A History of the Third French Republic Part 4

THE ADMINISTRATION OF SADI CARNOT

December, 1887, to June, 1894

The successor of Jules Grevy was Sadi Carnot, in many ways the best choice. As has been seen, the transition was less easy than the two ballots of the National a.s.sembly seemed to indicate (December 3, 1887).

The intrigues of the so-called "nuits historiques" (November 28-30) had been an endeavor of the Radicals to keep Grevy, in order to ward off Jules Ferry as his successor. Finally, Carnot was a compromise candidate, or "dark horse," a Moderate acceptable to the Radicals still unwilling to endure the leading candidate Ferry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SADI CARNOT]

President Carnot, hitherto known chiefly as a capable civil engineer and a successful Cabinet officer, was the heir to the name and traditions of a great republican family. His integrity was a guarantee of honesty in office, and his personal dignity was bound to heighten the prestige of the chief magistracy, somewhat weakened by his predecessor Grevy. On the other hand, Carnot's conception of the const.i.tutional irresponsibility or neutrality of his office was an insufficient bulwark to the State against the intrigues of petty politicians and the inefficiencies of the parliamentary regime. Consequently his term of office saw the Republic exposed to two of the worst crises in its history, the Boulanger campaign and the Panama scandals, while the legislative history records the overthrow of successive cabinets. These followed each other without definite constructive policy, and aimed chiefly at keeping power by constant d.i.c.kerings and playing off group against group.

The demoralization of parliamentary life had reached a climax. The Republicans were divided into the Moderates, former followers of Gambetta, the Radicals with Floquet and Brisson, the Extreme Left with Clemenceau and Pelletan, the Socialists with Millerand, Basly, and Clovis Hugues. The Royalists and Bonapartists worked against the Government and the Boulangists took advantage of the chaos to push their cause. The Socialists, in particular, were a new group in the Chamber, destined in later years to hold the centre of the stage. In their manifesto of December, 1887, signed by seventeen Deputies, they advocated, in addition to innumerable specific reforms or practical innovations, schemes for the reorganization of society: state monopolies, nationalization of property, progressive taxation, and the like.

The year 1888, characterized by intense political and social unrest, was critical. The trial and conviction of Grevy's son-in-law Wilson involved was.h.i.+ng dirty linen in public. The steady growth of Boulangism testified to dissatisfaction, even though, as it proved, the enemies of the established order had united on a worthless adventurer as their leader.

General Boulanger had been first "invented" as a leader by the extreme Radicals, and especially by Clemenceau, the _demolisseur_ or destroyer of ministries. Then, being gradually abandoned by them, he went over to the anti-Republicans and took heavy subsidies from the Monarchists, while continuing to advocate, at least openly, an anti-parliamentary, plebiscitary Republic.

Early in 1888, in February, the candidacy of Boulanger to the Chamber was started in several departments. The electioneering activities of a general in regular service and sundry deeds of insubordination on his part finally caused the Government, as a disciplinary measure, to retire him. The result was that his partisans raised a cry of persecution, and his actual retirement gave him the liberty to engage in politics which his service on the active list had prevented. In April Boulanger was elected Deputy in the southern department of la Dordogne and the northern le Nord. His plan of campaign was to be candidate for Deputy in each department successively in which a vacancy occurred, thus indirectly and gradually obtaining a plebiscite of approval from the country. At the same time he raised the cry in favor of militarism, not for the sake of war, he said, but for defence. He attacked the impotence of Parliament and, as a remedy, called for the dissolution of the Chamber and the convocation of a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly to revise the const.i.tution. His opponents raised the answering cry of dictators.h.i.+p and Caesarism. The election in the Nord was particularly alarming because of Boulanger's majority.

Boulanger now had both Moderates and many Radicals against him, including the Prime Minister Floquet, and was, on the other hand, supported openly or secretly by the Imperialists and Monarchists, advocates for varying purposes of the plebiscite. The Royalists, who thought their chances of success the most hopeful, wanted to use Boulanger as a tool to further their designs for the overthrow of the Republic. Not only did he receive funds from the pretender, the comte de Paris, but an ardent Royalist lady of rank, the d.u.c.h.esse d'Uzes, squandered millions of francs in furthering Boulanger's political schemes as leader of the Boulangists: the "National Party" or "Revisionists."

