A History of the Third French Republic

by C. H. C. Wright

THE ADMINISTRATION OF EMILE LOUBET

February, 1899, to February, 1906

The successor of Félix Faure, Emile Loubet, was elected on February 18, 1899, by a good majority over Jules Méline, the candidate of the larger number of the Moderates or "Progressists" and of the Conservatives. Loubet was himself a man of Moderate views, but he was thought to favor a revision of the Dreyfus case. Among the charges of his enemies was that, as Minister of the Interior in 1892, he had held, but had kept secret, the famous list of the "Hundred and Four" and had prevented the seizure of the papers of Baron de Reinach and the arrest of Arton. So Loubet's return to Paris from Versailles was amid hostile cries of "Loubet-Panama" and "Vive l'armée!"

On February 23, after the state funeral of President Faure, a detachment of troops led by General Roget was returning to its barracks in an outlying quarter of Paris. Suddenly the Nationalist and quondam Boulangist Paul Déroulède, now chief of the Ligue des Patriotes and vigorous opponent of parliamentary government, though a Deputy himself, rushed to General Roget, and, grasping the bridle of his horse, tried to persuade him to lead his troops to the Elysée, the presidential residence, and overthrow the Government. Déroulède had expected to encounter General de Pellieux, a more amenable leader, and one of the noisy generals at the Zola trial. General Roget, who had been substituted at the last moment, refused to accede and caused the arrest of Déroulède, with his fellow Deputy and conspirator Marcel Habert.

Meanwhile the Dreyfus case had been taken out of the hands of the Criminal Chamber and given to the whole Court. To the dismay of the anti-Dreyfusites the Court, as a body, annulled, on June 3, the verdict of the court-martial of 1894, and decided that Dreyfus should appear before a second military court at Rennes for another trial.

Thus party antagonisms were becoming more and more acute. In addition Dupuy, the head of the Cabinet, seemed to be spiting the new President. On the day after the verdict of the Cour de Cassation, at the Auteuil races, President Loubet was roughly jostled by a band of fashionable young Royalists and struck with a cane by Baron de Christiani. A week later, at the Grand Prize races at Longchamps, on June 11, Dupuy, as though to atone for his previous carelessness, brought out a large array of troops, so obviously over-numerous as to cause new disturbances among the crowd desirous of manifesting its sympathy with the chief magistrate. More arrests were made and, at the meeting of the Chamber of Deputies the next day, the Cabinet was overthrown by an adverse vote.

RENÉ WALDECK-ROUSSEAU

The ministerial crisis brought about by the fall of Dupuy was as important as any under the Third Republic because of its consequences in the redistribution of parties. For about ten days President Loubet was unable to find a leader who could in turn form a cabinet. At last public opinion was astounded by the masterly combination made by Waldeck-Rousseau, Gambetta's former lieutenant, who of recent years had kept somewhat aloof from active participation in politics. He brought together a ministry of "défense républicaine," which its opponents, however, called a cabinet for the "liquidation" of the Dreyfus case. The old policy of "Republican concentration" of Opportunists and Radicals was given up in favor of a mass formation of the various advanced groups of the Left, including the Socialists.

Waldeck-Rousseau was a Moderate Republican, whose legal practice of recent years had been mainly that of a corporation lawyer, but he was a cool-headed Opportunist. He realized the ill-success of the policy of the "esprit nouveau," and saw the necessity of making advances to the Socialists, who more and more held the balance of power. He succeeded in uniting in his Cabinet Moderates like himself, Radicals, and, for the first time in French parliamentary history, an out-and-out Socialist, Alexandre Millerand, author of the famous "Programme of Saint-Mandé" of 1896, or declaration of faith of Socialism. Still more astounding was the presence as Minister of War, in the same Cabinet with Millerand, of General de Galliffet, a bluff, outspoken, and dashing aristocratic officer, a favorite with the whole army, but fiercely hated by the proletariat because of his part in the repression of the Commune.

The first days of the new Cabinet were stormy and its outlook was dubious. The task of reconciling such divergent elements, even against a common foe, seemed an impossibility, until at last the Radicals under Brisson swung into line. Such was the beginning of a Republican grouping which later, during the anti-Clerical campaign, was known as le Bloc, the united band of Republicans.

The Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry took up the Dreyfus case with a queer combination of courage and weakness. Insubordinate army officers were summarily punished for injudicious remarks, but in order to appear neutral and to avoid criticism, the Cabinet held so much aloof that the anti-Dreyfusites were able to bring their full forces to bear on the court-martial. For a month at Rennes, beginning August 7, an extraordinary trial was carried on before the eyes of an impassioned France and angry onlooking nations. Witnesses had full latitude to indulge in rhetorical addresses and air their prejudices; military officers like Roget, who had had nothing to do with the original trial, were allowed to take up the time of the court. Galliffet, though convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus, was unwilling to exert as much pressure as his colleagues in the Cabinet desired. It soon became evident that, regardless of the question involved, the issue was one between an insignificant Jewish officer on the one hand and General Mercier, ex-Minister of War, on the other. The judges were army officers full of caste-feeling and timorous of offending their superiors. Thus, on September 9, Dreyfus was a second time convicted, though with extenuating circumstances, by a vote of 5 to 2, and condemned to ten years' detention. This verdict was a travesty of justice, and a punishment fitting no crime of Dreyfus, since he was either innocent or guilty of treason beyond extenuation. The Ministry, perhaps regretting too late its excessive inertia, immediately caused the President to pardon Dreyfus, partly on the ostensible grounds that Dreyfus by his previous harsher condemnation had already purged his new one. This act of clemency was, however, not a legal clearing of the victim's honor, which was achieved only some years later.

During the turmoil of the Dreyfus affair the Cabinet was, it seemed to many, unduly anxious over certain conspirators against the Republic. The symptoms of insubordination in high ranks in the army, linked with the Clerical manœuvres, had encouraged the other foes of the Republic (spurred on by the Royalists), whether sincere opponents of the parliamentary régime like Paul Déroulède, or venal agitators such as the anti-Semitic Jules Guérin. But, certainly, above all objectionable were the proceedings of the Assumptionists, a religious order which had amassed enormous wealth, and which, by the various local editions of its paper la Croix, had organized a campaign of venomous slander and abuse of the Republic and its leaders.

The Government, having got wind of a project of the conspirators to seize the reins of power during the Rennes court-martial, anticipated the act by wholesale arrests on August 12. Jules Guérin barricaded himself with some friends in a house in the rue de Chabrol in Paris, and defied the Government to arrest him without perpetrating murder. The grotesque incident of the "Fort Chabrol" came to an end after thirty-seven days when the authorities had surrounded the house with troops to starve Guérin out and stopped the drains.

In November a motley array of conspirators, ranging from André Buffet, representative of the pretender the Duke of Orléans, to butchers from the slaughter-houses of La Villette, were brought to trial before the Senate acting as a High Court of Justice, on the charge of conspiracy against the State. After a long trial lasting nearly two months, during which the prisoners outdid each other in declamatory insults to their enemies, the majority were acquitted. Paul Déroulède and André Buffet were condemned to banishment for ten years and Jules Guérin to imprisonment for the same term. Two others, Marcel Habert and the comte de Lur-Saluces, who had taken flight, gave themselves up later and were condemned in 1900 and 1901, respectively, amid a public indifference which was far from their liking.

Thus the year 1899 had proved itself one of the most dramatically eventful in the history of the Republic. It was also to be one of the most significant in its consequences. For the new grouping of mutually jealous factions against a common danger had, in spite of the fiasco of the second Dreyfus case, shown a way to victory. And exasperation against the intrigues of the Clericals and the army officers was going to turn the former toleration of the "esprit nouveau" into active persecution, especially as the Socialists and Radicals formed the majority of the new combination.

In November, 1899, Waldeck-Rousseau laid before Parliament an Associations bill to regulate the organization of societies, which was intended indirectly to control religious bodies. The leniency of the Government hitherto and the commercial energy of many religious orders, manufacturers of articles varying from chartreuse to hair-restorers and dentifrice, had enabled them to amass enormous sums held in mortmain. The power of this money was great in politics and the anti-Clericals cast envious eyes on these vague and mysterious fortunes. There were in France at the time almost seven hundred unauthorized "congregations." Against the Assumptionists in particular the Government took direct measures early in 1900, such as legal perquisitions, arrests, and prosecution as an illegal association.

