THE RISE AND FALL OF BOULANGER
The relations of Clemenceau to General Boulanger form an important
though comparatively brief episode in the career of the French
statesman. Boulanger was Clemenceau's cousin, and in his dealings with
this ambitious man he did not show that remarkable skill and judgment
of character which distinguished him in regard to Carnot and Loubet,
whose high qualities Clemenceau was the first to recognise and make use
of in the interest of the Republic. Boulanger was a good soldier in the
lower grades of his profession, and owed his first important promotion
to the Duc d'Aumale. This patronage he acknowledged with profound
gratitude and even servility at the time; but repaid later, when he
turned Radical, by what was nothing short of treacherous persecution of
the Orleanist Prince. Boulanger went even so far as to deny that he had
ever expressed his obligations to the Duke for aid in his profession, a
statement to which the publication of his own letters at once gave the
lie.
The General was, in fact, vain, ostentatious and unscrupulous. But
having gained popularity among the rank and file of the French army
by his good management of the men under his command and his sympathy
with their grievances, he was appointed Director of Infantry, and
in that capacity introduced several measures of military reform and
suggested more. A little later, circumstances led him into close
political harmony with the Radicals and their leader. At this juncture
Clemenceau seems to have convinced himself that good use could be made
of the general, who owed his first great advance to Orleanist favour,
without any danger to the Republic. Having, as usual, upset another
short-lived Cabinet, Clemenceau therefore exercised his influence to
secure his relation the post of War Minister in the new Administration
of M. Freycinet. This was in January 1886. At first he was true to his
Radical friends and carried out the programme of army reforms agreed
upon between himself and Clemenceau, thus justifying that statesman's
choice and support. The general treatment of the French conscript was
taken in hand. His food was improved, his barrack discipline rendered
less harsh, his relations to his officers made more human, his spirit
raised by better prospects of a future career. All this was good
service to the country at a critical time and should have redounded
to the credit of the Radical Party far more than to Boulanger's own
glorification. This, however, was not the case. All the credit was
given to the General himself. Hence immense personal influence from one
end of the country to the other.
Practically every family in France was beneficially affected, directly
or indirectly, by Boulanger's measures of military reform, and thanked
the brave General for what had been done. Not a young man in the army,
or out of it, but felt that his lot, when drawn for service or actually
serving, had been made better by the War Minister himself. So it ever
is and always has been. The individual who gives practical expression
to the ideas which are forced upon him by others is the one who is
regarded as the real benefactor: the real workers, as in this instance
Clemenceau and his friends, are forgotten.
One of the incidents which helped to enhance Boulanger's great
popularity was what was known as the Schnäbele affair. This person
was a French commissary who crossed the French frontier into
Alsace-Lorraine to carry out some local business with a similar German
official which concerned both countries. He was arrested by the German
military authorities as not being in possession of a passport. This
action may possibly have been technically justifiable, but certainly
was a high-handed proceeding conducted in a high-handed way. At that
time France was constantly feeling that she was in an inferior position
to Germany, and her statesmen were slow to resent small injuries,
knowing well that France was still in no position to make head against
the great German military power, still less to avenge the crushing
defeats of 1870-71. When, therefore, Boulanger took a firm stand in
the matter and upheld in a very proper way the dignity of France, the
whole country felt a sense of relief. France, then, was no longer a
negligible quantity in Europe. M. de Bismarck could not always have
his way, and Boulanger stood forth as the man who understood the real
spirit of his countrymen. That was the sentiment which did much to
strengthen the General against his opponents when he began to carry out
a purely personal policy. He had inspired the whole nation with a sense
of its own greatness.
He was then the most popular man in the country. He stood out to the
people at large as a patriotic figure with sound democratic sympathies
and an eminent soldier who might lead to victory the armies of France.
Thenceforth Boulanger gradually became a personage round whom every
kind of social and reactionary influence and intrigues of every
sort were concentrated. To capture the imposing figure on the black
horse, to fill him with grandiose ideas of the splendid part he could
play, if only he would look at the real greatness and glory of his
country through glasses less tinted with red than those of his Radical
associates, to inspire him with conceptions of national unity and
sanctified religious patriotism which should bring France, the France
of the grand old days, once more into being, with himself as its noble
leader--this was the work which the fine ladies of the Boulevard St.