In June, 1888, Boulanger brought forward in the Chamber a project for a revision of the const.i.tution. He advocated a single Chamber, or, if a Senate were conceded, demanded that it be chosen by popular vote. The power of the Chamber was to be diminished, that of the President increased, and laws were to be subject to ratification by plebiscite or referendum. The measure was naturally rejected, but Boulanger renewed the attack in July by demanding the dissolution of the Chamber. In the excitement of the debate the lie was pa.s.sed between Boulanger and the President of the Council of Ministers, Floquet. Boulanger resigned his seat and in a duel, a few days later, between Floquet and Boulanger, the das.h.i.+ng general, the warrior of the black horse, and the hero of the popular song "En rev'nant d'la revue," was ignominiously wounded by the civilian politician.

But Boulanger's star was not yet on the wane. He continued to be elected Deputy in different departments, and the efforts of the Ministry to cut the ground from under his feet by bringing in a separate revisionary project did not undermine his popularity with the rabble, the jingo Ligue des Patriotes of Paul Deroulede, and the anti-Republican malcontents. In January, 1889, after a fiercely contested and spectacular campaign, he was elected Deputy for the department of the Seine, containing the city of Paris, nerve-centre of France. It is generally conceded that if Boulanger had gone to the Elysee, the presidential mansion, on the evening of his election, and turned out Carnot, he would have had the Parisian populace and the police with him in carrying out a _coup d'etat_. Luckily for the country his judgment or his nerve failed him at the crucial moment, and from that time his influence diminished. The panic-stricken Government was able to thwart his plebiscitary appeals by re-establis.h.i.+ng the _scrutin d'arrondiss.e.m.e.nt_, or election by small districts instead of by whole departments. Moreover, when the Floquet Cabinet fell soon after on its own revisionary project, the succeeding Tirard Ministry was able to pa.s.s a law preventing simultaneous multiple candidacies, and impeached Boulanger, with some of his followers, before the Senate as High Court of Justice. Instead of facing trial, Boulanger and his satellites Dillon and Henri Rochefort fled from France. In August they were condemned in absence to imprisonment. Boulanger never returned to France, and with diminis.h.i.+ng subsidies his following waned. The elections of 1889 resulted in the return of only thirty-eight Boulangists and, when in September, 1891, Boulanger committed suicide in Brussels at the grave of his mistress, most Frenchmen merely gave a sigh of relief at the memory of the dangers they had experienced not so long before.

The International Exposition of 1889 afforded a breathing spell in the midst of political anxieties, and helped, by its evidence of the Republic's prosperity, to weaken Boulanger's cause. But unsettled social and religious problems remained troublesome. The successive cabinets after the Floquet Ministry, and following the general election of 1889, pursued a policy of "Republican concentration," combining Moderate and Radical elements, disappearing often without important motives, and replaced by cabinets of approximately the same coloring. The Clerical Party was hand-in-glove with the Royalists and the Boulangists. It took advantage of governmental instability to try to undermine the Republic, but its own harmony of purpose was in due time diminished by the new policy of Leo XIII. That astute Italian diplomat was himself temperamentally an Opportunist. He conceived the idea of controlling France by advances to the Republic and by feigning to accept it in order to get hold of its policies, especially the educational and military laws. He realized, too, the harm done to the Vatican by the stubbornness of many French Catholics. He felt the necessity of making amends for the behavior of the Catholic Royalists in the Boulanger affair. Certain prelates, including the Archbishop of Aix, Monseigneur Gouthe-Soulard, attacked the Government violently at the end of 1891 in connection with disturbances by French pilgrims to Rome who had manifested in favor of the Pope and written "Vive le Pape-Roi!" at the tomb of Victor Emmanuel.

