1 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, how T 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- Hale 1 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 years 1 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 "messages 11 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 miracle 1 ' 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 ladies 1 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 "row 11 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 • • -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 appeared 3 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 Gambetta 1 s 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 family 1 ' 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 t under 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 k fine 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 Pasquier 1 to assume office. The negotiations were laborious, and on one occasion when a politician whom the Marshal President had summoned, asked for two days 1 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 crows 1 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 blacksmiths 1 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 Dufaure 1 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 d 1 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 B oulanger, wh om Campenon selected for a missi on to the United States at the time of the Centena ry of Am erican Independence. Boulanger TmcT an excellent record, and had come to the front very rapidly, being: made a genera l de brigade when only forty-three years old. Nevertheless, Gambetta did not jike 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 "Reds 11 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 Galliffet 1 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 Laurier 1 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 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 years 1 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- nople 1 ) 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 egg 9 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 Zola 2 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 G revy 's period of office having expired, he was re-elected President of the ^JRjej>ubircJ bv 4d7 votes against 6ft ff iven" to MTBrisson. The latter's Cabinet now retired. Freycinet ibrmed the Tenth Ministry of Gravy's tim e. Its progra mme was conciliation between all R epublicans,, ar »d a genuine attemp t 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 Mimst eFbt War. 1 Th is 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 "Tirailleurs 1 '' 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_18S 2) Director of. jjij? Jnfa^ry Pgpart- ment at the War Office, and busied himself particularly with such matte rs 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 freq uent coTfiminatory declaratio ns respecting those react ionary_offitiers who openly vented their dislike for the Republic. His own Republicanism was oniv ojiestioned by those ^vho knew _ that wflile n"e"-"was~ serving, iT fewyears previo usl y, with the Vllth Army Corps, under the Duke d'Aumaie, he had conducted hi mselft b wards that' Prince with t he ut most 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 Ame He, to Pom Carlos, Duke of Braganza and Crown Prince of Portugal The m arriage had been originally p romoted by Mmc'de L a, Ferrona ys 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 marria ge did not pa rti- 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 R oyalist Committees should be forme d in many region s to organise subscriptions for numerous b eautiful presents to th e bride, was_^nlyjQatural, but that her father, living JnJkh&jnidst of Republica n Fran ce, 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 t o be made a great Royalist dem onstr ation, and the C ount de Paris' 1 in discretion 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 h ave ensued. _ J B ut st rong 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 E xpulsion 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 JNapoleo n_to Switzerland, and his son, Prince Victor Bon aparte, 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, m ore the Duke d'Aumale's misfortune than his fault if he was drawn intcTthis aHair, and suffered by the indis- cr etion 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 T hiers, 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. Al tho ug h he was byJarJJbe ablestj member of his family, h e had, we think, n o personal po litical amb ition. 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 t hg_ result he was expelled from France by virtue of Cl ause 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 twen ty-one years of age, whe n 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 s peech to the Chamber should be printed an(T~placarded t hroughout the 36,Q Q0Tco mmune8 of .trance. MillntflO Ills- nam e had been little kno wn beyond a few coteries of politicians and specia lists ; from that hour it became famous, or notorious, i f that expression be preferred. ~ To some people Boulang er's violent attack o il -t ho Duke d'Aumale seemed inexplicable, by reason of their earlier relati ons. 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' Aumal e 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 e quivocal beha viour^ 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. Bo ulanger, who still re mained at the head of the army, had for some time p ast 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 ^Ge rman press, "the reptile press" of those days, which took its instructions from Prince Bismarck's acolytes, a lready denounced Boulanger as a danger t o 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 fr ontier, as he w isheoTTo 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 bellic ose Boulanger lost a good deal of influenc e with the more moderate Republicans, owing to an impudent letter on military education and trammg wEich lie addressed ~to~ ^Parliamentary Committee, and aft erwards 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, S chncebele |W j arrpfftpd Ky-CL^w^n police-officers and removed to Metz. To, m ost Frpnrh people, t 4is seemed direct prov ocation 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, Boula n ger now sen t as secretly as possible some addi tional detachme ntsof troops~ towards the frontier and, re membering the interven tion of Russia during the war scare of 1875, h gj addressed aletter either to the Russian Emperor (Alexander III.) or to his War Minister (there have been conflicting statements on that point) in which he solicited Russi an 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 Boulange r W^S alpnT rpgpnnsihlPj fl"nH virtually threw him over. Th us Flourens saved the situatio n 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. <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 aut horised the establishment of an Officers' Club in a building on the Place de rOpeVa, and he not infrequently visited it, there being a good ™ a i??3Igf'"^ s aMfirAiim mining 1,1m iiimhrtraTs: Demonstratio ns i n his favour were often mad e 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 Thiebau d, who prevailed BOULANGER'S INTRIGUES so far with Boulanger that already early in 1887 the latter accompanied hi m under the name of Mft|fo r 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 roid r 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 Boulangisme y 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 : . I H ||| ^ 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- sidising 1 ' 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 Paris 1 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 anU y 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 Siecle y 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 months 1 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 desires 1 — 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 Paris 1 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 dt d l,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 years 1 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 years 1 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 months 1 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 years 1 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 Republique 1 — 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 government 11 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 Chamber 1 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. Hanotaux 1 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 years 1 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 Philippe 1 s 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 <£ J 55,000 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 Eg y pt? Fran ce 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 selected 1 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 Printed by R. & R Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. •••>' THIS BOOK IS DTJTJ ^"N "HP •^STTE 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are sufcact^q immediate recall. 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