Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "France" to "Francis Joseph I." / Volume 10, Slice 8

by Various

Some of the Republicans whose votes turned out M. de Freycinet wanted Jules Ferry to take his place, as he was considered to be a strong man in foreign policy, and Gambetta, for this reason, was willing to see his personal enemy at the head of public affairs. But this was prevented by M. Clémenceau and the extreme Left, and the new ministry was formed by M. Duclerc, an old senator whose previous official experience had been under the Second Republic. On its taking office on the 7th of August, the ministerial declaration announced that its policy would be in conformity with the vote which, by refusing supplies for the occupation of the Suez Canal, had overthrown M. de Freycinet. The declaration characterized this vote as “a measure of reserve and of prudence but not as an abdication.” Nevertheless the action of the Chamber—which was due to the hostility to Gambetta of rival leaders, who had little mutual affection, including MM. de Freycinet, Jules Ferry, Clémenceau and the president of the Republic, M. Grévy, rather than to a desire to abandon Egypt—did result in the abdication of France. After England single-handed had subdued the rebellion and restored the authority of the khedive, the latter signed a decree on the 11th of January 1883 abolishing the joint control of England and France. Henceforth Egypt continued to be a frequent topic of debate in the Chambers; the interests of France in respect of the Egyptian finances, the judicial system and other institutions formed the subject of diplomatic correspondence, as did the irritating question of the eventual evacuation of Egypt by England. But though it caused constant friction between the two countries up to the Anglo-French convention of the 8th of April 1904, there was no longer a French active policy with regard to Egypt. The lost predominance of France in that country did, however, quicken French activity in other regions of northern Africa.

The idea that the Mediterranean might become a French lake has, in different senses, been a preoccupation for France and for its rivals in Europe ever since Algeria became a French province by a series of fortuitous incidents—an insult Algerian policy. offered by the dey to a French consul, his refusal to make reparation, and the occasion it afforded of diverting public attention in France from interior affairs after the Revolution of 1830. The French policy of preponderance in Egypt had only for a secondary aim the domination of the Mediterranean. The French tradition in Egypt was a relic of Napoleon’s vain scheme to become emperor of the Orient even before he had made himself emperor of the West. It was because Egypt was the highway to India that under Napoleon III. the French had constructed the Suez Canal, and for the same reason England could never permit them to become masters of the Nile delta. But the possessors of Algeria could extend their coast-line of North Africa without seriously menacing the power which held Gibraltar and Malta. It was Italy which objected to a French occupation of Tunis. Algeria has never been officially a French “colony.” It is in many respects administered as an integral portion of French territory, the governor-general, as agent of the central power, exercising wide jurisdiction. Although the Europeans in Algeria are less than a seventh of the population, and although the French are actually a minority of the European inhabitants—Spaniards prevailing in the west, Italians and Maltese in the east—the three departments of Constantine, Algiers and Oran are administered like three French departments. Consequently, when disturbances occurred on the borderland separating Constantine from Tunis, the French were able to say to Europe that the integrity of their national frontier was threatened by the proximity of a turbulent neighbour. The history of the relations between Tunis and France were set forth, from the French standpoint, in a circular, of which Jules Ferry was said to be the author, addressed by the foreign minister, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire on the 9th of May 1881, to the diplomatic agents of France abroad. The most important point emphasized by Tunis. the French minister was the independence of Tunis from the Porte, a situation which would obviate difficulties with Turkey such as had always hampered the European powers in Egypt. In support of this contention a protest made by the British government in 1830, against the French conquest of Algiers, was quoted, as in it Lord Aberdeen had declared that Europe had always treated the Barbary states as independent powers. On the other hand, there was the incident of the bey of Tunis having furnished to Turkey a contingent during the Crimean War, which suggested a recognition of its vassalage to the Sublime Porte. But in 1864, when the sultan had sent a fleet to La Goulette to affirm his “rights” in Tunis, the French ambassador at Constantinople intimated that France declined to have Turkey for a neighbour in Algeria. France also in 1868 essayed to obtain control over the finances of the regency; but England and Italy had also large interests in the country, so an international financial commission was appointed. In 1871, when France was disabled after the war, the bey obtained from Constantinople a firman of investiture, thus recognizing the suzerainty of the Porte. Certain English writers have reproached the Foreign Office for its lack of foresight in not taking advantage of France’s disablement by establishing England as the preponderant power in Tunis. The fact that five-sixths of the commerce of Tunis is now with France and Algeria may seem to justify such regrets. Yet by the light of subsequent events it seems probable that England would have been diverted from more profitable undertakings had she been saddled with the virtual administration and military occupation of a vast