FRANCE was putting on a brave face when MacMahon went out, and Grévy came in. In 1878, to show that she had not been crushed by Sedan and the Commune, she invited the world again to a magnificent International Exhibition at Paris, a testimony to all of the recovery of her wealth, of the soundness of her social and economic life, and the vitality of her artistic genius. But for all this show of courage, the country did not possess a merry heart. The blow from Prussia had cut the ground from under her feet internationally. French diplomats were no longer taken at their former value. Their country could not be trusted to back them up with effective deeds if they indulged in bold words. The eyes of the Continent were not fixed now upon Paris, but upon Berlin. Bismarck the Destroyer was exercising a power over Europe possessed by no French ruler since Napoleon III. German learning, German science, German industrial methods, German ideas and dogmas, from destructive theology to destructive socialism, seemed dictating the movements of the world. France was regarded to have fallen from her high estate largely because she had deserved her calamity. The numerous changes in her Constitution were looked upon as proof positive that her people were hopelessly frivolous and volatile – "a nation of ballet-masters and hair-dressers," as was once ungallantly thrown at them, or (to quote a geography often studied in America) "the French are a gay people very fond of dancing and of light wines."
"Gay" the France of 1871 and onward certainly was not. The whole public tone was changed to a sterner, soberer cast. There were long, moments of painful introspection, followed not infrequently by other moments of seeming despair. Writing under the shadow of the great defeat, this is the way a keenminded and intelligent woman wrote of her country's crisis and future: "Wounded, sick, humbled, borne on a raft in the midst of the tempest, the nation often asked herself what hardships were yet awaiting her. The course remains obscure, and the nearest objects even uncertain and veiled. [But] France has not lost, and will not lose her courage. She is laboring: she is hoping: and while endeavoring to find her proper path, she reckons upon the day when revolutions will be at an end, and when liberty with order will forever crown the long and painful efforts of her most faithful servants, of every name and every period."
In the thirty years following the retirement of MacMahon, France was to pull herself together and to lift up her head. Certain external circumstances were to favor this process of recovery. In the first place, Bismarck was to continue in power at Berlin down to 1890, and the Iron Chancellor, with all his sins, never ceased to realize that his new creation, the German Empire, needed genuine peace for internal consolidation; and although he from time to time snarled and threatened his neighbors across the Vosges, he never actually put his hand on his sword. Furthermore, about the time that Bismarck gave way to his more truculent young master, William II, France was to have the good fortune to make an alliance with Russia, an agreement which insured the Third Republic against being dragged into a new war with Germany at a hopeless military disadvantage. Again, between 1879 and 1900, although the relations between France and Britain were often deplorably uncordial, and even presented very disagreeable "incidents," nothing really happened to produce a great crisis with the "hereditary enemy." The result was that these were years of peace, and a time likewise in which it was relatively easy for the foreign minister of the Third Republic to preserve peace with honor. This absence of extreme international tension, of course, made the problem of internal rehabilitation very much easier. What, nevertheless, really was saving the day were the quiet, prosaic virtues of the great majority of the French people. The mass of the bourgeois and the peasants had no strong political convictions. They were ready now as formerly to support any government which maintained order and a decent amount of personal liberty. The Third Republic was able to accomplish this prime end, and that was originally the reason it was allowed to endure. But the rehabilitation of France was not due to any magic virtues in the simple organic "Laws of 1875." The new Constitution merely provided peaceful and static modernized conditions under which the great forces of the intelligence, sobriety, and collective morality of the French people could be brought into play unhindered. Between 1879 and 1914 there seem to be almost no great figures in French history; no sweeping constitutional reforms; no startling events which illustrate the genius of a nation. Some of the episodes are, indeed, very interesting, but their main interest lies in the fact that they did not subvert the nation. Then, in 1914, after this long, prosaic story of the Third Republic, the curtain again rises on a world crisis, and behold! friend and foe alike recognize it – France is herself again.
During the earlier part of this time, in fact down to the end of the Dreyfus crisis about 1899, the real political issue, however disguised, was always around one point, – the right of the Third Republic to exist. The Monarchists were very far from surrendering the game when MacMahon handed in his resignation. They confidently expected the Republicans to make such blunders as would disgust the nation. To that end they persistently egged on the extreme radical and demagogic factions, well understanding that a second Commune would be the veritable herald for the coronation ceremonies of a king. The Monarchists never came really near to controlling a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, but they were repeatedly in sufficient strength to combine with dissident Republican factions to upset ministries, and in the later eighties their intrigues almost seemed close to success. This was when they rallied behind an adventurer, Boulanger, whose attempt to establish a dictatorship in the style of Louis Napoleon must have been inevitably followed by a reaction to orderly Monarchy.
The Republicans thus all through this period had to face an inveterate and resourceful Opposition; not an Opposition of ordinary partisans who desired (as in America or England) to get the Government merely to enjoy the delights of office and in a legal manner to execute a platform of economic or legal "reforms"; but an Opposition that desired to overturn the whole Constitution, and which was quite willing, if orderly means to get its will failed, to discuss the chances of a coup d'état. And behind the Monarchists for long stood the clergy, still with an enormous influence over all the pious Catholics of France, and the great aristocratic families, stripped, indeed, of their official privileges, but not of their wealth and enormous social influence in all the nerve-centers of the nation. It is not surprising, therefore, that there were times when the Third Republic seemed fighting for its life. The Republicans were furthermore handicapped by the fact that they had for long only a few really high-class leaders and were suffering from extremely poor party discipline. Gambetta died on the very last day of 1882. He had not been a chieftain of perfect poise and judgment during the tumultuous early seventies; but as time advanced he had become steadier, saner, and more moderate. His love for France had been very genuine. There had been unpleasant incidents in his personal career, but none could deny that in statesmanlike ability, as well as in mere eloquence and political adroitness, he was head and shoulders above the small-fry parliamentarians who too often afflicted the counsels of the Third Republic. He had awakened too many bitter personal enemies to succeed as prime minister when he held that treacherous office for a short time preceding his death. None the less he was admittedly the heart and soul of the Third Republic. When he passed from the scene, France was consigned to an era of rule by decidedly small men; nor till the eve of 1914, when the renewal of the threat from Germany set the best blood of the land to tingling, did the leadership again fall largely to individuals who deserved their official eminence.
If the Republicans had been united as a single party, matters might have been better. As a matter of fact, they were split into an utterly perplexing congeries of "groups." Between the conservative deputies who represented the wealthy bourgeois manufacturers and the great landowners, and certain Parisian legislators whose constituents openly lamented the downfall of the Commune, the sole point of contact was usually the dislike of the idea of the enthronement of the Comte de Paris, or of Prince Napoleon, the Bonapartist pretender. There could be no easy coöperation between these factions. Most ministries were patchwork affairs, not groups of congenial colleagues, but temporary parcelings-out of the various portfolios to the chiefs of several different factions, in the vague hope that the premier of the new Cabinet could escape a vote of "no confidence" long enough to put through some desired piece of legislation. Between 1875 and 1900 there were only four years when there was not at least one change in the ministry; and by 1912 there had been forty-five ministries in only thirtyseven years. After 1900, however, conditions tended to stabilize, and the average term grew longer, although the so-called Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry (1899-1902) continued to bear the record with the unprecedented term of nearly three years.
Under these circumstances it is safe to say that one of the reasons the Third Republic endured was because first and last, after infinite groping and agony, the French people had reached the conclusion that a democratic republic was the government best fitted to their national genius. To trace the yearly annals of this Government is by no means necessary in a sketch like the present. Assuredly there is no call for outlining the fate of the forty-five and more ministries; nor, as explained, have the Presidents of the Republic been by any means such influential personages as to require that their separate terms be discussed like the "administrations" of their American compeers. To understand the perils and recovery of the democratic system in France it is sufficient to fasten upon a few decisive incidents. The most important of these are the Boulanger fiasco, the Dreyfus case, and then, just before the Great War, the final collision with the Clericals. By the time this last internal struggle was ended, the country was girding itself for the death-battle with the Teuton giant.
