were,  of  course,  several 
Jews  among  Boulanger's  entourage,  but  they  were  men  like 
Mayer  and  Meyer  who  had  apostatised  for  their  private  ends ; 
and,  curiously  enough,  Boulanger,  desirous  of  pleasing  every- 
body in  turn,  occasionally  posed  as  an  anti-Semite,  saying; 
"  One  of  the  first  things  we  shall  have  to  do  will  be  to  rid 
France  of  the  Jews ! "  In  those  days,  be  it  added,  anti  - 
Semitism — destined  to  reach  its  apogee  at  the  time  of  the 
Dreyfus  case — was  already  rampant  in  several  directions,  for 
,douard  Drumont's  notorious  book,  La  France  Juive,  had  been 
published  in  1886. 

Of  the  money  supplied  by  the  Duchess  d'Uzes,1  only  a 
bagatelle  was  spent  on  the  Dordogne  election,  but  at  the 
ensuing  contest  in  the  NorcJ  (April  15,  1888)  the  outlay  was 
«£*10,000,  expended  in  flooding  the  constituency  with 
pamphlets,  portraits,  placards,  and  paid  orators,  and  in 
favouring  influential  electors.  In  the  result,  Boulanger  polled 
172,500  votes,  or  87,500  more  than  the  moderate  Republican 

1  In  return  for  this  assistance  the  Boulangist  Committee  guaranteed  that 
whenever  there  was  an  "official"  Royalist  candidate  at  an  election,  he  should 
not  be  opposed  either  by  the  General  or  by  any  Republican  Boulangist. 


s* 


BOULANGEITS  APOGEE  325 

and  Radical  candidates  who  opposed  him.  The  impression 
throughout  France  was  tremendous.  Jules  Ferry  raised  a  cry 
of  alarm,  and  realising  that  Republican  concentration  was 
more  necessary  than  ever,  offered  to  give  the  Government  all 
the  help  he  could.  But  Floquet,  a  second  or  possibly  third-rate 
man,  often  foolish  and  always  vainglorious,  declined  the 
overture.  He  could  do  without  the  help  of  "  Famine "  and 
"  Tonquin w  Ferry ;  and  whereas  the  latter  declared  any 
revision  of  the  Constitution  to  be  extremely  dangerous,  he 
merely  adjourned  that  matter  for  a  short  time. 

The  Boulangist  faction  was  now  directed  by  a  permanent 
committee,  which  met  almost  daily  at  its  headquarters  in  the 
Rue  de  Seze,  near  the  Madeleine.  The  party  was  skilfully 
organised  throughout  France,  it  had  its  local  agents  in  every 
department,  its  travelling  agents  who  hastened  hither  and 
thither  at  a  moment's  notice,  and  it  must  be  said  that,  in 
addition  to  many  paid  servants,  there  were  others  who  worked 
quite  gratuitously  and  yet  most  zealously  on  its  behalf.  Let  us 
not  be  too  severe  on  them.  Their  devotion  was  sincere  even 
though  it  were  an  aberration  of  patriotism.  In  many  instances 
the  divisions  among  Republicans,  the  supineness  of  certain 
ministers  and  deputies,  the  charges  of  corruption  which  were  so 
often  current,  the  shame  of  the  decorations  affair,  the  difficult, 
almost  dangerous,  financial  situation  of  the  country,  with  its 
chronic  budgetary  deficit  ever  since  the  collapse  of  the  Union 
Generale  in  1882,  the  long-precarious  position  and  ultimate 
bankruptcy  of  the  Panama  Canal  Company,1  the  scandalous 
collapse  of  the  Comptoir  d'Escompte,  which  was  only  saved  from 
ruin  by  State  intervention,  followed  by  the  Credit  Foncier's 
troubles — many  thousands  of  people  being  interested  in  those 
institutions  —  all  such  matters  angered  or  disgusted  many 
Frenchmen,  and,  even  as  in  Louis  Philippe's  time,  the  faults 
of  individuals  were  imputed  to  the  regime  itself. 

Away  with  the  Parliamentary  Republic  since  it  brought 
turpitude,  ruin,  and  disgrace  in  its  train !  Away,  too,  with  the 
men  who  scattered  or  wasted  the  country's  resources,  military 
as  well  as  financial  !  Those  who  desired  la  Revanche  and  the 
reconquest  of  Alsace-Lorraine  were  perhaps  the  most  zealous 
of  the  great  mass  of  Boulanger,s  supporters.  In  one  way  or 
another,  then,  the  movement  was  largely  one  of  misdirected 
1  We  shall  deal  with  the  Panama  affair  in  our  next  chapter. 


326  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

patriotism.  Thousands  who  knew  nothing  of  what  was 
occurring  behind  the  scenes,  looked  to  Boulanger  as  to  a  man 
who  would  restore  the  national  life  to  a  state  of  cleanliness, 
prosperity,  and  dignity ;  a  man  also,  who  would  heal  France  of 
the  wound  from  which  she  had  been  bleeding  ever  since  1870, 
and  make  her  whole  again.  All  those  confiding,  simple-minded, 
honest  folk  knew  nothing  of  the  General's  real  character,  or  took 
account  of  the  many  ambitions  gravitating  around  him,  the 
cortege  of  anxious  pretenders  and  needy  or  aspiring  adventurers, 
each  of  whom  desired  to  make  the  popular  hero  his  tool. 

Thus  the  progress  of  "  the  cause  "  continued.  Even  as  the 
lily  and  the  violet  were  the  emblems  of  the  orthodox  Royalists 
and  Bonapartists,  so  now  the  red  carnation  flaunted  its 
sanguineous  hue  and  shed  its  spicy  perfume  through  the 
Boulangist  ranks.  When  the  real  flower  was  not  to  be 
obtained,  an  artificial  one  decorated  each  stalwart's  buttonhole. 
The  party's  motto  was  virtually  that  of  the  League  of  Patriots, 
so  largely  recruited  from  its  midst :  "  Who  goes  there  ? 
France ! "  And  its  chief — quitting  the  Hotel  du  Louvre, 
which  had  been  his  bivouac  ever  since  his  return  to  Paris  from 
Clermont-Ferrand  —  was  now  installed  in  a  handsomely 
appointed  house  of  the  Rue  Dumont  d'Urville,  nigh  to  the 
proud  arch  which  commemorated  the  glory  of  the  Grande 
Armee,  under  which  it  was  hoped  he  would  before  long  ride  in 
triumph,  avenging  that  desecrating  march  of  the  victorious 
German  legions  in  March  1871,  which  was  yet  so  well 
remembered  in  Paris.  Meantime,  surrounded  by  secretaries, 
lacqueys,  and  parasites,  he  was  leading  an  easy  life,  free  to 
indulge  his  somewhat  expensive  tastes.  He  went  into  society, 
dined  at  the  Hotel  d'Uzes,  in  the  Rue  de  la  Chaise,  Faubourg 
St.  Germain,  where  he  met  a  good  many  members  of  the 
authentic  Royalist  noblesse,  whom  the  Duchess  virtually 
compelled  to  attend  those  repasts  or  the  receptions  which 
followed  them ;  and  he  was  also  to  be  met  at  the  soire'es  given 
in  the  Rue  Fortuny  by  Dugue  de  la  Fauconnerie,  an  ex- 
Bonapartist  who  now  professed  to  be  a  moderate  Republican, 
though  his  salons  were  often  frequented  by  genuine  adherents 
of  Prince  Victor  Napoleon.  Thus  Boulanger  found  himself 
alternately  in  royalist  and  imperialist  circles. 

However,  when  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  met,  he  took  his 
seat  as  a  deputy  for  the  Nord,  and  on  June  4  he  called  upon 


BOULANGEITS  APOGEE  327 

his  colleagues  to  declare  that  the  Revision  of  the  Constitution 
had  become  a  matter  of  urgency.  This  motion,  however,  was 
promptly  rejected  by  377  to  186  votes.  Then  a  few  weeks 
were  spent  in  prosecuting  the  campaign  in  various  parts  of  the 
country,  the  Count  de  Paris  likewise  evincing  activity  at  this 
time — despatching  circulars  to  the  provincial  mayors,  and 
placarding  towns  and  villages  with  a  manifesto  in  which  he 
declared  himself  a  partisan  of  communal  self-government. 
The  Church  also  was  bestirring  itself,  demanding  guarantees  of 
Boulanger  in  return  for  its  support ;  and  one  of  its  new  organs, 
La  Croix,  founded  by  the  Assumptionist  Fathers,  who  with 
the  help  of  the  alleged  miracles  of  Lourdes  were  raking 
in  money  from  the  faithful,  printed  a  declaration  from  him 
stating  that  he  would  never  tolerate  any  kind  of  religious 
persecution. 

On  July  12  he  submitted  to  the  Chamber  a  motion  for  its 
dissolution.  There  was  an  angry  debate,  Floquet,  the  Prime 
Minister,  speaking  of  Boulanger  as  one  who  had  passed  from  the 
sacristies  of  the  priests  to  the  antechambers  of  Royalty,  while 
Boulanger  retorted  that  Floquet  was  an  ill-bred  usher  (pion) 
and  a  liar.  Then  he  theatrically  resigned  his  seat.  A  duel 
ensued  between  the  Premier  and  the  General,  and  to  show  how 
times  were  changing,  it  may  be  mentioned,  that  two  of  the 
latter's  former  Radical  friends,  Clemenceau  himself  and  Georges 
Perin,  acted  as  Floquefs  seconds.  The  duel  was  fought  with 
swords,  and,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  Floquet,  a  lawyer  by 
profession,  proved  to  be  far  more  expert  in  the  science  of  fence 
than  his  military  adversary.  Boulanger,  indeed,  knew  little  or 
nothing  of  it.  He  rushed  on  Floquet  with  senseless  impetuosity, 
and  succeeded  in  slightly  wounding  him,  but  in  return  he 
himself  was  wounded  severely  in  the  neck. 

His  friends  sent  word  of  what  had  happened  to  his  wife, 
then  resident  in  the  Rue  de  Satory  at  Versailles.  She  was  a 
lady  of  high  character  but  of  rigid  and  perhaps  somewhat 
gloomy  piety.  Two  daughters  had  been  born  of  the  marriage, 
but  for  ten  years  past  it  had  been  one  in  name  only.  Husband 
and  wife  did  not  live  together,  and  had  only  been  seen  in 
company  on  a  few  official  occasions  while  the  General  was 
Minister  of  War.  For  some  time  past  he  had  desired  to  regain 
his  freedom — that  is  temporarily,  for  he  wished  to  contract 
another    marriage — but,    according    to    one    account,    Mme. 


328  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Boulanger,  with  her  strict  Catholic  principles,  refused  to  be  a 
party  to  any  ordinary  divorce  proceedings.  An  attempt  was 
therefore  being  made  to  prevail  on  the  Pope  to  dissolve  the 
union.  When  Mme.  Boulanger  heard  that  her  husband  had 
been  wounded  she  refused  to  go  to  him,  saying  that  she  was 
sure  he  did  not  want  her,  but  as  a  matter  of  duty  she  would 
willingly  send  him  her  doctor. 

She  was,  no  doubt,  well  aware  of  his  liaison  with  Mme.  de 
Bonnemains,    which   appears   to   have  originated  in  or   about 

1886,  and  it  has  been  suggested  that  her  opposition  to  a  divorce, 
or  even  an  ecclesiastical  dissolution  of  her  marriage,  was 
inspired  less  by  any  religious  feelings  than  by  a  determination 
to  prevent  her  husband  from  marrying  his  mistress.  As  will 
presently  appear  there  are  indications  that  such  was  the  case. 
When  Mme.  Boulanger  refused  to  nurse  the  General  it  was  his 
mistress  who  did  so.  Marguerite  Crouzet — Spouse  divorcee  de 
Bonnemains,  to  employ  French  legal  parlance — was  born  on 
December  19,  1855,  and  was  now  (1888)  in  her  thirty-third 
year,  her  lover  Boulanger  being  fifty-one.  Her  beauty  was 
that  of  "  a  fine  woman.11  With  the  eyes  of  a  Juno,  she  had 
full  lips,  a  somewhat  large  and  prominent  nose,  and  a  bust 
which  would  have  appealed  to  Rubens.  She  belonged  to  a 
good  bourgeoise  family  possessed  of  ample  means.  One  of  her 
uncles  was  a  notary  with  an  extensive  practice.  Somewhat 
extravagantly  inclined,  she  seems  to  have  been  living  at  this 
time  not  on  her  income  but  her  capital,  at  the  rate  of  about 
i?3000  a  year,  some  ^500  of  which  were  paid  for  the  rent  and 
taxes  of  her  residence  in  the  Rue  de  Berri.  We  doubt  if  she 
were  ever  legally  "Viscountess"  de  Bonnemains  (though  she 
was  often  thus  designated),  for  her  father-in-law,  the  General 
Viscount  de  Bonnemains,   appears  to  have  been  still  alive  in 

1887,  at  which  date  she  had  been  divorced  from  her  husband, 
who,  in  his  father's  time,  only  claimed  the  rank  of  Baron.1 
It  is  quite  certain  that  she  became  extremely  attached  to 
Boulanger,  and  that  he  loved  her  with  all  the  passion  of  a  man 
in  his  prime.     His  supporters  subsequently  declared  that  she 

1  We  have  previously  alluded  to  the  Bonnemains  family.  See  anUy  p. 
298.  We  find  that  Charles  Frederic,  Viscount  de  Bonnemains,  General  of 
Division  and  Grand  Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  resided,  in  or  about  1887, 
at  38  Chauss^e  d'Antin,  Paris,  and  at  the  chateau  de  Nozay,  Cher.  His  son. 
Baron  de  Bonnemains,  was  living  in  the  Rue  de  la  Peyrouse  ;  and  the  latter 's 
divorced  wife  in  the  Rue  de  Berri  (No.  39)  as  stated  above. 


MADAME  DE  BONNEMAINS  329 

had  exercised  a  most  deleterious  influence  over  him,  ever 
deterring  him  from  taking  the  decisive  steps  which  might  have 
made  him  master  of  France.  It  at  least  seems  certain  that  the 
attachment  rendered  him  very  irresolute  during  the  latter 
stages  of  the  movement,  and  that  in  the  end  he  quite  sacrificed 
his  so-called  "  cause  "  to  his  love. 

While  he  was  recovering  from  his  wound  there  came  a  bye- 
election  for  the  Ardeche  at  which  he  was  a  candidate.  The 
party  was  so  confident  of  success  that  only  some  ^2000  were 
spent  on  this  occasion,  with  the  result  that  Boulanger  was 
defeated  by  15,000  votes.  This  elated  the  Republicans,  who 
immediately  declared  that  the  movement  had  spent  its  force 
and  was  subsiding.  But  on  August  19  there  were  bye-elections 
for  the  Nord,  the  Somme  and  the  Charente  Inferieure,  the 
General  being  a  candidate  in  all  three  departments.  And  all 
three  elected  him,  the  first  by  142,000,  the  second  by  57,000, 
and  the  third  by  76,000  votes.  Once  more,  then,  the  Re- 
publicans were  plunged  in  consternation.  It  is  true  that 
this  triple  victory  was  a  costly  one.  The  Boulanger  Election 
Fund  spent  £6800  in  the  Nord,  ^9400  in  the  Charente 
Inferieure,  and  ,£10,800  in  the  Somme  — that  is  <£27,000 
altogether !  It  was  evident  that  even  the  princely  war- 
chest  provided  by  the  Duchess  d'Uzes  would,  at  that  rate,  be 
speedily  exhausted. 

A  few  weeks  later,  the  man  of  the  moment  suddenly 
disappeared.  It  was  stated,  truly  enough,  that  he  had  gone  on 
a  voyage  de  convalescence.  But  where  was  he  ?  The  newspapers 
were  full  of  surmises  and  erroneous  reports  on  the  subject,  even 
as  they  were  in  those  later  days  when  ^mile  Zola  disappeared 
from  France,  and  we  contrived  with  the  help  of  an  astute  legal 
friend  to  hide  him  away  in  England.  Boulanger,  however,  had 
not  come  to  our  shores.  While  some  were  seeking  him  here, 
others  in  Holland,  and  others  in  Switzerland,  he  was  quietly 
staying  at  Tangiers  in  the  company  of  Mme.  de  Bonnemains. 
When  he  returned  to  France  at  the  end  of  October,  his  elder 
daughter,  Mile.  Marcelle  Boulanger,  was  married  to  Captain 
Driant,  who  had  formerly  been  his  orderly  officer.  The 
General  attended  the  ceremony  at  St.  Pierre  de  Chaillot 
(October  31,  1888)  in  full  uniform.  Mme.  Boulanger  was  also 
present.  So  was  the  Duchess  d'Uzes,  and  so,  too,  was  Mme. 
de  Bonnemains,  the  last  named  gorgeous  in  blue  velvet,  trimmed 


330  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

with  blue  fox.  At  this  period  the  Vatican  had  intimated  that 
the  General's  own  marriage  could  not  be  ecclesiastically  dissolved, 
and  he  now  adopted  the  more  prosaic  course  of  suing  for  an 
ordinary  divorce.  The  application  was  based  on  the  fact  that 
his  wife  had  long  lived  apart  from  him.  In  accordance  with 
the  usual  French  practice  both  parties  were  summoned  to  appear 
before  a  judge,  sitting  privately,  in  order  that  he  might 
attempt  to  reconcile  them  before  finally  authorising  the  suit. 
But  at  his  first  words,  so  the  story  runs,  Boulanger  interrupted 
him,  saying :  "  It  is  useless,  there  can  be  no  reconciliation,  for 
Madame  refuses  to  return  to  the  conjugal  domicile.'"  "  Indeed  I 
do  not,  Monsieur,1'  Mme.  Boulanger  retorted.  "  Give  me  your 
arm,  and  let  us  go  home."  That  was  a  woman's  wit — some 
might  perhaps  say,  spite — the  truth  being  apparently  that 
Mme.  Boulanger  was  prepared  to  adopt  any  tactics  in  order  to 
prevent  her  husband  from  marrying  his  mistress.  Of  course 
they  did  not  go  home  together,  but  the  General  found  himself 
foiled,  and  the  divorce  proceedings  were  dropped. 

There  was  no  little  turmoil  in  France  towards  the  end  of 
the  year.  The  Boulangist  demonstrations  became  more  frequent 
and  more  aggressive.  Floquet,  the  Prime  Minister,  still  wished 
to  effect  some  Revision  of  the  Constitution,  holding  that  by 
doing  so  he  would  deprive  the  General's  party  of  a  weapon  on 
which  they  greatly  relied.  Nevertheless,  late  in  1888,  he 
agreed  to  adjourn  action  until  circumstances  might  be  more 
favourable,  and  obtained  in  that  respect  a  vote  of  confidence 
from  the  Chamber.  About  this  time  one  of  the  Paris  deputies, 
an  obscure  individual  named  Hude,  died,  and  it  became 
necessary  to  replace  him.  Boulanger  was  naturally  made  a 
candidate,  while  the  Republican  party  adopted  as  its  nominee 
a  member  of  the  city's  Municipal  Council,  a  worthy  but  little 
known  individual,  M.  Jacques.  At  the  same  time  the  Socialists, 
who  were  now  beginning  to  raise  their  heads,  decided  to  run 
a  candidate  of  their  own  named  Boule.  Still  this  did  not 
influence  the  issue.  Great  efforts  were  put  forward  on  both 
sides,  though  the  Republicans  spent  nothing  like  the  money 
which  the  Boulangists  lavished  in  promoting  the  General's 
candidature  in  one  or  another  way.  Indeed  their  outlay 
amounted  to  no  less  than  0^18,000.  The  ballot  took  place 
on  January  27,  1889,  and  Boulanger  headed  the  poll  with 
244,000  votes,   or   a   majority   of  82,000   over   Jacques,   who 


BOULANGER'S  APOGEE  331 

polled  162,000— Boule  following  with  17,000  only,  and  some 
12,000  bulletins  being  declared  "spoilt."1 

Intense  was  the  excitement  that  night  in  Paris.  Boulanger 
and  his  intimates  assembled  at  the  Cafe  Durand,  near  the 
Madeleine,  their  usual  meeting-place,  and  many  people  imagined 
that,  in  presence  of  this  crowning  success,  the  General  would 
march  without  hesitation  on  the  Elysee  Palace.  The  police 
regarded  him  with  favour,  the  picked  soldiers  of  the  Garde 
Republicaine  made  no  secret  of  their  sympathy,  and  certainly 
no  more  favourable  opportunity  of  success  was  ever  offered  him. 
But  he  made  no  attempt  whatever,  being,  it  seemed,  amply 
satisfied  with  the  votes  he  had  secured  that  day.  His  inaction 
has  been  accounted  for  in  various  ways.  According  to  some 
writers  he  lacked  the  moral  courage  necessary  to  attempt  a 
Coup  d'Etat;  according  to  others  he  was  held  in  check  by 
the  thought  that  should  he  fail  and  be  arrested  or  shot — 
it  mattered  little  which — he  would  for  ever  lose  Mme.  de 
Bonnemains,  and  according  to  others,  he  was  resolved,  before 
taking  any  decisive  action,  to  await  the  result  of  the  general 
elections  which  must  come  some  months  later.  There  is,  how- 
ever, yet  another  explanation,  namely  that  in  his  agreements 
with  the  Count  de  Paris  and  the  Duchess  d'Uzes  he  had 
promised  to  make  no  attempt  to  restore  the  monarchy  by 
violent  means.  The  Count  de  Paris  was  impressed  by  the  fact 
that  every  regime  established  by  force  in  France  during  the 
previous  hundred  years  had  lasted  but  a  short  time  and  come 
to  a  violent  end.  The  first  Republic,  founded  by  a  sanguinary 
Revolution,  had  been  swept  away  by  Napoleon,  who  in  his  turn 
was  hurled  down  by  force.  The  Bourbons,  brought  back  by 
foreign  bayonets,  had  been  overthrown  by  a  tumultuous  popular 
rising.  The  Orleans  Monarchy,  born  amid  that  convulsion, 
had  perished  in  another — one  that  had  given  birth  to  the 
Second  Republic,  which  was  destined  to  be  throttled  in  the 
night  by  the  restorer  of  the  Empire.  And  his  sway,  like  his 
uncle's,  had  collapsed  amid  the  disasters  of  a  foreign  invasion. 
To  build  up  the  monarchy  afresh  by  forcible  means  would, 
then,  fate  it  to  destruction.  To  ensure  its  continuance  it  must 
be  established  in  a  peaceful  and  lawful  manner.  It  followed, 
therefore,  that  although  the  Count  de  Paris  was  anxious  to 

1  The  General  had  the  support  of  all  Royalist  and  Bonapartist  electors 
as  well  as  of  the  Revisionist  Radicals  and  the  so-called  Patriotic  Party. 


332  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

avail  himself  of  Boulanger's  influence  he  did  not  desire  to  see 
himself  set  on  the  throne  by  the  mere  power  of  the  sword ;  and 
we  have  been  told  that  this  is  why  the  General  never  attempted 
any  Coup  d^tat. 

We  doubt,  however,  whether  he  could  have  restored  the 
monarchy  by  that  means  or  any  other.  At  one  moment  the 
majority  of  the  country  might  certainly  have  accepted  him 
as  dictator,  but  at  any  attempt  to  enthrone  either  Bourbon 
or  Bonaparte  serious  conflict  would  have  arisen  among  his 
heterogeneous  army  of  followers.  The  Republican  form  of 
government,  whatever  its  faults,  still  remained  that  which 
divided  Frenchmen  the  least.  And  this  they  ended  by  realising, 
rallying  to  its  support,  and  beating  back  the  attempts  against 
it  with  all  the  more  zeal  when  they  discovered  that,  whatever 
dishonesty  might  have  lurked  here  and  there  among  their 
rulers  and  law-givers,  it  was  as  nothing  compared  with  that 
of  the  corrupt  gang  which,  under  such  pleas  as  patriotism 
and  public  probity,  aspired  to  become  their  masters. 

After  the  Paris  election  the  Floquet  Cabinet,  hitherto  all 
laissez  dire  and  laissez  jaire,  awoke  to  some  consciousness  of  its 
responsibility.  It  was  evident  that  the  electoral  successes  of 
Boulanger  and  his  adherents  were  largely  due  to  the  list-voting 
system,  rightly  rejected  in  Gambetta's  time,  and  foolishly 
adopted  in  1885.  If  it  were  maintained,  the  next  General 
Elections  might  become  a  Boulangist  Plebiscitum.  The  Govern- 
ment therefore  brought  forward  a  bill  for  the  revival  of  the 
scrutin  uninominal,  as  in  the  Republic's  earlier  days * ;  and 
after  a  very  sharp  fight  the  Chamber  passed  this  bill  by  a 
small  majority  (February  12,  1889).2  Floquet,  however,  was 
not  to  be  won  from  his  idea  of  pacifying  the  country  by 
means  of  Constitutional  Revision.  He  submitted  his  scheme  on 
February  14,  and  was  met  by  a  motion  for  adjournment.  The 
Conservatives,  the  Boulangists,  and  the  moderate  Republicans 
(that  is  the  Government's  usual  supporters),  coalesced  on  this 
occasion,  the  former  because  they  feared  their  interests  would 
suffer  if  Floquet's  particular  plans  were  adopted,  and  the  last 
named  being  steadily  opposed  to  any  revision  at  all.  In  the 
result,  as   the  Ministry  declined  to  adjourn    the   question,   it 

1  See  ante,  pp.  193,  243,  244,  261. 

2  In  the  summer  came  a  complementary  law  rendering  it  illegal  for  any- 
body to  be  a  candidate  in  more  than  one  constituency  on  any  occasion  that 
might  arise. 


FALL  OF  FLOQUET  333 

was  overthrown.  The  previous  Administration,  it  may  be 
remembered,  had  been  compelled  to  resign  precisely  because 
adjournment  had  been  its  policy. 

At  this  juncture  Waldeck- Rousseau,  emerging  from  his 
semi-retirement,  proposed  that  a  ministere  de  combat  should 
be  formed  to  fight  both  the  Boulangists  and  the  Radical 
Revisionists.  But  Carnot,  who  deemed  this  too  bold  a  course, 
requested  Meline  to  form  a  cabmet  de  conciliation,  and  on 
Meline  failing  to  do  so,  Tirard  returned  to  office,  this  time 
again  with  some  very  able  men.  Freycinet  was  maintained  at 
the  War  Ministry  ;  Rouvier  took  Finances  ;  Thevenet,  Justice  ; 
Faye,  Agriculture ;  and  Fallieres,  Education  and  Worship. 
Rear-Admiral  Jaures  became  Minister  of  Marine  and  the 
Colonies;1  Spuller,  so  long  Gambetta's  able  coadjutor  and 
devoted  friend,  was  appointed  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  and 
Yves  Guyot  assumed  the  direction  of  Public  Works.2  But  the 
most  important  nomination  was  that  of  Constans  as  Minister  of 
the  Interior,  a  post  he  had  already  filled  under  Freycinet  and 

1  Constant  Louis  Benjamin  Jaures,  born  in  Paris  in  1823,  and  an  uncle  of 
Jean  Jaures,  now  so  well  known  as  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  French  Socialists, 
had  seen  much  service  at  sea  when  in  1870-71  he  became  commander  of  the 
21st  Army  Corps,  belonging  to  Chanzy's  forces.  Under  the  Republic,  besides 
commanding  the  escadre  devolutions,  Admiral  Jaures  had  acted  as  ambassador 
at  Madrid  and  St.  Petersburg.  He  died  not  long  after  entering  Tirard's 
Cabinet,  his  post  then  being  taken  by  Admiral  Krantz. 

2  M.  Yves  Guyot,  so  well  known  in  England  of  recent  years,  was  born  at 
Dinan  in  Brittany  in  1843.  At  the  age  of  one-and-twenty  he  came  to  Paris  with 
a  scheme  for  a  navigable  balloon,  which  seems  to  have  been  unsuccessful. 
He  next  turned  to  politics,  edited  a  newspaper  in  the  South  of  France,  and 
eventually  became  a  contributor  to  Le  Rappel,  founded  by  Victor  Hugo  and 
his  friends.  Later,  M.  Guyot  established  Le  Radical.  He  served  for  some 
years  as  a  Paris  Municipal  Councillor,  exposed,  as  a  journalist,  many  abuses 
prevalent  in  the  Police  Service,  and  was  first  elected  to  the  Chamber  in  1880. 
Appointed  Minister  of  Public  Works  in  1889  he  retained  that  post  for  nearly 
four  years.  In  1893,  however,  he  failed  to  secure  a  seat  in  the  Chamber, 
and  thereupon  devoted  most  of  his  attention  to  economic  questions,  becoming 
probably  the  foremost  champion  of  Free  Trade  in  France.  At  the  time  of 
the  Dreyfus  case  he  was  director  of  Le  Siecley  and  ably  supported  the  cause 
of  justice.  During  the  Boer  War  he  was  virtually  the  only  journalist  in 
France  who  took  the  British  side  and  accurately  predicted  the  issue  of  the 
struggle.  A  very  active  as  well  as  able  man,  M.  Guyot  has  travelled  ex- 
tensively, and  produced  numerous  works  on  economical  and  political  subjects. 
One  may  particularly  mention  the  admirable  I>ictiormaire  du  Commerce*  de 
VIndustrie  et  de  la  Banque,  which  he  edited  in  conjunction  with  M.  Raffalo- 
vitch.  M.  Guyot  was  a  close  friend  of  Emile  Zola,  and  the  writer  has  long 
had  the  advantage  of  his  acquaintance. 


334  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Ferry  in  1880-81,  when,  with  unhesitating  vigour  he  had 
enforced  the  decrees  against  the  religious  orders.  His  return 
to  office  presaged,  therefore,  the  energetic  suppression  of  all 
factious  proceedings.  Born  at  Beziers  in  1833  and  the  son  of 
a  Registrar  of  Mortgages,  Jean  Antoine  Ernest  Constans  first 
became  an  advocate  and  then  a  professor  of  law  at  Douai, 
Dijon,  and  Toulouse.  He  entered  the  Legislature  in  1876  as 
a  deputy  for  the  Haute  Garonne,  and  after  serving,  as  we  have 
mentioned,  under  Freycinet  and  Ferry,  he  was  sent  on  a  mission 
to  Pekin,  and  in  1886  became  Governor  of  the  French  Indo- 
Chinese  possessions.  Now  that  he  was  again  a  Minister  the 
Boulangists  speedily  discovered  that  the  impunity  they  had 
enjoyed  under  the  weak  but  pompous  Floquet  was  quite  a  thing 
of  the  past. 

At  this  time  an  armed  band  of  Russian  adventurers,  led  by 
a  man  named  Atchinoff,  and  bent  on  intriguing  in  Abyssinia 
under  the  pretext  of  introducing  the  Greek  religion  into  that 
country,  contrived  to  land  at  Sagallo,  on  the  coast  of  the 
French  territory  of  Djibouti,  and  when  summoned  to  withdraw 
refused  to  do  so.  The  French  thereupon  fired  on  them  and 
killed  six  of  their  number.  Communications  passed  between  the 
Russian  and  French  Governments,  the  former  altogether  dis- 
avowing Atchinoff  and  his  expedition,  and  the  latter  expressing 
its  regret  at  the  fatal  issue  of  the  affair.  There  the  matter 
ended  as  regards  the  two  powers.  But  the  Boulangist  League 
of  Patriots  availed  itself  of  the  affair  to  make  a  violent, 
unpatriotic  attack  on  the  Republican  Government.  It  paid 
a  heavy  penalty  for  that  impulsive  rashness,  for  Constans 
peremptorily  dissolved  it  (February  28, 1889).  The  Boulangists 
should  have  given  more  heed  to  the  warning  than  they  did.1 
Only  one  of  them  was  really  alarmed  at  the  new  situation 
which  had  arisen,  and  that  was  Boulanger  himself.  He  now 
found  himself  much  more  closely  shadowed  by  detectives  than 
in  Floquet's  time,  and  rumours  that  his  actual  arrest  was 
intended  reached  him,  finally  unnerving  him  or  his  mistress  to 
such  a  point  that,  either  of  his  own  accord  or  at  her  solicitation 
(the  point  is  one  which  only  an  answer  from  the  grave  could 
elucidate),  he  suddenly  fled  with  her  to  Brussels,  where,  assuming 

1  There  was  another  significant  occurrence  a  week  later :  The  decree  of 
exile  against  the  Duke  d'Aumale  was  annulled,  and  on  March  12  he  was 
received  by  President  Carnot  at  the  £lysee. 


BOULANGEITS  DOWNFALL  335 

the  name  of  Bruno,  he  put  up  at  the  Hotel  Mengelle.  For 
several  hours  his  chief  acolytes  were  in  dismay.  They  felt  that 
his  flight  might  ruin  everything.  Besides,  they  deemed  his 
presence  in  Paris  to  be  the  more  essential  as  a  great  scandal 
had  just  arisen  in  connection  with  the  Comptoir  d'Escompte, 
and  the  Panama  Canal  Company  had  suspended  its  payments — 
all  this  causing  much  perturbation  in  financial  and  commercial 
circles,  and  affording  the  party  the  best  of  opportunities  for 
renewing  its  attacks  on  the  existing  regime's  corruption.  How- 
ever, at  the  first  news  of  Boulanger's  flight,  Count  Dillon  had 
followed  him  to  Brussels,  whence,  despite  Mme.  de  Bonnemains' 
tears  and  entreaties,  he  at  once  brought  him  back  to  Paris 
(March  14),  the  escapade  remaining  unknown  both  to  the 
Government  and  to  the  public  at  large.  At  this  juncture, 
being  temporarily  freed  from  petticoat  influence  and  inspired 
by  his  friends,  the  General  again  showed  some  energy.  On 
March  17  he  made  a  speech  at  Tours,  in  which  he  called  upon 
the  Catholic  Church  and  the  faithful  to  rally  round  him,  while 
on  the  19th  he  issued  a  manifesto  against  the  greedy,  devouring 
"  pack  of  Parliamentarians.'" 

But  there  was  justification  for  his  earlier  alarm.  The  new 
Government  had  quite  determined  to  arrest  him.  Certain  facts 
had  become  known  to  it,  and  inquiries  respecting  others  were 
progressing.  Constans  was  rendered  the  more  eager  for  action 
by  an  impudent  interpellation  of  the  Boulangist  deputy, 
Laguerre,  who,  in  dealing  with  some  of  the  current  financial 
scandals,  suggested  that  the  Minister  had  taken  bribes  and 
secret  commissions  from  a  certain  source.  "  All  I  ever  received 
from  that  source,"  replied  Constans,  "was  the  present  of  a 
Lyons  sausage,  which  I  ate.""  That  naturally  set  the  Chamber 
laughing,  but  the  Minister  was  indignant  at  having  such 
charges  brought  against  him.  At  last,  however,  all  was  ready 
for  Boulanger's  arrest,  and  M.  Loze,  the  Prefect  of  Police,  was 
summoned  to  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  (where  some  of  the 
chief  members  of  the  Cabinet  were  assembled)  to  receive  instruc- 
tions. They  were  no  sooner  given  him,  however,  than  he  began 
to  object  because  he  feared  a  rising  in  Paris,  and  was  not  certain 
of  the  fidelity  of  his  officers.  After  listening  to  him  for  a  few 
minutes,  Constans  suddenly  exclaimed :  "  Very  well,  if  you  fear 
to  carry  out  your  instructions,  resign  your  post.  Here  are  pen, 
ink,  and  paper.     We  were  prepared  for  this  contingency,  and 


336  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

we  know  whom  to  put  in  your  place."  The  Minister's  energy 
disconcerted  the  Prefect,  who  protested  that  he  was  not  wanting 
in  courage,  but  had  merely  wished  to  point  out  what  serious 
eventualities  might  arise.  He  was  quite  willing  to  obey  his 
orders,  he  added,  and  he  went  off  to  make  his  preparations.1 

He  was  certainly  right  in  doubting  the  fidelity  of  some  of 
his  subordinates,  for  Boulanger,  Dillon,  and  Rochefort  heard  of 
what  was  brewing,  and  whoever  their  exact  informants  may 
have  been — Rochefort  has  declared  that  in  his  own  case  it  was 
Countess  de  Bari,  wife  of  the  brother  of  Francis  II.  of  Naples — 
the  information  must  have  first  emanated  from  a  police  official. 
The  Government  really  wished  to  arrest  the  General,  and  not, 
as  often  asserted,  merely  to  frighten  him  into  leaving  France, 
though,  after  all,  it  was  perhaps  as  well  that  he  took  that 
course.  On  quitting  his  house  in  the  Rue  Dumont  d'Urville 
on  the  evening  of  April  1,  he  was  perceived  and  followed  to  the 
Northern  Railway  Station  by  a  detective  named  Godefroy,  who, 
after  seeing  him  start  for  Brussels,  repaired  to  the  Prefecture  of 
Police  to  inform  his  superiors.  The  Prefect  was  absent,  how- 
ever— at  the  Grand  Opera  with  his  daughters,  so  it  was  ultimately 
ascertained — and  in  his  absence  no  action  was  taken,  presumably 
because  the  subordinate  functionaries  thought  it  best  to  allow 
the  General  to  escape. 

He  stayed  at  the  Hotel  Mengelle  at  Brussels  for  some  three 
weeks.  Mme.  de  Bonnemains  was  with  him,  Dillon  and 
Rochefort — for  whose  arrest,  also,  warrants  had  been  issued — 
followed.  Then  came  other  members  of  the  Permanent  Com- 
mittee, and  deputations  galore,  everybody  being  so  hospitably 
treated  that  at  the  end  of  the  first  fortnight  the  General's  bill 
amounted  to  i?880.  Such  was  the  number  of  adherents  who 
flocked  round  him  and  so  fervid  were  their  demonstrations  that 
M.  Bernaert,  the  Belgian  Premier,  sent  word  that  it  would  be 
best  for  him  and  his  friends,  in  their  own  interests,  to  transfer 
their  headquarters  to  another  country.  The  hint  was  taken, 
and  on  April  24  Boulanger  arrived  in  London  with  his  supporters 
Dillon  and  Naquet,  many  others  following  them.  When 
Boulanger  alighted  from  the  train  at  Charing  Cross  he  was 
accorded  a  kind  of  public  reception,  among  those  who  greeted 

1  We  have  told  the  story  as  it  was  related  to  us  several  years  ago  by  one 
of  the  Ministers  present  on  the  occasion.  Since  those  days  the  Prefect  has 
risen,  like  M.  Constans  himself,  to  a  high  position  in  the  French  diplomatic 
service. 


BOULANGER'S  DOWNFALL  337 

him  being  several  portly  dames  of  the  quartier  Jrangais,  whom 
he  chastely  embraced.  For  a  short  time  he  was  patronised  by 
that  excellent  lady  the  Baroness  Burdett-Coutts,  who,  unfortun- 
ately, would  seem  to  have  been  very  badly  advised  in  the  matter. 
She  invited  a  number  of  notabilities  to  meet  the  General  at 
dinner  in  Stratton  Street,  but  the  impression  he  produced  was 
by  no  means  favourable,  and  on  the  irregularity  of  his  private 
life  becoming  known  (as  it  should  have  been  at  the  outset,  con- 
sidering the  number  of  people  who  were  acquainted  with  it  in 
Paris)  English  society  dropped  him  as  suddenly  as  it  had  taken 
him  up. 

A  house  had  been  rented  for  him  in  Portland  Place,  and 
together  with  a  host  of  English  newspaper  reporters,  all  the 
Boulangist  tag,  rag,  and  bobtail  flocked  to  his  receptions  there. 
A  visit  we  paid  one  Sunday  filled  us  with  much  amusement. 
After  filing  past  the  General  in  the  drawing-room,  where  all 
the  men  desired  to  shake  hands  with  him,  while  the  women, 
including  some  strange  Leicester  Square  characters,  were  eager 
to  exchange  a  kiss,  we  were  prompted  by  a  sound  of  revelry  on 
high  to  explore  the  other  parts  of  the  house ;  and  we  then 
found  most  of  the  bedrooms  occupied  by  individuals  who,  after 
paying  their  respects  to  the  General,  had  felt  desirous  of  drink- 
ing his  health  as  often  and  as  copiously  as  possible.  It  so 
happened  that  the  enterprising  agent  of  some  French  wine- 
shippers  had  forwarded  a  large  supply  of  champagne,  claret, 
burgundy,  and  cognac;  and  the  Boulangist  stalwarts  having 
procured  a  number  of  bottles  of  wine  or  spirits  had  retired 
with  them  to  the  seclusion  of  the  bedrooms,  where  they  sprawled 
on  the  beds  and  the  floors,  smoking  and  toasting  the  hero  who 
was  so  gallantly  kissing  the  ladies  downstairs. 

Meantime  legal  proceedings  against  him,  and  also  against 
Dillon  and  Rochefort,  were  pending  in  Paris.  The  Government 
was  opposed,  however,  by  Bouchez,  the  Procureur  general,  who 
favoured  the  Boulangist  cause,  and  it  became  necessary  to 
replace  him  by  Quesnay  de  Beaurepaire.  The  investigation  of 
the  affair  lasted  three  months,  and  when  the  indictment  drafted 
by  Beaurepaire  became  known,  it  was  found  to  resemble  a 
novelette,  which  was  not  perhaps  so  very  surprising,  as,  under 
the  pseudonym  of  Jules  de  Glouvet,  M.  le  Procureur  had  pre- 
viously issued  three  or  four  works  of  fiction.  The  charges, 
however,  were  serious  enough,  for  they  included  both  conspiracy 


338  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

against  the  safety  of  the  State,  and  misappropriation  of  public 
money,  the  General  being  accused  of  employing,  both  while 
Director  of  Infantry  and  Minister  of  War,  some  of  the  Secret 
Service  Fund  of  his  department  for  the  purpose  of  making  him- 
self popular  among  the  troops.  In  connection  with  the  charge 
of  conspiracy  there  was  particular  mention  of  his  secret  visit  to 
Prince  Napoleon  at  Prangins.  Owing  to  those  charges  desperate 
efforts  were  made  by  M.  Arthur  Meyer  and  others  to  induce 
the  General  to  return  to  France,  face  the  music,  and  confound 
his  accusers,  but,  influenced  by  Mme.  de  Bonnemains,  he  was 
unwilling  to  do  so. 

Paris  was  now  celebrating  the  centenary  of  the  Revolution 
of  1789,  and  a  great  International  Exhibition,  with  the  famous 
Eiffel  Tower  as  one  of  its  most  remarkable  features,  was  being 
held  on  the  Champ  de  Mars.  Prior  to  its  inauguration  there 
was  a  festival  at  Versailles,  when  Carnot,  surrounded  by  all  the 
great  bodies  of  the  State,  delivered  an  eulogistic  address  on  the 
First  Revolution.  On  his  way  to  that  ceremony  he  was  fired 
at  by  a  weak-witted  young  fellow  named  Perrin,  who  escaped 
with  a  sentence  of  four  months1  imprisonment.  With  the 
masses  generally  the  President  was  now  becoming  extremely 
popular.  He  was  applauded  by  huge  crowds  wherever  he  went, 
whether  it  were  to  the  Exhibition,  the  Opera,  the  inauguration 
of  the  new  Sorbonne,  or  the  great  gathering  of  some  18,000  of 
the  mayors  of  France  at  the  Palais  de  Tlndustrie  ;  and  although 
some  Boulangist  deputies,  notably  Advocate  Laguerre,  exerted 
themselves  to  keep  "  the  cause ,1  before  the  public,  it  was  already 
evident  that  the  craze  for  le  brav*  gintral  was  subsiding. 
Indeed,  when  elections  for  the  departmental  and  district 
councils  took  place  throughout  the  country  at  the  end  of  July, 
Boulanger,  though  a  candidate  in  virtually  400  constituencies, 
was  returned  in  only  12.  The  combined  Boulangist  and 
Reactionary  parties  secured  altogether  489  seats,  whereas  950 
were  obtained  by  the  Republicans,  and  were  so  distributed  as 
to  give  them  a  majority  in  74  departments. 

A  little  later  the  Senate  assembled  as  a  High  Court  of 
Justice  to  adjudicate  on  the  charges  against  Boulanger  and  his 
alleged  accomplices,  Rochefort  and  Dillon.  The  decision  was 
given  on  August  14,  when,  by  206  members  to  3,  Boulanger 
and  Dillon  were  found  guilty  of  conspiracy,  Rochefort  being 
convicted  on  the  same  count  by  183  to  23.     Boulanger  alone 


BOULANGER'S  DOWNFALL  339 

was  convicted  of  misappropriation  of  money  belonging  to  the 
Secret  Service  Fund.  The  sentence  passed  by  the  court  on  all 
three  offenders  was  one  of  transportation  for  life  to  a  fortified 
place,  but  they  were,  of  course,  in  perfect  safety  in  London. 
Rochefort,  for  his  part,  regularly  wrote  leading  articles  for  his 
newspaper,  ISIntransigeant,  from  which  he  derived  a  comfort- 
able income,  and  devoted  his  spare  time  to  artistic  matters,  in 
which  he  had  some  taste.  It  was  then  that  he  discovered  there 
had  once  existed  a  painter  called  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence. 

Boulanger,  either  just  before  or  after  his  conviction  by 
default,  had  an  interview  with  the  Count  de  Paris  at  the 
temporary  London  residence  of  the  Duchess  d'Uzes.  At  this 
moment,  whatever  might  be  the  difficulties  of  the  situation, 
neither  the  Count  nor  the  General  thought  of  throwing  up  the 
sponge,  for  they  expected  good  results  from  the  coming  general 
elections  in  France.  They  issued  several  manifestoes  attacking 
the  Republic,  and  Prince  Victor  Bonaparte  displayed  similar 
activity.  But  at  the  first  ballots  on  September  22,  230 
Republicans  were  elected  against  86  Royalists,  52  Bonapartists, 
and  22  Boulangists.  Further,  129  Republicans  were  returned 
on  October  6,  and  the  new  Chamber  ultimately  consisted  of 
366  Republicans  and  210  members  of  the  various  opposition 
groups.  Boulanger  had  lost  his  civil  rights  by  reason  of  his 
recent  condemnation,  nevertheless  his  friends  nominated  him  in 
the  Clignancourt  district  of  Paris,  where  he  polled  7816  votes 
against  5507  given  to  a  Republican  named  Joffrin.  The 
latter  secured  the  seat  owing  to  the  General's  disqualification. 
In  the  provinces  the  most  remarkable  occurrence  was  the  defeat 
of  Jules  Ferry  by  a  Boulangist  at  St.  Die,  which  he  had 
represented  since  1871.  It  was  a  hard  blow  but  he  accepted  it 
with  equanimity,  remarking  in  a  letter  which  he  wrote  on  the 
subject:  "The  Republic  emerges  triumphant  from  a  redoubt- 
able crisis,  so  what  does  it  matter  if  she  leaves  me  behind  her 
on  the  battlefield  ?  " 

Boulanger,  however,  had  been  deeply  affected  by  the  result 
of  the  first  ballots,  and  would  have  gone  to  America  had  it  not 
been  for  the  expostulations  of  his  friends.  When  the  blow  of 
the  second  ballots  had  fallen,  and  he  saw  absolutely  everything 
collapsing  around  him,  nobody  could  dissuade  him  from 
retirement,  and  two  days  later  he  and  his  mistress  quitted 
London    for   Jersey,   and   installed    themselves   at   the    Hotel 


340  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

de  la  Pomme  (TOr  at  St.  Helier's.  They  spent  the  winter 
there. 

In  February  some  little  stir  occurred  in  Paris  owing  to  an 
escapade  of  the  Royalist  Pretender's  son,  the  young  Duke 
d'Orleans.  Although  the  Law  of  Exile  prohibited  his  presence 
in  France,  he  made  his  way  to  the  capital,  put  up  at  the 
residence  of  the  Duke  de  Luynes,  and  announced  that,  having 
now  attained  the  requisite  age,  he  had  come  to  serve  his  time 
in  the  army.  The  authorities  retorted  by  lodging  him  in  the 
Conciergerie,  and  the  newspapers  made  no  little  fun  of  the 
affair,  as  the  young  Prince,  instead  of  sharing  with  his  "  fellow 
conscripts  "  the  contents  of  the  usual  army  gamelk,  or  porringer 
— one  of  his  professed  desires1 — was  regaled  with  copious 
dejeuners  and  dinners  procured  from  a  very  good  restaurant. 
On  being  tried  by  the  Eighth  Correctional  Police  Court  for 
infringing  the  exile  law,  he  defended  himself  with  some  wit  and 
spirit,  remarking  that  even  if  his  judges  should  convict  him  he 
was  convinced  that  he  would  at  least  be  acquitted  by  the 
200,000  conscripts  whose  turn  for  service  had  arrived. 
Sentenced  to  two  years''  detention,  he  was  removed  to  the 
prison  of  Clairvaux,  but  less  than  four  months  afterwards  the 
authorities  released  him,  and  he  was  sent  out  of  France. 

Meantime  there  had  been  a  change  of  Ministry  and  some 
other  notable  events  of  which  we  shall  speak  in  our  next 
chapter.  All  we  need  mention  here  is,  first,  that  at  the  Paris 
Municipal  elections  of  April  1890,  only  three  out  of  eighty 
Boulangist  candidates  were  elected.  The  movement  was 
evidently  dead.  In  fact  on  May  21  the  General  himself 
V  announced  the  dissolution  of  his  Committee.  Next,  in 
September,  came  the  publication  of  the  many  revelations  of 
Terrail-Mermeix,  sometime  a  Boulangist  deputy  for  the  seventh 
arrondissement  of  Paris.  These  dealt  the  cause  a  final 
decisive  blow. 

The  General  and  Mme.  de  Bonnemains  were  still  residing  at 
Jersey,  but  had  removed  from  the  Pomme  d'Or  to  a  house  at 
St.  Brelade.  The  island's  humid  climate,  was,  however,  by 
no  means  suited  to  Mme.  de  Bonnemains.  She  contracted 
pulmonary  consumption,  and  then,  by  slow  degrees,  this  beautiful 
woman   with   the   statuesque  figure,   the   bust   which   Rubens 

1  He  received  on  that  account  the  nickname  of  Gamelh,  which  clung  to 
him  for  several  years. 


BOULANGER'S  DEATH  341 

might  well  have  chosen  as  a  model,  shrank  to  a  skeleton.  For 
some  time  her  lover  did  not  appear  to  notice  it.  He  himself 
was  ageing  rapidly,  growing  grey,  careworn,  and  bent.  The 
Parisians  would  have  no  longer  recognised  the  gallant  soldier 
on  the  prancing  black  charger  whom  they  had  once  applauded 
so  frantically :  the  dashing  captain  who  was  to  have  restored 
Alsace-Lorraine  to  France.  The  manage  was  at  least  free  from 
pecuniary  cares,  for  the  General  was  apparently  still  possessed  of 
considerable  resources,  and  Mme.  de  Bonnemains  about  this  time 
inherited  a  fortune  of  over  i?l 00,000  from  the  widow  of  her 
uncle  the  notary.  But  the  unfortunate  woman  was  wasting 
away,  racked  by  incessant  coughing,  and  displaying  that 
distaste  for  food  which  is  so  characteristic  of  the  terrible 
disease  that  had  fallen  on  her.  In  February  1891  she  made  a 
journey  to  Paris,  where  she  became  so  ill  that  the  doctors  would 
not  allow  her  to  return  to  Jersey.  She  at  last  joined 
Boulanger  at  Brussels,  where  he  rented  a  house  in  the  Rue 
Montoyer.  It  was  handsomely  furnished ;  all  comfort,  even 
luxury,  surrounded  them;  but  death  was  hovering  near,  and 
could  not  long  be  warded  off.  Their  last  days  together  were 
somewhat  embittered,  it  has  been  said,  by  certain  dissensions, 
provoked  by  anonymous  letters  addressed  to  the  General,  but 
his  grief  was  intense  when  on  July  16  his  mistress  at  last  passed 
away.  Her  fortune  was  bequeathed  to  three  distant  female 
relatives,  who  desired,  we  believe,  to  take  charge  of  her 
interment.  But  the  General  would  not  allow  it,  and  she  was 
laid  to  rest  in  a  vault  at  the  cemetery  of  Ixelles,  near  Brussels. 
He  lingered  on,  greatly  afflicted  by  her  loss,  until  September 
30,  when,  at  half-past  eleven  in  the  morning,  he  shot  himself 
dead  beside  her  grave.  That  afternoon  President  Carnot  gave 
a  great  garden  party  in  the  grounds  of  the  Elysee  Palace,  and 
in  the  midst  of  that  gay  entertainment  there  came  tidings  of 
the  death  of  the  man  who  had  been  the  most  dangerous  enemy 
that  the  Republic  had  known  since  its  foundation. 

He  was  buried  at  Ixelles  on  October  3.  Rochefort, 
Deroulede,  a  score  of  deputies,  and  a  couple  of  hundred  other 
Boulangists  attended  the  ceremony.  The  Belgian  Primate, 
the  Cardinal  Archbishop  of  Mechlin,  had  forbidden  all  religious 
rites  as  the  deceased  had  committed  suicide,  and  speeches  were 
prohibited  by  the  civil  authorities.  When  the  coffin  containing 
the  General's  remains  had  been  deposited  beside  that  of  the 


342  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

woman  he  had  loved,  Deroulede  sprinkled  over  it  a  little  French 
soil  he  had  brought  with  him.  That  was  all.  Georges  Boulanger, 
sometime  the  most  prominent  figure  in  France,  and  Marguerite 
Crouzet,  sometime  de  Bonnemains,  still  sleep  side  by  side  in 
the  Belgian  cemetery,  their  grave  inscribed  only  with  their 
Christian  names  and  the  dates  of  their  respective  births  and 
deaths.  The  thought  that  conspicuous  courage  and  high 
ability  on  the  one  hand — for  Boulanger  displayed  both  those 
qualities  during  his  earlier  years — and  that  beauty  and  charm 
on  the  other,  should  have  ended  so  pitifully,  stays  the  words  of 
judgment  which  we  might  otherwise  have  appended  here.  Let 
us  only  add :  Requiescant  in  pace. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  GREAT  PANAMA  SCANDAL 

Some  Royalties  in  Paris— The  Comptoir  d'Escompte  and  the  Copper  Corner 
— A  Municipal  Scandal— A  Memorable  Freycinet  Ministry — A  great  Loan, 
— Cronstadt  and  Portsmouth*— The  Pope,  the  Clergy,  and  the  Republic — 
Loubet  Prime  Minister — Retirement  of  Constans — The  Panama  Canal 
Company — Ferdinand  de  Lesseps— The  Canal  Scheme  and  the  Earlier 
Work— Alexandre  Eiffel  and  the  Canal  Locks— The  Panama  Lottery 
Bonds— A  Debacle — The  Company  in  Bankruptcy — Frenzied  Finance — 
Twenty-Three  Millions  Sterling  squandered— Prosecution  and  Parlia- 
mentary Inquiry — Baron  de  Reinach — Loubet  replaced  by  Ribot — 
Cornelius  Herz,  Charlatan  and  Blackmailer — Prosecution  of  the  Company's 
Directors— The  Sad  State  and  Death  of  Ferdinand  de  Lesseps — Proceed- 
ings against  Deputies  and  Senators — Floquet  and  Newspaper  Subsidies 
— The  Case  of  ex-Minister  Baihaut — Death  of  Jules  Ferry— Many 
Acquittals— Sentences  on  Charles  de  Lesseps,  Baihaut,  and  Blondin — 
Charles  Dupuy  as  Prime  Minister— The  General  Elections  of  189£^f  he 
Mysterious  X. — The  Norton  Forgeries — Cornelius  Herz  and  his  Extradi- 
tion— Arton's  Fate  and  Revelations — More  Prosecutions  and  Acquittals 
—The  Chamber's  Vote  of  Censure— The  Affair  Reviewed— The  Fate  of 
the  Canal  Scheme — Purchase  by  the  United  States. 

Carnot's  Presidency  was,  from  first  to  last  a  period  of  political 
and  social  unrest.  The  bark  of  the  Republic  had  to  be  navigated 
through  a  sea  of  troubles,  storm  followed  storm,  and  the 
intervals  of  sunshine  were  brief  and  infrequent.  As  our  previous 
chapter  will  have  shown,  even  the  year  1889,  the  centenary  of 
the  First  Revolution,  was  one  of  great  turmoil  in  spite  of  the 
Exhibition  and  the  presence  of  some  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  foreigners  in  Paris.  Held  in  commemoration  of  an  event 
which  was  a  warning  and  a  lesson  for  Kings,  the  Exhibition 
naturally  failed  to  attract  many  Royalties  to  France,  still 
there  were  two  crowned  heads,  the  Shah  and  the  King  of  Greece, 
and  some  seven  or  eight  Princes  among  her  visitors.     Three  of 

343 


344  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  Princes  may  be  mentioned :  firstly,  one  who  was  altogether 
persona  gratissima  among  the  Parisians,  that  is  the  Heir 
apparent  of  Great  Britain,  afterwards  Edward  VII. ;  secondly, 
Dom  Carlos,  Crown  Prince  of  Portugal,  who,  as  the  husband  of 
the  Count  de  Paris1  daughter,  desired  to  mark  his  and  her 
dissociation  from  the  Count's  political  enterprises,  and  ease  the 
position  of  those  members  of  the  House  of  Orleans  who  still 
resided  in  France,  whither,  by  the  way,  the  Duke  d'Aumale 
had  then  lately  returned.  The  third  Prince  of  note,  who  came 
to  Paris  in  1889,  was  Ferdinand  of  Bulgaria,  the  son  of  an 
Orleans  Princess,  and  since  those  days  included  among  the 
Crowned  Heads  of  Europe. 

Shortly  before  the  Exhibition  opened  there  occurred  a  crisis 
in  the  affairs  of  the  Comptoir  d'Escompte  to  which  we  previously 
alluded.  This  arose  through  the  Comptoir's  relations  with  a 
Company  called  the  Societe  des  Metaux,  directed  by  a  financier 
named  Secretan.  He,  in  conjunction  with  Denfert-Rochereau, 
Governor  of  the  Comptoir  d'Escompte,  and  the  latter's 
coadjutors,  Laveissiere  and  Hentsch,  attempted  to  create  a 
*  corner  "  in  copper,  speculating  so  extensively  and  so  recklessly, 
however,  that  on  the  attempt  failing  neither  the  Comptoir  nor 
the  Societe  could  meet  its  engagements.  Denfert-Rochereau 
killed  himself,  Secretan  and  the  others  were  arrested,  and  the 
Comptoir,  being  an  institution  holding  certain  privileges  from 
the  State,  the  Government  intervened  to  prevent  it  from 
collapsing.  With  official  sanction  the  Bank  of  France  and  the 
Rothschilds  advanced  sufficient  money  to  check  a  financial 
panic  which  was  setting  in.  Secretan,  the  prime  mover  in  the 
affair,  was  sentenced  to  six  months'  imprisonment,  no  very 
severe  penalty  perhaps,  but  it  may  be  added  that  he  was 
quite  ruined  by  the  failure  of  his  scheme.  The  sale  of  his 
great  collection  of  works  of  art,  in  which  figured  Millet's 
famous  painting  "  L'Angelus,"  was  an  event  of  world-wide 
interest. 

Early  in  the  following  year,  1890,  even  the  Paris  Municipal 
Council  became  involved  in  a  financial  scandal.  It  appeared 
that  at  an  issue  of  City  Bonds  the  Council's  Syndic  had  placed  a 
number  of  them  at  the  disposal  of  some  of  his  colleagues  in  such 
a  way  that  they  were  able  to  dispose  of  them  at  a  considerable 
premium.  The  Council  was  at  that  moment  largely  composed 
of  Boulangists,  but  fortunately  some  elections  held  not  long 


FREYCINET  AGAIN  IN  POWER  345 

afterwards  quite  purged  the  H6tel-de-Ville  of  that  corrupt 
element. 

A  little  earlier  the  Tirard  Ministry,  to  which  most  of  the 
credit  for  suppressing  the  Boulangist  movement  must  be  assigned, 
had  quitted  office,  dissensions  having  arisen  in  its  midst,  not- 
ably between  Tirard  and  Constans.  They  were  certainly  an  ill- 
assorted  pair,  the  first  being  essentially  a  man  of  peace  and  the 
second  a  born  fighter.  Constans  withdrew  on  March  1,  1890, 
and  five  days  later  the  Administration,  being  defeated  in  the 
Senate,  was  replaced  by  another  under  Freycinet.1  This  again 
was  a  memorable  Ministry  in  various  respects,  for  it  prepared 
the  way  for  the  Franco-Russian  Alliance,  launched  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  loans  ever  issued  in  France,  devised  a  Tariff 
system  which  provoked  a  Tariff  War  with  other  countries,  and 
raised  the  army  to  a  higher  point  of  efficiency  than  it  had  attained 
since  1871.  That,  let  it  be  at  once  said,  was  largely  Freycinet's 
work,  for  he  called  General  de  Miribel,  so  virulently  assailed  in 
Gambetta's  time,  to  his  councils,  made  him  Chief  of  the  General 
Staff,  with  the  prospective  appointment  of  Generalissimo  in  the 
event  of  war,  and  gave  high  command  to  Galliffet,  Saussier,  and 
Davoust :  all  of  them  able  men  who  did  right  good  work  in 
their  several  posts. 

The  great  Loan  we  have  mentioned  was  planned  by  Rouvier. 
It  was  one  for  869£  million  francs  (^34,780,000)  issued  at  92 
francs  55  centimes,  and  bearing  3  per  cent  interest.  More  than 
sixteen  times  the  amount  asked  for  was  subscribed  in  Paris  and 
the  provinces  (January  1891),  and  the  manner  in  which  the  first 
instalments  were  paid  showed  that  few  of  the  subscriptions  had 
been  of  a  speculative  character.  This,  be  it  remembered, 
occurred  only  one  year  after  the  Panama  Canal  Company  (of 
which  we  shall  soon  speak)  suspended  payment,  with  liabilities 
which  affected  800,000  investors. 

It  is  to  M.  Ribot,  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  in  this 
Freycinet  Cabinet,  that  the  preliminaries  of  the  Franco-Russian 
entente 2  must  be  ascribed.  In  July  1891  a  French  squadron 
under  Admiral  Gervais  visited  Cronstadt  and  was  inspected  by 

1  It  was  composed  as  follows  :  Freycinet,  Premier  and  Minister  for  War ; 
Fallieres,  Justice  and  Worship  ;  Constans  (who  returned  to  office),  Interior  ; 
Ribot,  Foreign  Affairs  ;  Rouvier,  Finances ;  Barbey,  Marine ;  Bourgeois, 
Education  and  Fine  Arts  ;  Yves  Guyot,  Public  Works  ;  Develle,  Agriculture ; 
and  Jules  Roche,  Commerce. 

2  We  shall  deal  with  it  in  some  detail  in  a  later  chapter. 


346  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  Czar.  On  its  homeward  way,  in  order  to  mark  that  no 
hostility  to  England  was  intended  in  the  turn  which  French 
diplomacy  was  taking,  the  squadron  proceeded  to  Portsmouth, 
where  it  was  reviewed  by  Queen  Victoria.  Somewhat  later  the 
Russian  Minister,  M.  de  Giers,  came  to  Paris. 

This  period  was  also  marked  by  the  evolution  of  the  Papacy 
towards  the  Republic.  Already  in  1890,  Cardinal  Lavigerie, 
Archbishop  of  Algiers  and  Primate  of  French  Africa,  had 
signified  his  "  sincere  adhesion  "  to  the  existing  regime,  which, 
fifteen  years  earlier,  he  had  urged  the  Count  de  Chambord  to 
overthrow  by  force.  It  was  hoped  that  the  example  set  by  a 
prelate  of  such  high  reputation  and  authority  might  tend  to 
improve  relations  between  Church  and  State,  but  neither  really 
abandoned  its  claim  to  supremacy.  The  position  was  embittered 
by  the  conduct  of  many  French  pilgrims  to  Rome,  who  demon- 
strated there  in  favour  of  the  Temporal  Power,  thus  angering 
Italians  generally,  and  offending  King  Umberto's  Government. 
In  France  several  matters  were  pending  in  relation  to  the 
Church,  such  as  the  conditions  under  which  the  Religious 
Orders  might  exist  and  the  taxation  they  should  pay,  and 
although  Pope  Leo  preached  conciliation  the  majority  of  the 
Episcopate  did  not  disguise  its  hostility  to  the  Republican 
Government.  The  Archbishop  of  Aix-en-Provence,  Mgr. 
Gouthe-Soulard,  issued  such  an  offensive  manifesto  that  he 
was  prosecuted  by  M.  Fallieres,  then  Minister  of  Worship,  and 
sentenced  to  pay  a  fine  of  i?120.  Subsequently  the  five  French 
Cardinals  published  a  declaration  complaining  bitterly  of  the 
manner  in  which  Catholics  were  treated  (this  simply  meaning 
that  the  Government  was  resolved  to  allow  the  Church  no 
excessive  privileges),  and  the  Archbishop  of  Algiers,  as  if 
repenting  of  his  earlier  "sincere  adhesion'"  to  the  Republic, 
now  adhered  to  this  document  also,  though  it  was  really  a 
protest  against  the  national  institutions.  The  Royalist  Com- 
mittees in  the  provinces  were  also  instigated  by  the  Count  de 
Paris  to  oppose  all  reconciliation  between  genuine  Catholics 
and  the  State.  But  on  February  18,  1892,  a  popular  news- 
paper, Le  Petit  Journal,  published  a  very  sensational  article 
written  by  Ernest  Judet,  who  stated  that  at  an  audience 
granted  to  him  by  the  Pope,  the  latter  had  strongly  counselled 
adhesion  to  the  Republic,  saying,  among  other  things:  "A 
Republic  is  as  legitimate  a  government  as  any  other."     Two 


THE  POPE  AND  THE  REPUBLIC  347 

days  later,  to  the  amazement,  and  in  some  cases  the  consterna- 
tion of  the  militant  Catholics,  clerics  and  laymen  alike,  Pope  Leo 
issued  a  memorable  Encyclical  in  which  he  virtually  exhorted 
the  clergy  and  faithful  of  France  to  rally  to  the  Republic. 

To  understand  this  move  on  the  Pontiff's  part  the  reader 
should  bear  in  mind  that  at  this  time  (February  1892) 
Boulangism  was  quite  dead — the  General  having  committed 
suicide  during  the  previous  autumn — and  that  all  chances  of  a 
Monarchical  Restoration  in  France  seemed  to  have  utterly 
departed.  Moreover,  the  earlier  overtures  of  Cardinal  Lavigerie 
dated  from  a  period  subsequent  to  Boulanger's  flight  from 
France.  As  long  as  there  had  seemed  to  be  a  prospect  of  the 
Republic  succumbing  in  the  struggle,  neither  Prelate  nor 
Pontiff  had  spoken.  But  now  the  Republic  had  triumphed, 
and  the  Head  of  the  Church  felt  that  he  must  make  peace  with 
her.  At  this  juncture  Freycinet  desired  to  settle  the  questions 
which  were  in  abeyance  in  regard  to  the  Religious  Orders ;  and 
a  bill  being  ready,  precedence  was  desired  for  it.  The  Minister 
spoke  hopefully  in  the  Chamber  of  the  prospects  of  a  recon- 
ciliation between  Church  and  State,  but  Henri  Brisson  retorted 
that  their  claims  and  aspirations  were  irreconcilable.  The 
majority  of  the  deputies  were  plainly  of  that  opinion,  for  an 
"  order  of  the  day "  which  the  Government  wished  to  see 
carried  was  rejected  by  282  to  210  votes.  The  Cabinet  there- 
upon resigned. 

The  next  Ministry  was  formed  by  M.  Emile  Loubet,  in 
later  years  President  of  the  Republic.  It  included  all  the 
members  of  the  previous  Administration *  excepting  four : 
Constans,  Fallieres,  Barbey,  and  Yves  Guyot.  Loubet  himself 
took  Constans"'  place  at  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior,  Louis 
Ricard  succeeded  Fallieres,  Viette  secured  Guyot's  post,  and 
Godefroy  Cavaignac  (son  of  the  general  of  '48)  replaced 
Barbey.  Freycinet  remained  Minister  of  War.  An  able  man 
in  that  respect,  he  was,  indeed,  far  better  qualified  for  depart- 
mental duties  than  for  general  political  control,  in  which  he  so 
often  displayed  a  painful  lack  of  decision.  Loubet  (then  fifty- 
three  years  of  age)  might,  not  be  so  good  a  speaker,  but  he 
possessed  more  personal  authority  and  knew  his  own  mind. 
The  non-inclusion  of  Constans  in  this  Ministry  was  indirectly 
due  to  a  virulent  campaign  which  Henri  Rochefort's  journal, 
1  See  ante,  p.  345. 


348  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

V Intransigeant,  was  carrying  on  against  him  apropos  of  all 
sorts  of  mythical  high  crimes  and  misdemeanours  which  it  laid 
at  his  door.  He  had  treated  those  charges  with  the  contempt 
they  deserved  until  one  of  the  Boulangist  deputies,  M.  Francis 
Laur,  called  on  him  in  the  Chamber  to  answer  them.  Constans 
did  so  in  two  ways.  He  began  by  smacking  M.  Laur's  face, 
and  then  indignantly  repelled  the  insinuations  against  him. 
The  occasion  is  known  in  the  Parliamentary  annals  of  the 
Republic  as  la  journSe  des  gjfles.  However,  the  persistency  of 
the  attacks  on  Constans  by  those  who  could  not  forgive  him 
for  having  put  down  Boulangism  with  a  strong  hand,  tended 
to  perpetual  unpleasantness,  and  President  Carnot  himself 
suggested  that  it  would  be  well  if  he  ceased  for  a  time  to  hold 
office.  As  is  well  known,  he  ended  by  entering  the  diplomatic 
service,  becoming  Ambassador  at  Constantinople. 

