Boulangism and the Republic

Now that the Boulangist adventure is entirely a thing of the past, it is worth while to see how far this strangest of all political episodes seriously endangered the French Republic, and how it may affect its future.

When, in the spring of 1888, the series of by-elections began, in which General Boulanger was destined to score success after success against the regular Republican candidates, it must be said that the French Republic was in a very unenviable position. The Wilson crisis had just brought about the compulsory resignation of M. Grévy. Although no one doubted the personal integrity and honesty of purpose of the old President, his blind attachment to his unworthy son-in-law had caused the stain of corruption to defile the highest office of the state. There was no lack of evil prophets who were ready to liken the Wilson scandals to the famous Teste and Cubières case of June, 1847, so speedily followed by the fall of Louis Philippe, and to the many financial scandals which had cropped out during the last years of the Third Empire. In addition to this, it must be remembered that the elections of 1885 had been far from showing a success for the Republican party. The party had, in truth, retained a working majority in the House, but its opponents had gained fully one hundred seats, and more than doubled their numbers. With such revelations as those which had compelled the resignation of President Grévy, was it not to be feared that the elections of 1889 might prove more disastrous still, and that the newly elected President might have to confront an anti-Republican majority in the lower branch of the national legislature ?

Just then a man appeared, surrounded by a halo of popularity, the very genesis of which seemed an unintelligible mystery, who belonged to that profession, the army, which is still unquestionably the most popular before the masses of the French people, and who certainly was not unwilling to play the part of General Bonaparte after his return from Egypt; shaking hands with any one who might have a grievance, and turning to his own account the wave of popular contempt which was steadily rising against the then existing government.

When attempting to-day to judge the whole of the Boulangist adventure, no one should forget that, when he suddenly leaped into popularity, General Boulanger was considered by every one a Republican. His entrance into the cabinet was due entirely to the influence of one of the most active of the Republican leaders, M. Clémenceau. One of Boulanger’s first acts had been the punishment of an uncle of the leading monarchical pretender, the Duc d’Aumale, for a breach of discipline, and his speech in the Senate in defense of his action had the true Republican ring. It was such a novelty in the French legislature to hear a general, a war minister, utter such strongly Republican sentiments that this alone might to a great extent explain the general’s popularity with the Radical masses of the population of the largest cities in France.

Close students of history cannot deny that this was the most dangerous moment of the crisis. The new President had no prestige ; he was not then believed to be what is called a strong man. In their long tenure of office the Republicans had committed many mistakes ; some of them undoubtedly unavoidable, but none the less hurtful to the government in the minds of the people. As always happens when the same political element remains a long time in power, the selfish spirit of office-seeking had fastened upon the ruling party all that was ready to live and thrive by corruption, and the old monarchical skit was again half jocosely, half seriously, uttered: “ We do not say that every Republican is a thief, but every thief is a Republican.” Conscious of having made mistakes, the Republicans disagreed as to what these mistakes were, and still more on what course was to be pursued in the future in order to regain fully the confidence of the nation. What an opportunity this rise of Boulanger into notoriety seemed to present to them ! They had but to turn the eyes of the public away from all the disputed issues of the day, to hide behind the popular hero, to monopolize in favor of the Republic and of the Republican party that love of one man which history had taught was such an important element in the makeup of the political ideas of the French masses. And the general, with his unmeaning but good-natured smile, not only took care to discourage no one, but was sure to discover the weak spot which offered admission to the poison of flattery. and by this means to become the candidate for friendship with the smallest holder of any amount of influence or patronage. What a temptation! This was the critical hour. Was the Republican party really made up of Republicans, or did it consist merely of men who, for one reason or another, considered it impossible to identify themselves with any of the old monarchical parties, and were bent mainly upon retaining for themselves as large a share of power as possible ?

We repeat that here was the temptation for the Republican party. How much easier to shout, “ Vive Boulanger! ” than to say to the country : “ We have made mistakes; we shall try to discover what they are, and to correct them. We have allowed corruption to creep into our ranks ; we have already taken one bold step against it: we have compelled a President, whose own person every one of us respected, to retire, because his presence at the head of the government made it impossible to hunt down the corruptionists who were in his own family. We mean to continue the fight, and after getting rid of Wilson to get rid of Wilsonism too.”

What now was the attitude of the general himself ? He took great care not to offend the Republican party as a whole, He spoke against corruption ; so did all the Republicans. He spoke against colonial enterprises, against M. Jules Ferry; so did a great many Republicans, and so would a great many more have done if they had not been afraid of being taxed with inconsistency. He was evidently waiting for the Republican party to take him up, to make him its leader, and insure the continuance of its tenure by the help of the popularity of the " brav’ général.”