Whatever the sins or virtues of the new Government in the eighties, it did little to catch the public imagination, and the Parisian press, financed often from Royalist sources, exploited to the uttermost every official scandal and uncleanness which could be dragged to light. It was very wise, considering the military situation, to do nothing to provoke Germany or to attempt a desperate campaign for the lost provinces; but such a policy had nothing glorious about it. It weakened the Republic to be constantly taunted with ignominious submission; and it was very easy for irresponsible Royalist candidates to throw out dark hints of a programme of "revenge." On the other hand, there came a steady call from the more radical elements for a drastic revision of the Constitution, to render the Government less obnoxiously "moderate." There were also during the later eighties a number of concurring problems which served to weaken the Republican ministries: new encounters with the Clericals in the attempt to secularize education; very heavy expenses for colonial wars, especially in Cochin-China and Anam, which seemed to bring little profit or glory; large outlays on public works, followed by business depressions, increased taxes, and a dangerous increase in the public debt. All these factors aided to precipitate what was known as the Boulanger crisis of 1886-89.
George Ernest Boulanger (born in 1837) had neither Bourbon, OrManist, nor Napoleonic blood in his veins; he was not even a "nobleman"; yet he practically became a pretender to the supreme power, if not to the throne of France. His father was a Breton lawyer and head of an insurance company. The later "brave general" himself served with some credit as a major in the War of 1870. He subsequently rose to a high position in the army, without, however, mingling much in politics. He was extremely fond of showy uniforms covered with glittering decorations, and what with his handsome auburn hair and beard, his very regular features, and his fine military carriage, he made an almost ideal "man on horseback" to catch the popular eye.
In December, 1885, by one of the frequent reorganizations of the Cabinet, Boulanger was thrust into the ministry of war at the demand of the radicals, who declared that he was "the only general who was genuinely a Republican." How "Republican" he really was, the country presently had full opportunity to decide.
Boulanger soon showed himself anything but an ordinary routine administrator. The acts of the "Freycinet" Cabinet to which he belonged seemed extremely anti-Royalist. Indeed, in June, 1886, the war minister had a somewhat peculiar share in the legislation, which decreed the banishment of the Orléanist and other families pretending to the crown of France, on the ground that their presence in the country was a constant stimulus to revolutionary intrigues. The General was soon the object of loud applause from the less responsible section of the press. He openly flattered the popular desire for "revenge" on Germany, and let his partisans acclaim him as the future conqueror of Alsace-Lorraine. At the same time he was taking steps in the army to relax the severity of the discipline, to make life in the barracks pleasanter, and in general to increase his own popularity with the rank and file. At great public reviews this hero of the café songs – "General Revenge," as they styled him – was a striking figure with his tall, black horse, and his brilliant uniform. When a diplomatic incident arose with Germany, it was with difficulty that Boulanger's colleagues prevented him from ordering such movements of troops to the frontier as might have produced the most serious danger of a great war. Meantime around the war minister were gathering irresponsible radicals, who wished for any kind of a change, in order to overthrow the humdrum regime of the "bourgeois" Republicans; and with them were far more intelligent and sinister Royalists who saw in Boulanger the precise instrument they needed. He was given greater and greater praise and newspaper publicity. Such proceedings could not, however, be concealed. The moderate Republicans were not entire fools. In July, 1887, they forced a reorganization of the ministry, by which Boulanger lost his war portfolio.
The General could not be disciplined, however, for the popular applause he was receiving. He had to be named commander of an army corps, but was sent to one with its headquarters at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne. His influence was still potent in Paris. The Royalists took up his cause with zeal, and better still with money. At the national fête, July 14, 1887, their hired demonstrators made the capital ring with their yells, "Down with the Republic! Down with [ President] Grévy! Hurrah for Boulanger! It's Boulanger we need!" It was evident that the country was by no means through with "the brave general."
Then suddenly the Third Republic faced a serious scandal. A prominent general was charged with "procuring" for very unworthy persons decorations of the Legion of Honor and other like orders. An investigation revealed that Daniel Wilson, the sonin-law of President Grévy himself, had been hand in glove with the offender. Wilson was already known as a very shady stockjobber. There was no proof that the President had been conscious that family influences had been controlling him, but he was now becoming old and clearly had been open to improper suggestions. His official honor was tarnished. He ought to have resigned promptly. On the contrary, he obstinately clung to office, and when the Cabinet resigned he tried to find other ministers who would serve him. But no prominent French statesmen would accept their portfolios at his hands. The Chambers put public pressure upon him by adjourning to a fixed time "to receive the President's message." So Grévy with very ill grace resigned to France, but he was now eighty years old and manifestly had lost his grip on men and on measures. His downfall, of course, increased the general disfavor in which many held the Third Republic and it played directly into the hands of Boulanger.
During 1888 that officer was the most important figure in France. The National Assembly had elected as President to succeed Gravy, a Moderate Republican, Sadi Carnot (December, 1887, to June, 1894), a gentleman of great personal dignity and integrity, and the heir to the name and tradition of a distinguished Republican family, being a descendant of the famous Carnot, the Jacobin war minister. The new President did not possess sufficient official authority, however, to accomplish much in an increasingly serious situation. The ordinary supporters of the Government were split into petty factions and had lost all efficient leadership; the Cabinet was weak, and the Royalists, with their radical tools, seemed to possess every kind of opportunity.
Boulanger now began regular negotiations with the Orléanists and the Bonapartists. It was a grand game of bluff on every side; for what could the Comte de Paris ordinarily have expected of a leader who was all the time talking of a change in the Constitution whereby the "President of the Republic" would be elected by a general plebiscite (quite in Louis Napoleon's style) instead of indirectly by the Chambers? The truth was the Royalists had taken Boulanger's correct measure. They believed him useful to overthrow the Third Republic. They would then have no difficulty in overthrowing him.
The General promptly plunged into politics. The Government proceeded to punish him for alleged breaches in discipline and placed him on the retired list (March, 1888). He now could pose as a persecuted martyr. Behind him was a curious combination of all the enemies of the moderate democratic régime: "exalted patriots" howling for "revenge"; radicals who favored the extreme forms of socialism; black-gowned Clericals, and a whole retinue of titled ladies and fine gentlemen who passed for the upper noblesse. Boulanger never had constructive statesmanship enough to propose a real reform programme. His party was called the "Revisionists and Nationalists," who made their concrete issues on an attack on the Laws of 1875. "Dissolution! Revision! Constituent [Assembly]!" were their watchwords. The only thing certain was that a coup d'état was fairly in prospect.
Money, in most amazing quantities, began to be at the disposal of "General Revenge." Newspapers ever more zealously sounded his praises. Popular song-writers tuned their lyres in his behalf.
"Death to the Prussians, and hurrah for Boulanger!" went the refrain of one of the songs. Statesmen all over Europe were becoming anxious. Under such leadership France seemed headed straight into a war for the lost provinces. But the military situation was such that nothing then save a great defeat could be looked for. It was high time that affairs steadied or a catastrophe was certain. Yet for the nonce the Republican chiefs seemed helpless. Whenever there was a bye-election to fill a vacancy in the Chamber of Deputies, Boulanger stood forth as candidate. Never in French electioneering were funds used more freely than in his behalf. When the ordinary Orléanist sources of supply dried up, a great lady, the Duchesse d'Uzés, came forward with her private purse. She was convinced that the promotion of Boulanger was a direct step to bringing back the "king," an act most pleasing to Heaven. Therefore she advanced no less than 3,000,000 francs ($600,000). With such a stimulus, the object of her devotion won six elections within five months (March to August, 1888), resigning, of course, after each triumph, and presenting himself before a new constituency. His object was very plain. By a great number of such successes, won by heavy majorities, he could claim that he was in everything, except the bare letter of the law, the choice of the nation. He would therefore possess a "mandate" to call on the army to seize the presidential palace, and to proclaim a dictatorship.
Late in 1888 this adventurer had to a peculiar extent usurped the imaginations of the unpolitical. Thousands who knew nothing of his real basis of support looked on Boulanger as a man who would restore public life to cleanliness, prosperity, and dignity, and who was also capable, in some strange way, without hazard of an utterly disastrous war, of repairing the territorial loss of 1871. The noisy and well-financed "League of Patriots" did everything to inculcate such notions, while the "brave general" lived in a kind of state in an elegant mansion at Paris, surrounded by secretaries, courted by lesser soldiers of fortune like himself, and welcomed at many magnificent soirées and dinners by marquises and dukes of haughty pedigree.