The campaign went on through the year 1900, the Exposition of that year helping to act as a partial truce. The expedition of the Allies to China to put down the Boxer rebellion also diverted attention. Waldeck-Rousseau was sincerely desirous of bringing about a pacification of feeling in the country, and he felt bitter practically only against the Jesuits and the Assumptionists. He even succeeded in carrying through Parliament an amnesty bill dealing with the Dreyfus case and destined to quash all criminal actions in process, whether of Dreyfusites or anti-Dreyfusites. The former fought the project vigorously on the ground that it opposed a new obstacle to ultimate discovery of the truth, but they were unsuccessful. Waldeck-Rousseau remained at heart, none the less, a believer in Dreyfus's innocence and in spite of his amnesty project, he could not always hide his true feelings. In consequence he offended his Minister of War, General de Galliffet, Dreyfusite as well, but tired of the struggle now that the Rennes trial had made the task of rehabilitation apparently hopeless. Galliffet resigned his office and was succeeded by General André, a politician soldier, who started out at once to purge the army drastically of its Clericalism.

Waldeck-Rousseau's Associations project was fairly mild. He had no desire for a violent break with the Vatican, and the wily and diplomatic Leo XIII probably so understood well enough in spite of his protests. But, as debate and discussion went on, the measure became more severe. Waldeck-Rousseau had originally planned a bill dealing with authorization and incorporation of associations in general, in which he refrained from any specific allusion to religious bodies of monks and nuns, thereby assimilating them with other groups. As finally voted and promulgated in July, 1901, the law made provisions for the privilege of association in general, but made the important additional stipulations that no religious order or "congregation" could be formed without specific authorization by law, that a religious order could be dissolved by ministerial decree, and that no one belonging to an unauthorized order could direct personally, or by proxy, an educational establishment, or even teach in one. Thus the enemies of the lay Republic who, under cover of the "esprit nouveau," and by years of manipulation of the feeding sources of army and navy officers, had hoped to grasp power, and had made a supreme effort at the time of the Dreyfus agitation, now saw themselves thwarted, and faced the prospect of severer treatment.

Matters had progressed even further than Waldeck-Rousseau himself perhaps desired. In the spring of 1902, new legislative elections took place for the renewal of the Chamber of Deputies. The policy of the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry was endorsed by a sound majority, and yet at this moment of triumph, after the longest rule as Prime Minister of any hitherto in the history of the Republic, Waldeck-Rousseau resigned his post without an adverse vote. Undoubtedly the state of his personal health was partly responsible for his departure from office and he was destined not to live beyond 1904. The last important events of his administration were a visit of the Czar to France and a return visit of President Loubet to Russia.

Waldeck-Rousseau's successor as Prime Minister was Emile Combes, a strong foe of the Church. Combes had himself been a former theological student and had, in his youth, written a thesis on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. He now had all the vindictiveness of one who burns what he formerly worshipped. Encouraged by the recent elections, he turned more and more against the Vatican and impelled by the more violent members of the Bloc, he drifted toward the rupture which his predecessor had tried to avoid. A committee of the different groups supporting the Cabinet, called the "délégation des gauches," had in time been instituted to formulate policies with the Prime Minister, who often had to obey it instead of guiding. Waldeck-Rousseau had intended not to apply his law retroactively. He had planned to spare educational establishments already in existence before July, 1901, when his measure went into operation, and had winked at lack of compliance on the part of many others. Combes applied the letter of the law ruthlessly. Amid public protestations and disturbances he closed a large number of these unauthorized schools; firstly, those which had actually been opened without permission since the promulgation of the law, then the many schools which were older than the law. In so doing he was called a persecutor, because the directors of the schools declared that they had allowed the time limit of application for authorization to go by, only through the understanding with the previous Administration that they were not to be interfered with. Now they could not help themselves.

Emboldened by success Combes next took up the applications of the congregations which had duly followed the law and were seeking authorization. By decree, as was his right, he first promptly closed unlicensed schools of recognized orders. Then came the applications of orders seeking authorization. Legal procedure demanded laws to reject as well as laws to accept applications. A recommendation favored by the Government but rejected by the Chamber of Deputies would not go before the Senate. On the other hand, an unfavorable opinion of the Government ratified by the House would still have to go before the Senate. A way would thus be open for prolonged chicanery.

Combes cut matters short. He lumped fifty-four individual applications into three batches, teaching orders, preaching orders, and the commercial order of the Chartreux, manufacturers of the liqueur called "chartreuse." Then, presenting these batches of applications collectively instead of individually to the Chamber, he caused their rejection and proceeded to dissolve the orders and close their fifteen hundred establishments. Through the spring of 1903 there were turbulent scenes in consequence in various parts of France, the monks trying sometimes passive resistance, sometimes actual violence. In the reactionary districts the population attempted to stir up riots. Occasionally, even, a military officer whose duty it was to evict the monks refused to obey orders. But, nothing daunted, Combes went on, with the support of the Chambers, to reject a large mass of applications from teaching orders of women. Even Waldeck-Rousseau was led in time publicly to declare that he had never contemplated the transformation of his Associations law of 1901 from a measure of regulation to one of exclusion, nor the assumption by the State of expensive educational charges hitherto carried on by religious orders. At last the law of July, 1904, put a complete end to all kinds of instruction by religious bodies, thereby insuring, after a lapse of time for liquidation, the disappearance of all teaching orders.