But  the  opponents  of  the  Republic,  and  notably  the  ex- 
Boulangists,  were  not  disposed  for  a  truce.  They  now  directed 
their  attacks  upon  a  Vice-President  of  the  Chamber,  a  talented 
man  named  Burdeau,  who  was  only  some  forty  years  of  age, 
and  seemed  to  have  a  great  future  before  him.  He  had  served 
on  a  Committee  to  which  the  question  of  renewing  the  charter 
of  the  Bank  of  France  had  been  submitted,  and  a  Clerico- 
Boulangist  organ  now  suddenly  asserted  that  he  had  taken  a 
large  bribe  from  the  Rothschilds  to  prevent  the  Bank's  new 
charter  from  interfering  with  their  interests.  The  newspaper 
was  promptly  prosecuted  for  this  libel,  and  its  manager  was 
sentenced  to  imprisonment  and  fine,  as  well  as  the  payment  of 
i?3200,  which  were  to  be  expended  in  publishing  the  sentence 
in  as  many  newspapers  as  possible  throughout  the  country. 
Shortly  afterwards,  when  an  interpellation  of  Clemenceau,s  had 
compelled  Cavaignac  to  resign  the  Ministry  of  Marine,  Burdeau 
was  appointed  in  his  place.1 

However,  a  much  more  serious  storm  was  now  about  to 
burst.  This  was  the  affair  of  the  Panama  Canal  Company, 
which  for  some  years  past  had  been  gradually  assuming  a  more 
and  more  threatening  aspect.     There  had  been  many  schemes 

1  The  expedition  against  Behanzin,  King  of  Dahomey,  was  then  in  pro- 
gress. The  commanders  of  the  French  naval  squadron  and  the  land  forces 
were  independent  of  each  other,  and  friction  between  them  was  apprehended. 
Clemenceau  desired  that  paramount  control  should  be  given  to  the  military 
commander,  General  Dodds.  Cavaignac  refused  his  assent,  and  resigned  on 
the  Chamber  supporting  Clemenceau's  suggestion. 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  349 

for  a  Central  American  Canal  which  should  connect  the 
Atlantic  and  Pacific  Oceans,  before  the  French  Company  was 
established.  Napoleon  III.  had  been  interested  in  one  of 
them,  and  had  suggested  to  Ferdinand  de  Lesseps  at  the  time 
of  the  success  of  the  Suez  undertaking  that  his  next  work 
should  be  to  sever  North  from  South  America,  even  as  he  had 
just  severed  Asia  from  Africa.1  The  question  came  before  an 
International  Geographical  Congress  held  in  Paris  in  1875, 
when  Lieutenant  Lucien  Napoleon  Bonaparte- Wyse  was  chosen 
to  make  certain  preliminary  explorations.  He  did  so,  and  on 
obtaining  a  "  concession "  from  the  Republic  of  Colombia,  to 
which  the  Panama  territory  then  belonged,  he  transferred  it  to 
M.  de  Lesseps.  When  this  occurred  the  latter  was  over  seventy 
years  of  age,  and  it  seemed  almost  like  tempting  Providence 
for  anybody  to  embark  at  that  time  of  life  in  such  a  gigantic 
enterprise.  But  Ferdinand  Marie  de  Lesseps  was  then  still  a 
man  of  extraordinary  vitality.  Born  at  Versailles  in  1805,  the 
son  of  Count  Mathieu  de  Lesseps  and  also  a  second  cousin  of 
the  Empress  Eugenie,2  he  had  held  a  variety  of  consular  and 
diplomatic  appointments  in  Portugal,  Tunis,  Egypt,  Holland, 
Spain,  and  Italy,  before  starting  in  1854  on  that  great  under- 
taking of  the  Suez  Canal,  which,  in  spite  of  prolonged  British 
opposition  and  many  other  difficulties,  he  brought  to  a 
triumphant  issue  in  1869,  when,  as  a  kind  of  amende  honorable 
on  England's  part,  he  was  welcomed  among  us  and  presented 
with  the  freedom  of  the  City  of  London.  In  that  same  year, 
moreover,  although  he  was  sixty-four  years  of  age,  he  contracted 
a  second  marriage,  his  first  wife,  Agathe  Delamalle,  his  union 
with  whom  dated  from  1838,  having  left  him  a  widower  in 
1854,  after  bearing  him  two  sons,  Charles  and  Aime  Victor. 
His  second  bride  was  Mile.  Louise  Helene  Autard  de  Bragard, 
a  Creole  beauty  in  her  nineteenth  year,  born  in  Mauritius,  but 
descended  from  an  ancient  Provencal  family.  At  that  time 
Lesseps"*  age  seemed  to  sit  on  him  lightly.  His  hair  was 
becoming  white,  but  he  was  as  active  as  a  young  man,  and 
looked  quite  a  picture  of  robust  health  with  his  handsome, 
full  face  and  his  well-knit  figure.  Five  children  were  born  of 
his  second  marriage :  1,  Mathieu ;  2  and  3,  Marie  Consuelo 
and  Bertrand  (twins);    4,  Solange ;   5,  Paul.     People  smiled 

1  See  our  Court  of  the  Tuileries,  page  371. 
2  See  ibid,  page  63. 


350  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

when  they  saw  that  good-looking  elderly  gentleman  surrounded 
by  his  young  family,  and  it  used  to  be  jocularly  remarked  that 
he  did  credit  to  the  fruitful  vine  emblazoned  in  his  armorial 
bearings.1 

In  1879,  that  is,  ten  years  after  the  inauguration  of  the 
Suez  Canal,  he  started  on  a  vigorous  campaign  in  favour  of 
the  proposed  Panama  enterprise,  and  visited  the  Isthmus  with 
a  committee  in  order  that  some  estimate  of  the  cost  of  the 
undertaking  might  be  prepared.  It  was  at  first  held  that  the 
cost  would  be  between  thirty-three  and  thirty-four  millions 
sterling,  and  that  eight  years  would  be  required  to  complete 
the  work.  But  the  estimate  was  revised,  on  what  basis  we  do 
not  know,  and  reduced  to  twenty  millions.  A  company  was 
then  formed,  and  apart  from  certain  founders"'  shares,  590,000 
shares  of  a  face  value  of  £%0  each,  were  offered  for  public 
subscription.  Additional  preliminary  work  and  study  became 
necessary,  however,  and  it  was  found  advisable  to  buy  up  most 
of  the  shares  in  the  railway  line  running  from  Colon  (Aspinwall) 
to  Panama.  In  the  latter  part  of  1882  the  various  expenses 
had  already  absorbed  most  of  the  capital  subscribed,  and  in 
September  and  October  that  year  850,000  bonds  of  i?20  face 
value,  were  issued.  The  greater  number  of  these  were  offered 
at  only  i?ll :  8s.  each.  The  excavation  work  only  began  in 
1883.  According  to  the  scheme  adopted,  the  canal  was  to  be 
on  the  tide-level  plan.  It  was  to  have  a  bottom  width  of  72 
feet,  its  length  was  estimated  at  about  46  miles,  and  there  was 
to  be  a  garage,  about  3  miles  long  and  200  feet  wide,  in  the 
plain  of  Tavernilla.  At  the  outset  a  perfect  town  was  erected 
for  the  purposes  of  the  enterprise.  Dwelling-places  sprang 
up ;  there  were  workshops,  magazines,  wharfs,  hospitals,  and 
sanatoria  ;  and  a  huge  quantity  of  materiel — machines,  pumps, 
trucks,  implements  of  all  kinds — was  gathered  together.  Large 
sums  of  money  were  wasted  on  useless  roads,  luxurious  stables, 
dairy  farms,  ornamental  gardens  and  pleasure  houses  for  the 
managing  director  and  the  principal  officials ;  and  the  real 
canal  work,  parcelled  out  in  numerous  sections  among  petty 
sub-contractors,  proceeded  very  slowly  indeed.  A  call  of  £5 
per  share  on  those   which  were  only  partially  paid  up  then 

1  Lesseps  bears  argent  charged  with  a  vine-stock  vert,  fruited  with  two 
bunches  of  grapes  sable,  planted  on  a  terrace  of  the  same,  and  surmounted 
in  the  middle  chief  by  a  mullet  azure. 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  351 

became  necessary,  and  again  a  large  number  of  bonds,  repre- 
senting a  face  value  of  about  ^5,882,000,  were  issued.  The 
system  of  carrying  on  the  work  in  small  sections  was  now 
abandoned.  Five  large  divisions  were  formed  and  handed 
over  to  French  and  American  contracting  firms,  the  Canal 
Company  itself  supervising  their  work.  The  tide-level  system 
was  still  adhered  to,  but  it  was  now  estimated  that  the 
expenditure  it  would  entail  would  amount  to  forty-eight  millions 
sterling. 

More  money  was  therefore  required,  and  the  Government 
(Brisson's  Ministry,  Grevy  being  President),  was  asked  to 
sanction  the  issue  of  lottery  bonds  (valeurs  a  lot),  for  a  sum  of 
^24,000,000.  Before  deciding  whether  they  would  support 
this  application,  the  authorities  sent  out  a  State  engineer, 
M.  Armand  Rousseau,  who,  while  reporting  that  it  would  be 
possible  to  complete  the  canal,  made  reserves  both  as  to  its 
estimated  cost,  and  the  manner  in  which  the  work  had  been 
hitherto  conducted.  Nevertheless,  the  Government  submitted 
a  bill  to  the  Chamber,  whose  reception  of  the  measure  was  so 
unfavourable  that  it  had  to  be  withdrawn.  The  Company 
thereupon  called  in  the  last  £5  remaining  unpaid  on  the 
original  shares,  and  issued  another  500,000  bonds,  only  half 
of  which  were  taken  up.  To  tempt  the  public  it  became 
necessary  to  revert  to  the  lottery  bond  scheme,  and  in 
November  1885,  an  application  in  that  respect  was  made 
to  Rouvier,  then  Minister  of  Finances,  but  he  would  not 
entertain  it. 

In  the  hope  of  favourably  influencing  public  opinion,  the 
Company  now  entered  into  an  arrangement  with  the  great 
engineer  and  contractor,  Alexandre  Eiffel,  who  at  that  moment 
was  preparing  his  famous  tower  for  the  Exhibition  of  1889. 
Born  at  Dijon  in  1832  Eiffel  had  been  a  pupil  of  the  Ecole  des 
Arts  et  Manufactures,  and  had  designed  already  in  1858  the 
fine  tubular  iron  railway -bridge  spanning  the  Garonne  at 
Bordeaux.  His  subsequent  work  included  many  other  bridges 
and  viaducts  in  various  parts  of  France,  in  Hungary  and  in 
Portugal,  also l ;  and  he  had  erected  the  striking  pavilion  of 
the  city  of  Paris,  which,  as  an  example  of  iron  and  steel  con- 

1  Notably  the  daring  Dom  Luis  bridge  at  Oporto.  It  was  there  and 
at  the  inauguration  of  that  fine  work  (in  1875,  we  think),  that  we  first  met 
M.  Eiffel.     At  that  time  his  enthusiasm  for  his  profession  was  remarkable. 


352  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

struction,  had  proved  one  of  the  features  of  the  Exhibition  of 
1878.  When  Eiffel  was  approached  by  the  Panama  Canal 
Company,  the  latter  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  a  sea-level  canal  could  not  be  overcome, 
and  accordingly  it  was  now  proposed  that  the  lock  system 
should  be  adopted,  Eiffel  undertaking  all  the  work  in  connection 
with  the  construction  of  the  locks,  and  supplying  the  whole 
maUriel.  Rates  were  arranged  for  all  the  metal-work  he  might 
furnish,  and  for  all  the  earth-work  which  would  have  to  be 
done  by  his  men.  There  were  to  be  ten  locks  in  all,  the  cost 
of  their  construction  being  estimated  at  ^5,300,000.  Eiffel's 
assistance  was  only  secured,  however,  on  onerous  conditions,  for 
apart  from  half  a  million  sterling,  which  went  in  indemnifying 
earlier  contractors,  an  immediate  cash  payment  of  i?l,320,000 
had  to  be  made  to  him. 

In  January  1888,  the  Company  again  applied  to  the 
Government  for  authority  to  issue  lottery  bonds,  and  on  the 
refusal  of  Tirard,  now  Minister  of  Finances,  petitions  to  the 
Chamber  were  organised  on  an  extensive  scale,  159,000 
signatures  being  obtained,  and  the  services  of  certain  deputies 
secured  to  introduce  a  bill  granting  the  Company  the  much- 
desired  privilege.  This  measure  became  law  in  June,  the 
Company  being  authorised  to  raise  twenty-four  millions  sterling 
by  means  of  lottery  bonds  which  were  to  be  redeemable  in 
ninety  -  nine  years.  Moreover,  sufficient  money  was  to  be 
deposited  in  the  form  of  Rentes,  to  ensure  due  payment  of  the 
prizes  at  each  successive  drawing.  Accordingly,  on  June  26, 
1888,  2,000,000  bonds  were  issued  at  ^14  :  8s.,  representing 
^28,800,000,  of  which  amount  ^4,800,000  were  to  be  reserved 
for  the  prize  fund.  But  in  spite  of  huge  sacrifices,  exceeding 
dtdl,240,000,  and  an  extraordinary  Press  campaign  (which  alone 
cost  ^280,000),  the  issue  failed.  Only  849,249  bonds  were 
taken  up,  representing  about  ^8,934,000.  That  was  not 
sufficient,  and  in  December  the  Company  made  a  last  despairing 
and  most  costly  effort  to  place  the  bonds  which  had  remained 
unsold  in  June.  But  that  attempt  also  failed,  and  thus  a 
dibdcle  was  at  hand. 

To  assist  the  Company  the  Government  tried  to  induce  the 
Chamber  to  sanction  a  bill  which  granted  three  months  delay 
for  the  payment  of  liabilities,  but  the  Chamber  would  not  even 
discuss  it,  and  thereupon  bankruptcy  ensued.    Three  temporary 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL 

managers  of  the  Company,  appointed  by  the  Civil  Tribunal  of 
the  Seine,  vainly  endeavoured  to  continue  the  work,  and  prevent 
the  disaster  from  becoming  irretrievable  ;  finally,  in  March 
1889,  M.  Monchicourt  became  sole  liquidator.  Under  his 
auspices  a  committee  repaired  to  the  Isthmus  to  study  the 
position,  and  reported  (May  1890)  that  it  would  be  possible 
to  complete  the  canal  in  eight  years,  that  the  maUriel  was  in  a 
satisfactory  state,  and  that  ,£36,000,000  would  be  required. 
That  was  a  "  large  order,""  as  the  saying  goes,  and  all  the 
liquidator  could  do  was  to  terminate  some  of  the  Company's 
onerous  contracts,  and  compel  M.  Eiffel  to  refund  some 
i?120,000  of  the  advance  money  paid  to  him.  At  the  time 
operations  were  suspended,  he  had  provided  the  requisite 
maUriel  and  set  up  the  necessary  installations  for  the  locks,  but 
the  excavatory  and  other  earth  work  had  scarcely  begun,  and 
was  in  a  chaotic  state. 

Now  the  Company's  shareholders  and  bondholders  had 
banded  themselves  together  soon  after  it  suspended  payment, 
and  on  March  28,  1889,  they  forwarded  to  the  Public  Prosecutor 
a  plaint  against  the  Board  of  Directors.  The  Procureur  general 
at  that  moment  was  still  M.  Camille  Bouchez,  the  same  who 
declined  to  proceed  against  Boulanger,  and  he  took  no  notice 
of  the  plaint.  His  successor,  Quesnay  de  Beaurepaire,  became 
absorbed  for  a  time  in  the  prosecution  of  Boulanger,  and  like- 
wise gave  no  heed  to  the  unfortunate  Panama  stockholders, 
though  they  renewed  their  applications  repeatedly.  At  last  it 
was  resolved  to  petition  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  which  at 
once  referred  the  matter  to  the  Minister  of  Justice,  in  order 
that  all  proper  investigations  might  be  made.  Beaurepaire 
could  then  no  longer  ignore  the  matter,  and  on  July  11,  1891, 
he  sent  to  the  Presiding  Judge  of  the  Paris  Appeal  Court  a 
requisition  to  institute  investigatory  measures  against  Ferdinand 
de  Lesseps,  Marius  Fontane,  and  Henri  Cottu,  President  and 
members  of  the  Directorate  of  the  Panama  Company.  Lesseps 
being  a  Grand  Officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  this  form  of 
procedure  was  necessary.  The  Court  delegated  one  of  its 
members,  Councillor  Prinet,  to  conduct  the  investigation,  which 
lasted  for  seventeen  months,  chiefly  by  reason  of  the  intricacy 
and  magnitude  of  the  affair,  and  the  many  obstacles  which 
interested  parties  placed  in  Prinefs  way. 

Here  let  us  interrupt  our  narrative  for  a  moment  to  indicate 

2  a 


354  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

what  were  the  principal  financial  aspects  of  the  affair  as  ascer- 
tained during  the  legal  investigation  and  the  liquidator's 
operations.  The  Company  had  issued  4,734,878  shares  or 
bonds  of  a  nominal  value  of  £92,847,000,  irrespective  of  9000 
founders''  shares  and  513,480  lottery  bonds  issued  by  the 
liquidator  in  1889.  The  various  issues  of  stock  had  produced 
£55,623,980  gross,  but  it  was  acknowledged  that  .£3,768,000 
had  been  expended  in  commissions,  allowances  and  other  pay- 
ments to  syndicates  and  others.  For  instance,  one  syndicate 
organised  by  the  Jew  banker,  Levy-Cremieux,  had  taken 
£156,000,  Cremieux  himself  pocketing  an  additional  £44,000. 
In  connection  with  the  issue  of  bonds  in  1886,  £120,000  had 
been  spent  on  advertisements  and  "  press  services  " ;  in  connec- 
tion with  that  of  1887,  £94,440  had  been  spent  in  a  like  way ; 
while  in  1888  the  outlay  in  this  respect  was  nearly  £99,000. 
But  the  Syndicates  were  far  more  greedy  than  the  journalists. 
At  the  last  issue  of  lottery  bonds,  before  the  Company  sus- 
pended payment,  a  syndicate  was  formed  which  appropriated 
no  less  than  £940,000,  and  although  the  Credit  Lyonnais  and 
the  Societe  generale  took  £80,000  of  that  amount,  they 
demanded  and  obtained  an  additional  payment  of  £160,000 
for  their  support.  It  was  sheer  robbery  on  the  part  of  those 
two  institutions,  whose  honorability  was  supposed  to  be  above 
suspicion.  But  there  was  also  a  financier  named  Hugo 
OberndoerfFer,  who,  for  influencing  the  stockjobbers  on  the 
Bourse,  was  remunerated  with  £155,000;  and  further  large 
sums  passed  to  Baron  Jacques  de  Reinach,  of  whom  we  shall 
speak  presently. 

In  interest  and  similar  charges  the  Company  paid  away 
£10,082,720.  Its  expenses  of  administration  were  :  in  Panama, 
£3,415,483,  in  Paris,  £624,176— total,  £4,039,659.  Of  that 
amount  the  directors  rtook  £75,200,  M.  de  Lesseps  received 
£38,650,  and  £63,650  were  paid  to  the  American  Committee. 
The  Company's  fine  offices  in  Paris  cost,  with  the  furniture, 
£81,520.  On  the  land  and  the  many  buildings  purchased  or 
erected  on  the  Isthmus  for  the  accommodation  of  the  workmen 
and  the  staff,  £1,157,365  were  expended.  Fine  pleasure  houses, 
ornamental  gardens,  and  model  farms  are,  of  course,  expensive 
luxuries. 

The  subjoined  statement  shows  the  amounts  actually  spent 
on  the  Canal : 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  355 

Purchase   of  the   Concession   and   Advances   to  the 

Colombian  Government £437,640 

Paid  to  Contractors  and  piece-workers  for  labour  and] 

accessories     .         .         .         .         .       £17,723,325  V  18,504,825 

Workshops,  etc.,  and  materiel     .         .         .      78 1,500 J 

Purchase  of  the  Panama  to  Colon  Railway  Shares,  a 

useful  investment 3,730,727 


Full  Expenditure  on  Canal   ....  £22,673,192 
Interest  and  similar  charges  ....     10,082,720 


Total      .         .         .  £32,755,912 

Gross  Receipts  of  the  Company £55,623,980 

Total  Expenditure  as  given  above        ....    32,755,912 

Balance  unaccounted  for  above £22,868,068 

Of  that  balance  the  greater  part  was  squandered  recklessly 
on  financial  syndicates  and  individual  financiers,  newspaper 
proprietors,  journalists,  and  various  senators  and  deputies. 
About  a  fifth  of  it  went,  as  we  have  shown,  in  excessive 
administrative  expenses. 

As  already  mentioned,  M.  Prinet's  investigations  were  ex^ 
tremely  protracted,  and  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  influenced 
by  the  rumours  which  frequently  appeared  in  some  newspapers, 
ended  by  losing  patience,  and  passed  a  resolution  demanding 
speedy  and  energetic  measures  in  the  Panama  affair.  At  last, 
in  September  1892,  La  Libre  Parole,  the  journal  of  Iildouard 
Drumont,  the  author  of  La  France  Juive,  began  to  publish  a 
series  of  articles  entitled  "  Les  Dessous  du  Panama,"  in  which  it 
was  plainly  stated  that  certain  deputies  and  senators  had  sold 
their  votes  at  the  time  when  the  issue  of  the  lottery  bonds  was 
authorised.  Prinet  thereupon  started  a  supplementary  inquiry, 
which  revealed  very  strange  doings  on  the  part  of  a  certain 
financier  called  Baron  Jacques  de  Reinach.  Large  amounts 
had  been  handed  to  him  by  the  Panama  Company  for  various 
purposes,  and  notably  a  sum  of  ^120,600  for  "publicity 
expenses."  An  order  was  issued  for  him  to  account  for  that 
money  (November  5,  1892),  but  it  was  found  that  he  was  then 
absent  from  home,  in  such  wise  that  the  order  did  not  imme- 
diately reach  him.  A  few  days  later  three  deputies,  under  the 
influence  of  the  Libre  Parole  articles,  asked  leave  to  interpellate 
the  Government,  and  a  debate  was  fixed  for  December  21, 
after  Ricard,  the  Minister  of  Justice,  had  declared  that  citations 


356  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

were  about  to  be  served  on  suspected  parties.     Now,  during  the 

night  of  December  19-20,  Baron  de  Reinach  was  found  in  his 

bed,  dead.     On  the  morning  of  the  21st,  Ferdinand  de  Lesseps, 

Marius  Fontaine,  Cottu,  and  Eiffel  were  served  with  citations 

summoning  them  to  appear  before  the  First  Chamber  of  the 

Appeal   Court   sitting    as   a   correctional   tribunal.       At   the 

Palais   Bourbon   that   afternoon,   a   deputy   named    Delahaye 

accused  Reinach  of  having  received  i?200,000  from  the  Panama 

Company  to  buy  votes.     He  had  distributed,  said  Delahaye,  no 

less  than  i?120,000  among  150  members  of  the  Legislature,  he 

had  paid  i?16,000  to  an  ex-Minister,  and  i?8000  to  a  member 

of  the  Committee  appointed  to  report  on  the  lottery  bond  bill. 

Loubet,  the  Prime  Minister,  at  once  agreed  that  there  should 

be  a  parliamentary  inquiry,  and  a  committee  of  thirty-three 

members  was  appointed,  with  Brisson  (a  Radical)  as  its  President, 

and  Jolibois  (a  Bonapartist)  and   Clausel  de  Coussergues  (a 

distinctly  moderate  Republican)  as    Vice-Presidents.     At  the 

very   first    sitting    of   this    Committee,    Delahaye    denounced 

Reinach  as  having  been  the  chief  agent  in  corrupting  public 

men  with  the  assistance,  however,  of  a  shady  dabbler  in  finance 

named  Arton,  who,   it  was  discovered,   had  already  fled   the 

country.     Councillor  Prinet  also  told  the  Committee  that  five 

or  six  hundred  persons  of  various  positions  had  received  money 

from  the  Panama  Company,  but  that  Baron  de  Reinach  had 

only  expended  i?l  20,000  on  them,  though  he  had  obtained  no 

less  than  ^392,000  of  the  Company's  funds. 

The  Committee  carried  its  inquiry  a  little  further,  and  then 

demanded  of  the  Government  the  seizure  of  all  Reinach's  books 

and  papers  and  the  exhumation  of  his  remains,  in  order  that 

there  might  be  a  post-mortem  examination  to  ascertain  if  he 

had  died  a  violent  death.     Loubet  raised  no  objection  to  the 

seizure  of  the  papers,  but  he  held  (and  so  did  the  Minister  of 

Justice,   Ricard)  that  the   Government  had   no  authority  to 

exhume  the  Baron's  remains,  that  being  a  matter  in  which  the 

authority  rested  with  the  deceased's  family.1     Loubet  spoke 

1  The  Baron  was  an  uncle  of  those  three  gifted  brothers,  Joseph,  Salomon, 
and  Theodore  Reinach.  Joseph  was  also  his  son-in-law.  Let  us  say,  though 
some  may  think  it  superfluous,  that  none  of  the  brothers  had  anything  to 
do  with  the  Baron's  financial  affairs  or  any  knowledge  of  them.  M.  Joseph 
Reinach,  however,  discovered  that  his  uncle,  in  settling  some  family  matters 
a  short  time  before  his  death,  had  paid  him  some  money  out  of  funds 
belonging  to  the  Panama  Company.  The  amount,  ill 600,  was  immediately 
refunded  by  M.  Joseph  Reinach  to  the  liquidator. 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  357 

rather  testily  on  this  occasion,  as  if  tired  of  the  incessant 
demands  made  upon  the  Government.  The  period,  be  it  said, 
was  one  of  great  unrest,  for  in  addition  to  the  Panama  affair, 
and  numerous  difficulties  with  the  Church  (the  Episcopate 
absolutely  disregarding  the  Pope's  desire  for  conciliation),  the 
Anarchists  were  now  spreading  terror  through  Paris,  where 
bomb  after  bomb  was  thrown.  Confronted  by  all  that  outside 
trouble,  and  perpetually  harassed  in  the  Chamber,  one  could 
well  understand  a  Minister  losing  patience.  The  outcome, 
however,  was  the  Cabinet's  defeat,  for  an  overwhelming  majority 
of  deputies  approved  of  Brisson's  demand  for  the  exhumation 
of  Reinach's  remains. 

Ribot  formed  the  next  Administration,  at  first  retaining 
most  of  his  previous  colleagues,1  including  even  Loubet,  who, 
all  considered,  did  not  wish  it  to  be  thought  that  he  was  afraid 
of  either  Panamists  or  Ravachols.  He  even  made  no  further 
difficulty  about  the  exhumation  affair.  However,  Quesnay  de 
Beaurepaire,  the  Procureur  general,  who  had  opposed  it,  retired 
from  his  post  (in  which  he  was  replaced  by  a  M.  Tanon)  and 
secured  a  seat  on  the  bench  of  the  Cour  de  Cassation.  Ribot, 
on  taking  office,  made  a  fairly  strong  declaration  of  policy, 
telling  the  Senate  that  if  he  found  any  mud  in  his  path  he 
should  simply  kick  it  aside.  On  December  10,  1892,\  Reinach's 
body  was  examined  by  Professor  Brouardel,  who  reported,  how- 
ever, that  he  had  found  the  viscera  so  decomposed  that  it  was 
impossible  to  tell  whether  the  deceased  had  taken  poison  or 
not.     Thus  much  ado  had  been  made  to  no  purpose. 

Two  days  later,  however,  Le  Figaro  published  a  sensational 
article  stating  that  Rouvier,  while  Minister  of  Finance,  had  had 
certain  relations  with  Baron  de  Reinach  and  a  notorious 
individual  named  Cornelius  Herz.  Of  the  latter  we  must  here 
say  something.  He  was  born  at  Besancon  in  1845,  but  his 
father  was  a  Bavarian,  and  Cornelius  was  taken  to  the  United 
States  in  his  early  childhood  and  naturalised  as  an  American 

1  At  first  there  were  only  two  changes,  Charles  Dupuy  succeeding 
Bourgeois  as  Education  Minister,  and  Siegfried  taking  Roche's  place  at  the 
Ministry  of  Commerce.  At  a  later  stage  Loubet,  Freycinet,  Ricard,  and 
Burdeau  retired,  and  the  Cabinet  was  reconstituted,  Ribot  passing  from 
Foreign  Affairs  to  the  Interior,  and  General  Loizillon  and  Admiral  Rieunier 
becoming  Ministers  of  War  and  Marine.  Rouvier  was  replaced  at  Finances 
by  Tirard.  At  the  time  of  the  reconstitution  M.  Delcasse  first  took  office, 
becoming  Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies. 


358  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

citizen.  On  reaching  manhood  he  tried  various  callings,  served 
an  apprenticeship  to  a  pharmaceutical  chemist  in  Paris,  practised 
medicine  without  a  diploma  at  San  Francisco,  and  became  an 
agent  in  France  for  Thomas  Alva  Edison,  the  famous  inventor. 
After  succeeding  in  establishing  a  technical  journal  called  La 
Lumiere  electrique,  he  managed  to  found,  in  succession,  both  an 
electric  light  and  a  telephone  company.  He  next  organised  a 
notable  Electrical  Exhibition  held  in  Paris  in  1881,  and  posed 
so  successfully  as  a  scientist  of  the  first  rank  that  the  Cross 
of  Commander  and  later  that  of  Grand  Officer  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour  were  conferred  on  him.  Yet,  all  the  while,  he  was 
merely  a  charlatan — one  of  the  first  rank,  it  must  be  granted,  a 
man  with  Mesmer's  illusive  smattering  of  science  and  Cagliostro's 
unbounded  impudence.  For  instance  we  once  heard  him 
insinuate  that  some  of  Edison's  inventions  were  really  his  own. 
The  truth  is  that  Herz  had  a  certain  gift  of  assimilation,  and 
was  expert  both  in  sucking  the  brains  of  those  with  whom  he 
came  in  contact,  and  in  draining  their  purses.  For  the  rest,  he 
had  merely  purchased  and  attempted  to  work  the  patents  of 
such  men  as  Cabanellas,  Marcel  Deprez,  Carpentier,  and 
Hospitalier.  The  state  of  France  inducing  him  to  dabble  in 
politics,  he  at  last  acquired  a  share  in  the  proprietary  of  a 
newspaper,  La  Justice,  whose  political  director  was  M.  Georges 
Clemenceau.  That  connection,  according  to  M.  Clemenceau's 
own  statements,  ceased  in  1885  ;  nevertheless  he  and  Herz  met 
occasionally,  as  do  most  men  prominent  in  one  or  another  way 
in  public  life.  Nobody  can  know  everything,  and  M.  Clemen- 
ceau was  certainly  long  unaware  that  Herz  profited  by  the 
footing  he  had  obtained  in  political  and  financial  circles  to  sell 
his  influence  in  one  and  another  direction,  and  levy  blackmail 
whenever  he  felt  that  he  held  some  imprudent  man  in  his 
power.  He  had  long  been  acquainted  with  the  difficulties  of 
the  Panama  enterprise,  he  was  expert  in  worming  out  secrets 
from  subaltern  officials,  and  having  done  so,  he  brought  pressure 
to  bear  on  Ferdinand  de  Lesseps  and  Baron  de  Reinach. 

According  to  the  Figaro  article  which  we  mentioned  before 
penning  the  above  parenthesis,  Reinach,  confronted  by  the 
insatiable  demands  of  Herz  (who  knew  how  the  Baron  had 
been  appointed  to  distribute  money  for  the  Panama  Company), 
appealed  to  Clemenceau,  and  later  to  Rouvier,  for  help ;  and 
finally,  on  finding  that  Herz  would  not  abate  his  demands, 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  359 

destroyed  himself.  Clemenceau  confirmed  the  story  in  La 
Justice,  acknowledging  that  he  had  gone  with  Rouvier  and 
Reinach  to  see  both  Herz  and  Constans.  A  debate  in  the 
Chamber  followed,  Ribot  stating  that  Rouvier  had  resigned 
office  on  account  of  certain  revelations  which  in  no  wise  affected 
his  honour.  Rouvier  himself  admitted  the  facts  as  stated, 
saying  that  he  had  taken  what  was  perhaps  an  imprudent 
step,  but  one  which  was  inspired  by  feelings  of  humanity  and 
generosity^  It  is  not  quite  clear  how  much  of  the  truth  was 
known  to  Rouvier  and  Clemenceau  at  that  moment,  but  we 
have  always  understood  that  the  facts  were  not  fully  before 
them.  It  is  certain  that  both  were  well  aware  of  the  "  subsidies " 
which  the  Panama  Company  was  paying  to  the  press ;  but  how- 
ever much  Reinach  may  have  required  help  he  could  not  tell 
everything  (particularly  as  Herz  held  him  also  in  regard  to 
another  scandalous  affair,  that  of  the  Southern  Railway  Line), 
and  if  those  to  whom  he  appealed  divined,  despite  his  reticence, 
some  of  the  facts  which  were  afterwards  brought  to  light,  one 
can  understand  that  the  fear  of  provoking  a  public  catastrophe 
may  have  led  them  to  shrink  from  further  investigation. 

The  statements  made  by  Le  Figaro  and  La  Justice  were 
followed  by  fresh  magisterial  inquiries,  and  on  December  16 
warrants  were  issued  for  the  arrest  of  Charles  de  Lesseps,  Marius 
Fontane,  Baron  Henri  Cottu,  directors  of  the  Panama  Company, 
and  Sans-Leroy,  an  ex-deputy,  who  had  belonged  to  the  Com- 
mittee on  the  last  Lottery  Bond  Bill,  and  was  said  to  have 
received  ^8000  for  securing  the  support  of  certain  parlia- 
mentary colleagues.  There  was  also  a  warrant  against  Ferdinand 
de  Lesseps,  but  it  was  not  executed.  The  aged  promoter  of 
the  enterprise  had  been  quite  overwhelmed  by  its  failure,  and 
ever  since  the  beginning  of  1889  he  had  remained  plunged  in  a 
state  of  senile  prostration  at  his  country  place,  La  Chenaie,  near 
Guilly  in  the  Indre.  His  family  and  friends  exerted  themselves 
to  keep  everything  hidden  from  him,  but  he  was  really  quite 
incapable  of  realising  the  position,  for  he  retained  only  a 
flickering  of  intelligence  and  spent  month  after  month  in  a 
semi-somnolent  condition.  In  1884  when  he  was  elected  a 
member  of  the  French  Academy,  on  which  occasion  the  illustrious 
Renan  welcomed  him  among  the  Immortals  with  a  most  delight- 
fully witty  speech,  he  had  still  possessed  a  good  deal  of  his  old 
vigour,  but  the  increasing  difficulties  of  the  Panama  Company 


360  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

from  that  time  onward,  aged  him  rapidly,  and  he  was  but  a 
ghost  of  his  former  self  at  the  moment  of  the  actual  failure. 
Of  course  he  was  nominally  responsible  for  what  occurred,  but 
the  real  responsibility  rested  with  those  about  him.  In  his 
sudden  mental  and  physical  decline  he  became  a  mere  instrument 
in  their  hands  and  those  of  the  greedy  and  unscrupulous 
financiers  who  regarded  the  Panama  enterprise  as  a  mere  milch- 
cow.  If,  as  the  accounts  indeed  indicate,  he  himself  drew  from 
it,  over  a  term  of  years,  a  sum  of  about  .£39,000,  on  the  other 
hand  its  collapse  left  him  with  very  slender  resources — so 
slender,  in  fact,  that  at  his  death  at  La  Chenaie  in  1894  the 
Board  of  the  Suez  Canal  Company  voted  an  annual  allowance 
of  about  ^5000  a  year  to  his  wife  and  children — being  unwilling 
that  the  Lesseps  family  (with  the  great  Suez  achievement 
behind  it)  should  be  cast  adrift  on  the  world. 

When  the  warrants  were  executed  against  Charles  de  Lesseps 
and  the  others  a  perquisition  was  also  made  at  a  private  bank 
directed  by  a  M.  Thierree,  with  whom  Baron  Jacques  de 
Reinach  had  done  business ;  and  this  perquisition  resulted  in 
the  finding  of  six-and-twenty  old  cheques  of  Reinach's,  repre- 
senting d^l.20,000,  which  seemed  to  implicate  some  prominent 
public  men.  M.  Andrieux,  the  deputy,  who  owned  that  he 
had  inspired  the  Libre  Parole  articles  entitled  "  Les  Dessous 
du  Panama,""  also  produced  a  photograph  of  one  of  Reinach's 
alleged  memoranda  of  the  sums  which  he  had  paid  away. 
Under  all  these  circumstances  the  Legislature  authorised  pro- 
ceedings against  Deputies  Rouvier,  Antonin  Proust,  Jules 
Roche,  Emmanuel  Arene,  and  Dugue  de  la  Fauconnerie,  and 
Senators  Albert  Grevy,  Leon  Renault,  Paul  Deves,  Beral,  and 
Thevenet.  All  these  public  men,  however,  like  M.  Sans-Leroy 
whom  we  previously  mentioned,  were  able  to  clear  themselves 
of  the  charges  of  corruption  preferred  against  them.  Some  did 
so  at  a  very  early  stage,  in  such  wise  that  the  indictments 
against  them  were  quashed,  while  the  others  were  acquitted 
by  the  jurymen  before  whom  they  appeared.  Of  course  the 
Opposition  journals  refused  to  acknowledge  their  innocence 
(even  as  in  later  times  they  have  refused  to  admit  that  of 
Captain  Dreyfus),  but  looking  at  the  matter  dispassionately,  if 
a  [few  cases  have  remained  doubtful  until  this  day,  there  was 
absolutely  no  evidence  of  guilt  in  many  instances,  while  in 
others  grave  indiscretion  was  the  utmost  that  could  be  proved. 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  361 

For  instance  while  the  Panama  Company  was  subsidising  the 
press  to  boom  it,  it  had  been  held  advisable  that  a  share  of  the 
money  it  distributed  should  go  to  Republican  journals.  Rouvier 
played  some  part  in  that  affair,  but  the  chief  role  was  taken  by 
Floquet,  as  he  frankly  acknowledged  in  the  Chamber,  holding 
even  that  he  had  acted  rightly,  and  that  the  money  had  been 
extremely  useful,  as  it  had  helped  the  Republican  Press  in  the 
great  fight  against  General  Boulanger.  That,  however,  is  not 
an  argument  which  we  can  accept.  We  hold  that  no  Govern- 
ment has  a  right  to  procure  money  for  party  purposes  from 
private  sources  in  return  for  a  promise  to  support  the 
donator's  interests.  Something  very  similar  has  long  gone  on 
in  this  country  unfortunately,  and  casts  a  nasty  blot  upon  our 
public  life.  There  have  been  occasional  efforts  to  bring  the 
truth  to  light,  to  stop  the  practice  of  augmenting  party  funds 
by  the  bestowal  of  so-called  "  honours "  ;  still  matters  do  not 
appear  to  be  very  much  better  now  than  they  were  in  the  old 
days.  Tories  and  Liberals  alike  shrink  from  any  ventilation 
of  such  abuses,  and  no  doubt  it  requires  courage  to  wash  one's 
dirty  linen  in  public.  That  courage  we  seldom  evince  in  Eng- 
land, but  the  French  displayed  it  fully  during  the  Panama  case. 
La  lessive  du  Panama  was  a  common  phrase  of  the  time. 

Towards  the  end  of  1892  a  perquisition  at  the  offices  of  the 
Credit  Lyonnais  led  to  the  arrest  of  another  of  the  Panama 
Company's  high  officials,  Blondin,  and  of  an  ex-Minister  of 
Public  Works,  Baihaut,  who,  in  return  for  laying  one  of  the 
early  Lottery  Bond  Bills  before  the  Chamber,  had  obtained 
i?l 5,000  from  the  Company.  This  affair  naturally  created  a 
very  great  stir  indeed.  When  the  Chamber  reassembled  in 
January  1893,  Floquet,  by  reason  of  his  share  in  the  newspaper 
subsidy  business,  lost  his  position  as  President,  which  went  to 
Casimir-Perier.  It  may  be  mentioned  also  that  about  this 
time  Jules  Ferry  became  President  of  the  Senate,  in  the  place 
of  Le  Royer,  who  resigned  that  office  because  he  had  grown 
old  and  tired  of  the  duties  which  he  had  discharged  for  eleven 
successive  years.  It  seemed  as  though  Ferry's  return  to  a 
prominent  position  might  be  the  prelude  to  his  assumption  of 
a  yet  more  important  office — and  certainly  France  then  needed 
a  thoroughly  strong  man  at  the  helm  of  affairs — but  unfortun- 
ately the  most  competent  of  her  available  statesmen  did  not 
long  survive  the  Senate's  tardy  act  of  justice.     He  passed  away 


362  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

at  the  end  of  that  winter  (March  17,  1893),  aged  sixty-one, 
and  was  succeeded  by  Challemel-Lacour.  Before  that  date 
Loubet  and  Freycinet,  weary  of  incessant  and  undeserved 
attacks,  had  withdrawn  from  the  Ribot  Cabinet,  which  had  to 
be  reconstituted.1 

On  February  9  the  Paris  Appeal  Court  convicted  Ferdinand 
and  Charles  de  Lesseps,  Eiffel,  Fontane,  and  Cottu  of  the 
original  charges  against  them,2  and  sentenced  them  to  various 
penalties,  but  all  the  proceedings  were  quashed  by  the  Cour  de 
Cassation,  because,  according  to  the  law,  they  should  have  been 
taken  within  a  period  of  three  years,  dating  from  the  time 
when  the  defendants  had  been  removed  from  the  directorate  of 
the  Panama  Company.  That  had  occurred  on  December  16, 
1888,  and  the  proceedings  had  not  been  instituted  until 
December  21,  1892.  They  were  therefore  null  and  void  in 
law.  Other  proceedings,  however,  to  which  prescription  did 
not  apply,  had  been  lately  initiated,  and  these  were  duly  brought 
to  an  issue.  The  Chamber  of  Indictments  threw  out  the  cases 
against  Cottu,  Albert  Grevy,  Leon  Renault,  Paul  Deves,  and 
Rouvier,  but  ordered  that  Charles  de  Lesseps,  Marius  Fontane, 
Blondin,  Baihaut,  Sans-Leroy,  Beral,  Antonin  Proust,  Dugue 
de  la  Fauconnerie,  Gobron  (an  ex-deputy),  and  Arton,  Reinach's 
intermediary,  should  be  tried  at  the  next  Paris  Assizes.  The 
Chamber  of  Deputies  also — apart  from  the  legal  proceedings — 
censured  those  of  its  members  who  had  become  involved  in  any 
way  in  the  affair,  and  a  very  forcible  speech  which  M.  Godefroy 
Cavaignac  delivered  on  this  occasion  was  placarded  by  authority 
throughout  France. 

On  March  8,  1893,  the  Paris  Assize  Court  assembled  to  try 
the  defendants  whose  names  we  have  given  above.  They  were 
all  present  excepting  Arton,  who  had  long  previously  fled  from 
France.  According  to  some  newspapers  the  authorities  were 
by  no  means  anxious  to  apprehend  him  ;  and  it  is  at  least 
certain  that  when  he  had  fled  to  Venice  he  was  met  there  by  a 
detective,  who,  instead  of  arresting  him,  endeavoured  to  effect 
an  arrangement  on  the  subject  of  "revelations.11  This  was 
done,  moreover,  with  the  knowledge  of  certain  officials  at  the 
Ministry  of  the  Interior.  At  the  trial  at  the  Assizes  Charles 
de  Lesseps  declared  that  the  Company  had  repeatedly  suffered 
from  the  exorbitant  demands  of  Cornelius  Herz,  who  on  one 
1  See  ante,  p.  357,  footnote.  a  See  ante,  p.  356. 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  363 

occasion  had  claimed,  through  Reinach,  as  much  as  i?400,000. 
Reinach,  said  de  Lesseps,  had  received  half  that  amount  to 
deal  with  him.  Baihaut,  for  his  part,  had  asked  for  ^40,000, 
and  i?15,000  had  been  paid  to  him.  Floquet,  moreover,  was 
said  to  have  "  demanded  "  i?12,000  for  the  Republican  Press ; 
and  when  he  denied  that  statement,  Charles  de  Lesseps  adhered 
to  it,  saying  also  that  the  ex-Minister  had  declared  that  the 
Company  ought  really  to  pay  a  very  much  larger  amount  than 
the  one  named.  It  was  shown,  moreover,  that  Clemenceau  had 
been  in  some  degree  cognisant  of  those  negotiations.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  Mme.  Cottu  asserted  in  evidence  that  a 
detective  had  told  her  that  if  her  husband  would  only  make 
some  revelations  against  Royalist  deputies,  the  proceedings 
against  him  would  be  dropped,  it  was  found  that  M.  Bourgeois, 
the  Minister  of  Justice,  had  no  knowledge  of  the  matter. 
Soinoury,  Directeur  de  la  Surete  generale,  and  Nicolle,  a  police- 
commissary,  were  involved  in  this  affair,  but  it  was  proved 
conclusively  that  they  had  received  no  authority  whatever  to 
act  as  they  had  done,  and  Bourgeois,  who  had  temporarily 
resigned  office  in  order  to  face  this  charge,  resumed  his  duties 
on  obtaining  a  vote  of  confidence  from  the  Chamber.  Finally, 
the  jury  acquitted  Marius  Fontane,  Sans-Leroy,  Beral,  Gobron, 
Proust,  and  Dugue  de  la  Fauconnerie ;  but  it  convicted  Charles 
de  Lesseps  and  Blondin  of  corrupt  practices,  and  both  were 
sentenced  to  imprisonment,  the  former  for  one  year  and  the 
second  for  two  years.  Baihaut,  the  ex-Minister  of  Public 
Works,  was  also  found  guilty  of  demanding  money  and  receiving 
^ISjOOO.  For  that  offence  the  Court  sentenced  him  to  five 
years  imprisonment,  a  fine  of  i?30,000,  the  loss  of  all  civil 
rights,  and  the  reimbursement  of  the  money  he  had  obtained. 
In  the  event  of  his  own  estate  being  inadequate  for  the  payments 
imposed  upon  him,  the  estates  of  Charles  de  Lesseps  and  Blondin 
were  to  be  liable  for  the  deficiency. 

A  fortnight  after  sentence  was  pronounced  (March  21, 
1893),  the  Ribot  Cabinet  resigned  office  owing  to  a  conflict 
between  the  Senate  and  the  Chamber  apropos  of  their  financial 
prerogatives,  the  Chamber  wishing  to  reduce  the  Senate  in  that 
respect  to  the  status  of  the  British  House  of  Lords,  and  the 
Senate  victoriously  resisting  the  attempt,  as  it  did  several 
others  on  subsequent  occasions.  The  next  Cabinet  was  formed 
by  Charles  Dupuy,  who  had  lately  been  Minister  of  Education. 


364  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Born  at  Le  Puy  in  the  Haute  Loire,  and  the  son  of  a  peasant, 
he  was  only  forty-two  years  old  on  assuming  the  Premiership, 
but  after  first  making  his  way  in  the  scholastic  profession  he 
had  come  quite  to  the  front  as  a  politician,  being  assisted  by  a 
certain  outward  bonhomie  of  manner  masking  no  little  energy 
which,  unfortunately,  was  not  always  of  the  best  kind.1 

The  general  state  of  the  country  gave  serious  concern  to 
careful  observers  at  this  period.  There  had  been  many  strikes 
among  the  working  classes  under  Ribot,  and  there  were  even 
more  under  Dupuy,  and  the  manner  in  which  the  Government 
dealt  with  those  matters  was  often  most  unwise.  Dupuy's 
energy  was  too  frequently  vigour  of  a  blundering  kind,  and  the 
evolution  of  a  large  section  of  the  masses  towards  Socialism, 
and  of  a  small  section  towards  Anarchism,  was  hastened  and 
intensified,  leading  to  serious  disruption  in  the  Republican 
ranks.  The  full  result  was  seen  later — during  the  Presidencies 
of  Casimir-Perier  and  Felix  Faure — when  it  became  necessary 
for  the  Governmental  Republicans  to  ally  themselves  with 
those  Reactionaries  who  professed  to  have  "rallied"  to  the 
Republic,  but  whose  sole  object  was  to  overthrow  it.  Under 
Carnot,  during  the  Ribot  and  the  first  Dupuy  Ministries,  the 
spirit  of  the  country  certainly  remained  distinctly  Republican, 
in  spite  both  of  many  Governmental  blunders  and  the  growing 
disgust  of  the  masses  with  the  bourgeoisie,  the  former  identifying 
the  latter  with  the  Panama  scandals.  The  Count  de  Paris 
imagined  that  those  scandals  might  strengthen  the  Royalist 
cause,  but  a  manifesto  which  he  issued  on  the  subject  was 
either  treated  with  silent  contempt  or  answered  by  scoffing 
references  to  the  equally  disgraceful  scandals  which  had  marked 
the  reign  of  his  grandfather,  Louis  Philippe.  Further,  the 
General  Elections  of  1893  testified  both  to  the  growth  of  the 
country's  Republicanism  and  to  that  Republicanism's  in- 
creasingly democratic  evolution.  The  Royalists,  Bonapartists, 
and  Nationalists,  hitherto  about  170  in  number,  now  gained 
the  victory  in  only  93  constituencies,  and  35  of  their  successful 
candidates  sailed  in  under  false  colours,  that  is  as  men  who 

1  Dupuy's  colleagues  were  Poincare,  Education,  Worship,  and  Fine  Arts  ; 
Peytral,  Finances :  Develle,  Foreign  Affairs ;  Guenn,  Justice ;  Terrier, 
Commerce  and  Industry ;  Viger,  Agriculture ;  Viette,  Public  Works  ; 
Loizillon,  War;  Rieunier,  Marine;  Delcasse\  Colonies.  Dupuy  himself 
took  the  Interior. 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  365 

professed  to  have  "rallied"  to  the  Republic.  The  Radical 
Republicans  secured  150  seats,  and  the  Socialists,  previously  a 
quantite  negligeable,  were  returned  for  no  fewer  than  49.  Those 
results  were  largely  the  outcome  of  all  the  Boulangist  and 
Panamist  disclosures,  and  it  should  be  observed  that  they  were 
obtained  in  spite  of  all  the  outrageous  Anarchist  "propa- 
ganda by  deeds"  which  marked  this  period,  and  which  some 
had  imagined  would  frighten  the  country  into  Conservatism. 

But  we  must  now  again  return  to  the  Panama  affair,  for 
the  trial  of  Charles  de  Lesseps,  Blondin,  Baihaut,  and  the 
others  had  by  no  means  brought  it  to  a  close.  Several  matters 
remained  to  be  disposed  of.  The  Opposition  journals  harped 
perpetually  on  the  so-called  list  of  corrupt  politicians  held  by 
Andrieux.  It  comprised  a  few  names  and  a  good  many  initials, 
and  there  was  also  mention  of  a  very  mysterious  X.  Who 
could  X.  be  ?  A  German  journalist,  one  Otto  Brandes,  Paris 
correspondent  of  the  Berliner  Tageblatt,  foolishly  and  reck- 
lessly stated  in  his  journal  that  this  recipient  of  Panamist 
bounty  was  M.  Ernest  Carnot,  son  of  the  President  of  the 
Republic.  The  assertion  was  as  ludicrous  as  impudent,  and  it 
was  astonishing  to  find  a  journalist  of  reputation  and  experience 
giving  publicity  to  such  a  canard.  The  result  was  Herr 
Brandes'  expulsion  from  France.  Another  reckless  suggestion 
was  that  the  X.  of  the  Andrieux  list  might  be  Baron  Mohrenheim, 
the  Russian  Ambassador,  to  whom  the  Government  naturally 
had  to  apologise.  On  the  other  hand  it  exacted  an  apology 
from  the  Swiss  Government  when  some  foolish  people  of  Basle 
introduced  a  libellous  "  Panamist  group  v  into  a  carnival  pro- 
cession. 

Meantime  two  men  whose  guilt  was  notorious  had  still 
escaped  punishment.  One  of  them  was  Arton,  Baron  de 
Reinach's  agent,  and  the  other  Cornelius  Herz,  who,  after 
fleeing  to  England,  had  been  lying  ill  at  the  Tankerville  Hotel, 
Bournemouth.  The  French  authorities  desired  to  extradite 
him,  but  his  illness  prevented  his  removal  to  London  and  his 
attendance  at  Bow  Street  Police  Court.  He  was  repeatedly 
examined  by  French  and  English  doctors,  and  the  former, 
Brouardel,  Charcot,  and  Dieulafoy,  agreed  that  his  illness  must 
have  a  fatal  issue  at  no  very  distant  date.  Nevertheless,  there 
were  frequent  interpellations  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies 
respecting  his  extradition.     He  was  struck  off  the  roll  of  the 


366  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Legion  of  Honour  in  January  1893,  *  and  in  the  following  June 
Millevoye,  an  Anglophobist  and  ex-Boulangist  deputy,  subse- 
quently notorious  as  the  editor  of  La  Patrie,  took  the  Government 
to  task  respecting  the  delay  in  the  extradition  proceedings,  and 
the  British  Government's  behaviour  in  regard  to  them.  But 
the  character  of  the  debate  suddenly  changed.  A  Nationalist 
organ,  La  Cocarde,  had  previously  announced  the  early  publica- 
tion of  some  "  documents "  which  had  been  stolen  from  the 
British  Embassy,  and  which  it  asserted  to  be  extremely  com- 
promising for  certain  members  of  the  French  Legislature. 
Millevoye,  who  had  alluded  to  this  affair  in  his  speech  to  the 
Chamber,  was  summoned  to  explain  himself,  and  thereupon 
read  out  the  alleged  "documents,"  which  consisted  of  some 
letters  ascribed  to  Sir  Thomas  W.  Lister  of  the  British  Foreign 
Office — letters  imputing  to  several  politicians  and  journalists, 
such  as  Burdeau,  Clemenceau,  and  Rochefort,  the  acceptance  of 
British  bribes,  ranging  from  i?2000  to  £3600,  in  connection 
with  the  Herz  business  and  French  affairs  generally. 

Millevoye  declared  that  these  letters  had  been  given  him  by 
a  "  patriot  of  the  island  of  Mauritius,1'  but  directly  he  began 
to  read  them  to  the  Chamber  it  became  patent  that  they  were 
rank  and  clumsy  forgeries.  For  a  moment  the  excitable 
Deroulede  tried  to  support  his  friend  Millevoye,  but  they  both 
succumbed  to  the  storm  of  jeers  which  their  folly  provoked, 
and  resigned  their  seats  as  a  result  of  the  censure  which  the 
Chamber  speedily  inflicted  on  them.2  Millevoye's  "  patriot  of 
Mauritius "  proved  to  be  a  mulatto  named  Norton.  He  and 
Ducret,  the  editor  of  La  Cocarde,  were  both  tried  for  forgery, 
the  first  being  sentenced  to  three  years'  and  the  second,  as  an 
accessory,  to  one  year's  imprisonment.  Neither  the  Prime 
Minister,  Charles  Dupuy,  nor  the  Foreign  Minister,  Develle, 
came  well  out  of  this  affair,  for  it  was  shown  that  Norton's 
"  documents "  had  been  previously  made  known  to  them,  and 

1  The  Council  of  the  Legion  proved  more  dilatory  in  some  other  cases, 
and  thereby  came  into  conflict  with  the  Chamber,  which  on  July  13,  1895, 
passed  a  resolution  inviting  the  Government  to  reorganise  the  Council,  as  it 
took  "  such  little  account  of  the  decisions  of  justice. "  The  Council  thereupon 
resigned,  and  General  F^vrier,  Chancellor  of  the  Order,  followed  its  example. 

2  •«  The  Chamber,  stigmatising  the  odious  and  ridiculous  slanders  brought 
forward  at  the  tribune,  and  regretting  the  loss  of  the  country's  time, 
throughout  an  entire  sitting,  passes  to  the  order  of  the  day  " — For  the 
motion,  382  ;  against  it,  2— Millevoye  and  Deroulede. 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  367 

that  they  had  imagined  they  might  be  genuine !  In  that 
matter  the  wish  may  have  been  father  to  the  thought,  not  that 
Dupuy  and  Develle  were  violent  Anglophobists,  like  Millevoye, 
or  on  account  of  the  delicate  questions,  notably  in  regard  to 
Siam,  which  were  then  pending  between  France  and  Great 
Britain,  but  because  it  might  have  served  their  interests  if  some 
of  the  Frenchmen  named  in  the  "  documents  "  had  really  been 
guilty  of  taking  bribes  from  "  perfidious  Albion.1' 

The  affair  in  no  wise  expedited  the  extradition  proceedings 
against  Cornelius  Herz ;  but  in  August  1894  the  Paris 
Correctional  Tribunal  condemned  him,  by  default,  to  five 
years'  imprisonment  and  i?120  fine,  which  sentence  the  Appeal 
Court  confirmed  in  the  following  year.  At  last  the  Bow  Street 
magistrate  was  empowered  to  repair  to  Bournemouth  in  connection 
with  the  extradition  proceedings,  but  decided,  in  his  wisdom, 
against  the  surrender  of  Herz  to  the  French  authorities.  Thus 
the  Bavarian  charlatan  and  blackmailer,  who,  after  "  exploiting  " 
so  many  inventors, had  preyed  like  a  vampire  on  the  Panama  Canal 
Company,  and  driven  Baron  de  Reinach  to  suicide,  escaped  the 
punishment  of  the  law.  Relying  on  the  impunity  assured  to 
him  by  the  English  magisterial  decision,  he  coolly  insulted  the 
French  authorities  when,  somewhat  later,  they  foolishly  sought 
to  obtain  certain  information  from  him.  At  last,  on  July  6, 
1898,  he  died,  without  ever  having  made  any  revelation  of 
importance. 

Two  years  previously  the  other  absconding  Panamist, 
Arton,  was  arrested  in  London.  He  had  long  been  resident 
in  the  vicinity  of  Clapham  Junction,  running  a  tea  business  on 
St.  John's  Hill,  and  taking  his  meals  at  a  little  restaurant  called 
"  The  Crichton."  In  his  case  extradition  was  granted  on  the 
condition  that  he  should  only  be  prosecuted  for  offences  at 
common  law.  He  was  first  tried  in  Paris  in  June  1896,  but 
those  proceedings  having  been  set  aside,  he  was  sent  in 
November  before  the  Assizes  of  Seine-et-Marne,  convicted,  and 
sentenced  to  eight  years'  hard  labour.  During  those  trials  and 
afterwards  he  made  a  number  of  bogus  or  unreliable  "  revela- 
tions." Certain  memoranda  in  his  note-books  were  supposed  to 
indicate  the  payments  he  had  made  to  public  men  with  the 
authorisation  of  Baron  de  Reinach  acting  for  the  Panama 
Company.  It  was  impossible,  however,  to  check  either  his 
memoranda  or  his  assertions.     His  character  was  far  from  good, 


368  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

and  it  was  contended  that  sums  which  he  claimed  to  have  paid 
away  had  really  been  squandered  by  himself  in  speculation  or 
otherwise.  Nevertheless,  in  March  1897,  proceedings  were 
instituted  against  several  more  members  of  the  Legislature  and 
prominent  journalists — Henri  Maret,  Alfred  Naquet,  Antide 
Boyer,  Levrey,  St.  Martin,  Planteau,  Gaillard,  Rigaut,  and 
Laisant,  who,  according  to  Arton,  had  received  from  him  sums 
varying  from  ,£480  to  i?4<000.  When  the  case  was  heard  in 
March  1898  the  Public  Prosecutor  abandoned  the  proceedings 
against  some  of  the  accused,  and  the  others  were  acquitted  by 
the  jury,  who  found  it  impossible  to  believe  Arton "s  evidence.1 
Some  suspicion  attached  to  the  case  of  Naquet,  who,  instead  of 
standing  his  trial  at  that  time,  crossed  over  to  England,  but  he 
ultimately  returned  to  Paris,  and  in  his  turn  also  secured  an 
acquittal. 

A  three  volume  report  of  the  proceedings  of  the  first. 
Parliamentary  Committee  on  the  Panama  Affair  was  issued  in 
1893,  and  another  came  from  a  second  Parliamentary  Com- 
mittee in  January  1898.  In  March  that  year  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies  discussed  those  reports,  and  by  a  unanimous  vote 
in  which  515  members  participated,  signified  its  opinion  and 
censure  in  the  following  terms  : — 

The  Chamber  regrets  that  at  the  outset  of  the  Panama  affair  a 
lack  of  duty  on  the  part  of  certain  magistrates  ensured  impunity  to 
the  culprits.  It  also  regrets  the  silence  preserved  at  that  period 
respecting  the  discovery  of  certain  misdemeanours  and  felonies 
which  led  to  proceedings  in  1895.2  It  blames  the  police  manoeuvres 
which  were  concerted  at  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  at  the  end  of 
1892  and  the  commencement  of  1893,  and  which  resulted  in 
negotiations  (pourparlers)  at  Venice  between  an  emissary  of  the 
detective  service  sent  thither  for  that  purpose  and  a  person  [Arton] 
accused  of  offences  at  common  law  and  liable  to  arrest  under  a 

1  His  statements  and  memoranda  had  given  rise  to  many  libel  suits  against 
newspapers,  some  of  which,  notably  La  France,  had  been  mulcted  in  heavy 
damages  at  the  suit  of  those  who  were  accused  of  having  taken  bribes. 

2  The  above  passage  refers  to  a  scandal  connected  with  the  Southern 
Railway  Company,  in  which  Baron  Jacques  de  Reinach  was  involved.  A 
great  amount  of  money  had  been  squandered,  and  Edmond  Magnier,  a 
Senator  of  the  Var  and  political  director  of  U  fivtnement  newspaper,  had 
taken  a  large  bribe  from  Reinach  in  return  for  his  Parliamentary  services. 
When  a  warrant  was  issued  for  Magnier's  arrest  in  1895  he  escaped  from  his 
house  hidden  in  a  linen-basket,  but  ultimately  surrendered,  and  on  being 
convicted  at  his  trial  was  sentenced  to  a  year's  imprisonment.  See  also 
ante,  p.  359. 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  369 

warrant.  It  also  blames  the  interference  and  the  participation  of 
political  men  in  financial  negotiations  and  operations  more  or  less 
dependent  on  public  authority  [this  applied  to  several  Senators  and 
Deputies],  and  it  repudiates  all  pecuniary  assistance  supplied  to  the 
Government  in  any  form  whatever  by  private  persons  or  companies. 

The  final  words  referred,  of  course,  to  the  newspaper  subsidy 
business  in  which  Floquet  and  Rouvier  had  taken  part.  With 
respect  to  the  magistrates  who  had  failed  to  discharge  their 
duty  at  the  outset  of  the  affair  that  censure  was  levelled  more 
particularly  at  M.  Quesnay  de  Beaurepaire,  who  had  been 
Procureur  general  at  the  time.  But  it  is  only  fair  to  add  that 
on  the  Cour  de  Cassation  inquiring  into  the  matter  it  held 
that  there  were  no  grounds  for  a  prosecution.  This  decision 
was  tantamount  to  a  reversal  of  the  Chamber's  censure  in 
Beaurepaire's  case. 

Reviewing  the  whole  affair  we  feel  that  it  certainly  disclosed 
a  lamentable  state  of  things.  There  were  distinct  instances  of 
culpability  or  grievous  indiscretion.  And  we  will  not  say  that 
no  moral  guilt  attached  to  every  one  of  those  who  were 
acquitted  at  law,  or  to  some  who  altogether  escaped  prosecution, 
such  as  certain  newspaper  proprietors  and  writers  who  bled  the 
unfortunate  Panama  enterprise  on  a  large  scale,  taking  money 
not  so  much  to  advertise  it  in  a  legitimate  way  as  to  delude 
investors  and  to  refrain  from  attacking  the  Company  and 
revealing  practices  of  which  they  were  fully  cognisant.  But  on 
the  other  hand  the  corruption  was  certainly  not  so  widespread 
as  some  asserted.  It  was  naturally  exaggerated  by  the  Republic's 
enemies,  and  in  a  good  many  instances  the  bitter  personal 
jealousies  and  differences  between  Republicans  themselves 
tended  to  magnify  it.  It  was  a  matter  of  which  one  might 
well  say  that 

All  those  who  told  it  added  something  new, 
While  they  who  heard  it  made  enlargement  too. 
In  ev'ry  ear  it  spread,  on  ev'ry  tongue  it  grew. 

Taking  the  charges  against  the  members  of  the  Legislature 
it  should  be  remembered  that  there  were  some  900  Senators 
and  Deputies,  and  that  guilt  or  indiscretion  was  proved  against 
very  few  of  them.  On  the  other  hand  as  regards  the  press, 
several  of  the  Royalist,  Bonapartist,  or  Boulangist  journals 
which  so  freely  denounced  parliamentary  corruption  were 
among  those  which  pocketed  the  Company's  subsidies.     It  was, 

2b 


370  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

indeed,  precisely  on  that  account  that  Floquet  insisted  on  some 
share  of  the  Company's  favours  going  to  the  Republican  press 
also.  That,  however,  was  certainly  a  great  mistake.  A  strong 
and  really  high-minded  Minister  would  not  have  stooped  to 
countenance  such  practices,  and  even  regulate  them,  as  Floquet 
did;  he  would  have  stopped  them  directly  they  came  to  his 
knowledge.  The  collapse  of  the  Panama  Company  was  not 
averted  by  the  course  pursued.  It  came  as  it  was,  indeed, 
bound  to  come  under  the  circumstances,  and  with  aggravated 
consequences  also,  for  not  only  was  the  Company's  financial 
deficit  increased  by  its  largesse  to  newspapers  and  other  bribe- 
takers, but  government,  parliament,  and  press  became  discredited 
in  many  directions. 

It  is  perhaps  fitting  that  we  should  here  append  a  brief 
account  of  the  fate  of  the  unlucky  enterprise.  In  July  1893  a 
law  was  passed  to  facilitate  the  liquidation  of  the  Company,  and 
M.  Lemarquis,  who  became  special  proxy  for  the  stockholders, 
endeavoured  in  conjunction  with  M.  Gautron,  then  liquidator, 
to  form  a  new  Company  for  finishing  the  Canal.  About 
£1,272,000  were  subscribed  by  former  directors,  contractors, 
and  members  of  the  earlier  syndicates,  and  in  1894  an  effort 
was  made  to  dispose  of  300,000  new  shares,  of  which,  however, 
only  34,843  were  at  first  taken  up.  Nevertheless  a  new 
Company  was  ultimately  formed  with  a  capital  of  .£2,600,000, 
represented  by  650,000  shares,  50,000  of  which  (fully  paid  up) 
were  allotted  to  the  Colombian  Government,  which  repeatedly 
renewed  the  Canal  concession.  There  was  not  enough  money 
to  resume  work  again  on  any  extensive  scale,  in  fact  the  new 
Company  could  only  keep  the  existing  maUriel  in  repair,  and 
carry  out  some  small  and  urgent  operations.  In  November 
1899,  however,  an  international  technical  commission  formed  of 
ten  able  engineers,  some  from  the  United  States  and  others  from 
England  and  Germany,  reported  favourably  on  the  possibility 
of  completing  the  Canal  at  a  cost  of  about  £20,500,000. 
President  M'Kinley  of  the  United  States  subsequently  had  the 
matter  investigated  by  a  special  commission,  and  in  1901,  with 
a  view  to  the  completion  of  the  work  by  the  American 
Government,  the  latter  entered  into  an  arrangement  with 
Great  Britain  which  superseded  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  of 
1850,  whereby  both  powers  had  agreed  that  neither  should 
exclusively  control  or  fortify  any  proposed  ship  canal  through 


THE  PANAMA  SCANDAL  371 

Central  America.  By  the  new  arrangement,  which  is  known  as 
the  Hay-Pauncefote  treaty,  Great  Britain  agreed  that  the 
United  States  should  have  the  sole  right  of  constructing, 
maintaining,  and  policing  the  Panama  Canal ;  the  United  States 
on  its  side  undertaking  that  the  regulations  of  the  enterprise 
should  be  substantially  the  same  as  those  now  governing  the 
free  navigation  of  the  Suez  Canal.  The  French  Panama 
Company  thereupon  sold  its  rights  and  property  to  the  United 
States  for  a  sum  of  ^8,000,000,  subject  to  the  conclusion  of 
a  treaty  between  the  purchasers  and  the  Colombian  Republic. 
Such  a  treaty  was  negotiated  at  Washington,  it  being  agreed 
that,  in  return  for  a  payment  of  ^2,000,000,  and  an  annual 
rental  of  ^50,000,  the  United  States  should  be  granted  a 
hundred  years1  lease  with  a  privilege  of  perpetual  renewal. 
Unluckily  for  Colombia,  however,  its  Congress  obstinately 
refused  to  ratify  this  treaty,  in  spite  of  significant  warnings 
that,  if  it  should  fall  through,  Panama  would  assert  its 
independence — as,  indeed,  it  had  done  repeatedly  during  the 
previous  half-century.  With  American  support  the  threatened 
Revolution  took  place  in  November  1903,  and  Colombia 
thereby  lost  both  its  Panamese  territory  and  the  money 
proffered  by  the  United  States.  The  latter  secured  in  per- 
petuity from  the  new  Republic  of  Panama  a  strip  of  country 
ten  miles  in  width  and  extending  from  ocean  to  ocean,  together 
with  unlimited  rights  of  control,  the  terms  of  purchase  being 
virtually  identical  with  those  which  Colombia  had  spurned. 
Since  that  period  the  completion  of  the  Canal  has  been 
progressing  slowly  but  steadily  under  American  auspices. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   ANARCHIST   TERROR — THE   ASSASSINATION 
OF   CARNOT 

The  Anarchists,  their  Precursors  and  their  Theories  —  Bakunin  and  the 
Federation  Jurassienne — Early  Phases  of  the  Anarchist  Movement  in 
France — "  Propaganda  by  Deeds" — The  Russian  Nihilists  in  France — 
The  Murder  of  General  Seliverskoff— The  Affair  at  Fourmies— The  Clichy 
Anarchists — Ravachol,  the  "  Chevalier  de  la  Dynamite  "—The  Crime  at 
La  Varizelle — The  Violation  of  Mme.  de  RochetailleVs  Grave — The 
Murder  of  the  Hermit  of  Chambles — Another  crime  imputed  to  Ravachol 
— His  sojourn  at  St.  Denis — The  Theft  of  the  Dynamite  Cartridges — 
The  Explosions  of  the  Boulevard  St.  Germain,  the  Lobau  Barracks,  the 
Rue  de  Clichy,  and  the  Cafe  Very — Ravachol's  Trials  in  Paris  and  at 
Montbrison — His  Death  by  the  Guillotine — Leauthier's  Crime — The 
Deaths  of  Ferry,  Taine,  Maupassant,  Gounod,  and  MacMahon — The 
Russian  Fleet  at  Toulon — A  Casimir-Perier  Ministry — Vaillant  and  the 
Bomb  of  the  Palais  Bourbon — The  Explosions  of  the  Hotel  Terminus, 
the  Faubourg  St.  Jacques,  and  the  Rue  St.  Martin — The  Bomb  of  the 
Madeleine— The  Outrage  at  Foyot's  Restaurant— The  Trial  and  Execution 
of  Emile  Henry— The  Villisse  Affair — The  Second  Dupuy  Ministry— 
The  Prosecution  of  the  Thirty — The  Murder  of  Carnot  by  Caserio — His 
Trial  and  Execution — Some  later  Outrages. 

In  1892,  while  M.  Loubet  was  Prime  Minister  and  the  Panama 
scandal  was  gradually  approaching  a  climax,  Paris  was 
suddenly  startled  and  then  horrified  by  a  succession  of  dastardly 
outrages  and  crimes,  the  motives  of  which  at  first  seemed  to  be 
incomprehensible,  though  it  was  immediately  recognised  that 
they  were  the  work  of  so-called  Anarchists.  The  name  of 
Anarchist  had  been  made  familiar  in  France  some  forty  years 
previously  by  the  writings  of  P.  J.  Proudhon,  but  the  sect 
claimed  a  far  more  distant  ancestry.  Traces  of  its  principal 
theories  might  be  found,  indeed,  among  the  views  held  by 
some  of  the  early  Christians,  views  which  either  survived  until, 
or  sprang  up  afresh  during  the  Middle  Ages,  and  which  had 

372 


EARLY  PHASES  OF  ANARCHISM  373 

exponents  during  the  popular  risings  in  England  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  and  among  the  German  Anabaptists  two  hundred 
years  later.  It  may  be  taken,  however,  that  the  nineteenth  and 
twentieth  century  Anarchist  is  more  particularly  the  offspring  of 
some  of  the  "philosophy"'1  current  in  France  about  the  time 
of  the  great  Revolution.  Abbe  Meslier,  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau, 
and  Diderot  were  more  or  less  the  modern  Anarchist's  pro- 
genitors. Indeed  the  canons  of  his  belief  are  almost  summed 
up  in  two  lines  which  fell  from  Diderot's  pen : — 

La  nature  n'a  fait  ni  serviteurs  ni  maitres, 
Je  ne  veux  ni  donner  ni  recevoir  des  lois. 

The  Hebertists  and  Babouvists  of  L  the  period  of  the  Terror 
favoured  in  some  degree  those  doctrines.  Subsequently,  during 
Louis  Philippe's  reign,  the  Anarchist  theory  found  an  exponent 
in  Bellegarrigue ;  and  later  still,  during  the  Republic  of  1848, 
Claude  Pelletier  adopted  its  more  essential  points.  As  for  the 
Anarchism  of  to-day  that  is  best  expounded  in  La  Societe 
mourante  et  FAnarchie,  by  Jean  Grave,  but  it  is  also  clearly 
and  cleverly  epitomised  in  Malato's  pamphlet,  La  Philosophic 
de  F Anarchic  To  put  the  matter  briefly,  Anarchism  is  a 
political  and  social  system,  in  which  each  individual  being 
develops  according  to  his  natural  rights,  and  in  which  society 
quite  dispenses  with  central  government.  It  is  argued  that 
every  man  has  a  natural,  equal,  and  imprescriptible  right  to 
happiness  and  free  development;  but  that  this  right  is 
annihilated  in  the  existing  social  systems  by  a  number  of  evil 
or  blamable  institutions,  such  as  central  or  superior  authority, 
religion,  family  ties,  property-rights,  militarism,  patriotism  J 
and  so  forth,  these,  in  their  ensemble,  having  established  upon 
earth  a  regime  which  cannot  be  justified  in  logic,  and  which, 
in  practice,  is  evil  and  criminal.  That  regime  then,  says  the 
Anarchist,  must  be  cast  down,  and  replaced  by  one  of  true 
liberty  and  fraternity,  that  is  a  commonalty  in  which  each 
man  would  work  according  to  his  strength,  and  receive  according 
to  his  needs.  All  beings  would  be  equal,  all  unions  would  be 
free.  If  man  is  not  naturally  good  and  kindly,  he  is  at  least 
capable  of  becoming  so,  and  of  realising  that  his  own  interests 
are  inseparable  from  those  of  humanity  at  large.  It  would  be 
possible  and  just,  it  is  added,  to  replace  the  existing  system  of 
oppressive  and  unjust  laws   by  a  state  of  common   brotherly 


374  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

customs.  From  this  it  will  be  seen  that  the  Anarchist  theory 
differs  largely  from  the  doctrines  of  the  Socialist  schools,  which 
embrace  in  various  degrees  such  principles  as  authority  and 
compulsion.  But,  the  reader  may  say,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
Anarchist  theory,  as  set  forth  above,  to  justify  bomb-throwing, 
destruction,  and  slaughter.  Those  deeds,  however,  are  the 
outcome  of  the  principle  that  the  existing  regime  of  Society 
must  be  cast  down,  and  in  this  respect  one  sees  what  a  wide 
difference  there  is  between  Socialism  and  Anarchism.  The 
former  likewise  wishes  to  overthrow  the  present  system,  but 
seeks  to  do  so  by  exclusively  lawful  means,  the  power  of  the 
vote,  and  so  forth ;  whereas  Anarchism  declares  that  laws  are 
altogether  wrong  and  ought  not  to  be  obeyed,  and  that  the 
social  change  should  be  effected  by  revolutionary  courses  and 
not  by  the  lawful  means  of  which  Socialists  seek  to  avail 
themselves.  Indeed,  the  employment  of  lawful  means 
would  be  an  acknowledgment  of  the  authority  of  laws,  an 
authority  which  the  Anarchist  absolutely  denies.  But  let  it 
be  added  that  while  there  are  many  thousands  of  Anarchists 
scattered  through  Europe  and  America,  the  vast  majority  are 
content  to  state  their  theories  and  confine  themselves  to 
persuasive  propaganda.  It  is  only  the  more  fanatical  and 
less  intelligent  sectarians  that  have  carried  out  the  so-called 
"propaganda  by  deeds "  by  means  of  bombs  and  other  de- 
structive or  death-dealing  instruments. 