territory which such preponderance would have entailed. The wonder is that this opportunity was not seized by Italy; for Mazzini and other workers in the cause of Italian unity, before the Bourbons had been driven from Naples, had cast eyes on Tunis, lying over against the coasts of Sicily at a distance of barely 100 m., as a favourable field for colonization and as the key of the African Mediterranean. But when Rome became once more the capital of Italy, Carthage was not fated to fall again under its domination and the occasion offered by France’s temporary impotence was neglected. In 1875 when France was rapidly recovering, there went to Tunis as consul an able Frenchman, M. Roustan, who became virtual ruler of the regency in spite of the resistance of the representative of Italy. French action was facilitated by the attitude of England. On the 26th of July 1878 M. Waddington wrote to the marquis d’Harcourt, French ambassador in London, that at the congress of Berlin Lord Salisbury had said to him—the two delegates being the foreign ministers of their respective governments—in reply to his protest, on behalf of France, against the proposed English occupation of Cyprus, “Do what you think proper in Tunis: England will offer no opposition.” This was confirmed by Lord Salisbury in a despatch to Lord Lyons, British ambassador in Paris, on the 8th of August, and it was followed in October by an intimation made by the French ambassador at Rome that France intended to exercise a preponderant influence in Tunis. Italy was not willing to accept this situation. In January 1881 a tour made by King Humbert in Sicily, where he received a Tunisian mission, was taken to signify that Italy had not done with Tunis, and it was answered in April by a French expedition in the regency sent from Algeria, on the pretext of punishing the Kroumirs who had been marauding on the frontier of Constantine. It was on this occasion that M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire issued the circular quoted above. France nominally was never at war with Tunis; yet the result of the invasion was that that country became virtually a French possession, although officially it is only under the protection of France. The treaty of El Bardo of the 12th of May 1881, confirmed by the decree of the 22nd of April 1882, placed Tunis under the protectorate of France. The country is administered under the direction of the French Foreign Office, in which there is a department of Tunisian affairs. The governor is called minister resident-general of France, and he also acts as foreign minister, being assisted by seven French and two native ministers.

The annexation of Tunis was important for many reasons. It was the first successful achievement of France after the disasters of the Franco-German War, and it was the first enterprise of serious utility to France undertaken Extension of African Territory. beyond its frontiers since the early period of the Second Empire. It was also important as establishing the hegemony of France on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. When M. Jules Cambon became governor-general of Algeria, his brother M. Paul Cambon having been previously French resident in Tunis and remaining the vigilant ambassador to a Mediterranean power, a Parisian wit said that just as Switzerland had its Lac des quatre Cantons, so France had made of the midland sea its Lac des deux Cambons. The jeu d’esprit indicated what was the primary significance to the French of their becoming masters of the Barbary coast from the boundary of Morocco to that of Tripoli. Apart from the Mediterranean question, when the scramble for Africa began and the Hinterland doctrine was asserted by European powers, the possession of this extended coast-line resulted in France laying claim to the Sahara and the western Sudan. Consequently, on the maps, the whole of northwest Africa, from Tunis to the Congo, is claimed by France with the exception of the relatively small areas on the coast belonging to Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Liberia, Germany and England. On this basis, in point of area, France is the greatest African power, in spite of British annexations in south and equatorial Africa, its area being estimated at 3,866,950 sq. m. (including 227,950 in Madagascar) as against 2,101,411 more effectively possessed by Great Britain. The immensity of its domain on paper is no doubt a satisfaction to a people which prefers to pursue its policy of colonial expansion without the aid of emigration. The acquisition of Tunis by France is also important as an example of the system of protectorate as applied to colonization. Open annexation might have more gravely irritated the powers having interests in the country. England, in spite of Lord Salisbury’s suggestions to the French foreign minister, was none too pleased with France’s policy; while Italy, with its subjects outnumbering all other European settlers in the regency, was in a mood to accept a pretext for a quarrel for the reasons already mentioned. Apart from these considerations The protectorate system. the French government favoured a protectorate because it did not wish to make of Tunis a second Algeria. While the annexation of the latter had excellent commercial results for France, it had not been followed by successful colonization, though it had cost France 160 millions sterling in the first sixty years after it became French territory. The French cannot govern at home or abroad without a centralized system of administration. The organization of Algeria, as departments of France with their administrative divisions, was not an example to imitate. In the beylical government France found, ready-made, a sufficiently centralized system, such as did not exist in Algeria under native rule, which could form a basis of administration by French functionaries under the direction of the Quai d’Orsay. The result has not been unpleasing to the numerous advocates in France of