France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

He made many changes in army regulations, which increased his popularity with the army. One was all order to the men to wear their beards, and as in the French army soldiers had always been obliged to shave except when on active service, this was interpreted, in the excited state of public feeling, into an intimation of the probability of a speedy declaration of war. As War Minister, the general also extended the time when soldiers on leave might stay out at night, and relieved them from much of the heavy weight that on the march they had had to carry. He broke up certain semi-aristocratic clubs in the regiments which controlled army opinion, and gave more weight to the sentiments of the sub-officers.

But before long the Ministry, in which he represented the War Department, came to an end,—as, indeed, appears to have been the fate of all the ministries under the administration of M. Grévy. No policy, no reforms, could be carried out under such frequent changes. The popular cry was that the popular favorite must retain his portfolio as War Minister in the new Cabinet; and this occasioned considerable difficulty. The general had begun to be feared as a possible dictator. His popularity was immense; but what his place might be in politics no one could precisely tell. That he was the idol of the nation was certain; but was he a Radical of the Belleville type, or a forthcoming Napoleon Bonaparte,—an Imperialist on his own account, or a Jacobin?

The fall of the second Ministry in which he served put him out of office, and the War Minister who succeeded him proceeded to bid for popularity by fresh reforms, which the Radical Deputies thought might be acceptable to the people. Those who deal with the French peasant should never lose sight of the fact that the peace and prosperity of himself and of his household stand foremost in his eyes. The Frenchman, as we depict him in imagination or in fiction, is as far as possible from the French peasant. If ideas contrary to his selfish interests ever make their way into his mind, they are due to the leaven of old French soldiers scattered through the villages. So when the new Minister of War proposed, and the Chamber of Deputies passed, an ordinance that made it illegal to buy a substitute, and required every Frenchman, from eighteen to twenty-one years of age, to serve in the army, the peasant found small consolation for the loss of his sons' services in the thought that the son of a duke must serve as well as the son of a laborer. Boulanger had introduced no such measure. "Vive le Général Boulanger!"

Another measure, passed about the same time, brought great trouble into families. It was a law making education compulsory, and was loaded with vexatious and arbitrary regulations. Every child privately educated had to pass, semi-annually, a strict examination before certain village authorities. This gave rise in families to all sorts of tribulations. France is not exactly a land of liberty; personal liberty is sacrificed to efforts to enforce equality.

General Boulanger after his loss of office was given the command of the Thirteenth Army Corps, and was sent into a sort of exile at its headquarters at Clermont-Ferrand. At the railroad-station in Paris a great crowd awaited him on the day of his departure. It broke down the barriers, and delayed in-coming and out-going trains, as it pressed around him. At first the general seemed pleased by this evidence of his popularity; then he began to feel the truth of what a friend whispered to him, "These twenty thousand men will make you forty thousand enemies," and he grew embarrassed and annoyed by the demonstration. Finally he mounted a locomotive, and made a brief speech to the people; then the train steamed out of the station.

The exile of the general to Clermont-Ferrand, and the harsh measures taken against him by the man who succeeded him in the War Office, caused his popularity with the populace daily to increase. He was felt to be a power in the State, and this, when he perceived it, awakened his ambition.

In November, 1887, when all parties in France were anticipating the resignation of M. Grévy after the exposure of his son-in-law, the majority of Frenchmen, outside the Chamber of Deputies, dreaded the election of M. Jules Ferry to his place, and prophesied that it would be the signal for another civil war. This was the opinion held (rightly or wrongly) by M. Grévy himself, by General Boulanger, and by the Comte de Paris. By the last day of November, when it seemed impossible for M. Grévy to retain office, because no leader of influence in the Chamber would help him to form a ministry, Boulanger, who had come up to Paris, met a small party of his friends, including M. Clemenceau, leader of the Radical party, and Rochefort, the leader of the Radical press, at dinner at the house of M. and Madame Laguerre.[1] M. Laguerre was a deputy who supported Boulanger in the Chamber against his enemies. Two gentlemen present had that afternoon seen M. Grévy, who had implored them to find some leader who would form a ministry; already had M. Clemenceau been thought of, but he was undecided. It was evident that if he would secure the out-of-doors support of Boulanger's popularity, his ministry must include Boulanger. It seemed equally certain that if it did so, it would be beset by enemies in the Chamber. In the midst of a heated discussion on the subject, General Boulanger about midnight was mysteriously called away.

[Footnote 1: See "Les Coulisses du Boulangisme," published in "Figaro," and attributed to M. Mermieux.]

The person who summoned him was the editor of the "Cocarde," the Boulangist newspaper, who had been sounded that afternoon by an agent of the Comte de Paris to know if it were probable that Boulanger would join the Monarchists to defeat the chances of Jules Ferry. The party of the Comte de Paris had recently gathered strength both by the death of the Comte de Chambord and that of the Prince Imperial. But it was also divided. There were those who called themselves of the old school, who held to the high-minded traditions which had caused M. Thiers to say to one of them in 1871, "You are of all parties the most honest,—I do not say the most intelligent, but the most honest;" and the men of the new school,—men of the close of the century, as they called themselves,—who thought all means good that led to a good end, and were for energetic action. To this party belonged the Comtesse de Paris, daughter of the Duc de Montpensier and of the Infanta Luisa of Spain. She had been known to say emphatically: "I don't like people who are always going to do something to-morrow,—like the Comte de Chambord; such princes die in exile."

The Duc d'Aumale, on the contrary, despised crooked ways; and the hope of an intrigue or alliance with General Boulanger was not named to him by his nephew, especially as there was good reason to think he would never have consented to make a useful instrument of the man who had so ill-treated him when Minister of War.