The French Catholics tended to resent the interference of the Pope, but the latter, who had for some months received the support of Cardinal Lavigerie, Archbishop of Algiers and Primate of Africa, tried to bring pressure on the leaders of the French clergy. In February, 1892, as a rejoinder to a manifes...o...b.. five French cardinals, came his famous encyclical letter advocating the established order of things. "The civil power considered as such is from G.o.d and always from G.o.d....

Consequently, when new governments representing this new power are const.i.tuted, to accept them is not only permitted but demanded, or even imposed, by the needs of the social good." This encyclical was followed by a letter to the French cardinals in May and by other manifestations of his wishes. Thus a certain number of Catholics, among whom the comte de Mun and Jacques Piou were leaders, cut adrift from the Right and adhered to the Republic, forming the small group of "Rallies." They were never very numerous or powerful, and the Dreyfus affair, a few years later, showed how the Pope's desire to rally the Catholics to the Republic was thwarted by the French clergy and the reactionaries.

The procedure of Leo XIII was thus a proof that the Vatican wanted to be on good terms with the Republic. The _rapprochement_ with Russia was another proof that France, in spite of its troubles, was to be reckoned with in Europe. France and Russia felt it necessary to draw together in answer to the noisy renewal of the Triple Alliance. There had been tension in the spring of 1891, in which the French were not wholly blameless, as a result of the private visit to Paris of the dowager empress of Germany, the Empress Frederick. In the summer of 1891 a French fleet under Admiral Gervais was invited to Russian waters. It visited Cronstadt, and the Czar and the President exchanged telegrams of sympathy. On the return to France the same fleet visited Portsmouth by invitation, and was welcomed by the Queen and the authorities. The visit to England did not, however, have the same meaning as the Russian one.

"Portsmouth" meant an expression of England's freedom of action face-to-face with the Triple Alliance, and an endeavor to smooth French susceptibilities recently ruffled by Lord Salisbury. After an Anglo-French compact, in August, 1890, for the part.i.tion of protectorates and zones of influence in Africa, the British Prime Minister alluded rather scoffingly in the House of Lords to the lack of value of the Sahara a.s.signed to the French. "Cronstadt," as opposed to "Portsmouth," meant an active understanding, to be followed in 1892 by a military defensive compact negotiated in St. Petersburg by General de Boisdeffre, head of the French General Staff.

The return visit of the Russians took place at Toulon in 1893, and Admiral Avellan with his staff visited Paris, which went wild with enthusiasm. At that moment French relations with Italy were strained, partly because the Italian Government was jealous of the cordiality between the Pope and the Republic. The Franco-Russian manifestation was a new veiled warning.

In 1892, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Jules Meline, the Chamber adopted a protective tariff policy. This resulted in several tariff disputes and engendered bad feeling with various countries, including Italy.

The desperate attack of the Royalists, engineered mainly against the Republic in the Panama scandals, helped to bring the Pope and the State still closer together, so that at certain times the Rallies or Republican Catholics and the Royalists fought each other violently. The Panama scandal was planned in view of the elections of 1893. During the decade following 1880 Ferdinand de Lesseps, the successful builder of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, had organized and tried to finance a company to construct a ca.n.a.l at Panama. The prestige of Lesseps's name and the memory of his previous achievement made countless Frenchmen invest huge sums in the company. But the expenses were enormous and the financial maladministration apparently extraordinary, for the directors of the company were led into illegal steps in order to influence legislation, or pay hush money to the press to hide the condition of affairs, and then were blackmailed into further outlays. The company failed in 1888, and efforts to put it on its feet proved abortive. Hints of the scandals leaked out, and the Government played into the hands of its opponents by trying to conceal matters.

In November, 1892, some Royalist members of the Chamber brought matters to a head and the Government was obliged to do something. It was decided to proceed against Ferdinand de Lesseps, his son Charles de Lesseps, Henri Cottu, Marius Fontane, members of the board of directors, and G.