protectorates as a means of colonization. According to M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the most eminent French authority on colonization, who knows Tunis well, a protectorate is the most pacific, the most supple, and the least costly method of colonization in countries where an organized form of native government exists; it is the system in which the French can most nearly approach that of English crown colonies. One evil which it avoids is the so-called representative system, under which senators and deputies are sent to the French parliament not only from Algeria as an integral part of France, but from the colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe and French India, while Cochin-China, Guiana and Senegal send deputies alone. These sixteen deputies and seven senators attach themselves to the various Moderate, Radical and Socialist groups in parliament, which have no connexion with the interests of the colonies; and the consequent introduction of French political controversies into colonial elections has not been of advantage to the oversea possessions of France. From this the protectorate system has spared Tunis, and the paucity of French immigration will continue to safeguard that country from parliamentary representation. After twenty years of French rule, of 120,000 European residents in Tunis, not counting the army, only 22,000 were French, while nearly 70,000 were Italian. If under a so-called representative system the Italians had demanded nationalization, for the purpose of obtaining the franchise, complications might have arisen which are not to be feared under a protectorate.

But of all the results of the French annexation of Tunis, the most important was undoubtedly the Triple Alliance, into which Italy entered in resentment at having been deprived of the African territory which seemed marked The Triple Alliance. out as its natural field for colonial expansion. The most manifest cause of Italian hostility towards France had passed away four years before the annexation of Tunis, when the reactionaries, who had favoured the restitution of the temporal power of the pope, fell for ever from power. The clericalism of the anti-republicans, who favoured a revival of the fatal policy of the Second Empire whereby France, after Magenta and Solferino, had by leaving its garrison at St Angelo, been the last obstacle to Italian unity, was one of the chief causes of their downfall. For after the war with Germany, the mutilated land and the vanquished nation had need to avoid wanton provocations of foreign powers. Henceforth the French Republic, governed by Republicans, was to be an anti-clerical force in Europe, sympathizing with the Italian occupation of Rome. But to make Italy realize that France was no longer the enemy of complete Italian unity it would have been necessary that all causes of irritation between the two Latin sister nations were removed. Such causes of dissension did, however, remain, arising from economic questions. The maritime relations of the two chief Mediterranean powers were based on a treaty of navigation of 1862—when Venice was no party to it being an Austrian port—which Crispi denounced as a relic of Italian servility towards Napoleon III. Commercial rivalry was induced by the industrial development of northern Italy, when freed from Austrian rule. Moreover, the emigrant propensity of the Italians flooded certain regions of France with Italian cheap labour, with the natural result of bitter animosity between the intruders and the inhabitants of the districts thus invaded. The annexation of Tunis, coming on the top of these causes of irritation, exasperated Italy. A new treaty of commerce was nevertheless signed between the two countries on the 3rd of November 1881. Unfortunately for its stability, King Humbert the previous week had gone to Vienna to see the emperor of Austria. In visiting in his capital the former arch-enemy of Italian unity, who could never return the courtesy, Rome being interdicted for Catholic sovereigns by the “prisoner of the Vatican,” Humbert had only followed the example of his father Victor Emmanuel, who went both to Berlin and to Vienna in 1873. But that was when in France the duc de Broglie was prime minister of a clerical government of which many of the supporters were clamouring for the restitution of the temporal power. King Humbert’s visit to Vienna at the moment when Gambetta, the great anti-clerical champion, was at the height of his influence was significant for other reasons. Since the 7th of October 1879 Germany and Austria had been united by a defensive treaty, and though its provisions were not published until 1888, the two central empires were known to be in the closest alliance. The king of Italy’s visit to Vienna, where he was accompanied by his ministers Depretis and Mancini, had therefore the same significance as though he had gone to Berlin also. On the 20th of May 1882 was signed the treaty of the Triple Alliance, which for many years bound Italy to Germany in its relations with the continental powers. The alliance was first publicly announced on the 13th of March 1883, in the Italian Chamber, by Signor Mancini, minister for foreign affairs. The aim of Italy in joining the combination was alliance with Germany, the enemy of France. The connexion with Austria was only tolerated because it secured a union with the powerful government of Berlin. It effected the complete isolation of France in Europe. An understanding between the French Republic and Russia, which alone could alter that situation, was impracticable, as its only basis seemed to be the possibility of having a common enemy in Germany or even in England. But that double eventuality was anticipated by a secret convention concluded at Skiernewice in September 1884 by the tsar and the German emperor, in which they guaranteed to one another a benevolent neutrality in case of hostilities between England and Russia arising out of the Afghan question.

