Part 5 (2/2)
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 Ca.s.sation, at the Auteuil races, President Loubet was roughly jostled by a band of fas.h.i.+onable 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: RENe WALDECK-ROUSSEAU]
The ministerial crisis brought about by the fall of Dupuy was as important as any under the Third Republic because of its consequences in the redistribution of parties. For about ten days President Loubet was unable to find a leader who could in turn form a cabinet. At last public opinion was astounded by the masterly combination made by Waldeck-Rousseau, Gambetta's former lieutenant, who of recent years had kept somewhat aloof from active partic.i.p.ation in politics. He brought together a ministry of ”defense republicaine,” which its opponents, however, called a cabinet for the ”liquidation” of the Dreyfus case. The old policy of ”Republican concentration” of Opportunists and Radicals was given up in favor of a ma.s.s formation of the various advanced groups of the Left, including the Socialists.
Waldeck-Rousseau was a Moderate Republican, whose legal practice of recent years had been mainly that of a corporation lawyer, but he was a cool-headed Opportunist. He realized the ill-success of the policy of the ”esprit nouveau,” and saw the necessity of making advances to the Socialists, who more and more held the balance of power. He succeeded in uniting in his Cabinet Moderates like himself, Radicals, and, for the first time in French parliamentary history, an out-and-out Socialist, Alexandre Millerand, author of the famous ”Programme of Saint-Mande” of 1896, or declaration of faith of Socialism. Still more astounding was the presence as Minister of War, in the same Cabinet with Millerand, of General de Galliffet, a bluff, outspoken, and das.h.i.+ng aristocratic officer, a favorite with the whole army, but fiercely hated by the proletariat because of his part in the repression of the Commune.
The first days of the new Cabinet were stormy and its outlook was dubious. The task of reconciling such divergent elements, even against a common foe, seemed an impossibility, until at last the Radicals under Brisson swung into line. Such was the beginning of a Republican grouping which later, during the anti-Clerical campaign, was known as _le Bloc_, the united band of Republicans.
The Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry took up the Dreyfus case with a queer combination of courage and weakness. Insubordinate army officers were summarily punished for injudicious remarks, but in order to appear neutral and to avoid criticism, the Cabinet held so much aloof that the anti-Dreyfusites were able to bring their full forces to bear on the court-martial. For a month at Rennes, beginning August 7, an extraordinary trial was carried on before the eyes of an impa.s.sioned France and angry onlooking nations. Witnesses had full lat.i.tude to indulge in rhetorical addresses and air their prejudices; military officers like Roget, who had had nothing to do with the original trial, were allowed to take up the time of the court. Galliffet, though convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus, was unwilling to exert as much pressure as his colleagues in the Cabinet desired. It soon became evident that, regardless of the question involved, the issue was one between an insignificant Jewish officer on the one hand and General Mercier, ex-Minister of War, on the other. The judges were army officers full of caste-feeling and timorous of offending their superiors. Thus, on September 9, Dreyfus was a second time convicted, though with extenuating circ.u.mstances, by a vote of 5 to 2, and condemned to ten years' detention. This verdict was a travesty of justice, and a punishment fitting no crime of Dreyfus, since he was either innocent or guilty of treason beyond extenuation. The Ministry, perhaps regretting too late its excessive inertia, immediately caused the President to pardon Dreyfus, partly on the ostensible grounds that Dreyfus by his previous harsher condemnation had already purged his new one. This act of clemency was, however, not a legal clearing of the victim's honor, which was achieved only some years later.
During the turmoil of the Dreyfus affair the Cabinet was, it seemed to many, unduly anxious over certain conspirators against the Republic. The symptoms of insubordination in high ranks in the army, linked with the Clerical manoeuvres, had encouraged the other foes of the Republic (spurred on by the Royalists), whether sincere opponents of the parliamentary regime like Paul Deroulede, or venal agitators such as the anti-Semitic Jules Guerin. But, certainly, above all objectionable were the proceedings of the a.s.sumptionists, a religious order which had ama.s.sed enormous wealth, and which, by the various local editions of its paper _la Croix_, had organized a campaign of venomous slander and abuse of the Republic and its leaders.
