Paris, May 20, 1887.
Freycinet appears to have agreed with Grévy to try and form a Cabinet and to be hard at work at the task. Of course the question is whether Boulanger is or is not to be in the new Cabinet? It was believed this morning that Grévy and Freycinet had decided upon offering to keep him as Minister of War. As the day has gone on, however, the belief has gained ground that Freycinet has not found colleagues willing to run the risk of war which the maintenance of Boulanger would produce, and that he is to propose to Grévy a Cabinet from which Boulanger is to be excluded. He is, however, to make it an essential condition with Grévy that he is to have the power to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies in his hands, as without this power he does not feel able to form a Cabinet without Boulanger, or indeed any Cabinet at all. In the mean time the Reds are getting up in all directions addresses and petitions in favour of Boulanger, with a view to forcing Grévy's and Freycinet's hands and working on their fears. If Boulanger is got rid of, the immediate danger of war will probably be escaped for the moment. Boulanger's own character, and the position in which he has placed himself, make him threatening to peace; and the opinion held of him in Germany and the irritation felt against him there make him still more dangerous.
Lord Lyons to Lord Salisbury.
Paris, May 24, 1887.
The last news is supposed to be that Floquet, the President of the Chamber, has undertaken the task of forming a Ministry, and that he will keep many of the outgoing Ministers, Boulanger included. The goings and comings at the Elysée; the singular selections of men to be Prime Ministers, or quasi Prime Ministers, and the apparent want of firmness and inability to exercise any influence on the part of the President of the Republic, have certainly not increased the reputation of M. Grévy. Floquet will, I suppose, be unacceptable to Russia, for the Russians have always ostentatiously kept up the show of resentment against him for the cry, offensive to the Emperor Alexander II., which he raised when that monarch visited the Palais de Justice during the Exhibition of 1867. Boulanger has lately declared that he does not want to continue to be Minister, but that if he is Minister, he will, whatever Germany may say, continue his mobilization scheme, and not relax in his preparations to resist an attack from Germany, and to avert the necessity of submitting to humiliation.
I think, in fact, that things look very bad for France both at home and abroad. I can only hope that as the phases of the Ministerial crisis change from hour to hour, you may receive by telegraph some more satisfactory news before you get this letter.
In course of time a new Ministry was formed under M. Rouvier, and the important fact attaching to it was that Boulanger had been got rid of. Otherwise there was nothing much to distinguish the new Ministers from the old, and they seemed disposed to angle for popularity in the country much in the same way as Freycinet and Goblet.
The object of removing Boulanger had been to reassure and placate Germany, but no sooner had this been done, than the Government appeared to feel alarmed at the danger of incurring unpopularity in the country, and hastily announced that the new Minister of War would continue to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor.
Again, it had been understood that one of the objects of the new Government would be to put an end to the isolation of France by placing itself on more cordial terms with the neighbouring nations and especially with England; but what it appeared anxious to profess, was the intention of stoutly refusing to accept or even acquiesce in the Anglo-Turkish Convention respecting Egypt. All this, as Lord Lyons observed, might proceed in great measure from ignorance and inexperience, and might be mitigated by the knowledge of affairs and sense of responsibility which accompany office, but still it was disquieting: all the more disquieting, because the French Foreign Minister never failed to intimate that France would never be a party to an arrangement which would confer upon England an international right to re-occupy Egypt under certain circumstances after evacuation, whilst France was to be formally excluded from enjoying an equal right.