These measures against the religious groups were, in spite of outcries of persecution, after all matters of internal administration. But, meanwhile, causes for direct dissension with the Vatican had arisen over questions involving the Concordat regulating the relations of Church and State.

The first dispute was about the method of appointing bishops. The Concordat gave to the Government the right of appointing bishops, subject to the papal ratification of the appointee's moral and theological qualifications. During the Third Republic the habit had grown up of mutual consultation before appointments were made, a practice which led the Vatican to assume that its initial influence was as great as that of the Government, and finally to make use of the formula nobis nominavit, or nominaverit, as though the Government merely proposed a candidate subject to the Vatican's free right to accept or to reject. The keen-scented Combes took an early opportunity to raise this issue by making certain appointments to bishoprics without previously consulting the Vatican. In the midst of the discussions Leo XIII died in July, 1903, and was succeeded by Pius X, whose character was utterly different from that of his predecessor. His primitive faith saw in France the home of heretics like the Modernist, the Abbé Loisy; and his Secretary of State, the ultramontane Cardinal Merry del Val, was as hostile to France, as his predecessor Cardinal Rampolla had, on the whole, been well disposed to the "eldest daughter of the Church." Between Merry del Val and Combes no agreement was possible. So matters went from bad to worse.

In the autumn of 1903 the King of Italy made a visit to France, and in 1904 it was deemed advisable to have President Loubet return this visit to emphasize the new cordiality between France and Italy, the settlement of long-standing difficulties, and to cultivate as much as possible one member of the Triple Alliance. The Pope protested violently against this visit to his enemy in Rome and made it clear that he would refuse to see Loubet. The diplomatic crisis became acute and the French Ambassador to the Vatican was recalled.

Soon came a complete rupture over the treatment by the pontifical authorities of two French bishops, Geay of Laval and Le Nordez of Dijon. They had shown themselves loyal Republicans and had become the object of attack in their own dioceses until personal scandals were imagined or raked up against them. Combes took the part of the bishops and, to punish the Vatican for interfering with the French prelates, definitely broke off diplomatic relations in July, 1904, withdrawing even the chargé d'affaires who had been left after the departure of the ambassador.

For some time, plans for the separation of Church and State had been under discussion in a somewhat academic way by a committee or Commission of the Chamber, under the general guidance of Ferdinand Buisson and Aristide Briand. The latter had even drawn up a preliminary project. But Combes, in spite of his vehemence in words against the Church, hesitated to involve the Ministry. He knew that the country at large was fully satisfied with the maintenance of the Concordat and that some of his own colleagues in the Cabinet, as well as Loubet, preferred not to disturb it.

Suddenly a great scandal broke out. The enemies of the Ministry got hold of the fact that General André, through some of his subordinates in the War Office, was carrying on a regular system of espionage upon army officers suspected of luke-warm republicanism or of Clerical sympathies, and was using as spies members of Masonic lodges or even subordinate Masonic army officers throughout France.[16] These spies had filed innumerable notes or memoranda known as fiches, containing information, rumor, or scandal concerning the persons involved, their families and intimacies. The discovery that leading members of the Cabinet had been countenancing methods as reprehensible as those of the worst of their opponents, caused an uproar. The Cabinet seemed on the point of being overthrown when one of its enemies did it a great service. A wild and blatant anti-Ministerialist named Syveton rushed up to the Minister of War and struck him two blows in the face during a meeting of the Chamber. The effect of this deed was to cause a temporary reaction in favor of the Ministry, but also to draw Combes more to the Radicals, and he promptly brought forward his own governmental separation plan, which was considerably at variance with the Briand project. The respite was, however, only momentary, and, after sacrificing General André, Combes gave up the struggle and resigned in January, 1905, without being actually put in the minority.