The Government, having got wind of a project of the conspirators to seize the reins of power during the Rennes court-martial, antic.i.p.ated the act by wholesale arrests on August 12. Jules Guerin barricaded himself with some friends in a house in the rue de Chabrol in Paris, and defied the Government to arrest him without perpetrating murder. The grotesque incident of the ”Fort Chabrol” came to an end after thirty-seven days when the authorities had surrounded the house with troops to starve Guerin out and stopped the drains.
In November a motley array of conspirators, ranging from Andre Buffet, representative of the pretender the Duke of Orleans, to butchers from the slaughter-houses of La Villette, were brought to trial before the Senate acting as a High Court of Justice, on the charge of conspiracy against the State. After a long trial lasting nearly two months, during which the prisoners outdid each other in declamatory insults to their enemies, the majority were acquitted. Paul Deroulede and Andre Buffet were condemned to banishment for ten years and Jules Guerin to imprisonment for the same term. Two others, Marcel Habert and the comte de Lur-Saluces, who had taken flight, gave themselves up later and were condemned in 1900 and 1901, respectively, amid a public indifference which was far from their liking.
Thus the year 1899 had proved itself one of the most dramatically eventful in the history of the Republic. It was also to be one of the most significant in its consequences. For the new grouping of mutually jealous factions against a common danger had, in spite of the fiasco of the second Dreyfus case, shown a way to victory. And exasperation against the intrigues of the Clericals and the army officers was going to turn the former toleration of the ”esprit nouveau” into active persecution, especially as the Socialists and Radicals formed the majority of the new combination.
In November, 1899, Waldeck-Rousseau laid before Parliament an a.s.sociations bill to regulate the organization of societies, which was intended indirectly to control religious bodies. The leniency of the Government hitherto and the commercial energy of many religious orders, manufacturers of articles varying from chartreuse to hair-restorers and dentifrice, had enabled them to ama.s.s enormous sums held in mortmain.
The power of this money was great in politics and the anti-Clericals cast envious eyes on these vague and mysterious fortunes. There were in France at the time almost seven hundred unauthorized ”congregations.”
Against the a.s.sumptionists in particular the Government took direct measures early in 1900, such as legal perquisitions, arrests, and prosecution as an illegal a.s.sociation.
The campaign went on through the year 1900, the Exposition of that year helping to act as a partial truce. The expedition of the Allies to China to put down the Boxer rebellion also diverted attention.
Waldeck-Rousseau was sincerely desirous of bringing about a pacification of feeling in the country, and he felt bitter practically only against the Jesuits and the a.s.sumptionists. He even succeeded in carrying through Parliament an amnesty bill dealing with the Dreyfus case and destined to quash all criminal actions in process, whether of Dreyfusites or anti-Dreyfusites. The former fought the project vigorously on the ground that it opposed a new obstacle to ultimate discovery of the truth, but they were unsuccessful. Waldeck-Rousseau remained at heart, none the less, a believer in Dreyfus's innocence and in spite of his amnesty project, he could not always hide his true feelings. In consequence he offended his Minister of War, General de Galliffet, Dreyfusite as well, but tired of the struggle now that the Rennes trial had made the task of rehabilitation apparently hopeless.
Galliffet resigned his office and was succeeded by General Andre, a politician soldier, who started out at once to purge the army drastically of its Clericalism.
Waldeck-Rousseau's a.s.sociations project was fairly mild. He had no desire for a violent break with the Vatican, and the wily and diplomatic Leo XIII probably so understood well enough in spite of his protests.
But, as debate and discussion went on, the measure became more severe.
