Part 42 (2/2)

A corn-law pa.s.sed in France was obnoxious to the country, as tending to make bread more dear; ”Boulanger is to bring us cheap bread!

Long live our Boulanger!” became the popular cry.

But all this enthusiasm seems to have been founded only on expectation.

General Boulanger had done nothing that might reasonably have attracted national grat.i.tude and adoration. Yet there was a strong feeling throughout France that Boulanger would save the country from what was called the Parliamentary _regime_. France had become weary of the squabbles of the seven parties in the Chamber, of the rapid changes of ministry, of the perpetual coalitions, lasting just long enough to overthrow some chief unpopular with two factions strong enough by combination to get rid of him. The Chamber, it was said, though unruly and disorganized, had usurped all the functions of government, and a republic without an executive officer who can maintain himself at its head, has never been known to stand. In France fas.h.i.+on is everything, and in France, in 1888, it was the fas.h.i.+on to speak ill of parliamentary government.

”Why am I a Boulangist?” cried a young and ardent writer of the party.[1] ”Why are my friends Boulangists? Because the general is the only man in France capable of carrying out the expulsion of mere talkers from the Chamber of Deputies,--men who deafen the public ear, and are good for nothing. Gentlemen, a few hundreds of you, ever since 1870, have carried on the government. All of you are lawyers or literary men, none of you are statesmen.”

[Footnote 1: Le Figaro.]

At the height of the popularity of the general his career was very near being cut short by a political duel. In France, as we have seen in the history of the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri, it is not an unheard-of thing to get rid of a political adversary by a challenge. After Boulanger had insulted the Duc d'Aumale while he was Minister of War, a challenge pa.s.sed between himself and an Orleanist, M. le Baron de Lareinty. Boulanger stood to receive the fire of his adversary, but did not fire in return. He was subsequently anxious to fight Jules Ferry; but Jules Ferry declined any meeting of the kind.

After he entered the Chamber, his great enemy, Floquet, who was then in the Cabinet, called him in the course of debate ”A Saint-Arnaud of the _cafes chantants!_” Boulanger challenged him for this, and the duel took place with swords. Floquet was slightly wounded, but the general's foot slipped, and he received his adversary's sword-point in his throat. It was almost a miracle that it did not sever the jugular vein. For some time ”Le brav' General's”

life was despaired of; but when he was p.r.o.nounced out of danger, Paris amused itself with the thought that the most prominent soldier in the French army had nearly met his death at the hands of an elderly lawyer.

Since the funds furnished to Boulanger for the election expenses of his candidates, and even for his own personal expenses, came from the Royalist party, he was more bound to it than ever; but he pretended to be guided by a body that called itself the National Republican Committee, which he a.s.sured his friends, the Monarchists, he used only as a screen. When Madame d'Uzes threw her last million into the gulf, it seemed expedient to the Royalists to exact more definite pledges from Boulanger than his word as a soldier. ”If the present Government of France is overthrown,” they said, ”and an appeal made to the people, who will fill the interregnum? Will General Boulanger, if all power is intrusted to him, consent to give it up, if the nation votes for monarchy? And with all the machinery of government in his hands, is it certain that a _plebiscite_ would be the free vote of the people?”

A general election was to take place in the summer of 1889, at the height of the Universal Exposition. Hitherto the various elections in which Boulanger had contended had been for vacant seats in the old a.s.sembly. He was anxious to test his popularity in Paris by standing for the workman's quarter of Belleville; and in spite of his being opposed by the Radicals in the Chamber, as well as by the Government, he was elected by a large majority.

The Government then changed its method of attack. It brought in a bill changing the selection of parliamentary candidates from the _scrutin de liste_ to the _scrutin d'arrondiss.e.m.e.nt._ Boulanger therefore would be eligible for election only in the district in which he was domiciled.

Besides the National Republican Committee (which the general called his screen), there was formed all over France a Boulangist society called the League of Patriots. This league was now attacked by the Government as a conspiracy. A High Court of Justice was formed by the Senate, before which its leaders were summoned to appear.