It will be convenient here to refer to the relations of France with Germany and Italy respectively in the years succeeding the signature of the Triple Alliance. With Germany both Gambetta, who died ten weeks before the treaty was announced and who was a strong Russophobe, and his adversary Jules Ferry were inclined to come to an understanding. But in this they had not the support of French opinion. In September 1883 the king of Spain had visited the sovereigns of Austria and Germany. Alphonso XII., to prove that this journey was not a sign of hostility to France, came to Paris on his way home on Michaelmas Day on an official visit to President Grévy. Unfortunately it was announced that the German emperor had made the king colonel of a regiment of Uhlans garrisoned at Strassburg, the anniversary of the taking of which city was being celebrated by the emperor by the inauguration of a monument made out of cannon taken from the French, on the very eve of King Alphonso’s arrival. Violent protests were made in Paris in the monarchical and in not a few republican journals, with the result that the king of Spain was hooted by the crowd as he drove with the president from the station to his embassy, and again on his way to dine the same night at the Elysée. The incident was closed by M. Grévy’s apologies and by the retirement of the minister of war, General Thibaudin, who under pressure from the extreme Left had declined to meet le roi uhlan. Though it displayed the bitter hostility of the population towards Germany, the incident did not aggravate Franco-German relations. This was due to the policy of the prime minister, Jules Ferry, who to carry it out made himself foreign minister in November, in the place of Challemel-Lacour, who resigned.

Jules Ferry’s idea was that colonial expansion was the surest means for France to recover its prestige, and that this could be obtained only by maintaining peaceful relations with all the powers of Europe. His consequent Franco-German relations. unpopularity caused his fall in April 1885, and the next year a violent change of military policy was marked by the arrival of General Boulanger at the ministry of war, where he remained, in the Freycinet and Goblet cabinets, from January 1886 to the 17th of May 1887. His growing popularity in France was answered by Bismarck, who asked for an increased vote for the German army, indicating that he considered Boulanger the coming dictator for the war of revenge; so when the Reichstag, on the 14th of January 1887, voted the supplies for three years, instead of for the seven demanded by the chancellor, it was dissolved. Bismarck redoubled his efforts in the press and in diplomacy, vainly attempting to come to an understanding with Russia and with more success moving the Vatican to order the German Catholics to support him. He obtained his vote for seven years in March, and the same month renewed the Triple Alliance. In April the Schnaebelé incident seemed nearly to cause war between France and Germany. The commissary-special, an agent of the ministry of the interior, at Pagny-sur-Moselle, the last French station on the frontier of the annexed territory of Lorraine, having stepped across the boundary to regulate some official matter with the corresponding functionary on the German side, was arrested. It was said that Schnaebelé was arrested actually on French soil, and on whichever side of the line he was standing he had gone to meet the German official at the request of the latter. Bismarck justified the outrage in a speech in the Prussian Landtag which suggested that it was impossible to live at peace with a nation so bellicose as the French. In France the incident was regarded as a trap laid by the chancellor to excite French opinion under the aggressive guidance of Boulanger, and to produce events which would precipitate a war. The French remained calm, in spite of the growing popularity of Boulanger. The Goblet ministry resigned on the 17th of May 1887 after a hostile division on the budget, and the opportunity was taken to get rid of the minister of war, who posed as the coming restorer of Alsace and Lorraine to France. The Boulangist movement soon became anti-Republican, and the opposition to it of successive ministries improved the official relations of the French and German governments. The circumstances attending the fall of President Grévy the same year strengthened the Boulangist agitation, and Jules Ferry, who seemed indicated as his successor, was discarded by the Republican majority in the electoral congress, as a revolution was threatened in Paris if the choice fell on “the German Ferry.” Sadi Carnot was consequently elected president of the Republic on the 3rd of December 1887. Three months later, on the 9th of March 1888, died the old emperor William who had personified the conquest of France by Germany. His son, the pacific emperor Frederick, died too, on the 15th of June, so the accession of William II., the pupil of Bismarck, at a moment when Boulanger threatened to become plebiscitary dictator of France, was ominous for the peace of Europe. But in April 1889 Boulanger ignominiously fled the country, and in March 1890 Bismarck fell. France none the less rejected all friendly overtures made by the young emperor. In February 1891 his mother came to Paris and was unluckily induced to visit the scenes of German triumph near the capital—the ruins of St Cloud and the Château of Versailles where the German empire was proclaimed. The incident called forth such an explosion of wrath from the French press that it was clear that France had not forgotten 1871. By this time, however, France was no longer isolated and at the mercy of Germany, which by reason of the increase of its population while that of France had remained almost stationary, was, under the system of compulsory military service in the two countries, more than a match for its neighbour in a single-handed conflict. Even the Triple Alliance ceased to be a terror for France. An understanding arose between France and Russia preliminary to the Franco-Russian alliance, which became the pivot of French exterior relations until the defeat of Russia in the Japanese war of 1904. So the second renewal of the Triplice was forthwith answered by a visit of the French squadron to Kronstadt in July 1891.