However, the Republican factions were at last awakening to their danger. They dropped some of their personal feuds. The honest radicals who had earlier supported Boulanger began to repudiate him. The very light metal of the man, mentally and morally, made the sinister elements behind his candidacies all too obvious. Early in 1889 he obtained his last triumph. A seat in the Paris delegation became vacant. Boulanger's supporters spent at least 450,000 francs ($90,000) in his behalf, and won him the election. He received no less than 244,000 votes, against Jacques (Moderate Republican) with 162,000, and Boule (Socialist) only 17,000. This brought matters to an issue. Many of Boulanger's supporters now expected him to strike his blow: to call on the police and the garrison to follow him, march down to the Palais d'Elysée, and order Carnot "in the name of the nation" forthwith to depart.
But alas! "General Revenge," though capable of threatening to beard Germany, was not of the stuff of which stout revolutionists were made. He could not screw his courage to the sticking point. The Republican majority in the deputies struck back in a self-defense. The weak and procrastinating Floquet Ministry was thrown out, and its successor, the sterner Tirard-Constans Ministry, pricked the whole bubble by one bold stroke. Constans, the new Minister of the Interior, had got hold of evidence that Boulanger was not confining himself to lawful! means of agitation. He issued an order for the arrest of the General, to bring him before the Senate to be tried for offenses against the safety of the State. The Prefect of the Paris police hesitated to execute the order, and said he doubted the fidelity of his officers. "Very well," remarked Constans coolly, "resign your post. Here are pen, ink, and paper. We are prepared for this contingency." The Prefect promptly accepted his orders, but they were never to be executed. Some one of his assistants "leaked." Boulanger so far from defying the Government to do its worst, fled post-haste to Brussels, like an absconding cashier (March 31, 1889).
This ignominious exit ruined him absolutely in the eyes of most of his followers. Instead of a hero, they discovered only a cowardly charlatan. His usefulness to the Royalists vanished even more rapidly. They promptly stopped throwing good money after bad. The Belgian Government did not enjoy having the responsibility of harboring so dangerous an agitator thus close to France. It induced Boulanger to withdraw to England. During his absence there the Senate tried him for conspiracy against the nation, and found him guilty 203 votes to 3. He was sentenced to transportation for life, but of course remained safe under the British flag.
The subsequent elections to the deputies completed the utter rout of Boulanger's followers. He presently withdrew to the island of Jersey, and then, in September, 1891, he committed suicide in Brussels at the grave of a woman who had been his mistress, and for whose sake he had divorced his wife. This was a sufficiently tragic end for an impostor who had almost persuaded the majority of Frenchmen that he was a wise statesman and a mighty general, who could avenge 1871 and give them peace, prosperity, and glory.
The collapse of Boulanger was a very heavy blow for the Royaalists and Clericals. Once more things had looked very hopeful. Once more they had utterly lost. After 1889 there was much less danger than before of a sudden overthrow of the Republic. The question of the main forms of government was less debated, and the party groups split along problems of economic betterment (tariff, income tax, etc.), and the various programmes of the different stripes of Socialists who were coming to the front. Then, toward the close of the century, the Republic was veritably put on the rack by the famous "Dreyfus Affair" which was only dismissed from public contentions a few years before the outbreak of the Great War.
Stated in the abstract the "Affair," although highly distressing to its principals, contained nothing that should convulse a great nation. A young officer of Jewish extraction is accused of selling confidential military documents to a "foreign power." He is condemned, and banished to a convict camp. Presently the evidence against him is discovered to be utterly spurious. The case is reopened. He is first pardoned, then openly vindicated and reinstated in his profession. The true criminals are chased into ignominous exile, or are disgraced and punished in France. What is there here to make really significant political history? And yet the "Dreyfus Affair" began to trouble France in 1894; it usurped the first place in public discussions from 1898 down through 1900 and it was not finally disposed of till 1906. While it was at its height, the settlement of the "Affair" veritably threatened to upset the Third Republic, and by a turn of fortune's wheel the final issue was to discredit still further the Monarchists and probably to hasten the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in France.
The reason for this is, as an American writer has properly put it, that in France "incidents are idealized. To the Republicans, the Dreyfus conviction did not mean the chance of miscarriage of justice in the case of a young Jewish officer. It meant that a coalition of reactionaries and Clericals, always the enemies of the Republic, and strong in the army, with the anti-Semites were trying to ride roughshod over the rights of the people, and therefore over the Republic itself. That thought girded them to endure con. tinuous strife and sacrifice, until the wrong had been righted, and 'the principle' of the thing established."
The "Dreyfus Affair" presents so many highly interesting incidents, is so rich in personal factors, is so engrossing when considered merely as a study of mass psychology and of human nature in general, that it is best to stick very closely to bald details lest it receive a wholly disproportionate amount of space.
In 1894 President Sadi Carnot, after an extremely creditable tenure of office, had been killed by an anarchist, and M. Casimir- Périer was in the presidential palace, when, late in the year, it became known that a certain Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, and a member of the general staff of the army, had been arrested, accused of selling military secrets to Germany. The trial, involving as it did highly confidential matters, was conducted before a secret court martial. The main evidence was a document (the famous bordereau) alleged to have been in Dreyfus's handwriting. Presently it was announced that the defendant had been condemned. There was, of course, general indignation that venal traitors could be found in the very nerve-center of the army. Few had the slightest doubts as to the justice of the verdict. On January 5, 1895, Dreyfus was publicly degraded from his rank, with every detail of ignominy, and sentenced to life imprisonment in Devil's Island in French Guiana (South America). The matter then dropped from public attention, after some complaint from the Socialists that for a lesser crime a common soldier would have been executed, while now a wealthy officer escaped with his life.