Germain, hand in hand with the Catholic Church, its priests and the
cultivated reactionaries generally, set themselves to accomplish.
From this time onwards the _mot d'ordre_ to back Boulanger went round
the _salons_. Legitimists, Orleanists and Buonapartists were, on this
matter, temporarily at one. Each section hoped at the proper moment
to use the possible dictator for the attainment of its own ends.
Thus Boulanger was diverted from the Radical camp and weaned from
Radical ideas even during his period as War Minister in M. Freycinet's
Cabinet. So subtle is the influence of "society" and ecclesiastical
surroundings upon some natures, so powerful the effect of refined
and charming conversation and genial flattery delicately conveyed,
that men of far stronger character than Boulanger have now and then
succumbed to it. Only devotion to principle or ruthless personal
ambition can hold its own against such a combination of insidious
forces dexterously employed--and women of the world and Jesuits are
both very dexterous--when once the individual to be artistically
trepanned permits himself to be experimented upon. Boulanger, though
not devoid of cleverness, was at bottom that dangerous description of
designing good fellow who all the time means well; and he fell a victim
to the delightful women and clever adventurers around him. He himself
was probably not aware that he had passed over to the enemy until the
irresistible logic of events and his changed relations with his old
friends proved to him how far he had gone.
M. Rouvier, a shrewd and cynical politician of the financial school,
saw through the General, understood how dangerous he might become, and
refused to accept the ex-Minister of War into the Cabinet he formed on
the fall of Freycinet. But Boulanger had now so far established himself
personally that neither a political check nor even general ridicule
affected his career. Even his duel with M. Floquet, a farce in which
General Boulanger made himself the clown, could not shake him. Floquet
was a well-known Radical of those days, who had been a fellow-member
of the League of the Rights of Man with Clemenceau at the time of the
Commune. Boulanger was a soldier, accustomed to the use of arms all
his life, and reported to be a good fencer. Floquet, quite unlike his
old friend of years before, scarcely knew which end of his weapon to
present to his opponent, so inexperienced was he in this sort of lethal
exercise. When, therefore, the duel between the two men was arranged,
the only point discussed was how small an injury would Boulanger, in
his generosity, deign to inflict upon his Radical antagonist, in order
that the seconds might declare that "honour is satisfied." No doubt
Clemenceau himself, who acted as one of Floquet's seconds on this
occasion, took that view of the matter.
What actually occurred was quite ludicrous. Floquet, duly instructed
thereto by his own friends, stood, good harmless bourgeois as he was,
like a waxwork figure, with his rapier stuck out at arm's length
straight in front of him. No science there. But there was still less on
the other side. Boulanger, to the amazement of Clemenceau and everybody
on the ground, in what appeared to be a sudden stroke of madness,
immediately rushed at Floquet and his rigid skewer and, without any
such elaborate foolishness as the laws of fence enjoin, carefully
spitted his own throat on the point of Floquet's weapon. Honour was
thus satisfied and ridicule began. But ridicule did not kill.
No sooner was Boulanger cured of his self-inflicted wound than he went
on much as he did before. Having ceased to be Minister for War, he
was sent down to command an army corps at Clermont-Ferrand. According
to all discipline, and regulations duly to be observed by generals at
large, this kept the man appointed out of Paris. Not so Boulanger. He
visited the capital at least twice. Thereupon he was deprived of his
command and his name was removed from the Army List. That, by the rules
of war and politics, ought to have finished him. But it didn't. The
Radicals and Republicans had still no idea what an ugly Frankenstein
they had created for themselves. True, Clemenceau had declared
definitely against his own protégé the moment he saw the line he was
taking; but he underrated entirely the position to which Boulanger had
attained, not only among the reactionaries but in the hearts and minds
of the French people. For Boulanger, now gifted with a free hand, went
into the political arena at once, and was a candidate simultaneously
for the Nord and the Dordogne: provincial districts with, of course, a
totally different sort of electorate from that of the capital, where
the _brav' Général_ with his fine figure on horseback was already the
hero of the Parisians. He was elected and sat for the Nord.