While such were the relations between France and the principal party to the Triple Alliance, the same period was marked by bitter dissension between France and Italy. Tunis had made Italy Gallophobe, but the diplomatic France and Italy. relations between the two countries had been courteous until the death of Depretis in 1887. When Crispi succeeded him as prime minister, and till 1891 was the director of the exterior policy of Italy, a change took place. Crispi, though not the author of the Triple Alliance, entered with enthusiasm into its spirit of hostility to France. The old Sicilian revolutionary hastened to pay his respects to Bismarck at Friedrichsruh in October 1887, the visit being highly approved in Italy. Before that the French Chamber had, in July 1886, by a small majority, rejected a new treaty of navigation between France and Italy, this being followed by the failure to renew the commercial treaty of 1881. Irritating incidents were of constant occurrence. In 1888 a conflict between the French consul at Massowah and the Italians who occupied that Abyssinian port induced Bismarck to instruct the German ambassador in Paris to tell M. Goblet, minister for foreign affairs in the Floquet cabinet, in case he should refer to the matter, that if Italy were involved thereby in complications it would not stand alone—this menace being communicated to Crispi by the Italian ambassador at Berlin and officially printed in a green-book. But after Bismarck’s fall relations improved a little, and in April 1890 the Italian fleet was sent to Toulon to salute President Carnot in the name of King Humbert, though this did not prevent the French government being suspected of having designs on Tripoli. Italian opinion was again incensed against France by the action of the French clericals, represented by a band of Catholic “pilgrims” who went to Rome to offer their sympathy to the pope in the autumn of 1891, and outraged the burial-place of Victor Emmanuel by writing in the visitors’ register kept at the Pantheon the words “Vive le pape.” In August 1893 a fight took place at Aigues Mortes, the medieval walled city on the salt marshes of the Gulf of Lyons, between French and Italian workmen, in which seven Italians were killed. But Crispi had gone out of office early in 1891, and the ministers who succeeded him were more disposed to prevent a rupture between Italy and France. Crispi became prime minister again in December 1893, but this time without the portfolio of foreign affairs. He placed at the Consulta Baron Blanc, who though a strong partisan of the Triple Alliance was closely attached to France, being a native of Savoy, where he spent his yearly vacations on French soil. That the relations between the two nations were better was shown by what occurred after the murder of President Carnot in June 1894. The fact that the assassin was an Italian might have caused trouble a little earlier; but the grief of the Italians was so sincere, as shown by popular demonstrations at Rome, that no anti-Italian violence took place in France, and in the words of the French ambassador, M. Billot, Caserio’s crime seemed likely to further an understanding between the two peoples. The movement was very slight and made no progress during the short presidency of M. Casimir-Périer. On the 1st of November 1894 Alexander III. died, when the Italian press gave proof of the importance attributed by the Triplice to the Franco-Russian understanding by expressing a hope that the new tsar would put an end to it. But on the 10th of June 1895, the foreign minister, M. Hanotaux, intimated to the French Chamber that the understanding had become an alliance, and on the 17th the Russian ambassador in Paris conveyed to M. Félix Faure, who was now president of the Republic, the collar of St Andrew, while the same day the French and Russian men-of-war, invited to the opening of the Kiel Canal, entered German waters together. The union of France with Russia was no doubt one cause of the cessation of Italian hostility to France; but others were at work. The inauguration of the statue of MacMahon at Magenta the same week as the announcement of the Franco-Russian alliance showed that there was a disposition to revive the old sentiment of fraternity which had once united France with Italy. More important was the necessity felt by the Italians of improved commercial relations with the French. Crispi fell on the 4th of March 1896, after the news of the disaster to the Italian troops at Adowa, the war with Abyssinia being a disastrous legacy left by him. The previous year he had caused the withdrawal from Paris of the Italian ambassador Signor Ressmann, a friend of France, transferring thither Count Tornielli, who during his mission in London had made a speech, after the visit of the Italian fleet to Toulon, which qualified him to rank as a misogallo. But with the final disappearance of Crispi the relations of the two Latin neighbours became more natural. Commerce between them had diminished, and the business men of both countries, excepting certain protectionists, felt that the commercial rupture was mutually prejudicial. Friendly negotiations