Boulanger, beyond looking well on his black horse, had but little to recommend him as a possible destroyer of the Republic. Still, he was a general, a position which has always possessed great prestige in the eyes of a certain section of French society. He was not shrewd enough to observe where his so-called friends were trying to lead him. As a consequence he allowed himself to be carried away by the tide that at last threw him against the rocks of Jersey, where his political career ended even before his life came to a sudden close in the little churchyard of Uxelles, near Brussels.
There is no denying that Boulangism was engineered by the Royalist party on the one side, and by some enterprising journalists on the other. Either of these two circumstances would have been enough in itself ultimately to wreck the cause, but at the beginning it appeared in the light of a movement which appealed so well to the sympathies and to the feelings of the whole nation that it seemed even more formidable from a distance than when in its midst.
Everything conspired to transform it into a vast conspiracy. When, after the fall of the Goblet ministry, in which he held the portfolio of the War Office, Boulanger found himself obliged to retire from political life, and was transferred to the command of an army corps at Clermont Ferrand, he could not reconcile himself to his exile, but used to come back
Photo: Gerschel, Paris.
CAPTAIN DREYFUS
Photo: Petit, Paris.