Casimir-Périer did not remain in office to wrestle with the problems presently created by the reopening of the "Affair." He had got on very poorly with his Cabinet, and felt aggrieved at the way certain deputies had continually reviled him in the Chamber. To very general surprise, on January 15, 1895, he resigned the presidency (in which he was pretty clearly a misfit), and two days later the National Assembly elected Félix Faure, "a well-meaning man, but full of vanity, and naïvely delighted with his own rise in the world from a humble position to that of chief magistrate." Without proving decidedly incapable, it is fair to say that Faure did not handle the Dreyfus case in a very fortunate manner.What now followed is best explained by a series of brief, concrete statements:1. France as well as other European countries had been vexed for the preceding decade by the "anti-Semitic movement," involving a general attack upon the Jews and their influence. This propaganda in France seems to have had heavy backing from the Clericals in an attempt to create prejudice against the Republic because the latter was supported by various prominent French Jews. In 1892 the national scandal over the bankruptcy of the Panama Canal Company – an event that shook the Cabinets and Chambers if not the actual Government – was intensified by the charge that great Jewish financiers had been exploiting the helpless Christian stockholders. Drumont, an irresponsible journalist, founded a newspaper "Free Speech" (La Libre Parole) which gained great popularity from its continuous attacks on all things Hebraic. In the hot struggle which followed, Dreyfus's guilt was constantly affirmed by many Frenchmen merely because he was a Jew; and the attempt to defend him was represented as a deliberate attack on Christianity.2. After Dreyfus had disappeared in exile his wealthy family still struggled to prove his innocence. They would not have succeeded had not, in 1896, a Colonel Picquart, a fearless and intelligent soldier permitted to inspect military secrets, become convinced that the famousbordereau was not by Dreyfus, but by a notorious and dissolute brother officer, Major Esterhazy. When, however, Picquart communicated his doubts to higher officers, he was at once told that the evidence was conclusive and was ordered away to Tunis. He was replaced in the Intelligence Department by a certain Colonel Henry. 3. By this time the dissensions among the experts had leaked out. Dreyfus found defenders in civil life, especially Senator Scheurer-Kestner, a fairly prominent politician. Many unsettling facts in the case were brought to light. A considerable number of influential literary men began to take up the claim for "revision." On the other hand, a new party, the "Nationalist," came forward to make the conviction of Dreyfus a point of honor. It was soon evident that this group was largely composed of Monarchists, Clericals, and various types of reactionaries, who were trading on the popularity of the military, and trying to get the Republicans into the unhappy position of "attacking the honor of the army." The Republicans naturally did not care to fall into this trap. In 1897 Prime Minister Méline declared publicly that the case was closed and there could be no new trial. It was known that President Faure agreed with him.4. Esterházy was now given the form of a court martial, and was triumphantly acquitted, being congratulated on the result by some of the highest dignitaries in the army. Picquart in turn was arrested and imprisoned on charge of "indiscipline." The Clericals, the anti-Semites, and the corrupt gang which as soon developed held high places in the army were, of course, delighted. As was well said, the "Nationalist" party was made up of the alliance of "the sword and the holy water sprinkler."5. The Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution condemning the friends of Dreyfus for their "odious campaign," which was distracting the country and casting discredit upon the army, but now to the rescue flew Émile Zola, one of the most prominent novelists of France. On January 13, 1898, he fired into L'Aurore, a widely read newspaper, his memorable public letter "I accuse," in which he charged various prominent army officers by name with having been in a conspiracy to ruin Dreyfus. His object was a prosecution for libel and a judicial inquiry into the whole affair. The chiefs of the army put forth all their power. Zola was condemned. The verdict was quashed on a technicality. He was tried and condemned a second time. Zola then, for reasons of legal strategy, not cowardice, fled to England. He had amply achieved his intention of turning a blazing light upon the whole history of the original trial of Dreyfus.6. In a Cabinet reorganization, the new Minister of War was Godefroy Cavaignac. He asserted officially that Dreyfus was guilty, because of other documents, in addition to the bordereau, which proved the case beyond the least doubt. To the minister's utter demoralization, however, Colonel Henry, of the Intelligence Department, suddenly committed suicide, after leaving a confession that he had forged the chief of these supplementary documents "in the interest of the country." Almost simultaneously Esterházy was found to have fled to England, where he cheerfully confessed to have been the author of the famous bordereau.7. An increasing fraction of Frenchmen were now, of course, convinced that Dreyfus was innocent. The Socialists and all the other radical parties, which were naturally anti-Clerical and anti- Monarchist, began to shift their position. At this juncture President Faure suddenly died, it is alleged, of apoplexy (Feburary 16, 1899). In his place was elected Émile Loubet, a leader of moderate views and common sense, who found it much easier to take a just attitude toward Dreyfus than Faure could have done.8. The question of the "revision" of the sentence had now passed into the hands of the Court of Cassation, the highest court of France. With admirable professional firmness, the judges, unmoved by passion and threatenings, proceeded to a. careful technical examination, and at length decreed that the whole of the former proceedings were void, and that Dreyfus should be brought back from his exile, and given a new trial.9. Dreyfus was tried a second time at Rennes in Brittany before a court martial sitting from August 7 to September 9, 1899. The seven judges were all military men who doubtless looked upon the prisoner as at least the instrument of bringing great contempt upon the honor of the army, and they were also obviously anxious to save the reputations of the high officers who had committed themselves to the defendant's guilt as an article of faith.
Popular passions rose to the boiling point. An attempt was made to assassinate Dreyfus's chief advocate. Much evidence favorable to the defendant was excluded; much hearsay assertion was admitted for the prosecution. The verdict was "guilty," five votes to two, but "with extenuating circumstances" and with only ten years' imprisonment. This was, of course, an absurd decision. If Dreyfus was really guilty, he deserved little short of death, for there could be no "extenuating circumstances" in a case of the kind.
10. "Nationalists" and Dreyfusards were alike angry at the verdict, but by this time the great majority of Frenchmen outside of narrow military circles were convinced that there had been a gross miscarriage of justice. The Ministry recommended to President Loubet that he pardon Dreyfus and he did so. This gave back to the unhappy captain his liberty, but not his good name. Yet the "Nationalists" raged that Loubet had sold himself and the honor of France to "the gold of the Jews." At length, however, matters quieted. In 1900 an act of amnesty for the entire "Affair" was passed. France became involved in other matters and the case ceased to be acute.11. The victim and his family naturally, however, labored for a complete vindication. The question of the validity of the second verdict was brought before the Court of Cassation. This time the feet of justice were deliberately slow, if only to let passions cool still more. At last in 1906 the high court set aside the second verdict as it had the first. Esterházy was branded as the real criminal. Dreyfus was restored to the army and given the rank of major – due to him if he had not been disgraced. Picquart, expelled from the service in 1898 for having stood up for truth and righteousness, was reinstated now as brigadier-general; a little later he became a major-general and was appointed Minister of War in the new Clemenceau Cabinet. Zola had died before this consummation of justice. His remains were buried in the Pantheon, the Westminster Abbey of France. As for the officers who had conspired against Dreyfus, they were cashiered from the army, or only remained in it professionally broken and disgraced. So the famous "Affair" ended, and "like stories in popular novels all the heroes were rewarded and all the villains were punished."
It is impossible, even after going over the great mass of the evidence, to discover quite why so many high officers in the army committed themselves implicitly to the theory of the guilt of Dreyfus, even if they disliked him personally and disliked Jews in general. Esterházy surely seemed marked from the outset as the probable culprit. While there is no earthly doubt of the essential facts in the case, there may be certain personal items that can never be cleared up. Beyond a peradventure many honorable soldiers felt that the good name of the army was being impugned before the world, and that for the sake of preserving that name spotless it were better for one miserable captain to linger on Devil's Island than for the honor of the bulwark of France to be smirched by judicial proceedings. The trial, however, rendered a high service apart from its vindication of the innocent. It betrayed a carelessness, rottenness, and in some cases a sheer corruptibility among a type of French officers which had to be weeded out unless the nation were to advance to a new Sedan. To the credit of the Third Republic this necessary work was bravely and unsparingly done. The personnel of the officers' corps was purified and invigorated; a higher standard of professional duty was set; and when the crisis of 1914 came, the handling of the army was in the hands of a vastly cleaner and abler set of men than those who had prostituted justice in 1894, and perjured themselves defending injustice in 1898-99. Had there been no Dreyfus case there might have been no victory of the Marne.
The collapse of this attempt to sustain iniquity gave the last blow to the Monarchists. It was manifest that Orléanist gold had stimulated the "Nationalist" agitation. How outrageous and artificial was the anti-Semitic agitation is proved by the fact that wealthy Jewish speculators seem to have advanced money to the Royalists to finance anti-Semitic papers – doubtless expecting very good interest when the "king" should have come to his own. After 1900 it can hardly be said that there were enough avowed Royalists left in France to make them an appreciable danger to the Republic.
Even more calamitous, however, did the results of the Dreyfus case prove to the Clericals. They had enmeshed themselves completely with "the honor of the army," and now they had their reward. French Clericalism had become so hopelessly political that the attempts of Pope Leo XIII, an extremely sagacious pontiff, to disentangle it from its alliance with the Monarchists, met with only indifferent success. In 1892 he had issued an encyclical cautioning French Catholics that the Church was not committed to any special form of government, and that as good citizens they should loyally work with the Third Republic. Only a part of the Clericals accepted this admonition with apparent good faith; the majority seem to have rejected it just so far as they could and not openly defy their Holy Father. Thus the French Catholic Church drifted on to the opening years of the twentieth century with the words "Clerical" and "Royalist" almost if not quite synonyms in the popular speech. Then the long delayed tempest burst on the Churchmen.
These words are written too soon after the disestablishment of the French Catholic Church to make it possible to speak with complete historical retrospect and responsibility. Probably most Americans will praise or blame what was done in France in 1901 to 1907 according as they are themselves Protestants or Catholics, although very many of the latter will admit with cheerfulness that it was desirable to alter a situation in which the Church was fixed under the secular control of a government whereof a great many of the political leaders were freethinkers, not to mention atheistical Socialists, or such as were Protestants or Jews.
