The extremists had in time another grievance against Jules Ferry in his opposition to a radical revision of the constitution. The enemies of the Republic still feigned to believe, especially when the death of the comte de Chambord in 1883 had fused the Legitimists and Orléanists, that an integral revision would pave the way for a monarchical restoration. The Radicals demanded the suppression of the power of the Senate, whose consent was necessary to summon a constitutional convention. A Congress was summoned in 1884 at which the very limited programme of the Ministry was put through. The changes merely eliminated from the constitution the prescriptions for senatorial elections. After this, by an ordinary statute, life-senatorships were abolished for the future, and some changes were made in the choice of senatorial electors.
Jules Ferry was what would to-day be called an imperialist. In this he may have been unwise, for the French, though intrepid explorers, do not care to settle permanently far from the motherland. The north coast of Africa might have been a sufficient field for enterprise. But Jules Ferry thought that the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, formed in 1882, was going to isolate France permanently in Europe. So she was to regain her prestige by territorial annexations in the Sudan, the Congo, Madagascar, Annam, and Tonkin.
The French had some nominal rights on Tonkin since 1874, and disturbances there had caused a revival of activities. When the French officer Rivière was killed in an ambuscade in May, 1883, Jules Ferry sent heavy reinforcements and forced the King of Annam to acknowledge a French protectorate. This stirred up the Chinese, who also claimed Annam, and who caused the invasion of Tonkin by guerillas supported by their own troops. After various operations in Tonkin the Treaty of Tien-tsin was signed with China in May, 1884, by which China made the concessions called for by the French. Within a month Chinese troops ambuscaded a French column at Bac-Le and the Government decided on a punitive expedition. Thus France was engaged in troublesome warfare with China, without direct parliamentary authorization. The bombardment of Foo-chow, the attack on the island of Formosa, and the blockade of the coast dragged along unsatisfactorily through 1884 and 1885.
While Jules Ferry in the spring of 1885 was actually negotiating a final peace with China on terms satisfactory to the French, the cession of Annam and Tonkin with a commercial treaty, and while he was categorically affirming in the Chamber of Deputies the success of military operations in Tonkin, a sudden dispatch from the East threw everything into a turmoil. General Brière de l'Isle telegraphed from Tonkin that the French had been disastrously defeated at Lang-son and General de Négrier severely wounded. The news proved to be a grievous exaggeration which was contradicted by a later dispatch some hours after, but the damage was done. On March 30, in the Chamber of Deputies, Jules Ferry was insulted and abused by the leaders of a coalition of anti-Republicans and Radicals. The "Tonkinois," as his vilifiers called him, disgusted and discouraged, made little attempt to defend himself, and his Cabinet fell by a vote of 306 to 149. On April 4, the preliminaries of a victorious treaty of peace were signed with China.
The fall of Jules Ferry was a severe blow to efficient government. It marked the end, for a long time, of any effort to construct satisfactory united Cabinets led by a strong man. It set a precedent for innumerable short-lived Ministries built on the treacherous sands of shifting groups. It paved the way for a deterioration in parliamentary management. It accentuated the bitter hatred now existing between the Union des gauches, as the united Gambetta and Ferry Opportunist groups called themselves, on the one hand, and the Radicals and the Extreme Left on the other. The Radicals, in particular, were influential, and one of their more moderate members, Henri Brisson, became the head of the next Cabinet. Brisson's name testified to an advance toward radicalism, but the Cabinet contained all sorts of moderate and nondescript elements, dubbed a "concentration" Cabinet. Its chief function was to tide over the elections of 1885, for a new Chamber of Deputies. In anticipation of this election Gambetta's long-desired scrutin de liste had been rather unexpectedly voted.
The workings of the new method of voting were less satisfactory than had been anticipated. Republican dissensions and a greater union of the opposition caused a tremendous reactionary landslide on the first ballot. This was greatly reduced on the second ballot, so that the Republicans emerged with a large though diminished majority. But the old Left Centre had practically disappeared and the Radicals were vastly more numerous. The great divisions were now the Right, the moderate Union des gauches, the Radicals, and the revolutionary Extreme Left. The Brisson Cabinet was blamed for not "working" the elections more successfully and it resigned at the time of President Grévy's re-election. He had reached the end of his seven years' term and was chosen again on December 28, 1885. He was to have troublesome experiences during the short time he remained in the Presidency.
The Freycinet, Goblet, and Rouvier Cabinets, which fill the rest of Grévy's Presidency, were largely engrossed with a new danger in the person of General Boulanger. He first appeared in a prominent position as Minister of War in the Freycinet Cabinet. A young, brilliant, and popular though unprincipled officer, he soon devoted himself to demagogy and put himself at the head of the jingoes who called Ferry the slave of Bismarck. The expeditions of Tunis and Tonkin had, moreover, thrown a glamour over the flag and the army.
Boulanger began at once to play politics and catered to the advanced parties, who adopted him as their own. He backed up the spectacular expulsion of the princes, which, as an answer to the monarchical progress, drove from France the heads of formerly reigning families and their direct heirs in line of primogeniture, and carried out their radiation from the army. The populace cheered the gallant general on his black horse, and when Bismarck complained that he was a menace to the peace of Europe Boulanger's fortune seemed made. At a certain moment France and Germany were on the brink of war in the so-called Schnaebele affair.[13] So, when Boulanger was left out of the Rouvier Cabinet combination in May, 1887, as dangerous, he played more than ever to the gallery as the persecuted saviour of France and, on being sent to take command of an army corps in the provinces at Clermont-Ferrand, he was escorted to the train by thousands of enthusiastic manifestants.
Meanwhile, President Grévy was nearing a disaster. In October, 1887, General Caffarel, an important member of the General Staff, was arrested for participating in the sale of decorations. When Boulanger declared that the arrest of Caffarel was an indirect assault on himself, originally responsible for Caffarel's appointment to the General Staff, the affair got greater notoriety. The scandal assumed national proportions when it was found to involve the President's own son-in-law Daniel Wilson, well known to be a shady and tricky politician, who had the octogenarian President under his thumb. The matter reached the scale of a Cabinet crisis, since it was by an overthrow of the Ministry that the President could best be reached. Unfortunately, Grévy could not see that the most dignified thing for him to do was to resign, even though he was in no way involved in Wilson's misdemeanors. For days he tried to persuade prominent men to form a Cabinet; he tried to argue his right and duty to remain. But finally the Chamber and Senate brought actual pressure upon him by voting to adjourn to specific hours in the expectation of a presidential communication. He bowed to the inevitable and retired from the Presidency with the reputation of a discredited old miser, instead of the great statesman he had appeared on beginning his term of office.