were initiated on both sides, and almost the last act of President Félix Faure before his sudden death—M. Delcassé being then foreign minister—was to promulgate, on the 2nd of February 1899, a new commercial arrangement between France and Italy which the French parliament had adopted. By that time M. Barrère was ambassador at the Quirinal and was engaged in promoting cordial relations between Italy and France, of which Count Tornielli in Paris had already become an ardent advocate. Italy remained a party to the Triple Alliance, which was renewed for a third period in 1902. But so changed had its significance become that in October 1903 the French Republic received for the first time an official visit from the sovereigns of Italy. This reconciliation of France and Italy was destined to have most important results outside the sphere of the Triple Alliance. The return visit which President Loubet paid to Victor Emmanuel III. in April 1904, it being the first time that a French chief of the state had gone to Rome since the pope had lost the temporal sovereignty, provoked a protest from the Vatican which caused the rupture of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See, followed by the repudiation of the Concordat by an act passed in France, in 1905, separating the church from the state.

While the decadence of the Triple Alliance had this important effect on the domestic affairs of France, its inception had produced the Franco-Russian alliance, which took France out of its isolation in Europe, and became the pivot Russian alliance. of its exterior policy. It has been noted that in the years succeeding the Franco-Prussian War the tsar Alexander II. had shown a disposition to support France against German aggression, as though to make up for his neutrality during the war, which was so benevolent for Germany that his uncle William I. had ascribed to it a large share of the German victory. The assassination of Alexander II. by revolutionaries in 1881 made it difficult for the new autocrat to cultivate closer relations with a Republican government, although the Third Republic, under the influence of Gambetta, to whom its consolidation was chiefly due, had repudiated that proselytizing spirit, inherited from the great Revolution, which had disquieted the monarchies of Europe in 1848 and had provoked their hostility to the Second Republic. But the Triple Alliance which was concluded the year after the murder of the tsar indicated the possible expediency of an understanding between the two great powers of the West and the East, in response to the combination of the three central powers of Europe,—though Bismarck after his fall revealed that in 1884 a secret treaty was concluded between Germany and Russia, which was, however, said to have in view a war between England and Russia. Internal dissension on the subject of colonial policy in the far East, followed by the fall of Jules Ferry and the Boulangist agitation were some of the causes which prevented France from strengthening its position in Europe by seeking a formal understanding with Russia in the first part of the reign of Alexander III. But when the Boulangist movement came to an end, entirely from the incompetency of its leader, it behoved the government of the Republic to find a means of satisfying the strong patriotic sentiment revealed in the nation, which, directed by a capable and daring soldier, would have swept away the parliamentary republic and established a military dictatorship in its place. The Franco-Russian understanding provided that means, and Russia was ready for it, having become, by the termination in 1890 of the secret treaty with Germany, not less isolated in Europe than France. In July 1891, when the French fleet visited Kronstadt the incident caused such enthusiasm throughout the French nation that the exiled General Boulanger’s existence would have been forgotten, except among his dwindling personal followers, had he not put an end to it by suicide two months later at Brussels. The Franco-Russian understanding united all parties, not in love for one another but in the idea that France was thereby about to resume its place in Europe. The Catholic Royalists ceased to talk of the restitution of the temporal power of the pope in their joy at the deference of the government of the republic for the most autocratic monarchy of Christendom; the Boulangists, now called Nationalists, hoped that it would lead to the war of revenge with Germany, and that it might also be the means of humiliating England, as shown by their resentment at the visit of the French squadron to Portsmouth on its way home from Kronstadt. It is, however, extremely improbable that the understanding and subsequent alliance would have been effected had the Boulangist movement succeeded. For the last thing that the Russian government desired was war with Germany. What it needed and obtained was security against German aggression on its frontier and financial aid from France; so a French plebiscitary government, having for its aim the restitution of Alsace and Lorraine, would have found no support in Russia. As the German chancellor, Count von Caprivi, said