What happened? Not a single one of the various and conflicting fractions of the Republican party for a moment consented to swallow the bait. True, the general for a while remained popular among the Radicals, but simply because they approved of his measures while minister of war, because they liked his attitude towards the Orleans princes and towards the Catholic Church. What they did not consent to was to make his black charger the emblem of their flag, and “ Vive Boulanger! ” their battle-cry.

So soon as it became apparent that this was the price to be paid for General Boulanger’s alliance, the general was read out of the Republican party. He was not, it is true, abandoned by all the members of the party ; a number of men who had figured either in the Moderate or in the Radical wing of the Left— MM. Le Hérissé, Laguerre, Laur, Laisant, Turquet, Naquet, etc. — remained with him ; but they were only individuals, not one of whom, with the possible exception of M. Laguerre, had ever wielded any great influence within the party, and of whom it may be said that any political organization was better without them than with them.

The Republican party had passed through the “ corridor of temptation,” and had not succumbed. The general was compelled either to fall back into comparative obscurity, and patiently to wait for an opportunity to display his military talents, if he had any, and thus earn the popularity which up to that time seemed only a freak of Dame Fortune, or else to engage in political intrigues, at the end of which he was sure to come to political suicide, if not to something worse.

How different, how much more dangerous to the existence of Republican institutions, the situation would have been if the Republican party had consented to go hand in hand with the ambitious general ! On the surface everything would have favored the Republic. The general’s popularity would have been more than an offset for the unpopularity of many a Republican leader whose acts while in power had given no little offense. Election after election would have been carried triumphantly, and every success of the general or his followers would have been considered a Republican success. But when the final victory had been won; when, under command of the Black Horse leader, the Republican forces had routed the remains of the monarchical parties in 1889, what would the condition of things have been ? How could a party which had seemed doomed to defeat, and had been carried back into power by the popularity of an ambitious and unscrupulous leader, deny that leader any position of authority within its gift ? The platform of the Republican party would have been Boulanger, and nothing else. The general’s career would have been a consistent one. By the Republic he had been made a general; by the Republic, head of the department of infantry in the ministry of war ; by the Republic, commander-in-chief of the French forces in Tunis ; by the Republic, minister of war. Thus, every one of his steps forward and upward being taken under Republican auspices, under Republican auspices, too, he would take the final step, which meant the absorption within his personality of all that had been the Republican party.

Who can for a moment doubt what the sequel would have been? Hardly was it necessary to read the malodorous revelations published recently in Paris newspapers, Coulisses du Boulangisme, Papiers Secrets du Boulangisme, etc., in order to know what the government of the general would have been, what an era, of corruption and incapacity would have been inaugurated. Soon the inevitable revulsion would have come, and then the monarchical opposition would have asserted itself, unstained by any contact with the adventurer; ready to welcome all those (their name would have been Legion) who turned away with disgust from a Republican party recreant to all its principles, from a leader whose name had become synonymous with ruin and dishonor. Where would the Republic have been then ?

From such a fate, from such a danger, — the only danger it really ran, — it was saved by the simple honesty, the real republicanism, of the Republican party. Having to choose between the difficulties of their political situation and temporary ease and success through an alliance with a leader whose ambition they felt to be both unscrupulous and impure, they chose the harder path, sure that the way to win success was first to deserve it.

Then began the period in which the danger was much more apparent than real. The bait which had been offered to the Republicans and spurned by them was offered to, and greedily seized by, the monarchical parties. Yet it would appear as if everything made it impossible for them to coalesce with General Boulanger. Every one of the steps by which he had won his popularity had been taken in open defiance of what they called their principles. He had exiled their princes. He had announced his purpose to send their priests to the barracks; “ Les curés sac au dos ! ” had been one of his mottoes. They called themselves conservatives; he had been anxious to show his love of change simply for change’s sake even in the smallest matters, such as announcing as a great reform the permission granted to soldiers to wear their heard, — a permission that still exists, by the way, and is the only thing remaining to tell the world that there was once a French minister of war by the name of General Boulanger. Not only did it seem morally impossible for the Royalists to follow such a leader, but, from the simple standpoint of expediency, nothing really urged them to take such a course. They had no reason to be dissatisfied with things as they were. They had won a comparative victory at the last general election; they had, it is true, not succeeded in repeating their victory of 1885 in 1886, when the time had come round for the elections to the departmental councils, but the rebuff they had suffered was not a very serious one ; they had lost no seats, or rather, had won as many as they had lost. Since these elections the Wilson scandals had come up, and, moreover, the warring factions of the Republican party were as far as ever from harmony; the Radicals were always ready to upset any moderate cabinet, the Moderates to upset any radical cabinet; and the country was sure, some day or other, to get tired of this chassé croisé of politicians. Why should they unite with a Radical general whose policy they had time and again denounced, and who could not openly come over to them without at once being abandoned by the sole element wherein his strength appeared to reside, the ultra-radical part of the urban population of France ?