It cannot be denied that there was a considerable deterioration in government during the régime of Combes. In attempting to thwart the Clerical Party he let himself lapse into methods as objectionable as theirs. His anti-clericalism breathed the spirit of persecution, as much as did the intrigues of the clergy during the early days of the Republic. He transformed Waldeck-Rousseau's plans for the regulation of religious orders into a measure of proscription. He countenanced underhanded intrigues, and allowed his Minister of War to undermine army discipline by his methods of political espionage almost as much as it had been undermined in the days of the supremacy of the Clericals. The concessions of the Ministers of War and of Marine to the Socialists and pacifists considerably weakened the efficiency of both army and navy. Combes's administration was pre-eminently one of self-seeking politicians.

Yet, on the other hand, certain very praiseworthy achievements may be registered to its credit. One of these was the act of General André, in 1903, instituting a new private investigation of the Dreyfus case. It resulted in the discovery of material sufficient to justify a new demand for revision, which the Cour de Cassation admitted in March, 1904. Another achievement was the rapprochement with England known as the Entente cordiale or friendly understanding, which following the new amity with Italy greatly strengthened France face-to-face with Germany. The Russian alliance had given France one definite European ally, and the cordiality with Italy, a member of the Triple Alliance, cleared the situation in the Mediterranean and on the frontier of the Alps. The Entente cordiale was engineered by Edward VII as a result of his visit to Paris in 1903. The accord of April, 1904, was really due to English as well as French fear of German aggression. It liquidated all the old contentions between England and France, one of which, the French Shore Dispute over Newfoundland fishing rights, dated back to the Treaty of Utrecht in the early eighteenth century. But, above all, France definitely gave up her Egyptian claims in return for freedom of action in Morocco guaranteed by England. For France was anxious to add Morocco to her African sphere of influence. A secret arrangement with Spain gave that country reversionary claims to certain parts of Morocco. By the agreement with England the bad blood caused by the Fashoda incident was wiped away, a new intimacy sprang up between "Perfidious Albion" and "Froggy," and through the natural drawing together of England and France's ally Russia, the Triple Entente came into being some years later, which was destined to face Germany and Austria in the Great European War.

Combes's successor as Prime Minister was a member of his own Cabinet, Maurice Rouvier. More moderate in views than Combes, he would have been content to let the Separation bill rest, but the Radicals were in the saddle and he let things take their course. The discussions over the project went on through most of the year 1905, under the guidance of the Minister of Worship, Bienvenu-Martin, and particularly of Aristide Briand, the rapporteur or spokesman for the Commission in the Chamber. The bill, again and again modified in a spirit of conciliation and leniency under the guidance of Briand, finally resulted, as promulgated on December 9, in a sincere effort for a compromise between different views on religion. It showed a desire, since Church and State were to be divorced, to treat the former fairly. Provision was made, when the budget for religious purposes should be suppressed, for the legal inventory of ecclesiastical property, the pension of superannuated clergy, and the formation of legal corporations to insure public worship (associations cultuelles). It must be remembered that the new measure applied quite as much to the Protestants and to the Jews as to the Catholics. Before the separation the Protestant pastors and the Jewish rabbis were maintained by the State no less than the Catholic clergy. Their numerical insignificance made them of little importance in the general combat over the Clerical question. Nor could they fairly be accused of intrigue against the Republic.

The year 1905 is noteworthy for two other important events. One was the reduction of the term of compulsory military service from three to two years. This measure was carried through largely under the auspices of General André and proved an over-dangerous concession to the anti-militarists and pacifists, since it was destined so soon to be repealed. The other was the sensational diplomatic dispute with Germany over Morocco, which resulted at first for France in a worse humiliation than Fashoda.

Germany under Bismarck had encouraged the numerous French colonial schemes, as a way of keeping her busy abroad and of diverting her thoughts from Alsace-Lorraine. But as the Empire began to develop its Pan-Germanism and its aspirations to world-power under William II, it grew jealous of England and France and of their arrangement of 1904 to settle the interests of Morocco. Forthwith Germany began to intrigue with the Sultan of Morocco against the French, and declared that, as it had not been officially informed of the agreements between England, France, and Spain, it intended to disregard them. The defeat of Russia by Japan, in particular, encouraged Germany to feel that France, deprived of its ally, could be bullied with impunity. On March 31, Emperor William landed at Tangier and proclaimed that his visit was to the Sultan as an "independent sovereign." Germany also called for the convocation of an international meeting to regulate the Moroccan question. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Delcassé, objected to the thwarting of his plans, but because of the deterioration of the army and navy and the lack of hoped-for Russian support, Rouvier was obliged under German threats to drop him from his Cabinet and to agree to the convocation of the Conference of Algeciras.[17]