The  direct  father  of  nineteenth  and  twentieth  century 
Anarchism  was  the  Russian  Revolutionary  Michael  Bakunin.1 
In  September  1872  a  split  occurred  in  a  Congress  of  the  Inter- 
national Society  of  Workers  held  at  the  Hague.     Bakunin's 

1  Descended  from  an  old  noble  family  of  Twer,  this  apostle  of  Nihilism 
and  Anarchism  was  born  in  1814.  In  his  youth  he  entered  the  Artillery 
School  of  St.  Petersburg,  but  renounced  a  military  career,  and  subsequently 
repaired  to  Berlin,  where  he  became  a  member  of  the  Hegelian  sect.  He 
afterwards  associated  with  Proudhon  and  other  French  Revolutionaries,  and 
in  1848  was  mixed  up  in  the  attempts  to  free  the  Slav  populations  of  Austria 
from  the  rule  of  the  Hapsburgs.  In  the  following  year  he  headed  the  insur- 
rection of  Dresden,  but  having  been  captured  by  the  Prussian  authorities  he 
was  handed  over  to  the  Emperor  Nicholas  I.  of  Russia,  who  in  1851  com- 
mitted him  to  the  dungeons  of  Schliisselburg.  Five  years  later  Alexander  II. 
sent  him  to  Siberia  as  a  penal  colonist,  but  in  1859  he  escaped  and  made  his 
way  to  Japan.  He  reached  England  in  1861,  and  became  one  of  the  chief 
promoters  of  the  International  Society  referred  to  above.  His  death  took 
place  in  1876. 


EARLY  PHASES  OF  ANARCHISM  375 

individualist  views  could  not  possibly  be  reconciled  with  the 
socialist  theories  of  Karl  Marx.  Moreover,  the  two  leaders 
cordially  detested  each  other,  and  each  took  his  own  course, 
followed  by  his  adherents.  Whilst  Marx  triumphed  more  par- 
ticularly in  Germany,  Bakunin  founded  the  so-called  Federation 
Jurassienne,  which  recruited  many  adherents  in  Eastern  France, 
in  Switzerland  and  Northern  Italy,  its  views  being  also  carried 
into  Spain  by  Bakunin's  disciple,  Farelli.  A  newspaper, 
called  VAvant  Garde  and  edited  by  Paul  Brousse,  was 
established  at  Geneva,  but  it  was  in  Italy  in  1877 — a  year 
after  Bakunin's  death — that  the  Anarchists  first  made  them- 
selves really  conspicuous.  They  did  not  effect  much  progress 
in  France  until  1878,  when  VAvant  Garde  having  been  killed 
by  repeated  prosecutions,  another  journal,  Le  Revolt  6,  was 
founded  by  Prince  Kropotkin  and  Elisee  Reclus  who, 
although  an  Anarchist,  was  none  the  less  a  very  eminent 
geographer.  At  a  congress  held  in  France  in  1879  the 
Socialists  and  Anarchists  found  agreement  impossible.  The 
former  decided  to  take  part  in  electoral  contests,  the  latter 
resolved  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  them  but  to  employ 
revolutionary  tactics.  Some  attempt  to  effect  a  compromise 
was  made  at  a  subsequent  congress  at  Havre,  but  dissensions 
soon  broke  out  again.  Nevertheless  twenty-one  Anarchist 
delegates,  representing  seven  distinct  "groups,"  attended  a 
Socialist  Congress  held  in  Paris  in  1881.  They  were  expelled 
from  that  gathering  after  a  series  of  violent  scenes,  and  thereupon 
organised  an  independent  Revolutionary  Congress. 

It  was  now  that  the  Anarchist  movement  really  began  to 
take  shape  in  France.  Another  newspaper,  La  Revolution  Sociale, 
was  established  in  Paris,  and  the  "  groups  "  of  Lyons,  Grenoble, 
Vienne,  Roanne,  St.  Etienne,  Narbonne,  Beziers,  and  Cette 
adhered  to  the  Parisian  programme.  Lyons,  moreover,  not  to 
be  outdone  by  the  capital,  now  had  an  Anarchist  organ  of  its 
own,  a  weekly  journal  called  Le  Droit  Social,  with  an  average 
circulation  of  about  8000  copies,  which  will  show  how  largely 
the  movement  (which  some  may  deem  insane)  was  already 
spreading.  In  the  same  year,  1881,  an  Anarchist  Congress 
was  held  in  London  with  the  object  of  exchanging  views  and 
arriving  at  a  common  programme,  but  virtually  nothing  was 
effected  in  that  respect,  perhaps  because  Anarchism,  in  spite  of 
the   attempts  to  bind   it   together  by  means  of  "groups,"  is 


376  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

essentially  a  perverted  form  of  individualism,  in  which  each 
takes  his  own  independent  course.  A  few  Anarchists,  sharing 
the  same  particular  idea,  occasionally  combine  to  carry  it  into 
effect,  but  there  is  no  central  authority,  no  board  of  directors, 
no  junta,  no  camarilla,  no  governing  power  of  any  kind.  Some 
European  governments  long  imagined  that  there  must  be  a 
regular  organisation,  and  on  that  account  blundered  exceedingly 
in  their  attempts  to  put  down  the  movement.  London, 
moreover,  has  long  been  regarded  as  the  city  whence  the  mot 
oVordre  goes  forth  for  some  dreadful  outrage.  But  there  is  no 
mot  oVordre  at  all,  there  is  simply  individual  inspiration,  and 
thus  you  cannot  stamp  out  Anarchism  as  you  might  suppress 
certain  conspiracies.  Anarchism  is  at  once  hydra  -  headed 
and  elusive. 

It  was  in  1882  that  the  French  Anarchists  first  began  to 
practise  the  so-called  "  propaganda  by  deeds.""  There  were 
serious  revolutionary  disturbances  at  Montceau-les-Mines,  the 
great  coal-mining  centre  in  Saone-et-Loire.  Dynamite  now 
began  to  play  a  role  in  such  risings.  There  were  several 
explosions,  a  chapel  on  one  occasion  being  completely  destroyed. 
It  became  necessary  to  draft  a  strong  body  of  troops  into  the 
district,  and  a  large  number  of  workmen  were  arrested  and  tried 
at  Riom.  Lyons  also  had  its  Anarchist  affair,  a  bomb  being 
thrown  at  a  cafe  on  the  Place  Bellecour,  with  the  result  that  a 
man  was  killed.  Prince  Kropotkin,  the  Nihilist,  was  accused 
of  having  helped  to  foment  these  disorders,  and  was  arrested 
and  sent  to  prison  with  many  others  as  we  related  in  a  previous 
chapter.1  Later  came  a  semi- Anarchist  demonstration  on  the 
Place  des  Invalides  in  Paris,  in  which  Louise  Michel  figured, 
her  participation  leading  to  a  sentence  of  six  years'*  solitary 
confinement — an  excessive  penalty  in  the  case  of  a  woman  who 
really  needed  careful  treatment  in  an  asylum.  However,  thanks 
to  a  subsequent  amnesty  she  served  only  a  portion  of  her  term. 
There  were  many  other  arrests  and  condemnations  at  that  time, 
but  the  Anarchist  movement  was  not  checked  by  them.  It 
now  had  a  fresh  newpaper,  Terre  et  Liberty  which  appeared 
every  week  and  attained  a  circulation  of  nearly  20,000  copies 
before  a  series  of  condemnations  led  to  its  demise  some  three 
months  after  its  birth.  Le  Revolt^  on  which  Jean  Grave 
now  collaborated  with  Elisee  Reclus,  still  continued  to  appear. 
1  See  ante,  p.  270. 


EARLY  PHASES  OF  ANARCHISM  377 

Ensuing  years  witnessed,  indeed,  considerable  accessions  to 
Anarchist  literature,  and  although  there  was  a  lull  in  the 
"  propaganda  by  deeds  "  everything  indicated  that  the  principles 
of  the  movement  were  steadily  spreading. 

In  1890  attention  was  momentarily  diverted  from  the 
French  Anarchists  to  the  Russian  Nihilists — whose  tenets  are 
almost  identical.  A  number  of  Russians  were  found  making 
explosives  at  Le  Raincy  in  the  environs  of  Paris,  and  arrest 
and  condemnation  naturally  followed.  That  occurred  in  May, 
and  during  the  following  November  Paris  was  startled  by  the 
murder  of  General  Seliverskoff,  a  former  Russian  Minister  of 
Police,  at  the  Hotel  de  Bade  on  the  Boulevard  des  Italiens. 
The  assassin,  a  Pole  called  Padlewski,  escaped  with  the 
assistance  of  some  French  revolutionary  Radicals,  notably  a 
journalist  named  Labruyere,  and  the  wife  of  Duc-Quercy,  a 
notorious  agitator.  The  latter  hid  Padlewski  in  Paris  after 
his  crime ;  and  the  former  accompanied  him  out  of  France, 
going  with  him,  indeed,  as  far  as  Trieste.  A  prosecution 
followed  this  exploit,  and  if  Padlewski  escaped,  Labruyere, 
Mme.  Duc-Quercy,  and  a  certain  Gregoire  paid  for  it  by 
imprisonment  (December  1890). 

On  the  following  "  May  Day  "  there  were  some  disturbances 
in  the  coal-mining  districts  in  the  Nord.  Both  M.  Isaac,  the 
sub-Prefect,  and  Major  Chapu,  the  officer  commanding  some 
troops  called  out  at  Fourmies,  virtually  lost  their  heads  on  this 
occasion,  giving  orders  to  fire  under  such  circumstances  that 
nine  people  were  shot  dead  and  forty  wounded,  those  who  were 
killed  including  four  women  and  three  children.  This  terrible 
affair  aroused  general  indignation ;  but  curiously  enough  it  was 
on  account  of  quite  a  minor  incident,  occurring  that  same  day 
at  Clichy-Levallois  in  the  outskirts  of  Paris,  that  there  came 
during  the  next  few  years  a  perfect  Anarchist  Terror,  which 
culminated  in  the  assassination  of  President  Carnot. 

A  party  of  some  twenty  Anarchists,  headed  by  a  woman 
carrying  a  red  flag,  was  marching  through  Clichy  when  the 
local  Commissary  of  Police  assembled  several  of  his  men  to 
disperse  the  little  procession  and  seize  the  "  seditious  emblem." 
The  scuffle  which  ensued  became  quite  an  affray,  some  shots 
being  fired  on  both  sides,  though  happily  without  effect ;  and 
finally,  three  men  named  Dardare,  Decamp,  and  Leveille  were 
secured  by  the  police.     Desirous  as  we  are  of  preserving  strict 


378  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

impartiality  in  this  narrative,  we  must  admit  that  the  police 
subjected  their  prisoners  to  gross  ill-treatment,  hitting  them, 
kicking  them,  and  dragging  them  along  the  ground.  Had  the 
Commissary  been  present,  it  would  have  been  his  duty  to 
prevent  this,  but  he  had  gone  off  to  wash  his  hands — perhaps 
like  Pontius  Pilate — and,  in  the  result,  the  prisoners  had  to  be 
attended  medically  before  they  could  stand  their  trial.  Their 
original  offence  was  not  so  very  great,  for  the  red  flag  had  been 
flaunted  here  and  there  in  and  about  Paris  on  several  occasions 
since  the  return  of  the  Communist  exiles.  Yet  although  the 
jury  accorded  "  extenuating  circumstances,""  the  Public 
Prosecutor,  M.  Bulot,  demanded  exemplary  punishment,  and 
the  Presiding  Judge,  M.  Benoit,  inflicted  as  high  a  penalty  as 
he  could,  sending  Decamp  to  hard  labour  for  five  years,  and 
Dardare  for  three.  Leveille  had  been  acquitted.  Now  it  was 
those  sentences  which  provoked  the  outrages  of  Ravachol,  with 
whom  the  Anarchist  Terror  began. 

Ravachol,  the  Chevalier  de  la  Dynamite,  as  he  was  called  in 
those  days,  was  of  German  extraction.  His  real  name  was 
Francois  Auguste  Kcenigstein,  but  his  mother  had  been  a 
demoiselle  Ravachol.  Though  only  of  average  height  and 
somewhat  slim  build,  he  possessed  very  great  muscular  strength. 
He  had  a  thin  face,  with  the  jaws  of  a  wolf,  and  bright  and 
cunning  eyes.  He  had  come  into  the  world  in  the  department 
of  the  Loire,  that  region  of  coal  and  iron,  where  the  scenery  is 
so  often  wild  and  rugged,  and  where  life  is  always  hard.  It  is 
there,  indeed,  that  the  most  rebellious  spirits  in  France  are 
found.  RavachoFs  real  calling  was  that  of  a  journeyman  dyer, 
and  he  had  acquired  a  slight  knowledge  of  chemistry — sufficient, 
at  all  events,  to  compound  nitro-glycerine  and  prepare  dynamite 
cartridges.  Whatever  his  deficiencies  he  was  a  vain,  boastful 
man,  full  of  self-importance  and  fond  of  thrusting  himself 
forward.  He  was  eager,  too,  for  money,  and  as  his  wages  as  a 
dyer  did  not  suffice  him,  he  practised  coining,  smuggling,  and 
eventually  murder. 

The  first  murders  he  committed  took  place  at  La  Varizelle, 
near  St.  Chamond,  where  after  breaking  into  the  house  of  an 
old  rentier  named  Rivollier,  he  despatched  him  in  his  bed  by 
splitting  his  skull  with  a  hatchet.  Then,  as  his  victim's  old 
servant  tried  to  escape,  he  followed  her  into  the  road  and 
killed  her   there.     But   although   he   broke   or   forced   every 


RAVACHOL'S  EARLY  CAREER       379 

cupboard  or  drawer  he  could  find,  he  obtained,  apparently,  very 
little  money  by  those  first  crimes.  They  were  perpetrated  on 
the  night  of  March  29,  1886.  Several  persons  were  arrested 
on  suspicion,  but  the  real  culprit  was  never  known  until 
Ravachol  ultimately  confessed  his  guilt.  A  period  of  five 
years  elapsed,  and  it  may  be  that  he  committed  more  than  one 
crime  during  that  interval,  but  the  next  one,  by  order  of  date, 
that  he  acknowledged,  occurred  on  a  dark,  rainy  night  in  May 
1891,  when,  disregarding  the  incessant  downpour,  he  climbed 
over  the  wall  of  the  cemetery  of  St.  Jean  de  Bonnefond  near 
Terrenoire,  and  made  his  way  towards  the  grave  in  which  the 
Countess  de  Rochetaillee  had  recently  been  buried.  He  had 
heard,  somehow  or  other,  that  this  lady  had  been  laid  to  rest 
wearing  several  valuable  articles  of  jewellery,  and  these  he  was 
resolved  to  have.  In  order  to  reach  the  coffin,  he  first  had  to 
remove  two  stone  slabs,  one  weighing  330  and  the  other  260 
lbs.  But  he  was  as  strong  as  the  famous  assassin,  Troppmann, 
and  he  accomplished  his  task  and  broke  the  coffin  open. 
According  to  his  own  account,  the  odour  of  the  corpse  almost 
brought  on  nausea,  nevertheless  he  persevered,  and  proceeded 
to  feel  the  hands  and  the  wrists,  in  order  to  secure  any  rings  or 
bracelets  which  might  be  there.  But  there  were  none,  and  with 
a  muttered  oath  he  turned  his  attention  to  the  neck,  hoping 
at  all  events  to  find  a  necklace.  But  there  was  only  a  ribbon, 
from  which  depended  a  small  consecrated  medal  and  a  tiny 
wooden  cross.  Ravachol  ragefully  tore  them  from  the  ribbon, 
flung  them  away,  and  hastened  from  the  spot,  lamenting  his 
bad  luck. 

A  few  weeks  later,  on  June  19,  he  committed  a  much  more 
profitable  crime.  There  was  an  old  man,  an  octogenarian 
named  Jacques  Brunei,  living  in  a  lonely  cabin  near  Chambles. 
He  had  dwelt  there  for  fifty  years  and  was  known  as  the  Hermit, 
having,  indeed,  a  great  reputation  for  piety,  but  belonging 
apparently  to  no  religious  order.  He  went  about  soliciting 
alms,  and  people  often  brought  him  money  and  victuals.  It 
occurred  to  Ravachol  that  as  the  Hermit  spent  little  or  nothing 
on  sustenance,  he  must  have  a  secret  hoard,  and  in  this  surmise 
he  was  not  mistaken.  About  noon,  on  June  19,  1891,  he 
repaired  to  the  Hermit's  cabin,  and  told  him  he  would  give 
him  twenty  francs  to  have  some  masses  said,  if  he  could  give 
him  change  for  a  fifty  franc  note.     The  Hermit,  who  was  lying 


380  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

on  his  bed,  replied  that  he  had  no  change,  and — perhaps 
because  he  did  not  like  his  visitor's  manner — made  an  attempt 
to  rise.  But  Ravachol  prevented  it,  sprang  upon  him,  knelt  on 
his  chest,  stifled  his  cries  with  a  handkerchief  and  strangled 
him.  He  found  money  all  over  the  place,  in  an  earthenware 
cooking-pot,  in  a  cupboard,  under  the  bed,  and  also  in  a  little 
loft.  And  gold  and  silver  and  copper  coins  were  all  mingled 
together.     The  gold  and  silver  alone  represented  £1600. 

Ravachol  roughly  sorted  some  of  the  money.  He  did  not 
want  to  burden  himself  with  the  coppers  and  therefore  flung 
them  on  the  floor ;  but  he  took  as  much  gold  and  silver  as  he 
could  conveniently  carry,  shut  up  the  house,  and  going  towards 
the  railway  station  entered  a  cafe  near  it  and  lunched. 
Murder  made  him  hungry,  and  he  devoured,  it  appears,  an 
omelette  of  six  eggs,  some  fresh- water  fish  and  a  steak,  washing 
these  down  with  draughts  of  wine,  and  afterwards  treating 
himself  to  some  punch,  like  a  man  well  satisfied  with  his  work. 
It  was  not  yet  finished  however.  He  returned  to  the  Hermit's 
dwelling,  shut  himself  inside,  and  then  carefully  sorted  all  the 
money  he  could  find.  He  realised  that  there  was  too  much  for 
him  to  take  away  on  that  occasion,  but  he  resolved  to  return 
on  the  morrow  with  a  valise.  So  once  more  he  departed,  this 
time  for  his  home  at  St.  diamond,  where  he  informed  his 
mistress — a  lean  ugly  little  woman,  with  eyes  denoting  hysteria 
— of  his  successful  exploit.  Her  name  was  Rulhiere,  and  on 
the  morrow  he  and  she,  after  securing  a  conveyance,  drove  to 
the  vicinity  of  Chambles.  Ravachol  went  up  to  the  cabin  with 
a  valise,  in  which  he  packed  all  the  remaining  gold  and  silver 
and  sundry  other  valuables,  and  then  rejoined  his  mistress.  A 
few  hours  later  a  person  of  the  locality  discovered  the  Hermit 
lying  dead  on  his  bed,  with  some  i?50  worth  of  coppers  strewn 
on  the  floor  near  him. 

But  Ravachol  had  been  noticed  during  his  journeys  to  and 
from  the  cabin,  and  he  was  found  and  arrested.  So  were  his 
mistress  and  two  receivers  named  Fachard  and  Crozet,  to  whom 
he  had  disposed  of  certain  articles  removed  from  the  Hermit's 
dwelling.  It  happened,  however,  quite  accidentally,  that  while 
the  gendarmes  were  taking  Ravachol  to  prison,  a  drunken 
man  reeled  into  the  midst  of  the  group,  and  the  gendarmes 
momentarily  released  their  prisoner.  He  at  once  availed  him- 
self of  his  opportunity  and  fled.     His  mistress  and  the  others 


RAVACHOL'S  CAREER  381 

were  not  so  fortunate.  They  were  brought  to  trial,  and 
Rulhiere  was  sentenced  to  seven  years1  hard  labour,  Crozet  to 
one  year's  and  Fachard  to  five  years'  imprisonment. 

Ravachol  appears  to  have  fled  first  to  Lyons,  where  he  rid 
himself  of  the  coat  and  hat  he  had  been  wearing,  throwing 
them  away  on  the  banks  of  the  Rhone.  Next  he  betook  him- 
self to  St.  Etienne,  where  he  had  certain  friends,  notably  a  man 
named  Jus-Beala,  who  was  living  with  a  girl  called  Mariette 
Soubert.  It  would  appear  that  Ravachol  had  already  deposited 
with  them  some  of  the  money  he  had  stolen  at  Chambles,  and 
they  contrived  to  hide  him  in  their  house  for  a  short  time.  It 
was  subsequently  claimed  that  they  even  assisted  him  to  murder 
an  old  woman  named  Marcon  and  her  daughter,  who  kept  a 
small  ironmongery  business  in  the  Rue  de  Roanne  at  St. 
Etienne,  but  all  three  denied  that  crime,  and  indeed  Beala  and 
Mariette  were  acquitted  by  the  jury  which  tried  them  on  the 
charge.  After  a  careful  perusal  of  the  evidence,  we  even  think 
that  Ravachol  was  guiltless  in  this  respect.  The  crime  was 
committed  on  July  27,  1891,  that  is  only  five  weeks  after  the 
murder  of  the  Hermit  of  Chambles,  when  Ravachol  was  in  no 
need  of  money,  as,  on  joining  Beala,  the  latter  had  handed  him 
several  thousand  francs  which  he  had  received  on  deposit. 

Before  long  all  three  of  them,  Ravachol,  Beala,  and  Mariette, 
quitted  St.  Etienne  for  St.  Denis  on  the  north  of  Paris.  Both 
men  professed  Anarchist  principles,  and  had  been  connected 
with  certain  "groups"  in  southern  France.  At  St.  Denis 
they  found  themselves  in  a  veritable  hot-bed  of  Anarchism,  the 
cause  counting  numerous  "  companions "  among  the  riff-raff  of 
the  district.  Ravachol,  who  had  now  assumed  the  name  of 
Louis  Leger,  often  heard  them  speak  of  the  Clichy-Levallois 
case  and  the  "  martyrs  "  Decamp  and  Dardare,  who  had  received 
such  severe  sentences,  and  the  idea  of  "  avenging  "  them  gradu- 
ally grew  upon  him.  Others,  for  their  part,  wished  to  "  avenge  " 
some  of  the  Spanish  Anarchists,  whom  the  Government  of 
the  Queen -Regent  was  "persecuting"  on  account  of  their 
risings  and  outrages  in  Andalusia  and  Catalonia.  A  supply  of 
dynamite  being  needed,  Ravachol  and  three  friends  named 
Faugoux,  Drouhet,  and  Chalbret,  repaired  to  Soisy-sous-Etiolles, 
south  of  Paris,  where  they  stole  about  120  cartridges  from  the 
works  of  a  contractor  named  Couezy.  Ravachol  then  employed 
a  young  fellow  named  Simon,  a  Parisian  gavroche,  more  usually 


382  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

known  by  the  sobriquet  of  Biscuit,  to  reconnoitre  the  house  on 
the  Boulevard  St.  Germain  where  M.  Benoit,  the  judge  who 
had  sentenced  Decamp  and  Dardare,  occupied  a  flat,  and  he 
afterwards  repaired  thither  himself,  provided  with  an  explosive 
apparatus.  The  journey  was  made  in  a  tramcar,  and  to  avoid 
arousing  suspicion  Ravachol  dressed  himself  on  this  occasion  in 
a  frock-coat  and  silk  hat  like  some  genuine  bourgeois.  He 
deposited  his  apparatus  on  the  landing  of  the  second  floor  of  the 
house  where  M.  Benoit  lived,  then  quietly  took  his  departure. 
An  explosion  promptly  ensued,  doing  damage  to  the  extent  of 
^lOOO  or  so,  but  fortunately  nobody  was  killed  or  injured. 
Four  days  afterwards,  at  a  late  hour  on  March  15,  1892,  there 
was  an  explosion  at  the  Lobau  Barracks,  this  being  the  work  of 
an  anarchist  carpenter  named  Meunier,  who  had  secured  some 
of  the  dynamite  stolen  from  Soisy ;  and  although  it  so  chanced 
once  again  that  no  loss  of  life  occurred,  the  Government  hastily 
drafted  a  bill  providing  that  persons  responsible  for  such  explo- 
sions should  be  liable  to  capital  punishment. 

On  March  27  Ravachol  replied  to  that  measure  by  depositing 
an  infernal  machine  in  a  house  in  the  Rue  de  Clichy,  where  M. 
Bulot,  the  Public  Prosecutor  at  the  trial  of  Decamp  and  Dardare, 
resided.  On  this  occasion  six  persons  were  injured  more  or  less 
severely,  and  the  damage  to  property  represented  nearly  ^6000. 
Ravachol,  well  pleased  with  his  exploit,  went  off  to  lunch  at  an 
establishment — half  wine-shop,  half  restaurant — on  the  Boule- 
vard Magenta.  It  was  kept  by  a  M.  Very,  who  had  married  a 
Mile.  Lherot,  the  latter's  brother  serving  as  his  principal  waiter. 
Ravachol  was  very  vain,  and  some  boastful  remarks  he  made 
respecting  the  Boulevard  St.  Germain  and  Rue  de  Clichy  crimes 
prompted  Lherot  to  denounce  him.  He  was  arrested,  as  were 
his  friends  Beala  and  Mariette,  his  young  acolyte  Simon,  and  a 
man  named  Chaumentin,  who,  in  order  to  save  himself,  gave 
evidence  against  the  others. 

Beala,  Mariette,  and  Chaumentin  were  acquitted  at  the 
Paris  Assizes,  but  Ravachol  and  Simon  were  convicted  with  the 
admission  of  extenuating  circumstances  (!),  whereupon  they 
were  sentenced  to  hard  labour  for  life.  Full  inquiries  had  now 
been  made,  however,  into  RavachoPs  past  career,  and  he  was 
sent  before  the  Assizes  at  Montbrison  to  answer  for  the  murders 
we  previously  related.  Beala  and  Mariette,  who  were  arraigned 
at  the  same  time,  were  only  convicted  of  having  harboured  him, 


RAVACHOUS  CAREER 

but  he  himself,  having  acknowledged  some  of  the  crimes  in 

question,  was   condemned  to  death.     He  was  undoubtedly  a 

veritable  brigand,  an  unscrupulous  rebel  against  every  law,  but 

from  the  statements  he  made  at  his  trials  he  evidently  had  little 

aowledge  of  Anarchical  theories.     He  professed  Anarchism 

mply  because  it  gave  him  an   excuse  to  satisfy  his  violent 

stincts,  his  passion  for  slaughter  and  destruction,  being,  indeed, 

:tle  more  than  a  savage  beast  who  recoiled  from  no  excesses. 

e  refused  to  appeal  to  the  Court  of  Cassation  or  to  solicit  a 

prieve,  and  was  executed  at  Montbrison  on  July  10,  1892. 

n  his  way  to  the  guillotine  he  was  attended  by  a  priest,  who 

inly  exhorted  him  to  repentance.     "  Take  away  your  crucifix  !" 

avachol  shouted  in  reply.     "  Don't  show  it  to  me  ;  I  shall  spit 

i  it  if  you  do  ! "     And  forthwith  he  began  to  sing  a  horrible 

tty,  commencing — 

Pour  etre  heureux,  nom  de  Dieu, 
II  faut  tuer  les  proprietaires, 
Pour  etre  heureux,  nom  de  Dieu, 
II  faut  couper  les  cures  en  deux  ! 

ie  world  was  well  rid  of  such  a  miscreant. 

But  he  had  already  found  an  Anarchist  "  avenger."  On  the 
ening  preceding  his  trial  in  Paris,  there  was  a  terrible  explo- 
>n  at  the  Very  Restaurant,  whose  waiter,  Lherot,  had  denounced 
n.  Very  himself  was  killed,  as  was  a  customer  named 
imonod,  several  other  persons  being  injured.  This  outrage 
pears  to  have  been  the  work  of  Meunier,  the  carpenter,  who 
,s  already  responsible  for  the  explosion  at  the  Lobau  Barracks. 
i  fled  to  London,  and  was  not  secured  until  the  summer  of 
94.  As  there  were  certain  discrepancies  and  gaps  in  the 
idence  against  him  he  escaped  with  a  sentence  of  hard  labour 
•  life,  twenty  years  being  the  punishment  allotted  to  one  of 
;  comrades  named  Bricou,  while  a  man  named  Francis,  who 
I  also  been  extradited  from  England  in  connection  with  the 
;e,  was  acquitted. 

The  explosion  at  the  Very  Restaurant  created  a  panic  in 
ris,  and  the  police  arrested  everybody  suspected  of  Anarchism 
ora  they  could  lay  hands  upon.  Yet  a  good  many  "  com- 
lions  "  remained  at  large  in  the  northern  outskirts  of  Paris, 
ich  seemed  to  be  their  favourite  habitat.  It  was  there  that 
;y  sang  "  La  Ravachole,"  composed  by  a  "  poet "  of  the  band, 
and  beginning — 


384  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Dans  la  grande  ville  de  Paris 
II  y  a  des  bourgeois  bien  nourris ; 
II  y  a  aussi  des  misereux, 
Qui  ont  le  ventre  bien  creux. 
Ceux-la  ont  les  dents  longues — 
Vive  done  le  son,  vive  le  son, 
Vive  le  son  de  l'explosion  ! 

There  was  also  a  ditty  on  the  explosive  by  the  means  of 
which  death  and  destruction  were  to  be  meted  oat  to  the  hated 
bourgeoisie,  its  chorus  running — 

Danse,  dynamite, 
Danse,  danse  vite, 
Dansons  et  chantons : 
Dynamitons,  dynamitons  ! l 

After  the  explosion  at  the  Very  Restaurant  some  months 
elapsed  without  other  outrages  in  Paris,  but  as  the  perpetrator 
of  that  crime  had  not  been  found,  and  there  were  frequent 
prosecutions  of  Anarchists  for  minor  offences,  on  which  occasions 
some  of  them  indulged  in  the  most  horrible  threats,  apprehen- 
sion and  restlessness  lingered  in  the  city.  At  last,  on  November 
8,  an  infernal  machine  was  deposited  at  the  offices  of  the  Car- 
maux  Mining  Company  in  the  Avenue  de  POpera,  and  on  being 
removed  to  the  office  of  a  Commissary  of  Police  in  the  Rue  des 
Bons  Enfants,  it  exploded  there,  killing  no  fewer  than  six  police 
officials.  This  again  threw  Paris  into  consternation  —  the 
greater  as,  although  several  Anarchists  were  arrested,  the  real 
culprit  could  not  be  found.  The  crime  was  ultimately  acknow- 
ledged, however,  by  a  young  fellow,  barely  one-and -twenty, 
named  Emile  Henry,  who  belonged  to  a  very  respectable  family, 
but  was  infected,  like  his  elder  brother  Fortune,  with  Anarchist 
ideas. 

Slight  of  build,  with  a  thin  face,  a  sharp  pointed  nose,  a 
little  ruddy  beard,  and  some  down  just  fringing  his  upper  lip, 
Henry  was  possessed  in  some  respects  of  remarkable  intelligence. 

1  Several  years  previously,  before  dynamite  had  become  the  favourite 
weapon  of  Revolutionary  Extremists,  and  petroleum  was  still  honoured  in 
memory  of  the  conflagrations  of  the  Paris  Commune,  we  recollect  that  the 
Berlinese  followers  of  Hasselmann,  "the  German  Marat,"  had  a  song  set  to 
the  tune  of  the  "  Chanson  de  Mme.  Angot "  in  Lecocq's  operetta,  with  a 

chorus  running — 

Hier  Petroleum,  da  Petroleum, 

Petroleum  uni  und  um, 
Lass  die  Humpen  frisch  voll  pumpen, 
Dreimal  Hoch  Petroleum  ! 


RAVACHOL'S  AVENGERS  385 

So  great  had  been  his  precocity  that  at  the  age  of  sixteen  he 
had  already  carried  his  mathematical  studies  to  a  point  that 
entitled  him  to  admission  at  the  Ecole  Poly  technique,  which  few 
young  men  are  sufficiently  qualified  to  enter  before  they  are 
one-and-twenty.  In  manners  Henry  was  cold,  abrupt,  energetic, 
always  self-possessed,  and  some  writers  have  likened  him  to  an 
incipient  Robespierre  or  St.  Just.  He  did  not  enter  the  Ecole 
Poly  technique,  as  his  relatives  desired,  because  he  was  opposed 
to  militarism,  but  took  to  commercial  pursuits,  first  under  his 
uncle  M.  Bordenave,  an  engineer,  who  sent  him  to  an  establish- 
ment he  had  at  Venice.  Ultimately  he  apprenticed  himself 
to  a  clockmaker,  and  it  was  said  that  he  did  so  in  order  to 
learn  a  branch  of  mechanics  which  would  enable  him  to  con- 
struct and  regulate  the  most  effective  infernal  machines  possible. 
That  he  meant  to  cause  as  much  havoc  as  he  could  was  shown 
by  the  fact  that  the  apparatus  which  exploded  in  the  Rue  des 
Bons  Enfants  was  charged  with  no  fewer  than  twenty  dynamite 
cartridges. 

Henry  had  deposited  it  at  the  offices  of  the  Carmaux 
Mining  Company  for  this  reason :  serious  disturbances  had 
occurred  at  Carmaux  some  time  previously,  owing  to  the 
Company  dismissing  a  workman  named  Calvignac,  who,  besides 
acting  as  secretary  to  the  Miners'  Union  had  been  a  member 
of  the  Municipal  Council  and  as  such  was  elected  mayor  of  the 
town.  The  men  on  their  side  demanded  the  dismissal  of 
M.  Humblot,  the  acting  manager;  and  a  strike  ensuing,  the 
region  was  plunged  into  a  state  of  disorder,  attended  by 
numerous  acts  of  violence,  the  authors  of  which  were  in  most 
instances  arrested.  The  Prime  Minister  was  then  M.  Loubet, 
who,  while  determined  to  punish  criminal  excesses,  did  not 
wish  his  administration  to  be  branded  by  the  working  classes 
throughout  France  as  the  previous  one  had  been,  owing  to  the 
tragical  affair  of  Fourmies,  though  the  person  really  responsible 
for  that  affray  had  been  a  local  functionary  and  a  military 
officer.  M.  Loubet,  then,  proposed  arbitration  between  the 
contending  parties  at  Carmaux,  and  it  was  accepted,  he  acting 
as  arbitrator.  We  think  that  this  was  the  first  occasion  in  the 
history  of  the  third  Republic  when  its  government,  instead  of 
insisting  on  the  letter  of  the  law  and  confining  itself  strictly 
to  repressive  measures,  threw  itself,  as  it  were,  between  the 
contestants   in   the   interests   of  social   peace.      However,   M. 

2c 


386  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Loubet's  award  did  not  at  first  give  satisfaction  to  the  miners. 
It  specified  that  Calvignac  should  be  reinstated  as  a  workman 
and  that  the  company  should  give  him  leave  of  absence  to 
discharge  his  duties  as  mayor;  that  all  the  men  on  strike 
should  be  taken  back  except  those  sent  to  prison  for  violence ; 
and  that  M.  Humblot,  the  manager,  should  resume  his  duties. 
The  chief  difficulty  was  occasioned  by  the  sentences  on  the 
riotous  miners.  Their  comrades  wished  them  to  be  amnestied, 
and  the  Government  refused  that  request.  However,  it  very 
liberally  commuted  the  sentences,  and  the  men  then  went  back 
to  work.  Now  it  was  this  affair,  in  which  the  Company  had 
not  been  blameless,  that  prompted  Emile  Henry  to  deposit 
his  infernal  machine  at  their  Paris  offices,  with  the  consequences 
we  have  related. 

Another  period  of  calm  so  far  as  the  Anarchists  were 
concerned  ensued,  the  Panama  affair  occupying  most  public 
attention.  A  number  of  celebrated  Frenchmen,  however,  were 
passing  away  at  this  time.  Renan,  eminent  in  history  and 
philosophy,  in  their  relations  to  Christianity,  had  died  in 
October  1892 ;  John  Lemoinne,  the  great  editor  of  Le  Journal 
des  Debats,  following  him  in  December,  while  in  March  1893 
France  lost  both  her  able  statesman,  Jules  Ferry,  and  her  great 
critic  in  art  and  history,  Hippolyte  Taine.  In  July  came  the 
death  of  the  famous  conteur,  Guy  de  Maupassant,  who  had 
previously  lost  his  reason,  being  stricken  at  first  with  a  form  of 
la  folic  des  grandeurs  which  led  him  to  regard  his  literary  work 
with  supreme  disdain,  and  to  centre  all  his  thoughts  on  his 
claims  to  social  prominence  as  a  scion  of  the  old  Norman 
nobility.  The  abuse  of  women  and  the  abuse  of  drugs  finally 
shattered  his  intellect,  which,  though  it  gave  glimpses  of 
genius,  was  probably  predisposed  to  insanity,  if  one  may  judge 
by  the  fate  of  both  his  father  and  his  brother.  At  last  suicidal 
mania  appeared,  and  although  Maupassant  was  saved  from 
self-destruction,  it  was  only  to  linger  for  a  time,  bereft  of 
reason. 

There  was  no  little  unpleasantness  between  Frenchmen  and 
Italians  during  August  that  year.  Italian  labourers  had  long 
been  pouring  into  France,  and  were  welcomed  there  by  con- 
tractors and  others,  as  they  worked  for  less  money  than  the 
French.  Disputes  were  frequent,  however,  and  in  an  affray  at 
the  salt  works  at  Aigues-Mortes  in  Languedoc,  two  Frenchmen 


DEATHS  OF  CELEBRITIES  387 

were  killed.  This  led  to  terrible  reprisals ;  the  whole  population 
rose  against  the  Italian  immigrants,  and  fifty  people  lost  their 
lives  in  the  combats  which  ensued.  Further,  at  Toul  in 
northern  France,  the  French  and  Italians  working  on  a  railway 
line  fell  out  with  tragical  results.  Italy  took  fire  at  the  news,  and 
Milan,  Rome,  Naples,  and  Palermo  demonstrated  against  the 
French  residents.  The  Republic's  embassy  in  the  Eternal  City 
was  only  saved  from  assault  by  military  intervention.  However, 
both  governments  did  all  they  could  to  calm  the  popular 
effervescence,  which  presently  subsided.  Again,  the  relations 
of  the  Republic  with  Great  Britain  were  not  particularly 
cordial  at  this  time  on  account  of  the  suspicions  aroused  by 
French  action  against  Siam.  On  the  other  hand  France  and 
Russia  were  gradually  drawing  more  closely  together.  In 
October  a  Russian  squadron  under  Admiral  Avellan  arrived  at 
Toulon,  thus  returning  the  French  visit  to  Cronstadt.  Avellan 
and  many  of  his  officers  and  men  came  on  to  Paris,  where  they 
were  handsomely  entertained.  Some  democrats  and  socialists, 
remembering  Russia's  form  of  Government  and  Poland's  fate, 
resented  the  idea  of  any  alliance  between  the  Republic  and  the 
autocratic  Empire,  but  to  the  nation  generally  it  seemed  like 
a  ray  of  sunshine  appearing  amid  the  clouds  by  which  France 
had  been  long  encompassed.  It  promised  companionship  after 
prolonged  isolation,  moral  support  in  time  of  peace,  and  the 
help  of  untold  legions  in  the  event  of  any  wanton  attack. 

Amidst  the  festivities  to  which  that  Russian  visit  gave  rise, 
the  gallant  soldier  who  had  first  made  a  name  by  seizing  the 
famous  Malakoff  fort  at  the  siege  of  Sebastopol,  died  at  his 
chateau  in  the  Loiret.  Two  months  previously,  although  he 
was  eighty-five  years  old,  he  might  still  have  been  seen  shooting 
over  the  coverts  of  the  estate,  but  an  affection  of  the  digestive 
organs  suddenly  came  upon  him,  soon  followed  by  nephritis  and 
urinaemia,  which  left  no  hope  of  recovery.  On  October  8  he 
fell  into  a  semi-comatose  state,  accompanied  by  delirium,  amidst 
which  he  was  at  times  heard  calling :  "  Les  Turcos  !  a  moi  les 
Turcos  ! "  as  if,  indeed,  his  imagination  had  carried  him  back  to 
that  unforgettable  disaster  of  Worth,  when  the  Turcos  had 
fought  on  till  their  last  gasp.  The  sufferer  lingered  in  this 
condition  until  the  morning  of  October  17,  and  then,  after  a 
brief  return  of  consciousness,  during  which  he  saw  the  inevitable 
approaching   and   faced  it  serenely,   he  passed    quietly  away. 


388  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Such  was  the  death  of  MacMahon.  France  at  that  moment 
gave  no  thought  to  the  errors  which  had  marked  his  presidency, 
or  to  the  limitations  of  his  ability  for  supreme  command.  She 
remembered  him  only  as  one  of  her  most  gallant  and  devoted 
soldiers,  and  State  obsequies  were  decreed  in  his  honour. 

On  the  morrow  of  the  Marshal's  death  France  lost  another 
eminent  son,  one  whose  spirit  was  never  attuned  to  the  roar  of 
artillery  or  the  crepitation  of  the  fusillade.  There  was  even 
little  real  virility  in  the  art  of  Charles  Gounod.  Its  chief  char- 
acteristic was  its  feminine  sweetness,  a  sweetness  which  made 
itself  felt  even  when  he  strove  to  be  solemn.  Faust  has  remained 
his  most  widely  known  and  most  popular  composition,  but  his 
best  was  probably  Romfo  et  Juliette  in  its  final  version,  inspira- 
tion having  then  carried  him  to  a  degree  of  graceful  litheness 
and  heavenly  douceur  which  he  had  never  previously  attained. 
He  was,  we  feel,  essentially  the  musician  of  tenderness  and  love ; 
and  quite  apart  from  the  hostility  of  the  French  to  Wagner  on 
account  of  his  nationality,  one  can  understand  that  a  nation 
which  had  grown  up  in  the  cult  of  such  music  as  Gounod  pro- 
duced, should  long  have  been  unable  to  appreciate  the  art  of 
the  master  of  Bayreuth.  The  Republic  honoured  the  composer 
of  Faust  as  she  honoured  the  victor  of  Magenta:  each  was 
committed  to  the  grave  at  the  expense  of  the  nation. 

For  some  time  past  there  had  been  no  Anarchist  outrages, 
for  although  efforts  were  made  to  connect  a  certain  Charles 
Moore — well  known  as  the  poet-cabman,  one  who  composed 
verses  while  he  drove  his  fares  through  the  streets  of  Paris — 
with  the  Anarchist  movement,  it  is  certain  that  an  attempt 
made  by  Moore  on  the  life  of  M.  Edouard  Lockroy  at  the  time 
of  the  General  Elections  of  1893,  was  inspired  by  his  failure  to 
obtain  assistance  from  M.  Lockroy,  who,  being  busy  with 
political  matters,  had  neglected  to  answer  Moore's  applications. 
He  knew  him  well,  and,  like  Victor  Hugo,  he  had  previously 
befriended  him.  But  Moore,  imagining  himself  to  be  scorned 
by  a  confrere  in  literature,  ended  by  repairing  to  M.  Lockroy's 
committee  rooms,  and  there,  on  a  landing,  fired  a  revolver  at 
him,  fortunately  without  serious  effect.  At  his  trial  the  poet- 
cabman  certainly  asserted  that  he  was  an  Anarchist — but  that 
was  the  fashion  of  the  day — and  he  did  himself  no  good  by  the 
course  he  took,  for  a  sentence  of  six  years'  hard  labour  was 
inflicted  on  him.     An  old  workman  named  Villisse,  who  tried  to 


FURTHER  ANARCHIST  OUTRAGES  389 

fire  a  revolver  while  he  was  in  a  crowd  at  the  time  of  Admiral 
Avellan's  visit  to  Paris,  and  was  sentenced  therefor  to  five  years' 
solitary  confinement,  was  also  said  to  be  an  Anarchist,  but  he  was 
simply  insane,  and  ought  to  have  been  sent  to  an  asylum. 

In  November,  six  days  after  Salvador  Franch,  the  Catalonian 
Anarchist,  had  flung  a  bomb  from  the  gallery  of  the  Liceo 
theatre  at  Barcelona,  killing  twenty-two  and  wounding  forty 
persons  seated  in  the  stalls  and  the  pit,  Paris  was  shocked  by 
a  crime  which  might  be  directly  traced  to  the  influence  of 
Anarchist  outrage  and  literature  on  a  feeble  mind.  The  culprit 
was  a  youthful  bootmaker  named  Leauthier.  Nineteen  years 
old  and  a  native  of  the  Hautes  Alpes,  he  was  earning  a  fair 
living  and  was  entitled  to  receive  a  legacy  of  ^50  on  reaching 
his  majority ;  but  the  perusal  of  wild  writings  had  inflamed  his 
mind  against  the  glutted  bourgeoisie  "  which  consumed  and  did 
not  produce."  So  little  did  Leauthier  understand  those  words, 
that  as  in  France  a  customer  at  a  restaurant  or  cafe  is  called  a 
"  consumer  "  (consommateur)  he  resolved  to  avenge  the  "  sublime 
Ravachol"  on  a  " consumer "  of  that  category.  First  of  all, 
however,  he  resolved  to  be  one  himself,  that  is,  to  partake  of 
a  first-rate  dinner,  and  then  plant  a  sharp  knife — one  which  he 
used  in  his  calling — in  the  stomach  of  the  most  "  consuming  * 
bourgeois  he  might  see  in  the  establishment.  He  therefore 
repaired  to  Marguery's  well-known  restaurant,  adjoining  the 
Gymnase  theatre,  where,  if  he  did  not  partake  of  any  sole  a 
la  normande,  the  dish  for  which  the  house  was  particularly 
renowned,  he  at  least  treated  himself  to  soup,  roast  quail, 
claret,  and  champagne.  When  he  was  afterwards  called  upon 
to  pay  his  bill  he  answered  coolly  that  he  had  dined  because  he 
was  hungry,  but  that  having  no  money  he  did  not  intend  to 
pay.  "  In  that  case,1'  said  M.  Marguery,  whom  the  waiter  had 
summoned,  "  in  that  case  a  man  does  not  drink  champagne." 
"  Well,  the  bourgeois  drink  it !  *  Leauthier  rejoined.  "  But  they 
pay  for  it,"  said  M.  Marguery.  "  Yes,  with  our  money  ! "  was 
the  retort.  The  famous  restaurateur  did  not  argue  the  point 
any  further,  but  putting  his  hand  on  Leauthier's  shoulder  led 
him  to  the  door.  The  other  was  grasping  his  knife  in  his 
pocket  at  that  moment,  but  either  his  courage  failed  him  or  he 
did  not  consider  M.  Marguery  a  sufficiently  important  person- 
age to  be  his  victim.  At  all  events  he  went  off  quietly.  But 
on  the  next  evening  (November  13)  he  repaired  to  the  Bouillon 


390  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Duval  in  the  Avenue  de  l'Opera,  and  at  the  moment  when  a 
well-dressed  customer,  who  had  just  finished  dinner,  was  putting 
on  his  overcoat,  Leauthier  stabbed  him  in  the  chest.  Then  he 
fled,  but  having  left  his  hat  behind  him  and  feeling  certain 
that  he  would  be  arrested,  he  ended  by  giving  himself  up  to 
the  police.  "  I've  had  a  good  dinner,"  said  he,  "  and  I've  stuck 
a  bourgeois.'1''  When  he  heard  that  his  victim  was  M.  George- 
vitch,  the  Servian  Minister  in  Paris,  he  retorted :  "  What !  an 
ambassador  ?  So  much  the  better."  He  would  probably  have 
been  sentenced  to  capital  punishment,  but  the  factum  he  read 
in  his  defence  at  his  trial,  was  so  childish  and  so  incoherent 
that  the  jury  felt  that  he  could  not  be  fully  responsible  for  his 
actions.  They  therefore  gave  him  the  benefit  of  "  extenuating 
circumstances,"  and  he  was  sentenced  to  transportation  for 
life.  Like  young  Simon,  Ravachol's  whilom  acolyte,  he  was 
killed  during  a  revolt  of  the  prisoners  on  Devil's  Island  in 
October  1894. 

Shortly  after  Leauthier's  crime  the  Dupuy  Ministry  resigned, 
its  more  Radical  members  being  no  longer  in  agreement  with 
their  colleagues.  M.  Casimir-Perier,  at  that  moment  President 
of  the  Chamber,  formed  the  next  Cabinet,  his  parliamentary 
office  being  secured  by  Dupuy.1  Except  in  regard  to  financial 
matters,  in  which  it  promised  reforms  to  alleviate  the  taxation 
of  the  poor,  the  new  Administration's  policy  appeared  vague. 
It  had  been  in  office  only  six  days  when,  on  the  afternoon  of 
December  9,  a  bomb  exploded  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies. 
It  was  thrown  from  one  of  the  public  tribunes  or  galleries  by  a 
man  who  had  meant  to  hurl  it  into  the  space  immediately  facing 
the  seats  occupied  by  M.  Casimir-Perier  and  his  colleagues. 
But,  according  to  his  own  account,  a  woman  nudged  his  arm, 
and  the  bomb,  striking  a  pillar  of  the  gallery,  at  once  exploded, 
injuring  numerous  spectators  and  precipitating  a  quantity  of 
shoemaker's  nails  and  scraps  of  iron  upon  the  heads  of  the 
deputies  seated  below.  Altogether,  about  forty  people  were 
struck,  but  in  most  instances  their  injuries  were  little  more 
than  scratches,  and  the  person  who  was  most  severely  hurt  was 
the  very  man  by  whom  the  bomb  had  been  thrown. 

1  The  Prime  Minister  took  the  department  of  Foreign  Affairs,  and  the 
other  posts  were  distributed  as  follows  :  Interior,  Raynal ;  Finances,  Burdeau; 
Education  and  Worship,  Spuller ;  Justice,  Antonin  Dubost ;  War,  General 
Mercier ;  Marine,  Rear-Admiral  Lefevre  ;  Public  Works,  Jonnart ;  Commerce, 
Marty  ;  ami  Agriculture,  Viger. 


FURTHER  ANARCHIST  OUTRAGES  391 

His  name  was  Vaillant ;  born  at  M£zieres  in  1861,  he  was 
an  illegitimate  child,  and,  after  receiving  a  barely  rudimentary 
education,  had  been  cast  on  the  world  penniless,  when  about 
fourteen  years  of  age.  He  had  tried  his  fortune  in  Algeria  and 
the  Argentine  without  success,  and  after  returning  to  France  mis- 
fortune had  dogged  his  footsteps,  though  he  was  willing  to  work 
and  had  a  good  character  as  regards  sobriety,  being  practically 
a  total  abstainer.  By  a  marriage  contracted  when  he  was  very 
young  he  had  a  daughter  named  Sidonie,  and  since  his  return 
to  France  he  had  cohabited  with  a  woman  who  had  borne  him 
one  or  two  children.  At  the  time  of  his  crime  he  was  living 
at  Choisy-le-Roi,  south  of  Paris,  and  was  employed  in  a  business 
house  at  the  princely  salary  of  sixteen  shillings  a  week.  As  his 
counsel,  Maitre  Labori,  has  said,  Vaillant  was  simply  an  exaspere' 
de  la  misere.  The  statement  he  insisted  on  reading  at  his  trial 
proved  it.  The  sufferings  of  the  destitute  and  the  callousness 
of  society  were  its  principal  themes.  Of  a  dreamy  and  sensitive 
nature  he  had  long  brooded  over  his  misfortunes,  his  bitter 
want ;  and  though  he  certainly  upheld  Anarchist  ideas  at  his 
trial  it  is  probable  that  he  would  never  have  entertained  them 
had  it  not  been  for  the  misery  to  which  he  and  his  children 
were  reduced.  The  construction  of  his  bomb  had  cost  him  only 
a  few  francs,  expended  on  various  occasions,  as  his  means  did 
not  allow  him  to  dispose  of  more  than  a  few  sous  at  a  time. 
As  we  previously  indicated,  the  contents  of  the  bomb  were 
such  nails  as  are  commonly  found  in  boot  heels.  There  were, 
however,  three  pounds  of  them. 

Me.  Labori  pleaded  ably  for  Vaillant,  but  the  jury's  verdict 
was  a  foregone  conclusion,  and  this  time  there  was  no  mention 
of  extenuating  circumstances.  Vaillant  was  therefore  con- 
demned to  death.  Several  newspapers  praised  the  jury's 
firmness.  "  No  indulgence ! "  said  U £v6nement  in  an  article  by 
its  editor,  Senator  Edmond  Magnier,  who,  a  little  later,  was 
sent  to  prison  for  selling  his  parliamentary  influence  to  Baron 
de  Reinach.1  "A  reprieve  would  be  an  insult  to  the  jury," 
declared  the  Journal  des  Dibats.  But  Le  Figaro  and  other 
newspapers,  feeling  that  there  were  special  circumstances  in  the 
case,  were  in  favour  of  clemency.  About  ^300  were  collected 
by  Le  Figaro  for  the  benefit  of  Vaillant's  daughter,  Sidonie, 
who  wrote  a  touching  letter  to  Mme.  Carnot,  soliciting  her 
1  See  ante,  footnote,  p.  368. 


392  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

intervention.  There  were  a  good  many  people  who  sought  self- 
advertisement  by  thrusting  themselves  forward  on  the  child's 
behalf,  but  some  offers  were  quite  sincere.  Vaillant,  however, 
insisted  on  appointing  Sebastien  Faure,  the  Revolutionist,  to 
act  as  his  daughter's  guardian,  to  the  horror,  of  course,  of 
many  would-be  patronesses  belonging  to  the  aristocracy. 
Meantime,  a  good  many  Socialist  and  Radical  deputies  were 
petitioning  Carnot  for  a  commutation  of  sentence,  and  Me. 
Labori  also  saw  him  on  the  subject.  It  is  probable  that  the 
President  would  have  granted  the  appeal,  but  Casimir-Perier, 
the  Premier,  was  absolutely  opposed  to  leniency.  He  and  his 
colleague  Raynal  of  the  Interior  were  at  this  time  making  a 
vain  attempt  to  suppress  Anarchism  by  issuing  2000  per- 
quisition warrants,  and  ordering  numerous  arrests.  The  names 
of  many  people  who  were  merely  chance  acquaintances  of 
Anarchists  figured  on  the  lists.  The  Cabinet  Noir,  moreover, 
was  revived  on  a  large  scale.  Nobody's  correspondence  remained 
safe.  Letters  addressed  to  London  or  Switzerland  were  regarded 
as  being  particularly  suspicious.  The  Legislature,  yielding  to 
the  panic,  modified  the  press  and  association  laws  in  a  reactionary 
sense.  And  yet  all  those  steps  proved  futile.  On  February  7, 
1894,  two  days  after  Vaillant  had  been  guillotined,  and  his 
remains  buried  in  the  coin  des  suppliers  at  the  cemetery  of 
Ivry,  a  large  branch  of  palm  was  found  lying  on  the  grave, 
with  a  card  bearing  these  threatening  lines : 

Sous  les  feuilles  de  cette  palme, 

Que  t'offre  le  Droit  outrage, 
Tu  peux  dormir  d'un  sommeil  calme, 

O  Martyr,  tu  seras  venge  ! 

Those  were  no  vain  words,  for  on  February  12  there  was  a 
terrible  explosion  at  the  Cafe  Terminus,  followed  in  March  by 
the  bomb  of  the  Rue  St.  Jacques,  the  bomb  of  the  Faubourg 
St.  Martin,  and  the  bomb  of  the  Madeleine.  Next,  in  April, 
there  was  the  affair  of  the  Foyot  Restaurant,  while  in  June 
came  the  assassination  of  Carnot  at  Lyons. 

The  tragical  outrage  at  the  Cafe  Terminus  was  the  work  of 
Emile  Henry,  of  whom  we  previously  spoke.  Bent  on  avenging 
Vaillant,  he  had  first  intended  to  throw  his  bomb  either  into 
Bignon's  Restaurant  in  the  Avenue  de  l'Opera  or  into  the 
Cafe  de  la  Paix  on  the  Boulevard,  but  had  not  done  so  because 
he   had  noticed   very   few  customers  in   those   establishments, 


Jean  Casimir-Perier 


1   1     •        .    <      I 


FURTHER  ANARCHIST  OUTRAGES  393 

and  wished  (so  he  grimly  confessed)  to  kill  as  many  persons  as 
possible.  He  therefore  went  towards  the  Gare  St.  Lazare  and 
finally  flung  his  deadly  missile  into  the  Cafe  Terminus.  The 
bomb  was  somewhat  faultily  made,  and  thus  only  one  customer 
was  killed  by  it,  though  a  score  were  injured,  some  of  them 
severely.  Stopped  while  he  was  trying  to  escape,  Henry  fired 
several  revolver  shots,  but  was  ultimately  secured.  He  freely 
declared  that  he  had  made  the  bomb  which  had  exploded  in 
the  Rue  des  Bons  Enfants  in  November  1892,  and  his  guilt  in 
the  Cafe  Terminus  affair  was  obvious.  Cynical  raillery  and 
repartee  were  ever  on  his  lips  during  his  trial,  his  attitude 
throughout  the  proceedings  being  of  the  most  uncompromising 
character.  But  at  his  execution  on  May  21  his  courage 
forsook  him  and  only  with  difficulty  was  he  got  to  the 
guillotine. 

Meantime,  there  had  been  other  outrages,  perpetrated,  it 
has  always  been  thought,  by  means  of  other  bombs  which 
Henry  had  prepared,  and  which  were  removed  from  his  lodgings 
at  the  time  of  his  arrest,  before  the  police  were  able  to  make 
any  perquisition  there.  The  person  who  secured  those  bombs 
is  supposed  to  have  been  a  Belgian  Anarchist  named  Jean 
Pauwels,  who  was  a  friend  of  Henry's.  In  any  case  the 
delinquent  devised  a  curious  scheme.  He  engaged  a  furnished 
room  in  the  Rue  St.  Jacques  and  another  in  the  Faubourg  St. 
Martin,  then  wrote  to  the  police  commissaries  of  both  districts, 
stating  that,  overwhelmed  by  misfortune,  he  intended  to  take 
his  life,  and  therefore  desired  that  nobody  should  be  accused  of 
an  act  for  which  he  alone  would  be  responsible.  The  letters 
ready  (they  were  signed  with  the  name  of  Rabardy),  the  writer 
left,  in  each  of  the  rooms  he  had  engaged,  a  bomb  placed  in 
such  a  position  that  it  would  fall  and  explode  directly  the 
police  forced  the  door,  which  the  author  of  the  scheme  locked 
from  the  outside,  carrying  the  key  away  with  him.  Thus  on 
March  19,  1894,  Paris  was  startled  by  two  more  affairs.  The 
bomb  left  in  the  Rue  St.  Jacques  exploded,  wounding  three 
persons,  one  of  whom,  the  landlady  of  the  house,  died  from 
her  injuries.  In  the  Faubourg  St.  Martin,  however,  the  bomb 
fell  harmlessly  to  the  floor,  and  was  afterwards  exploded  by  the 
police,  as  a  measure  of  precaution. 

Several  fresh  perquisitions  and  arrests,  and  the  seizure  of  the 
various  Anarchist  journals  followed  those  outrages.     A  number 


394  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

of  minor  offenders,  Mengaud,  Herteau,  Castel,  Rousset,  and 
others,  were  also  brought  to  trial  in  Paris  and  the  provinces 
about  this  time,  and  sentenced  to  terms  of  imprisonment.  It 
must  be  said,  however,  that  in  some  cases  the  prisoners  were  not 
Anarchists  at  all.  For  instance,  Gaston  Richard,  a  youthful 
pork  butcher's  assistant,  who  stabbed  the  brother  of  a  tavern- 
keeper  at  Courbevoie,  and  was  sentenced  to  twenty  years'* 
hard  labour  for  that  crime,  declared  at  his  trial  that  if  during 
the  investigation  of  his  case  he  had  admitted  he  was  an 
Anarchist,  it  was  simply  because  he  had  wished  to  prevent  the 
magistrate  from  pestering  him  on  the  subject  any  further.  At 
this  period  proceedings  were  also  instituted  against  the  Revolu- 
tionary writer  Maurice  Charnay,  who  was  sentenced  to  six 
months1  imprisonment  for  his  so-called  Catechisme  du  Soldat, 
an  early  example  of  those  efforts  to  diffuse  anti-militarism,  to 
which  the  French  Anarchists  of  to-day  have  largely  devoted 
themselves.  Jean  Grave  was  also  prosecuted  for  his  book 
La  SocUU  rnourante  et  VAnarchie,  a  subversive  treatise,  no 
doubt,  but  a  remarkably  well  written  one.  Elisee  Reclus, 
Octave  Mirbeau,  Paul  Adam,  and  Bernard  Lazare  spoke  in 
favour  of  Grave  and  his  book,  but  he  was  nevertheless  sentenced 
to  two  years1  imprisonment,  and  it  was  ordered  that  all  copies  of 
the  offending  work  should  be  destroyed.1 

On  March  15,  as  a  man  was  about  to  enter  the  Madeleine 
church,  a  bomb  he  was  carrying  in  his  pocket  exploded,  and  he 
was  immediately  killed.  He  was  none  other  than  Jean  Pauwels, 
the  Belgian  Anarchist  of  whom  we  have  spoken.  Once  again, 
then,  there  came  several  perquisitions  and  arrests,  but  most  of 
those  who  were  lodged  in  gaol  had  to  be  released  after  a  few 
weeks'  detention,  there  being  no  proof  of  their  complicity  in  the 
Anarchist  movement.  Yet  the  Government  still  clung  to  the 
idea  that  there  must  be  a  gigantic  conspiracy.  It  did  not 
realise  that  the  many  crimes  which  had  occurred  were  simply 
the  work  of  more  or  less  isolated  individuals,  inspired  chiefly,  if 
not  entirely,  by  the  mere  force  of  example.  On  April  4  the 
windows  of  the  Cafe  Foyot  in  the  Quarter  Latin  were  blown  in 
by  a  bomb,  and  a  customer,  M.  Laurent  Tailhade,  one  of  the 
literary  men  who  had  attempted  the  psychology  of  Anarchism, 
was  injured.     The  perpetrator  of  this  outrage  was  never  found, 

1  Grave  profited  by  an  amnesty  granted  in  February  1895.     Whilst  in 
prison  he  had  written  another  curious  work,  La  SootiU  future. 


ASSASSINATION  OF  CARNOT  395 

but  it  is  unlikely  that  it  was  directed  against  M.  Tailhade,  as  he 
had  evinced  some  platonic  Anarchist  leanings. 

The  month  of  May,  marked  by  the  execution  of  Emile 
Henry,  went  by  without  further  crimes,  but  in  June  came  the 
supreme  tragedy.  We  previously  remarked  that  President 
Carnot  spent  much  of  his  time  in  travelling  about  France, 
inaugurating  public  works  and  attending  a  great  variety  of 
local  functions.  That  year  a  Colonial  Exhibition,  due  to  private 
initiative,  but  favoured  with  municipal  support,  was  being  held 
at  Lyons,  and  on  June  23  the  President  who  had  promised  to 
visit  it,  quitted  Paris  for  that  purpose,  accompanied  by  M. 
Dupuy,  the  Prime  Minister,1  General  Borius,  and  some  members 
of  his  household.  When  the  train  stopped  at  Dijon,  M.  Carnot 
found  his  elder  son,  a  lieutenant  of  artillery,  his  daughter  Mme. 
Cunisset-Carnot,  her  husband  and  children,  waiting  to  spend  a 
few  minutes  in  his  company.  There  was  a  brief  but  cordial 
chat,  the  President  embraced  his  son,  daughter,  and  grand- 
children— for  the  last  time,  though  he  knew  it  not — and  the 
journey  to  Lyons  was  then  resumed.  His  reception  that  night  in 
the  great  Southern  city  was  an  enthusiastic  one.  The  working- 
classes  of  Lyons  are  extremely  democratic,  and  in  connection 
with  strikes  they  have  now  and  again  given  serious  trouble  to 
the  authorities ;  but  the  race  which  is  found  there  is  one  with  a 
naturally  frank,  open,  cordial  disposition.2  Carnot,  whatever 
the  errors  of  his  Ministers  and  the  political  necessities  of  the 
time,  had  made  himself  personally  popular  in  many  parts  of 

1  Casimir-Perier's  Cabinet  had  resigned  on  May  23,  the  Chamber  having 
disapproved  of  its  action  in  forbidding  the  employes  of  the  State  Railways  to 
send  delegates  to  a  Trades-Union  Congress.  It  was  felt  at  that  time  that  the 
Government's  policy  was  assuming  too  reactionary  a  character,  that  its 
repressive  measures  had  failed  to  stamp  out  Anarchism  and  had  provoked 
much  discontent  among  the  masses  generally.  Nevertheless  it  was  succeeded 
by  an  Administration  which  evinced  identical  tendencies.  Charles  Dupuy 
again  became  Premier  and  Minister  of  the  Interior,  his  colleagues  being : 
Justice,  Guerin  ;  Finances,  Poincare ;  Education,  Leygues  ;  Foreign  Affairs 
(for  the  first  time),  Gabriel  Hanotaux  ;  Public  Works,  Barthou ;  Agriculture, 
Viger ;  Commerce,  Lourties  ;  Marine,  Felix  Faure ;  and  War,  the  sub- 
sequently notorious  General  Mercier.  This  Administration  is  known  in 
French  parliamentary  annals  as  the  "  Ministere  des  Jeunes."  Dupuy  was 
then  forty-three,  Hanotaux  forty-one,  and  Poincare  thirty-four  years  old. 
All  their  colleagues  were  under  sixty. 

2  The  clerical  party  has  long  been  in  a  distinct  minority  at  Lyons.  Notre 
Dame  de  Fourvieres  is  less  an  attraction  for  the  Lyonnese  themselves,  than 
for  the  tourists  or  pilgrims  who  go  to  the  city. 


396  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

France,  and  the  Lyonnese  were  resolved  to  give  him  as  warm  a 
welcome  as  he  had  met  elsewhere.  On  June  25  he  held  a  series 
of  receptions,  visited  the  Exhibition,  and  dined  in  the  evening 
as  the  city's  guest  at  the  stately  Palais  du  Commerce,  in  which 
the  local  Bourse  is  held.  In  response  to  the  toast  of  his  health, 
proposed  by  Dr.  Gailleton,  the  popular  democratic  Mayor  of 
Lyons,  the  President,  after  referring  to  political  dissensions 
and  social  unrest,  made  an  eloquent  appeal  for  concord,  "  in  the 
name  of  the  country  which  needed  that  all  her  children  should 
remain  united  in  order  that  she  might  continue  marching 
without  a  pause  towards  progress  and  justice,  of  which  it  was 
fit  she  should  set  an  example  to  the  world."  Those  who  heard 
and  applauded  those  words  regarded  them  as  being  virtually  the 
Presidential  ultima  verba,  for  Carnot's  term  of  office  had  almost 
expired  and  he  had  stated  that  he  would  not  accept  re-election. 
Nobody,  however,  imagined  that  his  appeal  was,  at  the  same 
time,  almost  his  last  utterance  as  a  man. 

The  banquet  was  to  be  followed  by  a  gala  performance  at 
the  Grand  Theatre.  The  distance  thither  from  the  Palais  du 
Commerce — along  the  Rue  de  la  Republique1 — being  very 
short,  Carnot  proposed  to  go  on  foot.  But  some  member  of 
his  family  privately  told  the  Mayor  that  he  was  rather  tired,  and 
it  was  therefore  decided  to  drive  to  the  theatre  in  a  landau. 
The  President  seated  himself  in  the  carriage,  as  did  Dr.  Gailleton, 
General  Borius  and  General  Voisin.  A  detachment  of  Cuirassiers 
rode  in  front,  virtually  walking  their  horses,  for  the  Rue  de  la 
Republique,  which  is  some  seventy-five  feet  wide,  was  crowded 
with  people,  who  had  gathered  in  the  roadway  as  well  as  on  the 
foot  pavements  on  either  hand.  A  loud  clamour  of  "  Vive  la 
Republique  !  Vive  Carnot !  Vive  le  President ! "  went  up  as  the 
head  of  the  procession  was  seen  slowly  approaching,  and  neither 
the  police  nor  the  troops  (who  were  altogether  outnumbered) 
made  any  attempt  to  drive  the  onlookers  from  the  road  to  the 
footways.  The  President  himself  seemed  anxious  to  be  in  touch 
with  that  gay  and  enthusiastic  crowd.  A  Cuirassier  rode  on 
either  side  of  the  carriage,  and  Carnot,  addressing  the  one  on 
the  right  hand  (the  side  on  which  he  himself  was  seated  in  the 
landau),  told  him  to  draw  back  a  little  in  order  that  he  might 
be  the  better  able  to  see  the  great  concourse  of  spectators. 

1  That  fine  street  was  one  of  the  improvements  effected  by  Napoleon  III. 
and  was  originally  called  Rue  Imperiale. 


ASSASSINATION  OF  CARNOT  397 

The  presidential  party  had  quitted  the  Palais  du  Commerce, 
by  way  of  the  Place  des  Cordeliers,  at  a  little  past  nine  o'clock, 
and  the  procession  had  scarcely  turned  into  the  Rue  de  la 
Republique,  when  a  young  man  bounded  forward,  holding  in 
his  raised  right  hand  a  paper,  which  those  who  saw  it  imagined 
to  be  a  petition.  The  steps  of  the  carriage  closed  up  directly 
its  doors  were  shut,  but  it  was  a  low-built  landau,  and  the 
young  man,  resting  his  left  hand  on  the  top  of  the  right-hand 
door,  sprang  up  and  struck  the  President  a  terrific  blow.1 
Within  the  paper  which  had  been  noticed,  there  was  a  poignard, 
and  such  was  the  force  of  the  blow  that  the  weapon  penetrated 
to  a  depth  of  about  four  and  a  half  inches,  perforating  the  liver 
and  opening  the  vena  porta.  Nevertheless  Carnot  had  strength 
enough  to  draw  out  the  weapon  and  fling  it  into  the  road. 
Then  gasping,  "  I  am  wounded  ! "  he  sank  back  in  the  carriage 
and  fainted  away.  As  for  the  assassin  he  had  immediately 
sprung  down  again,  and  diving  between  the  horses  of  the  landau 
and  those  of  the  last  row  of  Cuirassiers  who  preceded  it,  he 
darted  to  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  striving  to  force  his  way 
through  the  crowd  there  and  disappear.  But,  at  his  sudden 
rush  and  excited  appearance  people  took  him  to  be  an  escaping 
thief — for  nobody  as  yet  suspected  the  truth — and  a  pretty 
young  servant  girl  pluckily  caught  hold  of  him  by  the  sleeve  in 
order  to  detain  him.  He  wrenched  himself  free  from  her  and 
struck  her  in  the  breast.  But  others  then  intervened,  some 
policemen  sprang  forward,  and  he  was  seized  and  finally  carried 
off,  amid  the  frantic  shouts  of  the  crowd  which,  now  knowing 
what  had  happened,  wished  to  lynch  him  on  the  spot. 

The  Mayor  of  Lyons,  who  was  a  medical  man,  did  all  he 
could  for  the  unfortunate  President,  while  the  carriage  was 
being  driven  as  rapidly  as  possible  to  the  Prefecture.  There, 
Dr.  Poncet,  Professor  of  Surgery  at  the  local  Ecole  de  Medicine, 
and  other  able  men,  exerted  themselves  to  save  the  sufferer's  life. 
But  they  speedily  perceived  that  the  wound  was  mortal. 
Nothing  could  stop  hemorrhage  under  such  conditions.  Carnot 
lingered  for  about  three  hours,  expiring  soon  after  he  had 
received  extreme  unction  from  the  Cardinal  Archbishop  of 
Lyons.     His  cousin,  M.  Simeon  Carnot,  and  the  latter's  sister, 

1  Our  narrative  of  the  assassination  of  Carnot  has  been  constructed  partly 
from  the  published  accounts  and  partly  from  what  we  personally  saw  in 
company  with  one  of  our  relatives  by  marriage. 


398  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

as  well  as  the  Prime  Minister  and  some  other  high 
officials,  were  with  the  unfortunate  President  during  his  last 
hours. 

The  assassin's  name — often  incorrectly  given — was  Santo- 
Geronimo  Caserio.1  He  was  born  at  Motta-Visconti,  in 
Lombardy  on  September  8,  1873.  His  father  was  a  bargeman, 
and  he  had  several  brothers — all  respectable,  hard-working  folk. 
At  thirteen  years  of  age  he  had  been  apprenticed  to  a  baker  at 
Milan,  where  he  came  in  contact  with  various  Anarchists  whose 
theories  he  imbibed.  His  family  vainly  endeavoured  to  rescue 
him  from  such  views.  As  a  mere  youth,  however,  he  was  sent 
to  prison  for  distributing  Anarchist  writings  among  soldiers. 
Subsequently,  to  avoid  serving  in  the  Italian  army,  he  fled  to 
Lugano,  in  Switzerland.  Thence  he  made  his  way  to  Geneva,  and 
so  on  to  Lyons.  That  occurred  in  the  autumn  of  1893.  From 
Lyons  Caserio  repaired  to  Vienne,  and  finally  to  Cette,  on  the 
Mediterranean  coast,  where  he  secured  employment  with  a 
baker,  a  compatriot  named  Vialla.  Both  at  Vienne  and  at 
Cette  he  entered  into  relations  with  local  Anarchists,  meeting 
them  at  the  cafes  and  wine  shops  they  frequented.  It  was  the 
execution  of  Vaillant  that  first  inspired  him  with  the  idea  of 
assassinating  M.  Carnot,  and  finally  the  news  that  the 
President  was  about  to  visit  Lyons  prompted  him  to  carry 
the  idea  into  effect.  On  June  23  he  deliberately  picked  a 
quarrel  with  his  employer  with  the  object  of  securing  instant 
dismissal  and  the  payment  of  what  money  was  due  to  him, 
about  20  francs,  with  which,  and  a  trifle  he  had  saved,  he  set 
out  for  Lyons,  travelling  by  train  to  Montpellier,  Tarascon,  and 
Vienne.  At  the  last-named  town  he  tried  to  find  some 
Anarchists  whom  he  had  known  there  the  previous  year,  but 
failed  to  discover  them,  and  his  money  now  being  well-nigh 
exhausted,  he  resolved  to  proceed  to  Lyons  on  foot.  Quitting 
Vienne  about  %  p.m.,  he  reached  Lyons,  a  distance  of  some 
twenty  miles,  in  the  evening;  and  after  buying  a  newspaper 
there  so  that  he  might  ascertain  the  presidential  programme,  he 
followed  the  crowd  to  the  Rue  de  la  Republique.  Never  was 
premeditation  more  clearly  displayed.  Caserio  had  purchased 
the  poignard  with  which  he  assassinated  the  President  before 
quitting  Cette,  and  had  paid  four  shillings  for  it.     The  blade 

1  Otherwise  St.  Jerome  Caserio.  In  books  of  reference  he  is  often  called 
merely  Santo  Caserio  or  Caserio  Santo. 


