A History of the Third French RepublicWright, C. H. C. (Charles Henry Conrad)
History
A History of the Third French Republic
Wright, C. H. C. (Charles Henry Conrad)
France -- History -- Third Republic, 1870-1940
The successor of Félix Faure, Emile Loubet, was elected on February 18,
1899, by a good majority over Jules Méline, the candidate of the larger
number of the Moderates or "Progressists" and of the Conservatives.
Loubet was himself a man of Moderate views, but he was thought to favor
a revision of the Dreyfus case. Among the charges of his enemies was
that, as Minister of the Interior in 1892, he had held, but had kept
secret, the famous list of the "Hundred and Four" and had prevented the
seizure of the papers of Baron de Reinach and the arrest of Arton. So
Loubet's return to Paris from Versailles was amid hostile cries of
"Loubet-Panama" and "Vive l'armée!"
On February 23, after the state funeral of President Faure, a detachment
of troops led by General Roget was returning to its barracks in an
outlying quarter of Paris. Suddenly the Nationalist and quondam
Boulangist Paul Déroulède, now chief of the Ligue des Patriotes and
vigorous opponent of parliamentary government, though a Deputy himself,
rushed to General Roget, and, grasping the bridle of his horse, tried to
persuade him to lead his troops to the Elysée, the presidential
residence, and overthrow the Government. Déroulède had expected to
encounter General de Pellieux, a more amenable leader, and one of the
noisy generals at the Zola trial. General Roget, who had been
substituted at the last moment, refused to accede and caused the arrest
of Déroulède, with his fellow Deputy and conspirator Marcel Habert.
Meanwhile the Dreyfus case had been taken out of the hands of the
Criminal Chamber and given to the whole Court. To the dismay of the
anti-Dreyfusites the Court, as a body, annulled, on June 3, the verdict
of the court-martial of 1894, and decided that Dreyfus should appear
before a second military court at Rennes for another trial.
Thus party antagonisms were becoming more and more acute. In addition
Dupuy, the head of the Cabinet, seemed to be spiting the new President.
On the day after the verdict of the Cour de Cassation, at the Auteuil
races, President Loubet was roughly jostled by a band of fashionable
young Royalists and struck with a cane by Baron de Christiani. A week
later, at the Grand Prize races at Longchamps, on June 11, Dupuy, as
though to atone for his previous carelessness, brought out a large array
of troops, so obviously over-numerous as to cause new disturbances among
the crowd desirous of manifesting its sympathy with the chief
magistrate. More arrests were made and, at the meeting of the Chamber of
Deputies the next day, the Cabinet was overthrown by an adverse vote.
[Illustration: RENÉ WALDECK-ROUSSEAU]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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