The working alliance between the Government of France and the Papacy which had lasted from the eighth century in the days of Pepin was now about to be violently sundered; and the feelings of the aggrieved parties had been by no means completely restored at the time of the outbreak of the Great War. The precise quarrel between the Third Republic and the Vatican turned, however, on so many technical questions, and on matters understandable only by Frenchmen, that it is highly difficult to indulge in any details and to preserve lucidity. It is better both for clearness and also for impartiality once more to stick to the barest possible statements of fact.
The original issue arose over questions largely concerned with education. Despite certain hostile moves by the Republicans, the control of the teaching of French youth had remained largely in the hands of various ecclesiastical bodies which were charged with inculcating very undemocratic, not to say pro-monarchical, principles, into the minds of their pupils. Besides, the Catholic membership in religious orders and Congregations had been increasing vastly in numbers despite the fact that the law made the authorization and augmentation of some of them, to say the least, very hard. It was claimed that a great fraction of the national wealth (over a billion francs in 1900) had been swept under the "dead hand" (mortmain) of these orders; the nuns had risen to over 75,000, the monks to over 190,000, and they constituted the veritable standing army of "a rival power" to the State. In 1900, Waldeck-Rousseau, a prime minister of more than ordinary ability and with a firm hold upon the Chambers, declared that this situation constituted a menace to the safety of the Republic, and various doings of the monastic orders in the Dreyfus case certainly gave color to the charge. In 1901 he carried, therefore, the somewhat famous "Law of Associations" which provided that all Church "Congregations" should be "authorized"; that all not then "authorized" (only a limited number) should apply to the Chambers for authorization; that those who did not apply or had their requests refused should forthwith be dissolved and their property be seized by the Government for charitable purposes.
In 1902, Waldeck-Rousseau was succeeded by Combes, an extremely bitter foe of the Church. Combes had been a student for the priesthood in his youth, then had become utterly estranged from the Catholics. The Clericals, of course, denounced him as an old-time pagan persecutor. "Clericalism," he declared, "is in fact to be found at the bottom of every agitation and every intrigue [in France] during the last five and thirty years!" The "Law of Associations" handled by such a minister soon proved a terrible weapon against the monks. Very few orders were permitted to continue. Over five hundred teaching, praying, and "commercial" orders were put out of existence. In 1904 another blow was struck by a law requiring all teaching by religious orders to cease within ten years, including even that by "authorized" bodies. The Clericals, of course, cried aloud, denounced this act as sheer tyranny, and one intended to make the next generation of Frenchmen into blaspheming atheists. Combes, however, strode on his way and apparently a large majority of the Chambers supported him.
Nevertheless he had let the Concordat of 1801 alone. The absurd situation still existed that the State (the Third Republic) appointed the bishops; and though the bishops appointed the priests, it was only with the consent of the Government. In return for this control the State paid the salaries of the French clergy. The situation was an anomalous, not to say outrageous one, and probably the churchmen themselves would have been glad to have had it ended, provided they could have brought themselves to accept the Republic as a fixture, and dismissed all dreams of seeing a pious "king" proceed once more in state to Reims to be crowned with the crown of St. Louis. The Republicans had long chafed at the situation. They had hesitated to force the issue, well understanding the power of the enemy, but the Vatican presently gave them intense provocation.
In 1903 died Pope Leo XIII, one of the most astute pontiffs who ever sat on the throne of St. Peter. His successor, Pius X (1903-14), was a man of great saintliness and nobility of character, but of by no means the same degree of worldly wisdom. He promptly took a very stiff attitude toward proceedings in France, and in 1904 precipitated a crisis when President Loubet visited Rome to exchange civilities with the King of Italy. Pius, in a formal diplomatic letter, denounced the action of the President in visiting a "usurper" in this city where the Pope was a "prisoner," as a deliberate insult to the Vatican.
The French Government had now a good technical excuse for becoming very angry. It made counter-complaints that the Pope was interfering with the French bishops in a way forbidden by the Concordat. Already since 1903 a committee of the Chamber had been working on a bill aimed to separate Church and State. Diplomatic relations between the Republic and the Vatican were promptly severed (July 30, 1904), and on December 9, 1905, the law was actually passed dissolving the Concordat, suppressing the salaries paid by the Government to the clergy, and making the Third Republic wash its hands of any responsibility for the upkeep of religion. The Catholic Church was left perfectly free to shift for itself. Aged clergymen were to be pensioned. The rest were (presently at least) to be maintained solely by the contributions of the faithful.
All this represented what was, on the whole, a skillful and honest attempt to dissolve relations with the Church without making the Republic turn persecutor. The main friction came over the church buildings, cathedrals, chapels, etc., which were in theory the property of the community. These were not to be given outright to the Church, but were to be held by "Cultural Associations" to be organized in each city or town by the pious Catholics who could arrange for the maintenance of religious worship. There were other, somewhat elaborate, provisions to safeguard the handling of the great endowments still left to the Church. The measure, in short, was a studiously moderate one, and reflected high credit on M. Briand, who had the main share in its drafting and enactment.
The run of opinion among the French Catholics was undoubtedly in favor of making the best of this law, and organizing the "Cultural Associations" to work with the Government; but Pius X soon created an almost intolerable situation by issuing a formal encyclical (1906) denouncing the separation of Church and State as "a very pernicious error," and ordering all Catholic laymen to have nothing to do with forming Cultural Associations. Possibly the Pontiff's expectation was to goad the Republicans into some acts of brutal persecution which would supply the Clericals with the advertising and glories of martyrdoms, and so to produce the inevitable reaction in favor of the Church. This pitfall the succeeding Clemenceau Ministry skillfully avoided. A law was passed in 1907 allowing the clergy to continue to use the church buildings under arrangements to be made in each place between the local priests and the prefects or mayors. It was, of course, impossible for the Catholic authorities to order the priests to cease to say mass in an ancient and sacred building, merely because the Church had no longer a technical, legal ownership of the same, if the services were not in the least obstructed. There was accordingly no serious interruption in the regular religious worship in France – an act of persecution into which the extreme Clericals had possibly hoped that the Government would blunder.
In the nine years following the disestablishment of the French Church there was, of course, much friction and heartburning. The attitude of Pope Pius X continued to be that of outraged astonishment, but on the whole, passions had considerably cooled. Despite violent outcry, the Government had gone ahead and taken over many ecclesiastical buildings (not churches), such as bishop's palaces, rectories, theological schools, etc., for secular uses. The Minister of Labor had located his offices in the onetime residence of the Archbishop of Paris. On the other hand, it was claimed that the exemption from governmental interference was producing a genuine return of piety and spirituality among the Catholics of France. The religious question was, however, still a sullen one when in 1914, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Freethinker, and Atheist rallied as one man against the Teutonic peril.
The foregoing has been a mere tracing of a few of the crises and problems that thrust themselves upon the Third Republic. Loubet had occupied the presidential chair very creditably from 1899 to 1906. One of the last acts in his administration had been the passage of a law (1905) reducing the period of army service from three to two years. This measure, it proved, was unwise, and was too great a concession to the anti-militarists, but it at least testified to the peace-loving character of Frenchmen in the first decade of the twentieth century. Loubet was succeeded by Armand Fallières (1906 to 1913), "an easy-going, good-natured, and well-meaning but second-rate statesman," who, however, was favored by never being obliged to face a crisis calling for high-grade executive ability.
During his administration, besides, of course, the aftermath of the religious question, there was the run of labor agitation, so- cial reform legislation, industrial problems, railway strikes (notably in 1910), etc., which France shared in about average measure with other great civilized states. Socialism and its peculiar manifestation of "syndicalism" were showing such power as to cause anxiety to the bourgeoisie; and there were inevitably the usual economic, budgetary, and taxation matters to provide exciting debates in the Chambers. But from 1905 onwards the thoughts of all citizens were no longer being concentrated so exclusively upon the old questions of Republicans and Royalists, Clericals and Radicals. The contending factions, so implacably hostile, it would seem, were being reminded ever more significantly that they were first of all things Frenchmen. A new generation was, indeed growing up, men to whom 1870 was a childhood recollection, or, more often, an anecdote from their fathers; nevertheless, their eyes were again being turned toward the Rhinelands, not in vengeful ambitions to recover the lost provinces, though the memory thereof could not die, but lest some new and absolutely crippling stroke be aimed at the beloved patrie. In 1913, after a violent discussion throughout the nation and in the Chambers, the army law was again altered, restoring three years of military service. The Socialists and other radicals protested with fury, but the best intelligence of France consented to the sacrifice, for the warnings from the eastern frontier were too terrible to be disregarded.