ASSASSINATION  OF  CARNOT  399 

was  marked  "  Toledo,"  but  it  was  really  French  cutlery,  made  at 
Thiers  in  Auvergne. 

He  repeatedly  declared  after  his  arrest  that  he  had  no 
accomplice,  and  had  taken  nobody  into  his  confidence.  At  his 
trial  his  expression  was  placid,  and  his  appearance  youthful, 
merely  a  little  down  shading  his  upper  lip.  His  manners  seemed 
gentle,  but  his  intelligence  was  plainly  somewhat  limited.  On 
the  presiding  judge  remarking  that  he  had  neglected  his 
studies  while  at  school,  he  admitted  it,  adding:  "If  I  had 
learnt  more  I  should  have  been  cleverer  and  better. "  At  the 
same  time  he  displayed  no  repentance  for  his  deed.  He  asserted 
that  he  had  cried  "  Vive  la  Revolution  ! "  when  he  struck  the 
President,  and  "  Vive  l'Anarchie ! "  as  he  rushed  across  the 
street.  On  being  sentenced  to  capital  punishment,  his  placidity 
forsook  him  and  he  began  to  tremble.  When  he  was  roused 
from  sleep  on  the  morning  appointed  for  his  execution  (August 
16),  he  quite  broke  down,  bursting  into  sobs.  He  met  his  fate, 
indeed,  like  a  child  appalled  by  the  thought  of  death ;  and  on 
the  way  to  the  guillotine  the  headsman's  assistants  had  to 
support  him  on  either  side.  It  was  said  that  he  gasped  "  Vive 
l'Anarchie ! "  as  he  was  cast  upon  the  bascule,  but  in  reality  his 
only  words  were  :  "  I  won't,  I  won't,"  uttered  in  the  Lombardian 
dialect,  and  suggesting  the  cry  of  a  whimpering,  recalcitrant 
boy  when  threatened  with  a  flogging.  Such  criminals  as  Caserio 
may  not  be  hardened  offenders,  they  may  have  only  a  limited 
intellect,  perverted  by  evil  companionship,  and  swayed  at  last 
by  a  fixed  idea,  but  whatever  may  be  urged  on  their  behalf,  the 
fact  remains  that  they  are  dangerous  to  the  whole  community. 
In  the  state  of  France  at  that  time  the  execution  of  Caserio  was 
inevitable,  but  it  is  perhaps  a  question  whether  the  practice  of 
Switzerland  and  Italy  in  such  cases  is  not  to  be  preferred.1 

With  all  pomp  and  ceremony  Carnot's  remains  were  laid  to 
rest  beside  those  of  his  illustrious  grandfather  in  the  Pantheon, 
in  Paris.  Reaction  was  now  rampant  in  the  official  world,  and  a 
serious  schism  sundered  the  Parliamentary  majority.  The  policy 
of  Republican  concentration  was  absolutely  abandoned,  the  so- 
called  Moderate  Republicans  seeking  an  alliance  with  those 
Monarchists  who  professed  to  accept  the  Republic.  Thus  the 
Congress  of  Versailles  chose  Casimir-Perier  to  be  President  of 

1  The  assassins  of  the  Empress  Elizabeth  and  King  Humbert  were  not 
executed  but  sentenced  to  rigorous  imprisonment  for  life. 


400  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

the  Republic  by  451  votes  against  195  given  to  Henri  Brisson, 
the  Radical  nominee.  Those  Royalists  and  Bonapartists  who 
still  refused  to  adhere  to  the  Republic  voted  for  General 
Fevrier,  while  certain  Republican  coteries,  opposed  both  to 
Perier  and  to  Brisson,  scattered  their  votes  between  Charles 
Dupuy  and  Emmanuel  Arago. 

Thoroughly  "resolute  government11  was  now  decided  on, 
and  bills  levelled  at  Anarchism  were  soon  submitted  to  the 
legislature.  They  placed  every  person  reputed  to  be  an 
Anarchist  outside  the  pale  of  the  common  law,  they  denied  him 
the  right  of  trial  by  jury,  they  were  so  worded  that  a  mere 
remark,  a  mere  letter,  expressive  of  the  slightest  sympathy 
or  interest,  became  an  indictable  offence,  punishable  with  a  long 
term  of  hard  labour.  It  was  proposed  also  to  muzzle  the 
press  yet  more  tightly  than  before,  and  various  rights  and 
privileges  in  which  the  whole  community  was  interested, 
including  the  ordinary  liberty  of  the  subject,  were  affected  more 
or  less  directly  by  this  panic  legislation.  Radical  deputies  and 
senators  urged  that  there  should  at  least  be  a  time-limit  to  laws 
which  carried  France  back  to  the  dark  hours  of  Oram's  crime 
and  the  tyranny  of  General  Espinasse  ;  but  the  Government 
insisted  that  its  measures  must  be  eternal !  Both  in  the 
Chamber1  and  the  Senate  they  were  passed  by  large  silent 
majorities,  in  spite  of  the  many  angry  protests  of  the  more 
democratic  members. 

But  the   community  signified  its   displeasure.     Before  the 

voting  of  the  his  oVexception  the  Government  had  resolved  to 

indict,  on  a  charge  of  conspiracy,  a  number  of  persons  concerned 

in  the  diffusion  of  subversive  ideas  and  practices.     The  plan 

seems  to  have  been  to  include  in  this  prosecution  both  those 

1  M.  Auguste  Burdeau  now  took  Casimir-Perier's  former  place  as 
President  of  the  Chamber,  but  he  was  unfortunately  carried  off  by  a 
pulmonary  complaint  at  the  end  of  the  year.  Born  at  Lyons  in  1851,  he  was 
the  son  of  a  humble  office-attendant,  whose  meagre  salary  was  supplemented 
by  his  wife's  earnings  as  a  dressmaker.  After  remarkably  brilliant  studies 
at  Lyons  and  Paris  (defraying  the  cost  of  his  education  by  the  scholarships 
he  won)  Burdeau  was  appointed  a  professor  at  the  Lycie  St.  Louis.  He 
served  Paul  Bert  as  chief  secretary  at  the  time  of  Gambetta's  "  Grand 
Ministere,"  and  after  being  elected  a  deputy  for  Lyons  in  1885,  became  in 
turn  Minister  of  Marine  and  Finances,  distinguishing  himself  in  both  those 
offices.  The  untimely  death  of  this  exceptionally  able  man  was  much 
regretted.  A  national  pension  was  conferred  on  his  widow  and  children.  His 
memory  survives  as  that  of  the  French  translator  of  the  writings  of  Herbert 
Spencer. 


ATTEMPTS  TO  SUBDUE  ANARCHISM         401 

who  dreamt  of  an  ideal  state  of  society,  and  those  who  carried 
on  the  so-called  propaganda  by  act,  the  psychologists  who 
simply  frequented  the  Anarchists  in  order  to  study  them,  and 
the  men  who  were  the  objects  of  their  curiosity.  The 
defendants  picked  out  by  the  authorities  were  thirty  in  number, 
among  them  being  several  writers,  four  married  women  (their 
husbands'  alleged  accomplices),  and  three  burglars,  two  of  whom, 
we  think,  were  Italians.  The  three  burglars  were  convicted  and 
sentenced  for  their  offences  against  the  common  law,  but  the 
jury  stoutly  refused  to  convict  the  others.  There  was  indeed  no 
"practical"  Anarchist,  no  Henry,  no  Ravachol,  no  Pauwels, 
among  them.  The  majority  were  simply  half-witted  idealogues, 
crazy  poetasters,  entitled,  perhaps,  to  be  placed  in  asylums,  but 
not  such  men  as  deserved  the  galleys — that  seeming  to  the  jury 
to  be  excessive  punishment  even  in  the  case  of  more  seriously 
subversive  writers  like  Jean  Grave  and  Sebastien  Faure,  who 
were  among  the  accused.  Moreover,  many  people  were  already 
inclining,  rightly,  we  think,  to  the  view  that  Anarchism  was  not 
to  be  stamped  out  by  exceptional  laws,  martyr-making,  or  any 
other  imitation  of  the  measures  which  had  altogether  failed 
to  subdue  Nihilism  in  Russia.  Briefly,  the  prosecution  of  the 
Thirty  broke  down,  much  to  the  Government's  confusion. 

The  Correctional  Courts,  in  which  there  were  no  juries,  gave, 
however,  short  shrift  to  those  prisoners  who  were  brought  before 
them.  There  were  numerous  arbitrary  arrests,  and  some 
perfectly  innocent  persons  were  sent  to  prison.  It  was  only 
right  that  real  apologists  of  Caserio's  crime  should  be  punished, 
but  any  man  who  spoke  at  all  foolishly  in  his  cups  paid  a  very 
heavy  penalty  for  his  idiocy.  Delation  was  encouraged  by  the 
authorities,  and  in  that  respect  it  seemed  as  if  the  days  of 
Robespierre  and  the  "  suspects  "  might  return.  The  electorate 
expressed  its  opinion  of  the  reactionary  policy  which  was  being 
pursued  in  no  uncertain  manner.  Casimir-Perier,  before  his 
elevation  to  the  Presidency  of  the  Republic,  had  sat  in  the 
Chamber  as  deputy  for  Nogent-sur-Seine,  an  agricultural  rather 
than  an  industrial  centre ;  yet  at  the  election  for  a  new  member 
a  Socialist  was  returned.  That  was  distinctly  a  blow  for  the 
new  President  as  well  as  for  his  ministers.  Nevertheless,  the 
Government  inclined  more  and  more  to  the  Conservative  and 
Clerical  parties,  the  gap  between  Moderate  and  Radical  Re- 
publicans ever  becoming  wider.     Vortigern,  the  British  ruler,  is 

2d 


402  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

said  by  historians  to  have  called  in  the  Saxons  as  auxiliaries,  with 
the  result  that  the  Saxons  ultimately  dispossessed  the  Britons. 
In  a  somewhat  similar  fashion  the  so-called  "  Moderates "  of 
Casimir-Perier's  time  called  in  those  Monarchists  and  Clericals 
who  had  feigned  compliance  with  the  Pope's  behest  to  rally  to 
the  Republic.  In  course  of  time  those  allies,  wrapped  in  the 
cloak  of  anti-Semitism,  marched  to  the  assault  of  the  Republic 
and  tried  to  overthrow  it.  All  the  unrest  which  marked  the 
presidency  of  Felix  Faure,  was  due  to  the  attempts  of  the 
Monarchists  and  Clericals  (banded  together  as  "Nationalists'") 
to  gain  complete  mastery.  Fortunately  for  the  Republic  they 
were  checked  in  time,  defeated,  and  ultimately  driven  forth. 
But  the  necessity  for  all  that  might  have  been  avoided.  The 
wolf  ought  never  to  have  been  admitted  into  the  sheepfold. 

Anarchism  did  not  die  out  in  France  after  the  assassination 
of  Carnot,  nor  is  it  dead  there  yet.  The  futility  of  the 
propaganda  by  deeds  was  becoming,  however,  more  and  more 
manifest  among  French  Anarchists,  if  not  among  those  of  Italy 
and  Spain.  We  doubt  if  any  French  Anarchist  ever  harboured 
a  desire  to  take  President  Carnot's  life.  At  all  events  none 
attempted  to  do  so.  The  crime  was  that  of  an  Italian.  The 
fact  that  repressive  laws,  however  stern  and  stringent  they  might 
be,  could  not  prevent  outrages  if  there  were  men  inclined  to 
perpetrate  them,  was  made  manifest  within  a  year  of  Carnofs 
death.  In  January  1895  a  bomb  was  found  on  the  window-sill 
of  a  house  near  the  Pare  Montceau,  and  on  being  cast  into  the 
street  exploded  there,  doing  considerable  damage.  In  August 
the  same  year,  on  a  packet  addressed  to  Baron  Alphonse  de 
Rothschild  being  opened  by  his  confidential  secretary,  it 
exploded,  injuring  the  secretary  most  severely.  Many  arrests 
were  made,  but  the  sender  of  the  package  was  never  discovered. 
Within  a  fortnight  after  that  affair  a  bomb  was  thrown  into  the 
doorway  of  the  Rothschild  establishment  in  the  Rue  Lafite, 
luckily  without  bursting.  On  that  occasion  the  culprit  was 
caught  and  sent  to  prison.  Those  attempts  on  the  great 
bankers  and  their  property  were  connected  quite  as  much  with 
anti-Semitism  as  with  Anarchism.  Nevertheless  they  showed 
that  mere  laws  were  powerless  to  prevent  the  perpetration  of 
outrages  by  means  of  explosives.  If  the  attempted  propaganda 
by  outrage  gradually  subsided  in  France,  it  was  not  from  a  fear 
of  any  penalties  attaching  to  it,  but  partly  on  account  of  its 


THE  PRESENT  FRENCH  ANARCHISTS         403 

recognised  futility,  and  partly  on  account  of  an  evolution 
among  the  French  Anarchists — one  which  drew  them  nearer 
to  the  Socialists,  both  combining  to  diffuse  the  principles  of 
anti-militarism.  Further,  the  evolution  of  some  sections  of 
the  French  Socialists  towards  so-called  Syndicalism  has  been 
largely  brought  about  by  the  presence  of  ex- Anarchists  in 
their  ranks. 

At  an  Anarchist  Congress  held  at  Amsterdam  in  1907,  the 
principal  members  who  upheld  the  propaganda-by-deeds  theory 
in  regard  to  assassination  were  Americans  and  Italians.  Of 
recent  times  the  French  Anarchists  have  more  particularly 
taken  to  sabotage,  that  is,  the  wilful  destruction  of  property 
during  labour  strikes.  Many  men,  however,  styling  themselves 
Anarchists,  but  caring  nothing  for  real  Anarchist  theories, 
have  risen  to  notoriety  of  late  times  by  reason  of  other  crimes. 
Thieves  and  assassins,  prompted  solely  by  desire  for  money, 
and  utterly  unscrupulous  in  their  methods,  they  have  been  true 
descendants  of  Ravachol,  who  ended  by  professing  Anarchism 
as  a  kind  of  excuse  for  his  misdeeds.  It  is  a  question  whether 
the  motor-car  bandits  who  tried  to  terrorise  Paris  and  its 
suburbs  in  1911  and  1912  can  be  called  Anarchists  in  the  real 
sense,  for  their  crimes  were  not  inspired  by  any  political  or 
social  considerations.  They  robbed  simply  to  fill  their  pockets ; 
they  murdered  for  the  same  purpose,  or  else  to  escape  arrest. 
At  last  two  of  them,  Bonnot  and  Dubois,  were  besieged  in  a 
garage  at  Choisy-le-Roi ;  and  two  others,  Gamier  and  Vallet, 
with  the  former's  mistress,  Louise  Vuillemin,  were  blockaded 
in  a  villa  at  Nogent-sur-Marne  (April  and  May  1912).  The 
buildings  were  fired  or  partially  blown  up,  and  the  four  men 
perished,  La  Vuillemin  surrendering  to  the  authorities.  Others 
of  the  band  were  arrested  either  before  or  after  the  deaths  of 
the  leaders,  the  police  doing  4 their  utmost  to  secure  every  con- 
federate. Such  men  foolishly  imagine  that  they  hold  the  com- 
munity at  their  mercy,  but  the  criminal  rebel  against  society 
usually  pays  forfeit  with  either  his  liberty  or  his  life.1 

1  Respecting  Anarchism  all  the  world  over,  see  our  volume,  The 
Anarchists,  their  Faith  and  their  Record  (John  Lane,  the  Bodley  Head). 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   PRESIDENCIES    OF   JEAN    CASIMIR-PERIER   AND 
FELIX    FAURE 

The  Perier  Family— The  Great  Casimir  Perier— His  Son  Auguste— The 
Early  Career  of  President  Jean  Casimir-Perier — His  Character  and  his 
Premiership — His  Elevation  to  the  Presidency — Mme.  Casimir-Perier — 
The  President's  Relations  with  his  Ministers— The  Beginning  of  the 
Dreyfus  Affair — Casimir-Perier  and  Prince  Minister— Causes  of  the 
President's  Resignation — His  later  life — The  Election  of  Felix  Faure— 
His  Origin,  Education,  and  Early  Career— Mme.  and  Mile.  Lucie  Faure 
—The  Court  at  the  FJysee— Faure  and  the  Duchess  d'Uzes— The  Ribot, 
Bourgeois,  and  Meline  Ministries — Czar  Alexander  III.  in  Paris — Faure 
in  Russia — The  Story  of  a  Toast — The  Bazar  de  la  Charite"  Disaster — 
The  Dreyfus  Agitation — Prosecution  of  Zola— General  Elections — Another 
Meline  Ministry — M.  Hanotaux  and  his  Policy — Differences  between 
France  and  England — M.  Hanotaux'  Career — Progress  of  the  Dreyfus 
Case  and  Captain  Henry's  Suicide — Revision  Proceedings — Brisson  and 
Dupuy  Ministries — The  Fashoda  Affair — Death  of  F&ix  Faure  and  the 
Legends  respecting  it. 

When  Jean  Casimir-Perier  became  President  of  the  Republic 
at  the  end  of  June  1894,  he  was  only  in  his  forty-seventh  year, 
thus  being  the  youngest  of  all  the  Presidents  that  the  present 
regime  has  known.  His  predecessor,  Carnot,  had  been  fifty  at 
the  time  of  his  elevation,  and  his  successor,  Felix  Faure,  was 
nearly  five-and-fifty  on  attaining  to  the  chief  magistracy.  Of 
the  other  Presidents,  three,  MacMahon,  Loubet  and  Fallieres, 
were  sexagenarians  when  elected,  while  two,  Thiers  and  Grevy, 
were  in  their  seventh  decade.  The  Perier  family  is  a  very 
ancient  one  of  Dauphine,  the  elaborate  investigations  of  a  writer 
of  that  province  showing  that  it  took  its  name  from  the  hamlet 
of  Perier  in  the  commune  of  St.  Baudelle-et-Pipet,  Isere.  Both 
hamlet  and  family  are  frequently  mentioned  in  records  of  the 
fourteenth   century.     The   founder   of  the   family   fortune   in 

404 


THE  PERIER  FAMILY  405 

modern  times  was  a  certain  Jacques  Perier,  who  died  in  1758, 
leaving  two  sons,  the  elder  of  whom  was  also  named  Jacques 
and  the  younger  Claude.  In  1775  the  latter  purchased  from 
the  Duke  de  Villeroy  the  marquisate  of  Vizille  and  the  splendid 
chateau  of  that  name,  erected  by  Constable  Lesdiguieres.  Claude 
Perier  there  entertained  the  Notables  of  Dauphine  in  1788,  when 
they  passed  their  famous  resolution  that  they  would  grant  no 
taxes  whatever  until  the  States  General  of  the  Kingdom  had 
met  and  deliberated  on  the  subject.  Both  Jacques  and  Claude 
Perier  amassed  large  fortunes  as  linen  manufacturers  and 
merchants.  One  of  the  former's  sons,  Casimir  Pierre  Perier, 
became  a  wealthy  banker  and  a  great  statesman.  Born  at 
Grenoble  in  1777,  he  witnessed  the  Reign  of  Terror  in  Paris, 
and  on  that  account  became  convinced  at  an  early  age  that  a 
nation  ought  to  be  governed  with  a  firm  hand.  After  serving 
in  the  army  of  Italy,  he  established,  with  one  of  his  brothers, 
the  banking  house  of  Perier  freres,  whose  capital  he  quadrupled 
in  a  few  years'  time.  He  also  became  largely  interested  in  the 
Anzin  coal  mines,  which  proved  a  great  source  of  wealth  to 
himself  and  his  family.  He  was  elected  as  a  deputy  for  Paris 
under  Charles  X.,  and  after  the  Revolution  of  1830  was  chosen 
to  be  President  of  the  Chamber.  When  the  Laffitte  Ministry 
fell,  Casimir  Perier  became  Louis  Philippe's  Prime  Minister,  in 
which  capacity  he  suppressed  the  Parisian  and  Lyonnese  insur- 
rections with  the  greatest  vigour,  supported  Belgium  against 
Holland,  and  checked  the  Austrians  in  Italy.  He  was  a  man 
of  a  very  imperious  nature,  with  flashing  eyes  and  brusque, 
impetuous  ways.  He  often  treated  his  colleagues  as  if  they 
were  merely  his  servants,1  he  allowed  no  resistance  to  his  plans, 
not  even  from  the  King  himself,  and  more  than  once  he  humbled 
the  proud  Mme.  Adelaide.  But  his  political  career  was  brief, 
for  he  was  carried  off  in  May  1832,  when  only  in  his  fifty-fifth 
year.  All  the  accounts  of  him  in  historical  works  and  books 
of  reference  say  that  he  succumbed  to  cholera,  which  was  then 
certainly  raging  in  Paris;  but  the  statements  of  his  medical 
men,  given  after  his  death  in  the  Gazette  Medicate  de  Paris,  show 

1  One  day  when  a  colleague,  the  Marquis  d'Argout,  was  about  to  reply- 
to  an  interpellation  in  the  Chamber  without  having  first  taken  the  instructions 
of  the  Prime  Minister,  Casimir  Perier  called  him  back  to  the  ministerial 
bench  :  "  Ici,  D'Argout !  "  he  cried  in  a  stentorian  voice,  as  if  he  had  been 
summoning  his  dog. 


406  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

that  although  he  certainly  accompanied  the  young  Duke 
cPOrleans  on  his  visits  to  the  cholera  wards  at  the  hospitals, 
he  never  contracted  the  disease,  but  succumbed  to  a  fever, 
induced  by  a  long-standing  nervous  complaint,  which  undermined 
and  finally  exhausted  his  strength. 

His  son,  Auguste  Victor  Perier  (who  by  a  decree  in  1874 
was  authorised  to  add  the  paternal  Christian  name  of  Casimir 
to  the  family  surname,  in  such  wise  that  the  latter  henceforth 
became  Casimir-Perier),  was  trained  for  the  diplomatic  pro- 
fession, serving  in  turn  as  a  secretary  at  the  embassy  in  London, 
as  charge"  d'affaires  at  Naples  and  as  Minister  Plenipotentiary 
in  Hanover.  He  became  a  deputy  in  1846,  and  was  re-elected 
under  the  Second  Republic.  He  protested  against  the  Coup 
d^tat  of  Louis  Napoleon,  and  was  then  arrested  like  so  many 
others.  On  his  release,  he  retired  for  some  years  into  private 
life,  occupying  himself  with  agricultural  pursuits.  He  disposed 
of  great  influence  in  Dauphine  and  also  in  the  Aube,  having 
inherited  in  the  former  province  the  splendid  chateau  of  Vizille 
and  in  the  latter  region  the  chateau  of  Pont-sur-Seine,  which 
last  his  father  had  erected  in  1825  to  serve  as  a  summer  residence 
within  easy  reach  of  Paris.1  However,  although  Auguste 
Casimir-Perier  twice  came  forward  as  an  Opposition  candidate 
for  the  Legislative  Body  of  the  Empire,  he  was  defeated  on 
both  occasions  by  official  pressure  on  the  electorate.  During 
the  war  of  1870  the  Germans,  having  been  worried  by  some 
francs-tireurs  in  the  vicinity  of  Pont-sur-Seine,  seized  him  as  a 
hostage  and  imprisoned  him  at  Laon.  On  the  arrival  of  peace 
he  supported  Thiers,  who,  after  the  death  of  Lambrecht,  made 
him  Minister  of  the  Interior.  In  February  1872,  however,  as 
the  National  Assembly  negatived  his  proposal  that  it  should 
leave  Versailles  and  install  itself  in  Paris,  Casimir-Perier  resigned. 
Thiers  reappointed  him  to  the  same  post  six  days  before  his — 
Thiers's — fall  from  power,  and  MacMahon  at  that  moment 
offered  him  the  Premiership,   which   he  was  willing    to   take 

1  There  had  been  a  magnificent  chateau  at  Pont-sur-Seine,  one  which 
ranked  as  the  second  in  France,  that  is  immediately  after  Chambord. 
Napoleon  I.  bought  it  for  his  mother  who  frequently  dwelt  there,  but  at  the 
invasion  of  1814  it  was  wantonly  fired  by  the  troops  of  Wurtemberg  and 
almost  totally  destroyed.  Casimir  Perier  afterwards  bought  the  ruins  and 
wished  to  re-edify  the  pile  in  its  entirety,  but  the  Canal  de  l'Est  scheme 
prevented  him  from  doing  so,  and  only  one  or  two  of  the  old  pavilions  could 
be  utilised  in  the  chateau  which  he  erected. 


THE  PERIER  FAMILY  407 

provided  that  the  administrative  services  should  be  completely 
reorganised  by  new  appointments  in  a  thoroughly  Republican 
sense.  To  that  condition  the  Marshal  would  not  accede,  and 
thus  the  Premiership  passed  to  Broglie.  Auguste  Casimir- 
Perier  survived  till  the  summer  of  1876,  when  he  was  suddenly 
carried  off  by  pneumonia,  after  contracting  a  chill  one  evening 
in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne. 

He  had  married  Mile.  Camille  Fontenillat,  daughter  of  a 
wealthy  receiver  of  the  exchequer  and  sister  of  the  Duchess 
d'AudifFret-Pasquier.  By  that  marriage  he  had  three  children, 
a  daughter,  Henriette,  who  married  Count  Louis  de  Segur 
(grandson  of  the  historian  of  the  Grande  Armee  and  great- 
grandson  of  Marshal  de  Segur 1),  and  two  sons,  first  Jean  Paul, 
who  became  President  of  the  Republic,  and  secondly  Pierre,  a 
captain  of  artillery,  who  succumbed  to  angina  pectoris  while  on 
a  mission  in  Peru  in  1852.  Curiously  enough,  his  elder  brother 
was  ultimately  carried  off  by  precisely  the  same  complaint. 

Jean  Paul  Casimir-Perier  was  born  in  Paris  on  November  8, 
1847.  He  was  one  of  the  brilliant  pupils  of  the  famous  Lycee 
Bonaparte,  later  Fontanes,  and  now  Condorcet,  where  we  were 
privileged  to  study  ;  and  he  subsequently  secured  the  degree 
of  licentiate  both  in  law  and  in  letters.  During  the  war  of 
1870  he  became  Captain  of  the  4th  Company  of  the  1st  battalion 
of  the  Mobiles  of  the  Aube.  His  men  were  supplied  with 
uniforms  and  weapons  entirely  at  his  personal  expense,  and 
throughout  the  war  he  contributed  largely  to  their  creature 
comforts.  The  battalion  formed  part  of  the  Army  of  Paris 
during  the  German  Siege,  and  at  the  combat  of  Bagneux  on 
October  13,  1870,  Casimir-Perier,  after  succouring  his  superior 
officer,  the  Count  de  Dampierre,  who  had  fallen  mortally 
wounded,  took  the  chief  command,  and  by  a  rapid  flanking 
movement  drove  the  Germans  from  the  village.  His  gallantry 
and  success  were  rewarded  with  the  cross  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour.2 

He  afterwards  became  chef  de  cabhiet  to  his  father  when 
the  latter  was  appointed  Minister  of  the  Interior,  and  in  April 
1873  he  married  his  cousin-german,  Mile.  Helene  Perier,  who 

1  An  earlier  Mile.  Perier  had  become  the  wife  of  Charles,  Count  de 
Remusat,  and  another  one  the  wife  of  Marshal  Randon. 

2  At  the  time  of  his  election  to  the  Presidency  of  the  Republic  he  still 
held  the  rank  of  Staff-Captain  in  the  Territorial  Army. 


408  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

had  been  adopted  by  a  family  connection,  M.  Vitet  of  the 
Academie  des  Inscriptions  et  Belles  Lettres.  A  son  and  a 
daughter — Claude,  born  in  September  1880,  and  Germaine,  born 
in  September  1881 — were  the  issue  of  that  marriage.  In  1876 
the  future  President  of  the  Republic  was  first  elected  a  deputy 
for  the  arrondissement  of  Nogent-sur-Seine  in  the  Aube,  and  sat 
for  that  constituency  during  many  years.  His  first  official  post 
was  that  of  Under-Secretary  for  Education,  Worship,  and  Fine 
Arts  in  Dufaure's  Ministry  at  the  end  of  the  Septennate. 
Later,  General  Campenon  chose  him  to  be  Under-Secretary  for 
War.  At  the  time  when  the  Orleans  Princes  were  removed 
from  the  army,  he  abruptly  resigned  his  seat  in  the  Chamber, 
merely,  however,  because  he  felt  that  he  could  not  well  take  part 
in  the  proceedings,  as  the  great  statesman,  his  grandfather, 
had  been  Louis  Philippe's  Prime  Minister.  His  own  Re- 
publicanism seemed  evident  from  the  fact  that  after  sitting  with 
the  Left  Centre  he  had  joined  the  Republican  Left.  His  electors 
were  altogether  unwilling  that  he  should  retire,  and  in  a  few 
weeks'  time  they  re-elected  him. 

In  1888,  when  the  Centenary  of  the  Assembling  of  the 
Notables  of  France  was  celebrated,  Casimir-Perier  entertained 
President  Carnot  at  that  historic  chateau  of  Vizille  which  is  full 
of  fine  paintings,  sculpture,  furniture,  and  ancient  tapestry. 
Thiers  had  been  a  guest  there  after  his  fall  from  power.  In 
1893  Casimir-Perier  was  elected  President  of  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies,  and  in  December  that  year,  as  we  previously  related, 
he  became  Prime  Minister.  Not  since  Gambetta's  time  had  any 
ministerial  appointment  aroused  so  much  interest  and  curiosity 
in  France.  Casimir-Perier  stepped  to  the  front  bearing  an 
illustrious  name,  possessing  great  intellectual  gifts,  decision  and 
firmness  of  character,  and  a  command  of  clear  and  precise 
language.  He  had  worked  zealously  as  a  deputy,  acquiring 
great  experience  in  public  affairs,  and  there  were  many  who 
hoped  that  France  had  at  last  found  a  real  statesman.  But  his 
disposition  was,  in  reality,  very  similar  to  his  grandfather's.  He 
was  essentially  an  authoritarian,  and  tried  to  rule  France  in  too 
high-handed  a  manner.  He  had  in  all  sincerity  become  a 
Republican,  but  one  of  limited  views.  He  was  in  no  sense  a 
democrat.  His  policy  with  respect  to  the  Anarchists  failed 
entirely,  as  we  previously  showed,  and  he  was  not  successful  in 
dealing  with  the  masses  generally.     On  the  other  hand,  he  was 


PRESIDENT  CASIMIR-PERIER  409 

less  inclined  towards  the  Clericals  than  was  Charles  Dupuy,  and 
his  one  hour  of  success  as  Prime  Minister  was  when,  on  being 
reproached  with  weakness  towards  the  Church  and  its  supporters, 
he  read  to  the  Chamber  a  despatch  he  had  sent  to  the  French 
Ambassador  to  the  Vatican.  In  that  despatch  (March  7,  1894) 
he  stated  that  if  there  was  to  be  pacification  between  the  State 
and  the  Church,  it  was  essential  that  the  clergy  of  every  degree 
"  should  show  due  respect  for  the  rights  of  the  State  and  sub- 
mission to  all  the  laws."  The  reading  of  those  words  in  the 
Chamber  elicited  an  outburst  of  applause  from  every  section  of 
the  Republican  ranks.  However,  the  actual  policy  pursued  by 
Casimir-Perier  and  Spuller  (then  Minister  of  Worship)  did  not 
altogether  accord  with  those  declarations. 

Casimir-Perier  knew  himself  far  better  than  many  others 
knew  him.  Carnot,  shortly  before  his  assassination,  and  when 
he  had  already  decided  not  to  accept  re-election  for  the  Presi- 
dency, suggested  to  him  that  he  should  come  forward  as  a 
candidate.  "  No,  no,'1  Casimir-Perier  answered,  "  my  place  is 
at  the  tribune,  not  at  the  Elysee.  I  am  a  fighter,  born  for 
fighting.  I  shall  never  be  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency.,, 
Indeed,  after  Carnofs  death,  he  refused,  very  stoutly  at  first,  to 
allow  himself  to  be  nominated.  His  mother,  a  tall,  handsome 
woman,  in  the  depths  of  whose  blue  eyes  you  could  detect  no 
little  latent  energy,  was  then  still  alive.  She  was  supposed  to 
have  very  great  influence  over  him,  but  when  she  begged  him  to 
accept  nomination  he  would  not  listen  to  her.  It  was  Auguste 
Burdeau  who  at  last  wrung  from  him  an  unwilling  consent. 
Burdeau  was  already  in  desperate  health  and  knew  he  could  not 
live  much  longer,  and  it  was,  to  use  his  own  words,  "  as  a  dying 
man  "  that  he  entreated  Casimir-Perier  to  change  his  decision, 
as  in  that  dark  hour  France  needed  a  man  of  firm  will  at  her 
head. 

Although  so  large  a  number  of  senators  and  deputies  at 
once  cast  their  vote  in  Casimir-Perier's  favour,  in  such  wise  that 
he  was  elected  at  the  very  first  ballot,  his  success,  as  we  previously 
indicated,  was  not  popular,  owing  to  the  tendencies  displayed 
during  his  premiership.  To  society  his  Presidency  seemed  to 
promise  a  great  deal.  He  was  a  man  of  great  private  wealth, 
in  fact  one  of  the  richest  men  in  France,  he  was  allied  to  many 
notable  families,  and  he  was  still  young  and  very  active.  His 
appearance   and   manners   recalled   his   military  training.     Of 


410  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

average  height,  he  had  his  mother's  blue  eyes,  the  moustache  and 
the  bearing  of  a  cavalry  officer.  His  wife  was  a  charming 
woman,  fair,  tall,  slim,  extremely  elegant,  and  tasteful  in  her 
attire,  graceful  and  gracious  also  in  her  manners.  She  could 
ride,  row,  shoot,  and  angle,  and  at  the  same  time  she  possessed 
a  cultured  mind  and  a  lively  wit.  For  the  rest  she  was  as 
good -hearted  and  as  charitable  as  her  husband's  mother. 
France  had  not  yet  known  such  a  Presidente,  for  even  Mme.  de 
MacMahon's  good  qualities  were  surpassed  by  those  of  Mme. 
Casimir-Perier.  But  she  lacked  opportunity  to  distinguish  her- 
self, for  her  husband  only  retained  his  position  for  180  days. 

His  character  and  his  claims  were  revealed  by  a  phrase  of 
the  first  Message  he  addressed  to  the  Legislature :  "  Having  a 
deep  sense  of  my  responsibility,  it  will  be  my  duty  to  see  that 
the  rights  conferred  on  me  by  the  Constitution  are  neither 
disregarded  nor  allowed  to  lapse."  Those  were  the  words  of  a 
man  resolved  to  govern.  But  Casimir-Perier  was  now  in  the 
position  of  Louis  Philippe,  and  his  grandfather's  place  was  held 
by  Charles  Dupuy.  The  famous  statesman  of  the  July  Monarchy 
had  not  allowed  the  King  to  govern — it  being  sufficient  that  he 
should  reign — and  Dupuy  adopted  towards  the  President  much 
the  same  course  as  the  latter's  grandfather  had  adopted  towards 
his  Sovereign.  It  was  a  tit  for  tat  inflicted  on  the  third 
generation. 

Under  those  circumstances  Casimir-Perier  can  hardly  be  held 
responsible  for  the  policy  pursued  under  his  Presidency,  though 
credit  may  be  given  him  for  the  pardoning  of  some  four 
hundred  offenders  soon  after  his  assumption  of  office.  We  have 
said  that  he  was  not  democratic.  He  had  been,  as  an  adminis- 
trateur  of  the  great  Anzin  mines,  a  large  employer  of  labour, 
and  in  such  matters  as  workmen's  grievances  and  strikes  he  took 
the  master's  view.  At  the  time  of  his  premiership  he  had  been 
virulently  attacked  for  his  connection  with  the  Anzin  Company, 
but  had  confounded  his  assailants  by  stating  that  he  had  not 
waited  for  his  appointment  to  executive  functions  to  resign  his 
position  on  the  Company's  directorate.  "I  retired  from  it," 
said  he,  "  on  the  day  I  was  elected  President  of  the  Chamber." 
In  that  respect  he  certainly  took  an  honourable  course ;  but 
Anzin,  which  yielded  great  wealth  to  its  proprietors,  had  long 
been  chosen  by  extremists  as  an  example  of  the  manner  in  which 
capitalists  "  exploited  "  the  slaving  masses.     The  President  was 


PRESIDENT  CASIMIR-PERIER  411 

therefore  reviled  for  being  even  a  shareholder  in  the  enterprise, 
and  a  journalist  and  deputy  named  Gerault-Richard,  denounced 
him  in  a  paper  called  Le  Chambard l  as  the  "  Vampire  of  Anzin." 
In  fact  the  extremist  journals  never  ceased  attacking  the 
President  because  he  happened  to  be  a  rich  man.  He  was 
undoubtedly  sensitive  to  those  attacks,  and  was  really  distressed 
when  his  old  electors  in  the  Aube  chose  a  Socialist  as  his 
successor. 

In  the  autumn  of  1894  he  inaugurated  a  monument  to  the 
memory  of  the  defenders  of  Chateaudun  during  the  war  of  1870  2 
and  reviewed  the  troops  assembled  for  the  autumn  manoeuvres 
in  the  neighbouring  region  of  La  Beauce.  Whatever  his 
political  faults  might  be  he  had  certainly  shown  himself  a 
gallant  soldier,  and  one  might  have  thought  that  the  army 
would  have  received  him  well.  But  he  was  simply  treated  with 
cold  respect.  About  this  time  the  Count  de  Paris  died  at 
Stowe  House  in  Buckinghamshire  (September  8),  but  the  French 
generally  paid  little  attention  to  an  event  which,  a  few  years 
previously,  would  have  given  rise  to  all  sorts  of  speculations. 
A  few  weeks  later,  however,  there  occurred  an  incident  the 
consequences  of  which  plunged  France  into  a  turmoil  for  several 
years.  This  was  the  theft  of  a  paper  from  the  rooms  of  the 
military  attache  of  the  German  Embassy.  It  was  a  list  of 
documents  supplied  to  that  attache  by  an  officer  in  the  French 
army.  Written  in  reality  by  Major  Walsin-Esterhazy  of  the 
74th  Regiment  of  the  Line,  who  at  one  time  had  been  connected 
with  the  Intelligence  Department  of  the  War  Office,  it  was 
imputed  to  Captain  Alfred  Dreyfus,  an  artillery  officer  of  the 
Jewish  pe*wtasion,  Mho  at  that  moment  belonged  to  the 
Intelligence  Department.  Dreyfus  was  arrested,  court-mar tialled, 
convicted,  and  sentenced  to  transportation  for  life  to  a  fortified 
place,  preceded  by  military  degradation  (October  1894  to  January 
1895).  One  of  the  earliest  effects  of  this  famous  affair,  which 
was  to  have  so  many,  was  Casimir-Perier's  resignation. 

First  of  all,  however,  the  Dupuy  Cabinet  retired,  and  it 
is  therefore  curious  that  the  President,  in  the  evidence  which 
he  gave  at  Dreyfus's  second  trial  (Rennes,  1899),  should  have 
ascribed  his  own  withdrawal  from  office  to  the  manner  in  which 

1  A  popular  expression  signifying  the  upheaver  or  overthrower.     Cham- 
bardementi  upheaval  or  overthrow,  is,  perhaps,  more  generally  used. 

2  See  ante,  p.  17. 


412  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE  * 

that  Ministry  had  treated  him.  As  he  had  got  rid  of  it,  one 
might  have  thought  that  his  own  resignation  had  become 
unnecessary.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  there  was  an  interval  of 
only  twenty-four  hours  between  the  fall  of  the  Cabinet  and  the 
retirement  of  the  President.  The  former  event  was  caused  by  a 
vote  of  the  Chamber  in  favour  of  an  inquiry  into  the  alleged 
neglect  of  M.  Raynal  respecting  the  conventions  he  had  signed 
in  1883  with  the  Railway  Companies,  he  then  being  Minister  of 
Public  Works.  There  was  now  a  dispute  between  some  of  the 
Companies  and  the  State  in  regard  to  the  date  at  which  the 
latter^  guarantee  would  be  payable  ;  and  the  Council  of  State, 
having  decided  in  favour  of  the  Companies,  the  country  found 
itself  liable  for  an  amount  of  ^32,000,000.  That,  of  course, 
did  not  personally  affect  Casimir-Perier,  who  withdrew,  according 
to  his  own  account,  because  the  Ministry  had  not  respected  his 
prerogatives — that  is,  had  left  him  in  ignorance  of  important 
matters,  on  which  he  was  entitled  to  full  information.  On 
accepting  election  the  President  had  desired  to  have  at  least  a 
share  in  the  government  of  France,  and  Dupuy  had  allowed 
him  none  in  home  politics,  and  Hanotaux  none  in  foreign 
affairs. 

For  some  time  past  the  Parisian  press  had  been  attacking 
Germany  with  great  violence  in  connection  with  the  Dreyfus 
case ;  and  the  German  ambassador,  Prince  Miinster,  had  replied 
by  a  note  inserted  in  Le  Figaro  (December  26,  1894),  stating 
that  the  embassy  had  never  had  the  slightest  intercourse  with 
Dreyfus,  either  directly  or  indirectly.  This  intimation  having 
little  effect,  the  Emperor  William  instructed  Miinster  to  call 
on  the  President  and  say  virtually  :  "  If  it  is  proved  that  the 
German  embassy  has  never  been  implicated  in  the  Dreyfus  case, 
I  hope  the  French  Government  will  not  hesitate  to  declare  so." 
Casimir-Perier  received  Prince  Miinster  at  the  Elysee  on  January 
6,  1895.  At  that  moment  M.  Hanotaux,  the  Foreign  Minister, 
was  absent  from  Paris.  The  President  had  hitherto  taken  little 
or  no  part  in  the  case.  He  had  seen  no  document  bearing  on 
it  prior  to  Dreyfus,s  condemnation.  He  knew,  however,  that 
Prince  Miinster  had  previously  had  interviews  on  the  subject 
with  M.  Hanotaux,  but  the  latter,  in  spite  of  his,  the  President's 
request,  had  given  him  no  information  about  them.  Under  the 
circumstances,  Casimir-Perier  (we  are  following  the  statements 
he  himself  made  at  Rennes)  held  that  the  only  course  for  one 


THE  DREYFUS  CASE  413 

who  spoke  in  the  name  of  France  was  to  tell  the  Ambassador 
the  truth  quite  frankly.1  1  Thus  Minister  was  now  put  in  full 
possession  of  the  facts,  which,  we  presume,  he  had  not  ascertained 
from  M.  Hanotaux  at  his  previous  interviews.  It  has  been  said 
that  the  Emperor  William  had  instructed  Miinster  to  leave 
Paris  if  he  did  not  obtain  satisfaction,  and  General  Mercier, 
then  Minister  of  War,  afterwards  declared  (Rennes,  1899),  that 
there  had  been  a  night  of  great  anxiety,  as  war  with  Germany 
was  apprehended.  We  greatly  prefer  Casimir-Perier's  version 
that  there  was  nothing  of  the  kind,  for  he  was  no  coward  and 
would  not  have  retired  from  the  Presidency  had  there  been 
danger  of  war.  But  as  he  said  at  Rennes  :  "  This  affair  (the 
Dreyfus  case  and  his  interview  with  Prince  Miinster)  was  in  no 
wise  the  cause  of  my  resignation,  but  I  knew  that  the  Foreign 
Minister  had  had  interviews  with  the  Ambassador  respecting 
the  Dreyfus  case,  and,  in  spite  of  my  observations,  had  told  me 
nothing  about  them.  I  was  therefore  exposed  to  this  :  that  in 
much  more  serious  circumstances  a  foreign  representative  might 
say  to  me  that  my  declarations  did  not  agree  with  those  of  the 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs.  Those  considerations  weighed 
upon  my  conscience.'" 

According  to  some  accounts  the  President's  differences  with 
M.  Hanotaux  dated  from  the  very  first  day.  He  was  the  more 
interested  in  foreign  politics,  it  is  said,  as  the  convention  with 
Russia  had  been  actually  signed  by  him  during  his  brief 
premiership,  and  as  it  was  becoming  the  keystone  of  French 
policy  he  felt  that  he  ought  to  be  consulted  on  all  matters 
relating  to  it.  But  M.  Hanotaux  persistently  refused  "  to  work 
with  him."  Casimir-Perier  also  had  a  grievance  against  M. 
Raymond  Poincare,  the  Minister  of  Finances,  for  submitting 

1  The  point  appears  to  be  this  :  The  name  of  the  power  to  which  Dreyfus 
was  alleged  to  have  betrayed  his  country  had  not  been  officially  stated. 
Germany  thus  had  no  official  knowledge  that  she  was  the  power  implicated 
in  the  proceedings  against  him.  The  Kaiser's  Government  therefore  resented 
the  assertions  of  the  French  press  that  Germany  was  that  power,  the  more 
so  as  the  German  embassy  had  never  had  any  intercourse  with  Dreyfus. 
The  charge  made  by  some  newspapers  that  Germany  had  "  solicited  "  French 
officers  to  betray  their  country,  was  also  resented.  If  Esterhazy's  name  had 
been  mentioned  at  that  time,  the  Germans  would  have  understood  the  position, 
but  he  was  not  yet  suspected.  All  that  Casimir-Perier  could  tell  Prince 
Miinster  was  that  Germany  was  really  the  power  concerned  in  the  case,  and 
that  the  document  on  which  Dreyfus  had  been  condemned  had  been  abstracted 
from  the  German  attaches  rooms  in  the  Rue  de  Lille. 


414  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

applications  for  supplementary  credits  to  the  Legislature  without 
previously  mentioning  them  at  the  Council  of  Ministers  or 
speaking  about  them  to  him  privately.  When  the  Dupuy 
Cabinet  fell,  Casimir-Perier  sent  for  Challemel-Lacour,  with 
whom  he  was  on  terms  of  real  friendship,  and  told  him  that  he 
also  meant  to  retire.  Challemel-Lacour  tried  to  dissuade  him 
from  doing  so,  and  suggested  that  he  should  ask  M.  Leon 
Bourgeois  to  form  a  Ministry,  but  the  President  replied  that  he 
would  not  "  turn  to  the  left,,,  meaning  to  the  Radicals.  His 
resolve  in  that  respect  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  not  only 
been  attacked  fiendishly  by  extremists  like  Gerault  Richard 
and  the  latter's  counsel,  Jaures,  but  that  a  good  many  Radicals 
had  participated  in  the  campaign  of  slander  against  him.  He 
stated  in  his  final  message  to  the  Chambers  that  he  could  no 
longer  endure  that  "  campaign  of  libel  and  insult  which  certain 
publicists  carried  on  against  the  irresponsible  Chief  of  the  State." 
So  he  resigned  office  to  the  momentary  consternation  of  the 
Conservative  Republicans. 

During  his  after-life  the  so-called  "  Vampire  of  Anzin,"  the 
"  Man  with  the  Forty  Millions,'1 1  devoted  both  time  and  means 
to  the  furtherance  of  good  works.  He  presided  over  an  Inter- 
national Congress  for  the  organisation  of  public  and  private 
charity,  and  was  closely  connected  with  a  society  for  the  assist- 
ance and  treatment  of  consumptive  children.  He  was  also  the 
President  of  the  Alliance  of  the  French  Social  Hygiene  Societies, 
which  aimed  at  solving  a  variety  of  social  problems  by  private 
initiative  and  action.  At  the  time  of  M.  Loubet's  Presidency 
Casimir-Perier  often  figured  with  his  successor  at  ceremonies 
connected  with  institutions  for  improving  the  condition  of  the 
working-classes.  When,  during  the  last  stages  of  the  Dreyfus 
Affair  and  the  Clericalist  agitation,  Loubet  called  Waldeck- 
Rousseau  to  the  head  of  affairs,  the  latter  at  once  begged 
Casimir-Perier  to  take  the  post  of  Minister  of  War,  urging  that, 
although  he  had  been  President  of  the  Republic,  he  might  well 
do  so,  in  the  difficult  and  dangerous  state  of  the  country,  without 
any  loss  of  dignity,  for  he  would  be  rendering  a  real  service  to 
the  nation.     But  the  ex-President  was  unwilling  to  accede  to 

1  His  private  fortune  was  said  to  amount  to  that  figure,  in  francs,  which 
would  be  £1,600,000.  Another  account  gives  his  private  income  as  over 
£60,000  a  year.  That  may  be  guess  work,  but,  as  we  said  previously,  he 
was  certainly  a  very  wealthy  man. 


CASIMIR-PERIER  RESIGNS  415 

the  request,  and  Waldeck-Rousseau  thereupon  appealed  to 
General  de  Galliffet,  who  consented  to  take  office.  Casimir- 
Perier  died  on  March  11,  1907,  succumbing,  like  his  elder 
brother,  to  angina  pectoris. 

On  his  resignation  of  the  Presidency  the  Radicals  hoped  to 
secure  the  election  of  M.  Henri  Brisson,  one  of  their  party's 
ablest  men,  who  had  come  to  the  very  front  as  President  of  the 
Chamber.1  But  a  politician  of  pronounced  views  does  not 
usually  command  a  majority  at  the  Presidential  Congresses. 
Two  candidates  opposed  Henri  Brisson  —  Waldeck-Rousseau, 
Gambetta's  old  lieutenant,  who  had  of  late  years  taken  little 
part  in  political  life,  and  Felix  Faure,  who  had  served  as  Minister 
of  Marine  in  the  Dupuy  Cabinet,  which  had  just  fallen. 
Waldeck-Rousseau  came  forward  willingly,  at  the  request  of 
the  old  Opportunists,  while  Faure  was  nominated  almost  despite 
himself  (like  Carnot  on  a  previous  occasion),  and  scarcely 
anticipated  success,  although,  being  an  ambitious  man,  he  was 
prepared  to  welcome  it.  At  the  first  ballot  Brisson  secured 
338,  Faure  224,  and  Waldeck-Rousseau  184  votes.  The  last- 
named  thereupon  withdrew,  recommending  his  friends  to  vote 
for  Faure,2  who  obtained  at  the  second  ballot  430  votes  against 
361  given  to  Brisson,  and  was  therefore  elected. 

He  was  the  son*  of  a  certain  Jean  Marie  Faure,  a  carpenter, 
who,  in  1835,  when  he  was  five-and-twenty  years  old,  came 
from  the  little  town  of  St.  Symphorien-sur-Coise,  in  the 
mountainous  district  south-west  of  Lyons,  to  seek  his  fortune  in 
Paris.  He  secured  employment  with  a  M.  Cuissard,  a  master- 
joiner  and  chair-maker  of  14  Faubourg  St.  Denis,  and  three 
years  later,  being  a  tall  and   handsome  fellow,  as  well  as  a 

1  M.  Brisson  was  born  at  Bourges  in  1835,  and  became  a  barrister  in 
Paris  twenty-four  years  later.  In  1870  during  the  siege  he  acted  as  adjoint 
to  Etienne  Arago,  Mayor  of  Paris,  and  in  18T1  was  elected  as  a  deputy  for 
the  city,  of  which  he  continued  to  be  one  of  the  representatives  until  1902, 
when,  being  defeated  at  the  elections,  he  became  a  candidate  for  Marseilles, 
where  he  was  returned.  He  was  President  of  the  Chamber  from  1881  to 
1885,  from  the  end  of  1894  to  1898,  and  again  acted  in  that  capacity  in  1904. 
He  first  became  Prime  Minister  in  1885  (April  6  to  December  29),  and 
secondly  in  1898.     See  post,  pp.  435,  436. 

2  "lam  sorry  I  did  so,"  said  Waldeck-Rousseau  to  £mile  Zola  in  later 
years,  "  but  at  that  time  Faure's  opinions  seemed  to  coincide  with  my  own 
on  many  questions,  whereas  Brisson's  were  very  different.  Besides,  who 
would  have  imagined  that  a  clever  man  like  Faure,  who  had  made  his  way 
in  the  world  by  sheer  personal  ability,  would  have  placed  the  Republic  in  so 
much  danger  as  he  has  ?  " 


416  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

thoroughly  good  workman,  he  was  fortunate  enough  to  marry 
his  master's  daughter,  Mile.  Rose  Adelaide.  On  M.  Cuissard 
subsequently  retiring,  Faure  succeeded  him  in  the  business, 
which  he  removed  to  71,  now  65,  Faubourg  St.  Denis.  It  was 
there  that  his  son  Francois  Felix  was  born  on  January  30, 1841. 
Mme.  Faure,  the  mother,  had  an  uncle  named  Rousselle,  who 
had  amassed  a  considerable  fortune  in  the  wine  trade,  and  M. 
Rousselle  and  his  wife  {nie  Scarron  —  an  uncommon  name, 
suggestive  of  the  first  husband  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon)  became 
god-parents  to  their  grand-nephew,  the  future  President  of  the 
Republic.  In  1851  Mme.  Faure  died,  and  eight  years  later  her 
husband  married  a  Creole  of  Cuba,  by  whom  he  had  a  son,  who 
entering  the  French  navy  became  a  sub-lieutenant,  and  died  at 
Tunis  from  the  effects  of  sunstroke. 

Francois  Felix  Faure  was  first  educated  at  one  of  the  schools 
of  the  Christian  Brothers  in  Paris,  later  at  the  College  de 
Beauvais  (his  mother's  native  place),  and  next  at  a  Commercial 
School  kept  by  a  M.  Pompee — a  so-called  innovator  in  educa- 
tional matters — at  Ivry,  near  Paris.  The  building,  which  still 
exists,  had  been  one  of  the  petites  maisons  of  Louis  XV.,  and  in 
one  of  the  dormitories  occupied  by  young  Faure  and  his  school- 
fellows there  may  still  be  seen  the  remains  of  some  once  fine 
mural  paintings,  representing  the  triumph  of  Amphitrite, 
Actaeon  contemplating  the  charms  of  the  bathing  Diana,  and 
Antiope  pursued  by  Jupiter.  The  figures  are  as  unattired  as 
were  our  first  parents,  and  it  is  certain  that  M.  Pompee,  in 
turning  the  apartment  into  a  dormitory  for  his  pupils,  fully 
established  his  claim  to  be  regarded  as  an  "  educational  inno- 
vator." Faure  remained  at  Ivry  for  three  years  (1854-57),  and 
was  afterwards  sent  to  England  to  learn  the  language.  He 
became  a  pupil  au  pair  at  a  school  kept  by  a  M.  de  Chastelain 
at  the  old  semi-Elizabethan  Church-house  at  Merton,  Surrey,1 
the  arrangement  being  that  the  youth  should  receive  board  and 
lodging  and  learn  English  in  return  for  his  assistance  with  the 
French  classes.  He  returned  to  France  in  1859  at  the  death  of 
his  grand-uncle,  M.  Rousselle,  who  left  him  a  considerable  sum 
of  money,  which  was  applied  to  the  building  of  a  house,  let  out 
in  flats,  in  the  Rue  du  Chateau  d'Eau,  Paris.  About  this  time, 
on  his  father's  second  marriage  taking  place,  he  was  "  emanci- 
pated'" by  the  family  council  so  that  he  might  be  able  to 
1  Sheridan  at  one  time  resided  there. 


PRESIDENT  F^LIX  FAURE  417 

manage  his  own  affairs.  The  richest  folk  at  St.  Symphorien, 
his  father's  native  place,  had  been  tanners,  a  circumstance  which 
had  impressed  M.  Faure  senior,  who,  believing  apparently  that 
there  was  nothing  like  leather,  urged  his  son  to  embark  in  that 
trade.  Young  Felix  therefore  entered  the  employment  of  a 
M.  Origet,  a  Parisian  commission-agent  of  the  leather  trade,  and 
after  a  short  time  was  inspired  with  the  idea  of  learning  tanning 
and  everything  else  which  might  be  useful  to  him  in  his  calling. 
It  was  thus  that  he  entered  the  service  of  M.  Dumee-Mesteil 
at  Amboise,  where  he  remained  for  eighteen  months,  working 
as  hard  as  any  ordinary  journeyman,  and  learning  the  whole 
process  of  tanning  and  preparing  leather. 

For  three  generations  members  of  the  Guinot  family  had 
been  Mayors  of  Amboise.  In  March  1841  Mile.  Guinot, 
daughter  of  the  Mayor  of  that  time,  married  a  M.  Belluot,  an 
avouS  or  solicitor,  who  was  supposed  to  be  a  man  of  good 
position  and  integrity.  Four  months  subsequent  to  the 
marriage,  however,  after  dissipating  his  wife's  dowry  and  em- 
bezzling the  money  of  his  clients,  he  fled  from  the  town.  Mme. 
Belluot  was  then  encemte,  and  in  February  1842  gave  birth  to  a 
daughter,  who  was  christened  Lucie.  She  had  returned  to  her 
father's  home,  and  it  was  there  that  her  child  was  first  reared. 
Mile.  Belluot  never  knew  her  father,  who  had  fled  from  France 
and  was  not  seen  there  again.  When  her  maternal  grandfather 
died,  she  resided,  like  her  mother,  with  the  latter's  brother,  who 
in  his  turn  became  Mayor  of  Amboise,  and  later  a  Senator  for 
the  department.  While  young  Felix  Faure  was  at  Amboise 
he  fell  in  love  with  Mile.  Belluot,  but  having  as  yet  no  position, 
and  being  only  one-and-twenty,  he  did  not  venture  to  urge  his 
suit.  He  betook  himself  to  Havre,  where  he  entered  the  house 
of  a  leather  broker,  subsequently  acquiring  an  importing  and 
commission  business  in  conjunction  with  a  partner,  a  Dutchman 
named  Van  Harten.  At  that  time  he  returned  to  Amboise  and 
asked  for  Mile.  Belluot's  hand.  Her  relatives  then  told  him  the 
whole  story  of  her  father's  misconduct  and  disappearance,  and 
some  young  men  might  have  been  deterred  from  the  match  by 
such  information,  but  Faure  did  not  waver,  and  the  young  couple 
were  speedily  married.  When  Faure  had  become  President  of 
the  Republic,  the  story  of  that  marriage  was  maliciously  raked  up, 
garbled,  travestied,  and  flung  at  him  by  political  adversaries  as 
if  he  had  acted  otherwise  than  honourably,  and  as  if  his  wife  could 

2e 


418  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

be  in  any  degree  responsible  for  the  actions  of  a  parent  whom 
she  had  never  even  seen.  The  conduct  of  those  who  flung  mud 
at  the  President  on  account  of  his  father-in-law's  lapses  was 
extremely  cowardly.  There  is  always,  it  unfortunately  seems,  a 
small  category  of  Frenchmen  ready  to  avail  themselves  of  any 
weapons  against  those  from  whom  they  differ  politically. 

Felix  Faure  steadily  prospered  in  business  as  an  importer 
and  commission  agent.1  He  dealt  with  virtually  every  kind  of 
goods  landed  from  abroad  at  Havre,  but  his  specialities  were 
leather  in  the  rough  and  hides — principally  from  the  Argentine, 
then  known  as  the  La  Plata  Confederation.  At  the  time  when 
he  relinquished  business  he  was  said  to  be  worth  about  i?60,000. 
His  father  also  had  prospered,  particularly  in  a  furniture  and 
upholstery  business  which  he  installed  in  the  Rue  Auber  in 
Paris.  When  Mme.  Rousselle,  the  widow  of  his  first  wife's 
uncle,  died,  she  left  another  small  fortune  to  him  and  his  son 
Felix,  in  such  wise  that  on  the  latter  becoming  President  of  the 
Republic  he  was  at  the  head  of  some  <£80,000.2 

He  was  already  a  Municipal  Councillor  and  Deputy  Mayor 
of  Havre  at  the  time  of  the  Franco-German  War.  He  helped 
to  put  the  town  in  a  state  of  defence,  and  to  organise  the  local 
Mobile  Guard,  in  which  he  rose  to  the  rank  of  Chef-de-Bataillon, 
taking  part,  too,  in  some  minor  engagements  towards  the  close 
of  the  war,  in  such  wise  that  he  secured  the  cross  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour.  At  the  first  news  of  the  conflagrations  in  Paris  at 
the  fall  of  the  Commune,  he  assembled  a  hundred  volunteer 
firemen  and  started  with  them  for  the  capital.  When  MacMahon 
succeeded  Thiers,  Faure  was  revoked  by  the  Duke  de  Broglie 
from  his  position  as  Deputy-Mayor  of  Havre  on  account  of  his 
Republicanism.  In  August  1881,  however,  he  became  deputy 
for  the  Havre  division.  His  first  position  in  the  executive  of 
the  country  was  that  of  Under-Secretary  of  State  for  Commerce 
and  the  Colonies  in  Gambetta's  "  Great  Ministry."  He  held  the 
same  post  under  Jules  Ferry  (1883-5)  and  under  Tirard  (1888), 
and  being  thoroughly  well  informed  respecting  commercial  and 

1  On  the  retirement  of  his  partner,  Van  Harten,  he  took  another, 
M.  Bonvoisin,  who  withdrew  in  1886.  The  firm  then  became  known  as 
F.  Faure  and  Co.  Two  gentlemen  named  Bergerault  and  Cremer  acquired 
an  interest  in  it,  and  it  passed  into  their  hands  when  Faure  himself  retired. 

2  Like  most  of  the  Presidents  he  distributed  about  £2000  in  charity, 
etc.,  at  the  time  of  his  election.  He  gave  a  500  franc  note  (£20)  to  the 
usher  of  the  Chamber  who  first  informed  him  of  his  success. 


PRESIDENT  F^LIX  FAURE  419 

industrial  matters,  shipping,  the  colonies  and  their  resources, 
he  often  reported  on  the  budget  of  the  Ministry  of  Commerce. 
At  last,  in  1893,  he  became  a  Vice-President  of  the  Chamber, 
and  in  the  following  year  Minister  of  Marine  under  Dupuy. 
He  was  without  doubt  a  most  active  worker,  always  rising  at 
six  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  never  going  to  bed  before  mid- 
night. Slim  and  lanky  in  his  youth,  he  became  a  tall,  powerful, 
vigorous  man,  and,  unfortunately,  he  was  unduly  vain  of  his 
stature,  good  figure,  and  strength.  Extremely  fond  of  horses, 
he  was  a  first-rate  rider;  and  also  a  capital  shot.  He  had 
inherited  the  fair,  fresh  complexion  of  his  mother,  who  belonged 
to  Northern  France,  but  at  the  time  he  became  President  his 
hair  was  virtually  white. 

He  was  not  an  untra veiled  man.  He  had  toured  in  Algeria, 
Tunis,  Corsica,  Italy,  Greece,  Egypt,  and  Asia  Minor,  and  on 
one  occasion  had  proceeded  as  far  as  Teheran.  The  books  he 
collected  were  more  particularly  volumes  of  travel,  accounts  of 
foreign  countries  and  the  French  colonies,  and  on  his  accession 
to  the  Presidency  three  or  four  thousand  works  of  that  descrip- 
tion were  removed  to  the  Elysee  from  his  private  residence  in 
the  Rue  de  Madrid.  He  also  collected  Indian  and  Indo-Chinese 
curios,  his  official  position  with  respect  to  the  colonies  having 
enabled  him  to  acquire  some  very  fine  bronze,  lacquer,  and 
carved  woodwork  through  the  French  agents  in  Annam,  Cam- 
bodia, and  adjoining  States.  In  his  Mediterranean  tours  he 
was  accompanied  by  his  eldest  daughter,  Mile.  Lucie  Faure,  a 
prepossessing  and  lively  lady  with  a  keen  wit.  She  wrote  some 
little  books  on  her  impressions  of  Northern  Africa  and  Florence, 
and  was  as  ready  to  discourse  on  the  "  Summa  Theologiae "  of 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas  and  the  "  Confessions  "  of  St.  Augustine  as 
on  Coquelin's  interpretation  of  his  latest  role  at  the  Francais, 
the  last  horse  show,  or  the  most  recent  work  of  the  painters 
of  the  new  symbolist  school.  Added  to  that,  she  was  a  warm 
admirer  of  the  writings  of  Mme.  de  Martel,  otherwise  Gyp,  who 
was  an  intimate  family  friend ;  and  she  patronised  a  League  of 
the  Children  of  France,  rich  and  poor,  for  the  promotion  of 
mutual  help  and  brotherliness.1 

1  She  is  now  Mme.  Felix-Faure-Goyau.  Her  husband  is  well  known  as  a 
scholarly  writer,  and  she  herself  has  produced  of  recent  years  some  interest- 
ing works  on  Cardinal  Newman,  the  women  in  Dante's  poems,  etc.  Her 
younger  sister  married  M.  Rene  Berge,  a  Government  mining  engineer,  by 
whom  she  had  a  son,  M.  Jacques  Berge-Faure. 


420  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

We  have  said  that  the  new  President  was  vain  of  his  personal 
appearance.  He  also  grew  very  vain  of  his  position,  and 
extremely  fond  of  display,  in  such  wise  that  the  Elysee  became 
even  more  of  a  court  than  it  had  been  in  MacMahon's  time. 
It  was  a  court,  however,  marked  by  sundry  incongruities.  Faure 
was  an  incessant  smoker,  fonder  too  of  his  pipe  than  of  a  cigar, 
and  before  long  the  pipe  became  very  much  en  Evidence  at  the 
palace.  Further,  the  President  never  allowed  you  to  forget 
that  he  was  a  horsey  man.  The  number  of  photographs  which 
depicted  him  wearing  riding  boots  and  spurs  in  one  or  another 
of  the  Elysee  salons  was  legion.  At  other  times,  however,  he 
assumed  all  the  superbia  of  a  monarch,  and  sighed  because  there 
was  no  regulation  specifying  some  splendid  uniform  for  the 
Presidential  office.  At  all  events  he  kept  the  director,  the 
sub-director  and  the  six  attache's  of  the  Protocol  Department 
of  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs  extremely  busy  in  regulating 
the  ceremonial  of  the  Republican  Court.  Casimir-Perier  had 
engaged  an  outrider  or  piqueur,  named  Montj  arret,  during  his 
brief  presidency,  and  Faure,  taking  Montjarret  into  his  own 
employment,  clad  him  magnificently  in  a  costume  reminiscent 
of  the  eighteenth  century  uniform  of  the  Imperial  Hunt  of  the 
Second  Empire.  Cler,  his  head  maitre  (Thotel,  was  also  a  very 
imposing  personage. 

The  officers  of  the  Civil  Household  were  not  more  numerous 
than  in  the  past.  There  was  M.  Le  Gall,  an  inspector  of  naval 
works,  who  became  Director  of  the  Presidential  Cabinet,  and 
M.  Blondel,  who  was  appointed  Chief  Private  Secretary  after 
serving  the  President  in  a  similar  capacity  prior  to  his  election. 
The  Military  Household,  however,  was  on  a  larger  scale  than 
it  had  been  even  in  MacMahon's  time.  First  came  General 
Tournier,  Chief  of  the  Military  Household  and  Secretary 
General ' ;  then,  as  aides-de-camp  and  orderly  officers,  there 
were  Colonel  Chamoin  (infantry),  Major  Bourgeois  (artillery), 
Major  Moreau  (engineers),  Major  Marette  de  la  Garenne 
(cavalry),  Major  Lombard  (marine  infantry),  and  Captain 
Germinet  (navy).  To  these  were  soon  adjoined  Captain  de  la 
Motte  as  an  extra  secretary,  and  Colonel  Menetrez  as  quarter- 
master, in  which  capacity  he  attended  to  the  President's 
requirements  during  his  frequent  journeys  into  the  provinces. 
Major  Marette  de  la  Garenne,  whom  we  previously  mentioned, 
1  He  was  succeeded  in  those  posts  by  General  Hagron. 


FAURE  AND  POPULARITY  421 

acted  as  principal  equerry  and  captain  of  the  shooting  grounds. 
Faure  might  have  sung  like  Hortense  Schneider  in  the  Grande 
Duehesse  de  GSrolstein :  "  J'aime  les  militaires  ! "  His  predilec- 
tions in  that  respect  were  obvious.  He  even  believed  himself 
to  be  a  military  genius,  though  his  experience  as  a  soldier  had 
been  very  brief.  Given  his  tastes,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
army  attained  under  his  Presidency  an  ascendancy  which  it 
should  never  be  allowed  to  acquire  in  any  Republican  State 
or  even  any  Constitutional  Monarchy. 

In  Faure's  time  some  eight  official  dinners,  each  of  over  a 
hundred  covers,  were  given  at  the  Elysee  every  year,  as  well  as  a 
variety  of  smaller  dinner-parties,  as  when  sovereigns  or  princes 
visited  Paris.1  These  were  followed  by  concerts,  for  which 
perhaps  five  hundred  invitations  were  issued.  There  were  also 
two  great  balls,  which  some  seven  thousand  people  attended, 
and  garden-parties  were  occasionally  given  in  the  summer. 
Every  Monday  and  Thursday  there  was  an  open  reception — 
open,  that  is,  to  all  high  officials.  Wednesday  was  the 
presidential  day  of  rest. 

Like  Casimir-Perier,  Faure  found  the  limitations  of  his 
authority  very  irksome,  and  by  dint  of  asserting  himself,  he 
secured  a  greater  share  of  power  and  liberty  than  his  predecessor. 
He  also  evinced  great  susceptibility  with  respect  to  his  popularity, 
and  one  day  when  M.  Jean  Dupuy,  director  of  Le  Petit  Parisien, 
called  on  him,  he  remarked :  "I  look  at  your  paper  now  and 
then,  and  I  notice  that  you  very  seldom  speak  of  the  President. 
You  ought  to  speak  of  him  more  frequently,  as  often  as  you 
can,  so  as  to  make  him  popular,  and  give  him  sufficient  authority 
to  mediate  between  contending  parties.'"  On  another  occasion, 
when  a  young  officer  of  the  Elysee  guard  was  invited  to  lunch, 
Faure — according  to  the  anecdotiers,  for  whose  veracity  we  do  not 
vouch — suddenly  said  to  him  :  "  Now,  lieutenant,  am  I  popular 
or  not  ? *  The  lieutenant  thought  a  moment,  then  replied : 
"  No,  Monsieur  le  President."  "  No  ?  Why  not  ?  Tell  me." 
"  Well,  it  is  like  this,  Monsieur  le  President.  My  father,  who 
lived  to  a  great  age  under  a  succession  of  rulers,  used  to  say  that 
he  could  always  tell  if  they  were  popular  because  in  that  case 

1  During  his  long  residence  at  Havre  Faure  had  become  partial  to  cider, 
and  often  drank  it  at  dinner  at  the  Elysee,  even  on  official  occasions.  He 
did  not  imitate  MacMahon  in  preferring  green  Chartreuse  as  a  liqueur,  his 
favourite  one  was  white  Curacao. 


422  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

their  effigies  in  gingerbread  were  invariably  found  on  sale,  at  a 
penny  a  time,  at  the  Gingerbread  Fair.1  But  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
Monsieur  le  President,  that  I  saw  no  gingerbread  effigy  of  you 
at  the  fair  this  year.'1  "  Ah,"  remarked  the  President,  "  I 
never  thought  of  that.     I  must  have  it  seen  to  next  Easter." 

There  came  a  moment  when  Faure  was  certainly  most 
popular  among  all  classes  of  Parisians.  That  was  the  time  of 
the  visit  of  the  Czar  and  Czarina.  He  was  also  at  times  received 
remarkably  well  in  the  provinces,  which  he  often  visited,  following 
in  that  respect  the  example  of  Carnot.  But  his  popularity 
fluctuated.  As  he  was  a  firm  upholder  of  the  army,  it  rose 
among  the  Nationalists,  and  declined  to  zero  among  the  Radical 
Republicans  during  the  Dreyfus  agitation.  It  is  certain  that 
Faure's  personal  leanings  were  towards  the  Army,  the  aristocracy, 
the  Church,  and  the  Nationalists  generally.  He  had  been  one 
of  the  founders  of  the  League  of  Patriots,  over  which  Deroulede 
presided ;  and  though  at  the  time  of  the  Boulangist  movement 
he  had  carefully  refrained  from  any  open  participation  in  it,  he 
seems  to  have  regarded  it  with  some  sympathy.  In  that  respect 
it  may  be  mentioned  that,  having  done  much  to  improve  the 
shooting  grounds  at  Rambouillet,  he  prepared  a  beautifully 
printed  book  on  the  subject,  in  which  he  took  occasion  to  refer 
to  "  the  great  and  sympathetic  figure  of  the  Duchess  d'Uzes," 
who  was  so  often  seen  in  the  forest  with  the  Bonnelles  Hunt,  of 
which  she  was  "  Master."  That  reference  was  perhaps  intended 
by  Faure  as  some  compensation  for  his  failure  to  decorate  the 
Duchess  with  the  Legion  of  Honour.  She  had  presented  a 
monument  to  the  memory  of  Emile  Augier  to  the  townVof 
Valence,  his  native  place — a  monument  which  was  her  design 
if  not  actual  work — and  Faure,  who  had  promised  to  inaugurate 
it  on  one  of  his  journeys  to  the  South,  proposed  to  decorate  the 
Duchess  on  that  occasion.  But,  quite  apart  from  the  question 
whether  the  work  was  such  as  to  entitle  her  to  that  distinction, 
there  was  the  fact  that  this  lady  had  financed  the  Boulangist 
movement  for  the  purpose  of  overthrowing  the  Republic.  How 
then  could  a  President  of  the  Republic  confer  on  her  the  Legion 
of  Honour  ?  Faure  was  obstinate,  and  persisted  in  his  design, 
but  M.  Loubet,  then  President  of  the  Senate,  put  his  foot  down 
and  told  him  plainly  that  although  he  and  all  the  other  repre- 

1  A  very  old  Parisian  institution  held  at  Eastertide  on  and  near  the  Place 
de  la  Nation. 

3 


THE  M^LINE  MINISTRY  423 

sentatives  of  the  Drome  (of  which  Valence  is  the  chief  town) 
were  quite  prepared  to  honour  the  memory  of  the  great  dramatic 
author,  their  compatriot,  they  would,  one  and  all — senators, 
deputies,  and  general  councillors — abstain  from  attending  the 
ceremony  if  the  intention  of  decorating  the  Duchess  d^zes 
were  not  abandoned.     Thereupon  the  President  gave  in. 