Boulanger became seriously alarmed. He did not see how he could act if shut up in prison. His apprehensions were carefully augmented by the heads of the police, who had placed one of their agents about his person.[1] This man showed him a pretended order for his arrest on April 1, 1889. The question of his retirement into Belgium if his liberty were threatened had been already debated by himself and his friends. Nearly all of them were against it.

”Let not the people think our general could run away,” said some.

But others answered, ”They will say it is a smart trick; that the general has cheated the Government.”

[Footnote 1: Les Coulisses du Boulangisme.]

After seeing the false doc.u.ment which was shown him, with great pretence of secrecy, by the police agent, the general hesitated no longer. On the evening of April 1, accompanied by Madame de Bonnemains, a lady to whom he was paying devoted attention, pending a divorce from his wife, he went to Brussels, followed by his friend Count Dillon, the go-between in financial matters between the Royalists and himself. The Cabinet of M. Carnot had learned the value of the saying, ”If your enemy wishes to take flight, build him a bridge of gold.”

The departure of the general threw consternation into the ranks of his followers. ”It cannot be!” they cried. Then they consoled themselves with the reflection that he must soon return, as he had done once before under somewhat similar circ.u.mstances.

But he did not return. The Government had triumphed. Boulanger's power was broken; like a wave, it had toppled over when its crest was highest. The High Court of Justice condemned Deroulede the poet, Rochefort, and Dillon, to confinement for life in a French fortress. The sentence, however, was simply one of outlawry, for they were all with Boulanger.

The exiles did not stay long in Brussels. The Government of Belgium objected to their remaining so near the frontier of France,--for in Brussels a telephone connected them with Paris,--and they went over to London. There, at the general's request, he had an interview with the Comte de Paris. But their conversation was limited to useless compliments and military affairs. Boulanger's power as a political leader was at an end; the friends of the prince would advance him no more funds, and in the elections, which took place very quietly in France during the summer, he and his friends suffered total defeat.

The Government of France--strengthened not only by the success of the Exposition, by its great triumph at the elections, and by the discomfiture of its enemies, but also by the conviction forced upon parliamentary leaders that the country was weary of mere talk and discord, and demanded harmony and action--now became the strongest Government that France had enjoyed for a long time. The Republic had pa.s.sed the point of danger, the eighteenth year, which had been the limit of every dynasty or form of government in France for over a century. It rallied to itself men from the ranks of all its former enemies, but its greatest victory was over the Monarchists.

The wreck of their cause by the alliance with a military adventurer was a blunder in the eyes of one section of the Royalists; in the eyes of another, it was a dishonor that amounted almost to a crime.

Boulanger had rallied to himself the clerical party in France by the promise of a republic strong enough to protect the weak,--”a republic that would concern itself with the interests of the people, and be solicitous to preserve individual liberty in all its forms, especially liberty of conscience, that liberty the most to be valued of all,”[1] Such a republic it seems possible the Third Republic may now become, especially since it is on all hands conceded that there is a reaction in France in favor of religious liberty, for those who are religious as well as for those who are ”philosophers.”

[Footnote 1: Speech at Tours.]

President Carnot has been an eminently respectable president. He has committed no blunders, and if he has awakened little enthusiasm, he has called forth no animosities. The worst that can be said of him is embodied in caricatures, where he always appears ready to serve some useful purpose, as a jointed wooden figure that can be put to many a use.

The French army is now stronger and better disciplined, and more full of determination to conquer, than any French army has ever been before. But no ruler of France can be anxious to precipitate a war with Germany; and judging from the present state of feeling among the French, there appear to be no serious political breakers ahead. Of course in France the unexpected is always to be expected, and what a day may bring forth, n.o.body knows.

Sir Charles Dilke tells us that in 1887, when a friend of his was going to France, he asked him to ascertain for him if General Boulanger were a soldier, a mountebank, or an a.s.s; and the answer brought back to him was, ”He is a little of them all.” The general, after his interview in London with the Comte de Paris, took up his residence in the island of Jersey. He cannot but have felt that his popularity had failed him, and that his enchanter's wand was broken. From time to time he made spasmodic efforts to bring himself again to the notice of the public. He offered repeatedly to return to France and stand his trial for conspiracy, provided that the trial might be conducted before a regular court of justice, and not before an especial committee appointed by the Chambers.

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