Waldeck-Rousseau had originally planned a bill dealing with authorization and incorporation of a.s.sociations in general, in which he refrained from any specific allusion to religious bodies of monks and nuns, thereby a.s.similating them with other groups. As finally voted and promulgated in July, 1901, the law made provisions for the privilege of a.s.sociation in general, but made the important additional stipulations that no religious order or ”congregation” could be formed without specific authorization by law, that a religious order could be dissolved by ministerial decree, and that no one belonging to an unauthorized order could direct personally, or by proxy, an educational establishment, or even teach in one. Thus the enemies of the lay Republic who, under cover of the ”esprit nouveau,” and by years of manipulation of the feeding sources of army and navy officers, had hoped to grasp power, and had made a supreme effort at the time of the Dreyfus agitation, now saw themselves thwarted, and faced the prospect of severer treatment.
Matters had progressed even further than Waldeck-Rousseau himself perhaps desired. In the spring of 1902, new legislative elections took place for the renewal of the Chamber of Deputies. The policy of the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry was endorsed by a sound majority, and yet at this moment of triumph, after the longest rule as Prime Minister of any hitherto in the history of the Republic, Waldeck-Rousseau resigned his post without an adverse vote. Undoubtedly the state of his personal health was partly responsible for his departure from office and he was destined not to live beyond 1904. The last important events of his administration were a visit of the Czar to France and a return visit of President Loubet to Russia.
Waldeck-Rousseau's successor as Prime Minister was Emile Combes, a strong foe of the Church. Combes had himself been a former theological student and had, in his youth, written a thesis on the philosophy of St.
Thomas Aquinas. He now had all the vindictiveness of one who burns what he formerly wors.h.i.+pped. Encouraged by the recent elections, he turned more and more against the Vatican and impelled by the more violent members of the _Bloc_, he drifted toward the rupture which his predecessor had tried to avoid. A committee of the different groups supporting the Cabinet, called the ”delegation des gauches,” had in time been inst.i.tuted to formulate policies with the Prime Minister, who often had to obey it instead of guiding. Waldeck-Rousseau had intended not to apply his law retroactively. He had planned to spare educational establishments already in existence before July, 1901, when his measure went into operation, and had winked at lack of compliance on the part of many others. Combes applied the letter of the law ruthlessly. Amid public protestations and disturbances he closed a large number of these unauthorized schools; firstly, those which had actually been opened without permission since the promulgation of the law, then the many schools which were older than the law. In so doing he was called a persecutor, because the directors of the schools declared that they had allowed the time limit of application for authorization to go by, only through the understanding with the previous Administration that they were not to be interfered with. Now they could not help themselves.
Emboldened by success Combes next took up the applications of the congregations which had duly followed the law and were seeking authorization. By decree, as was his right, he first promptly closed unlicensed schools of recognized orders. Then came the applications of orders seeking authorization. Legal procedure demanded laws to reject as well as laws to accept applications. A recommendation _favored_ by the Government but _rejected_ by the Chamber of Deputies would not go before the Senate. On the other hand, an _unfavorable_ opinion of the Government _ratified_ by the House would still have to go before the Senate. A way would thus be open for prolonged chicanery.
Combes cut matters short. He lumped fifty-four individual applications into three batches, teaching orders, preaching orders, and the commercial order of the Chartreux, manufacturers of the liqueur called ”chartreuse.” Then, presenting these batches of applications collectively instead of individually to the Chamber, he caused their rejection and proceeded to dissolve the orders and close their fifteen hundred establishments. Through the spring of 1903 there were turbulent scenes in consequence in various parts of France, the monks trying sometimes pa.s.sive resistance, sometimes actual violence. In the reactionary districts the population attempted to stir up riots.
Occasionally, even, a military officer whose duty it was to evict the monks refused to obey orders. But, nothing daunted, Combes went on, with the support of the Chambers, to reject a large ma.s.s of applications from teaching orders of women. Even Waldeck-Rousseau was led in time publicly to declare that he had never contemplated the transformation of his a.s.sociations law of 1901 from a measure of regulation to one of exclusion, nor the a.s.sumption by the State of expensive educational charges. .h.i.therto carried on by religious orders. At last the law of July, 1904, put a complete end to all kinds of instruction by religious bodies, thereby insuring, after a lapse of time for liquidation, the disappearance of all teaching orders.
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