His  first  Ministry  was  formed  by  M.  Ribot,1  and  lasted 
about  nine  months.  The  political  situation  then  compelled  an 
evolution  to  the  left,  and  M.  Bourgeois  formed  an  Administra- 
tion which  lasted  less  than  five  months.2  It  was  a  Radical 
Ministry,  it  carried  out  various  economic  reforms,  passed  a  law 
regulating  the  liberty  of  association  among  the  working-classes, 
and  advocated  a  progressive  income  tax,  the  principle  of  which 
the  Chamber  had  already  endorsed  in  Ribofs  time.  But  a 
conflict  respecting  financial  privileges  again  arose  between  the 
Chamber  and  the  Senate,  with  an  agitation  for  Constitutional 
revision  and  the  curtailment  of  the  Senate's  powers.  Faure 
secretly  favoured  the  Senate,  and  the  latter  refused  to  vote  the 
credits  for  the  expedition  which  was  to  end  in  the  conquest  of 
Madagascar.  To  avoid  further  legislative  conflict  the  Bourgeois 
Cabinet  then  retired  (April  23,  1896). 

Next  came  the  Meline  Ministry,  which  remained  in  office  for 
two  years,  that  is  for  a  longer  period  than  any  other  since  the 
foundation  of  the  Republic.  The  Premier,  M.  Felix  Jules 
Meline,  was  born  at  Remiremont  in  the  Vosges  in  1830,  and 
after  belonging  to  the  bar  was  elected  in  1872  a  deputy  for  his 
native  district.  Before  very  long  he  became  the  foremost 
champion  of  Protectionism  in  France.  He  served  as  Minister 
of  Agriculture  under  Ferry  from  1883  to  1885,  was  chosen 
President  of  the  Chamber  in  1888,  and  proved  the  real  leader  of 
the  majority  which  voted  the  Protectionist  Tariffs  in  1892. 
The  Ministry  which  M.  Meline  formed  in  April  1896 3  passed 

1  Ribot,  Premier  and  Finances ;  Leygues,  Interior  ;  Trarieux,  Justice ; 
Hanotaux,  Foreign  Affairs  ;  Zurlinden,  War  ;  Combes,  Marine  ;  Poincare, 
Education ;  Andre  Lebon,  Commerce ;  Chautemps,  Colonies ;  Dupuy- 
Dutemps,  Public  Works  ;  and  Gudaud,  Agriculture. 

2  M.  Bourgeois  was  Minister  of  the  Interior  ;  Berthelot  took  Foreign 
Affairs  ;  Cavaignac,  War  ;  and  Combes,  Education. 

3  He  took  the  Ministry  of  Agriculture  and  his  colleagues  were  Hanotaux, 
Foreign  Affairs  (this  was  the  period  of  French  pinpricks  and  British  graceful 
concessions) ;  Barthou,  Interior  ;  Cochery,  Finances  ;  General  Billot,  War ; 
Admiral  Besnard,  Marine  ;  Rambaud,  Education  ;  Andre  Lebon,  Colonies  ; 
Turrel,  Public  Works  ;  Boucher,  Commerce ;  and  Darlan,  Justice.     After 


424  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

some  useful  laws  on  financial  assistance  to  agriculturists  and 
compensation  to  workmen  injured  by  accidents,  and  took  no  par- 
liamentary steps  either  against  Radical  or  Socialist  tendencies 
or  in  favour  of  the  Clerical  party.  Bat  it  undoubtedly  befriended 
the  latter  in  various  ways,  and  courted  its  support.  Increasing 
influence  was  wielded  by  those  who,  as  Pope  Leo  XIII.  put  it, 
accepted  the  Constitution  in  order  that  they  might  modify 
legislation — that  is,  upset  the  educational  and  military  laws 
on  all  points  contrary  to  the  claims  of  the  clergy.  Broadly 
speaking,  the  Rallies,  as  these  mock  adherents  to  the  Republic 
were  called,  were  most  powerful  in  western  and  south-western 
France,  the  real  Republicans,  who  placed  the  claims  of  the 
State  far  above  those  of  the  Church,  predominating  in  the  east 
and  south-east,  as  well  as  in  every  industrial  centre  of  the 
country,  irrespective  of  geographical  position. 

The  first  important  event  which  occurred  under  the  Meline 
Ministry  was  the  visit  of  the  Emperor  Nicholas  of  Russia  and 
his  consort  to  Paris  in  October  1896.  They  landed  at 
Cherbourg,  where  they  were  received  by  Faure,  Loubet,  Brisson, 
Meline,  and  Hanotaux,  who  escorted  them  to  Paris,  where  they 
installed  themselves  at  the  Russian  Embassy.  One  of  the  chief 
functions  of  the  visit  was  the  laying  of  the  first  stone  of  a 
bridge  over  the  Seine,  on  which  was  bestowed  the  name  of  the 
Czar's  father,  Alexander  III.,  under  whom  the  rapprochement 
between  Russia  and  France  had  been  first  negotiated.  Apart 
from  the  many  visits  paid  by  the  Emperor  and  Empress  to  the 
monuments  and  edifices  of  Paris,  there  were  some  great  banquets, 
a  gala  performance  at  the  opera,  a  splendid  fete  at  Versailles, 
and  a  review  at  the  Camp  of  Chalons.  General  de  Boisdeffre, 
previously  military  attache  in  Russia,  and  later,  Chief  of  the 
Staff  of  the  French  Army,  was  at  this  time  specially  attached 
to  the  Czar's  person.  Four  Academicians,  Heredia,  Coppee, 
Claretie,  and  Sully  Prudhomme,  composed  odes  in  honour  of  the 
Russian  monarch,  the  lines  written  by  the  last-named  being 
recited   by   Sarah   Bernhardt  in   her   "golden    voice"   at   the 

M.  Maine's  resignation  he  remained  the  leader  of  the  old  "  Left  Centre  " 
and  other  Conservative  Republican  groups  banded  together  under  the  mis- 
leading name  of  **  Progressives."  He  became  a  Senator  for  the  Vosges  in 
1903,  since  when  he  has  never  ceased  to  advocate  increased  duties  on  foreign 
corn.  He  protested  against  the  separation  of  Church  and  State  in  December 
1906.  In  the  previous  year  he  published  a  very  remarkable  work  on  the 
return  to  the  land  and  overproduction  in  industry. 


*** 


Felix  Fau 


•••  •       •      . 


»      »    • 


•  •  •    .  ■     i  .  i  „ 


FAURE  IN  RUSSIA  425 

Versailles  fete,  where,  according  to  some  accounts,  she  felt  that 
sufficient  notice  was  not  taken  of  her  by  the  Imperial  guests. 
At  all  events,  the  Emperor  was  particularly  gracious  with 
Mme.  Felix  Faure,  and  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the 
Republic  the  President's  wife  took  official  rank,  as  it  were,  at 
State  functions,  appearing  almost  invariably  on  the  Emperor's 
arm,  the  Czarina  taking  that  of  the  President.  The  speeches 
exchanged  by  Faure  and  the  Emperor  left  no  doubt  of  the 
entente  between  France  and  Russia,  though,  while  the  word 
"  friendship  "  was  used  repeatedly,  the  word  "  alliance  "  remained 
unspoken. 

It  was  a  proud  moment  in  Faure's  life,  but  it  helped  to  spoil 
him.  From  that  time  onward  he  became  more  intent  than  ever 
on  assuming  "  the  dignity  of  a  dynastic  Prince,"  It  was,  of 
course,  by  no  means  his  first  interview  with  royalty;  he  had 
previously  met  the  Dowager-Empress  of  Russia  (sister  of  Queen 
Alexandra),  the  ailing  Czarewitch  (the  Grand  Duke  George), 
and  the  Emperor  Francis-Joseph  of  Austria.3  Russia,  too,  had 
conferred  on  him  the  Order  of  St.  Andrew  and  Austria  that  of 
St.  Stephen.  In  August  1897  he  went  to  Russia  by  way  of 
returning  the  Imperial  visit,  and  at  a  banquet  on  board  the 
Pothuau  in  the  waters  of  Cronstadt,  the  alliance  of  the  two 
countries  was  finally  proclaimed  to  the  whole  world.  According 
to  Faure's  own  account,  it  was  he  who  in  that  respect  virtually 
forced  the  Emperor  Nicholas's  hand,  by  inserting  in  the  draft  of 
the  toast  he  intended  to  propose,  the  words  "  our  friendly  and 
allied  nations."  M.  Hanotaux,  it  is  said,  demurred  slightly  to 
the  employment  of  the  expression  allied,  or  rather  felt  that  it 
ought  to  be  suggested  in  the  first  instance  by  the  Russian 
monarch.  But  Faure  clung  to  his  idea,  urging  that  with  a  man 
of  the  Emperor's  character  it  was  necessary  to  take  the  initiative 
and  that,  if  this  were  done  boldly,  assent  would  assuredly  follow. 
It  did ;  and  in  the  Emperor's  reply  to  Faure's  toast  the  words, 
"  friendly  and  allied  nations  "  were  repeated. 

A  few  months  previously  Paris  had  been  shocked  by  a 
terrible  catastrophe.  In  1885  a  number  of  ladies,  mostly  of  the 
aristocracy,  had  established  a  society  for  the  periodical  holding 
of  charity  sales.  The  organisation  was  known  as  the  Bazar  de 
la  Charite,  and  until  1897  its  sales  were  held  in  one  or  another 

1  At  Mentone.      About  the  same  time  he  called  on  Gladstone  at  Cannes 
and  had  a  long  conversation  with  him. 


426  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

private  mansion.  That  year,  however,  Mme.  Heine  lent  a  site 
in  the  Rue  Jean  Gou^on,  near  the  Champs  Elysees,  and  a  plank 
building  was  run  up,  largely  with  the  help  of  a  wood  and  canvas 
representation  of  a  street  of  old  Paris,  which  had  figured  at  a 
theatrical  exhibition  in  1896.  A  number  of  picturesque  stalls 
were  arranged  in  this  street,  and  as  an  additional  attraction  a 
cinematograph  was  installed  in  a  building  constructed  of  old 
deal.  On  the  afternoon  of  May  4,  when  about  1500  people, 
visitors  and  stall-holders,  were  in  the  bazaar,  a  fire  suddenly 
broke  out  owing  to  the  ignition  of  the  ether  in  the  lamp  of  the 
cinematograph,  and  in  ten  minutes  the  whole  place — constructed, 
as  we  have  said,  of  painted  wood  and  canvas — was  in  flames. 
There  was,  we  think,  only  one  exit,  towards  which  rushed  the 
whole  terrified  throng.  It  was  composed  of  members  of  the 
aristocracy  and  the  upper  bourgeoisie,  and,  painful  to  relate, 
while  a  few  men  did  their  best  to  save  the  women,  a  great 
many,  bent  solely  on  self-preservation,  behaved  with  the  greatest 
cowardice.1  The  result  of  the  fire  and  the  panic  was  terrible.  No 
fewer  than  a  hundred  and  seventeen  charred  corpses  were  found 
among  the  remnants  of  the  building,  and  several  of  the  injured 
died  soon  afterwards.  Nearly  all  of  those  who  perished  were 
women.  Among  them  were  the  Duchess  d'Alencon,  youngest 
sister  of  the  Empress  Elizabeth  of  Austria,2  the  Baronesses  de 
St.  Didier  and  Vatismenil,  the  Viscountesses  de  Malezieux  and  de 
Beauchamp,  the  wives  of  Generals  Warnet  and  Chevals,  and 
many  other  well-known  charitable  ladies.  General  Munier  was 
among  the  men  who  perished. 

A  feeling  of  horror  ran  through  Paris  when  the  disaster 
became  known.  The  theatres  were  closed,  virtually  the  whole 
city  went  into  mourning,  and  it  was  arranged  that  there  should 
be  a  solemn  requiem  service  at  Notre  Dame.     On  the  morning 

1  They  showed  nothing  like  the  gallantry  displayed  at  the  great  fire  at  the 
Austrian  Embassy  in  Paris  in  honour  of  the  first  Napoleon's  marriage  with 
Marie  Louise.  Both  the  Princesses  von  Schwartzenberg  and  von  Leyen  were 
burnt  to  death,  however,  on  that  occasion,  and  the  wives  of  Murat  and  Jerome 
Bonaparte  would  have  shared  the  same  fate  had  the  former  not  been  succoured 
by  the  Grand  Duke  of  Wurzburg  and  the  latter  by  Prince  Metternich. 

2  They  were  both  daughters  of  Duke  Maximilian  of  Bavaria.  The 
Duchess  Sophia,  born  in  1847,  was  first  betrothed  to  Ludwig  II.,  the  **  mad 
King"  and  patron  of  Wagner,  but  he  broke  off  the  match,  and  in  1868  she 
married  the  Duke  d'Alencon,  second  son  of  the  Duke  de  Nemours  and  a 
grandson  of  King  Louis  Philippe.  They  had  three  children,  the  Duke  de 
Vendome  and  the  Princesses  Louise  and  Blanche.     See  ante,  pp.  91,  92. 


THE  CHARITY  BAZAAR  DISASTER  427 

appointed  for  it  Paris  heard  that  the  Duke  d'Aumale,  who, 
being  in  feeble  health,  was  spending  the  spring  on  his  estate  in 
Sicily,  had  died  the  previous  day.  The  news  of  the  awful  death 
of  his  niece,  the  Duchess  d'Alencon,  had  dealt  him  a  mortal 
blow.  Faure,  the  Presidents  of  the  Senate  and  the  Chamber, 
the  Ministers,  and  the  Diplomatic  Body  attended  the  service  at 
Notre  Dame,  together  with  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  Sir 
George  Faudel-Phillips.  Unfortunately,  the  preaching  of  the 
sermon  on  this  occasion  was  entrusted  by  the  Archbishop  to  a 
certain  Father  Ollivier,  a  fanatical  monk,  who  seemed  to  have 
stepped  out  of  the  Middle  Ages.  He  availed  himself  of  his 
position  to  proclaim  the  paramount  claims  of  the  Church  and 
attack  the  State,  and  worst  of  all  he  compared  the  terrible 
catastrophe  of  the  bazaar  to  the  kindling  of  the  Divine  wrath 
against  those  who  did  not  accept  the  Church's  teaching.  As  it 
happened  many  of  those  who  had  perished  were  among  the 
most  pious  women  of  France. 

A  few  weeks  later,  when  the  Chamber  assembled,  M.  Brisson 
inaugurated  its  session  with  a  speech  in  which  he  expressed  the 
assembly's  sympathy  with  the  relatives  of  the  victims.  Then, 
referring  to  Father  Ollivier's  sermon,  he  denounced  it  as  the 
intolerant  and  bloodthirsty  doctrine  of  a  theocracy  which  was 
repugnant  to  the  generous  feelings  of  Frenchmen.  This  speech 
was  warmly  applauded,  and  the  Chamber  resolved  that  it  should 
be  placarded  throughout  France.  On  several  ultra- Catholic 
mayors  refusing  to  allow  it  to  be  posted  in  their  communes 
they  were  suspended  by  the  Prefects,  and  the  central  Govern- 
ment, being  forced  to  intervene  in  spite  of  its  clerical  leanings 
(as  a  matter  of  fact  many  good  Catholics  had  been  disgusted  by 
Father  Ollivier's  language),  ultimately  revoked  them. 

All  this,  as  we  have  said,  occurred  prior  to  Faure's  journey 
to  Russia.  Soon  after  his  return  there  arose  a  terrible  storm, 
which  for  some  years  plunged  political  life  into  confusion. 
This  was  the  Dreyfus  affair,  which  we  do  not  propose  to  recount 
in  any  detail  in  this  work.1     Suffice  it  to   say  that  Captain 

1  The  fullest  and  most  trustworthy  account  is  that  given  by  M.  Joseph 
Reinach  in  his  masterly  Histoire  de  V Affaire  Dreyfus  (5  volumes),  a  work 
which  is  additionally  valuable  by  reason  of  the  many  fine  portraits  of  the 
French  public  men  which  the  author  has  traced  in  it.  The  reader  who 
desires  a  brief  account  of  the  affair  may  consult  the  article  on  it  (30  pages) 
in  the  Jewish  Encyclopedia,  though  this  is  not  quite  complete,  as  it  only 
extends  to  the  «■  pardon  "  of  Dreyfus  by  President  Loubet.     The  article  in  the 


428  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Dreyfus's  brother  Alfred,  who  steadfastly  upheld  his  innocence, 
had  now  become  convinced  that  Major  Esterhazy  was  the  man 
who  had  sold  the  German  attache  the  papers  specified  in  the 
list  or  bordereau,  which  had  been  abstracted  from  that  attaches 
rooms.  Several  men  helped  to  expose  Esterhazy  and  prove  the 
innocence  of  Captain  Dreyfus,  among  them  being  notably  M. 
Scheurer-Kestner,  a  Vice-President  of  the  Senate,  and  Colonel 
Picquart  of  the  Intelligence  Office  of  the  Ministry  of  War. 
But  on  the  other  hand  Billot,  the  War  Minister,  Boisdeffre,  the 
Chief  of  the  General  Staff,  in  fact,  all  the  generals  and  nearly 
every  officer  in  the  army,  refused  to  admit  or  believe  that  there 
had  been  any  miscarriage  of  justice.  The  animosity  against 
Dreyfus  was  prompted,  even  among  the  military  men,  by  the 
anti-Semitism  which  had  been  spreading  through  France  ever 
since  the  failure  of  the  Union  Generale  Bank  in  1885  and  the 
publication  of  Edouard  Drumonfs  violent  book,  La  France 
Juive,  in  the  following  year.  Its  growth  had  been  assisted  by 
a  number  of  newspapers,  notably  La  Croix,2  a  journal  established 
by  the  Assumptionist  Fathers,  who  battened  on  the  "  miracles  " 
of  Lourdes;  La  Libre  Parole,  edited  by  Drumont,  whom  we 
have  just  mentioned ;  Le  Petit  Journal,  edited  by  Ernest  Judet ; 
V Intransigeant,  edited  by  Henri  Rochefort;  Le  Jour,  edited 
by  Vervoort,  a  relative  of  Rocheforfs  wife ;  La  Patrie,  edited 
by  Millevoye;  L "Eclair,  edited  by  Alphonse  Humbert  C  Le 
Gaulois,  edited  by  Arthur  Meyer,  the  renegade  Jew ;  Le  Soir, 
to  which  Gaston  Pollonnais,  another  renegade  Jew,  was  a 
leading  contributor ;  and  VEcJio  de  Paris,  on  which  Edmond 
Lepelletier  was  one  of  the  chief  writers.  All  those  journals 
were  more  or  less  Nationalist  organs,  all  of  them  were  banded 
together  against  the  Jews,  and  all  upheld  the  so-called  "  honour 
of  the  army."  Some,  moreover,  were  distinctly  clerical  in  their 
tendencies,  La  Croix,  of  course,  being  quite  a  Church  paper. 

Although  at  the  outset  it  seemed  as  if  the  army  alone  were 
Jewish  Encyclopedia  has  been  reprinted  in  pamphlet  form  by  Messrs.  Funk 
and  Wagnalls,  New  York  and  London  (Salisbury  Square).  Respecting  the 
part  played  more  particularly  by  Emile  Zola  in  the  case  the  reader  may 
consult  our  biography  of  the  famous  French  novelist  (Lane,  1904),  and  a 
little  volume  we  wrote  entitled  With  Zola  in  England  (Chatto  and  Windus). 
There  is  also  an  account  of  Dreyfus's  sufferings  prepared  by  himself  and 
containing  many  of  his  letters.  An  English  version  of  this  work  was  issued 
by  Messrs.  G.  Newnes  some  years  ago. 

2  There  were  numerous  provincial  editions  of  that  organ  besides  the  one 
issued  in  Paris. 


THE  DREYFUS  AGITATION  429 

concerned  in  the  Dreyfus  affair,  the  Clericals  and  the  Royalists 
soon  played  conspicuous  parts  in  it,  and  it  became  indeed  but  a 
pretext  for,  and  an  episode — a  long  and  terrible  one,  it  is  true 
— in  another  great  struggle  to  overthrow  the  Republic.  Faure 
and  his  Ministers  did  not  appear  to  realise  the  danger ;  he,  in 
particular,  supported  the  generals  and  other  officers,  the  Du  Paty 
de  Clams  and  the  Henrys,  who  became  compromised  in  the 
affair ;  and  many  of  the  masses,  particularly  in  Paris,  implicitly 
believing  the  assertions  of  their  favourite  newspapers  that  all 
Jews  were  by  nature  thieves  and  traitors,  likewise  supported  the 
military  commanders.  Further,  patriotic  feelings  were  aroused 
and  skilfully  played  upon  by  interested  parties.  It  was  to 
Germany — Germany,  which  had  already  robbed  France  of 
Alsace-Lorraine — that  Dreyfus,  the  traitorous  Jewish  officer, 
had  sold  his  country's  military  secrets,  and  those  who  now 
claimed  that  he  was  innocent  must  be  traitors  of  the  same 
stamp.  Moreover,  it  was  a  Jewish  syndicate,  with  millions 
behind  it,  that  had  started  the  agitation  in  favour  of  the 
condemned  man  who  had  now  been  languishing  for  more  than 
two  years  amid  the  torments  of  Devil's  Island.  Such  was  the 
current  language  of  the  hour,  and  it  was  declared  that  the  few 
newspapers,  Le  Siecle,  VAurore,  Le  Rappel,  La  Petite  Rfyubligue, 
Les  Droits  de  V  Homme,  and  Le  Figaro,1  which  pleaded  for 
investigation  and  a  new  trial,  had  been  bought  by  the  Jews. 

However,  Esterhazy  having  been  denounced  by  M.  Mathieu 
Dreyfus,  it  became  necessary  to  court-martial  him,  which  was 
done  with  closed  doors,  so  as  to  prevent  Colonel  Picquart's 
evidence  against  him  from  being  made  public.  The  accused 
was  promptly  acquitted,  and  acclaimed  by  the  noisy  patriotic 
crowd  which  had  been  waiting  outside  to  learn  the  court's 
decision.  But  a  good  many  literary  men,  scholars  and  scientists, 
"  intellectuals,"  as  they  were  derisively  styled,  had  been  impressed 
by  what  evidence  had  become  public  either  in  connection  with 
Esterhazy's  trial  or  otherwise;  and  on  January  13,  1898, 
VAurore  published  a  long  and  striking  open  letter  addressed 
by  ^mile  Zola  to  the  President  of  the  Republic,  a  letter  which 
has  passed  into  history  by  the  title  of  "  J'accuse,"  on  account  of 
the  many  times  that  expression  figured   in  it  in  relation   to 

1  It  should  be  added  in  fairness  that  both  M.  de  Cassagnac's  paper 
UAutorite,  and  the  semi-Royalist  journal,  Le  Soleil,  at  first  favoured  further 
inquiry  into  the  case. 


430  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

military  men  and  others.  Among  those  whom  Zola  charged 
with  various  offences  against  equity  and  humanity  were  Generals 
Mercier,  Billot,  Gonse,  de  BoisdefFre,  and  de  Pellieux,  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  du  Paty  de  Clam,  and  Major  Ravary.  He  also  declared 
that  the  acquittal  of  Esterhazy  was  a  supreme  blow  to  truth 
and  justice,  and  he  finally  accused  the  court-martial  which  had 
tried  Dreyfus  in  1894  of  having  condemned  him  on  a  document 
kept  secret  from  him  and  his  counsel,  and  the  court-martial 
which  had  just  tried  Esterhazy  of  having  covered  the  aforesaid 
illegality  by  order,  committing  in  fact  "the  judicial  crime  of 
knowingly  acquitting  a  guilty  man.11 

Zola's  letter  threw  Paris  into  uproar;  there  were  many 
demonstrations  against  the  Jews,  and  at  the  same  time  there 
came  a  shocking  explosion  of  anti-Semitism  in  Algeria.  The 
authorities  shrank  from  prosecuting  Zola  for  his  letter  in  its 
entirety,  and  proceeded  against  him  and  the  manager  of 
VAurore  solely  on  account  of  the  statement  that  Esterhazy  had 
been  acquitted  by  order.  While  the  case  was  yet  pending 
Count  von  Bulow,  the  German  Foreign  Secretary — but  not  yet 
Chancellor,  that  post  being  still  held  by  Prince  Clovis  von 
Hohenlohe — declared  in  the  Reichstag  that  "no  relations  of 
whatever  kind  had  ever  existed  between  Captain  Dreyfus  and 
any  German  organs  or  authorities  " ;  but  the  French  Nationalists 
and  anti-Semites  sneered  at  those  words  as  being  a  "mere 
official  statement. "  Zola's  case  came  before  the  Paris  Assizes 
on  February  7,  and  lasted  till  February  23,  1898,  resulting  in 
conviction,  and  the  sentence  of  Zola  to  a  year's  imprisonment 
and  a  fine  of  i?120.  The  proceedings  were  often  most  dramatic, 
and  the  presiding-judge,  M.  Delegorgue,  did  his  utmost  to 
hamper  the  defence,  which  was  very  ably  conducted  by  Maitre 
Labori,  the  advocate  who  had  defended  Vaillant,  the  Anarchist. 
Zola  appealed  on  legal  grounds  to  the  Cour  de  Cassation,  which 
quashed  his  conviction  and  ordered  a  new  trial  at  Versailles. 
This  did  not  come  on  until  July  18,  when  Me.  Labori  raised 
a  demurrer  which  was  disallowed,  whereupon  Zola,  his  co- 
defendant  the  manager  of  VAurore,  and  their  counsel  quitted 
the  court,  allowing  judgment  to  go  by  default.  This  moment- 
arily prevented  it  from  becoming  final,  and  in  order  to  avoid 
personal  service  of  it,  which  would  have  made  it  final  unless 
an  appeal  had  been  entered  within  a  few  days,  Zola  left  for 
London  that  same  night,  and  placed  himself  in  the  care  of  the 


FALL  OF  M.  MELINE  431 

present  writer,  who  with  the  assistance  of  a  very  shrewd  friend, 
a  solicitor,  was  able  to  ensure  him  a  life  of  strict  privacy  in 
England  during  a  whole  year. 

Some  two  months  before  that  occurred  there  had  been 
general  elections  in  France,  the  result  of  which  was  influenced 
both  by  the  Dreyfus  agitation  and  the  income-tax  proposals 
which  had  largely  occupied  the  previous  Legislature.  The  fight 
was  keen  and  very  confused,  there  being  more  than  2000 
candidates  for  the  584  seats  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies. 
Several  prominent  men  were  defeated,  and  the  Progressive 
party,  which  had  chiefly  formed  Meline's  majority,  secured  only 
225  seats,  in  such  wise  that  it  had  to  seek  the  support  of  either 
the  Conservatives  or  the  Radicals.  The  former  triumphed  at 
first  by  ensuring  the  election  of  young  M.  Deschanel  as  President 
of  the  Chamber  in  the  place  of  M.  Brisson  ;  but  when  a  debate 
on  the  general  policy  of  the  Government  ensued  (July  14)  a 
resolution  drafted  by  M.  Bourgeois  and  declaring  that  the 
Chamber  would  only  support  a  ministry  relying  on  an  exclusively 
Republican  majority,  was  carried ;  and  M.  Meline,  who  was 
prepared  for  an  alliance  with  the  Royalists  but  shrank  from  one 
with  the  Radicals,  then  had  to  resign,  greatly  to  the  chagrin  of 
Felix  Faure. 

In  all  matters  pertaining  to  home  politics  M.  Meline  had 
been  the  life  and  soul  of  the  retiring  Administration,  standing 
also  in  Parliamentary  ability  high  above  his  colleagues.  Ex- 
tremely slight  and  thin,  and  completely  bald,  he  had  quite  an 
ascetic  appearance,  and  it  was  often  said  that  he  suggested  a 
"  lay  monk.'"  Whenever  he  was  attacked  at  all  violently  by  the 
Radicals  or  Socialists  his  deep-set  eyes  flashed  fire  and  some 
keen  and  skilful  retort  at  once  leapt  from  his  lips,  but  at  other 
times  you  were  struck  by  his  expression  of  genuine  courtesy  and 
the  caressing  tones  of  his  voice.  However  much  one  might 
differ  from  him  on  economic  and  other  matters,  whatever  mis- 
takes he  may  have  made  in  regard  to  the  Dreyfus  affair,  in 
which,  like  so  many  other  politicians,  he  was  misled  by  the  War 
Office,  he  showed  himself  to  be,  as  the  French  say,  a  distinct 
personnaliU,  one  of  the  dozen  parliamentarians  of  the  first  rank 
that  the  Third  Republic  has  known. 

Among  the  colleagues  who  retired  with  him  was  the  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  M.  Hanotaux,  who  had  previously  held 
office  in  the  Dupuy  and  Ribot  Administrations,  that  is  since 


432  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

May  1894,  with  the  exception  of  an  interval  of  less  than  five 
months  (November  '95  to  April  "*96),  when  Berthelot  was  at  the 
Foreign  Office  as  a  member  of  Bourgeois''  Cabinet.  A  few 
months  before  the  first  appointment  of  M.  Hanotaux  the 
Emperor  Alexander  III.  of  Russia  had  been  able  to  say,  "  During 
the  last  sixteen  years  the  French  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs 
has  been  changed  fifteen  times,  so  that  one  never  knows  if 
one  can  rely  on  any  real  continuity  in  French  foreign  policy.11 
M.  Hanotaux^  tenure  of  office,  even  allowing  for  the  Berthelot 
interlude,  made  some  change  in  that  respect.  In  regard  to  the 
relations  of  France  with  Russia  he  did  little  more  than  reap 
where  others  had  sown,  most  of  his  energy  being  directed 
towards  the  relations  which  prevailed  with  England.  In  that 
respect  Lord  Salisbury  strove  to  overcome  his  propensity  for  pin- 
pricking  by  means  of  graceful  concessions.  It  is  a  question, 
however,  whether  M.  Hanotaux  might  not  have  secured  equal 
advantages  for  his  country  by  adopting  somewhat  different 
courses.  Those  he  followed  tended  steadily  to  the  development 
of  irritation  in  Great  Britain,  which  might  have  ended  by 
becoming  dangerous;  and  English  politicians  and  publicists 
who  desired  to  see  better  relations  established  with  France  often 
despaired  of  any  such  improvement. 

It  was  while  M.  Hanotaux  reigned  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay  that 
France  conquered  Madagascar  (1894-95).  The  French  losses 
were  very  severe,  many  thousand  men  dying  of  disease,  and  the 
conquest  would  have  taken  a  much  longer  time  to  effect  had  not 
the  French  been  able  to  hire  transport  vessels  of  British  ship- 
owners with  our  Government's  assent.  However,  an  almost 
immediate  result  of  the  conquest  was  the  introduction  of  a 
customs  tariff,  specially  directed  against  our  trade,  and  in  respect 
to  which  Lord  Salisbury  found  it  necessary  to  protest.  With 
regard  to  Siam  a  bitter  dispute  over  the  Mekong-Mongsin 
territory  and  other  matters  arose  between  the  two  powers  in 
1895,  but  Great  Britain  gave  way  on  many  points,  and  a 
convention  prepared  by  M.  Hanotaux  was  signed  during 
Berthelofs  brief  Ministry,  January  15, 1896.  In  view  of  France^ 
desire  to  cultivate  the  Russian  alliance,  it  was  perhaps  inevitable 
that  at  the  close  of  the  war  between  Japan  and  China  (1895), 
she  should  have  supported  Russia,  and  at  the  same  time 
Germany,  in  compelling  the  Japanese  to  abandon  the  Liaotung 
peninsula.     In  view,  too,  of  what  Great  Britain  and  Germany 


M.  HANOTAUX  AND  HIS  POLICY  433 

did  with  regard  to  Wei-hai-wei  and  Kiaochow  there  could  be 
no  complaint  of  the  "  concession  "  to  France  of  the  bay  of 
Kwang-chan-wan — south  of  Macao — in  April  1898.  There  was 
no  little  trouble,  however,  in  north-west  Africa  during  several 
years,  and  in  that  respect  again  Great  Britain  repeatedly  gave 
way  to  France.  In  June  1898  M.  Hanotaux  and  Sir  Edmond 
Monson  signed  an  agreement  which  considerably  lessened  if  it 
did  not  entirely  remove  the  long-standing  friction  in  regard  to 
the  Niger.  During  the  previous  year  we  had  met  the  wishes 
of  France  with  respect  to  the  commercial  regime  of  Tunis  by 
assenting  to  its  revision.  Nevertheless,  throughout  this  period 
the  Government  of  the  Republic  treated  us  with  scant  cordiality. 
It  was  then  the  habit  of  French  journalists  to  denounce  the 
insatiability  of  Great  Britain,  but  if  any  country  ever  showed 
itself  insatiable  in  its  claims,  pretensions,  and  attempts  it  was 
France  under  the  aegis  of  its  Anglophobist  Foreign  Minister. 

Born  at  Beaurevoir  in  the  Aisne  in  1853,  Albert  Auguste 
Gabriel  Hanotaux  was  only  forty-five  years  old  when  he  retired 
with  his  colleagues  of  the  Meline  Ministry,  since  which  time  he 
has  never  held  office.  He  first  entered  the  Foreign  Ministry  as 
an  attache'  of  the  Department  of  the  Archives  in  1879,  and 
became  chef-de-cabinet  both  to  Gambetta  and  to  Jules  Ferry. 
He  did  not  acquire  from  the  former  the  inveterate  dislike  of 
Great  Britain  which  marked  his  later  career,  but  he  probably 
derived  from  the  second  the  policy  of  colonial  expansion  which 
he  afterwards  pursued  with  so  much  vigour.  He  became  a 
secretary  of  embassy  at  Constantinople  in  1885  and  managed 
the  embassy's  affairs  par  interim  in  the  following  year.  Then, 
however,  he  was  elected  a  deputy  for  his  native  department,  and 
it  was  only  on  failing  to  secure  re-election  in  1889  that  he 
returned  to  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs,  with  the  rank  of 
Minister  Plenipotentiary.  He  became  in  turn  sub-Director  of 
the  Protectorate  Department  and  Director  of  the  Consular  Service 
before  ultimately  securing  the  chief  prize  of  his  profession. 

Pleasant  and  unassuming  in  his  manners,  M.  Hanotaux 
appealed  personally  to  all  who  met  him,  but  unlike  many 
diplomates  he  evinced  no  taste  for  society,  being  naturally  of  a 
retiring  disposition  and  only  too  glad  to  escape  from  official 
functions  when  he  could  possibly  do  so.  In  France  each 
Minister  has  a  well-furnished  official  residence,  with  lights,  firing, 
servants,  and  so  forth  at  his  disposal,  but  we  believe  that  M. 

2f 


434  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Hanotaux  never  once  slept  at  the  Ministry  for  Foreign  Affairs 
during  his  four  years  of  office.  He  was  a  bachelor  and  preferred 
his  little  private  flat  on  the  fifth  floor  of  a  house  on  the 
Boulevard  St.  Germain,  where  he  not  only  slept  but  usually 
took  his  meals,  unless,  indeed,  he  had  to  give  some  official 
dSjeuner  at  the  Ministry.  A  private  telephone  connected  the 
latter  with  his  flat.  Every  day,  as  a  rule,  he  quitted  his  official 
sanctum  about  one  o'clock  and  walked  home  to  lunch,  climbing 
the  five  flights  of  stairs  which  conducted  to  his  rooms,  as  the 
house  where  he  resided  had  no  lift.  His  flat  contained  a  few 
works  of  art,  some  Eastern  bric-a-brac,  busts  of  Carnot  and 
Gambetta  from  the  Sevres  manufactory,  a  bronze  medallion  of 
the  present  Emperor  of  Russia,  and  one  of  the  latter's  photo- 
graphs bearing  an  inscription.  In  each  of  the  three  sitting- 
rooms  you  saw  one  or  more  book-cases  replete  with  historical 
works,  the  French  classics,  some  examples  of  modern  fiction,  such 
as  the  novels  of  Balzac,  Alphonse  Daudet,  and  Pierre  Loti,  a  few 
writings  on  philosophy  and  art,  a  number  of  Elzevirs,  Cazins, 
and  other  valuable  old  volumes.  After  devoting  his  morning 
to  one  or  another  part  of  the  world  where  he  desired  to  annoy 
or  check  "  perfidious  Albion,1''  M.  Hanotaux  gave  his  afternoon 
or  evening  to  literary  work.  Before  becoming  a  Minister  he  had 
written  some  scholarly  studies  on  France  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  and  these  were  followed  in  his  ministerial 
days  by  an  elaborate  undertaking,  a  history  of  Cardinal  Richelieu. 
"  Le  style  est  Thomme  meme,11  wrote  BufFon  in  the  address  he 
delivered  when  he  became  a  member  of  the  French  Academy,1 
and  interpreting  that  aphorism  in  a  certain  sense  it  will  suffice 
to  mention  that  the  style  of  M.  Hanotaux  is  distinguished 
by  clearness  and  precision,  in  order  to  give  the  reader  some 
idea  of  one  side  of  his  character.  But  a  further  indication 
might  be  found  in  the  subject  selected  for  his  magnum  opus. 
Without  questioning  his  loyalty  to  the  Republic,  his  tendencies, 
like  those  of  the  great  Cardinal,  were  autocratic.  Only  the  first 
volume  of  the  history  of  Richelieu  had  been  published,  we  think, 
when  M.  Hanotaux  was  elected  a  member  of  the  French  Academy, 
his  reception  taking  place  some  three  months  before  his  with- 
drawal from  office.     He  was  then  placed  en  disponsibilite'  as  a 

1  It  may  perhaps  be  pointed  out  that  he  never  wrote  ••  Le  style,  c'est 
l'homme,"  in  which  erroneous  form  the  phrase  is  so  often  quoted.—  Recueil 
de  VAcadtmie,  1753,  pp.  337-338. 


COLONEL  HENRY  THE  FORGER      435 

plenipotentiary  of  the  first  class.  In  1904  he  came  forward  in 
the  Aisne  as  a  candidate  for  a  seat  in  the  Senate,  but  was  badly 
defeated.  Time,  however,  brings  round  its  revenges,  and  as 
M.  Hanotaux  is  still  only  in  his  fifty-seventh  year  it  is  quite 
possible  that  he  may  return  some  day  to  his  old  post.  Should 
he  do  so,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  he  will  direct  his  great  abilities 
to  the  preservation  of  the  present  good  relations  of  France  and 
England.1 

The  Meline  Administration  was  followed  by  one  formed  by 
Henri  Brisson,  who  took  the  department  of  the  Interior,  his 
principal  colleagues  being  Delcasse,  Foreign  Affairs;  Leon 
Bourgeois,  Education;  and  Godefroy  Cavaignac,  War.  The 
new  Prime  Minister  had  hitherto  striven  to  keep  aloof  from  the 
Dreyfus  case,  but  it  again  became  the  chief  political  affair  of 
the  time.  A  speech  made  by  Cavaignac,  who,  by  the  aid  of 
documents  supplied  to  him  by  Colonel  Henry,  chief  of  the 
Secret  Intelligence  Department  of  the  War  Office,  endeavoured 
to  prove  the  guilt  and  therefore  righteous  conviction  of 
Dreyfus,  was  placarded  throughout  France  by  the  order  of  the 
Chamber  in  July  1898  ;  but  in  the  following  month  it  was 
discovered  that  the  documents  were  not  authentic,  that  in  one 
instance  the  initial  "  D  "  (signifying  Dreyfus),  had  been  written 
over  an  erasure,  and  that  in  another  a  document  had  been  con- 
structed out  of  two  others,  falsified  in  parts  and  belonging  to 
different  years.2  Cavaignac  eventually  interrogated  Henry  at 
the  War  Office,  and  the  wretched  man  finally  admitted  his  guilt. 
He  was  thereupon  placed  under  arrest,  and  removed  to  the  fort 
of  Mont  Valerien,  where  on  the  following  evening  he  was  found 
dead  in  his  cell,  a  razor  having  been  left  in  his  possession, 
whether  purposely  or  accidentally  is  not  known.  Esterhazy,  the 
real  traitor,  in  whose  stead  Dreyfus  had  been  condemned,  now 
fled  from  France ;    General  de  Boisdeffre,  who  had  previously 

1  During  the  years  of  his  retirement  M.  Hanotaux  has  produced  a  variety 
of  works,  among  which  may  be  mentioned  first  a  valuable  collection  of  the 
instructions  given  to  the  French  envoys  at  Rome  from  1648  to  1789,  this 
being  important  material  for  the  history  of  French  relations  with  the  Vatican  ; 
and  secondly  a  voluminous  work  entitled  La  France  contemporaine,  which  is 
still  in  progress. 

2  They  had  either  been  found  in  pieces  or  were  else  purposely  torn  up. 
In  any  case  they  were  "  put  together  "  by  Colonel  Henry  himself.  The 
paper  was  ruled  in  squares  with  blue  lines,  and  it  was  discovered  that  there 
was  a  slight  difference  in  some  parts  as  regards  both  the  colour  of  the  lines 
and  the  size  of  the  squares. 


436  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

affirmed  the  authenticity  of  Henry's  "  document,"  resigned  his 
post  as  Chief  of  the  Staff;  Cavaignac  retired  from  the  War 
Ministry ;  and  Brisson  at  last  decided  that  there  must  be  a 
revision  of  the  Dreyfus  case.  Mme.  Dreyfus  submitted  a  formal 
request  to  that  effect,  but  the  anti-Dreyfusites  brought  pressure 
to  bear  on  General  Zurlinden,  who  succeeded  Cavaignac  at  the 
War  Office,  and  he,  after  vainly  opposing  revision,  resigned  his 
office.  General  Chamoin  succeeded  him,  and  the  preliminaries 
for  revision  then  began,  but  at  the  same  time  Colonel  Picquart 
was  once  more  odiously  persecuted  and  imprisoned  by  Zurlinden 
(as  Governor  of  Paris),  for  his  share  in  bringing  the  truth  to 
light,  false  charges  of  forgery  and  of  communicating  secret 
documents  to  strangers,  being  trumped  up  against  him.  Finally, 
on  September  27,  the  revision  proceedings  were  definitely 
inaugurated  by  an  inquiry  conducted  by  the  Criminal  Chamber 
of  the  Cour  de  Cassation. 

All  this  had  taken  place  during  the  Parliamentary  recess, 
which  ended  amid  tumultuous  demonstrations  in  the  streets  of 
Paris,  and  ominous  rumours  of  a  military  conspiracy.  There 
was  certainly  a  tendency  in  that  direction.  Passions  were 
inflamed  on  both  sides.  The  extreme  Dreyfusites  attacked  the 
whole  army,  or  at  least  the  entire  corps  of  officers,  as  being 
responsible  for  the  repeated  miscarriages  of  justice  which  had 
hitherto  marked  the  affair ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  an  over- 
whelming majority  of  military  men  still  preferred  to  believe  the 
assertions  of  the  many  generals  who  had  repeatedly  declared 
Dreyfus  to  be  guilty,  and  regarded  the  revision  proceedings  as 
an  insult  to  the  army  at  large.  President  Faure,  unfortunately, 
had  become  as  enamoured  of  militarism  as  of  etiquette  and 
ceremony.  Believing  that  the  army  could  do  no  wrong,  he  had 
supported  the  anti-Dreyfusite  generals  through  thick  and  thin. 
Some  of  Dreyfus's  partisans  feared  that  he  might  even  lend 
himself  to  designs  which  would  place  the  army  in  control  of  the 
country,  accepting  from  it  some  such  position  as  that  of  Life 
President,  which,  it  was  thought,  would  appeal  to  him.  But 
those  apprehensions  may  well  have  been  exaggerated,  though  it 
was  certainly  remarkable  that  Faure  took  no  steps  whatever  to 
put  an  end  to  the  great  unrest  which  prevailed.  On  the  day 
when  the  Chamber  reassembled  (October  25),  Brisson's  Ministry 
was  defeated  on  a  motion  which  virtually  accused  it  of  permitting 
the  many  Dreyfusite  attacks  upon  the  army,  and  it  thereupon 


THE  FASHODA  AFFAIR  437 

resigned.  Faure  then  certainly  evinced  some  desire  to  re- 
establish Republican  union,  for  he  entrusted  M.  Dupuy  with 
the  formation  of  a  Cabinet  having  that  object  in  view.1  Dupuy, 
however,  was  not  the  man  to  effect  any  such  union,  as  events 
showed.  But  it  happened  that  public  attention  was  suddenly 
diverted  from  the  Dreyfus  case  by  a  storm  in  quite  another 
quarter. 

This  was  the  famous  Fashoda  affair,  of  which  the  direct 
cause  was  an  expedition,  disguised  more  or  less  as  an  exploring 
and  scientific  mission,  which  had  been  entrusted  some  years 
previously  to  Captain,  subsequently  Colonel,  Marchand.  During 
a  period  of  some  eleven  years,  1887  to  1898,  France  organised 
a  very  large  number  of  expeditions  in  various  parts  of  Africa 
north  of  the  equator,  with  the  object  of  extending  her  colonial 
empire  on  that  continent.  The  regions  chiefly  affected  were 
those  known  as  the  French  Congo  and  the  French  Soudan.  It 
was  this  policy  of  aggrandisement,  perfectly  legitimate  in 
principle  but  at  times  overreaching  in  execution,  as  it  occasion- 
ally infringed  rights  possessed  by  Great  Britain  or  clashed  with 
interests  she  could  not  sacrifice,  that  led  to  all  the  trouble 
which  arose  between  the  two  powers  in  that  quarter  of  the 
globe.  The  activity  of  France  was  remarkable.  Apart  from 
the  conquests  of  Colonel  Archinard  there  were,  inter  alia,  such 
missions  or  expeditions  as  these :  Binger's  in  1887-89,  Dr. 
Crozat's  in  1890,  Colonel  MonteiPs  in  1891-92,  Quiquandon's, 
Beckmann's  and  Captain  Menard's  during  the  same  period, 
Captain  Mizon's,  which  lasted  from  1890  till  1893,  Hourst's  in 
1897,  and  Captain  Cazemajou's,  Hostain's,  and  D,011onnes'>  in 
1898. 

The  Marchand  expedition  was,  however,  one  of  a  particular 
group  ;  that  is  to  say,  it  was  not  one,  which  like  some  others, 
might  accidentally  lead  to  a  dispute  between  France  and  England 
through  some  over-zealousness  on  the  part  of  its  commanding 
officer,  but  it  was  an  expedition  planned  deliberately  against 
Anglo-Egyptian  interests.  As  we  have  said,  it  was  one  of  a 
group,  all  of  which  were  organised  for  the  purpose  of  securing 
positions  on  the  Upper  Nile,  and,  by  doing  so,  enabling  France 
to  provoke  at  an  opportune  moment  a  European  Conference  for 
the  settlement  of  the  Egyptian  question. 

1  Dupuy,  Minister  of  the  Interior ;  Delcasse\  Foreign  Affairs  ;  Freycinet, 
War  ;  Lockroy,  Marine  ;  Lebret,  Justice. 


438  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

France,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  left  us  in  the  lurch  at 
the  time  of  Arabi  Pasha's  revolt,  and  she  had  never  ceased  to 
regret  her  folly.1  At  times,  under  certain  Ministries,  she  had 
even  done  her  best  to  make  our  position  in  Egypt  as  difficult  as 
possible,  and  to  thwart  even  the  most  disinterested  attempts  to 
improve  the  condition  of  the  country.  In  Lord  Salisbury's  time 
(1887),  there  had  been  the  Drummond- Wolff  Convention  for 
our  conditional  evacuation  of  Egypt,  but  France  had  persuaded 
Turkey  to  reject  it.  A  renewal  of  that  undertaking  in  an 
improved  form,  which  was  invited  by  Gladstone  in  1892,  was 
likewise  rejected  by  France.  Yet  she  never  ceased  complaining 
of  the  British  occupation,  and  in  the  hope  apparently  of  bringing 
it  to  an  end,  she,  who  had  refused  to  co-operate  with  us  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Nile,  at  last  resolved  to  intervene  by  herself  at 
the  other  end,  so  to  say,  of  the  great  river,  whence  she  hoped 
to  bring  effective  pressure  to  bear  on  us. 

Great  Britain  was  not  unmindful  of  the  danger,  and  by 
virtue  of  the  claims  of  Egypt  to  the  Soudan  and  the  Bahr-el- 
Ghazal,  she  leased  to  King  Leopold,  as  sovereign  of  the 
Congo  Free  State,  the  left  bank  of  the  Nile  from  Lake  Albert 
to  a  point  north  of  Fashoda.  Both  France  and  Germany 
protested  against  that  arrangement  in  1894.  It  was  claimed 
that  Egypt  had  lost  possession  of  the  regions  in  question  since 
the  time  of  the  Mahdi,  and  could  not  lease  what  did  not  belong 
to  her.  France  came  to  a  frontier  arrangement  with  King 
Leopold,  which  seemed  to  indicate  an  intention  to  disregard  all 
Egyptian  claims.  But  in  1895  Sir  Edward  Grey,  then  Under- 
Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs,  gave  a  warning  in  the  House  of 
Commons  with  respect  to  the  undue  approach  of  any  power  to 
the  basin  of  the  Nile.  M.  Hanotaux  replied  to  that  speech, 
and  it  appears  to  have  been  understood  subsequently  that  the 
question  remained  more  or  less  open  to  discussion.  In  1897, 
however,  Great  Britain  still  made  reserves,  while  France 
maintained  her  previous  position. 

The  warning  of  1895  was  sufficient  indication  that  trouble 
would  arise  if  France  persisted  in  her  designs;  nevertheless 
Marchand's  expedition  started  in  the  following  year  with  the 
deliberate  intention  of  taking  up  a  position  on  the  Nile.  This 
expedition  had  been  first  planned  some  years  previously,  being 
originally  suggested,  it  seems,  by  Marchand  himself.  It  can  be 
1  See  ante,  pp.  265-269. 


THE  FASHODA  AFFAIR  439 

traced  back,  at  least,  as  far  as  1893,  when  M.  Delcasse  was 
Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies  in  the  first  Dupuy  Ministry. 
A  little  later,  however,  Marchand  had  to  take  part  in  other 
operations,  and  when  he  afterwards  laid  his  proposals  before  Dr. 
Chautemps,  Colonial  Minister  in  Ribot's  Cabinet  (January  to 
October  1895),  they  were  not  viewed  with  favour.  Marchand 
thereupon  memorialised  M.  Hanotaux  (May  1895),  and  secured 
his  full  approval.  Nothing  was  done,  however,  at  that  moment 
on  account  of  the  divergency  of  views  existing  between  the 
Foreign  and  Colonial  Ministries,  and  in  fact  matters  still 
remained  in  abeyance  for  some  time  after  Dr.  Chautemps  had 
been  succeeded  by  M.  Guieysse.  The  latter,  however,  ended  by 
adopting  the  views  of  the  Foreign  Office,  where  M.  Berthelot 
had  now  taken  M.  Hanotaux1  place,  and  on  February  24,  1896, 
M.  Guieysse  signed  Marchand's  formal  instructions. 

It  seems  probable  that  the  hesitation  with  respect  to  the 
hitter's  expedition  was  due  to  practical  considerations  and  not 
to  any  question  of  principle,  as  a  force  under  M.  Liotard  was 
already  in  the  Upper  Ubanghi,  and  had  orders  to  extend  a 
helping  hand  to  certain  expeditions  which  were  expected  to 
make  their  way  through  Abyssinia  to  the  Nile  basin.  Three 
such  expeditions  appear  to  have  been  planned  with  the  con- 
nivance of  the  Emperor  Menelik,  the  forces  being  mainly 
Abyssinian,  led  by  French  and  Russian  officers.  Those  schemes 
were  partially  carried  into  effect,  and  it  appears  that  if  they 
finally  failed  this  was  due  to  some  remissness  of  duty  on  the 
part  of  the  French  Governor  of  Obock,  whose  co-operation  in 
organising  them  was  required.  His  neglect  to  do  what  was 
expected  led  to  a  loss  of  French  influence  in  Abyssinia. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  of  French  intentions  in  the  matter. 
It  has  been  claimed  by  M.  Andre  Lebon  and  M.  Rene  Millet 1 
that  the  instructions  given  to  Marchand  were  essentially  pacific, 
that  he  was  not  to  prosecute  his  advance  if  he  met  with  resist- 
ance, and  so  forth  ;  but  all  that  was  merely  a  cloak  to  disguise 
the  real  object  of  the  expedition.  Before  it  started,  application 
was  made  to  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  for  a  credit  for  its 
expenses,  and  the  Minister  requested  that  the  sum  should  be 
granted  without  explanations.     "  It  is  a  political  vote  we  ask  of 

1  M.  Lebon  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  March  15, 1900  ;  M.  Millet  in 
Notre  Politique  exUrieure  de  1898  a  1905 ',  Paris,  1905.  M.  Lebon  was 
Colonial  Minister  when  Marchand's  expedition  actually  started. 


440  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

you,"  said  he ;  whereupon  the  Germanophile  and  Anglo- 
phobist  leader  of  the  French  Socialists,  M.  Jaures,  exclaimed : 
"No,  it  is  not  a  political,  but  a  national  vote."  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  certain  explanations  with  regard  to  this  so- 
called  "  scientific  and  exploring  mission "  had  already  been 
given  privately. 

In  July  1896  Marchand  landed  at  Loango  and  proceeded  to 
Brazzaville,  whence  the  column  he  organised  made  its  way  up 
the  Congo.  It  was  assisted  by  Liotard,  and  in  July  1898,  after 
no  little  hardship  and  adventure,  it  reached  Fashoda  on  the 
Nile,  where  it  entrenched  itself  so  as  to  keep  the  Dervishes  at 
bay.  Marchand's  exploit  was  undoubtedly  very  gallant  and 
l  able,  but  it  was  bound  to  lead  to  trouble  with  Great  Britain. 
The  real  prosperity  of  Egypt  was  dependent  on  the  possession 
of  the  Soudan,  which  it  had  lost  in  the  time  of  Gordon  and  the 
Mahdi.  Many  years  had  been  allowed  to  elapse  without  any 
effort  at  re-conquest,  but  this  became  imperative  when  France 
began  to  prosecute  designs  on  the  basin  of  the  Upper  Nile.  In 
1897,  therefore,  an  expedition  was  organised  by  the  Sirdar,  Sir 
H.  H.  Kitchener,  a  little  later  Lord  Kitchener  of  Khartoum. 
In  September  the  following  year,  on  going  southward  after  his 
victory  at  Omdurman,  he  found  Marchand  and  his  small  force 
installed  at  Fashoda.  On  being  summoned  to  retire,  Marchand 
refused  to  do  so,  and  the  matter  was  thereupon  referred  to  the 
British  Government. 

Sir  Edmond  Monson,  the  Ambassador  in  Paris,  made  a 
verbal  communication  on  the  subject  to  M.  Delcasse,  who  had 
now  become  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs.  It  was  not  answered 
immediately,  as  this  was  the  moment  of  the  Cabinet  crisis  when 
Brisson  was  succeeded  by  Dupuy,  and  in  the  interval,  by  reason 
of  the  threatening  language  of  some  London  newspapers  and 
various  reports  of  hostile  British  intentions,  quite  a  panic 
arose  in  French  official  spheres. 

It  may  be  the  case  that  the  delay  in  answering  Sir  Edmond 
Monson  was  intentional,  France  being  reluctant  to  order  the 
evacuation  of  Fashoda,  and  desirous  of  gaining  time  in  order 
to  provide  for  eventualities.  President  Faure,  and  others, 
apprehended  a  British  attack,  and  directly  the  Dupuy  Cabinet 
was  formed,  a  special  council  on  the  subject  was  held  at  the 
Elysee,  those  present  being  Faure  and  Dupuy,  Loubet  and 
Deschanel  (Presidents  of  the  Senate  and  Chamber),  and  Freycinet, 


THE  FASHODA  AFFAIR  441 

Lockroy,  Peytral,  and  Delcasse  (Ministers  of  War,  Marine, 
Finances,  and  Foreign  Affairs).  There  were  unfounded  rumours 
of  projected  British  descents  on  the  coasts  of  France,  Algeria, 
and  Tunis,  and  it  was  particularly  feared  that  the  English 
might  attempt  to  seize  Bizerta,  whose  defences  were  very  weak. 
Money  was  required  for  certain  armaments,  but  it  was  thought 
unwise  to  apply  to  the  Chamber  for  it,  as  this  would  arouse 
apprehension  in  England  respecting  France's  intentions,  and 
reveal  the  weakness  of  the  French  defences  on  certain  points. 
Faure  therefore  proposed  that  the  Government  should  spend 
the  necessary  money  on  its  own  authority,  and  afterwards  seek 
indemnity  from  Parliament.  Before  coming  to  a  decision  on 
the  point,  the  Ministers  had  a  private  consultation  with  the 
Presidents  and  Reporters  of  the  Financial  Committees  of  the 
Senate  and  the  Chamber  (MM.  Barbey,  Morel,  Mesureur,  and 
Camille  Pelletan),  and,  they  assenting,  it  was  resolved  at  a 
second  Council  to  spend  some  three  or  four  millions  sterling  on 
urgent  requirements.  That  was  done,  and  to  gain  yet  more 
time  M.  Delcasse  answered  Sir  E.  Monson  more  or  less  evasively, 
summoning,  moreover,  an  officer  of  Marchand's  mission  to 
France  on  the  plea  that  the  facts  must  be  fully  ascertained.  In 
response  to  a  telegraphic  despatch,  forwarded  via  Omdurman, 
Marchand  sent  Captain  Baratier  to  Paris,  and  by  that  time  the 
worst  of  the  storm  had  passed.  A  pacific  course  had  become 
the  more  advisable  on  the  part  of  France,  as  Russia  was  not 
inclined  to  support  her.  Only  a  month  or  two  previously 
(August  1898)  the  Czar  had  issued  his  famous  disarmament 
proposals,  and  wished  to  avoid  war.  On  his  behalf,  then, 
Count  Muravieff  strongly  advised  France  to  terminate  the 
Fashoda  affair  peacefully.  Thus  the  battle  was  limited  to  the 
efforts  of  diplomacy.  President  Faure,  it  may  be  added,  while 
anxious  to  provide  for  hostilities,  by  no  means  favoured  them. 
He  was  not  an  Anglophobe.  During  his  school  days  in  England, 
his  long  years  at  Havre,  his  terms  of  office  at  the  Colonial 
Ministry,  he  had  acquired  considerable  knowledge  and  experience 
of  English  people,  their  desires,  and  the  points  on  which  their 
interests  clashed  with  those  of  France ;  and  he  held  that  the 
misunderstandings  between  the  two  countries  were  mainly  the 
remains  of  old  time  prejudice  and  spite,  and  that,  with  one 
exception,  there  was  no  question  between  them  which  might 
not  be  amicably  adjusted.     The  exception  to  which  he  referred 


442  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

was  Egypt.  "  I  except  it,"  said  he,1  "  because  it  is  an  inter- 
national question,  one  which  not  France  and  England  but  all 
Europe  must  settle.  As  for  France  being  the  natural  enemy  of 
England,  that  is  not  true ;  if  England  has  any  natural  enemy 
it  is  Germany. " 

In  the  settlement  of  the  Fashoda  affair  M.  Delcasse  fre- 
quently shifted  his  ground.  There  was,  among  others,  the 
delicate  question  whether  negotiations  should  precede  or  follow 
the  evacuation  of  Fashoda  by  Marchand's  force.  Great  Britain 
insisted  on  the  latter  procedure,  and  it  therefore  became 
necessary  to  instruct  Marchand  to  quit  his  position  and  return 
to  France.  The  order  was  reluctantly  obeyed.  The  expedition 
quitted  Fashoda  in  December  1898,  crossed  Abyssinia,  and 
finally  reached  Jibuti  in  May  the  following  year.  Two  months 
previously  the  negotiations  between  France  and  England  had 
ended  in  an  agreement  by  which  the  former  power  renounced 
her  claims  to  territory  within  the  Nile  basin,  but  retained  her 
rights  over  Wadai,  east  of  Lake  Chad. 

Meantime  some  important  events  had  happened.  The 
"  humiliation  of  France,"  as  the  abandonment  of  Fashoda  was 
termed  by  the  Parisian  Nationalist  and  Anglophobist  press,  the 
"disgrace  of  the  brave  Major  Marchand,"  as  that  officer's  recall 
was  styled,  inspirited  all  the  enemies  of  the  Republic  to  attack 
the  regime  more  bitterly  than  ever.  The  revision  proceedings 
in  the  Dreyfus  case  were  carried  on  amid  all  sorts  of  difficulties. 
The  weakness  of  the  new  Dupuy  Ministry  became  apparent 
when,  in  deference  to  a  malicious  outcry  that  the  Criminal 
Chamber  of  the  Cour  de  Cassation  had  been  bribed  by  the  Jews 
to  give  a  decision  in  favour  of  Dreyfus,  a  bill  was  introduced 
transferring  the  revision  inquiry  from  that  particular  Chamber 
to  the  entire  Court.  The  anti-Dreyfusites  regarded  this  as  a 
great  victory,  as  for  some  reason  or  other  they  imagined  that 
the  judges  of  the  Civil  Chamber,  who  were  now  adjoined  to 
their  colleagues,  would  pronounce  against  the  unhappy  man 
who  was  still  in  durance  on  Devil's  Island. 

But  at  this  moment  France  was  startled  by  the  news  of  the 
death  of  Felix  Faure.  Such  an  event  was  quite  unexpected, 
and  a  wild  rumour  that  a  crime  had  been  committed  spread 
through  Paris.  There  had  been  certain  attempts  upon  the 
President  in  previous  years.  A  lunatic  named  Eugene  Francois 
1  This  was  before  the  Fashoda  affair. 


DEATH  OF  F^LIX  FAURE  443 

had  fired  at  him  while  he  was  on  his  way  to  the  review  at 
Longchamp  on  the  occasion  of  the  National  Fete  in  1896,  and 
a  bomb  was  thrown  near  the  Northern  Railway  Station  when 
he  started  for  Russia  in  1897.1  But  he  had  not  passed  away  in 
the  streets  ;  he  had  been  taken  ill  in  his  private  room  at  the 
Elysee,  and  the  medical  men  attributed  his  death  to  natural 
causes. 

That  day,  February  16,  1899,  the  President  had  not  once 
left  the  palace.  At  a  quarter  to  seven  o'clock,  in  the  morning 
he  sent  word  to  M.  Le  Gall,  his  chef-de-cabinet,  that  as  he  felt 
tired  in  the  legs  he  should  not  go  out  riding  as  usual.  When 
he  had  finished  dressing  he  joined  M.  Le  Gall,  conversed  with 
him,  read  some  despatches,  and  then  presided  over  a  ministerial 
council,  which  lasted  from  ten  till  half-past  eleven  o'clock.  He 
appeared  at  that  time  to  be  in  his  usual  health.  After  his 
dejeuner,  of  which  he  partook  enfamille,  he  read  some  diplomatic 
papers  sent  him  by  M.  Delcasse,  and  at  half-past  three  o'clock 
he  received  Cardinal  Richard,  Archbishop  of  Paris,  who  remained 
with  him  about  three-quarters  of  an  hour.  Subsequently,  in 
conversation  with  various  ecclesiastics,  including  the  Papal 
Nuncio,  the  Cardinal  said :  "  After  entering  the  President's 
study,  in  spite  of  the  great  courtesy  with  which  he  greeted  me, 
I  was  struck  by  the  state  of  abnormal  excitement  under  which 
he  was  labouring.  He  seemed  to  be  agitated  and  ill.  He 
asked  me  if  I  would  mind  it  if  he  did  not  sit  down,  and  then, 
while  he  conversed,  he  walked  up  and  down  the  room.  It  soon 
appeared  to  me  that  he  was  not  paying  attention  to  what  I 
said,  and  I  attributed  his  ill-disguised  impatience  to  his  nervous 
condition.  At  the  end  of  the  audience  he  accompanied  me 
rapidly  almost  as  far  as  the  door,  as  if  he  were  anxious  to  get 
rid  of  me  as  quickly  as  possible. " 

Almost  immediately  afterwards,  that  is  at  a  quarter  past 
four,  another  visitor  arrived,  this  being  His  Serene  Highness 
Albert  II.,  Prince  of  Monaco,  who  had  just  returned  from  a 
journey  to  Berlin,  where  he  had  been  the  guest  of  the  Emperor 
William.     Now  it  was  thoroughly  well  known  that  the  Prince 

1  In  the  same  year  a  bomb  exploded  near  the  statue  of  Strasburg  on  the 
Place  de  la  Concorde,  but  whether  this  affair  like  that  near  the  Northern 
Terminus  was  the  work  of  Anarchists  was  never  ascertained.  There  was 
undoubtedly  some  attempt  to  revive  propaganda  by  deeds  about  this  period. 
In  September  1898  the  Empress  Elizabeth  of  Austria  was  assassinated  by 
Luigi  Lucchini  in  Switzerland. 


444  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

had  taken  a  keen  interest  in  the  Dreyfus  case,  less  perhaps 
from  personal  curiosity  than  at  the  instigation  of  his  wife, 
who  was  of  Jewish  origin.  She  was  his  second  consort,  the 
first  having  been  Lady  Mary  Douglas  Hamilton,  mother  of 
Prince  Louis,  the  present  heir  apparent  to  the  principality. 
That  marriage,  which  was  contracted  in  1869,  did  not  prove  a 
happy  one,  however,  and  in  1880  it  was  annulled  by  the  Pope, 
the  son,  nevertheless,  being  declared  legitimate.  Lady  Mary 
Hamilton  afterwards  married  Count  Festetics,  a  Hungarian 
nobleman,  and  the  Prince  of  Monaco,  on  his  side,  espoused  the 
widowed  Duchess  de  Richelieu,  who,  as  we  have  said,  was  of 
Jewish  extraction,  being  a  granddaughter  of  the  poet  Heine. 
This  lady's  interest  in  the  Dreyfus  case  was  therefore  quite 
natural.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Prince  of  Monaco's  oceano- 
graphical  studies  and  general  partiality  for  the  sea  had  brought 
him  into  close  contact  with  the  German  Kaiser,  and  a  real 
friendship  had  sprung  up  between  them — the  Prince  frequently 
being  a  guest  on  board  the  Emperor's  yacht.  According  to 
views  held  in  several  quarters,  he  had  gone  to  Germany  in  the 
early  days  of  1899  expressly  to  seek  enlightenment  respecting 
the  Dreyfus  case,  and  in  calling  at  the  lillysee  on  February  16 
it  was  his  purpose  to  acquaint  Felix  Faure  with  what  he  had 
been  told.  It  has  also  been  said  that  he  did  so,  and  that  his 
statements  proved  a  great  blow  to  the  President,  who,  in  spite 
of  every  revelation  and  discovery,  had  hitherto  been  unable  to 
believe  in  the  innocence  of  Dreyfus. 

Faure,  so  slim  in  his  youth,  had  become  in  time  a  full-bodied 
man.  He  was  of  a  sanguineous  temperament,  a  rush  of  colour 
came  to  his  face  at  the  slightest  excitement ;  further,  his  neck 
had  thickened,  and  there  was  already  an  evident  predisposition 
to  apoplexy,  increased  perhaps  by  the  manner  in  which  he 
occasionally  over -exerted  himself.  M.  Charles  Dupuy,  the 
Prime  Minister  of  that  period,  has  related  that  he  often  found 
the  President  unwell.  On  one  occasion  Faure  placed  M.  Dupuy's 
hand  on  his  heart,  which  was  beating  violently,  and  said  to 
him  :  "  Feel  that !  You  see  to  what  a  condition  the  slightest 
anxiety  reduces  me ! "  Now  we  know,  by  Cardinal  Richard's 
statement,  that  Faure  was  already  ill  at  three  o'clock  on  the 
day  of  his  death.  Whether  the  Prince  of  Monaco  subsequently 
said  anything  very  serious  to  him  or  not  he  then  displayed 
much  the  same  unrest  and  lack  of  equilibrium.     "  He  was  strange 


DEATH  OF  F^LIX  FAURE  445 

in  his  manner ;  I  thought  him  ill,"  the  Prince  afterwards  stated 
to  his  friends.  Their  conversation  lasted  till  five  o'clock,  when 
the  President  accompanied  the  Prince  to  the  door  of  the  salon 
(Tattente,  and  then  returned  to  his  private  room.  General 
Hagron,  the  Secretary  General,  soon  afterwards  took  him  some 
decrees  to  sign,  and  he  then  seemed  to  have  recovered  his  self- 
control.  A  little  later  he  spoke  with  M.  Paoli,  the  travelling 
Commissary  of  Police,  and  remained  for  a  short  time  with  his 
private  secretary,  M.  Blondel,  in  whose  room  he  read  some 
telegrams  respecting  that  day's  parliamentary  sittings.  At 
half-past  six  o'clock  he  was  again  seen  by  M.  Le  Gall,  and  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  later,  while  the  latter  was  writing  a  letter, 
a  door,  by  which  his  room  and  the  President's  communicated, 
was  opened,  and  he  heard  Faure  gasping,  "Come  to  me,  Le 
Gall ;  I  am  ill,  very  ill."  On  looking  round,  he  saw  the  President 
clinging  to  one  leaf  of  the  door  to  prevent  himself  from  falling. 

He  hastened  to  him,  and  Dr.  Humbert,  the  family  medical 
man,  was  immediately  called.  Other  doctors,  MM.  Potain, 
Bergeron  and  Cheurlot,  were  also  summoned,  but  at  the  Pre- 
sident's own  request  Mme.  Faure  was  not  informed  of  his  illness 
until  the  near  approach  of  the  dinner-hour  made  it  necessary  to 
do  so.  At  first  neither  she  nor  Mile.  Lucie  Faure  evinced  any 
alarm,  it  being  their  opinion  that  the  President  had  been  seized 
with  a  fainting  fit  of  no  great  gravity.  In  fact,  Mme.  Faure 
remarked  :  "  It  cannot  be  serious ;  it  is  a  fainting  fit.  I  have 
seen  him  like  that  before."  But  when  a  fifth  medical  man,  Dr. 
Lannelongue,1  arrived,  he  pronounced  the  case  to  be  extremely 
serious,  and  indeed  another  seizure  supervened  and  all  efforts  to 
save  the  President  proved  unavailing.  Cerebral  congestion 
combined  with  haemorrhage  and  paralysis  of  the  face  and  the 
limbs  on  the  left  side  was,  according  to  the  doctors,  the  actual 
cause  of  that  sudden  death.2 

There  was,  of  course,  no  truth  whatever  in  a  wild  story 
which  circulated  in  Paris  to  the  effect  that  Faure  had  really 
expired  at  the  house  of  an  actress  belonging,  according  to  one 
paper,  to  the  Odeon,  according  to  another  to  the  Nouveautes, 
and  according  to  a  third  to  the  Grand  Opera,  and  that  his  life- 

1  See  ante,  p.  27^. 

2  Two  days  after  the  death  a  report  to  that  effect  stating  that  the 
symptoms  had  been  unmistakeable,  was  signed  by  the  five  medical  men 
mentioned  above.     Three  of  them  are  still  alive  and  adhere  to  their  report. 


446  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

less  body  had  been  brought  from  her  residence  to  the  Elysee. 
Almost  every  moment  of  the  President's  last  day  could  be 
accounted  for,  and  indeed  an  elaborate  statement  on  the  sub- 
ject was  issued  by  M.  Le  Gall. 

However,  a  certain  Mme.  Steinheil — who  in  November  1909 
was  tried  and  acquitted  on  the  charge  of  having  murdered  her 
husband  and  her  mother — declares  in  her  memoirs,  published 
in  1912,1  that  she  was  with  the  President  at  the  time  of  his 
first  seizure.  Her  husband,  Adolphe  Steinheil,  an  artist  of 
some  ability,  had  previously  painted  a  portrait  of  Faure,  and 
she  had  become,  she  says,  the  President's  confidante  and  secre- 
tary, assisting  him  to  prepare  an  autobiography  which  was  to 
have  constituted  a  secret  history  of  France  from  the  war  of 
1870  onward.  She  tells  us  that  she  received  from  Faure 
various  presents,  including  a  wonderful  pearl  necklace,  respect- 
ing which  she  relates  a  very  sensational  story,  which  is  not 
very  flattering  for  Faure's  memory.  Further,  Mme.  Steinheil 
says  that  she  arrived  at  the  Elysee  at  about  five  o'clock  on  the 
day  of  Faure's  death.  It  must  have  been  somewhat  later, 
however,  for  the  Prince  of  Monaco  left  at  five  o'clock,  and 
General  Hagron  and  M.  Paoli  saw  the  President  immediately 
afterwards,  that  is,  before  he  joined  M.  Blondel,  with  whom, 
says  Mme.  Steinheil,  she  found  him.  Blondel  left  them 
together,  she  adds,  and  soon  afterwards  Faure  had  a  first  attack 
of  dizziness.  She  mentions  that  he  was  greatly  worried  about 
the  Dreyfus  case,  and  that  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of  taking 
some  harmful  drug,  presumably  one  of  those  stimulants 
which  impart  momentary  strength,  but  afterwards  leave  one 
weakened.  However,  when  Faure  had  recovered  from  his  first 
attack,  Mme.  Steinheil  left  the  palace,  and  the  more  serious 
seizure  occurred  whilst  he  was  alone. 