Still Clemenceau, far-seeing and sagacious as he generally is in
his judgment of political events and personal character, failed
to appreciate what his cousin had drifted into rather than had
deliberately worked for. Nor perhaps did he estimate highly enough
either the cleverness or the unscrupulousness of the men and women
who were backing him. Certain it is that, although Boulangism was now
becoming a powerful political cult, Clemenceau and other advanced men,
such as my old friend Paul Brousse, President of the Paris Municipal
Council, were still of opinion that Boulanger was going down rather
than up. It was a mistake that might have cost not only the Radicals
but the French Republic as a whole very dear. For the General had the
qualities of his defects. Agreeable, good-natured, frank, accessible
and friendly to all who approached him, with enough ability to gauge
fairly well what was going on around him, loving display for its own
sake, and ever ready to pose in dignified and pleasing attitude, before
a populace by no means averse from well-managed advertisement, while
not apparently bent upon forcing his own will or dictatorship upon the
country--Boulanger, both before and after his election for the Nord,
was much more formidable than he looked to those who only measured his
power from the standpoint of wide intelligence. This the rather because
there was no lack of money to push his pretensions to high place.
Boulanger came to the front also at a time when the bourgeois Republic
(owing to the weakness, incapacity and instability of the bourgeois
politicians themselves) was discredited and was believed to be
tottering. Clemenceau's own unceasing campaign against widespread
abuses and incapable Ministers was largely responsible for this. There
was a general sense of insecurity and unsettlement, engendered by the
fall of Administration after Administration, due to political or
financial proceedings of doubtful character, exposed and denounced
by Clemenceau and the Radicals themselves. Some of the Radicals and
intellectuals even now supported Boulanger as an alternative to
perpetual upsets. Disgusted with lawyers, professional politicians
and place-hunters of high and low degree, the people likewise were
again on the look-out for a saviour of France who should secure for
them democracy without corruption, and honest leadership devoid of
Socialism. The old story, in fact.
At this particular moment, too, the organised forces in Paris, the army
and the gendarmerie, were Boulangists almost to a man. The danger,
therefore, of the Boulangist agitation now being carried on alike
in Paris and in the Departments seemed to a looker-on to be growing
more serious every day. This, however, continued not to be the view
of Clemenceau and his party. They thought, in spite of the voting in
the Nord and the Dordogne and the apparent popularity of the General
in Paris, that the whole thing would prove a mere flash in the pan;
that the good sense and Republican conservatism of the French people
would display itself when peril really threatened the Republic; and
that Boulanger would be even less successful than the Duc de Broglie.
Then came the General Elections. Boulanger was candidate for Paris.
Once more the obvious evidence of his great popularity was overlooked
by the Clemenceau group, the Boulangist fervour went on unrecognised,
and it seemed that it might depend upon the General himself at any
moment--as indeed proved to be the case--whether he should follow in
the footsteps of Louis Napoleon and accomplish a successful _coup
d'état_, or fall permanently into the background. But up to the last
moment his opponents could not believe that a general with no great
military career behind him, a citizen with no great name to conjure
with, a politician with no great programme to attract voters, could win
Paris or become master of France.
The crisis really was the more acute since there was no rival
personality, no Republican of admitted ability and distinction ready
to stake his reputation against Boulanger. Though Clemenceau, as
the preparations for the election proceeded and Boulanger's growing
strength became manifest, now did his utmost to stem the tide, there
was no doubt that, failing a really powerful opponent, Boulanger would
hold the winning place at the close of the poll. He took up a bold
position. He was the hero of the hour. The whole contest was admirably
stage-managed and advertised on his side. He rode through the city on
his black horse, a fine figure of a man, full of confidence of victory,
the halo of a coming well-earned triumph around him. It was universally
felt that the previous votes of the provinces would be quite eclipsed
by the vote of the capital. Parisians, peasants and miners, small
owners and proletariat would for once be together.