Eiffel, an engineer and contractor and the builder of the famous Eiffel Tower. At this juncture a well-known Jewish banker of Paris, Baron Jacques de Reinach, died suddenly and most mysteriously on November 20.

He was openly charged with being the bribery agent of the company, and his sudden death was by some called suicide, while others hinted that he had been put out of the way because of his dangerous knowledge.

Under these exciting conditions a Boulangist Deputy named Delahaye made an interpellation in the Chamber hinting at the campaign of corruption carried on by the company through the agency of Reinach and two other Jews of German origin, Arton and Cornelius Herz, the latter a naturalized American citizen. By this campaign it was charged that three million francs had been used to corrupt more than a hundred and fifty Deputies, and much more had been spent in other ways.

A commission of thirty-three was appointed under the chairmans.h.i.+p of Henri Brisson. The Royalists and Radicals were having their innings against the Government, and their newspapers continued to publish rumors and "revelations." The commission called for the autopsy of Reinach. The Loubet Cabinet, refusing to grant it, was voted down and resigned. The Ribot Ministry was then const.i.tuted, but at intervals lost successively two of its most prominent members, Rouvier and Freycinet, accused of complicity in the scandals. Even the leaders of the Radicals, Clemenceau and Floquet, in time found themselves involved. The former was charged with tricky dealings with Cornelius Herz, the latter was shown to have demanded money from the company, when Minister, in order to use it for political subsidies.

In December the Cabinet decided to arrest Charles de Lesseps, Marius Fontane, Henri Cottu, and a former Deputy, Sans-Leroy, accused of having accepted a bribe of two hundred thousand francs. At the same time, on the basis of the seizure of twenty-six cheque stubs at the bank used by the baron de Reinach, the Minister of Justice proceeded against ten prominent Deputies and Senators, among whom was Albert Grevy, former Governor-General of Algeria, and brother of Jules Grevy. The Government seemed panic-stricken in its readiness to sacrifice, on mere suspicion, prominent members of its party. All the parliamentaries accused were, in due time, exonerated.

The directors of the company came up for trial twice. The first time, with M. Eiffel, in January-February, 1893, and the second time, with other defendants, in March, before different jurisdictions on varying charges, they were condemned to fine and imprisonment. On appeal, in April, these condemnations were revised or annulled. One person became the scapegoat, a former Minister of Public Works named Bahaut, condemned to civil degradation, five years' imprisonment, and a heavy fine.

Scandal was, however, not satisfied with these names. There was also talk of a mysterious list of one hundred and four Deputies charged with accepting bribes from Arton. Moreover, it was felt that quas.h.i.+ng the indictments against prominent men like Rouvier and Albert Grevy was poor policy. If they were innocent they could prove their innocence. Under the circ.u.mstances suspicion would still be rife. The state of general anarchy was also revealed by the evidence of the wife of Henri Cottu, who testified that agents of the Government had offered her husband immunity if he would implicate a member of the Opposition.[14]

The Panama scandal was largely the work of the Monarchists angry at the failure of the Boulanger campaign. It did them no good, as the elections to the new Chamber proved. On the other hand, it worked havoc among the leaders of the Moderates, who, innocent or blameworthy, fell under popular suspicion, and were in many cases relegated to the background in favor of new leaders. Moreover, it helped the Socialists, and even, by throwing discredit on parliamentarism, it encouraged lawless outbreaks of anarchists.

New men in party leaders.h.i.+ps came in the composite Cabinet of Moderate leanings led by Charles Dupuy in April, 1893. He seemed at first to incline toward the Conservatives and treated with considerable severity some street disturbances. A prank of art students at their annual ball (_Bal des quat'-z-arts_) was magnified into a street riot and was not quelled until after the loss of a life. The _Bourse du travail_ (Workmen's Exchange) was closed by the Government after other disturbances.

The elections in August and September resulted in a large Republican majority and a corresponding decline in the anti-Republican Right. On the other hand, the Radicals rose to about a hundred and fifty, and the Socialists were about fifty, forming for the first time a large party able to make its influence felt. The "Socialistic-Radicals" represented an effort toward a compromise between the advanced groups.