In that same year President Fallières's term expired, and in his place the National Assembly chose Raymond Poincaré, a moderate Republican of approved worth as a statesman. He had been in the Palais d'Élysée less than eighteen months, when there broke over France a storm which made every earlier danger surmounted by the Third Republic appear simply as a tale that is told. The Pan-German was at the gates.
THE EXTENSION OF THE COLONIAL EMPIRE OF FRANCE UNDER THE THIRD REPUBLIC
IT is impossible to form a complete estimate of the achievements of modern France without taking into account the success of the Third Republic in establishing a magnificent colonial empire, embracing a large fraction of Central Africa, and its second similar success on a very ample if smaller scale in Cochin-China.
For obvious reasons, less is known by Americans of this great colonial achievement than of the performance of the British colonizers; but the French conquerors and explorers have earned the entire right to have their results compared honorably with those of their English-speaking contemporaries. The eve of the Great War found France uncontestably the second colonial power in the world.
The romance, heroism, and the inevitably great physical sacrifices attending these conquests we cannot, of course, discuss, but it has seemed useful to give American readers even a bald and matter-of-fact statement of the events which have made the Tricolor to fly over so large a fraction of the tropical world.
French colonies must be divided into two classes, those which are valuable only for their resources, and those which are suitable fields for colonization. The former type are those where the climate prevents native Frenchmen from settling and building homes for themselves. Foreigners can usually live in most tropical countries if their residence can be broken by periodic furloughs, spent in cooler and drier climates. Such lands are valuable as colonies, however, because of their natural resources, their raw products, and their markets. This is entirely true of such lands as Congo, the Soudan, Indo-China, and, in large part, Madagascar.
Colonies which are suitable for colonization are those where climatic and living conditions most nearly approach those in France, so that Frenchmen can settle there with their families and have no great longing to return to their native soil; such lands, for instance, as Algeria and Tunis. By a rather singular piece of good fortune these are the nearest of French possessions. Algiers is only twenty-four hours' steaming from Marseilles. No other European state has such an excellent colonial field so near at hand. Algeria and Tunis are like prolongations of the French homeland where the French race may be renewed. They are a "New France" in the making, by far the most precious of all the colonies.
The conquest of Algeria was completed under the Third Republic by the establishment of a French protectorate over Tunis (1881-83) and Morocco (1911).
Tunis was governed by a ruler, called a " bey," who was nominally a vassal of Turkey. Once established in Algeria, France felt that her position in that province could never be rendered secure until she had likewise extended her influence to Tunis. The first step was to get the friendship of the Bey, and in order to win his confidence several loans were adroitly arranged for him at Paris. French policy was dictated largely from the point of view of Algerian safety, which was constantly being menaced by border raids from Tunis.
There was another reason, however, which was presently involved: from the beginning of 1870 the Italians, who had then scarcely achieved their own national unity, were casting longing eyes on Tunis, itself an old Roman colony and the nearest neighbor of Sicily. The possession of Tunis would have rendered Italy almost the master of the Mediterranean, thanks to the narrowness of the passage between Sicily and North Africa. Their policy was so active, that in 1881 Jules Ferry, President of the French Council, felt that it was urgent that France should take measures to prevent "the key to the French Empire" (as he called Tunis) from falling into the hands of a foreign power. The incessant plundering raids (there were more than two thousand forays in ten years!) committed on the Algerian frontier by the unruly Kroumirs, Tunisian highlanders, which the Bey admitted he was quite helpless to control, served as a good excuse for the entrance of a French army into Tunis (April, 1881). Almost simultaneously a military force was dispatched from Toulon which disembarked at Bizerta, marched to Tunis, and on May 12, 1881, forced the Bey to sign a treaty in the palace of Bardo which placed him under French protection. By the terms of this treaty he promised in particular to carry on no negotiations with foreigners except through the mediation of the French "Resident" who became virtually the Bey's Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Tunis appeared so thoroughly subjugated that in a short time the French troops were recalled. This was the signal for a general uprising, the center of which was at Kairouan, one of the sacred cities of the Moslems. The insurrection was promptly suppressed. While a naval squadron bombarded and seized Sfax, 35,000 troops, who had advanced from three different directions, surrounded Kairouan and occupied that point without so much as a shot having been fired (September 25, 1881). The French Government, however, had the sagacity not to convert the protectorate into downright annexation. France was content to hold Bizerta where a large naval base had been built. The powers of the Resident were, however, increased. He now became the head of the reorganized administration in Tunis which was nevertheless otherwise composed entirely of natives.
During the early years of the twentieth century, in spite of the difficulties interposed by Germany (1905-11), France succeeded in completing her occupation of North Africa and insured the complete security of her Algerian Empire by establishing a protectorate over Morocco.
How much France has accomplished in Algeria in three quarters of a century and in Tunis in less than thirty years can readily be seen from the following statistics: In 1881 there were only a few hundred Frenchmen in Tunis; in 1906 there were 35,000 in Tunis alone. In 1881 there were 600 kilometers (about 375 miles) of roadway, 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) of railways, and one mediocre harbor for large vessels; to-day there are 2500 kilometers (about 1560 miles) of roads, 1900 kilometers (1190 miles) of railroads, and four modern ports. The finances have been so well administered that all the public works have been paid for without the creation of new imposts, and the receipts have in fact exceeded the expenditures. The annual commerce on the first date amounted to only 38,000,000 francs (about $7,600,000); it has increased fivefold, and now amounts to more than 200,000,000 francs (about $40,000,000) per annum.
As for Algeria, the results are even more striking. There were in the vicinity of 2,000,000 inhabitants in the old Moorish State in 1830, with practically no Europeans. There were only a few miles of roads, and a trade which amounted to some 8,000,000 francs ($1,600,000) a year. In 1908 the population exceeded 5,000,000 inhabitants, of whom no less than 514,000 were Frenchmen (either native-born or naturalized). Algiers is one of the leading ports in the Mediterranean and is the second most important of French harbors. Fourteen thousand kilometers (8750 miles) of roads and 3700 kilometers of railways (2315 miles) have been constructed, while the commerce (nearly a half of which consists of Algerian agricultural products) exceeds one billion of francs ($200,000- 000). It is thirty years ago, when these results were far from having been attained, that a German visitor wrote: "Whoever has witnessed the tremendous amount of labor which France has expended on Algeria, feels only contempt for those who, even in the presence of all these remarka- ble achievements, still dare to allege that the French are not good colonizers."
In West Africa, France has built up a great empire which very probably in the near future (as a result of the cultivation of cotton), will become the supply station for one of the most important of French industries; hence one of the most valuable assets of French economic power. According to statistics, the West African commerce amounts to more than 200,000,000 francs ($40,000,000) per annum, and 1400 kilometers (about 875 miles) of railway are employed in transporting raw materials. This empire includes (along the Atlantic coast) Senegal, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Dahomey; while in the interior are the vast regions drained by the mighty Niger. This whole rich empire, which is seven or eight times as large as France itself, is ordinarily called the "French Soudan." Its twelve or thirteen million inhabitants are, of course, mainly negroes (the word Soudansignifies the "black country"), but they are superior to the run of Equatorial Africans. Taken as a class they are a hardy, intelligent, industrious, and courageous people. With the exception of the natives of Dahomey, who have retained their old fetish worship, they have all been converted to a type of Mohammedanism. They are divided into numerous tribes, each of which has its own rudimentary political organization. As a rule they live in groups, either in open villages built of circular huts, or in fortified towns surrounded by thick mud walls.
