A History of the Third French Republic

by C. H. C. Wright

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.