The desire of the Moderate leaders of the Republic to meet the Pope halfway in his policy of conciliation was expressed in a noteworthy speech made in the Chamber in March, 1894, by the then Minister of Public Wors.h.i.+p, Eugene Spuller. Answering the query of a Royalist Deputy, the Minister declared that the time had come to put an end to fanaticism and sectarianism, and that the country could count on the vigilance of the Government to maintain its rights, and on the new frame of mind (_esprit nouveau_) which inspired it, which tended to reconcile all French citizens and bring about a revival of common sense, justice, and charity.

But the anarchists were not moved by any spirit of conciliation.

Borrowing methods of violence from the Russian nihilists, they used bomb-throwing to draw attention to the vices of social organization and to themselves. During 1892, 1893, and 1894 they tried to terrorize Paris. The deeds of various criminals, including Ravachol, Vaillant (who threw a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies),[15] Emile Henry, among others, culminated at last in the cruel murder of President Carnot. On June 24, 1894, while at Lyons, whither he had gone to pay a state visit to an international exhibition, President Carnot was fatally stabbed by an underwitted Italian anarchist named Caserio Santo, and died within a few hours. Never were more futile and abominable crimes committed than those which sacrificed Carnot and McKinley.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] The Panama affair was a violent shock to the Republic. People were amazed at the charges of widespread corruption and the tendency on the part of the Government to smooth things over. Suspicions aroused were not fully satisfied because Reinach was dead and Herz and Arton in flight. Cornelius Herz successfully fought extradition from England on the plea of illness. Arton was arrested in 1895 and extradited. His arrest caused a renewal of talk about Panama and the newspaper _la France_ undertook to print the famous list of one hundred and four Deputies. This publication was recognized to be a case of blackmail and its promoters were punished. Arton was also condemned to a term of hard labor, but his trial did not bring out the longed-for revelations.

[15] M. Dupuy, then President of the Chamber, got much credit for his calmness and his remark, as the smoke of the bomb cleared away, "La seance continue."

CHAPTER VII

THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF JEAN CASIMIR-PERIER

June, 1894, to January, 1895

AND OF FeLIX FAURE

January, 1895, to February, 1899

The customary promptness in the choice of a President, so unfamiliar to American campaigns, was observed in the election of Carnot's successor.

The historic name and the social and financial position of the new chief magistrate, Jean Casimir-Perier, seemed to the monarchical sister-nations a guarantee of national stability and dignity. In reality the election brought about a more definite cleavage between rival political tendencies. Casimir-Perier, grandson of Louis-Philippe's great minister, obviously represented the Moderates, most of whom tried in all sincerity to carry out the _esprit nouveau_ and a policy of good-will toward the Catholic Church. The Radicals said that this was playing into the hands of the Clericals, and to the Socialists Casimir-Perier was merely a hated capitalist. He was, moreover, unfortunately unfit for the acrimonies of political life. High-strung and emotional, he writhed under misinterpretation and abuse, and rebelled against the const.i.tutional powerlessness of his office. He had never really wanted the Presidency and had accepted it chiefly through the personal persuasion of his friend the statesman Burdeau, who unfortunately died soon after his election. The brief Presidency of Casimir-Perier, lasting less than a year, was destined to see the beginning of the worst trial the French Republic had yet experienced, the famous Dreyfus case.

The Administration, in which Dupuy remained Prime Minister, began by repressive measures, laws directed against the anarchists and the trial _en ma.s.se_ of thirty defendants ranging from utopian theorists to actual criminals. Most of them were acquitted, but the procedure did not ingratiate the Government with the advanced parties. Toward the end of 1894 the Dreyfus case began to be talked of, an affair which was destined to develop into a tremendous struggle of the leaders of the army and the Church to obtain control of the nation.