Some  of  the  allegations  respecting  Faure's  death  were  cer- 
tainly made  for  political  purposes.  For  instance,  it  was  said  at 
the  time — and  the  assertion  was  subsequently  revived  by  scribes 
of  the  moribund  Nationalist  faction — that  this  sudden  demise 
was  due  to  a  crime,  the  work  of  the  Dreyfusite  party,  which 
had  every  reason  for  wishing  to  get  rid  of  the  President. 
The  suggestion  was  that  he  had  been  poisoned  by  means  of 

1  My  Memoirs,  by  Marguerite  Steinheil..  The  volume  is  highly  dramatic, 
and  contains  some  wonderful  stories  of  French  judicial  and  journalistic 
methods. 


DEATH  OF  F^LIX  FAURE  447 

cyanide  of  potassium  inserted  in  a  cigar.  It  has  been  urged 
in  support  of  that  story  that  it  was  deemed  best  not  to  photo- 
graph Faure  when  he  lay  in  state  at  the  Elysee,  on  account 
of  the  contracted  condition  of  his  face,  in  which  scientists 
had  recognised  one  of  the  effects  of  poisoning  by  cyanide  of 
potassium.  But  Faure  was  surrounded  by  attendants  in  his 
last  hours,  and  none  ever  detected  any  odour  of  bitter  almonds 
as  would  have  been  the  case  had  he  been  poisoned  in  the  way 
alleged.  Besides,  although  cyanide  of  potassium  does  not  kill 
as  rapidly  as  prussic  acid,  from  which  it  is  derived,  it  is  followed, 
according  to  medical  authorities,  by  a  fatal  result  in  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour  at  the  utmost,  whereas  Faure's  agony  was 
prolonged  for  over  two  hours.  Besides,  why  should  one  doubt 
the  unanimous  report  of  five  medical  men  of  high  standing  ? 

We  believe,  as  M.  Charles  Dupuy,  the  Prime  Minister  of 
the  time,  has  indicated,  that  Faure's  illness  and  collapse 
were  in  a  large  measure  due  to  the  incessant  worries  which 
assailed  him.  Ambitious  and  inclined  to  be  vain,  he  had 
assumed  office  with  the  desire  to  make  his  Presidency  glorious, 
epoch-making  in  the  annals  of  the  Republic.  Of  that  result 
he  had  felt  assured  at  the  time  of  the  Czar's  visit  and  his 
own  voyage  to  Russia.  But  the  Fashoda  affair  had  proved  a 
hard  blow,  and  the  Dreyfus  affair  became  yet  another  blow  at 
every  turn  it  took.  There  was  not  merely  all  the  turmoil  which 
it  aroused  in  France,  there  was  the  attitude  assumed  in  regard 
to  it  by  almost  the  entire  European  press.  And  yet  in  only 
two  years'  time  a  great  Exhibition  was  to  be  held  in  Paris  to 
mark  the  close  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  and  it  was  Faure's 
ambition  that  he  might  then  receive  there  Emperors,  Kings, 
and  Princes  galore,  attracted  by  the  festival.  He  had  even 
hoped  at  one  moment  that  the  German  Kaiser  might  come. 
But  the  success  of  that  Exhibition  on  which  he  had  set  his 
heart  was  becoming  more  and  more  doubtful  every  day ;  the 
honour  of  the  army,  in  which  that  of  the  nation  was,  in  his 
opinion,  bound  up,  also  appeared  to  be  now  in  jeopardy ;  every- 
thing, indeed,  seemed  to  be  crumbling,  and  in  any  case  the  glory 
of  his  Presidency  was  irretrievably  tarnished.  All  those  thoughts 
may  have  weighed  upon  his  mind. 

While  Faure  undoubtedly  had  his  faults,  he  had  his  qualities 
also.  He  often  showed  that  he  was  not  wanting  in  energy  or 
acumen,  and  it  is  probable  that  if  the  Dreyfus  affair  had  been 


448  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

anything  but  a  military  one,  he — with  his  natural  eagerness  to 
assert  his  prerogative  and  exercise  his  influence — would  have 
prevented  it  from  taking  the  course  it  did.  As  it  happened, 
he  placed  implicit  confidence  in  the  military  commanders,  and 
could  not  believe  in  any  conspiracy  to  defeat  the  ends  of  justice, 
even  among  subordinate  officers.  It  is  regrettable  that  a  man 
who  began  life  so  well,  and  succeeded  in  it  for  many  years  by 
force  of  real  ability,  should  have  failed  to  prove  equal  to  circum- 
stances when  he  was  confronted  by  the  great  test  by  which 
history  must  judge  him. 


Emile   Loubet 


/ 


t    «     c       c 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  PRESIDENCY  OF  EMILE  LOUBET — THE  RUSSIAN 
ALLIANCE  AND  THE  ENTENTE  CORDIALE — 
THE   MOROCCO   TROUBLE    BEGINS. 

The  Election  of  M.  Loubet — Demonstrations  in  Paris — The  Loubet  Family 
and  its  Name — M.  Loubet 's  Early  Years — His  Marriage  and  Children — 
Quesnay  de  Beaurepaire  and  Panama — The  End  of  the  Dreyfus  Affair 
— The  Nationalist  Band — Christiani's  Attempt  to  assault  M.  Loubet — 
Waldeck-Rousseau's  energetic  Policy — The  Struggle  with  the  Religious 
Orders — The  Separation  of  Church  and  State — Foreign  Relations  under 
M.  Loubet — M.  Delcasse — France,  Russia,  Germany,  and  the  Boer 
War — Improved  Relations  with  Italy — The  Emperor  Nicholas  again  in 
France — Sketch  of  the  History  of  the  Russian  Alliance — Edward  VII. 
visits  Paris  in  State — His  Popularity  among  the  French — The  Causes  of 
the  bad  Relations  between  France  and  England — The  Entente  Cordiale 
Society — Effects  of  the  King's  Visit — Conventions  between  France  and 
Great  Britain  respecting  Newfoundland,  West  Africa,  Egypt,  Morocco, 
Siam,  Madagascar,  and  the  New  Hebrides — The  War  between  Russia 
and  Japan  and  Anglo-French  Relations. — The  Trouble  in  Morocco  and 
Franco-German  Relations. 

On  February  18,  1899,  a  Congress  of  the  Senate  and  the 
Chamber  once  more  met  at  Versailles  to  elect  a  new  President 
of  the  Republic.  The  President  of  the  Senate  was  at  that  time 
M.  Emile  Loubet,  who  by  right  of  his  office  became  President 
of  the  Congress,  and  thus  directed  the  proceedings  of  his  own 
election,  for  such  was  the  result  of  the  voting.  The  four 
principal  Republican  groups  of  the  legislature,  the  Progressive 
Union,  the  Democratic  Left,  the  Socialist-Radical,  and  the 
Socialist  parties  had  conjointly  issued  a  declaration  to  the  effect 
that  they  would  only  support  a  Republican  candidate  who  had 
not  been  mixed  up  in  party  struggles  of  recent  years.  There- 
upon M.  Loubet's  name  occurred  to  everybody,  and  at  the  first 

449  2  G 


450  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

ballot  he  was  elected  by  483  votes.1  "lama  Republican,  an 
old  Republican,  and  I  will  show  myself  a  faithful  one,"  he  said 
when  the  result  was  known. 

His  election  angered  the  Nationalists,  Royalists,  and 
Clericalists  extremely,  for  they  felt  that  France  was  escaping 
them.  That  evening,  when  the  new  President  arrived  from 
Versailles  at  the  Gare  St.  Lazare  in  Paris,  a  crowd  of  20,000 
people  awaited  him.  Among  it  were  perhaps  eight  hundred  of 
the  hired  demonstrators  who  had  so  long  shouted  "Vive 
Tarmee  ! "  and  "  Conspuez  les  Juifs ! "  They  were  usually  paid 
at  the  rate  of  two  francs  per  evening,  the  pay-offices  being  in 
the  vicinity  of  the  Boulevard  des  Italiens.  Young  Orleanist 
noblemen  were  often  seen  urging  these  men  to  excesses,  and 
there  was  little  doubt  as  to  whence  some  of  the  money  came 
to  requite  their  services.  There  had  also  arisen  a  Ligue  de  la 
Patrie  Francaise,  an  offspring  of  the  old  Ligue  des  Patriotes, 
which  name  it  ended  by  taking,  and  this  association,  in  which 
the  irrepressible  Paul  Deroulede  figured  conspicuously,  also 
helped  to  "  organise "  riotous  demonstrations.  Thus,  as  M. 
Loubet  drove  with  his  escort  out  of  the  courtyard  of  the  Gare 
St.  Lazare,  shouts  of  "Demission!  Panama !  Demission  ! "  assailed 
his  ears,  and  some  of  the  hired  roughs  began  to  pelt  the  carriage 
with  mud.  It  all  lasted  only  a  few  minutes,  but  it  clearly 
indicated  the  sentiments  and  the  temper  of  the  Nationalist 
combination.  And  there  was  mere  to  come.  The  funeral  of 
Felix  Faure  was  scarcely  over  on  February  18  when  Deroulede 
and  his  friend  Marcel  Habert  endeavoured  to  provoke  a  march 
on  the  Elysee,  the  former  appealing  to  General  Roget,  who 
commanded  a  brigade  on  duty  at  the  funeral,  to  lead  his  men 
to  the  palace.  But  Roget  refused  to  do  any  such  thing,  and 
Deroulede  and  Habert  were  arrested.  Nevertheless  paid  demon- 
strations continued  for  several  evenings  on  the  boulevards,  and 
the  Duke  of  Orleans  was  waiting  anxiously  at  Brussels  for  a 
summons  to  Paris  in  order  that  he  might  seize  the  throne. 
His  hopes  were  not  realised,  however,  the  demonstrations 
were  far  more  noisy  than  important,  and  if  a  fairly  strong 
Ministry  had  been  in  office  they  might  have  been  suppressed 
without  difficulty.     M.  Dupuy  had  tendered  his  resignation  to 

1  The  Congress  comprised  883  members,  of  whom  817  voted.  M.  Meline, 
who  was  M.  Loubet's  only  serious  opponent,  secured  279  votes.  Cavaignac 
obtained  23,  Deschanel  10,  and  Dupuy  8  votes. 


PRESIDENT  LOUBET  451 

the  new  President  as  he  was  constitutionally  bound  to  do,  but 
the  latter,  anxious,  perhaps,  to  feel  his  way  before  contributing 
to  any  important  changes,  had  declined  it. 

M.  Loubet  was  then  sixty-one  years  old,  short  of  stature, 
with  a  grizzly  beard,  an  intellectual  brow,  and  bright,  expressive 
eyes.  He  was  born  on  September  30, 1838,  at  Marsanne,  a  very 
ancient  bourg  of  some  1300  inhabitants  near  Montelimar  in  the 
Drome.  The  family  had  been  established  there  at  least  since 
1645,  that  being  the  date  of  the  death  of  a  certain  Dominique 
Loubet,  who  left  a  son  named  Noel.  Several  of  the  latter's 
descendants  became  "  consuls  "  and  "  treasurers  "  of  the  neigh- 
bouring bourg — now  village — of  Reauville.1  At  last  came  a 
certain  Jean  Joseph  Loubet  of  Marsanne  and  Reauville,  who  on 
the  7th  Brumaire,  Year  Five  of  the  Republic,  married  a  demoiselle 
Rose  Bayle,  belonging  to  a  very  ancient  family  of  Dauphine, 
resident  at  Marsanne  since  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
when  it  had  noble  rank  and  belonged  to  the  court  kept  there 
by  the  Counts  of  Valentinois.  The  marriage  of  Rose  and  Jean 
Joseph  led  to  the  birth  of  two  sons  :  Antonin  Loubet,  doctor  of 
medicine,  who  left  no  issue,  and  Auguste  Loubet,  mayor  of 
Marsanne  and  Chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honour.  The  latter 
married  Mile.  Marie  Marguerite  Nicolet,  and  three  children  were 
born  of  the  union :  (1)  Auguste,  a  doctor  of  medicine,  who 
settled  at  Grignan  on  some  property  which,  be  it  noted,  had 
already  belonged  to  a  branch  of  the  Loubet  family  in  the  time 
of  Mme.  de  Sevigne ;  (2)  Emile  Francois,  the  future  President 
of  the  Republic;  and  (3)  Felicie,  who  married  M.  Barbier, 
banker  at  Valence.  From  the  foregoing,  it  may  be  taken  that 
the  Loubets 2  were  of  good  old  yeoman  stock  which  had  made 
its  way  in  the  world. 

1  One  of  them,  we  find,  married  a  demoiselle  Elisabeth  Coustou,  who,  the 
name  being  uncommon,  may  have  belonged  to  the  same  stock  as  the  famous 
sculptors. 

2  The  name  is  pronounced  Loube  in  Northern  France,  but  its  terminal  t 
is  sounded  in  the  family's  own  part  of  the  country.  In  the  same  way  the 
terminal  letter  of  nougat  (hardbake)  is  sounded  at  Montelimar,  whose  nougat 
is  renowned.  This  will  explain  some  lines  of  an  irreverent  **  Chanson  de 
Montmartre,"  concocted  after  M.  Loubet 's  election  to  the  Presidency  : 

Monsieur  Loubete  nous  gate, 
Nous  gate  de  Montelimar. 

In  Zola's  novel  Br.  Pascal,  Antoine  Macquart,  the  drunkard  who  is 
destroyed  by  spontaneous  combustion,  is  said  to  possess  a  loubet,  that  name 
being  often  given  in  Provence  to  a  dog.     Etymologies  which  appear  obvious 


452  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

The  future  President  was  first  educated  at  Marsanne, 
whence  he  went  to  the  college  of  Crest.  He  and  his  school- 
fellows used  to  bathe  in  the  Drome,  and  young  Loubet  learnt  to 
swim  before  he  had  entered  his  teens.  This  proved  useful,  for 
one  day  he  pluckily  saved  a  schoolmate  from  being  drowned. 
Both  he  and  his  elder  brother  were  sent  to  Paris  in  1857,  Auguste 
to  study  medicine  and  Emile  to  study  law.  They  lived  together 
(like  other  young  students  of  strictly  limited  means)  in  a  sixth- 
floor  garret  in  the  Rue  de  Tournon  (No.  57).  £mile  took  his 
degree  as  a  licentiate -in -law  in  I860,  but  although  this 
qualified  him  to  follow  the  profession  of  an  advocate  after  the 
usual  stage  or  term  of  probation  (which  one  usually  spends  as 
second  or  third  secretary  to  a  practising  advocate)  he  was  not 
satisfied  with  it  but  qualified  himself  for  the  degree  of  doctor-in- 
law,  which  he  took  in  1863.1  He  subsequently  returned  home 
and  became  a  member  of  the  bar  of  Montelimar,  a  sub- 
prefecture  with  about  13,000  inhabitants  and  a  civil  tribunal 
having  jurisdiction  over  an  arrondissement  with  a  population  of 
60,000.  Its  bar  is  composed  of  six  or  seven  advocates,  and 
the  causes  argued  before  it  are  principally  such  as  arise  from 
disputes  among  the  inhabitants  and  the  surrounding  peasantry 
over  the  division  of  inheritances,  rights-of-way,  party- walls, 
leases,  tenancies,  and  similar  covenants.  And  it  was  in  that 
narrow  circle  that  young  Emile  Loubet  was  apparently  going  to 
bury  himself ! 

But  as  his  compatriots  would  say:  "II  avait  recule  pour 
mieux  sauter."  Besides  practising  his  profession  he  became  a 
district  councillor  for  Marsanne,  mayor  of  Grignan,  where  he 
inherited  his  uncle's  property,  and  then  mayor  of  Montelimar,  to 
which  last  post  his  fellow-townsmen  raised  him  at  the  fall  of  the 
Second  Empire.  In  the  previous  year  he  had  led  to  the  altar 
a  charming  young  person  who  became  an  excellent  wife,  Mile. 
Marie  Louise  Picard,  then  in  her  twentieth  year,  and  daughter 
of  a  successful  tradesman  of  Valence.2     He  did  much  for  the 

are  often  faulty,  yet  we  do  not  think  there  can  be  much  doubt  about  the 
etymology  of  loubet. 

1  De  Lege  Commissoria  was  the  subject  of  his  thesis  in  Roman  law,  that 
of  his  French  thesis  relating  to  rights  and  claims  in  the  sale  of  movable 
property. 

2  The  children  of  the  marriage  were :  (1)  Marguerite  Josephine,  who 
married  M.  Humbert  de  Soubeyran  de  St.  Prix,  judge,  first  of  the  Civil 
Tribunal  of  Marseilles,  and  later  of  that  of  Paris  ;  (2)  Denis,  who  died  in 


PRESIDENT  LOUBET  453 

town  of  Montelimar  during  his  mayoralty,  and  in  1876  he  was 
elected  deputy  for  the  district.  He  was  one  of  the  "  363  "  who 
defended  the  Republic  against  the  attempts  of  MacMahon's 
reactionary  ministers,  and  after  being  repeatedly  elected  to  the 
Chamber,  he  was  chosen  in  1885  as  a  senator  for  his  native 
department.  He  became  Minister  of  Public  Works,  Minister 
of  the  Interior  and  Prime  Minister,1  and  at  last,  in  1896,  he 
succeeded  Challemel-Lacour  as  President  of  the  Senate. 

Firm  in  his  republicanism,  tolerant  in  his  religious  views, 
though  the  political  encroachments  of  the  Church  compelled 
strong  measures  against  it  under  his  presidency,  shrewd  in  his 
judgment  of  men,  sincerely  but  not  noisily  patriotic,  solicitous 
for  the  well-being  of  the  masses,  benevolent  to  the  poor  and 
compassionate  to  the  suffering,2  a  fast  friend,  so  courteous  to  all 
that  he  never  really  made  a  personal  enemy,  simple  in  his  life 
yet  capable  of  real  dignity  of  manner,  Emile  Lou  bet  was 
undoubtedly  the  best  man  that  France  in  1899  could  have 
chosen  to  be  her  chief  magistrate.  We  believe,  too,  that  posterity 
will  eventually  assign  to  him  a  really  high  place  in  the  history 
of  the  Republic.  The  shouts  of  "  Panama  !  "  with  which  hired 
brawlers  greeted  his  election  were  nonsensical  as  well  as  offensive. 
They  referred  to  the  failure  of  the  first  proceedings  against  the 
Panama  Company's  Directors,  who,  as  those  proceedings  were 

infancy  ;  (3)  Paul  Auguste,  born  May  13,  1874,  doctor-in-law,  advocate  at 
the  Paris  Appeal  Court,  and  general  councillor  of  the  Drome ;  and  Philibert 
iWle,  born  May  10,  1892. 

1  See  ante,  p.  347. 

2  Throughout  his  Presidency  he  interested  himself  in  the  efforts  of  science 
against  tuberculosis  and  cancer,  and  in  many  institutions  for  children, 
youths,  young  girls,  and  others.  He  was  not  a  wealthy  man.  He  may  have 
been  worth  £14,000  when  he  was  elected  President,  but  not  more.  He  then 
gave  over  £1000  to  the  hospitals  and  the  poor,  and  throughout  his  presidency 
he  distributed  in  benefactions  about  £5000  every  year.  The  presidential 
emoluments  amount  to  £4000  per  month,  certain  supplementary  credits  being 
voted  when  sovereigns  visit  Paris  in  state.  But  the  expenses  attaching  to  the 
office  are  large,  and  the  applications  for  assistance  made  to  the  President 
of  the  Republic  are  very  numerous.  We  know  that  in  Faure's  time  there 
was  a  list  of  20,000  persons  who  had  been  relieved  by  him  or  his  predecessors. 
M.  Loubet,  of  course,  had  neither  the  handsome  fortune  of  Faure  nor  the 
great  wealth  of  Casimir-Perier,  but  he  never  hesitated  to  help  institutions  or 
individuals  so  far  as  he  was  able.  No  worthier  man  was  ever  President  of 
France.  It  was  strange  that  at  his  election  he  was  so  little  known  to  the 
newspaper  correspondents.  We  have  always  recalled  with  some  satisfaction 
that  we  were  at  once  able  to  contribute  an  article  of  some  length  respecting 
him  to  The  Westminster  Gazette. 


454  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

not  instituted  within  a  certain  delay,  benefited  by  prescription. 
That,  however,  was  due  entirely  to  the  remissness  of  the 
Public  Prosecutor  of  that  time,  M.  Quesnay  de  Beaurepaire, 
who  in  trying  to  cast  the  responsibility  on  M.  Loubet,  severely 
damaged  his  own  reputation,  for  it  was  shown  that  he  had 
delayed  taking  action  until  the  very  last  day,  only  then  going 
in  search  of  M.  Loubet  (Prime  Minister  at  the  time)  in  order  to 
settle  the  proceedings  with  him.  As  it  happened,  he  found  him 
absent,  and  the  last  day  elapsed  without  anything  being  done, 
in  such  wise  that  although  proceedings  were  soon  afterwards 
instituted  they  were  quashed  on  appeal.1  Months  had  elapsed 
during  which  the  Public  Prosecutor  might  have  moved  in  the 
matter,  but  he  had  not  done  so,  and  thus  it  follows  that  if 
anybody  had  shielded  the  Panama  Company's  Directors  it  was 
himself. 

The  recent  Presidencies  of  M.  Loubet  and  his  successor 
M.  Fallieres  cannot  be  judged  from  any  historical  standpoint. 
The  full  effect  of  many  measures  adopted  at  these  periods  is 
still  doubtful ;  the  evolution  of  the  Republic  initiated  in 
Loubefs  time  still  continues ;  the  changes  also  in  the  attitudes 
of  the  European  powers  cannot  in  some  respects  be  properly 
estimated.  We  shall  therefore  confine  ourselves,  from  this 
point  onward,  to  mentioning  some  of  the  chief  features  of  the 
Presidencies  of  M.  Loubet  and  M.  Fallieres.  The  latter's  term 
of  office  expires,  be  it  noted,  early  in  1913. 

The  Dreyfus  case  was  brought  to  an  end  in  1899.  Revision 
being  accorded,  the  unfortunate  Captain  Dreyfus  was  brought 
from  Devil's  Island  to  France  and  tried  again  by  court-martial 
at  Rennes.  He  was  once  more  convicted,  for  military  prejudice, 
and  in  some  instances,  it  must  be  said,  wilful  mendacity, 
triumphed  over  evidence  and  logic  ;  but  his  innocence  had  be- 
come so  manifest  that  M.  Loubet  granted  him  a  pardon,  which 
he  reluctantly  accepted  (September  1899).  A  general  amnesty 
law,  cancelling  many  proceedings  which  had  arisen  out  of  the 
affair  and  barring  others,  ensued.  Captain  Dreyfus,  however, 
retained  the  right  of  appealing  to  the  Cour  de  Cassation  if  any 
new  fact  in  relation  to  his  case  should  come  to  light.  In  1904 
he  availed  himself  of  that  privilege,  and  the  Cour  de  Cassation 
inquired  afresh  into  the  whole  affair.  In  the  result  it  found 
his  innocence  proved,  and  quashed  all  proceedings  against  him 
1  See  ante,  p.  362. 


CLOSE  OF  THE  DREYFUS  CASE  455 

(July  1906).  He  was  thereupon  re-installed  in  the  army  with  a 
step  in  rank,  and  was  assigned  such  duties  as  his  shattered 
health  could  bear ;  but  he  appears  to  have  found  his  position 
unsatisfactory,  for  he  ultimately  resigned. 

Behind  the  affair  itself  there  had  lurked  many  dangers  and 
ambitions.  The  men  who  had  striven  to  impede  the  course  of 
justice  were  not  influenced  so  much  by  a  desire  to  keep  Dreyfus 
in  prison  as  by  a  desire  to  overthrow  the  Republican  constitution. 
The  Nationalists,  as  they  were  called,  were  compounded  of  four 
elements  :  Royalists,  who  wished  to  place  the  Duke  of  Orleans  on 
the  throne ;  Nationalists,  who  wished  to  transform  the  existing 
parliamentary  Republic  into  a  dictatorial  one,  in  which  the 
army  would  have  been  paramount;  anti-Semites,  pure  and 
simple,  who  banded  themselves  with  the  others  from  a  desire 
to  satisfy  their  fierce  unreasoning  hatred  of  the  Jews ;  and 
Clericalists,  who  insinuated  themselves  into  the  general  move- 
ment in  order  that  it  might  tend  ad  majorem  Dei  gloriam,  that 
is  to  the  supremacy  of  Holy  Church.  They  were  quite  willing 
that  the  soldiery  should  be  the  arm  of  any  new  regime  that  might 
be  established,  but  they  were  determined  to  be  its  head.  And 
they  were  the  most  dangerous  of  all  the  factions  which  banded 
themselves  together  to  overturn  the  Republic. 

In  June  1899  the  Dupuy  Ministry  having  fallen  from  power, 
owing  to  an  attempted  assault  on  President  Loubet  at  the 
Anteuil  races  and  the  demonstrations  which  ensued,1  a  statesman 
of  a  firm,  strong  character  was  summoned  by  M.  Loubet  to  the 
head  of  affairs.  This  was  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau.2  He  dealt  in 
turn  with  all  the  opposing  factions  and  smote  them  hip  and 
thigh.     He  proceeded  against  the  irrepressible  Deroulede,  the 

1  The  assault  was  the  act  of  Baron  Henri  Christiani.  He  attempted  to 
strike  M.  Loubet  in  the  presidential  tribune  on  the  A&euil  race-course.  The 
President  was  seated  at  that  moment  between  Countess  Tornielli  and  Mme. 
Leon  y  Casteilo,  the  wives  of  the  Italian  and  Spanish  Ambassadors. 
However,  General  Brugere  and  M.  Crozier,  director  of  the  Protocol,  darted 
forward  to  frustrate  Christian's  intention,  and  it  was  really  only  the  general 
whom  he  struck,  the  tip  of  his  cane  barely  reaching  the  President's  hat. 
There  was  a  great  crowd  of  young  Royalist  noblemen  in  the  enclosure,  all 
wearing  white  carnations,  and  they  demonstrated  noisily.  But  at  Long- 
champ  on  the  following  Sunday  all  Republican  Paris  turned  out  to  acclaim 
M.  Loubet.  Christiani  was  sentenced  to  four  years'  imprisonment,  but 
M.  Loubet  pardoned  him  at  the  end  of  nine  months.  The  President 
exercised  his  prerogative  of  pardon  very  liberally,  and  kept  the  executioner 
extremely  idle, 

2  See  ante,  p.  248. 


456  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

leader  of  the  autocratic  Republicans,  against  Jules  Guerin,  the 
virulent  anti-Semite  champion,  against  M.  Buffet,  the  agent  of 
the  Duke  of  Orleans,  and  against  the  Assumptionist  Fathers, 
whose  newspapers  had  waged  incessant  war  against  the 
constituted  powers.  Guerin,  who  resisted  for  a  while  in  his  so- 
called  "Fort  Chabrol,,,  was  sentenced  to  ten  years1  imprison- 
ment, Buffet  and  Deroulede 1  were  banished  for  ten  years,  the 
Assumptionist  Fathers  were  fined  and  their  community  was 
dissolved.  Recalcitrant  or  disaffected  general  officers  were  also 
removed  from  their  commands ;  judicial  officials  who  failed  in 
their  duty  were  summoned  before  chambers  of  discipline,  or,  in 
the  case  of  public  prosecutors,  dismissed  from  their  posts. 

This  helped  to  promote  some  quietude  during  the  ensuing 
year  1900,  when  another  great  Universal  Exhibition  was  held  in 
Paris.  But  there  was  more  to  be  done.  The  Clerical  onslaught 
on  the  Republic  was  directed  less  by  the  parochial  clergy  than 
by  the  religious  orders.  In  France  those  communities  were 
becoming  all  powerful  in  the  Church,  many  of  whose  Bishops 
even  trembled  before  them.  Their  numbers  and  their  wealth 
had  also  greatly  increased  during  the  last  ten  or  twelve  years, 
all  legislation  respecting  them  having  proved  ineffective.  In 
many  instances  they  devoted  themselves  to  educating  the  young, 
in  which  respect  the  very  specimens  of  their  pupils'  proficiency 
which  they  submitted  to  the  jury  at  the  Paris  Exhibition  of 
1900  showed  that  they  were  rearing  them  to  hate  and  oppose 
the  Republic.  It  was,  we  think,  M.  Antonin  Dubost,  afterwards 
President  of  the  Senate,  who  first  made  that  discovery,  and 
showed  scores  of  examples  of  subversive  teaching  to  members 
of  Waldeck-Rousseau's  Government.  A  law  regulating  the  status 
of  the  religious  orders  and  providing  that  the  many  which  had 
sprung  up  without  authorisation  should  apply  for  it  was 
promulgated  on  July  1,  1901,  and  steps  were  taken  to  repeal 
the  Falloux  law,  which  dated  from  the  Second  Republic,  and 
enabled  anybody  to  exercise  the  teaching  profession.  It  was, 
indeed,  evident  that  the  incessant  unrest  from  which  the 
Republic  suffered  was  due  to  the  fact  that  generation  after 
generation  of  children  was  brought  up  by  men  anxious  for  the 
regime's  overthrow.  Unfortunately  Waldeck -Rousseau  was 
stricken  with  a  mortal  disease,  and  though  there  were  hopes 
of  prolonging  his  life  for  a  time,  it  was  necessary  for  him  to 
1  De>oulede's  friend,  Marcel  Habert,  was  banished  for  five  years. 


THE  REPUBLIC  AND  THE  CHURCH  457 

abandon  office.  His  Administration  resigned,  then,  in  June 
1902,  and  was  followed  by  one  formed  by  M.  Combes.  The 
struggle  with  the  Church  and  the  disaffected  elements  of  the 
army  then  became  accentuated.  Combes  went  further  with  the 
Clericals  than  Wal deck-Rousseau  might  have  gone,  and  General 
Andre  proceeded  very  vigorously  against  anti  -  Republican 
officers,  both  long  being  supported  by  a  compact  majority  in 
the  Legislature,  which  realised  that  the  fight  must  be  carried 
to  a  finish.  The  schools  of  unauthorised  religious  communities 
were  closed,  whereupon  hostile  demonstrations  took  place  in 
many  rural  districts  where  the  Clericalists  were  in  a  majority, 
the  Bishops  also  protested,  and  the  Government  and  the 
Chamber  retaliated  by  appointing  a  Committee  to  study  the 
question  of  the  separation  of  Church  and  State.  At  last  it 
became  necessary  to  expel  the  recalcitrant  religious  orders  from 
France  (April  to  May  1903).  There  was  no  alternative  in  the 
matter.  They  defied  the  civil  power,  they  would  only  recognise 
those  laws  that  pleased  them.1 

Pope  Louis  XIII.  was  at  that  time  sinking  rapidly.  He  was 
ninety-two  years  old.  Had  he  been  younger — sagacious,  in- 
genious, as  he  then  was — he  might  have  devised  some  compromise 
of  a  nature  to  prevent  the  struggle  from  going  to  extremes, 
although,  at  this  stage,  the  great  majority  of  Frenchmen  were 
thoroughly  roused  against  the  Clerical  imperium  in  imperio 
which  ever  threatened  their  institutions.  However  the  curia 
around  the  Pope  now  really  exercised  authority  at  the  Vatican, 
and  a  fresh  contest  broke  out  respecting  the  appointment  of 
various  new  Bishops,  Rome  refusing  to  adhere  to  formulae  which 
she  had  observed  in  the  days  of  Napoleon  I.  Amidst  all  this 
Leo  XIII.  died,  and  the  Conclave  which  then  assembled  elected 
as  his  successor  a  Pontiff  who  seemed  to  have  stepped  straight 
out  of  the  Middle  Ages  into  the  Twentieth  Century.  From  the 
hour  when  Pius  X.  seated  himself  in  the  Chair  of  St.  Peter, 
the  denunciation  of  the  Concordat  and  the  separation  of  Church 
and  State  in  France  became  foregone  conclusions.  The  Holy 
Father  even  precipitated  events  by  the  insult  which  he  offered 
to  President  Loubet  on  the  occasion  of  the  latter's  visit  to  King 
Victor  Emmanuel  at  Rome  in  April  1904.  The  French  Govern- 
ment, at  M.  Loubet's  personal  request,  had  done  all  that  could 

1  We  have  put  the  case  very  broadly.     We  much  regret  that  we  are  here 
unable  to  supply  details,  though  a  mass  of  material  lies  before  us. 


458  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

be  expected  of  a  Sovereign  State  with  the  object  of  arranging 
a  visit  to  Pope  Pius  at  the  same  time  ;  but  His  Holiness  clung 
to  the  fetish  of  the  Temporal  Power — gone  for  ever  so  far  as 
the  city  of  Rome  is  concerned — and  roundly  denounced  the 
Presidential  visit  paid  to  the  usurping  King  of  Italy.  France 
then  recalled  her  Ambassador  to  the  Vatican  (May)  and  within 
three  months  broke  off  diplomatic  relations.  Finally,  a  law 
separating  Church  and  State  in  France  was  voted  by  the 
Chamber  (July  1905)  and  the  Senate  (December  1905).  Many 
Republicans  only  voted  that  law  with  regret,  believing  that  it 
was  best  to  retain  some  control  over  the  Church ;  and,  besides, 
the  law  seems  to  have  been  defective  in  many  respects,  the 
Church  having  steadily  shown  her  contempt  for  some  of  its 
provisions.  However,  although  the  Church's  power  is  not 
extinct  it  has  been  greatly  curbed,  and  it  must  dwindle  yet 
more  and  more  with  the  diffusion  of  democratic  principles  now 
that  the  vast  majority  of  the  children  of  France  are  reared  in 
conformity  with  the  spirit  of  the  age. 

But  there  was  another  distinguishing  feature  of  M.  Loubet's 
Presidency,  his  intercourse  with  foreign  sovereigns,  the  cement- 
ing of  the  Russian  Alliance,  the  conclusion  of  the  Entente 
Cordiale  with  Great  Britain,  and  the  great  improvement  in  the 
relations  with  Italy  and  Spain.  In  these  matters  a  leading  role 
was  played  by  M.  Theophile  Delcasse.  Short  and  by  no  means 
impressive  in  appearance,  having  in  fact  at  times  a  somewhat 
pert  expression  of  face,  M.  Delcasse  is  a  Southerner,  born  in 
1852  at  Pamiers  in  the  Ariege.  He  first  attracted  attention  by 
his  contributions  on  foreign  affairs  to  La  RSpublique  Frangaise, 
the  journal  founded  by  Gambetta.  He  entered  the  Chamber  as 
a  Deputy  for  Foix  in  1889.  Nine  years  later  he  became  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  and  retained  that  post  until  June  6, 1905, 
when  he  resigned  owing  to  a  dispute  which  had  arisen  between 
France  and  Germany  with  respect  to  Morocco.  About  the  time 
when  he  first  assumed  office  the  Fashoda  affair  occurred,  as 
already  mentioned,  and  a  little  later  Great  Britain  became 
involved  in  war  in  South  Africa.  French  opinion  was  decidedly 
against  us  throughout  that  period,  and  a  large  section  of  the 
Parisian  press  clamoured  for  intervention  in  favour  of  the  Boer 
Republics.  At  a  certain  stage  the  young  Queen  of  Holland, 
moved  by  the  representations  of  the  Boer  delegates  in  Europe, 
personally  appealed  to  the  Czar,  her  relative, — both  of  them 


FRANCE,  THE  BOERS,  AND  ITALY     459 

being  descended  from  the  Emperor  Paul  of  Russia — and  Count 
Muravieff  then  communicated  with  France  on  the  subject. 
Germany,  which  some  time  previously  had  suggested  to  Mr. 
Kruger's  agent,  Dr.  Leyds,  through  the  Dutch  Government,1 
that  he  should  solicit  mediation,  was  also  sounded  on  the 
question,  but  from  one  or  another  cause  the  pourparlers  fell 
through,  and  whatever  statements  may  have  been  attributed 
by  newspapers  to  the  Kaiser,  respecting  the  character  of  the 
suggested  intervention,  it  stands  on  record  that  Prince  von 
Biilow,  the  German  Chancellor,  declared  in  the  Reichstag  in 
December  1900  that  in  "  no  quarter  whatever  had  the  idea  of 
any  kind  of  mediation — except  peaceful  mediation  with  the 
assent  of  England — ever  been  entertained."  In  regard  to 
France,  she  at  that  time  was  still  embittered  against  us  by  the 
outcome  of  the  Fashoda  affair,  and  this  increased  her  sympathy 
for  the  Boers,  but  although  Mr.  Kruger  was  received  at  the 
Iillysee  (before  we  notified  the  annexation  of  the  Transvaal)  it 
does  not  appear  that  the  Government  of  the  Republic  ever  had 
any  intention  of  armed  interference.  Besides,  it  knew  that  any 
war  with  Great  Britain  must  be  largely  a  naval  one,  and  it  was 
painfully  conscious  of  the  deficiencies  of  the  French  fleet.  At 
the  same  time  the  official  relations  with  Great  Britain  were, 
perhaps,  somewhat  strained. 

In  1901  there  came  some  augury  of  better  things.  French 
relations  with  Italy  had  long  been  bad.  Signor  Crispi,  the 
Bismarckian  statesman,  to  whom  many  attributed  a  great 
hostility  to  France,  had  fallen  from  office  in  1896,  but  there  had 
been  no  rapprochement  under  his  immediate  successors,  who, 
although  such  a  rapprochement  was  very  desirable  on  economic 
grounds,  feared,  apparently,  that  it  might  clash  with  the  Triple 
Alliance  to  which  Italy  was  a  party.  In  July  1900,  however, 
King  Humbert  was  assassinated  at  Monza,  and  his  son,  Victor 
Emmanuel  III.,  succeeded  him.  In  February  the  following 
year  a  Zanardelli  Cabinet,  with  Signor  Prinetti  as  Foreign 
Minister,  came  into  office,  and  in  April,  the  relations  with  France 
improving,  the  Italian  fleet  visited  Toulon  at  a  time  when  M. 
Loubet  was  on  the  Riviera.     That  was  a  hopeful  sign. 

In  September  the  Emperor  and  Empress  of  Russia  came  to 
France  in  connection  with  the  manoeuvres  of  the  French  army, 

1  Dutch  despatches,  June  1899.       Dr.  Leyds  did  not  then  think  that  the 
right  time  had  arrived  for  mediation. 


460  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

staying  at  Compiegne  and  reviewing  150,000  troops  at  Betheny. 
This  visit  showed  that  the  Russian  Alliance  was  firmly  fixed. 
The  root  of  it  is  to  be  found,  perhaps,  in  the  crisis  of  1875,  when 
Bismarck  and  Moltke,  provoked,  it  must  be  said,  in  part  by 
French  Ultramontane  demonstrations,1  and  alarmed  at  the  rapid 
recovery  of  France  from  her  disasters,  sought  a  pretext  for 
another  war,  after  which,  anticipating  victory,  they  meant  to 
demand  a  cession  of  still  more  territory  (notably  Belfort)  and 
an  indemnity  of  ten  milliards  of  francs.  General  Le  Flo,  then 
Ambassador  at  St.  Petersburg,  did  much  to  prevent  that  attack 
by  laying  everything  before  Alexander  II.,  while  M.  Gavard, 
French  Charge  d'affaires  in  London,  rendered  good  service  by 
the  manner  in  which  he  approached  Lord  Derby,  who  was  then 
at  the  Foreign  Office.  In  the  result  Russia  and  Great  Britain 
resolved  that  on  France  declaring  her  peaceful  intentions  2  they 
would  jointly  interfere  to  prevent  war.  This  was  Bismarck's 
first  serious  defeat  in  the  sphere  of  foreign  politics,  and  he 
revenged  himself  for  it  by  precipitating  the  Russo-Turkish 
war,  and  siding  against  Russia  at  the  Berlin  Congress.  M. 
Waddington,  however,  did  not  favour  a  French  alliance  with 
Russia,  and  no  progress  was  made  in  that  respect  for  some  years. 
Russia,  moreover,  became  busy  in  Central  Asia,  while  in  Europe 
she  had  to  contend  with  the  Nihilists.  Then,  too,  France's 
refusal  to  surrender  Hartmann,  who  attempted  to  blow  up  the 
Czar's  train  at  Moscow  (December  1879),  led  to  the  recall  of 
Prince  Orloff,  the  Russian  Ambassador  in  Paris ;  and  though 
Gambetta  was  anxious  to  effect  a  reconciliation,  holding  that, 
"  with  Russia  as  a  friend  on  one  side  and  England  as  a  friend 
on  the  other,  we  shall  have  nothing  to  fear,"  he  did  not  succeed 
in  his  endeavours.  Alexander  II.  was  assassinated  in  1881,  and 
at  the  coronation  of  Alexander  III.  France  appointed  M. 
Waddington  her  representative,  a  grave  mistake,  as  since  the 
Berlin  Congress  he  was  much  disliked  in  Russian  official  spheres. 
Later,  in  1884,  the  new  Czar  drew  nearer  to  Germany  and 
Austria,  meeting  the  two  Kaisers  at  Skiernievice  in  Poland,  when 
each  promised  the  others  to  observe  a  benevolent  neutrality  if 

1  See  ante,  pp.  175,  176. 

2  Germany  pretended  that  France  meant  to  attack  her,  asserting  this  to 
be  proved  by  the  fact  that  she  was  adding  a  fourth  battalion  to  each  of  her 
regiments.  But  this  was  merely  a  detail  of  military  organisation  :  the 
strength  of  the  regiments  remained  the  same  as  previously,  only  each  was 
divided  into  four  instead  of  three  battalions. 


\ 


FRANCE,  RUSSIA,  AND  ENGLAND  461 

they  became  involved  in  war  with  other  states.  Somewhat 
later  Russia  and  France  fell  out  over  ambassadorial  questions ; 
but  matters  at  last  improved  when  M.  Flourens  became  Foreign 
Minister,  as  he  was  able  to  inform  the  Czar  of  the  intrigues  by 
which  Prince  Ferdinand  of  Co  burg  was  placed  on  the  Bulgarian 
throne.  That  incident,  combined  with  the  general  duplicity  of 
Germany  and  Austria,  the  ill-will  of  England  and  the  accession 
of  Italy  to  the  Triple  Alliance,  inclined  Alexander  III.  to 
establish  closer  relations  with  France.  A  French  financier 
named  Hoskier,  who  wished  to  divert  Russian  loans  from  the 
Berlin  to  the  Paris  market,  was  also  instrumental  in  hastening 
the  alliance.  Loans  were  successfully  floated  in  France  in  1888, 
1890,  and  1891,  the  French  Government  rendering  considerable 
assistance  in  regard  to  some  complications  which  arose  on  the 
last  occasion.  Soon  afterwards  Russia  secretly  inquired  of 
France  if  she  would  authorise  the  arms  factory  of  Chatellerault  to 
supply  her  with  rifles,  and  the  Council  of  Ministers  granted  the 
application.  At  that  time  Carnot  was  President  of  the  Republic 
and  M.  Ribot  Foreign  Minister.  In  1891  M.  Flourens  went  to 
Russia  in  connection  with  an  Exhibition  held  at  Moscow,  but 
he  was  privately  received  by  the  Emperor  and  again  helped  on 
the  cause  of  the  alliance.  That  year,  it  will  be  remembered,  the 
French  fleet  visited  Cronstadt,  next  came  the  return  visit  to 
Toulon,  and  at  last,  some  time  during  Casimir-Perier's  premier- 
ship (December  1893  to  May  1894),  a  memorandum  establishing 
the  alliance  was  drawn  up  and  signed. 

In  May  1902  M.  Loubet  returned  the  visit  of  the  Russian 
monarch  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  also  visited  the  Danish  Royal 
family  at  Copenhagen  ;  and  early  in  the  following  May,  after  a 
journey  to  Algeria  in  April,  he  received  King  Edward  VII.  in 
Paris.1  It  was  the  first  State  visit  paid  by  a  British  King  to 
the  French  capital  for  several  centuries,  but  of  course  Queen 
Victoria  had  gone  to  Paris  in  state  at  the  time  of  the  Crimean 
War.  Of  King  Edward's  enthusiastic  reception  in  1903  we  need 
say  little,  for  there  are  abundant  records  on  the  subject.  As 
Prince  of  Wales  he  had  been  popular  in  France  for  forty  years, 
and  it  was  a  popularity  which  nothing  had  ever  diminished. 
France  and  England  had  had  some  serious  "  tiffs  "  during  that 

1  The  King  had  previously  paid  accession  visits  to  King  Carlos  of 
Portugal  at  Lisbon,  and  King  Victor  Emmanuel  at  Rome,  where  also  he 
visited  Pope  Leo  XIII. 


462  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

long  period,  and  Frenchmen  had  often  complained  of  British 
perfidy,  insatiability,  arrogance,  and  what  not  besides ;  but 
even  when  they  were  inclined  to  denounce  the  whole  of  our 
nation,  they  excepted  the  Prince  of  Wales  from  their  censure. 
Often  did  we  hear  such  words  as  these  :  "  Le  Prince  de  Galles  ? 
Ah,  lui,  c'est  bien  different.  II  nous  aime.  Mais,  vous  autres, 
vous  ne  nous  aimez  pas.  Vous  etes  trop  chicaniers.  Vous  nous 
faites  toujours  des  miseres  ! "  And  that  was  sub  Hanotaux,  in 
the  days  when  we  were  responding  to  pin-pricks  by  graceful 
concessions — if,  indeed,  Englishmen  can  ever  concede  points 
gracefully,  which  is  perhaps  a  subject  open  to  discussion. 

The  trouble  between  the  two  nations  may  be  traced  back  to 
the  Franco-German  War,  when,  so  the  average  Frenchman  com- 
plained, we  did  nothing  for  France.  The  more  enlightened  one 
admitted  the  diplomatic  steps  we  took,  our  solicitude  for  the 
starving  Parisians,  and  the  help  we  also  extended  to  impoverished 
peasants,  but  he  did  not  regard  that  as  being  in  any  degree 
sufficient  "  after  all  that  had  happened  during  the  Crimean  War 
alliance."  In  those  distant  days,  we  personally  longed,  even  as 
Lord  Kitchener  did,  to  see  a  British  army  land  in  Normandy  ; 
but  in  later  years  we  have  learnt  that  our  military  forces  were 
unorganised,  and  that  our  fleet  was  lamentably  weak.  At  all 
events  Frenchmen  should  remember  that  if  the  fresh  war 
threatened  by  Bismarck  in  1875  was  primarily  prevented  by 
the  energy  of  the  Czar,  we  co-operated  with  that  monarch's 
Government  in  ensuring  the  maintenance  of  peace.  However, 
the  Egyptian  affair  ensued,  and  when  we  invited  the  co-operation 
of  France  she  refused  it.  That  was  her  fault,  not  ours.  Never- 
theless, she  complained  of  us  for  years,  and  it  was  in  many 
instances,  as  we  have  shown  to  some  extent  in  passages  of  this 
volume,  largely  if  not  entirely  on  account  of  our  occupation  of 
Egypt  that  she  introduced  various  irritating  features  into  her 
otherwise  legitimate  policy  of  colonial  expansion.  At  last  came 
Fashoda,  in  which  respect  we  could  not  have  acted  otherwise 
than  we  did,  but  which  intensified  the  feeling  against  us  in 
France.  Thus,  when  the  South  African  war  began,  there  could 
be  no  doubt  as  to  which  side  the  great  majority  of  Frenchmen 
would  take,  quite  apart  from  any  natural  sympathy  of  theirs 
with  two  small  Republics.  A  good  many  Frenchmen  were  also 
angered  by  the  outspokenness  of  our  newspapers  during  the 
Dreyfus  case,  but  in  that  respect  let  it  not  be  forgotten  that 


THE  "ENTENTE  CORDIALE"  463 

Frenchmen  themselves  were  divided  on  the  subject,  and  that  it 
was  precisely  the  side  which  our  newspapers  supported  which 
ultimately  triumphed  in  the  struggle,  and  which,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  rules  France  at  the  present  hour,  having  won  the  support 
of  the  vast  majority  of  the  electorate. 

At  the  time,  however,  when  the  relations  of  the  two 
countries  were  at  their  worst,  an  association  for  the  development 
of  more  cordial  intercourse  was  established  in  London,  thanks 
to  the  initiative  and  energy  of  Major,  now  Colonel  Sir  J. 
Roper  Parkington.  We  had  the  advantage  of  belonging  to 
the  original  Committee  of  that  Society,1  which  took  the  name 
of  "  L'Entente  Cordiale,"  in  memory  of  the  good  relations  pre- 
vailing between  France  and  England  at  one  period  of  Louis 
Philippe1s  reign,  and  again  at  the  time  of  Napoleon  III.,  the 
expression  entente  cordiale  then  having  been  currently  used. 
The  new  Society,  which  was  non-political,  obtained  support  in 
many  directions,  but  it  is  certain  that  it  would  only  have 
attained  its  objects  after  long  and  strenuous  labour  had  it  not 
been  for  the  King's  visit  to  Paris  and  the  hearty  welcome  he 
received  there.  The  improvement  in  the  relations  of  the  two 
countries  was  then  immediate  and  widespread.  In  July  President 
Loubet  paid  a  return  visit  to  London,  where  he  received  a 
greeting  as  hearty  as  that  given  to  King  Edward.  In  October 
the  two  Powers  signed  an  agreement  declaring  that  all  questions 
of  a  juridical  character  or  relating  to  the  interpretation  of  treaties 
should,  if  incapable  of  settlement  by  diplomatic  means,  be 
referred  to  the  Hague  Arbitration  Court.2  Next,  in  April 
1904,  came  a  convention  concerning  Newfoundland  and  West 
Africa,  and  declarations  dealing  with  Egypt,  Morocco,  Siam, 
Madagascar,  and  the  New  Hebrides.  As  regards  Newfoundland 
the  convention  provided  for  the  abandonment  of  the  French 
rights  of  landing  on  the  treaty  shore.     An  arbitration  tribunal 

1  Among  the  Committee  were  the  following  members  of  Parliament,  Sir 
F.  Seager  Hunt,  Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson,  Sir  W.  Wedderburn,  Sir  E.  T.  Gourlay, 
Hon.  Philip  Stanhope  (now  Lord  Weardale),  Dr.  G.  B.  Clark,  Captain  Cecil 
Norton,  J.  W.  Maclure,  C.  P.  Scott,  T.  Skewes  Cox,  F.  S.  Stevenson,  R.  G. 
Webster,  J.  Bailey,  H.  C.  Richards,  Ernest  Gray,  D.  Brynmor  Jones,  Q.C., 
and  Henniker  Heaton.  Among  other  names  one  may  mention  those  of  Sir 
Henry  Cartwright,  Hon.  T.  C.  Farrer,  Hodgson  Pratt,  Felix  Moscheles,  W.  M. 
Thompson,  Walter  Emden,  Colonel  Probyn,  and  The  O'Clery.  The  Society 
owed  much  of  its  success  to  its  indefatigable  secretary,  Mr.  W.  H.  Sands. 

2  France  signed  arbitration  treaties  with  Holland  in  April  1904,  and  with 
Denmark  in  September  1905. 


V 


464  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

met  afterwards  in  Paris,  and  awarded  <£J55,000  to  the  Frenchmen 
interested  in  the  treaty  shore  fisheries.  As  regards  West 
Africa,  the  boundaries  of  the  French  and  British  possessions 
were  carefully  determined.  With  respect  to  Egypt?  France 
finally  acknowledged  our  predominant  position  there,  while 
with  reference  to  Morocco  we  recognised  the  influence  of  France 
in  that  country  (by  reason  of  the  proximity  of  Algeria),  and 
her  claims  to  ensure  its  tranquillity  by  assisting  it  in  matters 
of  financial  and  military  reform.  It  was  also  specified  that 
the  interests  of  Spain  should  be  respected  by  France,  it  being 
left  to  those  two  powers  to  come  to  an  agreement  on  the  subject. 
At  the  time  of  this  arrangement  it  was.  not  imagined  that 
Germany  would  raise  the  pretensions  which  she  did  afterwards. 

The  entente  cordiale  was  now  an  established  fact,  a  British 
fleet  visited  Brest,  a  French  one  came  to  Portsmouth  ;  there 
was  a  great  exchange  of  congratulatory  visits,  and  the  peace  of 
the  world  seemed  to  be  consolidated  by  the  happy  turn  which 
events  had  taken,  thanks  in  part  to  the  initiative  of  the  British 
Sovereign,  and  in  part  to  the  negotiations  conducted  by  Lord 
Lansdowne  and  M.  Delcasse.  Moreover,  President  Loubet  had 
received  the  King  and  Queen  of  Italy  in  Paris  in  October  1 903, 
returning  their  visit  at  Rome  in  April  1904.1  At  the  end  of 
May  that  year  the  young  King  of  Spain  came  to  Paris,  on 
which  occasion  some  Spanish  Anarchist  flung  a  bomb  at  the 
carriage  in  which  the  King  and  the  President  were  returning 
from  a  gala  performance  at  the  Opera-house.  Fortunately 
neither  was  injured;  and  in  October  that  year  M.  Loubet  went 
to  Madrid,  and  thence  to  Lisbon,  King  Carlos  of  Portugal  soon 
returning  the  latter  visit. 

All  this,  unfortunately,  made  Germany  extremely  jealous. 
She  pretended  to  fear  that  efforts  were  being  made  to  isolate 
her,  and  she  retaliated  by  picking  a  quarrel  with  France  over 

1  War  broke  out  between  Russia  and  Japan  over  Korean  and  Manchurian 
questions,  in  February  that  year,  but  France  was  not  called  upon  to  assist 
her  ally.  Had  she  done  so  Great  Britain  would  have  been  drawn  into  the 
affair,  in  accordance  with  a  treaty  of  alliance  which  she  had  signed  with 
Japan  in  January  1902.  There  was  distinct  danger  of  a  collision  at  one 
moment,  owing  to  the  sinking  of  some  English  trawlers  by  a  Russian 
squadron  off  the  Dogger  Bank.  Had  that  resulted  in  hostilities  between  the 
English  and  the  Russians,  the  French  would  have  been  compelled  to  intervene 
also.  Happily  none  of  those  contingencies  arose.  The  Russo-Japanese 
War  was  terminated  by  the  treaty  of  Portsmouth  (U.S.A.),  September 
5,  1905. 


MOROCCO  465 

the  Morocco  agreement  with  Great  Britain,  claiming  that  it 
had  not  been  signified  to  her  in  due  form,  and  that  she,  like 
all  the  other  Great  Powers,  was  entitled  to  participate  in  any 
arrangements  affecting  Morocco.  M.  Delcasse,  who  made  a 
firm  stand  on  his  country's  behalf  over  this  question,  was  at 
last  compelled  to  resign,  for  the  tension  had  become  so  acute 
that  fears  of  a  Franco- German  war  had  arisen,  and  the  Delcasse 
policy  was  regarded  as  imprudent  if  not  absolutely  dangerous. 
The  storm  subsided  on  M.  Rouvier  negotiating  with  Germany, 
with  the  result  that  a  diplomatic  conference  was  held  at 
Algeciras  (spring,  1906),  its  outcome  being  that  France  and 
Spain  were  entrusted  with  the  organisation  of  police  services 
and  other  duties  in  Morocco.  Nevertheless,  as  the  sequel  will 
show,  the  trouble  with  respect  to  that  country  was  only 
beginning. 


MINISTRIES  OF  M.  LOUBETS  PRESIDENCY 

Dupuy  Cabinet  (took  office  under  Felix  Faure,  October  30,  1898) :  Charles 
Dupuy,  Premier  and  Interior ;  Delcasse,  Foreign  Affairs  ;  Freycinet,  War ; 
Edouard  Lockroy,  Marine  ;  Guillon,  Colonies  ;  Leygues,  Education ;  Peytral, 
Finances  ;  Lebret,  Justice  ;  Viger,  Agriculture  ;  Krantz,  Worship  ;  Delombe, 
Commerce.  Resigned  June  1899.  Premiership  offered  to  MM.  Bourgeois 
and  Poincare,  who  declined  it. 

Waldeck- Rousseau  Cabinet :  Waldeck- Rousseau,  Premier  and  Interior ; 
Delcasse,  Foreign  Affairs  ;  Galliffet,  War,  till  May  29, 1900,  when  he  resigned 
and  was  succeeded  by  General  Andre ;  Lanessan,  Marine ;  Decrais,  Colonies ; 
Millerand,  Commerce ;  Monis,  Justice ;  Leygues,  Education ;  Jean  Dupuy, 
Agriculture ;  Caillaux,  Finances  ;  Pierre  Baudin,  Public  Works.  Resigned 
June  3,  1902.     Waldeck-Rousseau  died  August  10,  1904. 

Combes  Cabinet :  Emile  Combes,  Premier,  Interior,  Worship ;  Delcasse, 
Foreign  Affairs  ;  General  Andre,  War,  till  November  15,  1904,  when  he  was 
succeeded  by  M.  Berteaux;  Camille  Pelletan,  Marine  ;  Doumergue,  Colonies ; 
Rouvier,  Finances  ;  Trouillot,  Commerce ;  Mougeot,  Agriculture ;  Marue- 
jouls,  Public  Works  ;  Valle,  Justice ;  Chaumie,  Education  and  Fine  Arts  ; 
Berard,  Post  Office.     Resigned  January  18,  1905. 

Rouvier  Cabinet :  Maurice  Rouvier,  Premier  and  Finances  until  the 
resignation  of  M.  Delcasse  (June  1905),  when  he  took  Foreign  Affairs  and 
gave  Finances  to  M.  Merlou ;  Delcasse,  Foreign  Affairs  till  June  1905 ; 
Berteaux,  later  fitienne.  War ;  Etienne,  later  Dubief,  Interior ;  Thomson, 
Marine ;  Chaumie,  Justice ;  Gaultier,  Public  Works ;  Clementel,  Colonies  ; 
Ruau,  Agriculture;  Trouillot,  Commerce;  Bienvenu  Martin,  Education 
and  Worship.  Resigned  (under  M.  Fallieres),  March  1906.  Succeeded  by 
Sarrien  Cabinet  (see  post  p.  468).     M.  Rouvier  died  in  June  1911. 


2  H 


CHAPTER    XVI 


THE    PRESIDENCY    OF   ARMAND    FALLIERES — 
CONCLUSION 

Election  of  M.  Fallieres— His  Career,  Habits,  Tastes,  and  Family— The 
Sarrien  Cabinet — Dreyfus  Case  Decision — M.  Clemenceau  and  his 
Ministry — M.  Stephen  Pichon — The  Deputies  and  their  Salaries— Strikes 
and  Social  Unrest — Expeditions  to  Casa  Blanca — The  Cabinet  recon- 
structed— M.  Fallieres'  Foreign  Tours — A  new  Sultan  of  Morocco — 
Affair  of  the  Casa  Blanca  Deserters — Another  War  Scare — Franco- 
German  Negotiations — Arbitration  at  the  Hague — Austria,  Servia,  and 
Russia — The  Turkish  Sultan  deposed — Unrest  in  the  French  Civil  and 
Railway  Services — Naval  Administration — Fall  of  M.  Clemenceau — M. 
Aristide  Briand  and  his  First  Cabinet— Unrest  and  Scandals  in  1909 — 
Social  Legislation  for  Peasantry  and  Working  Classes — Elections  of 
1910— Great  Railway  Strike — Further  Negotiations  on  Morocco— Events 
Abroad — M.  Briand's  Second  Ministry— The  Monis  Cabinet — Riots  in 
Champagne — French  Advance  on  Fez — Attitude  of  Germany — The 
French  War  Minister  killed— Fall  of  M.  Monis— M.  Joseph  Caillaux' 
Cabinet — German  Ships  at  Agadir — Renewed  Fears  of  War — Franco- 
German  Conventions  on  Morocco  and  the  Congo — Fall  of  M.  Caillaux — 
M.  Raymond  Poincare  Prime  Minister — His  Colleagues — Some  Events 
of  1912. 

M.  Loubet's  term  of  office  expired  on  February  18,  1906.  As 
he  had  signified  that  he  did  not  desire  re-election  the  Congress 
of  Versailles  chose  as  his  successor  M.  Clement  Armand 
Fallieres,  President  of  the  Senate,  who  obtained  449  votes 
against  371  cast  for  M.  Doumer,  a  politician  of  authoritarian 
views,  who  had  governed  the  French  Indo-Chinese  possessions 
a,nd  acted  as  President  of  the  Chamber. 

M.  Fallieres''  grandfather  was  a  blacksmith  of  Mezin,  an 
ancient  little  town  of  Lot-et-Garonne,  famous  for  its  cork 
manufactories,  no  fewer  than  some  230,000,000  corks  being 
turned  out  there  on  an  average  every  year  for  the  use  of  wine- 

466 


Armand  Fallierf.s 


ARMAND  FALLIERES  467 

merchants,  grocers,  oilmen,  druggists,  chemists,  and  so  forth. 
In  Plantagenet  days  our  ancestors  drew  supplies  of  stout 
Gascony  wine  from  Mezin,  which  was  then  a  very  prosperous 
and  much  larger  locality  than  now.  M.  Fallieres  is  himself  a 
Avine-grower,  having  inherited  from  his  father,  who  became  a 
land  surveyor  and  clerk  to  the  local  justice  of  the  peace,  a  small 
property  called  Le  Loupillon,  which  he  has  extended.  The 
Loupillon  growth  is  a  vin  ordinaire  of  good  colour,  generous, 
and  with  a  faint  bouquet. 

Born  at  Mezin  on  November  6,  1841,  M.  Fallieres  was  first 
educated  there,  and  at  the  Lycee  of  Angouleme.  After 
studying  law  at  Toulouse  and  Paris,  he  became  in  1862  an 
advocate  at  Nerac,  which  is  near  Mezin.  At  the  Revolution 
of  1870  he  was  elected  Mayor  of  Nerac,  and  later  a  General 
Councillor.  In  1876  he  became  a  deputy  for  Lot-et-Garonne, 
and  four  years  subsequently  Under-Secretary  for  the  Interior. 
In  1882  he  was  appointed  Minister  of  the  Interior,  in  1883 
Prime  Minister,  and  a  little  later  Minister  of  Education,  which 
office  he  held  till  1885.  In  1887  he  again  became  Minister  of 
the  Interior,  next  Minister  of  Justice,  and  once  more  Minister 
of  Education.  Finally  he  again  acted  as  Minister  of  Justice 
from  1889  to  1892,  when  he  was  chosen  as  a  Senator  for  his 
native  department.  The  Presidency  of  the  Senate  fell  to  him 
in  1899,  on  M.  Loubet  becoming  President  of  the  Republic, 
and  even  as  he  had  succeeded  the  latter  at  the  Luxembourg,  so 
he  succeeded  him  at  the  Elysee. 

During  his  Presidency,  which  will  expire  in  February  1913,  M. 
Fallieres'  habits  have  been  very  similar  to  M.  Loubet's.  Rising 
at  seven  o'clock  in  the  morning,  he  soon  made  it  his  practice  to 
go  out,  incognito,  for  an  early  walk,  just  as  his  predecessor  had 
done.  All  the  arrangements  of  his  daily  life  have  been  simi- 
larly simple.  But,  unlike  M.  Loubet,  a  short  and  fairly  slim 
man,  M.  Fallieres  has  long  been  big  and  burly,  and  has 
possessed  no  little  physical  strength.  As  fond  of  sport  as  Felix 
Faure  was,  he  has  often  proved  himself  a  crack  shot,  and  the 
preserves  at  Rambouillet  and  Marly  have  received  great  atten- 
tion during  his  Presidency.  At  the  same  time  he  has  evinced 
distinct  artistic  perceptions  (he  possesses  a  collection  of  valuable 
paintings  and  curios)  and  also  a  keen  interest  in  mechanical 
science,  notably  as  regards  the  progress  of  aviation  and  the 
motor-car  industry. 


468  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

By  his  marriage  with  Mile.  Besson,  daughter  of  a  solicitor 
of  Nerac,  M.  Fallieres  became  the  father,  both  of  a  son,  M. 
Andre  Fallieres,  born  in  1875,  and  an  advocate  by  profession, 
and  of  a  daughter,  Anne,  born  in  1874,  and  married  in  1908 
to  M.  Jean  Lanes,  for  a  long  time  secretary  to  her  father. 

Soon  after  the  election  of  M.  Fallieres  the  existing  ministry 
suffered  a  defeat  in  the  Chamber  with  respect  to  its  administra- 
tion of  the  Church  and  State  Separation  Law,  and  a  new 
cabinet  was  formed  by  M.  Sarrien,  an  old  parliamentary  hand, 
who  had  twice  held  office  at  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  in 
General  Boulanger's  time.  For  that  post,  however,  M.  Sarrien 
now  secured  the  services  of  M.  Georges  Clemenceau,  while  M. 
Leon  Bourgeois  took  charge  of  foreign  affairs  at  the  Quai 
d'Orsay.1  General  Elections  for  the  Chamber  were  held  in 
May  1906,  and  resulted  in  the  return  of  about  340  Republicans, 
Radicals,  and  Socialist-Radicals,  there  being  also  117  Royalists, 
Bonapartists,  and  Nationalists,  with  64  Conservative  Republi- 
cans of  M.  Meline's  school,  and  75  Socialists.  These  elections 
generally  ratified  the  policy  pursued  by  successive  Administra- 
tions with  respect  to  the  Church,  for  more  than  400  candidates 
favouring  that  policy  were  returned. 

When  in  July  1906  the  Cour  de  Cassation  finally  pro- 
nounced in  favour  of  Captain  Dreyfus^s  innocence,  Colonel 
Picquart,  who  had  been  so  much  persecuted  by  his  superiors  in 
connection  with  the  affair,  was  then  raised  to  the  rank  of  a 
general,  and  placed  in  command  of  the  10th  Infantry  Division 
in  Paris.  Moreover,  when  on  October  19  that  year  M.  Sarrien 
resigned  the  Premiership  owing  to  ill -health  and  the  weak 
position  of  his  Cabinet,  General  Picquart  secured  in  the 
Administration  formed  by  M.  Clemenceau,  the  post  of  Minister 
of  War. 

M.  Clemenceau's  name  has  so  frequently  appeared  in  our 
pages  that  the  reader  has  been  able  to  follow  the  chief  phases 
of  his  political  career.  Still,  it  is  appropriate  to  give  a  few 
more  particulars  respecting  this  bold  and  ever-ready  parlia- 
mentary fighter.  Born  on  September  28,  1841,  at  Mouilleron- 
en-Pareds  in  La   Vendee,  he  came  to  Paris  to   study  at  the 

1  Other  members  of  the  administration  were  Raymond  Poincare\ 
Finances  ;  £tienne,  War  ;  Thomson,  Marine  ;  Ruau,  Agriculture  ;  Leygues, 
Colonies  ;  Doumergue,  Commerce  ;  Barthou,  Public  Works  and  Post  Office  ; 
Briand,  Worship  and  Fine  Arts. 


CLEMENCEAU  AND  PICHON  469 

Ecole  de  Medecine,  and,  after  joining  the  medical  profession, 
practised  in  that  revolutionary  district  of  the  capital,  Mont- 
martre,  of  which  he  became  mayor  during  the  German  siege. 
He  still  held  that  office  (besides  being  a  Deputy  for  Paris)  at 
the  advent  of  the  Commune,  when  he  was  often  but  unjustly 
reproached  for  having  failed  to  save  the  lives  of  Generals 
Clement  Thomas  and  Lecomte.  The  tragedy  of  the  Rue  des 
Rosiers  could  only  have  been  prevented  by  armed  force,  how- 
ever, and  none  was  available.1 

In  1875  M.  Clemenceau  became  President  of  the  Paris 
Municipal  Council.  From  the  following  year  until  1885  he 
was  again  a  deputy  for  Paris  (Montmartre),  and  afterwards  sat 
in  the  Chamber  for  Le  Var,  of  which  department  he  has  more 
recently  been  a  Senator.  The  expression  of  his  clean-cut  face, 
with  its  black  eyes  and  bumpy  brow,  was  very  energetic  in  the 
days  of  his  prime.  An  iron  will,  an  unflagging  determination 
to  keep  calm,  held  his  nervous  nature,  inclined  to  brusquerie, 
in  check.  His  voice  was  clear,  his  speech  quick  and  decided, 
unadorned  in  style,  but  partial  to  epithet  and  sarcasm.  We 
have  mentioned  how  frequently  his  intervention  in  debate 
overthrew  one  and  another  ministry;  and  on  his  accession  to 
the  premiership  in  1906  everybody  wondered  how  long  he 
would  contrive  to  prevent  the  downfall  of  his  own  adminis- 
tration. 

He  chose  as  Foreign  Minister  his  friend  M.  Stephen 
Pichon,  a  Burgundian,  born  at  Arnay-le-Duc  in  1857,  and 
early  in  life  a  contributor  to  La  Justice — Clemenceau's  organ — 
which  we  have  often  mentioned.  In  1885,  however,  M.  Pichon 
became  a  deputy  for  Paris,  and,  taking  at  last  to  a  diplomatic 
career,  was  appointed  French  Minister  in  Haiti,  then  at  Rio 
de  Janeiro,  and  next  at  Pekin.  That  was  in  1897.  He  was 
still  in  the  Chinese  capital  during  the  siege  of  the  European 
Legations  in  1900.  After  returning  home  in  the  following 
year,  he  became  French  Resident  in  Tunis.  In  January  1906 
he  entered  the  Senate  as  a  representative  of  the  Jura.  In 
home  politics  he  was  a  Socialist -Radical,  and  a  distinct 
opponent  of  any  encroachments  of  the  Church.  Under  M. 
Clemenceau,  his  foreign  policy,  marked  by  considerable  shrewd- 
ness and  firmness,  largely  followed  the  same  lines  as  that  of 
JL  Delcasse,  and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  he  helped  to 
1  See  ante,  p.  50  et  seq. 


470  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

bring  about  the  improved  relations  between  Great  Britain  and 
Russia  and  the  negotiations  for  their  agreement  in  respect  to 
Persia,  Afghanistan,  and  Tibet  (September  1907). 

The  Clemenceau  Cabinet  also  included  MM.  Millies-Lacroix, 
Colonies ;  Joseph  Caillaux,  Finances ;  Aristide  Briand,  Educa- 
tion, Worship,  and  ultimately  Justice ;  Doumergue,  Commerce ; 
Guyot-Dessaignes,  Justice ;  Alfred  Picard,  Marine  ;  and  Viviani, 
for  whom  a  new  post,  that  of  Minister  of  Labour  and  Social 
Prevision,  was  specially  created.  The  Ministry  speedily  en- 
countered attacks  in  the  Chamber  on  Church  and  State 
questions,  many  of  the  recently  elected  deputies — who  increased 
their  allowances  from  i?360  to  =£600  per  annum — evincing 
remarkable  truculence.  Early  in  1907  other  trouble  set  in. 
A  strike  of  the  electric  workers  in  Paris  plunged  the  city  into 
darkness  on  the  evening  of  March  8;  there  was  a  terrible 
explosion  on  the  Jena  at  Toulon  (March  12),  a  fire  at  the 
arsenal  there,  great  unrest  among  the  State  school-teachers 
who  claimed  trade -union  rights,  a  series  of  alarming  riots 
among  the  wine-growers  of  southern  France  (May  and  June), 
the  sudden  resignation  of  General  Hagron,  commander-in- 
chief  designate,  as  a  protest  against  General  Picquarfs  ad- 
ministration of  the  law  limiting  active  military  service  to  two 
years,  an  anti-militarist  crusade  by  the  Anarchist  and  Syndicalist 
sects,  and  at  last,  in  August,  the  murder  of  several  Europeans 
at  Casa  Blanca  in  Morocco,  as  a  result  of  the  establishment 
of  a  European-Moorish  control  of  the  customs''  service.  This 
led  to  the  despatch  of  French  and  Spanish  expeditions  to 
that  locality,  and  by  the  end  of  the  year  the  Morocco  question 
was  becoming  more  and  more  involved,  whilst  great  unrest 
prevailed  in  France  in  connection  with  Labour  troubles  and 
the  administration  of  Church  property — a  nasty  scandal  then 
arising,  for  some  of  the  liquidators  of  the  property  of  the 
expelled  Religious  Communities  were  accused  of  embezzlement. 
Meantime  the  Legislature  did  little  or  nothing  to  expedite 
political  and  social  reforms. 

When  1908  arrived 1  the  Cabinet  was  partially  reconstructed 
owing  to  the  sudden  death  of  the  Minister  of  Justice,  whose  post 
was  taken   by  M.  Briand,  while  M.  Cruppi   became  Minister 

1  It  was  on  February  1  that  year  that  the  King  and  Crown  Prince  of 
Portugal  were  assassinated  at  Lisbon,  the  former  being  succeeded  by  his 
younger  son,  Dom  Manuel. 