The conquest of this enormous territory was begun under Napoleon III, about the year 1855, and continued intermittently for more than forty years, up to 1898. It was actively pressed, however, only after the establishment of the Third Republic, beginning particularly with 1880. From the very outset progress was made as much by the efforts of small exploring parties, each accompanied by a handful of soldiers, as by regular colonial expeditions. In fact there was never any necessity for a large military force. The largest expeditionary corps was that which subdued Dahomey, and it numbered only 3000 men. On the other hand, France made an abundant use of the native troops just as Dupleix had attempted in the eighteenth century in India, and as the Government was already doing in Algeria. These natives, battalions of Senegalese sharpshooters and companies of Soudanspahis, recruited from among those tribes which had been the longest subjugated, usually proved to be hardy warriors of unfailing loyalty and devotion.
The first step in the conquest was the occupation of the valley of the Senegal by Faidherbe, the future commander of the "Army of the North" in 1870, and the establishment of a post at Medine (1855), near the head of the river. This had scarcely been built, when it was attacked by Hadj-Omar, a Mohammedan adventurer who was pillaging and burning the country, and slaughtering all who dared to resist him. His ambition was to establish a large empire for himself between the Senegal and the Niger, and the ousting of the French seemed a means of realizing this ambition. Medine, however, which was defended by an heroic mulatto, Paul Holl, eight soldiers of the marine infantry, and forty Senegalese, resisted for more than three months the attacks of 15,000 natives until Faidherbe could come to the rescue of the brave garrison.
By 1880 France felt that her possession of Senegal was more or less secure. Her leaders were desirous, nevertheless, of reaching the Niger and of opening up to the outside world that great valley which was reputed to be so very rich in natural resources. Halfway up the course of the Niger the French met with the opposition of the son and successor of Hadj-Omar, Ahmadou; and a little later, near the head of the valley, with that of another bold adventurer, Samory, a slave-trader, who, wherever he roamed, always left behind him traces of devastation and bloodshed. Colonel Archinard soon put an end to the attacks of Ahmadou, and in 1890, Segou, the capital of that bloody despot, was captured. But against Samory, who had succeeded in making himself "King of the Niger," with an "empire" more than half the size of France, and who had collected a fighting force of 40,000 warriors, the struggle lasted for no less than sixteen years (1882-98). In the end, however, he was outwitted by a very daring attack and taken captive in the very heart of his own camp.
In the course of this long struggle France secured possession of Timbuctou (December 15, 1893), which lies at the head of the bend in the Niger – a town celebrated throughout Mohammedan Africa. It was at one time the commercial and religious center of East Africa, but it had now fallen into decay and retained only a part of its one-time glory and importance – and that remnant solely because it is the gateway from the Soudan into the wide Sahara, the point of departure for the line of caravans which through all the ages have ploughed across the sands headed for their destinations in the coastal states of North Africa.
In the south the King of Dahomey, Behanzin, notorious for his practice of human sacrifices, had attacked the French posts along the Guinea coast. As a result an expedition under the leadership of Colonel Dodds succeeded in subduing that tyrant-ridden and iniquitous kingdom, although only after some rather serious fighting (1893-94).
During this period a connection had also been made across the Sahara between the French possessions of North and those of West Africa. This act involved the occupation of the oases, a process which commenced in 1843 when the French took possession of Biskra. The task was achieved, in spite of the treacherous resistance of the Touaregs, a tribe of nomadic Berbers who at times assisted the caravans in their passage, then again fell upon them in the most ruthless fashion. A term was put to their depredations, when by expeditions sent out between January, 1900, and March, 1902, France succeeded in gaining In-Salah and the Oasis of Touat.
In the Congo region France has pursued her favorite policy of "peaceful penetration." Enormous territories, rich in natural resources, have been opened up to her on the right bank of the Congo and its affluent, the Oubangui, without any show of armed force or serious resistance having been encountered. This French possession of Equatorial Africa is due largely to treaties negotiated with native chiefs, especially to the skillful diplomacy and tact of a daring adventurer and explorer, Lieutenant Savorgnan de Brazza.
In the Congo it had been France's ambition from the start to extend her dominion as far north as Lake Tchad, and she succeeded in reaching the valley of the river Chari. When she attempted to descend that river, however, she was met again by another Mohammedan despot, Rabah, the leader of a band of brigands and a slave-dealer – the Samory, in short, of Central Africa, who also had created another vast "empire." He offered the French a lively resistance. Two small expeditions sent out by them were foully cut to pieces. But early in 1900 the power of Rabah was broken when three separate French forces, the first under Foureau and Lamy which crossed the Sahara from Algeria, the second under Joalland from Senegal, and the third under Gentil which had come up from the Congo, made a juncture on the shores of Lake Tchad (April, 1900).
Shortly before this event a convention had been signed between France and England (March 21, 1899) as a result of the "Fashoda affair." By this the spheres of influence of the two countries in the Soudan were delimited. France renounced all claim to the Eastern Soudan and abandoned those posts which she had established on the affluents of the Nile. On the other hand, England granted her full liberty of action in the Central Soudan, particularly in those regions situated to the north and east of Lake Tchad.
The juncture of the three military expeditions on the shores of Lake Tchad was, from a political point of view, an act of extreme importance. The successful march across the hinterland from each of France's large African possessions transformed her theoreticalclaim to this territory, which had already been conceded by Great Britain and Germany, to a status of actual ownership. Since this barrier had been broken down, there was no longer anything to prevent France from starting work on the Trans-Sahara Railroad, the basis for which already existed in Algeria. The unity of the French Empire in Africa had been assured.
Madagascar – the French conquest of which occurred in 1895 – is a large island in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, whose area exceeds that of France. Geologically speaking, it is made up of a lofty plateau which is surrounded by forests – an admirable means of defense – and a coastal zone, which is very narrow on the eastern coast, but which broadens out on the west to a considerable degree. The coastal fringe is very flat, and the climate there, as in general throughout the entire island, extremely unhealthful for Europeans. The population of the island numbers about 2,500,000 inhabitants and is made up largely of negroes who are still in an uncivilized state. They are spoken of under the general title of Malgaches. During the course of the twelfth century, however, there was an invasion of Asiatics from the Malay Archipelago. These folk were presumably Mongolians, and they settled on the plateau. They were known as the Hovas and their superior qualities soon enabled them to dominate the island. The majority of them have been converted to Christianity by English missionaries and as a result have acquired a quasi-civilization. In their capital, Antananarivo, a pretentious city of some 50,000 inhabitants, there were schools, printing-presses, and newspapers. The native Government was an absolute monarchy. At the time of the French conquest there was an army of about 40,000 men who were armed with repeating rifles and modern artillery.
The first French establishment in Madagascar actually dates from the reign of Louis XIII and Richelieu, when the post of Fort Dauphin was built in the south of the island (1642). But little was done then to conquer the island. During the greater part of the nineteenth century there was a struggle for supremacy at the capital between the French and English, in which each country contested for the ear of the successive kings or queens of Madagascar. English influence was preponderant up to about 1878. As a result either of English instigation or of an unwarranted assumption that the English would sanction radical proceedings, the Hovas were at that time convinced that they could fall upon the French posts on the coasts with impunity. The inevitable consequence of such a policy was an open conflict with the French during which Tamatve and the principal posts were bombarded and blockaded. In 1885 the Hovas pretended to admit their defeat, and accepted France as suzerain power. A French Resident was set up at Antananarivo to direct the foreign affairs of the Hovas and control their home administration. For ten years the Hovas apparently succeeded in blinding France as to their real purpose of another stroke for independence, but in 1895 the situation again seemed ominous and a new military expedition was dispatched.
Under the command of General Duchesne 15,000 men were landed at Majunga on the west coast of Madagascar (March-August, 1895). These forces were to march eastward across the plateau to the capital. The region, however, was one which was practically devoid of inhabitants, and in order to prevent the troops from being cut off from supplies it was necessary to construct a road. Moreover, the country was so malarial that more than 5000 men died from fever along the way. Finally a picked company of 4000 men succeeded in forcing their way across the plateau where they took the army of the Hovas by surprise and eventually reached Antananarivo. They proceeded to storm the palace on September 30, 1895, whereupon Queen Ranavalo capitulated. Once again the Hovas agreed to accept a French protectorate. The recall of the larger share of the expeditionary forces was, however, the occasion for still another general uprising on the part of the Hovas, instigated by the Queen and her ministers (July, 1896). The insurrection was promptly suppressed by General Gallieni (later famous as the defender of Paris in 1914), who caused two of the ministers to be tried and shot for high treason (October 11, 1896). The protectorate was then abolished, and Madagascar was declared a French colony. The treacherous Queen, Ranavalo, was deported to Algeria (February, 1897).