Still they did it. Why ? Herein lies the whole secret, the whole moral lesson, of the Boulangist adventure. The Republicans repudiated the general because they had principles; the Royalists struck an alliance with him because they had none. They saw that they held about two hundred seats in the House ; that in many constituencies the Republicans had won by only very narrow margins; it looked as if the general controlled enough votes to carry the balance of power over to them in the doubtful constituencies, so that he and they together might easily win a majority of the House to be elected in 1889, if not earlier: and on this mere arithmetical basis the alliance was concluded. But the policy it involved was not such an easy matter for the Royalists as a Republican Boulangist alliance would have been. General Boulanger’s own following was of such a nature that by nothing but the noisiest professions of republicanism could it be held true to the Royalists’ new ally. It involved, on the part of the Royalists, a settled purpose of allowing the Boulangist wing of the newly formed army to have it all its own way during the electoral canvass; the Royalists might provide the candidates, but the platform had to be provided by the general’s friends, or else there was no hope of having the ultra-radical workingmen of Paris, Amiens, Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, La Rochelle, Périgueux, etc., follow the standard of General Boulanger. Well ! They had announced themselves ready to pay the price of the alliance. What that price was we now know from M. Mermeix’s revelations in the Figaro : paid by Madame la Duchesse d’Uzès, three million francs ; by other members of the Royalist party, two millions and a half; by the Comte de Paris, the Royalist pretender himself, two millions and a half, — a total of eight millions of francs. Persons who were ready to spend such enormous sums in order to carry an election — that is, persons who, while raising their voices against corruption, were ready to base all their hopes upon corruption — were not going to be stopped in their course by such a flimsy barrier as moral considerations.

But let us see now whether the existence of the Republic was seriously endangered by such a strange combination. That it appeared to be in danger ; that many of its friends were badly scared; that its most malignant enemies and its most perfidious critics thought its last hour was near at hand; that the London Times was already preparing the lofty editorial in which it would once more demonstrate to the world that the French were incapable of living twenty years under the same government, — all this is matter of public record. But it may well be doubted whether these hopes and fears had any real foundation in fact.

At first, of course, everything seemed easy to the coalition. The work had to be done in by-elections, the result of which could not alter the parliamentary majority, as the Republicans had a majority of over one hundred and fifty. The Royalists, therefore, were perfectly willing to let the general have it all his own way: he was to be the sole candidate ; he had the votes of his own Radical following ; through the influence of the clergy and of the Royalist and Bonapartist agents, he had the votes of all the enemies of the Republic, who were assured that the best way to destroy it was to vote for a man who shouted “ Vive la République ! ” louder than anybody else. The Royalists went so far even as to sacrifice a seat which they could consider as rightfully belonging to them. Two seats became vacant in the department of Nord, which the Royalists had carried at the general election of 1885. The general announced himself as a candidate for one of them. But who would be his associate on the ticket ? He could not, if he would, allow his name to go before the country side by side with that of a candidate hostile to the Republic. The Royalists gave way ; the general found an Alsatian, M. Koechlin Schwartz, who was willing to contribute liberally to the campaign fund, and who naively believed that General Boulanger was going to reconquer for France Alsace and Lorraine, and both were triumphantly elected by the coalition.

But could such things last? Was there any real danger of having a Boulangist House elected in 1889 ? Could any shrewd observer fail to see that, although the Royalists were perfectly willing to let the general, who had been ousted from the army for acts of insubordination, have himself elected time and again to seats which he could not occupy, every one of the two hundred anti-Republican deputies, when it came to sacrificing his own seat, would find reasons satisfactory to himself for refusing to surrender that seat, not to General Boulanger himself, but to any Boulangist whom the general might be pleased to designate ? Even admitting that the coalition had serious chances of winning a majority at the coming general election, — and such chances it certainly seemed to have, — it was clear that at least three fourths of that majority would consist of Royalists and Bonapartists who in no way owed their seats to the general, and who would not consider themselves his tools and creatures.

Nobody knew that better than the general himself, and that undoubtedly is the reason why, as is now a matter of public record, he was so ready to sell himself to any pretender willing to pay his price ; why he first offered himself to Prince Jerome Napoleon, who did not think the goods valuable enough for the price put upon them ; then to the Comte de Paris, who, having neither his father’s lofty patriotism nor his grandfather’s shrewdness, paid his money and asked no questions.