MOROCCO— CASA  BLANCA        471 

of  Commerce  in  the  place  of  M.  Doumergue.  Nevertheless, 
the  ministry  was  still  incessantly  attacked,  and  its  income-tax 
proposals,  introduced  by  M.  Caillaux,  were  subjected  to  much 
acrimonious  discussion.  Further,  great  difficulties  arose  with 
the  budget.  However,  the  Chamber  voted  i?1400  for  the 
transfer  of  Zola's  remains  to  the  Pantheon,  a  solemnity  which 
was  naturally  attended  by  Major  Alfred  Dreyfus,  whose  life 
was  attempted  on  this  occasion  by  a  Nationalist  fanatic  named 
Gregori.  The  municipal  elections  which  took  place  throughout 
France  a  little  later  favoured  the  Radical  -  Socialist  party. 
Trouble  afterwards  arose  with  the  so-called  General  Confedera- 
tion of  Labour,  which  really  represents  but  a  small  minority 
of  the  wage-earners,  and  several  of  whose  chief  officials  and 
members  belong  to  the  so-called  Syndicalist  sect,  which  has 
taken  over  some  of  the  revolutionary  ideas  of  the  Anarchists. 
At  a  riotous  demonstration  of  this  body  in  the  environs  of 
Paris  the  troops,  on  being  stoned,  retaliated  by  firing  on  the 
crowd,  thereby  killing  three  and  wounding  a  score  of  persons. 
This  occurred  at  the  end  of  July. 

In  May  President  Fallieres  had  paid  a  state  visit  to  London 
in  connection  with  the  Franco:German  Exhibition  at  Shepherd's 
Bush.  He  received  a  most  friendly  greeting  from  King  Edward 
and  the  citizens  of  our  metropolis.  In  July  he  sailed  for  the 
Baltic  and  was  received  in  turn  by  the  Kings  of  Denmark  and 
Norway,  the  Emperor  of  Russia  and  the  King  of  Sweden. 
The  outlook  in  international  affairs  then  appeared  to  be  fairly 
clear,  but  in  September  another  war  scare  arose.  The  Sultan 
of  Morocco  was  now  no  longer  Abdul  Aziz,  but  one  of  his 
brothers,  Muley  Hafid,  who,  after  prosecuting  a  successful 
rebellion,  had  become  the  acknowledged  sovereign.  French 
and  Spanish  forces  were  still  quartered  at  Casa  Blanca,  and 
serious  trouble  arose  between  France  and  Germany  respecting 
certain  men  of  German  nationality  who,  having  deserted  from 
the  French  Foreign  Legion,  were  arrested  by  the  French  at 
the  moment  when,  in  the  charge  of  an  official  of  the  German 
Consulate,  they  were  about  to  embark  for  Europe.  France 
claimed  the  right  to  arrest  all  deserters  from  her  forces. 
Germany  maintained,  however,  that  as  these  men  had  been 
under  the  protection  of  one  of  her  officials,  the  French  had 
possessed  no  right  to  lay  hands  on  them.  MM.  Clemenceau 
and    Pichon   were   firm   in   upholding   the   French   view,  but 


472  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

Germany  refused  to  entertain  it,  and  for  several  weeks  there 
was  a  danger  of  war  between  the  two  countries.  Moreover, 
the  international  situation  was  further  complicated  by  Austria^ 
formal  annexation  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  (October).  It 
has  been  said  that  Great  Britain,  at  this  period,  offered  to 
assist  France  with  five  divisions  of  troops  in  the  event  of 
hostilities  occurring  between  her  and  Germany.  However 
that  may  be,  the  French  took  steps  to  meet  eventualities.  A 
former  Minister  of  War,  M.  Henri  Maurice  Berteaux,1  who 
was  extremely  wealthy,  tendered  his  whole  fortune  to  help  in 
preparing  and  provisioning  the  fortresses  of  Eastern  France  in 
order  to  avoid  the  necessity  of  applying  to  the  Legislature  for 
funds,  a  course  which  might  have  angered  Germany  and 
precipitated  hostilities.  Fortunately,  the  efforts  of  diplomacy 
proved  successful,  and  it  was  ultimately  decided  that  the 
Hague  Arbitration  Court  should  adjudicate  upon  the  Casa 
Blanca  affair  (November).2 

Further  negotiations  ensued,  and  early  in  February  1909 
a  declaration  was  signed  by  Herr  von  Schcen,  German  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  and  M.  Jules  Cambon,  French  Ambassador 
in  Berlin,  by  which  the  special  political  interests  of  France  in 
Morocco  were  recognised,  whilst  both  powers  covenanted  that 
they  would  abstain  from  seeking  any  economic  privileges  in 
that  country  for  themselves  or  others,3  that  they  would  respect 
each  other's  commercial  interests,  and,  further,  endeavour  to 
associate  their  respective  subjects  in  those  business  enterprises 
of  which  they  might  obtain  the  undertaking.  "  Secret  Letters  " 
were  also  exchanged,  and  these  in  a  measure  invalidated  the 
published  covenant,  for  while  the  latter  proclaimed  economic 
equality  in   Morocco   the   German   Foreign   Minister   set   his 

1  See  post,  p.  480. 

2  From  the  above  date  onward  the  whole  history  of  the  conflicts  and 
negotiations  between  France  and  Germany  with  respect  to  Morocco  will  be 
found  related  in  La  Chronique  de  VAn  1911,  qui  contient  le  r6cit  des  negotia- 
tions ojjicielles  et  des  n&gociations  secretes  a  propos  du  Maroc  et  du  Congo, 
by  M.  Mermeix  (Paris,  Grasset,  1912).  For  references  to  M.  Mermeix, 
see  ante,  pp.  319,  340. 

3  Spain  was  then  prosecuting  a  campaign  in  northern  Morocco  in  order 
to  further  the  claims  of  sundry  financial  jobbers  who  were  interested  in 
certain  mines.  This  created  considerable  irritation  in  France,  and  also  in 
Catalonia,  the  squandering  of  blood  and  treasure  being  roundly  denounced 
by  Barcelona  Separatists  and  Revolutionaries,  who  even  attempted  to 
prevent  the  despatch  of  Catalan  regiments  to  the  scene  of  hostilities. 


MOROCCO— CASA  BLANCA        473 

signature  to  a  communication  recognising  that  French  economic 
interests  were  in  reality  superior  to  those  of  Germany. 
Moreover,  there  were  already  secret  pourparlers  respecting  the 
joint  participation  of  certain  French  and  German  financial 
houses  in  railway  and  other  enterprises  designed  to  open  up 
Morocco.  In  this  last  respect,  however,  France  adopted  very 
dilatory  tactics,  which  largely  led,  some  two  years  later,  to 
another  Moroccan  war  scare.  On  May  22,  1909,  the  Court  of 
the  Hague  gave  its  decision  respecting  the  Casa  Blanca 
deserters,  doing  so  very  ingeniously,  for  it  cast  blame  on  both 
parties,  and  yet  accorded  them  some  outward  semblance  of 
satisfaction.  Both  countries  were  disappointed  at  this  result, 
and  the  Clemenceau  Ministry  was  weakened  by  it. 

Before  then  there  had  been  trouble  over  the  Austrian 
annexation  of  Bosnia,  Russia  wishing  to  obtain  compensation 
for  Servia  and  Montenegro.  Prince  Biilow  signified  to  the 
Czar's  Government,  however,  that  Germany  would  support 
Austria  in  the  event  of  war.  Some  little  satisfaction  was 
ultimately  given  to  Montenegro,  and  as  Servia  obtained  none, 
a  tariff  war  with  Austria  ensued.  This  occurred  in  March, 
and  in  the  following  month  the  Turkish  Sultan,  Abdul  Hamid, 
was  deposed  by  the  army  of  Salonika,  his  brother,  Mahomed 
Reshad,  being  proclaimed  as  Mahomed  V.  by  a  so-called 
National  Assembly  composed  of  Young  Turks. 

In  France  the  social  unrest  was  still  increasing.  There  was 
much  discontent  in  many  branches  of  the  civil  service,  and 
revolutionary  methods  were  advocated  both  among  the  school 
teachers  and  the  postal,  telegraph,  and  telephone  employees, 
the  latter  going  on  strike,  and  eventually  wringing  a  virtual 
capitulation  from  the  Government  and  the  Legislature.  The 
Departmental  Councils  protested,  however,  against  these  civil- 
service  strikes,  and  M.  Clemenceau,  emboldened  by  that  attitude, 
initiated  a  campaign  of  punishment.  The  Revolutionaries  of 
the  Labour  Confederation  then  threatened  a  general  railway 
strike,  but  it  did  not  take  place,  though  somewhat  later  there 
was  a  strike  among  the  naval  reservists.  Moreover,  the  depart- 
ments of  Marine  and  Finances  quarrelled  over  the  former's 
application  for  <£*!  ,200,000  in  order  to  improve  the  lamentable 
condition  of  the  fleet.  On  this  matter  being  debated  M. 
Delcasse  roundly  denounced  the  mismanagement  of  naval 
affairs,  and  a  committee  of  inquiry,  under  his  presidency,  was 


\/ 


474  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

appointed.  The  chief  governmental  victory  of  this  period  was 
the  adoption  of  M.  Caillaux''  income-tax  bill  by  a  large  majority 
of  the  deputies  (March  9,  1909). 

If  the  Clemenceau  Cabinet  was  kept  in  office  it  was 
chiefly  from  fear  of  what  might  follow  it.  On  July  15  it 
managed  to  secure  a  qualified  vote  of  confidence,  but  a  few 
days  later,  when  the  report  of  the  navy  inquiry  commission 
came  on  for  debate,  the  'Prime  Minister,  angered  by  M. 
Delcasse's  expose  of  the  blunders  committed  in  naval  adminis- 
tration, lost  all  self-control,  and  impetuously  denounced  the 
former  Foreign  Secretary,  whose  policy  respecting  Morocco, 
said  he,  had  led  to  the  humiliation  of  France  at  Algeciras. 
This  upset  the  Chamber,  which,  in  the  light  of  recent  events, 
regarded  the  denunciation  as  unjust,  and  a  vote  of  confidence 
was  refused  by  212  to  76  votes.  The  Government  thereupon 
resigned. 

Only  a  short  time  previously  Prince  von  Bulow  had  retired 
from  the  German  Chancellorship,  being  impelled  to  that  course 
by  the  prolonged  refractory  attitude  of  the  Conservative  and 
Agrarian  parties  in  the  Reichstag  with  respect  to  questions 
of  taxation.  Herr  von  Bethmann-Hollweg  was  thereupon 
appointed  his  successor  (July  14).  Meanwhile  the  Revolu- 
tionary elements  in  France  had  their  eyes  fixed  on  Barcelona, 
where  the  local  Labour  Confederation  had  ordered  a  general 
strike,  which  ended  in  some  desperate  street-fighting  between 
the  troops  and  the  working  classes,  the  latter  being  overcome, 
and  stern — often  excessive  and  unjust — punishment  ensuing, 
much  to  the  indignation  of  French  Socialists,  Syndicalists  and 
Anarchists. 

Such  was  the  position  at  the  advent  of  the  new  French 
Ministry,  which  was  formed  by  M.  Aristide  Briand,  a  Breton 
of  Nantes,  where  he  was  born  in  1862.  He  practised  for  a 
while  as  an  advocate  at  Saint  Nazaire,  then  joined  the  Socialists 
of  Jules  Guesde's  school,  and  repairing  to  Paris,  preached  at 
one  moment  the  doctrines  of  Syndicalism  and  the  General  Strike. 
But  he  gradually  abandoned  those  extremist  principles,  became 
political  editor  of  La  Lanterne,  then  a  deputy,  and,  in  March 
1906,  joined  the  Sarrien  cabinet  as  Minister  of  Worship,  in 
which  capacity  he  brought  the  Separation  of  Church  and  State 
to  an  issue.  He  had  made  his  way  by  sheer  force  of  ability 
and  shrewdness ;   yet  remembering  some  of  his  antecedents  a 


FIRST  BRIAND  CABINET  475 

good  many  folk  became  apprehensive  when  M.  Fallieres  called 
him  to  the  Premiership.1 

In  his  declaration  of  policy  M.  Briand  promised  conciliation 
and  tolerance,  the  reorganisation  of  the  navy,  the  firm  main- 
tenance of  secular  education,  the  enactment  of  working-class 
pensions  and  the  income  tax,  the  regularisation  of  the  position 
of  civil  servants,  and  a  trial  of  the  proportional  representation 
system  in  municipal  elections.  The  Chamber  gave  a  fairly 
favourable  reception  to  this  programme.  There  was,  however, 
no  little  discontent  when  M.  Doumer,  now  President  of  the 
Budget  Committee,  announced  that  to  provide  for  the  estimates 
it  would  be  necessary  to  find  an  additional  sum  of  eight 
millions  sterling. 

During  the  recess  the  Czar,  whilst  on  his  way  to  Cowes  to 
visit  King  Edward  VII.,  called  at  Cherbourg,  where  he  was  met 
by  President  Fallieres.  In  October  the  execution  of  Sen  or 
Ferrer,  in  connection  with  the  Barcelona  riots,  with  which  he 
had  really  had  little  or  nothing  to  do,2  led  to  disturbances  in 
Paris,  where  the  Spanish  embassy  was  threatened,  but  the 
authorities  prevented  excesses.  In  the  Chamber  came  debates 
on  electoral  reform,  but  while  the  principle  of  list  voting  was 
accepted,  that  of  proportional  representation — to  further  which 
an  influential  League  had  lately  been  started — was  adjourned. 
Paris  was  far  more  interested,  at  that  moment,  in  the  sensa- 
tional trial  of  Mme.  Steinheil  on  charges  of  murder.3  The 
financial  position  now  led  in  further  taxation,  and  though  the 
Senate  was  dealing  actively  with  the  question  of  workmen's 
pensions,  the  unrest  in  the  Labour  world  increased  week  by 
week,  there  being  several  strikes  attended  T)y  violence.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  year  a  further  scandal  arose  respecting  the  property 
of  the  Religious  Orders.  Waldeck- Rousseau  had  estimated 
its  value  at  two  millions  sterling,  but  only  a  twentieth  part  of 

1  The  composition  of  his  Cabinet  was  as  follows  : — President  of  the 
Council  and  Minister  of  the  Interior,  Briand ;  War,  General  Brun  in  place 
of  General  Picquart ;  Marine,  Admiral  Boue  de  Lapeyrere  ;  Foreign  Affairs, 
Pichon ;  Justice,  Barthou ;  Finance,  Cochery,  in  place  of  Caillaux ;  Com- 
merce, Jean  Dupuy ;  Public  Works,  Posts  and  Telegraphs,  Millerand ; 
Education,  Doumergue ;  Agriculture,  Ruau ;  Labour,  Viviani ;  Colonies, 
Trouillot.  Six  of  the  above-named  Ministers  had  served  under  M.  Clemen- 
ceau.     There  were  also  four  Under-Secretaries  of  State. 

J  See  our  volume  The  Anarchists,  their  Faith  and  their  Record.  (London, 
John  Lane,  The  Bodley  Head.) 

3  See  ante,  p.  446. 


476  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

that  sum  now  remained,  for  liquidators  and  lawyers  had  preyed 
unscrupulously  upon  the  funds,  and  there  had  been  collusive 
sales  of  many  of  the  properties.  Further,  the  numerous  actions 
at  law  for  the  return  of  donations  made  by  private  families  to 
the  Orders,  had  often  ended  in  the  amounts  at  stake  being 
exhausted  in  costs.  M.  Briand  was  not  personally  responsible 
for  this  state  of  affairs,  but  as  some  of  the  liquidators  had  been 
appointed  by  him,  the  scandal  tended  to  weaken  his  position. 
The  upshot  was  the  transference  of  the  administration  of 
Church  property  to  the  State  Domains  Service.  One  of  the 
liquidators,  a  man  named  Duez,  was  also  arrested  for  embezzle- 
ment, he  having  admitted  that  he  had  purloined  i?  160,000. 
Further,  a  parliamentary  scandal  arose  on  Minister  Millerand 
being  accused  of  taking  excessive  fees  as  an  advocate. 

In  January  1910,  owing  to  the  rising  of  the  Seine,  Yonne, 
and  Marne,  disastrous  floods  occurred  in  Paris  and  elsewhere. 
A  large  relief  fund  was  raised  by  public  subscription,  and  the 
Chamber  voted  .£800,000  for  the  sufferers ;  but  it  would  not 
ratify  certain  new  taxation  proposals,  and  in  order  to  secure 
budgetary  equilibrium  more  than  six  millions  sterling  had  to 
be  procured  by  means  of  bonds.  However,  on  the  Customs 
Tariff  being  revised  in  a  Protectionist  sense,  assistance  was 
voted  for  the  improvement  of  peasant  holdings,  as  well  as  the 
pensions  bill  for  the  benefit  of  the  working  classes  and  the 
peasantry ;  M.  Delcasse's  costly,  but  necessary,  programme  for 
the  improvement  of  the  navy  was  also  adopted.  About  the 
end  of  April  there  were  General  Elections  for  the  Chamber, 
these  resulting  in  the  defeat  of  several  prominent  men,  such 
as  MM.  Allemane  and  Doumer,  and  the  return  of  over  230 
candidates  who  were  new  to  parliamentary  life.  M.  Brisson, 
long  President  of  the  Chamber,  was  confirmed  in  that  post 
(June  1),  and  403  deputies  gave  the  Government  a  vote  of 
confidence,  there  being  110  opponents  belonging  to  the 
extremist  parties. 

A  somewhat  serious  riot  soon  afterwards  occurred  at  the 
funeral  of  a  workman  injured  in  a  strike  affray,  and  when  an 
amnesty  for  offences  connected  with  Labour  troubles  was  pro- 
posed, the  Chamber  rejected  the  suggestion.  In  August  the 
attitude  of  the  railway  workers  became  threatening,  and  in 
October  those  of  the  Northern  Line  at  last  came  out  on  strike, 
being  followed  by  their  comrades  of  the  West.     The  Govern- 


THE  RAILWAY  STRIKE  477 

ment,  however,  took  vigorous  measures  and  thereby  saved  the 
situation.  The  Army  Reserves  were  called  out ;  the  various 
lines  were  guarded  by  the  military ;  soldiers  with  a  knowledge 
of  railway  work — among  them  being  all  those  strikers  who,  as 
reserve  men,  had  been  temporarily  reincorporated  in  the  army 
— were  called  upon  to  ensure  the  various  services ;  and  with 
few  exceptions  they  did  their  duty.  Thus,  although  there  was 
so-called  Sabotage  in  more  than  one  direction,  although  more 
than  one  bomb  was  thrown,  and  more  than  one  attempt  made 
to  displace  the  metals  or  impede  or  wreck  the  trains,  the 
Government's  firmness  created  such  a  great  impression  that  the 
men  of  all  the  other  railway  lines — whose  participation  in  the 
strike  had  been  feared — refrained  from  "coming  out."  The 
workers  of  the  Paris  Electric  Light  and  Motor  Power  service 
certainly  tried  to  terrify  the  capital  by  holding  up  the  tube 
trains  and  plunging  the  city  into  darkness,  as  they  had  done 
once  before,  but  this  affair  collapsed,  and  its  promoter, 
"  Secretary "  Pataud,  fled  for  a  time  to  Belgium.  However, 
M.  Viviani,  the  Labour  Minister,  resigned,  and  M.  Briand  was 
subjected  to  violent  attacks  by  the  revolutionary  extremists  in 
the  Chamber.  A  resolution  for  his  impeachment  was  rejected 
by  the  more  moderate-minded  majority,  and  he  finally  secured 
a  vote  of  confidence.  Immediately  afterwards  (November  2), 
having  decided  to  reconstruct  his  Administration,  he  re- 
signed. 

Let  us  now  refer  to  some  events  which  had  occurred 
previously.  There  had  been  various  negotiations  with  Germany 
both  over  railway  schemes  and  trading  projects  in  Morocco, 
and  over  a  suggested  Franco-German  consortium  for  the  opening 
up  of  some  French  Congolese  territory  on  the  southern  frontier 
of  the  German  Cameroon  colony.  In  this  matter  there  were 
difficulties  with  a  French  company  which  claimed  heavy  damages 
for  the  theft  of  rubber  and  ivory  by  Germans  and  natives  in 
their  employ.  None  of  these  questions,  however,  was  near 
solution  when  M.  Briand's  first  Cabinet  resigned.  Elsewhere 
the  chief  events  of  the  year  had  been,  first,  the  death  of  King 
Edward  VII.  on  May  6,  whereupon  M.  Pichon  was  appointed 
to  attend  the  obsequies  of  the  lamented  sovereign ;  secondly,  a 
rather  bitter  controversy  over  the  Declaration  of  London  on 
questions  of  naval  warfare  (drawn  up  in  1909) ;  and  thirdly,  a 
revolution  by  which  young  King  Manuel  of  Portugal  had  been 


478  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

overthrown  (October  4)  and  a  Republic  established  at  Lisbon. 
France  was  one  of  the  first  powers  to  recognise  the  new  regime. 
There  was  also  the  question  of  the  proposed  fortification  of 
Flushing  which,  being  regarded  in  France  as  instigated  by 
Germany,  gave  rise  to  some  uneasiness.  In  the  East,  moreover, 
the  Persian  imbroglio  inspired  fears  of  a  conflict  between 
Russia  and  Great  Britain,  with  both  of  which  powers  France 
desired  to  remain  on  the  best  terms.  Briefly,  when  M.  Briand 
reconstructed  his  Ministry  the  general  situation  was  much 
overclouded. 

M.  Briand's  desire  was  to  obtain  better  support  than  had 
been  given  him  by  some  of  his  former  colleagues.  The  previous 
Ministers  for  Foreign  Affairs,  War,  Marine,  and  Commerce 
reassumed  office,  but  M.  Girard  became  Minister  of  Justice ; 
M.  Klotz  took  Finances  ;  M.  Puech,  Public  Works  ;  M.  Maurice 
Faure,  Education  and  Fine  Arts ;  M.  Raynaud,  Agriculture ; 
M.  Jean  Morel,  the  Colonies  ;  and  M.  LafFerre,  Labour.  More- 
over, three  of  the  four  Under-Secretaries  of  State  were  changed. 
So  many  members  of  the  Administration  were  inexperienced, 
that  it  received  a  very  frigid  greeting.  A  vote  of  confidence 
was  passed  by  only  296  deputies  against  209,  and  MM. 
Delcasse,  Berteaux,  and  Camille  Pelletan  were  soon  at  the  head 
of  an  opposition  group.  Budgetary  and  Foreign  Office  debates 
ensued,  and  the  Government  often  had  difficulty  in  defending 
its  position.  Morocco  was  still  the  subject  of  pourparlers  with 
Germany,  notably  with  respect  to  the  railway  schemes,  in  which 
it  was  proposed  that  France  should  have  a  half  and  Germany  a 
quarter  share.  These  matters  were  still  dragging  on  when, 
after  an  interpellation  in  the  Chamber  on  the  alleged  in- 
sufficiency of  the  laws  respecting  the  Religious  Orders  and  educa- 
tion, the  Government  secured  a  majority  of  only  sixteen  votes. 
Its  resignation  ensued  (February  27,  1911). 

A  Cabinet  was  then  formed  by  M.  Ernest  Monis,  a  native 
of  Chateauneuf,  near  Cognac,  where  he  was  born  in  May  1846. 
Originally  an  advocate,  both  at  Cognac  and  at  Bordeaux,  and 
interested,  moreover,  in  the  brandy  trade,  he  had  become  a 
deputy  of  the  Gironde  in  1885,  a  senator  for  the  same  depart- 
ment in  1891,  and  Minister  of  Justice  in  Waldeck-Rousseau,s 
Administration.  Originally  a  very  moderate  Republican,  he 
had  inclined  of  later  years  to  the  more  advanced  section  of  the 
party.     The  leading  men  among  the  colleagues  whom  he  now 


RIOTS  IN  CHAMPAGNE  479 

selected1  were  MM.  Delcasse,  Berteaux,  and  Caillaux.  The 
choice  of  M.  Jean  Cruppi  as  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  caused 
much  astonishment,  for  this  brilliant  Toulousain  and  advocate 
was  not  known  to  have  any  competence  in  foreign  questions, 
and  his  only  previous  ministerial  appointment  had  been  that  of 
the  department  of  Commerce  in  Clemenceau's  Cabinet.  It  has 
since  been  said,  however,  that  M.  Cruppi  had  been  initiated 
into  some  of  the  secret  negotiations  with  Germany  respecting 
Morocco  and  the  Congo,  and  that  this  circumstance  procured 
him  his  new  post. 

Early  in  the  spring  trouble  arose  in  the  province  of  Cham- 
pagne respecting  the  delimitation  of  the  area  where  the  name 
of  champagne  might  be  legally  given  to  sparkling  wine.  By  a 
decree  of  the  Council  of  State,  that  name  was  reserved  to  the 
vintages  of  the  department  of  the  Marne  and  those  of  a  part 
of  the  Aisne,  the  wines  of  the  Aube  being  excluded.  Many 
municipalities  had  protested  and  resigned  owing  to  this 
decision,  and  in  March  rioting  broke  out  at  Bar-sur-Aube, 
where  the  new  Prime  Minister  was  burnt  in  effigy  to  the  delight 
of  thousands  of  demonstrators.  There  were  also  disturbances 
at  Troyes,  and  after  a  while  the  Government  reluctantly  agreed 
to  modify  the  delimitation  rules.  Thereupon,  however,  the 
wine-growers  of  the  Marne  rose  up  in  wrathful  fury,  many 
houses  and  establishments  being  sacked  and  burnt  at  Damery, 
Dizy,  Ay,  Epernay,  Venteuil,  and  other  localities.2  The  red 
flag  was  flaunted,  a  general  refusal  to  pay  taxes  ensued,  and  the 
whole  vineyard  district  of  the  Marne  had  to  be  subjected  to 
military  occupation  before  order  could  be  restored.  Even  then 
the  Government  remained  at  a  loss  how  to  reconcile  the  rival 
claims  of  the  Aube  and  the  Marne,  but  was  finally  constrained 
to  abolish  delimitation  altogether,  whilst  enacting,  however, 
stringent  regulations  to  prevent  wine  from  being  fraudulently 
described. 

1  The  Cabinet  included :  Interior,  Monis ;  Justice,  Antoine  Perrier ; 
Foreign  Affairs,  Cruppi ;  War,  Berteaux ;  Marine,  Delcasse ;  Finances, 
Joseph  Caillaux;  Education,  Steeg ;  Public  Works,  Charles  Dumont ; 
Commerce,  Masse  ;  Agriculture,  Pams  ;  Colonies,  Messimy ;  and  Labour, 
Paul-Boncour ;  with  four  Under-Secretaries. 

2  The  establishments,  etc.,  which  were  pillaged  or  destroyed,  were  those 
of  merchants  who  were,  rightly  or  wrongly,  accused  of  importing  grapes 
from  districts  (such  as  the  Aube)  situated  outside  the  area  specified  in  the 
delimitation  rules. 


480  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

During  the  Easter  recess  President  Fallieres  visited  Tunis. 
In  Morocco  rebellion  was  in  the  ascendant,  and  Muley  Hafid,s 
power  so  fast  collapsing  that  France  despatched  another  ex- 
pedition, a  flying  column  marching  on  Fez,  which  it  entered  on 
May  22.  Germany,  still  intent  on  negotiating  financial  and 
commercial  matters,  did  not  absolutely  protest  against  this 
advance,  but  pointed  out  that  it  would  have  a  bad  effect  on 
German  public  opinion,  and  even  advised  its  abandonment.  A 
little  later  Herr  von  Bethmann-Hollweg,  the  Chancellor,  who 
refused  to  believe  in  Muley  Hafid's  impending  fall  and  the 
approach  of  anarchy,  declared  that  the  occupation  of  Fez  would 
revive  all  the  questions  supposed  to  have  been  settled  at 
Algeciras.  Ultimately,  however,  there  came  an  inquiry  as  to 
what  proposals  France  would  make  if  Germany  would  allow  her 
a  free  hand  in  Morocco.  Conversations  on  the  subject  took 
place  at  Kissingen  between  Herr  von  Kiderlen-Wachter  and 
M.  Jules  Cambon,  while  in  Paris  M.  Cruppi  suggested  to  Herr 
von  Schcen  that  the  basis  of  an  agreement  might  be  found, 
perhaps,  in  Equatorial  Africa.  Nothing  was  effected  at  the 
time,  however,  as  the  French  ministry  fell  from  power. 

It  had  been  in  a  moribund  state  ever  since  May  20,  when, 
at  the  starting  of  an  aeroplane  race  from  Paris  to  Madrid,  M. 
Berteaux,  the  War  Minister,1  was  unhappily  struck  down  and 
killed  by  one  of  the  aerial  vessels,  M.  Monis,  the  Prime  Minister, 
being  at  the  same  time  severely  injured.  Nevertheless  the 
Cabinet  might  have  continued  in  office  had  not  M.  Berteaux' 
successor,  General  Goirand,  come  into  conflict  with  the  Senate 
respecting  the  supreme  command  of  the  army  in  war  time. 
This  led  to  the  Government's  resignation. 

The  next  Premier  was  M.  Joseph  Caillaux,  the  previous 
Financial  Minister.  He  was  born  at  Le  Mans  in  March 
1863,  his  father  being  M.  Eugene  Caillaux,  a  Bonapartist 
who  served  in  the  Broglie  Ministry  of  the  Sixteenth  of  May. 
He  began  life  as  a  licentiate -in -law  and  an  inspector  of 
Finances.  He  was  first  elected  a  deputy  in  1898,  and  became 
Minister  of  Finances  in  Waldeck-Rousseau's  Administration. 
1  Born  in  1853,  and  the  son  of  a  cloth  merchant,  M.  Berteaux  became  a 
stockbroker.  He  entered  the  Chamber  in  1893  as  a  Radical  Socialist,  hold- 
ing very  advanced  views  on  Labour  questions,  and  being  strongly  opposed 
to  the  Church.  He  specialised,  however,  in  military  matters,  and  first 
became  War  Minister  in  succession  to  General  Andre  in  1904.  See  also 
ante  p.  472. 


MOROCCO— AGADIR  481 

In  that  capacity  he  was  the  real  promoter  of  the  famous  Sugar 
Convention,  signed  at  Brussels  in  1902,  since  when  his  name 
had  constantly  been  associated  with  the  establishment  of  an 
income-tax  in  France.  In  the  Cabinet  he  constituted  on  June 
27,  1911,  MM.  Delcasse,  Steeg,  and  Pams  retained  their  posts, 
M.  Klotz  returned  to  Finances,  the  Prime  Minister  himself 
taking  the  Interior  and  Worship,  while  M.  Cruppi  exchanged 
Foreign  Affairs  for  Justice.  His  successor  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay 
was  M.  de  Selves,  a  nephew  of  M.  de  Freycinet,  and  for  many 
years  previously  Prefect  of  the  Seine.  Twice  already — in  1904 
and  1906 — he  had  been  offered  the  portfolio  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  but  had  then  preferred  to  remain  at  the  Paris  Hotel- 
de-Ville.  An  able  administrator,  he  had  there  found  himself 
in  his  right  place.  In  the  sphere  of  diplomacy  he  became  less 
fortunate,  but  this  was  largely  due  to  the  underhand  negotia- 
tions with  Germany  (suggestive  of  the  secret  diplomacy  of 
Louis  XV.)  which  the  Prime  Minister  conducted  unknown 
to  him.1 

The  new  Cabinet's  declared  programme  was  approved  by  a 
majority  of  200  deputies,  but  the  Senate  insisted  on  a  vigorous 
policy,  particularly  with  regard  to  social  disorder.  The 
authorities  complied  by  arresting  three  Syndicalist  leaders, 
who  had  incited  soldiers  to  disobey  their  officers,  and  by 
refusing  to  bring  pressure  to  bear  on  the  Railway  Companies 
for  the  reinstatement  of  men  whom  they  had  dismissed.  But 
at  the  beginning  of  July  public  attention  was  once  again 
directed  to  Morocco,  for,  under  the  pretext  of  protecting 
certain  German  traders  in  the  Sus  region,  Germany  had 
despatched  a  gunboat,  the  Panther,  to  the  port  of  Agadir,  this 
being  followed,  a  little  later,  by  the  despatch  of  a  larger 
vessel,  the  Berlin.  The  long  and  curious  story  of  the  negotia- 
tions which  ensued  will  be  found  in  a  work  we  have  previously 
mentioned.2  Certain  it  is  that  M.  Caillaux  secretly  employed 
emissaries  to  negotiate  with  German  statesmen  and  financiers, 
an  arrangement  which  might  put  an  end  to  the  frequently 
recurring  troubles  between  the  two  countries ;  and  in  this 
respect  he  was  undoubtedly   animated   by  patriotic   motives. 

1  Other  members  of  the  Caillaux  Cabinet  were :  Messimy,  War ; 
Augagneur,  Public  Works  and  Post  Office  ;  Lebrun,  Colonies  ;  Couyba, 
Commerce  ;  and  Rene'  Renoult,  Labour. 

2  Chronique  de  VAn  1911,  by  Mermeix.'    See  ante,  footnote  p.  472. 

2i 


V 


482  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

But  the  course  he  pursued  repeatedly  placed  the  French 
Foreign  Office  and  its  ambassador  at  Berlin  at  a  great  disad- 
vantage. Naturally,  Great  Britain  was  opposed  to  German 
action  at  Agadir,  and  at  one  moment  there  was  some  question 
of  a  Franco-British  naval  demonstration  there.  The  move 
made  by  Germany  was  designed,  however,  far  less  with  a  view 
of  actually  occupying  any  part  of  Morocco,  than  of  forcing  the 
hand  of  France  with  respect  to  the  commercial  matters  and 
suggestions  of  compensation  which  had  so  long  been  mooted 
but  invariably  postponed. 

The  position  was  now  complicated  by  the  Spanish  occupa- 
tion of  El  Ksar  and  Larache.  The  fears  of  war  revived  in 
France,  and  steps  were  taken  yet  once  more  to  provide  for 
contingencies.  For  instance,  General  Joffre  was  appointed 
Chief  of  the  General  Staff  to  assume  supreme  command  in  the 
event  of  hostilities,  and  General  Dubail  was  created  Chief  of 
the  Army  Staff,  while  a  Council  of  National  Defence  was 
constituted  under  the  Prime  Minister's  presidency.  In  August 
the  Departmental  Councils  sounded  a  strong  patriotic  note ; 
in  September  President  Fallieres  reviewed  the  fleet  at  Toulon,1 
which  he  quitted  to  attend  the  military  manoeuvres  in  eastern 
France.  There  were  many  demonstrations  in  favour  of  the 
army  and  the  navy,  and  French  patriotism  bubbled  up  as  in 
the  old  days  of  Gambetta  and  Boulanger. 

The  position  of  the  Caillaux  Government  was  rendered  the 
more  difficult,  however,  by  a  continuance  of  the  unrest  among 
the  school-teachers,  the  railway  and  other  workers,  and  the 
disturbances  which  occurred  in  northern  France  respecting  the 
high  price  of  provisions — meat,  poultry,  vegetables,  butter, 
cheese,  eggs,  sugar,  and  coffee,  all  being  affected.  Further, 
rents  had  increased  in  Paris  by  16  and  17  per  cent  in  the  course 
of  a  single  year ;  the  whole  being  caused  by  increase  of  taxation, 
which  producers,  merchants,  and  landlords  were  anxious  to 
recover  from  consumers  and  tenants. 

At  last  the  Franco-German  negotiations  came  to  an  issue, 
and  on  November  4  new  conventions  were  signed  at  Berlin. 
Briefly  put,  Germany  recognised  a  French  protectorate  in 
Morocco  ;  there  was  to  be  perfect  equality  between  all  countries 
in  regard  to  trade,  customs-duties,  mining  and  railway  rights 

1  Soon  afterwards  the  battleship  La  Libertt  was  destroyed  by  an  explosion, 
with  a  loss  of  200  lives. 


MOROCCO  AND  CONGO  TREATIES  483 

there ;  closed  ports  were  to  be  opened,  and  existing  rights  of 
fishery  were  to  be  maintained.  France,  moreover,  was  left  free 
to  negotiate  with  Spain  respecting  their  respective  claims, 
without  any  intervention  on  Germany's  part.  On  the  other 
hand,  France  ceded  to  Germany  considerable  territories  in  the 
Congo  and  Ubanghi  regions ;  Germany  relinquished  to  France 
some  territory  north  of  Lake  Tchad,  and  leased  other  districts 
to  her  for  a  period  of  ninety-nine  years ;  railway  and  naviga- 
tion questions,  affected  by  these  matters,  were  also  settled  ;  and, 
further,  France  surrendered  to  Germany  her  right  of  pre- 
emption with  respect  to  the  acquisition  of  Spanish  Guinea  and 
the  isles  of  Corisco  and  Elobey,  as  specified  in  a  previous 
arrangement  between  France  and  Spain.  In  October  1904, 
and  again  on  September  1,  1905,  there  had  been  secret  treaties 
between  Spain  and  France  respecting  their  respective  positions 
in  Morocco,  and  during  the  present  year,  1912,  their  Govern- 
ments have  engaged  in  further  negotiations  in  order  to  settle 
their  differences,  in  accordance  with  the  new  state  of  things 
created  by  the  last  Franco-German  convention. 

That  arrangement,  as  is  usual  when  countries  have  to  make 
mutual  concessions,  was  greeted  with  dissatisfaction  on  both 
sides.  The  German  Colonial  Minister  at  once  resigned ;  serious 
differences  also  arose  between  MM.  Caillaux  and  de  Selves, 
and  the  latter  abruptly  retired  from  office  on  January  9,  in  the 
present  year.  His  post  was  offered  to  M.  Delcasse,  who  at 
first  accepted  it,  but  afterwards  would  only  take  it  on  condition 
that  he  should  not  be  interfered  with — even  by  the  Prime 
Minister.  Moreover,  nobody  would  accept  M.  Delcasse's 
previous  post  of  Minister  of  Marine.  M.  Caillaux''  secret 
Moroccan  negotiations,  however  patriotic  they  may  have  been, 
had  cost  him  the  confidence  of  many  parliamentarians.  Thus, 
on  the  morning  of  January  11,  he  resigned,  and  M.  Raymond 
Poincare,  recently  secretary  of  the  Senate's  committee  of 
inquiry  into  the  Morocco  and  Congo  treaties,  succeeded  to 
his  office. 

The  son  of  an  inspector-general  of  roads  and  bridges,  a 
first  cousin  of  the  late  Jules  Henry  Poincare,  who  was  eminent 
in  mathematics,  physics,  astronomy,  and  philosophy,  the  new 
Prime  Minister  was  born  in  August  1860  at  Bar-le-Duc,  in 
Lorraine.  After  securing  the  degree  of  doctor-in-law  he  joined 
the  editorial  staff  of  Le  Voltaire,  and  became  first  a  general 


484  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

councillor,  and  later,  a  deputy  for  his  native  region.  At  thirty- 
three  years  of  age  he  was  Minister  of  Education,  Worship,  and 
Fine  Arts,  in  which  post  he  did  right  good  work.  In  1894 
he  became  Minister  of  Finances,  and  as  such  he  again 
distinguished  himself.  He  espoused  the  cause  of  Dreyfus, 
however,  and  for  nearly  ten  years  afterwards  remained  out  of 
office.  In  June  1899  M.  Loubet  certainly  offered  him  the 
Premiership,  but  he  declined  it  from  dislike  of  the  politique 
de  combat,  which  circumstances  then  required.  Nevertheless, 
he  remained  a  firm  admirer  and  personal  friend  of  Waldeck- 
Rousseau,  who  took  up  the  great  task  which  he  then 
declined,  that  of  restoring  France  to  a  consciousness  of  her 
obligations. 

On  being  chosen  for  the  Premiership  last  January,  M. 
Poincare  formed  a  strong  administration.  M.  Briand  took 
office  with  him  as  Minister  of  Justice ;  Delcasse^  remained 
Minister  of  Marine;  Klotz,  Minister  of  Finances;  Pams, 
Minister  of  Agriculture ;  and  Lebrun,  Minister  of  the  Colonies  ; 
while  Millerand  went  to  the  War  Office,  and  Steeg — a  very 
able  French  Protestant — to  the  Home  Department;  Jean 
Dupuy  at  the  same  time  taking  charge  of  Public  Works  and 
the  Post  Office,  and  Leon  Bourgeois  of  the  Ministry  of  Labour. 
Two  newcomers,  MM.  Guisfhau  and  Fernand  David,  were 
appointed,  the  first  to  the  Ministry  of  Education  and  Fine 
Arts,  the  second  to  that  of  Commerce  and  Industry.  Foreign 
Affairs  were  reserved  by  M.  Poincare  for  himself. 

Under  this  Ministry,  whose  inaugural  declaration  was 
approved  in  the  Chamber  by  440  votes  to  6,  the  chief  home 
question  has  been  that  of  electoral  reform,  the  Premier  being 
a  convinced  partisan  of  proportional  representation,  which, 
despite  the  rejection  of  certain  bills  and  the  strenuous  opposi- 
tion of  MM.  Clemenceau  and  Combes,  may  well  come  to  pass. 
Another  matter  pertaining  to  home  affairs  which  has  attracted 
great  attention  has  been  the  increase  of  crime,  particularly  in 
Paris,  whose  suburbs  were  terrorised  in  the  spring  by  the 
criminal  audacity  of  a  number  of  so-called  Anarchist  motor- 
bandits.  In  the  domain  of  foreign  affairs  the  war  between 
Italy  and  Turkey  and  the  further  changes  in  Morocco  have  to 
be  mentioned.  During  January  there  was  some  trouble 
over  the  seizure  by  the  Italians  of  a  French  mail-boat,  the 
Carthage,  and  also  that  of  the  Manouba,  in  which  last  case 


LATER  POSITION  IN  MOROCCO  485 

numerous  Turkish  passengers,  chiefly  doctors  and  nurses,  were 
detained,  though  the  vessel  was  allowed  to  go.  France  im- 
mediately demanded  the  release  of  the  prisoners,  and  Italy 
had  to  give  way.  The  progress  of  the  Turco-Italian  War  has 
been  vigilantly  watched  in  France,  and  in  view  of  the  proposed 
increase  of  the  Italian  and  Austrian  fleets  M.  Delcasse  has 
been  striving  to  augment  that  of  France,  especially  in  the 
Mediterranean.  Another  matter  connected  with  foreign  affairs 
has  been  the  intended  fortification  of  Flushing,  which  France 
still  views  with  apprehension. 

In  Morocco  she  had  to  take  serious  action  about  the  end  of 
May,  when  it  became  necessary  to  protect  the  Europeans  at 
Fez,  which  a  force  of  rebel  Berbers  besieged.  They  were 
ultimately  driven  across  the  Sebu  by  a  column  under  Colonel 
Gouraud,  but  Muley  Hafid's  position  had  become  so  difficult 
that,  on  June  6,  he  quitted  his  capital  for  Rabat  under  a 
French  escort.  At  last,  early  in  August,  the  Sultan  decided 
to  abdicate  in  favour  of  his  younger  brother,  Muley  Youssef. 
The  position  in  Morocco  still  remains  very  difficult,  and, 
between  the  rebellions  of  the  tribes  on  one  hand,  and  the 
claims  of  Spain  on  the  other,  the  task  which  France  has 
assumed  in  connection  with  that  country  may  not  reach 
fulfilment  for  a  considerable  period. 

The  Prince  of  Wales  made  a  somewhat  prolonged  stay  in 
France  this  year  for  educational  purposes,  and  met  with  the 
best  of  receptions  wherever  he  went.  That  the  Entente  Cordiale 
remained  as  firm  as  ever  was  shown  last  April  when  statues 
of  Queen  Victoria  and  King  Edward  VII.  were  inaugurated 
at  Nice  and  Cannes.  M.  Poincare,  who  attended  on  these 
occasions,  paid  eloquent  tributes  to  the  memories  of  the  two 
sovereigns.  Three  notable  Frenchmen  have  passed  away  this 
year :  on  April  14,  Henri  Brisson,  sometime  Prime  Minister 
and  long  President  of  the  Chamber ;  on  June  12,  Frederic 
Passy,  for  many  years  the  devoted  champion  of  peace  and 
arbitration ;  and  on  July  17,  the  Prime  Minister's  eminent 
cousin,  Henry  Poincare. 

Here  we  must  take  leave  of  our  subject.  No  really  full 
account  of  French  history  since  1870  can  well  be  compressed 
within  the  space  of  one  volume,  and  we  have  had  to  pass  over 
many  matters  of  real  interest.     Of  some  it  is  difficult  to  write, 


486  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

as  they  pertain  to  the  evolution  through  which  France  is  still 
passing,  and  it  is  as  yet  impossible  to  discern  how  far  they  may 
influence  her  destiny.  One  thing  is  certain,  that  power  has 
passed  from  the  more  Conservative  to  the  most  Radical  Repub- 
licans ;  but,  although  there  have  been  serious  shocks  at  times, 
the  many  changes  effected  have  come  about  without  any  too 
great  disturbance  of  the  national  life.  It  would  be  premature 
to  say  whether  the  last  barrier  against  the  advent  of  a  real 
Socialist  Government  has  been  reached.  On  various  occasions 
an  absolute  Socialist  triumph  has  seemed  imminent,  but  has 
not  occurred.  At  the  same  time  more  and  more  unrest  has 
been  discernible  of  recent  years.  During  the  gradual  broaden- 
ing of  the  national  institutions  the  working  classes  have 
acquired  more  and  more  privileges,  greater  and  greater  pre- 
ponderance. The  struggle  between  capital  and  labour  is  now 
keener  in  France  than  in  any  other  country.  There  have  been 
innumerable  strikes,  which  on  some  occasions  have  seriously 
threatened  the  national  life.  The  energy  displayed  by  the 
authorities  has  repeatedly  prevented  matters  from  going  too 
far;  nevertheless  the  working-class  organisations  have  become 
more  and  more  powerful,  and  nobody  can  tell  what  the  morrow 
may  bring  forth. 

We  feel,  however,  that  even  if  the  extreme  Socialist  elements 
were  to  acquire  power  the  changes  would  be  less  great  than 
some  imagine.  When  men  are  in  office  they  do  not  act  quite 
as  they  do  in  opposition.  France,  moreover,  is  not  alone  in  the 
world,  she  has  to  take  account  of  her  neighbours,  whether  they 
be  enemies  or  friends ;  and  the  necessity  in  which  she  is  placed 
of  maintaining  certain  alliances  and  friendships  must  influence 
her  career.  For  many  years  a  dwindling  was  apparent  in  her 
population ;  from  1906  to  1911  its  increase  was  only  349,264, 
the  total  in  the  latter  year  being  (inclusive  of  Corsica) 
39,601,509.  The  country  has  thus  been  placed  at  a  very  great 
disadvantage  in  comparison  with  Germany,  whose  population 
in  1910  was  64,925,933,  this  representing  an  increase  of 
8,558,755  during  a  period  of  ten  years.  Even  now,  in  spite  of 
all  the  progress  effected  in  French  military  organisation,  arma- 
ment, and  equipment,  we  doubt  whether  the  Republic  could 
emerge  victorious  from  a  struggle  with  Germany  unless  she 
received  serious  assistance  from  other  powers.  While  she  has 
done  her  best  to  augment   and  improve   her  army,  she  has 


CONCLUSION  487 

repeatedly  neglected  her  fleet  and  navy,  which  can  only  be 
restored  to  a  satisfactory  condition  by  much  exertion  and 
expenditure.  Let  us  add  that  the  great  bulk  of  her  people,  in 
spite  of  Socialist,  Syndicalist,  and  Anti-militarist  propaganda, 
remain  extremely  patriotic,  and  this  would  prove  a  factor  in 
at  least  the  sphere  of  foreign  politics  even  should  a  thoroughly 
Socialist  Administration  ever  secure  office. 

The  country  remains  wealthy,  thanks  to  the  national  in- 
dustry and  thrift,  but  the  State  finances  are  not  in  as  satis- 
factory a  condition  as  they  might  be,  owing  in  part  to  the  great 
expenditure  of  money  on  various  reforms.  These,  however,  must, 
in  time,  have  their  due  effect  on  the  prosperity  of  the  nation  as  a 
whole,  and  the  financial  position  of  the  State  should  then  again 
improve.  In  spite  of  Protection,  the  French  peasantry  do  not 
appear  to  be  so  prosperous  as  formerly,  or  at  least  they  do  not 
save  as  much  money  as  they  once  did.  Extreme  subdivision  of 
the  soil  may  at  last  prove,  economically,  as  much  an  evil  as 
the  apportionment  of  the  land  among  a  privileged  few.  The 
census  of  1911  shows  how  great  and  general  the  exodus  from 
the  villages  to  the  towns  has  become.  In  the  vine  regions  the 
phylloxera's  ravages  and  other  evils,  together  with  faulty 
legislation  respecting  the  wine  and  spirit  trades,  the  ever- 
increasing  competition  of  Algeria,  and  the  falling  off  in  the. 
export  trade,  have  tended  to  some  impoverishment.  At  the 
same  time  the  peasant's  standard  of  life  has  been  gradually 
raised.  Steps  have  been  taken  to  help  him  to  improve  his 
property,  and  he  is  included  in  the  Workers'  Pension  Law. 
He  now  indulges  in  more  comforts  than  he  used  to  do  ;  in 
many  regions  he  has  become  less  niggardly  than  of  yore.  But 
it  is  particularly  the  workman's  standard  of  life  which  has 
improved  under  the  Republic,  though  we  will  not  say  that  his 
gains  in  wages  have  fully  corresponded  in  late  years  with  the 
rise  in  rents  and  the  enhanced  price  of  provisions,  for  which  it 
is  hoped  to  find  some  remedy  in  the  imposition  of  the  income- 
tax  and  the  removal  of  much  indirect  taxation.  Of  the  whole 
nation  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  one  of  the  best  educated  in  the 
world.  No  little  nonsense  has  been  written  on  the  subject  of 
the  banishment  of  religion  from  the  schools.  Good,  sound, 
practical  morality  is  taught  in  all  of  them. 

Although,  by  reason  of  her  failure  to  increase  her  popula- 
tion at  anything  approaching  the  rate  of  other  nations,  it  may 


488  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

prove  that  the  days  when  France  ranked  as  an  almost  supreme 
conquering  military  power  are  gone,  we  are  confident  that, 
thanks  to  the  genius  of  her  sons,  the  spirit  of  emulation 
animating  so  many  of  them,  she  will  always  remain  one  of  the 
main  forces  of  the  world,  one  which  by  achievement  in  science, 
discovery,  literature,  art,  and  general  social  progress  must 
exercise  influence  over  the  bulk  of  mankind.  It  is  the 
Republic's  glory  that,  amid  so  many  difficulties,  her  chief 
leaders  have  ever  striven  to  promote  such  influence,  to  throw 
aside  the  fetishes  of  the  past  and  to  bring  about  a  new  era 
in  the  country's  development.  In  spite  of  all  revolutionary 
incitement,  and  making  every  allowance  for  temporary  unrest, 
and  passing  outbursts  of  impatience,  we  believe  that  the  social 
evolution  of  France  will,  on  the  whole,  continue  peacefully,  in 
accordance  with  reason  and  the  interests  of  the  community  at 
large.  There  was  an  age  when  of  all  the  world's  nations  she 
was  among  the  most  pre-eminent  in  war ;  and  though  it  remains 
her  duty  to  guard  her  frontier  and  defend  her  interests  both  at 
home  and  in  her  colonies,  we  trust  that  she  will  always  remain 
one  of  the  most  pre-eminent  nations  in  peace,  rearing,  year  by 
year,  a  more  and  more  contented  people,  dowered  with  plenty, 
happy  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  utmost  sum  of  liberty  that  is 
consistent  with  national  well-being,  growing,  also,  in  know- 
ledge, sowing  it  broadcast,  and  thereby  contributing  to  those 
conquests  which  alone  are  worthy  of  enlightened  man. 


ADDENDA  AND  ERRATA 


Page  21.  Lord  Kitchener. — The  battalion  in  which  Lord  Kitchener 
served  during  the  Franco-German  War  appears  to  have  been  the  sixth 
of  the  Mobile  Guard  of  Les  C6tes-du-Nord.  It  belonged  to  the  Reserves 
of  the  21st  Army  Corps,  which  was  commanded  by  "  General/'  later 
Admiral,  Jaures,  uncle  of  the  famous  Socialist  leader  (see  page  333  ante, 
footnote  1).  The  reserves  were  under  the  direct  orders  of  General-de- 
brigade  Collet,  who,  like  Jaures,  was  really  a  naval  officer  temporarily 
transferred  to  the  army. 

P.  94.  The  Duke  de  Chartres  died  at  the  Chateau  de  Vineuil,  near 
Chantilly,  on  December  5,  1910.  His  daughter,  the  Princess  Waldemar, 
predeceased  him  on  December  4,  1909. 

P.  175,  line  9.  For  Amanien  read  Amanieu. 

P.  193.  The  Constitution  of  the  Republic  may,  perhaps,  soon  be  modified 
so  far  as  the  election  of  Deputies  is  concerned.  Various  schemes  for  the 
revival  of  List  Voting  and  the  introduction  of  Proportional  Representation, 
to  meet  the  claims  of  minorities,  have  been  brought  forward  of  recent 
times,  but  have  not  been  finally  adopted  at  the  date  of  writing  these 
lines. 

P.  240.  The  Triple  Alliance,  Tunis  and  Tripoli. — The  recent  Memoirs 
of  Francesco  Crispi  throw  some  further  light  on  the  origin  of  this 
Alliance.  Already  in  1877,  Crispi,  then  President  of  the  Italian  Chamber 
of  Deputies,  went  on  a  secret  mission  to  Prince  Bismarck,  with  the  object 
of  securing  an  alliance  with  Germany  against  both  France  and  Austria. 
The  German  Chancellor,  however,  whilst  quite  willing  to  support  Italy 
against  the  former,  refused  to  act  against  the  latter  power.  Before  long, 
indeed,  an  Austro-German  alliance  was  established,  and,  as  stated  in  our 
narrative,  it  was  not  until  1882  that  Italy  joined  the  combination. 
According  to  Barthelemy  St.  Hilaire,  Lord  Salisbury,  as  mentioned  by  us 
(p.  239  ante),  offered  France  a  free  hand  in  Tunis ;  according  to  Crispi' s 
memoirs  he,  at  the  same  time,  offered  "  expansion  in  the  direction  of  Tunis 
or  Tripoli "  to  Italy,  the  proposal  being  made  to  Count  de  Launay,  one  of 
the  Italian  representatives  at  the  Berlin  Congress.  At  the  time  of  the 
French  operations  in  Tunis,  however,  the  British  Foreign  Office,  then 
under  Earl  Granville,  was  unfavourable  to  Italian  ambition,  and  it  was 
only  in  1890  that  Crispi  reopened  the  question  of  Tripoli  with  Lord 
Salisbury,  who  had  returned  to  his  former  post.     Signor  Catalini,  Italian 

489 


490  REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 

charge  d'affaires  in  London,  thereupon  reported  as  follows :  "  He  (Lord 
Salisbury)  has  charged  me  to  telegraph  to  your  Excellency  that  '  he  is 
convinced  that,  on  the  day  when  the  status  quo  in  the  Mediterranean  shall 
suffer  any  alteration  whatsoever,  Italy's  occupation  of  Tripoli  will  become 
an  absolute  necessity.'  He  himself  reminded  me  that  he  had  expressed 
this  same  opinion  to  me  on  a  previous  occasion,  and  he  said  he  considered 
it  an  important  point  in  his  policy.  He  furthermore  made  the  following 
declaration :  '  The  occupation  of  Tripoli  by  Italy  must  be  accomplished 
regardless  of  what  may  happen  in  Egypt — that  is  to  say,  whether  Egypt 
remain  under  British  control  or  in  the  hands  of  the  Sultan.  The  interests 
of  Europe  demand  this  occupation,  so  that  the  Mediterranean  may  be 
prevented  from  becoming  a  French  lake.  The  only  point  to  be  further 
considered  is  whether  the  present  moment  be  the  best  suited  for  putting 
this  undertaking  into  execution.'"  Shortly  afterwards,  in  a  despatch 
forwarded  to  Crispi,  the  British  Foreign  Secretary  expressed  the  view  that 
the  moment  was  not  favourable,  as  Italian  action  would  bring  about  a  war 
with  Turkey  and  impel  the  latter  power  to  seek  Russian  support.  "  Should 
Italy,"  said  Lord  Salisbury,  "  attempt  to  occupy  Tripoli  in  times  of  peace 
and  before  any  aggressive  movement  on  the  part  of  France,  she  would 
expose  herself  to  the  reproach  of  having  revived  the  Eastern  Question 
under  eminently  disadvantageous  conditions.  The  Sultan  would  not 
submit  to  the  loss  of  another  province  without  a  loud  outcry.  He  would 
be  willing  to  sacrifice  his  independence  in  order  to  preserve  his  territory, 
and  accept  the  protection  and  support  of  Russia."  Italy  was  thus  con- 
strained to  wait.  When,  however,  of  recent  times,  she  at  last  invaded 
Tripoli,  it  was  during  a  period  of  peace,  and  without  any  aggressive 
movement  on  the  part  of  France  having  occurred  ;  though  undoubtedly 
Italy  embarked  on  the  campaign  owing  to  French  enterprise  in  Morocco. 

P.  249,  line  13.  M.  Clemenceau. — For  now  read  afterwards. 

P.  253,  line  7.  General  Farre. — He  was  Minister  of  War  in  Ferry's 
first  administration  and  organised  the  Tunisian  Expedition,  but  is  best 
remembered  for  his  action  in  banishing  drums  and  drummers  from  the 
army,  as  he  regarded  them  as  superfluities. 

P.  255,  line  13.  General  de  Galliffet. — For  has  always  been  read  was 
always.  M.  de  Galliffet  died  in  Paris  on  July  8,  1909,  after  a  stroke  of 
paralysis. 

P.  261,  line  40.  For  has  remained  read  long  remained. 

P.  293,  line  5.   For  St.  Ayr  read  St.  Cyr. 

P.  316,  line  4.  The  third  Duke  Decazes  died  in  August  1912. 

P.  336,  footnote.  MM.  Constans  and  Loze. — The  former  became  am- 
bassador at  Constantinople  in  1898,  and  held  the  post  for  several  years. 
The  latter,  Henri  Auguste  Loze,  born  at  Le  Cateau,  Nord,  in  January 
1850,  became  ambassador  at  Vienna.     He  is  now  (1912)  a  senator. 

P.  371.  The  Panama  Canal. — International  difficulties  have  arisen 
respecting  the  action  of  the  United  States  Congress  in  exempting  certain 
American  shipping  from  the  payment  of  canal  tolls,  thereby  giving  it  an 
advantage  over  other  shipping  ;  and  the  British  Government  has  protested 
(August  1912)  against  this  action,  regarding  it  as  an  infringement  of  the 
Hay-Pauncefote  treaty. 


ADDENDA  AND  ERRATA  491 

P.  391,  line  1.  For  Mezieres  read  Mezieres. 

P.  426,  line  2.  For  Gougon  read  Goujon. 

P.  435,  line  4  and  footnote  1.  M.  Hanotaux. — For  fifty-seventh  read 
sixtieth.  The  fourth  volume  of  his  history  of  contemporary  France  (1871- 
1900)  appeared  in  1908.  It  is  not  known  whether  he  proposes  to  bring 
it  down  to  a  later  date. 

P.  440,  line  41.  M.  de  Freycinet. — Charles  Louis  de  Saulce  de  Freycinet, 
so  frequently  mentioned  in  our  pages  {see  Index)  was  born  on  Novem- 
ber 14,  1828.  At  the  time  of  the  Franco  -  German  War  he  was 
practising  as  a  mining  engineer,  but  the  National  Defence  Government 
made  him  Prefect  of  Tarn-et-Garonne,  which  post  he  quitted  to  become 
Gambetta's  coadjutor  (see  p.  25  ante).  Our  narrative  will  have  shown  that 
M.  de  Freycinet  was  on  four  occasions  Prime  Minister  of  France,  besides 
serving  in  four  other  ministries.  With  a  slim  figure  and  a  short  pointed 
white  beard,  he  was  long  known  in  political  circles  as  "the  little  white 
mouse,"  in  part  on  account  of  his  appearance,  and  in  part  by  reason  of  his 
dexterity,  agility,  and  general  wiliness  in  moments  of  emergency.  There 
is  reason  to  believe  that  he  long  hoped  to  become  President  of  the  Republic. 
He  is  still  a  senator,  but  lives  mostly  in  retirement  on  account  of  his 
great  age. 

P.  455,  line  25  and  footnote.  For  Anteuil  read  Auteuil. 

P.  457,  line  2.  M.  fimile  Combes  was  born  at  Roquecourbe,  Tarn, 
in  1835. 


INDEX 


Abdul  Aziz  of  Morocco,  465,  471 
Abdul  Hamid  of  Turkey,  473 
About,  E.  (1828-1885),  211 
Abyssinia,  439 
Abzac  de  Mayac,  Gl.  d',  221 
Adam,  Edmond,  14,  69, 188  ;  Mme. 
(b.  1836),  14,  188,  189,  214,  272 
Administrations  or  Ministries,  the 
more  important :   under  Thiers, 
40,    124  V  Broglie's,    136,    138  ; 
Cissey  -  Fortou's,   194  ;    Buffet's, 
194,    195;    Dufaure's    (I),    195, 
196 ;    J.    Simon's,    196   et    seq.  ; 
Broglie-Fortou's,  201  et  seq.,  214, 
216 ;    Rochebouet's,    216 ;     Du- 
faure's (If),  217  ;  Waddiflgton's, 
233-235;    Freycinet's    (I),    2&5 ; 
Ferry's  (I),  237-246;  Gambetta's 
(thefereat    Ministry),   247-255', 
259-261;    Freycinet's  (II),   263- 
269;   Duclerc's,  26%  278 ;  Faf-- 
lieres',   278;    Ferry's  (II),   279- 
289  ;   BrissonV  (I),  290  ;    Frey- 
"cinet's  (III),  292  ;  Goblet's,  299  J 
Rouvier's  (I),  301  ;  Tirard's  (I), 
311 ;    Floquet's,    322 ;    Tirard's 
(II),     3Q3;     'Freyci^'s     (IV), 
345  ;  LoubeJ's,  347,  357 ;  Ribofe 
(I),  357;    C.   Dupuy's'(I),  36a ; 
Casimir-Perier's,  390  ;  C.  Dupuy's 
(II),  395,  411 ;  RifoqVs  (II)j  423; 
Bourgeois',  423-4   Melin'e's,  423, 
431 ;    Brisson's    (11),    435 ;     C. 
Dupuy's '(III),   437,   455,    465; 
WaTdeck-Rousseau's,    455,    465  ; 
Combes',    457,    465 ;     Rouvier's 
(II),  465 ;  Sarrien's,  468 ;  Clemen- 
ceau's,  468  et  seq.  ;  Briand's  (I), 
474  (II),  478  ;  Moms' s,  478,  479  ; 
Caillaux',  480,  481  ;    Poincare's, 
483,  484 
Agadir  affair,  481 
Albert  II.  of  Monaco,  443-445 


Alencon,  Duke  d',  92,   279,  296, 
297,  Duchess  d'  (1847-1897),  92, 

426 
Alexander  II.  of  Russia  (d.  1881), 

259,  321,   322,  460;    Alexander 
III.   (1881-1894),  259,  300,  424, 

432,  460,  461 
Alexandria  bombarded,  265 
Alfonso  XII.  of  Spain  (1874-1885), 

283,  284 ;  Alfonso  XIII.   (1886), 

403,  464 
Algeciras  conference,  465,  474,  480 
Algeria,  229,  265 
Alliances  :    Anglo  -  Japanese,  464  ; 

Triple,  175,  240,  241,  489,  490 ; 

of  the  three  Emperors,  176,  240. 

See    also    Franco  -  Russian,    and 

names  of  contracting  powers 
Allix,  Jules,  57 
Amadeo,  King  of  Spain  (1870-1873), 

175 
Amboise,  F.  Faure  at,  417 
Amelie  (d' Orleans),  former  Queen 

of  Portugal  (b.    1865),  93,   183, 

294,  295 
Amic  family,  31,  32 
Amnesty  of  the  Communists,  69 
Anarchism,  doctrines  of,  372,  373, 

374 ;  attempts  to  suppress,  392, 

393,  400  et  seq. 
Anarchist  terror,  French,  270,  372- 

386,  388-395,  400-403.     See  also 

Assassination  of  Carnot 
Anarchists,  Spanish,  375,  381,  389, 

403,  464.     See  also  Barcelona 
Andlau,  Colonel  later  General  d', 

157,  303,  304 
Andrassy,     Julius,    Count    (1823- 

1890),  240 
Andre',  General,  457,  465,  480 
Andrieu,  J.,  57 

Andrieux,  M.,  261,  306,  322,  360 
Angel-making,  223 


493 


494 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Anglo-Japanese  alliance,  464 
Angouleme,  Duke  d',  85 
Annam,  287,  290 
Antigny,  Blanche  d',  316 
Anti-militarism,  470,  481,  487 
Anti-Semitism  in  France,  264,  324, 

428,  430 
Anzin  mines,  410,  411 
Aosta,  Duke  d',  Amadeo  (King  of 

Spain,  1870-1873),  175  ;  Emman- 
uel, 93  ;  Helene,  Duchess,  93 
Apaches,  early,  224 
Arabi  Pasha,  265,  266 
Arago,  Emmanuel  (1812-1896),  4, 

9,  12,  400  ;  ^tienne,  4 
Arbitration  treaties,  463 
Arene,  Emmanuel,  360 
Argout,  Marquis  d',  405 
Arnaud   de   l'Ariege,   Mme.,    188, 

212,  272  ;  her  son,  259,  270 
Arnim,  Count  von  (1824-1881),  176 
Arnould,  A.,  58 
Article  Sept,  236 
Artists,  some  French,  178, 179,  205, 

249,  281 
Arton  the  Panamist,  356,  362,  365, 

367,  368 
Assassination  of  Carnot,  395  et  seq. 
Assembly.     See  National 
Assi  of  the  Commune,  61 
Assumptionist    Fathers,   327,   428, 

456 
Atchinoff  expedition,  334 
Aube,  Admiral,  293 
Audiffret-Pasquier,    Gaston,   Duke 

d'  (1823-1905),  148,  194, 197,  201, 

210 
Augagneur,  M.,  481 
Augier,  Emile  (1820-1889),  422,  423 
Aumale,  Duke  d'  (1822-1897),  92, 

93,  94,  95  et  seq.,  101,  102,  128, 

158,  163,  210,  279,  294,  296,  297, 

298,  323,  324,  334,  427  ;  Duchess 

d',  96 
Aurelle  de  Paladines,  General   d' 

(1804-1877),  18,  19,  48 
Austria,   176,  240,  242,  275,  461, 

472,  473 
Austrian  embassy  fire,  426 

Bagneux,  combat  of,  407 
Bagration  mansion,  143,  214 
Baihaut,  M.,  293,  361,  362,  363 
Bakunin  (1814-1876),  374,  375 
Ball,  dramatic  artists',  220 
Ballay,  M.,  285 
Bandits,  motor-car,  484 


Baraguey  d'Hilliers,  Marshal  (1795- 

1878),  157,  158 
Barail,  General  du  (1820-1902),  138, 

166,  168,  225 
Barbey,  M.,  345,  347 
Barcelona  fighting,  474,  475 
Bardi,  Count  de,  147,  282,  283 
Bari,  Countess  de,  336 
Barodet,  126,  261 
Barre  and  Lebiez,  224 
Barreme  murder,  294 
Barthou,  M.,  395,  423,  468,  475 
Barye  (1795-1875),  179 
Basly,  308 

Bataille,  General,  225 
Batbie,  138 

Baudin,  M.,  Pierre,  465 
Baudry,  P.  (1828-1886),  178,  205 
Bazaine,  Marshal   (1811-1888),  19, 

133,  155-169,  253 
Bazar  de  Charite  fire,  425-427 
Beaconsfield,  Lord,  234 
Beauffremont,  Princess  de,  120 
Beaujolais,  Duchesse  de,  91,  92 
Beaumont-Castries,    Countess     de, 

186  et  seq.,  256 
Beaurepaire.     See  Quesnay 
Beauvoir,   Marquis    de,    315,   317, 

323,  324 
Behague,  Count  and  Countess  de, 

181,  182 
Belluot  family,  417 
Benefactions  of  French  Presidents, 

453 
Beral,  M.,  360,  362,  363 
Berard,  M.,  465 
Bergeret,  Communist,  62 
Berlin  Congress  (1878),  234,  239, 

460 
Bernhardt,  Sarah  (6.  1844),  424 
Berri,   Duke    de   (1778-1820),   85, 

111 ;  Duchess  de  (1798-1870),  85, 

86,  111 
Bert,  Paul  (1833-1886),  248 
Berteaux,  H.  Maurice  (1853-1911), 

465,  472,  478,  479,  480 
Berthelot,  Marcellin  (b.  1827),  299, 

423,  432,  439 
Beslay,  Communist,  57 
Besnard,  Admiral,  423 
Betheny,  review  at,  460 
Bethmann-Hollweg,  Herr  v.,  474, 

480 
Beule,  C.  E.  (1826-1874),  138,  139, 

140 
Bibesco,  Prince  G.,  120 
Biencourt,  Marquis  de,  263 


INDEX 


495 


Billioray,  Communist,  59 

Billoir,  murderer,  224 

Billot,  General  (1828-1908),  26, 
253,  263,  269,  423,  428 

Bismarck,  Prince  (1815-1898),  15, 
16,  38,  71,  72,  77,  79,  91,  160, 
161,  176,  234,  258,  267,  300,  301, 
460,  489 

Blacas,  Count  de,  87,  153,  154,  282, 
283 

Blanc,  Louis  (1811-1882),  9,  28,  270 

Blanqui,  Auguste  (1805-1881),  57, 
60 

Blignieres,  M.  de,  266 

Blocqueville,  Mme.  de,  186 

Blondel,  M.,  445,  446 

Blondin,  Panamist,  361,  362,  363 

Blumenthal,  Gl.  von,  16,  44,  133 

Bocher,  M.,  282 

Boer  War,  458,  459,  462 

Bois  de  Boulogne  during  the  Sep- 
tennate,  191 

Boisdeffre,  General  de,  424,  428, 
435,  436 

Bombs.     See  Explosions 

Bonaparte,  Prince  Charles  (1839- 
1899),  170 ;  Prince  Victor  Napo- 
leon (b.  1862),  185,  270,  296, 
339  ;  Princess  Marie  (b.  1882), 
153.  See  also  Napoleon  111 . ,  Napo- 
leon (Jerome),  and  Imperial 
Prince 

Bonaparte-Wyse,  Lieut. ,  349 

Bonheur,  Rosa,  313 

Bonnemains,  General  Viscount  de, 
298,  328;  Baron  de,  298,  328; 
Mme.  de,  298,  328,  329,  330,  331, 
335,  336,  337,  339,  340,  341,  342 

Bontoux,  financier,  263,  264 

Bordeaux,  Assembly  at.  See  National 

Bordeaux,  Duke  de.    See  Chambord 

Borel,  General,  225 

Borgnis-Desbordes,  General  (1839- 
1900),  285 

Borius,  General,  395 

Bosnia,  472,  473 

Bouchez,  Public  Prosecutor,  337, 
353 

Boue  de  Lapeyrere,  Admiral,  475 

Bouille,  Mme.  de,  88 

Boulanger,  General  (1837-1891), 
253,  293/  294,  297-305,  314-342  ; 
his  parents,  293  ;  his  wife,  327, 
328,  329,  330  ;  his  daughter,  329 

Boulangist  Muse,  the,  319-321 

Bourbaki,  General  (1816-1897),  19, 
22,  225 


Bourbon,  Louis  Henri,  Duke  de,  96, 

97;    his  wife,   111,  112;  Prince 

Charles  de,  93 
Bourbons,  Neapolitan,  256.    See  also 

Francis  II. 
Bourgeois,  Leon  (b.  1851),  423,  465, 

468,  484 
Boyer,  A.,  368 

Boyer,  General,  156,  160,  161 
Brandes,  O.,  365 
Brest,  British  fleet  at,  464 
Breteuil,  Marquis  de,  324 
Briand,  M.  Aristide  (6.  1862),  468, 

470,  474,  475,  476,  477,  478,  484 
Briere    de    l'lsle,    General    (1827- 

1896),  287,  288 
Brignon  frontier  affair,  303 
Brisson,   Henri    (1835-1912),   247, 

290,  308,  347,  356,  357,  400,  415, 

427,  431,  435,  436,  476,  485 
Broglie,   Albert,   Duke    de   (1821- 

1901),  126,  127,  136  et  seq.,  139, 

170,    172,    173,    194,   201,   210, 

216,   252,   260;    Leonce    Victor, 

Duke  de  (1785-1870),  136,  137 ; 

family,  136,  137 
Brouardel,  Prof.,  357,  365 
Brousse,  P.,  375 
Brugere,  General,  455 
Brun,  General,  475 
Brun,  Lucien,  150 
Brunoy,  Marquis  de,  143 
Buffet,   Louis  Joseph   (1818-1898), 

28,  125,  128,  142,  194,  195 ;  his 

son,  456 
Buffon,  quoted,  434 
Bulgaria,  Ferdinand,  King  of,  92, 

344,  461 
Bulot,  Public  Prosecutor,  378,  382 
Bulow,  Bernard,  Count,  later  Prince 

von  (6.  1849),  430,  459,  473,  474 
Burdeau,  Auguste  (1851-1894),  348, 

357,  366,  390,  400,  409 
Burdett-Coutts,  Baroness,  337 
Burmah,  290 
Buzenval,  battle  of,  22 

Cafes.    See  Procope,  Terminus,  Ve'ry 
Caffarel,  General,  303,  304 
Cahors,  5 

Caillaux,  Eugene,  202,  480 
Caillaux,  Joseph  (b.  1863),  465,  470, 

471,  479,  480,  481,  483 
Cambon,  M.  Jules,  472,  480 
Camelinat,  308 

Campenon,  General,  251,  252,  253, 
284,  288,  290 


496 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Canrobert,  Marshal  (1809-1895), 
161,  167,  253,  254 

Cappelli,  Marquis,  241 

Carayon-Latour,  Marquis  de,  150 

Carlos  I.,  Dom,  of  Portugal  (1863- 
1908),  93,  183,  294,  344,  470 

Carlos,  Don,  of  Spain  (b.  1848),  182, 
184,  283 

Carmaux  riots,  385 

Carnot,  Ernest,  365 ;  Hippolyte 
(1801-1888),  309,  310;  Lazare 
(1753-1823),  308,  309 

Carnot,  Sadi,  4th  President  of  the 
Republic  (1837-1887-1894),  as 
Minister  of  Finances,  290,  292, 
294,  299,  310  ;  elected  President, 
308  ;  his  origin,  birth,  and  earlier 
years,  308  et  seq. ;  his  parliamen- 
tary career,  309  ;  his  appearance, 
etc.,  310;  places  Boulanger  on 
half-pay,  316  ;  retires  him,  318  ; 
desires  a  cabinet  de  conciliation, 
333 ;  at  the  Exhibition  of  1889, 
338;  his  life  attempted,  338; 
receives  news  of  Boulanger's 
death,  341  ;  turmoil  of  his  presi- 
dency, 343 ;  suggests  the  with- 
drawal of  Constans,  348  ;  goes  to 
Lyons,  895  ;  his  reception  there, 
396  ;  is  assassinated,  397  ;  buried 
in  the  Pantheon,  399  ;  in  con- 
nection with  the  Russian  alliance, 
461 

Carpeaux,  J.  B.,  205 

Carteret-Trecourt,  General,  253 

Casa  Blanca  affairs,  470,  471,  472, 
473 

Caserio,  Sto.  Geronimo,  398,  399 

Casimir-Perier,  Auguste  (1811- 
1876),  126,  173,  174,  406,  407 

Casimir-Perier,  Jean,  5th  President 
of  the  Republic  (1847-1894-1907), 
as  President  of  the  Chamber, 
390,  408;  becomes  Prime  Minister, 
390 ;  his  efforts  against  Anar- 
chism, 392,  393,  394 ;  resigns, 
395 ;  elected  President  of  the 
Republic,  399,  400,  409 ;  replaced 
as  deputy  by  a  Socialist,  401  ;  his 
origin  and  birth,  404,  407,  409 ; 
his  military  and  parliamentary 
careers,  407,  408,  409  ;  his  mar- 
riage, 407,  408,  410 ;  his  policy 
towards  Rome,  409  ;  his  attain- 
ments, disposition,  wealth,  and 
appearance,  408-410,  414 ;  his 
first  Message,  410  ;  denounced  as 


a  capitalist  and  vampire,  410, 
411  ;  coldly  received  by  the  army, 
411  ;  snubbed  by  Dupuy  and 
Hanotaux,  412,  413,  414;  his 
attitude  in  the  Dreyfus  case,  412, 
413 ;  his  share  in  the  Russian 
alliance,  413,  461  ;  resigns  the 
Presidency,  414  ;  his  later  career 
and  death,  415 ;  his  wife,  407, 
408,  410 

Cassagnac,  Paul  de  (1842-1904),  64, 
210,  255,  266,  429 

Castelar,  Sefior,  175,  207 

Castries,  Duke  de,  187  ;  family,  131 

Cavaignac,  Godefroy,  347,  348,  423, 
435,  436,  450 

Cavour,  Count,  quoted,  191 

Cazot,  Jules,  248 

Chabaud-Latour,  General  de,  158 

Chabrillat,  Henri,  1,  2,  3 

Challemel-Lacour,  P.  A.  (1827- 
1896),  211,  260,  279,  362,  414 

Chamber  of  Deputies,  192,  193, 
195,  196,  197, 199,  204,  213,  214, 
216,  225,  227,  233,  235,  245,  246, 
249,  260,  261,  264,  266  et  seq., 
269,  278,  279,  288,  289,  290,  292, 
294,  296,  298,  299,  301,  305,  306, 
321,  322,  326,  327,  330,  332,  335, 
339,  347,  348,  351,  352,  353,  355, 
356,  357,  359,  361,  362,  363,  365, 
366,  368,  369,  390,  392,  395,  400, 
423,  427,  431,  435,  439,  458,  468, 
470,  471,  474,  475,  476,  477,  478, 
481,  484 

Chambles,  Hermit  of,  379  et  seq. 