in the Reichstag on the 27th of November 1891, a few weeks after a Russian loan had been subscribed in France nearly eight times over, the naval visit to Kronstadt had not brought war nearer by one single inch. Nevertheless when in 1893 the Russian fleet paid a somewhat tardy return visit to Toulon, where it was reviewed by President Carnot, a party of Russian officers who came to Paris was received by the population of the capital, which less than five years before had acclaimed General Boulanger, with raptures which could not have been exceeded had they brought back to France the territory lost in 1871. In November 1894, Alexander III. died, and in January 1895, M. Casimir-Périer resigned the presidency of the Republic, to which he had succeeded only six months before on the assassination of M. Carnot. So it was left to Nicholas II. and President Félix Faure to proclaim the existence of a formal alliance between France and Russia. It appears that in 1891 and 1892, at the time of the first public manifestations of friendship between France and Russia, in the words of M. Ribot, secret conventions were signed by him, being foreign minister, and M. de Freycinet, president of the council, which secured for France “the support of Russia for the maintenance of the equilibrium in Europe”; and on a later occasion the same statesman said that it was after the visit of the empress Frederick to Paris in 1891 that Alexander III. made to France certain offers which were accepted. The word “alliance” was not publicly used by any minister to connote the relations of France with Russia until the 10th of June 1895, when M. Hanotaux used the term with cautious vagueness amid the applause of the Chamber of Deputies. Yet not even when Nicholas II. came to France in October 1896 was the word “alliance” formally pronounced in any of the official speeches. But the reception given to the tsar and tsaritsa in Paris, where no European sovereign had come officially since William of Germany passed down the Champs Elysées as a conqueror, was of such a character that none could doubt that this was the consecration of the alliance. It was at last formally proclaimed by Nicholas II., on board a French man-of-war, on the occasion of the visit of the president of the Republic to Russia in August 1897. From that date until the formation of M. Briand’s cabinet in 1909, nine different ministries succeeded one another and five ministers of foreign affairs; but they all loyally supported the Franco-Russian alliance, although its popularity diminished in France long before the war between Russia and Japan, which deprived it of its efficacy in Europe. In 1901 Nicholas II. came again to France and was the guest of President Loubet at Compiègne. His visit excited little enthusiasm in the nation, which was disposed to attribute it to Russia’s financial need of France; while the Socialists, now a strong party which provided the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry with an important part of its majority in the Chamber, violently attacked the alliance of the Republic with a reactionary autocracy. However anomalous that may have been it did not prevent the whole French nation from welcoming the friendship between the governments of Russia and of France in its early stages. Nor can there be any doubt that the popular instinct was right in according it that welcome. France in its international relations was strengthened morally by the understanding and by the alliance, which also served as a check to Germany. But its association with Russia had not the results hoped for by the French reactionaries. It encouraged them in their opposition to the parliamentary Republic during the Dreyfus agitation, the more so because the Russian autocracy is anti-Semitic. It also made a Nationalist of one president of the Republic, Félix Faure, whose head was so turned by his imperial frequentations that he adopted some of the less admirable practices of princes, and also seemed ready to assume the bearing of an autocrat. His sudden death was as great a relief to the parliamentary Republicans as it was a disappointment to the plebiscitary party, which anti-Dreyfusism, with its patriotic pretensions, had again made a formidable force in the land. But the election of the pacific and constitutional M. Loubet as president of the Republic at this critical moment in its history counteracted any reactionary influence which the Russian alliance might have had in France; so the general effect of the alliance was to strengthen the Republic and to add to its prestige. The visit of the tsar to Paris, the first paid by a friendly sovereign since the Second Empire, impressed a population, proud of its capital, by an outward sign which seemed to show that the Republic was not an obstacle to the recognition by the monarchies of Europe of the place still held by France among the great powers. Before M. Loubet laid down office the nation, grown more republican, saw the visit of the tsar followed by those of the kings of England and of Italy, who might never have been moved to present their respects to the French Republic had not Russia shown them the way.