This was the unshaken opinion of his friends and followers, who seemed
in those exciting days to have with them the great majority of the
people. On the other side a wave of incapacity was actually flooding
the intelligence of his opponents. Instead of putting forward a really
representative man, either Republican or Socialist, with a fine
democratic record behind him, they made an absolutely contemptible
choice for their champion. One Jacques, an obscure liquor-dealer, whom
nobody ever heard of before the election, or gave a thought to after
it, was chosen to fight for Paris against the General. This man had
never done or said or written anything that anybody could remember,
or would remember if he could. If no Radical Republican was ready to
stand, Joffrin, an old member of the Commune and a skilled artisan most
loyal to his principles, always returning at once to his trade when
he failed to be elected for the National Assembly, would have been a
far better and more worthy candidate in every way. The election then
would have been a conflict between the enthusiasm of social revolution
and the fervour of chauvinist reaction. As it was, the Boulangists
could say and did say with truth that the General would represent the
citizens of Paris much more genuinely than Jacques. The result of this
error of tactics could, have been foreseen from the first. General
Boulanger won by a heavy majority.
That evening saw the crisis of the whole Boulangist agitation. Such
a victory at such a time called for immediate and decisive action.
That was the universal opinion. A political triumph so dramatic and so
conclusive could only find a fitting climax in the victor proclaiming
himself to be a Cromwell, a Monk or a Napoleon. Nothing less was hoped
for by the reactionists: nothing less was feared by the Republicans.
The figures of the poll were welcomed with enthusiastic cheering all
along the boulevards, and the Boulangist anthem, "_En revenant de la
Revue_," was played from one end of Paris to the other. The ball was
at the General's feet. He might have failed to win his goal, but all
Paris expected he would make a good try for it. This meant that the
very same night he should either go straight to the Elysée himself or
make some bold stroke for which he had prepared beforehand, that would
fire the imagination of the people. Such was the prevailing impression.
The General celebrated his election for the City of Paris at dinner at
Durand's famous restaurant, surrounded by his intimate supporters. The
excitement outside was tremendous. Hour after hour passed. Nothing was
done, nothing apparently had been made ready. The strain of waiting
became almost unbearable. The crowd gradually got weary of anticipating
the opening of a drama whose prologue had so roused their expectations.
At last, instead of staying to watch the first scenes of a revolution,
they took themselves off quietly to bed. Boulanger's chance of
obtaining supremacy was gone.
It was always said that, backed by the Radicals, and supported by
the President, the Minister of the Interior, M. Constans, a most
resolute and unscrupulous man, who was himself in the crowd outside
the restaurant, was the main cause of this miserable fiasco. Strong
precautions had been taken against any attempt at violence. Powerful
forces whose loyalty to the Republic was beyond question had been
substituted for brigades of known Boulangist tendencies. That M.
Constans would not, under the conditions, have stuck at trifles was
well known. He was kept at a distance from France for years afterwards,
on account of his ugly character, in the capacity of French Ambassador
at Constantinople, a city where at that time such a trifling peccadillo
as murder was scarcely noticed. So Boulanger knew what to expect.
Moreover, Clemenceau and the Radical Republicans, as well as Jaurès and
Socialists of every shade of opinion, had become thoroughly alarmed by
what they had heard and seen during the election, and would not have
given way without a fight to the death. The jubilant group at Durand's,
intimidated by these assumed facts, and Boulanger with his lack of
determination and easy self-indulgence, let the opportunity slip.
All sorts of excuses and explanations were made for the hesitation of
the General to provoke civil war. But on that one night he should have
made his position secure or have died in the attempt. Success was, so
far as a foreigner on the spot could judge, quite possible. It might
even have been achieved without any forcible action. There was no
certainty that, when the move decided upon was actually made, either
troops or the people would have sided against the hero of the day. But
that hero failed to rise to the level of the occasion, and the result
was fatal to the immediate prospects of himself and his followers.
A warrant was issued for his arrest and he ran away from Paris. He
now became an object of pity rather than of alarm. He was condemned
in his absence, and not long afterwards his suicide on the grave of
his mistress, in Brussels, ended his career. Thus the estimate which
Clemenceau had formed of his permanent influence was justified. But it
was a narrow escape. The three pretenders who had come to France to
watch the final development soon found their way across the frontier.
Nevertheless, General Boulanger, with all his weakness and hesitation,
was for many months the most dangerous enemy the Republic ever faced.
His downfall helped also to add to the number of Clemenceau's bitter
enemies, and was partly instrumental in bringing about the political
disaster which befell him later. For the Radicals who had been deceived
by Boulanger cherished animosity against the Radical leader for reasons
which, though quite incompatible, were decisive for them.