Ah! if General Boulanger had been a man of extraordinary genius, perhaps, without going so far as to pledge himself to work for the reëstablishment of the monarchy, he might have blended such apparently hostile elements as the Royalists, the Bonapartists, and his own ultra-radical followers ; perhaps the power, the fire, of his intellect might have molten all these seemly antagonistic metals into some new, dazzling, and solid alloys, —perhaps ! But if the general had been a man of extraordinary genius, he would never have thought of conspiring at all ; he would have served the Republic faithfully, risen by the strength of his merits and services, and — who knows ? — written his name on the most brilliant page of the history of France. If ever honesty was the best policy, it was for General Boulanger ; but so soon as he saw that the devotion of the Republicans to their ideas closed to his ambition any but the legitimate channels, open to all alike in a democratic community, his weak nature made him a slave to his spite, and the traitor was born within his bosom.

Two things, however, he had achieved, for which, although not intentionally brought about, the Republicans must in some way feel grateful to him. First, he had united the Republicans. They were united in their purpose of depriving him of whatever help he could derive from the state of the political legislation of the country ; and this they effected by substituting the scrutin d’arrondissement for the scrutin de liste, and by enacting a law against multiple candidacies. They were united in their purpose of using against him, if possible, the penal laws of the country; and this was done by impeaching him before the Senate, and so effectually that he ran away from the country rather than face his judges. Second, he helped the Republican party in its effort to fight against corruption within the party by drawing to himself nearly all the corrupt elements that still clung to it, all those who were Republican for revenue only ; and this explains why his following in the House consisted of men originally belonging to various fractions of the Republican majority, and not simply of men of one political faith. Political opinions had nothing to do with their joining themselves to him.

One important question remains to be examined. Would not the existence of the Republic have been imperiled if the general and his monarchical allies had been a little more skillful than they were, and if the coalition had won a majority in the elections of 1889 ? The answer to that question lies in the character of that majority, three fourths of which would have consisted of followers of the monarchy, and one fourth only of personal followers of the general, owing their election to the most radical part of the electorate. It must be remembered that the Republicans still held the presidency and the Senate. Any move of the majority looking toward the reëstablishment of a monarchy would have been instantly followed by a presidential decree of dissolution of the House, approved by the Senate, — a perfectly constitutional device ; and after such a movement there was no possible hope of getting a second time for the coalition candidates the votes of the radical workingmen. Such a course was therefore not to be feared. What was more likely to follow a coalition success at the polls was the constitution of a socalled conservative cabinet, which would have tried to govern the country in a way more acceptal.de to the Catholic clergy, and thus unwillingly to give the Republic one of the few sanctions that it still lacks, the demonstration that under its sway there is room for conservative as well as for progressive statesmanship. The worst enemies such a cabinet would have had would have been its former allies, who hate nothing so bitterly as clericalism. How long would have been its existence, unless it had formed with the most moderate among the Republicans an alliance, the first condition of which would have been the giving up of all hopes of a monarchical restoration, and a sincere acceptance of the Republican Constitution ?

Once, once only, the general found himself in circumstances that gave a direct attack against the existing government some apparent chances of success. It was on the evening of January 27, 1889, when the news of his triumphant and unexpected success at the polls in Paris itself struck with dismay the weak cabinet that was presided over by M. Floquet. But his attack would have had to be sudden and revolutionary, or rather insurrectionary. Calling to arms his excited and enthusiastic followers, he could have marched on the ÉElysée and tried what no French general had ever tried. He did not dare to do this. He knew that no one in the army had followed him in his career of insubordination ; that against a mob such as he could drag at his heels not one company would refuse to fire; that if the government but tried to defend itself, the hour of his triumph was sure to be quickly followed by the punishment of a rebel soldier. The risk was too great.

Thus, little by little, the end came, leaving the Republic stronger than before, because its defenders had been tried and had not been found wanting. Now the Republican party is more united; it is purer than it has been for nearly ten years. The President is no longer the comparatively unknown man he was at the beginning of the Boulangist adventure: he has represented France with admirable dignity whenever it has been his duty so to do ; his name is as much respected as that of any ruler at the present time. The whole fabric of government has proved strong enough to withstand such a crisis as no monarchy that France has known since 1789 has been able to pass through. The Republican leaders are at last realizing the necessity of carrying out a policy ; a cabinet is no longer upset as soon as it fails completely to satisfy a small body of its former supporters. The monarchical parties no longer believe in monarchy. The chief pretender showed them the way when he struck an alliance with the man who had sent his own uncle into exile. One after another, the most moderate of monarchical papers come out advising all true conservatives to accept as definitive the Republican form of government; and even in the House signs are not wanting of the final breaking up of the monarchical parties. So strong does the Republic now appear that no one but a man of extraordinary genius would be powerful enough to endanger its existence, while no one would think of assailing it hut an egregious fool.

Adolphe Cohn.