In September, 1894, an officer named Henry, of the spy service of the French army, came into possession of a doc.u.ment pieced together from fragments stolen from a waste-paper basket in the German Emba.s.sy. This doc.u.ment, containing a _bordereau_ or memorandum of information largely about the French artillery offered to the German military attache, Schwartzkoppen, was anonymous, but Henry undoubtedly recognized, sooner or later, the handwriting of a friend, Major Esterhazy, a soldier of fortune in the French army, of bad reputation and shady character.

Unable to destroy the doc.u.ment, which had been seen by others, Henry tried to fasten it on somebody else. Indeed, many people believe that Henry was an accomplice of Esterhazy in German pay. By a strange coincidence it happened that the handwriting of the _bordereau_ somewhat resembled that of a brilliant young Jewish officer of the General Staff named Alfred Dreyfus. He belonged to a wealthy Alsatian family, and from antecedent probability would not seem to need to play a traitor's part, but he was intensely unpopular among his fellows because of many disagreeable traits of character. Moreover, anti-Semitism, formerly non-existent in France, was now rife. It had been largely fomented by the anti-Jewish agitator Edouard Drumont, with his book _la France juive_ (1886) and his newspaper the _Libre Parole_ (1892). Prejudice against the Jews as tricky financiers had been prepared and encouraged by the sensational failure of the great bank, the Union generale, a Catholic rival of the Rothschilds, in 1882, and by the Panama scandals with the doings of Jacques de Reinach, Cornelius Herz, and Arton. The _Libre Parole_ had worked against Jewish officers in the army, an activity which culminated in some sensational duels, particularly one between Captain Mayer and the marquis de Mores (1892), in which the Jew was killed.

So, in the present instance, the Minister of War, General Mercier, who had recently committed some much-criticized administrative blunders, and who now wished to show his efficiency, caused the arrest of Dreyfus.

Then, egged on by anti-Semitic newspapers which had got hold of Dreyfus's name, Mercier brought him before a court-martial. The trial was held in secret, and the War Department sent to the officers const.i.tuting the tribunal, without the knowledge of the prisoner or his counsel Maitre Demange, a secret _dossier_, a collection of trumped-up incriminating doc.u.ments. Demange devoted himself to proving that Dreyfus was not the author of the _bordereau_, but the members of the court-martial, believing in the genuineness of the additional doc.u.ments, unhesitatingly convicted him of treason. Consequently, in spite of his protestations of innocence, Dreyfus was publicly degraded on January 5, 1895, and hustled off to solitary confinement on the unhealthy Devil's Isle, off the coast of French Guiana. Meanwhile the whole French people sincerely believed that a vile traitor had been justly condemned and that the secrecy of the case was due to the advisability of avoiding diplomatic complications with Germany. With dramatic unexpectedness, only ten days later (January 15), Casimir-Perier resigned the Presidency.

During the whole Dreyfus affair Casimir-Perier had chafed because his ministers had constantly acted without keeping him informed, particularly when he was called upon by the German Government to acknowledge that it had had nothing to do with Dreyfus. He had lost by death the support of his friend Burdeau; he was discouraged by the campaign of abuse against him, especially the election as Deputy in Paris of Gerault-Richard, one of his most active vilifiers. In particular he felt that his own Cabinet, and above all its leader Dupuy, were false to him. A discussion in the Chamber concerning the duration of the state guarantees to certain of the great railway companies ended in a vote unfavorable to the Cabinet, which resigned, whereupon Casimir-Perier seized the opportunity to go too. The Socialists declared that Dupuy had provoked his own defeat in order to embarra.s.s the President by the difficulty of forming a new Cabinet, and make him resign as well.

Two days later the electoral Congress met at Versailles. The Radicals supported Henri Brisson. The Moderates and the Conservatives were divided between Waldeck-Rousseau and Felix Faure, but Waldeck-Rousseau having thrown his strength on the second ballot to Faure, the latter was elected.

The new President, recently Minister of the Navy, was a well-meaning man, but full of vanity and navely delighted with his own rise in the world from a humble position to that of chief magistrate. The extent to which his judgment was warped by his temperament is shown by the later developments of the Dreyfus case.