Since then France has undertaken numerous progressive measures in Madagascar. Slavery has been abolished, and schools and hospitals have been opened everywhere. A thousand kilometers (625 miles) of roads have been built and some 200 kilometers (125 miles) of railways. The commerce of the island has increased from 27,000,000 francs in 1898 ($5,400,000) to 65,000,000 francs in 1906 ($13,000,000). A large naval station has been built at Diego Suarez as a base for the French fleet. These are the principal results of the first ten years of French domination in Madagascar. French possessions in Indo-China include what was formerly known as the "Empire of Annam." This ill-compacted dominion at the beginning of the nineteenth century had comprised the following native states: to the north, Tonkin, which lies in the rich delta of the Song-Koi, or Red River; in the center, "Annam Proper," along the coast of the China Sea; and to the south, Cochin-China, which lies in the delta of the Mekong. The whole represented an area a little more than three fifths of the surface of France. To the east of the Mekong and to the north of Cochin-China, France has now also secured the protectorate over the little Kingdom of Cambodia.
The population of the former Annamese Empire is Mongolian and the basis of its civilization very largely is Chinese. The inhabitants (over 30,000,000) are, considering their tropical environment, active, industrious, and intelligent. The Government was formerly that of an absolute monarchy of the regular Oriental type, with the capital at Hue. The "Emperor" was nominally a vassal of China, although the tribute, the sign of his vassalage, was rarely paid, and it was usually only in times of danger and dire distress that this potentate consented to admit his subordinate position. As for Cambodia, the inhabitants are likewise Mongolian, but their civilization is Hindu, and as a result they reveal much less of that energetic action which characterizes their neighbors across the Mekong.
The French conquest of this region falls into two distinct periods. The earlier, 1859-67, marks the capture of Cochin-China. French interest in that country dates, indeed, from 1787, when Louis XVI, at the request of the Annamese Emperor, sent over French officers and engineers to fortify Hue and the leading cities of Tonkin. This informal connection was retained, stimulated by a natural desire on the part of France to secure a naval base for her fleet and an entrance into China for her commerce. In 1858, as a result of the persecutions of French missionaries and native Christians, an excuse was offered the ambitious Government of Napoleon III for French intervention. Military operations were begun which centered around Saigon, in Cochin-China, from 1859 to 1861. By 1863 the region had been partially subdued and in 1867 the conquest was completed. Meanwhile, in 1863 Cambodia, out of fear of her western neighbor, Siam, had voluntarily placed herself under French protection.
The conquest of Tonkin in Northern Annam turned out to be a more serious matter. French interest in this region had grown out of a series of explorations and trading voyages by two Frenchmen, François Garnier and Jean Dupuis, both of whom were convinced of the value of the Red River in opening up important parts of Southern China, particularly Yunnan, to French commerce. The Annamites, however, resented their intrusion and attempted to block the Red River. As a result, when pacific measures had failed, Garnier with 175 men attacked and captured Hanoi, the capital of Tonkin, in November, 1873. He then pro- ceeded up the delta of the Red River and within a month it was in French hands. Garnier himself, however, unfortunately fell into an ambuscade and was killed.
When the question was referred to the French Government, it refused to push its advantage; the memories of 1870 were still too vivid to warrant a fresh military undertaking. An arrangement was consequently made with the natives whereby France offered to give up her conquests in return for the privilege of trading on the Red River (1873).
The Emperor of Annam, by his poor observance of this treaty, soon gave cause for fresh complaints, and in 1881 a new expedition (of 600 men) was sent out under General Rivière. Meanwhile the Annamites, not trusting to their own strength, had secured aid from their suzerain, China, and had succeeded in enlisting certain mercenary troops known as the "Black Flags." Rivière, nevertheless, managed to repeat the earlier conquests of Garnier. Inadvertently, however, he was himself besieged at Hanoi, and killed in a desperate sortie there (May, 1883). France now found herself at war, not only with Annam, but for all practical purposes with China as well. The contest with the former, however, was brief. Under the leadership of Admiral Courbet, the city of Hue was captured and a peace dictated (August 25, 1883) whereby Annam became a French protectorate.
France, however, still had the suzerain of Annam to reckon with. The war with China, which began during a recess in the French Parliament, was carried on without any formal declaration of hostilities. There were serious engagements, nevertheless, both on land and sea, the theater of war being Tonkin and the southern coast of the Celestial Empire. It was a bitter and expensive struggle, for the French, who fought in an unknown and wild country against fairly well-trained and excellently equipped Chinese troops, who completely outnumbered their European foes. Like so many Oriental struggles, where the treachery of the natives becomes a serious factor, the contest falls into two stages. In the earlier part events moved rapidly. In December, 1883, Son-Tay, a stronghold in Tonkin, was stormed and taken by Admiral Courbet. One by one the remaining Chinese fortresses fell before the French; and, in May, 1884, a treaty of peace was signed, binding China to evacuate Tonkin.
By virtue of this treaty France was given the right to occupy the fortress of Lang-Son (on the frontier of Tonkin and China) immediately, but the French troops charged with this task were treacherously assaulted at Bac-Le (June 23, 1884). As a result hostilities were reopened after a formal ultimatum had been presented at Pekin. Chinese resistance was still tenacious and both on land and sea there were some serious engagements. The arsenal at Foo-Chou was captured by Courbet, and Formosa was blockaded. On land Dominé with 600 men held out against the 15,000 Chinese at Tuyen-Quan for three months (December, 1884, to March, 1885). In March came the most serious engagement of the war, "the affair of Lang-Son," which resulted in the political overthrow of Jules Ferry, then prime minister of France. General de Negrier with a brigade of 4000 men had been attacked at Lang-Son (which had been taken by the French earlier in the war) by 20,000 Chinese whom he at first repulsed. During the engagement he was wounded, and his successor, who unfortunately lacked his confidence, foolishly dispatched various despondent reports to France which caused wild excitement in the Chambers and resulted in a ministerial crisis. Meantime the Chinese, who even before Lang-Son had started peace negotiations, convinced as they at last were of the superior strength of the French, had capitulated, and on June 9, 1885, the second and definitive treaty of Tien-Tsin was signed. China renounced all claim to Tonkin and recognized the protectorate of France over Annam.
At home there had been a violent political opposition to all French colonial ventures, mainly on the part of the conservative Royalists act. ing in their curious alliance with the extreme radicals, who of course execrated "imperialism." They now denounced the Tonkin expedition and the Chinese War as a most criminal piece of folly. Jules Ferry was loaded with violent abuse. As a result of a coalition between these strangely matched political elements, the bill for the payment of the expenses of the war narrowly escaped defeat, passing by a bare majority of four votes (274 to 270). So indifferent for the moment was France to her new acquisition!
Since 1885 the Third Republic has pursued much the same policy in Indo-China as in Algeria and Tunis, and with equal success. Saigon and Hanoi are now prosperous cities. Railroads have been built, the coal mines are being exploited, and mills constructed. Methods of agriculture have been improved to such an extent that Indo-China has become one of the greatest rice-producing countries. Commerce in its turn has increased so rapidly that it amounted to more than 550,000,000 francs ($110,000,000) in 1907.
The foregoing may be called a feeble tracing over the dry annals of remarkable achievements. Described in their fullness, these deeds would entitle the explorers and conquerors of the Third Republic to rank as worthy sons of Champlain, La Salle, Montcalm, and the others who in an earlier epoch wrought so valiantly and who so nearly succeeded in their task of making "New France" and not "New England" the dom- inant power on the Western Hemisphere. The new African and Asiatic empires won for the Tricolor do not, indeed (except in Algeria), open many lands suitable for settlement by white men, but they certainly place at French disposal a tropical wealth which can largely compensate for that lost empire of Hindustan which the futile Government of Louis XV had almost grasped in the days of Dupleix.