Chambord,  Count  de  (1820-1883), 
56,  84  et  seq.,  102,  144-155, 
174,  182,  198,  281  et  seq.  ;  Coun- 
tess de,  87,  147,  151,  282,  283 ; 
Chateau  of,  144 

Chamoin,  General,  436 

Champagne,  riots  in,  479 

Champigny,  battle  of,  22,  293 

Changarnier,  General  (1793-1877), 
28,  74,  127,  128,  129,  148,  149, 
152,  157 

Chantilly  races,  189 ;  bequest  of 
chateau,  324 

Chanzy,  General  Alfred  (1823-1883), 
15,  18,  19  et  seq.,  26,  27,  53,  189, 
253,  259,  275,  276 

Charcot,  Prof.  (1825-1893),  274, 
365 

Charette,  General  de,  283 

Charity  Bazaar  catastrophe,  425- 
427 


INDEX 


497 


Charlemagne,  General,  116,  142 

Charles  X.  of  France,  36,  84,  85, 
86 

Charmes,  Francis,  266 

Charnay,  Maurice,  394 

Chartres,  Duke  de  (1840-1910),  92, 
94,  95,  279,  295,  296,  297,  323, 
324,  489 

Chateaudun,  17,  411 

Chaudordy,  Count  de,  25,  255,  259 

Chaumie,  M.,  465 

Chautemps,  M. ,  439 

Che'nier  family,  31,  118 

Chesnelong,  M.,  148,  150,  151 

Chevigne,  Count  de,  147 

China  and  France,  287,  289,  432, 
433 

Christiani,  Baron,  455 

Church,  the.  See  Roman  Catholic, 
and  Separation 

Cissey,  General  de,  168,  173,  194, 

-   304 

"  Citron,"  Prince,  257 

Clemenceau,  Georges  (b.  1841),  53, 
249,  266,  268,  269,  278,  289,  295, 
296,  301,  303,  305,  306,  308,  321, 
322,  327,  358,  359,  363,  366,  468, 
469,  470,  471,  473,  474,  484,  490 

Clement,  J.  B.,  Communist,  58 

Cle'mentel,  M.,  465 

Clementine,  Princess.  See  Saxe- 
Coburg 

"  Clericalism  the  enemy,"  213 

Clicquot,  Veuve,  317 

Cloue,  Admiral,  255 

Clubs,  Paris,  189  et  seq. 

Cluseret,  General,  54,  62,  64,  65 

Cobden  Treaty  denounced,  79,  81, 
82 

Cochery,  M.,  249,  263,  269,  279, 
423  ;  his  son,  475 

Colonial  Expansion  of  France,  239 
et  seq.,  284  et  seq.,  348,  432,  433, 
437  etseq.,  482,  483 

Combes,  M.  Emile,  423,  457,  465, 
484,  491 

Commercial  Treaties,  denounced, 
78,  79,  81,  82.  See  also  Great 
Britain 

Committee  of  Nine,  148,  150 ;  of 
Thirty,  83,  84,  124,  126 

Commune  of  Paris,  origin  of  the, 
24,  40  et  seq.,  47  et  seq. ;  insurrec- 
tion of  March  18,  49  et  seq.  ;  the 
rising  criticised,  55,  56  ;  survey 
of  the  insurrection,  56,  66  et  seq. ; 
some  of  its  leaders,  57  et  seq., 


141  ;  its  suppression,  66  et  seq., 
253,  293 

Comptoir  d'Escompte,  325,  335,  344 

Concordat,  the,  denounced,  457 

Conde,  Prince  de,  Louis  Henri,  96 ; 
Louis  Philippe,  98 

Conflagrations  :  the  Commune,  67, 
68  ;  the  Opera  Comique,  301 ;  the 
Bazar  de  Charite,  425,  427 

Congo  Free  State,  285,  438 ;  French, 
285,  437,  477,  480,  483 

Congress,  Diplomatic.  See Algeciras, 
Berlin 

Congresses,  Parliamentary,  at  Ver- 
sailles, 192,  308,  399/400,  415, 
449,  466 

Conneau,  Dr.,  104,  105,  106 

Constans,  M.,  333,  334,  335,  336, 
345,  347,  348,  359,  490 

Constitution  of  the  Republic,  124, 
126,  152,  172,  173, 192,  193,  281, 
363,  423,  489 

Conventions,  diplomatic,  Anglo- 
Russian  (Persia,  Afghanistan, 
etc.),  468 ;  Congo  (Franco- 
German),  483  ;  Drummond- Wolff 
(Egypt),  438  ;  Morocco,  465,  482, 
483;  Newfoundland,  463,  464; 
New  Hebrides,  303  ;  Niger,  433  ; 
Nile  basin,  442;  Siam,  432; 
Suez  Canal,  303 ;  Sugar,  481  ; 
West  Africa,  463.  See  also 
Treaties 

Conventions,  French  railway,  280, 
412 

Coqueliu,  Constant  (1841-1909),  250 

Corvisart,  Baron,  104-106 

Cottu,  Baron  Henri,  353,  356,  359, 
362  ;  Baroness,  363 

Coulmiers,  battle  of,  19,  22 

"  Coups  d'Etat,"  abortive  or  feared  : 
MacMahon's,  216,  217  ;  Bou- 
langer's,  331,  332 ;  Felix  Faure's, 
436  ;  Deroulede's,  450,  456 

Courbet,  Andre,  Admiral  (1827- 
1885),  255,  287,  288 

Courbet,  Gustave  (1819-1877),  61, 
205,  249,  250 

Courcel,  Baron  de,  259 

Cournet,  Communist,  28,  59 

Couyba,  M.,  481 

Credit  Lyonnais,  354 

Cre'mieux,  Adolphe  (1796-1880),  3, 
4,  9,  15,  16,  258 

Crispi,  Francesco,  459,  489,  490 

Cromer,  Lord,  234 

Cronstadt,  squadrons  at,  345,  461 

2k 


498 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Crozier,  M.,  455 

Cruppi,  M.  Jean,  470,  479, 480,  481 
Cunisset-Carnots,  the,  395 
Czacky,   Mgr.,   Nuncio,  198,  281, 
282 

Dahomey  Expedition,  285,  348 
Darboy,    Archbishop    (1813-1871), 

66,  68 
Dardare,  Anarchist,  377,  378,  381 
Darlan,  M.,  423 
Daru,  Count,  28,  148 
Daudet,   Alphonse   (1840-1897),  5, 

185,  291 
David,  M.  Fernand,  484 
Davoust,  General,  345 
Dawes,  Sophie,  96,  97 
Decamp,  Anarchist,  377,  378,  381 
Decazes,  2nd  Duke  (1819-1886),  74, 

91,  138,  173,  175,  194,  201  ;  his 

son,  3rd  Duke  (1864-1912),  316, 

491 
Decazeville  riots,  294 
Decorations  scandal,  303,  304,  305, 

312  et  seq. 
Decrais,  M.,  465 

Defence  Government.    See  National 
Deguerry,  Abbe,  68 
Delahaye,  M.,  356 
Delcasse',  Theophile  (b.  1852),  357, 

364,  435,  437,  439,  440,  441,  442, 

458,  464,  465,  468,  473,  474,  476, 

478,  479,  481,  483,  484,  485 
Delescluze,  Charles  (1809-1871),  6, 

28,  59  et  seq. 
Delombe,  M.,  465 
Demi-monde,  220,  222,  223 
Demole,  M.,  293 
Denfert-Rochereau,  M.,  344 
Denmark,  461  ;  Prince  and  Princess 

Waldemar  of,  94,  295,  489 
Deputies'  salaries,  470 
Derby,  15th  Earl  of,  460 
Deroulede,  Paul  (b.  1846),  189,  262, 

299,  305,  307,  316,  341,  450,  455, 

456 
Deschanel,  Paul  (b.  1856),  431,  440, 

450 
Deseilligny,  M.,  138 
Develle,   M.,  293,   345,  364,  366, 

367 
Deves,  M.,  249,  269,  278,  360,  362 
Diderot  quoted,  373 
Dieulafoy,  Dr.,  365 
Dillon,  Count,  315,  316,  317,  335, 

336,  338 
Divorce  in  France,  123,  280 


Dodds,  General,  348 
Dombrowski,  L.,  62,  63 
Dompierre  d'Hornoy,  Admiral,  138 
Dore,  Gustave,  281 
Dorian,  F.  (1814-1873),  14 
Dosne,  M.   and   Mme.,   116,  117; 

Mile.,  109,  113,  116,  271 
Doumer,  M.   Paul  (6.   1857),  466, 

475,  476 
Doumergue,    M.,    465,    468,   470, 

471,475 
Dreux-Breze,  Scipion,  Marquis  de, 

146,  147,  150,  151,  153 
Dreyfus,  Captain  Alfred,  his  Case, 

411,  412,  413,  427-431,  435,  442, 

454,   455,   462,    463,   468,   471; 

Mme.,  436  ;  Mathieu,  428,  429 
Dreyfus,  M.  Camille,  305 
Driant,  Captain,  329 
Drummond-Wolff  Convention,  438 
Drumont,  fidouard,  324,  355,  428 
Drunkenness  in  France,  41 
Dubail,  General,  482 
Dubief,  M.,465 
Dubochet,  M.,  204,  212 
Dubost,  Antonin,  390,  456 
Dubourg  scandal,  120  et  seq. 
Duclerc,  M.,  269,  278 
Duc-Quercy,  agitator,  308,  377 
Ducret,  Edouard,  366 
Ducrot,    General    (1817-1882),    22, 

132,  134,  225 
Dufaure,  M.  (1798-1881),  40,  109, 

194,  195 
Dufferin,  Lord,  265 
Dugue  de  la  Fauconnerie,  210,  326, 

360,  362,  363 
Duhamel,  M.,  231 
Dumas,  Alex.,  pere,  96;  fits,  119, 

122,  291 
Dumont,  M.  Charles,  479 
Dunraven,  Earl  of,  72 
Dupanloup,    Bishop    (1802-1878), 

100,  146,  201 
Dupont- White  (1807-1878),  309 
Dupuis,  Jean,  287 
Dupuy,  Charles  (6.  1851),  357,  363, 

364,  366,  395,  400,  410,  411,  437, 

440,  442,  444,  447,  450,  455 
Dupuy,  Jean,  421,  465,  468,  475, 

484 

Eastern  Question,  Near,  201,  234, 

239,  468,  490 
Education.      See  Laws  and  Roman 

Catholic  Church 
Edward  VII. ,  his  State  visit  to  Paris, 


INDEX 


499 


461,  463 ;  his  death,  477 ;  statue 
to,  485.  See  also  Wales,  Albert 
Edward 

Egypt,  233,  234,  239,  243,  259,  265 
etseq.,  437,  438,  462,  464 

Eiffel,  A.,  351,  352,  353,  357,  362  ; 
tower,  338 

Elections,  French  Parliamentary : 
Assembly  of  1871,  28  ;  Commune, 
57  ;  first  for  Senate  and  Chamber 
in  1876,  195;  in  1877,  216;  in 
1881,  245;  in  1885,  292;  Bou- 
langer's,  316,  318,  322,  323,  324, 
329,  330,  331,  339  ;  in  1889,  338, 
339;  in  1893,  364;  in  1898,"  431; 
in  1906,  468  ;  in  1910,  476 

Elizabeth,  Empress  of  Austria,  92, 
399,  426,  443 

Elysee  Palace,  account  of  the,  109 
et  seq.  ;  Thiers's  receptions  there, 
112  et  seq.  ;  MacMahon's  life 
there,  220,  221;  Grevy's  life 
there,  229,  231 ;  in  Faure's  time, 
420,  421,  447 

Emperors,  Empresses,  etc.  See 
under  their  respective  names 

Enghien,  Duke  d',  97 

England.     See  Great  Britain 

Entente  Cordiale,  the,  458,  463, 
464 ;  Society,  463 

Ernoul,  Edmond,  127,  138,  139 

Esterhazy,  Major  Walsin,  411,  428, 
429,  430,  43*5 

lStienne,  M.,  465,  468 

Eu,  Count  d',  91 

Eudes,  Communist,  63,  307 

Eugenie,  Empress  (6.  1826),  103, 
106,  107,  114,  160,  162 

Evreux,  Count  and  Hotel  d',  109, 
110 

Exhibitions,  Paris  (1878),  217; 
(1889),  338 ;  (1900),  447,  456 

Expansion,  French  colonial.  See 
Colonial,  Fashoda,  Madagascar, 
Morocco,  Tonquin,  Tunis 

Expeditions,  French  colonial.  See 
as  above 

Explosions,  Anarchist,  in  Paris, 
382,  383,  384,  390,  391,  392,  402, 
403,  443,  464 

Expulsion  of  the  Princes,  296 

Fabrice,  General  von,  54 
Faidherbe,  General  (1818-1889),  18, 

22   285 
Faill'v,  General  de  (1810-1892),  132, 

133 


Fallieres,  Armand,  8th  President 
of  the  Republic  (b.  1841,  elected 
January  1906),  a  republicain  sans 
epithetes,  269  ;  his  brief  premier- 
ship, 278 ;  Minister  of  the  In- 
terior, 301  ;  of  Justice,  311 ;  of 
Education  and  Worship,  333  ;  of 
Justice  and  Worship,  345  ;  pro- 
secutes Bishop  Gouthe-Soulard, 
346  ;  retires,  347  ;  becomes  Presi- 
dent of  the  Republic,  466  ;  his 
parentage,  birth,  and  earlier 
career,  467 ;  his  appearance, 
tastes,  marriage,  and  children, 
467,  468 ;  visits  London,  and 
Russian  and  Scandinavian  sove- 
reigns, 471  ;  receives  the  Czar, 
475  ;  calls  Briand  to  the  premier- 
ship, 475  ;  visits  Tunis,  480 ; 
attends  naval  and  military  man- 
oeuvres, 482  ;  Andre,  468  ;  Anne, 
468 
Farelli,  Anarchist,  375 
Farre,  General  Albert,  253,  490 
Fashoda  affair,  437  et  seq.  447 
Faubourg     St.     Martin    explosion, 

393 
Faure,  Felix,  6th  President  of  the 
Republic  (1841-1895-1899)  :  early 
ministerial  appointments,  248, 
279,  311,  395  ;  is  elected  Presi- 
dent, 415,  418 ;  his  parentage, 
birth,  and  education,  415,  416 ; 
his  marriage,  417  ;  embarks  in 
the  leather  trade,  417,  418  ;  his 
fortune,  419  ;   his  public  career, 

419  ;  his  habits  and  tastes, 
419,  420,  421  ;  his  appearance, 
419,  444;  his  travels,  419;  his 
daughters,  419  ;  fond  of  display, 

420  ;  his  official  household,  420, 

421  ;  his  dinners,  etc.,  at  the 
Elyse'e,  421  ;  his  craving  for 
popularity,  421  ;  his  militarism, 
421,  422  ;  his  desire  to  decorate 
the  Duchess  d'Uzes,  422  ;  receives 
the  Russian  sovereigns,  424  ; 
goes  to  Russia  and  proclaims  the 
alliance,  425 ;  Zola's  letter  to 
him  on  the  Dreyfus  case,  429  ; 
his  attitude  in  that  affair,  436  ; 
447  ;  and  in  the  Fashoda  affair, 
440,  441  ;  some  attempts  on  his 
life,  442,  443  ;  his  sudden  death, 
442  et  seq.  ;  ridiculous  allegations 
respecting  it,  445 ;  causes  con- 
tributing to  his  death,  447 


500 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Faure,  Mme.  Felix,  417,  425,  445  ; 

Mile.    Lucy  (now    Mme.     Fe'lix- 

Faure-Goyau),  419 
Faure,  M.  Maurice,  478 
Favre,  Jules  (1809-1880),  4,  7,  8, 

9  et  seq.,  12,  15,  16,  28,  29,  40, 

71 

Faye,  M.,  333 
Feder,  financier,  264 
Federation  Jurassienne,  375 
Ferdinand  of  Bulgaria,  92,  344,  461 
Ferrata,  Mgr.,  Nuncio,  281 
Ferre,  Theophile,  Communist,  59 
Ferrer,  Seiior,  475 
Ferronays,  Countess  de  la,  182,  183 
Ferron,  General,  253,  302,  303,  304 
Ferry,  Jules  (1832-1893),  4,  9,  13, 
14,  189,  235,  236,  237  et  seq.,  246, 
263,  279,  284,  285,  286,  289,  290, 
303,  304,  305,  307,  308,  325,  339, 

361,  362,  386 
Festetics,  Count,  444 

Fete  rationale  of  France,  235 
Feucheres,  Countess  de,  96,  97 
Fe'vrier,  General,  317,  366,  400 
Fez,  French  march  on,  480 
Fille  de  Mme.  Angot,  la,  119 
Fires.     See  Conflagrations 
Flaubert,  Gustave,  291 
Fleet.     See  Navy 
Floquet,  Charles  (1828-1896),  211, 

235,  278,  305,  308,  321,  322,  325, 

327,  332,  361,  363 
Florentin,  Heloise,  95 
Flourens,  Gustave  (1838-1871),  63, 

64  ;  Leopold  (b.  1841),  299,  300, 

301,  311,  461 
Flushing,  fortification  of,  478 
Fontane,    Marius,   353,   356,    359, 

362,  363 
Food  riots,  482 
Forbes,  Archibald,  45 

Fortou,  Oscar  Bardy  de,  124,  126, 
V  173,  201    et  seq.,  214,  216,   225, 

273 
Fourichon,  Admiral  Martin  (1809- 

1884),  14,  16 
Fourmies,  affray  at,  377 
Franch,  Salvador,  389 
Francis,  Anarchist,  383 
Francis  II.  of  Naples,  88,  184,  185, 

257,  282  ;  his  consort,  184,  185 
Franco-German  War.     See  War 
Franco-Russian  Alliance,  177,  259, 

345,  387,  424,  425,  432,  441,  460, 

461,  471 
Frankfort.     See  Treaties 


Frederick  Charles  of  Prussia,  19, 

160,  162 
Frederick,   German    Emperor,   46, 

133 
French  population,  486  ;  peasantry, 

487  ;  working  classes,  487 
Freycinet,  Charles  Louis  de  Saulce 

de  (b.  1828),  9,  25,  189,  235,  246, 

261,  263,  264,  265,  266,  269,  290, 

296,  305,  308,  322,  333,  345,  347, 

437,  440,  465,  490 
Froschdorf,  87,  146,  147 
Frossard,  General  Charles  Auguste 

(1807-1875),  132,  161 
Fusion,  the  Royalist,  146,  147 

Gailleton,  Dr.,  396,  397 
Gallieni,  General  (b.  1849),  285 
Galliffet,  General  de  (1830-1909), 
189,  253,  254,  255,  345,  465,  490 
Gambetta,  Leon  (1838-1882),  his 
parentage,  birth,  and  early  years, 
5,  205,  206,  241 ;  at  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1870,  2  et  seq.  ;  as  delegate 
in  the  provinces,  12,  15,  16,  21, 
24,  25,  27,  28,  205  ;  elected  to 
the  National  Assembly,  28,  205, 
209  ;  his  Grenoble  speech,  83  ;  is 
attacked  by  Thiers,  124  ;  advises 
caution,  135  ;  interpellates  Beule, 
140  ;  his  proclamation  on  the  fall 
of  Metz,  155  ;  at  Bazaine's  trial, 
163,  164  ;  is  assaulted,  171  ;  his 
relations  with  Countess  de  Beau- 
mont, 187,  188  ;  advises  modera- 
tion in  1876,  195  ;  elected  to  the 
Chamber,  195,  213 ;  chosen  to 
preside  over  Budget  Committee, 
196  ;  denounces  the  Clericalists, 
199, 213, 237  ;  attacks  the  May  16 
regime,  204,  214 ;  a  Republicain 
de  Gouvernement,  co-operating 
with  Thiers,  204,  214  ;  his  first 
views  on  the  Franco-German  War, 
204,  205  ;  his  stay  at  San  Sebas- 
tian, 205  et  seq  ;  his  life  with  his 
aunt,  205 ;  his  views  on  new 
social  strata,  205  ;  his  glass  eye, 
206  ;  one  of  his  love  affairs,  2Q7j 
his  relations  with  Castelar,  207 ; 
his  return  to  France,  208  ;  his 
Bordeaux  speech,  208,  209 ;  his 
flat,  Avenue  Montaigne,  205,  206, 
209 ;  his  organ,  La  lit'publique 
Franeaise,  209  et  seq.  ;  his  life  in 
the  Chaussee  d'Antin,  212;  his 
friendship    with    M.     Dubochet, 


INDEX 


501 


204,  214 ;  songs  about  him,  213, 
253,  254 ;  declares  that  Mac- 
Mahon  must  submit  or  resign, 
214 ;  again  at  the  head  of  the 
Budget  Committee,  216 ;  has  a 
duel  with  Fortou,  225 ;  brings 
about  MacMah oil's  resignation, 
226;  his  lack  of  dignity,  164, 
232;  he  and  Gre'vy,  232,  233; 
becomes  President  of  the  Cham- 
ber, 233,  247,  255 ;  favours  Anglo- 
French  control  in  Egypt,  234  ;  a 
desire  to  convert  him,  237 ;  his 
attitude  towards  Italy,  241  ;  his 
list-voting  scheme,  243,  260,  261 ; 
is  repulsed  in  Paris,  244 ;  tours 
Normandy,  244 ;  is  nicknamed 
the  Pasha,  245 ;  his  views  on 
Tunis,  246;  forms  the  "Great 
Ministry,"  247  et.  seq.  ;  some  of 
his  artist  friends,  249  ;  his  inti- 
macy with  Coqueliu  aine,  250 ; 
resents  a  libellous  bust,  250 ;  his 
relations  with  military  men,  251 
et  seq.  ;  his  correspondence  with 
Galliffet,  254,  255 ;  his  acquaint- 
ance with  diplomacy,  255,  256  ; 
and  with  royal  personages,  256, 
257  ;  his  travels,  257, 258  ;  never 
meets  Bismarck,  258  ;  makes  a 
bellicose  speech,  258 ;  but  is 
intent  on  a  pacific  policy,  259 ; 
his  Commercial  Treaty  negotia- 
tions with  England,  259 ;  wishes 
to  co-operate  in  Egypt,  259,  260  ; 
begins  a  fresh  list-voting  and  an 
anti- Senatorial  campaign,  260, 
261  ;  falls  from  power,  261  ;  his 
conduct  in  office  criticised,  261, 
262 ;  goes  to  Genoa,  263  ;  his 
last  great  speech  on  the  Anglo- 
French  alliance,  267 ;  loses  his 
mother,  268 ;  becomes  President 
of  the  Army  Recruiting  Com- 
mittee, 270  ;  his  villa  at  Ville 
d'Avray,  270  ;  his  mistress, 
Leonie  Leon,  271  ;  his  suggested 
marriages,  271,  272  ;  is  bent  on 
marrying  Leonie,  272 ;  has  an 
accident  with  a  revolver,  273 ; 
his  illness  and  death,  273,  274 ; 
impression  created  by  it,  275  ;  his 
obsequies,  275 ;  his  negotiations 
with  the  Nuncio,  282  ;  his  rela- 
tions with  Carnot  in  1870,  309  ; 
his  desire  for  alliance  with  Russia 
and  Great  Britain,  460 


Gambetta,  senior,  5,  212,  213,  241, 
275  ;  his  wife,  nee  Massabie,  268 

Gambon,  Communist,  28 

Garibaldi,  General,  25,  28 

Gamier,  Charles  (1835-1898),  205 

Gamier,  Lieut.  Francis  (1839-1873), 
287 

Garnier-Pages  (1803-1878),  4,  9,  12 

Gaultier,  M.,  465 

Gavard,  M.,  460 

Gelinier,  criminal,  224 

Generals,  Galliffet  on  some  French, 
254,  255 

George  V.,  King,  see  York 

George  of  Greece,  Prince,  153 

Georgevitch,  M.,  390 

Gerault-Richard,  411 

German  army,  the,  in  Paris,  42 
et  seq.  ;  evacuates  France,  155. 
See  also  War,  Franco-German, 
and  battles  under  their  names 

Germany  and  France  :  during  the 
Commune,  54,  56,  65,  6Q ;  in 
regard  to  most  favoured  nation 
treatment,  78,  79  ;  in  relation  to 
the  French  Clericalists,  175, 176  ; 
during  the  war  scare  of  1875, 176, 
177,  242,  460  ;  in  regard  to  Tunis, 
242  ;  at  Gambetta' s  accession  to 
office,  259  ;  at  his  death,  275,  276  ; 
at  the  insult  offered  to  Alfonso 
XII.,  283 ;  in  regard  to  colonial  ex- 
pansion, 285 ;  in  relation  to  Boulan- 
ger  and  the  Schnoebele  affair,  299, 
300,  301,  302;  at  the  Brignon 
affair,  303 ;  again  in  regard  to 
Boulanger,  315,  320,  323,  325; 
in  regard  to  the  Dreyfus  case, 
411,  412,  413,  429,  430;  and 
to  Morocco,  458,  464,  465,  471- 
473,  481  -  483  ;  population  of, 
486 

Gerome,  J.  L.,  205 

Gervais,  Admiral  (b.  1837),  345,  346 

Giers,  Nicolas  de,  346 

Girard,  M..  478 

Girardin,  Emile  de  (1806-1881),  122, 
211 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  81,  286,  425 

Glais-Bizoin  (1800-1877),  4,  8,  9, 
12,  15,  16 

Goblet,  Rene  (1828-1905),  263,  290, 
292,  299,  322 

Gobron,  M.,  363 

Goirand,  General,  480 

Goncourt  Brothers,  291 

Goritz,  87,  282,  283 


502 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Gougeard,  Post-Captain,  20, 250, 251 
Goulard,  M.  de,  113,  124,  126 
Gounod,  Charles  (1818-1893),  388 
Gouthe-Soulard,  Bishop,  246 
Government  of  National  Defence. 

See  National 
Gragnon,  M.,  305 
Granet,  M.,  293,  305 
Granville,  2nd  Earl,  260,  489 
Grave,  Jean,  Anarchist,  373,  394 
Great  Britain  and  France :  Thiers, 
on  their  alliance,  37  ;  Gambetta 
also,  259,  267,  268,  460 ;  in  rela- 
tion to  Commercial  Treaties,  79, 
81,  259  ;  to  the  war  scare  of  1875, 
177,   460;    to  Egypt,  233,   234, 
259,  260,  265  et  seq.}  437,  438, 
462  ;  to  Tunis,  239,  240,  242,  243, 
433,  440,  441  ;  to  French  expan- 
sion in  Africa  generallv,  285,  437  ; 
to  Madagascar,  286,  432,  463  ;  to 
Burmah,  290 ;  to  Siam,  290,  367, 
387,  432,  463 ;  to  the  New  Heb- 
rides, 803 ;    to  the   Suez  Canal, 
303  {see  also  Egypt)  ;  to  Fashoda, 
etc. ,  437  et  seq. ;  to  the  Boer  War, 
458,  459,  462;    to  the   Dreyfus 
case,  462,  463  ;  to  Newfoundland, 
463,  464 ;  to  the  Russo-Japanese 
War,  464  ;  to  Morocco,  464,  472, 
482.     See  also  Entente  Cordiale 
Great  Ministry,  Gambetta's,  248  et 

seq. 
Gresley,  General,  225,  253 
Grevy,  Jules  (1807-1891),  3rd  Pre- 
sident of  the  Republic  (1879- 
1887),  his  origin,  birth,  and  early 
career,  73,  227  et  seq.  ;  becomes 
President  of  the  National  Assem- 
bly, 73  ;  is  offered  chief  executive 
office,  74  ;  resigns  the  Presidency 
of  the  Assembly,  125  ;  at  Thiers' 
funeral,  215  ;  becomes  President 
of  the  Chamber,  227  ;  and  of  the 
Republic,  227,  228  ;  his  private 
position,  attainments  and  tastes, 
228,  229 ;  his  official  household, 
230,  231  ;  is  weak  with  his  son-in- 
law,  231,  305,  306  ;  his  life  at  the 
ilyse'e,  229,  231  ;  his  appearance, 
232;  his  Constitutionalism,  232; 
his  attitude  towards  Gambetta, 
233,  262  ;  in  difficulties  with  the 
King  of  Spain,  283,  284;  re- 
elected President,  292 ;  informed 
of  the  Count  de  Paris'  indiscre- 
tion, 295  ;  wishes  to  avoid  extreme 


measures,  296  ;  is  insulted  by  the 
Boulangists,  303 ;  his  behaviour 
in  the  decorations  scandal,  305, 
306 ;  his  resignation,  306 ;  his 
death,  314 

Grevy,  M.  Albert,  229,  360,  362  ; 
General  Paul,  229 

Grey,  Sir  Edward,  438 

Grousset,  Paschal,  otherwise  "  Phi- 
lippe Daryl"  and  " Andre  Laurie" 
(1845-1909),  54,  58,  69 

Guerin,  anti-Semite,  456 

Gue'rin,  M.,  364,  395 

Guichard,  M.,  212 

Guieysse,  M.,  439 

Guillon,  M.,  465 

Guinea,  Spanish,  483 

Guiod,  General,  159 

Guise,  Duke  de,  Francois,  98,  99 ; 
Jean,  93,  95 

Guist'hau,  M.,  484 

Guizot,  Franyois  (1787-1874),  36, 171 

Gull,  Sir  William,  104,  105,  106 

Guyot,  M.  Yves,  333,  345,  347 

Guyot-Dessaignes,  M.,  470 

Gyp,  419 

Habert,  If.  Marcel,  450,  456 
Hagron,  General,  420,  445,  446,  470 
Hague  Arbitration  Court,  472,  473 
Hamilton,  Lady  Mary  Douglas,  444 
Hanotaux,  Gabriel  (b.   1853),  395, 

412,    413,    423,    425,    431-435, 

438,  439,  490 
Harcourt,  Count  Emmanuel  d',  200, 

201,  221 
Hartmann,  Nihilist,  460 
Hay,  Sir  John  Drummond,  243 
Henry,  Colonel,  435 
Henry,  Emile,  Anarchist,  384,  385, 

392,  393 
Herbette,  M.,  301 
Herbinger,  Lieut. -Col.,  288 
Hermit.     See  Chambles 
Herz,  Cornelius,  357,  358,  359,  362, 

363,  365,  367 
Herzegovina,  472 
Herzmann,  V.,  208 
Hirsch,  Baron,  324 
Historical  Nights,  the,  305,  306,  315 
Hohenlohe,  Prince  von,  430 
Holland  and  its  throne,  256,  257  ; 

and  the  Boers,  459 
Home,  David  Dunglas,  72 
Hugo,    Victor   (1802-1885),    9,   28, 

290,  291,  333;   Francois  Victor, 

96,  211 


INDEX 


503 


Humbert,  Alphonse,  428 

Humbert,  Dr.,  445 

Humbert,  King  of  Italy  (1878-1900), 

309,  459 
Humbert,  M.,  minister,  263 

Imperial  Prince,  tbe  (1856-1879), 84, 

103,  106,  107,  162,  260 
Income-tax    proposals,    423,    431, 

471,  474 
Isabella  II.  of  Spain,  120,  178,  257, 

283 
Italy  and  France,  90,  91,  175,  197, 

239-243,  346,  386,  387,  457-459, 

484,  485,  489 

Jacquemart,  Nellie,  29 

Japan  :  War  with  China,  432  ;  with 

Russia,  464 ;  alliance  with  Great 

Britain,  464 
Jardies,  les,  Gambetta  at,  270  et  seq. 
Jaureguiberry,  Admiral,  263,  269 
Jaures,  Admiral,  333,  489  ;  Jean  (b. 

1859),  socialist,  333,  414,  440 
Jecker,  M.,  66,  68 
Jesse,  Mme.  de,  71 
Jesuits  expelled,  236 
Jockey  Club,  French,  189,  190 
Joffre,  General,  482 
Joinville,  Prince  de  (1818-1900),  92, 

93,  98,  99  et  seq.,  141,  144,  152 
Jourde,  Communist,  61 
Judet,  Ernest,  346,  428 
Judic,  Mme.,  120 
Jus-Be'ala,  Anarchist,  381,  382 

Kaulla,  Mme.  de,  804 
Keratry,  Count  de,  3,  14 
Kiderlen-Wachter,  Herr  v.,  480 
Kitchener,  Lord,  21,  440,  462,  489 
Klotz,  M.,478,  481,  484 
Kcenigstein.     See  Ravachol 
Krantz,  Admiral,  311,  322 
Krantz,  M.,  465 
Kranz,  M.,  218 

Kropotkin,  Prince,  270,  375,  376 
Kruger,  President,  459 

Labori,  Me.,  391,  392,  430 

La  Bouillerie,  M.  de,  138 

Labour  Confederation,  471,  473 

Labruyere,  M.,  377 

La  Cecilia,  Communist,  62 

Lachaud,  Charles  (1818-1882),  164- 

166,  270 
Lacroix,  Sigismond,  303 
Lafferre,  M.,  478 


Laffitte,  Jacques,  35,  96 

Laguerre,  Me.,  305,  335,  338 

Laisant,  M.,  305,  316,  368 

Lallemand,  General,  158 

Lambert,  Baron,  179 

Lambrecht,  M.,  40,  124 

La  Motte  Rouge,  General  de,  158 

Lanes,  M.,  468 

Lanessan,  J.  M.  A.  de(6.  1843),  465 

Langson,  retreat  from,  288,  289 

Launelongue,  Dr.,  273,  274, 275,445 

Lansdowne,  Marquess  of,  464 

La  Rochefoucauld,  Dukede  Bisaccia, 
173,  174,  177,  210,  267 

La  Rochefoucauld  family,  173,  174 

La  Ronciere  le  Nouf  y,  Admiral,  225 

Lartigue,  General  de,  225 

Laur,  F.,  207,  304,  316,  348 

Laurentie,  M.  de,  210 

Laurier,  Clement,  25,  258 

Laval,  retreat  on,  21,  22 

Lavertujon,  Andre,  204 

Lavigerie,  Cardinal,  346,  347 

Law,  the  unwritten,  123 

Laws,  references  to  various ;  Con- 
stitutional, 192,  193,  281  (see 
also  Constitution) ;  on  drunken- 
ness, 41  ;  on  education,  236,  238, 
265,  298,  456,  478;  on  the 
Religious  Orders,  237,  456,  478 ; 
on  public  meetings  and  the  press, 
238 ;  on  the  expulsion  of  Pre- 
tenders, 278,  296 ;  on  profes- 
sional syndicates  and  working- 
class  associations,  280,  423 ;  on 
criminal  recidivists,  280 ;  on 
divorce,  280  ;  on  list-voting,  193, 
292,  332,  475 ;  on  military  service, 
303  ;  on  compensation  for  injury 
and  assistance  to  agriculturists, 
424,  476  ;  on  the  separation  of 
Church  and  State,  458 ;  on  the 
income  tax,  471,474;  on  working- 
class  and  peasants'  pensions,  476, 
487 

League  of  Patriots,  263,  299,  301, 
302,  307,  326,  334,  422,  450 

Leauthier,  Anarchist,  389,  390 

Lebaudy,  M.,  264 

Lebon,  Andre,  423,  439 

Lebret,  M.,  437,  465 

Lebrun,  M.,  481,  484 

Lecocq,  Charles  (b.  1832),  119,  120 

Lecomte,  General,  49  et  seq.,  469 

Le  Flo,  General  (1804-1887),  14, 
40,  460 

Le  Gall,  M.,  420,  443,  445,  446 


504 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Legion  of  Honour,  140,  303,  304, 

312,  313,  314,  366 
Le  Mans,  battle  of,  20,  21 
Lemohme,  John  (1815-1892),  210, 

386 
Le  Myre  de  Vilers,  M.,  286 
Leo  XIII.,   Pope,   217,   236,   237, 

263,  264,  346,  347,  457 
Le'on,  Leonie,  207,  212,  237,  270, 

271,  272,  273,  275 
Leopold  I.  of  Belgium,  80  ;  Leopold 

II.,  285 
Lepelletier,  Edmond,  428 
Le'ris,  Mme. ,  273,  275 
Le  Royer,  M.,  125,  140,  229,  361 
Lesseps,  Charles  de,  359,  360,  362, 

363 
Lesseps  family,  349,  350,  360 
Lesseps,  Ferdinand   de,    189,  299, 

349,  350,  353,  354,  356,  359,  360, 

362 
Levy-Cremieux,  M.,  354 
Lewal,  General,  253,  288 
Leyds,  Dr.,  459 
Leygues,  M.,  465,  468 
Liberation   of  the   Territory,   124, 

155 
Limouzin,  Mme.,  303,  304 
Lisbonne,  Communist,  61,  307 
Lissagaray,  Communist,  61 
Lister,  Sir  T.  W.,  366 
List- Voting,    193,    243,   260,   261, 

292,  332,  475,  489 
Littre,  Emile  (1801-1881),  201 
Loans,  great  French,  75,  82,  294, 

345  ;  Russian,  in  France,  461 
Lockroy,  ISdouard  Simon,  alias  (b. 

1838),   53,    266,    278,   292,  322, 

388,  437,  441,  465 
Logerot,  General,   311,   316,   317, 

318,  322 
Loire,  Army  of  the,  18,  19-22,  26, 

100,  311 
Loizillon,  General,  357,  364 
London,  Loubet  in,  463  ;   Fallieres 

in,  471 
Longchamp  race-course,  189; 

Loubet  insulted  at,  455 
Lord  Mayors  in  Paris  :    Alderman 

Stone,  178,  179 ;  Sir  G.   Faudel- 

Phillips,  427 
Loubet,  Emile  (b.  1838),  7th  Presi- 
dent of  the  Republic  (1899-1906), 

becomes     Minister     of      Public 

Works,  311  ;  Premier  and  Minis- 
ter of  the    Interior,   347,   356 ; 

resigns  premiership  but  retains 


Interior,  357  ;  arbitrates  on  the 
Carmaux  labour  trouble,  385 ; 
prevents  the  Duchess  d'Uzes  from 
being  decorated,  422 ;  attends 
secret  council  on  Fashoda,  440 ; 
is  elected  to  the  Presidency,  449  ; 
450  ;  demonstration  against  him, 
450 ;  his  origin  and  birth,  451  ; 
his  early  years  and  marriage,  452  ; 
his  philanthropical  bent,  453  ;  his 
attitude  in  the  Panama  crisis,  356, 
357,  454  ;  pardons  Dreyfus,  454  ; 
is  assaulted  at  Longchamp,  455  ; 
visits  Victor  Emmanuel  III.,  457, 
464  ;  is  insulted  by  Pius  X.,  457, 
458  ;  receives  Mr.  Kruger,  459  ; 
receives  the  Russian  sovereigns 
and  goes  to  Russia,  459,  461  ; 
receives  Edward  VII.  in  Paris, 
461 ;  visits  London,  463 ;  in  Spain 
and  Portugal,  464 ;  quits  the 
Presidency,  465  ;  his  habits  like 
those  of  Fallieres,  467 

Louise,  Queen  of  the  Belgians,  91 

Louis  Philippe,  King  of  the  French, 
36,  37,  39,  85,  91,  92,  97 

Louvel  the  regicide,  85 

Loze,  M.,  335,  336,  490 

Lutteroth.     See  Joinville 

Luynes,  Duke  de,  late,  177 ;  present, 
340 

Lyons,  Commune  at,  55,  211  ; 
Anarchists  at,  376 ;  people  of, 
395 ;  Carnot  assassinated  at,  396 
et  seq. 

Lyons,  Lord,  229,  255 

Mackau,  Baron  de,  315 

MacMahon  family,  generally,  129, 
130,  181 

MacMahon,  Marshal  de,  Duke  de 
Magenta  (1808-1893),  2nd  Presi- 
dent of  the  Republic  (1873-1879), 
is  offered  the  chief  executive 
office,  74 ;  is  elected  President, 
127  et  seq.,  194  ;  his  origin,  family 
connections,  and  birth,  129,  130, 
143 ;  his  military  career,  131  et 
seq ;  his  marriage,  131 ;  his 
manners  and  appearance,  134, 
220,  221  ;  forms  his  first  Ministry, 
136,  138  ;  his  first  Message,  139  ; 
demands  durable  powers,  152, 
173  ;  refuses  Chambord  an  inter- 
view, 153,  154;  his  septennial 
powers  voted,  154 ;  his  view  of 
the  White  Flag,  154 ;  suggested 


INDEX 


505 


as  Lieutenant  -  General  of  the 
Kingdom,  173 ;  tours  in  Brittany, 
etc.,  174;  his  proclamation  at  the 
Constitution  of  the  Republic,  195 ; 
his  views  on  religion,  198 ;  dis- 
misses Jules  Simon,  199,  200, 
201 ;  his  coup  de  tete  of  May  16, 
200  et  seq.  ;  offers  State  obsequies 
for  Thiers,  215  ;  denies  that  the 
Republic  is  threatened,  216,  217  ; 
his  establishment  at  the  Ely  see, 
220,  221 ;  his  private  residences, 
222 ;  refuses  to  displace  several 
generals,  225  ;  resigns  the  Presi- 
dency, 226  ;  his  death,  387,  388  ; 
his  favourite  liqueur,  421 

MacMahon,  Mme.  de.  See  Magenta, 
Duchess  de,  nee  de  Castries ; 
Patrice  de.  See  Magenta,  present 
Dukede;  his  wife.  See  Magenta, 
present  Duchess 

Madagascar,  286,  432,  463 

Madrid,  M.  Loubet  visits,  464 

Magenta,  Duchess  de,  nee  de  Cas- 
tries, wife  of  Marshal  MacMahon, 
131,  135,  143,  187,  218,  221,  222 

Magenta,  Patrice  de  MacMahon, 
present  Duke  de,  95,  131  ;  Mar- 
guerite d'Orleans,  present  Duchess 
de,  95 

Magne,  Pierre  (1806-1879),  138, 
139,  173,  210 

Magnier,  Edmond,  368,  391 

Magnin,  M.,  14 

Mahomed  V.  of  Turkey,  473 

Mahy,  M.  de,  311 

Malato,  Anarchist,  373 

Malon,  Benoit  (1841-1893),  social- 
ist, 28 

Manuel,  King  of  Portugal,  470, 
477 

Maquille,  Viscount  de,  144 

Marchand,  Jean  Baptiste,  Colonel 
(b.  1863),  437  et  seq. 

Maret,  Henri,  368 

Marguery,  M.,  389 

Martel,  M.,  125,  198 

Martimprey,  M.  de,  315,  324 

Martin,  Bienvenu,  465 

Martin-Feuille'e,  M.,  248 

Maruejouls,  M.,  465 

Marx,  Karl,  375 

Massabie,  Mile.  (Gambetta's  aunt), 
204,  205,  206,  212 

Massin,  Leontine,  1,  2 

Maupassant,  Guy  de  (1850-1893), 
386 


Mayer,  M. ,  editor,  305,  316 

May  the  Sixteenth  period,  200  et 

seq. 
Meaux,  Viscount  de,  201 
Mecklenburg  -  Schwerin,        Grand 

Duke  of,  19 
Meissonier,  Ernest  (1815-1891),  250 
Meline,  M.  (b.  1838),  279,  322,  333, 

423,  424,  431,  450 
Mercier,  General,  390,  395,  413 
Merlou,  M.,  465 

Mermeix,  M.  Terrail,  319,  340,  472 
Merton,  Surrey,  F.  Faure  at,  416 
Messimy,  M.,  479,  481 
Metz,    siege  and  fall   of,    19,    155 

et  seq. 
Meunier,  Anarchist,  382,  383 
Meurice,  Paul,  211 
Meyer,  Arthur,  of  Le  Gaulois,  316, 

317,  323,  337,  428 
Me'zin,  town  of,  466,  467 
Michel,  Louise,  69,  307,  376 
Mignet,  Francois  (1796-1884),  32, 

34,  109,  114,  115 
Military  Household,  F.  Faure's,  420 
Millerand,  Etienne  {b.   1859),  305, 

465,  475,  476,  484 
Millet,  Aime,  sculptor,  205 
Millet,  Jean  Francois,  painter,  his 

death,  179 
Millet,  Rene,  439 
Millevoye,  M.,  366,  367,  428 
Milliere,  Communist,  11,  12,  28 
Millies-Lacroix,  M.,  470 
Ministries.     See  Administrations 
Miribel,  General  Baron   de  (1831- 

1893),  252,  255,  345 
Mohrenheim,  Baron,  321,  322,  365, 
Moltke,  Marshal  von,  16,  17,  71, 

460 
Monaco,  Albert  II.,  Prince  of,  443, 

444,  445 
Monis,  Ernest  (b.  1846),  478,  480 
Monson,  Sir  E.,  440,  441 
Montaudon,  General  de,  225 
Montceau-les-Mines,  270,  376 
Montjarret,  piqueur,  420 
Montpensier,    Duke    de,    Antoine 

(1824-1890),  92,  93;    Ferdinand 

(6.  1884),  93 
Moore,  poet-cabman,  388 
Morel,  M.  Jean,  478 
Morocco,  243,  464,  465,  470,  471, 

472,  473,  474,  477,  478,  479,  480, 

481,  482,  483,  485 
Mortemart  family,  317 
Motor-car  bandits,  484 


506 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Mougeot,  M.,  465 

Mounet-Sully,  J.,  250 

"Mout,"  Mile.,  Gambetta's  mis- 
tress, 207 

Muley  Hafid  of  Morocco,  471,  480, 
485 

Muley  Youssef  of  Morocco,  485 

Mun,  Count  Albert  de  (b.  1841), 
324 

Munster,  Prince,  412,  413 

Muravieff,  Count,  441 

Naples.  See  Francis  II.  and  Bour- 
bons 

Napoleon  III.  (1808-1873),  ex- 
Emperor  (1852-1870),  37,  39,  56, 
84,  103  et  seq.,  112, 131, 132, 133, 
167,  349 

Napoleon  (Jerome),  Prince  (1822- 
1891),  83,  84,  99,  101,  107,  125, 
133,  170, 214,  260,  270,  277,  279, 
296,  315 

Naquet,  Alfred  (b.  1834),  280,  316, 
336,  368 

Nassr  Eddin,  Shah  of  Persia,  142 

National  Assembly,  elective  and  re- 
vising, 192.     See  also  Congress 

National  Assembly  of  Bordeaux, 
later  Versailles,  27,  28,  29,  40,  41, 
53,  55,  56,  69,  70,  72  et  seq.,  79 
et  seq.,  82,  83,  102,  108,  124  et 
seq.,  140,  141, 145,  146, 148, 155, 
170,  171,  173,  174,  192,  194 

National  Defence  Government,  4, 
7,  9,  12  et  seq.,  16,  20,  22,  23,  27, 
28,  38,  39 

Nationalist  party,  402,  422,  428, 
429,  455 

Navy,  French,  251,  270,  473,  474, 
476,  482,  485,  487 

Ne'grier,  General  de  (b.  1839),  287, 
288,  319 

Nemours,  Duke  de  (1814-1896),  91, 
101,  102,  189,  283 

Newfoundland.     See  Great  Britain 

Ney  d'Elchingen,  General,  254 

Nicholas  II.  of  Russia,  and  the 
Czarina,  422,  424,  425,  459,  460, 
471,  475 

Nile,  Upper,  437,  438,  440,  442.  See 
also  Fashoda 

Noailles,  Marquis  de,  265 

Nobility,  French,  180  et  seq. 

Norton  forgeries,  366,  367 

Oberndoeffer,  Hugo,  354 
Offenbach,  Jacques  (1819-1880),  120 


Okolowitz  General,  62 

Ollivier,  Emile  (b.  1825),  171,  172 

Ollivier,  Father,  427 

Opera  Comique  fire,  301 

Opera,  new,  inaugurated,  178 

Opportunism,  Gambetta's,  262 

Orange,  Prince  of,  Henry  William, 

256,  257  ;  Alexander,  257 
Ordinaire,  Dyonis,  211 
Orleans,  battle  of,  19,  100 
Orleans,  Bishop  of.     See  Dupanloup 
Orleans,  Dukes  d',  Ferdinand,  91, 

189 ;  Philippe  (present  Duke),  93, 

340,  450,  456 
Orleans,  Prince  Henri  d',  94 
Orleans  Princes  and  Princesses,  91, 

et  seq. 
Orleans  property  restored,  102 
Orloff,  Prince,  460 
Ozy,  Alice,  95 

Padlewski,  377 

Pain,  Olivier,  69 

Palikao,  General  Count  de,  7,  8 

Palli,  Count  H.  Lucchesi,  86 

Pams,  M.,  479,  481,  484 

Panama  Canal  Company  and  Scan- 
dal, 325,  345,  348  et  seq.  453, 
454 ;  the  Canal  and  the  United 
States,  370,  371,  490 

Paoli,  M.,  445 

Papacy.  See  Roman  Catholic  Church 

Paray-le-Monial  pilgrimages,  147 

Paris :  German  Siege  of,  14,  15, 
20,  22  et  seq.,  40,  41,  48,  407  ; 
after  the  war,  40  et  seq. ,  407 ;  the 
Germans  in,  42  et  seq.,  47 ;  amuse- 
ments in,  under  Thiers,  119, 120; 
its  new  opera  house,  178  ;  society 
in,  under  the  Septennate,  179  et 
seq.  ;  clubs  in,  189  et  seq.  ;  Bois  de 
Boulogne,  191  ;  Boulanger's  elec- 
tion in,  330,  331 ;  return  of 
French  Legislature  to,  234 ; 
municipal  scandals  of,  344  ;  floods 
in,  476  ;  rents  in,  482.  See  also 
Commune  and  Exhibitions 

Paris,  Count  de  (1838-1894),  92,  93, 
94,  144,  182,  183,  210,  282,  283, 
294,  295,  296,  303,  308,  315,  316, 
317,  323,  324,  327,  331,  332,  339, 
346,  364,  411 ;  Countess  de,  93, 
113,  114 

Parkingtou,  Sir  J.  Roper,  463 

Parliamentary  nomenclature,  such 
as  "Left/  "Right,"  etc.,  72, 
73 


INDEX 


507 


Parma,  Robert,  Duke  of,  88,  282, 

283 
Passy,  Frederic,  485 
Patriots,  League  of.     See  League 
Paturel,  General,  49,  50 
Paul-Boncour,  M.,  479 
Paulus,  303,  319 
Pauwels,  Anarchist,  393,  394 
Pearl,  Cora,  222,  223 
Pelletan,  Eugene  (1813-1884),  4,  9, 

12;    his  son,  Camille  (6.  1846), 

25],  296,  305,  322,  441,  465,  478 
Pelouze,  Mme.,  230 
Pensions  Law,  476,  487 
Penthievre,  Duke  de,  92 
Perier,  Casimir  Pierre  (1777-1832), 

405 
Perier  family,  404,  405,  406.     See 

also  Casimir-Perier 
Perregaux,  father,  35,  96  ;  and  son, 

96 
Perrier,  M.  Antoine,  479 
Peschard,  Mme.,  120 
Peyron,  Admiral,  255 
Peytral,  M.,  364,  441,  465 
Picard,  M.  Alfred,  470 
Picard,  Ernest  (1821-1877),  4,  13, 

14,40 
Pichon,  Stephen  (b.  1857),  305,  469, 

471,  475,  477 
Picquart,   General,  428,  429,   436, 

468,  470 
Pierre,  Admiral,  286 
Pittie,  General,  229,  231 
Pius  IX.,  Pope,  89,  90,  151,  175, 

197,  198,  217 
Pius  X.,  Pope,  457,  458 
Ploeuc,  Marquis  de,  263 
Poets,  some  French,  290,  291 
Poincare',  Jules  Henry  (1854-1912), 

483,  485 
Poincare,  Raymond  (b.  1860),  364, 

395,  413,  423,  465,  468,  483,  484, 

485 
Pollonnais,  Gaston,  428 
Pompadour,    Mme.    de,    and    the 

Elyse'e,  110 
Pompee,  schoolmaster,  416 
Pont-sur-Seine  Chateau,  406 
Population  of  France,  486 
Portsmouth,  French   squadrons  at, 

346,  464 
Portugal  and  France,  294,  295,  344, 

478.     See  also  Carlos,  Manuel  and 

Amelie 
Pothuau,  Admiral,  40 
Pourcet,  General,  26,  158 


Pouyer  -  Quertier,  Auguste  (1820- 
1891),  40,  75,  77 

Praslin,  Duchess  de,  112 

Prefects  of  May  16,  203 

Presidency  of  the  Republic  :  its  pre- 
rogatives, 192-193 

Presidents  of  the  Republic.  See  (I) 
Thiers,  (II)  MacMahon,  (111) 
Grevy,  (IV)  Carnot  (V)  Casimir- 
Perier,  (VI)  Faure,  (VII)  Loubet, 
(VIII)  Fallieres 

Press,  the  French,  103,  140,  209  et 
seq.,  231,  261,  266,  301,  352,  354, 
355,  357,  358,  359,  361,  369,  391, 
428,  429 ;  Anarchist  journals, 
375,  376 

Procope,  Cafe,  6 

Proportional  Representation,  475, 
484,  489 

Protocol  department,  420 

Proudhon,  P.  J.,  372 

Proust,    Antonin,    211,    249,   360, 

362,  363 
Puech,  M.,  478 

Pyat,  Felix  (1810-1889),  11,  28,  57, 
60,  317 

Quesnay  de  Beaurepaire,  M.,  337, 

353,  369,  454 
Quinet,  Edgar  (1803-1875),  9,  28,  61 

Rabagas,  Sardou's  play,  213 

Rachel,  Mile.,  313 

Rallies,  Les,  402,  424 

Ranc,  Arthur  (1831-1908),  126, 141, 

206,  211,  282 
Rattazzi,  Mme.,  304 
Ravachol,  378  et  seq. 
Raynal,    M.,   249,   279,   280,   390, 

392,  412 
Raynaud,  M.,  478 
Razoua,  Communist,  28 
Reclus,    Elise'e    (1830-1905),    375, 

394 
Red    Cross    Society,   French,    221, 

222 
Re'gnier,  160,  161 
Reinach,  Baron   de,  354-360,   362, 

363,  367,  368 

Reinach,    Joseph,    260,   356,   427; 

Salomon  and  Theodore,  256 
Religious  Orders,  the,  236,  237,  456, 

457,  470,  475,  476,  478 
Re'musat,  Count  Charles  de  (1797- 

1875),  124,  125,  407 
Renan,   Ernest    (1823-1892),    359, 

386 


508 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Renault,  Leon,  113,  360,  362 

Renoult,  M.  R.,  481 

Rentes,  conversion  of,  281,  303 

Republic,  the.  See  Constitution, 
Fete,  Presidents 

Restoration,  projected,  of  the  Em- 
pire, 102,  103  et  seq.,  170,  171, 
270 ;  of  the  Monarchy,  55,  56, 
82-84,  88  et  seq.,  143,  145,  146  et 
seq.     See  also  Boulanger 

Revanche,  La,  176,  209,  219,  242, 
258,  275,  276,  325,  460 

Revolutions,  French,  331 ;  that  of 
1870,  1  et  seq. 

Rezonville,  battle  of,  167 

Ribot,  Alexandre  (b.  1842),  250, 
289,  306,  345,  357,  363,  423, 461 

Ricard,  Louis,  347,  355,  356,  357 

Richard,  alleged  Anarchist,  394 

Richard,  Cardinal,  443 

Richelieu,  Duchess  of,  444 

Rieunier,  Admiral,  357,  364 

Rigault,  Raoul,  Communist,  59 

Ring,  Baron  de,  266 

Riviere,  Henri  (1827-1883),  287 

Roche,  Jules,  345,  357,  360 

Rochebouet,  General  de,  216,  217 

Rochechouarts,  the,  317 

Rochefort,  Henri  (de),  Marquis  de 
Lucay  (b.  1831),  4,  6,  7,  8,  9,  13, 
28, 61, 69,  239,  243,  301, 305, 316, 
336,  338,  339,  341,  347,  366,  428 

Rochefoucauld.  See  La  Rochefou- 
cauld 

Rochetaillee,  Countess  de,  379 

Roget,  General,  450 

Roi  Carotte,  Le,  119 

Roman  Catholic  Church  and  the 
Republic,  84,  89,  90,  91,  175  et 
seq.,  197, 198, 199,  213,  21£,  235, 
et  seq.,  265,  281,  282,  327,  335, 
346,  347,  359,  402,  409,  424,  427, 
429,  455-458,  468,  470,  475,  476, 
478 

Rossel,  Colonel,  54,  64,  65 

Rothschild,  Baron  and  Baroness 
Adolphe  de,  184  et  seq.  ;  various 
members  of  the  family,  180,  181, 
184  ;  explosion,  402 

Rouher,  Eugene  (1814-1884),  103, 
133,  171,  172,  260 

Rousseau,  A. ,  351 

Rousseau,  Theodore,  205 

Roustan,  M.,  239 

Rouvier,  Maurice  (1842-1911),  248, 
301,  305,  333,  346,  351,  357,  358, 
359,  360,  362,  465 


Ruau,  M.,465,  468,  475 

Rude,  Francois,  205 

Rue  des  Bons  Enfants  explosion, 
384 ;  St.  Jacques  and  Faubourg 
St.  Martin  explosions,  393 

Rulhiere,  woman,  380 

Russia  and  Austria,  473 

Russia  and  France.  See  Franco- 
Russian  Alliance 

Russo-Japanese  War,  464 

Russo-Turkish  War,  201 

Sacred  Heart,  France  dedicated  to 

the,  84,  147 
Saint    Hilaire,   Jules    Barthelemy, 

(1805-1895),  118,  238,  239 
Saint  Leu,  Chateau,  96,  97 
Saint  Martin,  M.,  368 
Saint  Privat,  battle  of,  167 
Saint  Vallier,  M.  de,  259 
Salaries  of  Deputies,  470 
Salisbury,    3rd    Marquess   of,    239, 

432,  438,  489,  490 
Salons,  some  Parisian,  180  et  seq. 
Samory,  285 
Sand,  George,  313 
San  Sebastian,  Gambetta  at,  205  et 

seq. 
Santerre  scandal,  256 
Sardou,  Victorien  (1831-1909),  119, 

213   291 
Sarrien,  M.,  293,  311,  468 
Saussier,  General,   253,  306,   308, 

345 
Savcrgnan    de    Brazza,    P.    (1852- 

1905),  285 
Saxe-Coburg,  Prince  Augustus  of, 

92 ;  Princess  Clementine  of  {nee 

d'Orle'ans),    91,    92,    113,    146; 

Prince  Ferdinand  of.  See  Bulgaria 
Say,   Leon   (1826-1896),    124,    194, 

246,  263,  265 
Scheurer-Kestner,  M.,  235,  428 
Schneider,  Hortense,  224 
Schnoebele'  affair,  300,  301 
Schoen,  Herr  v.,  472,  480 
Secretan,  M.,  344 
Sedan,  battle  of,  133,  134 
Seliverskoff,  General,  377 
Selves,  M.  de,  481,  483 
Senate,  the,  192, 193, 194, 195,  204, 

213,  226,  260,  261,  281,  298,  306, 

338,  345,  361,  363,  369,  400,  423, 

458,  480,  481 
Separation   of    Churcli   and   State, 

457,  458,  474 
Septennate,  the,  152,  154 


INDEX 


509 


Serre  de  Riviere,  General,  158 

Servia,  473 

Seymour,  Lord  Henry,  189 

Shah.     See  Nassr  Eddin 

Siam,  290,  367,  387,  432,  463 

Sieges.     See  Metz  and  Paris 

Siegfried,  M.,  357 

Simon,  an  Anarchist,  381,  382,  390 

Simon,  Jules  (1814-1896),  4,  9,  13, 

40,  124,  126,  196,  197,  199,  200, 

201,  238 
Sixteenth   of  May   Period,   200  et 

seq. 
Skiernievice,  Emperors  at,  460 
Societe  des  Metaux,  344 
Societe  Generale,  354 
Society  under  the  Septennate,  179 

et  seq. 
Songs  and  refrains,  popular,  119, 

218,    219,   253,   254,   303,    319- 

321,  384 
Soubert,  Mariette,  381,  382 
Soubeyran  de  St.  Prix,  M.,  452 
Soudan,    Egyptian,    438    et    seq.  ; 

French,  285,  437 
Soult,  Marshal,  36,  117,  118 
Southern  Railway  Scandal,  359 
Spain  and  France,  175,  283,  284, 

464,   465,   470,    472,    475,    482, 

483,  485.     See  also  Alfonso  and 

Spuller,  Eugene  (1835-1896),  2,  15, 
206,  211,  259,  302,  333,  390 

Stage,  Parisian,  219,  220 

Steeg,  M.,  479,  481,  484 

Steenackers,  M.,  8 

Steinheil,  Mme.,  446,  475 

Strikes,  notable :  Montceau,  270, 
376  ;  Carmaux,  385  ;  Paris  elec- 
trical workers,  470,  477  ;  railway 
workers,  473,  476,  477  ;  postal 
employees,  473  ;  reservists,  473 

Suez  Canal,  234,  266,  269,  349,  360. 
See  also  Egypt 

Syndicalists,  the,  403,  470,  471,  474, 
481 

Tailhade,  L.,  394 

Taine,  H.  (1828-1893),  48,  386 

Talleyrand,  35 

Targe',  Allain,  M.,  249,  290 

Taxes,  war,  79 

Temple,  General  du,  149 

Terminus  Cafe  Explosion,  392 

Terrail-Mermeix,  319,  340,  472 

Theo,  Mme.,  120 

The'venet,  M.,  333,  360 


Thibaudin,  General,  278,  279,  284, 
304 

Thiebaud,  G.,  314,  316 

Thiers,  Adolphe  (1797-1877),  Chief 
of  the  Executive  Power  and  first 
President  of  the  Republic  (1871- 
1873),  becomes  head  of  the  State, 
28,  29,  55  ;  his  origin,  birth,  and 
early  years,  30  et  seq.  ;  appreci- 
ated by  Talleyrand,  35  ;  his  career 
under  Louis  Philippe,  36,  39; 
under  Napoleon  111.,  37,  38; 
during  the  Franco-German  War, 
38,  39  ;  negotiates  peace,  40,  71 ; 
his  policy  towards  the  Commune, 
54,  55  ;  his  Paris  residence  and 
collections,  61,  62,  76,  77,  117; 
installed  at  Versailles,  70  et  seq.  ; 
his  oratory,  73  ;  his  intercourse 
with  the  Assembly,  74,  75,  79  et 
seq.,  108,  124  et  seq.  ;  his  financial 
policy,  75,  77,  81,  82  ;  becomes 
President  of  the  Republic,  76 ; 
tenders  his  resignation,  79,  80 ; 
his  attitude  towards  Gambetta, 
83,  124 ;  and  the  Duchess  de 
Berri,  86 ;  in  regard  to  the 
Orleans  Princes'  property,  102 ; 
routine  of  his  life,  108 ;  his  re- 
ceptions, 108,  109,  112  et  seq.  ; 
the  story  of  his  marriage,  115  et 
seq.  ;  liberates  the  territory,  124, 
155  ;  is  defeated  over  the  Presi- 
dency of  the  Assembly,  125  ;  on 
his  general  policy  also,  and 
resigns,  127  ;  in  regard  to  Mac- 
Mahon,  128  ;  falls  flag  in  hand, 
135  ;  the  Shah's  anxiety  to  see 
him,  142  ;  his  life  after  his  fall, 
142,  143  ;  in  relation  to  Bazaine, 
156,  157 ;  wittily  answered  by 
Baroness  Adolphe  de  Rothschild, 
185,  186  ;  advises  moderation  at 
the  constitution  of  the  Republic, 
195 ;  his  organ,  Le  Bien  Public, 
211  ;  his  last  years,  death,  and 
obsequies,  214,  215 

Thiers  family,  30  et  seq. 

Thiers,  Mme.,  nee  Dosne,  113,  115 
et  seq.,  215 

Thomas,  General  Clement,  51,  52, 
112,  469 

Thompson,  Sir  Henry,  104  et  seq. 

Thomson,  M.,  211,  465,  468 

Thoumas,  General,  252,  273 

Tirard,  M.,  263,  269,  279,  281,  311, 
333,  345,  352,  357 


510 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 


Tissandier,  Gaston  (1843-1899),  21 

Tonquin,  286  et  seq. 

Toulon,  Russian  squadrons  at,  387, 
461  ;  Italian,  459 

Tournier,  General,  420 

Tours,  Defence  Delegates  at,  16, 
19,  20 

Trarieux,  M.,  423 

Treaties,  some :  Frankfort,  71,  77, 
78;  Clayton-Bulwer,  370;  Hay- 
Pauncefote,  371, 490;  arbitration, 
463.  See  also  Cobden,  Com- 
mercial, Conventions,  and  Great 
Britain 

Tre'lat,  Professor,  274 

Triple  Alliance.     See  Alliance 

Tripoli,  489,  490 

Trochu,  General  (1815-1896),  7,  8, 
9,  16,  22,  23,  120,  133 

Trouillot,  M.,  465,  475 

Trubetskoy,  Princess  Lise,  113 

Tunis,  239  et  seq.,  293,  480,  489, 
490 

Turco-Italian  War,  484,  485 

Turkey,  201,  240,  246,  473,  484, 
485,  490.  See  also  Eastern 
Question  and  Tripoli 

Union  Club,  191 

Union  Ge'nerale  Bank,  263,  264 

United     States     of    America     and 

Panama  Canal,  370,  371,  490 
Unwritten  law,  the,  123 
Uzes,  Duchess  d',  317,   323,  324, 

326,  329,  422  ;  Dukes  d',  317 

Vacquerie,  Auguste,  211 
Vaillant,  Anarchist,  391,  392 
Valle',  M.,  465 

Valles,  Jules  (1832-1885),  58,  59 
Vannsay,  Count'  H.   de,  146,   151, 

153 
Vendome,  Duke  de,  92 
Vermorel,  Communist,  58,  61 
Vernier,  L.  A.,  10,  11 
Versailles,   70,   71,   72,    108,    219, 

234,  308  ;  Count  de  Chambord  at, 

153  et  seq.     See  also  Congress  and 

National  Assembly 
Very  Cafe  explosion,  382,  383 
Vesinier,  Communist,  58 
Veuillot,   Louis    (1813-1883),    210, 

281 
Victor  Emmanuel  III.  of  Italy,  457, 

459 
Victoria,  Queen,  461,  485 


Viger,  M.,465 

Ville  d'Avray,  Gambetta  at,  270  et 

seq. 
Villette,  Colonel,  168 
Villisse,  388 

Vinoy,  General,  23,  49,  53 
Viviani,  M.,  470,  475,  477 
Vizille  chateau,  406,  408 
Vogue,  MM.  de,  130,  134 
Von  der  Tann,  General,  19 

Waddington,  M.  (1826-1894),  126, 
233,  234,  241,  460 

Waldeck  -  Rousseau,  Rene  (1846- 
1904),  248,  260,  279,  280,  333, 
414,  415,  455,  456,  457,  465, 
475 

Waldemar,  Prince  and  Princess,  of 
Denmark,  94,  295,  489 

Wales,  Prince  of,  Albert  Edward, 
(later  Edward  VII.),  177,  218, 
257,  344,  461,  462,  463 ;  George, 
185  ;  Edward,  485 

Wallace,  Sir  Richard,  23 

Wallon,  H.,  192,  194 

Walsin-Esterhazy.     See  Esterhazy 

Wars  :  Franco -German,  1,  3,  6, 
11,  15  et  seq.,  38;  position  at 
close  of,  24  et  seq. ;  terms  of  peace 
and  liberation  of  territory,  40, 
42,  75,  78,  124,  155;  capitula- 
tions of  the  period,  157-  See  also 
Bagneux,  Buzenval,  Champigny, 
Chateaudun,  Coulmiers,  Laval, 
Le  Mans,  Loire,  Metz,  Orleans, 
Paris,  Red  Cross,  Rezonville,  St. 
Privat,  Sedan,  and  Worth.  For 
other  wars  see  Boer,  Dahomey, 
Madagascar,  Morocco,  Russo- 
Japanese,  Russo  -  Turkish,  Ton- 
quin, Tunis,  Turco-ltalian 

War  scares :  in  1875,  176,  177, 
460  ;  in  1887,  299,  300  ;  over  the 
Dreyfus  case,  413  ;  over  Fashoda, 
440,  441  ;  over  Morocco,  465, 
471,  472,  481,  482 

Weiss,  J.  J.,  259 

White  Flag,  the,  144  et  seq.,  154, 
198 

Wilhelmina,  Queen  of  Holland, 
257,  458,  459 

William  I.,  German  Emperor,  16, 
17,  38,  43,  71, 132  ;  William  II., 
412,  413,  444,  459 

William  III.,  King  of  Holland,  256, 
257 

Wilson,  Daniel,  8,  229  et  seq.,  261, 


INDEX 


511 


283,  304,  305,  310,  312,  313,  314  ; 

Mme.,  nee  Grevy,  230 
Wilson,  Sir  Charles  R.,  234,  317 
Wine-growers'  riots,  470,  479 
Wittich,  General  von,  18 
Worth,  battle  of,  132,  133 
Wurtemberg,      Marie      d"  Orleans, 

Duchess  of,  91 


York,  Duke  of,  now  George  V., 
185 

Zola,  &nile  (1840-1892),  34,  224, 
264,  291,  294,  333,  415,  429,  430, 
431,  471 

Zucco  wine,  98 

Zurlinden,  General,  436 


THE   END 


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