Last modified: 2008-04-26 by ivan sache
Keywords: president | casimir-perier (jean) | faure (felix) | poincare (raymond) | deschanel (paul) | lebrun (albert) |
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![[Casimir-Périer's standard]](../images/f/fr_prjcp.gif)
Casimir-Périer's standard - Image by Željko Heimer, 27 September 2004
Jean Casimir-Périer (1847-1907) was Casimir Périer's grandson and Auguste Casimir-Périer's son.On 24 June 1894, President of the Republic Sadi-Carnot was murdered in
Lyon by the Italian anarchist Caserio. The Chamber and the Senate
gathered in Versailles and elected Casimir-Périer on 27 June (451 votes
out of the 851 voters). The new President was very conservative and his
authoritarian attitude was expected to calm down the situation.
However, Casimir-Périer was Orleanist via his grand-father and
extremely wealthy, being the main shareholder of the coal mines of
Anzin, in the north of France. The anarchists and the socialists
immediatly rejected him and started a campaign of personal defamation
against him. Casimir-Périer overreacted and gave on 3 July a very
aggressive speech in the Chamber, saying he would use all the powers
granted to him by the Constitution.
In the beginning of July, a new law proposal attempted to strengthen
the anti-anarchist laws. The opposition and the unions were probably
the main targets of this law, since the anarchists had lost any popular
support after the assassination of the very popular and honest
Sadi-Carnot. During the summer 1894, the socialists had their congress
in Nantes, where they adopted the principle of the revolutionary
general strike, coined by the young lawyer Aristide Briand
(1862-1932), later one of the warmer defenders of reconciliation with
Germany and the League of Nations and awarded the Nobel Prize of Peace
in 1926. The Conseil Général des Fédérations Ouvri&elarge;res was founded during the congress, and became next year in Limoges the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT).
In September 1894, the journalist Gérault-Richard published in the
Chambard a very violent pamphlet against the President, entitled A
bas Casimir (Down with Casimir). The journalist was sued and defended
by Jean Jaurès (1859-1914), who attacked once again the President and
his family. Gérault-Richard was sentenced to one year's imprisonment.
However, he was elected Deputy in January 1895 for the XIIIth district
of Paris. Casimir-Périer perceived this election as another personal
insult and felt abandoned by his own political majority.
On 15 January, the government led by Dupuy was defeated because of a
dirty affair of contracts with the railway companies. The next day, the
President said he could no longer afford the personal campaigns against
him and his lack of political power and resigned. He withdrew from
public life until his death.
The flag used by Président Jean Casimir-Périer is
kept in the private archive HCC (Habillement, Couchage, Casernement - Outfit, Bedding, Barracks) of the Direction du Commissariat de la Marine (Direction of the Admiralty Board) in Toulon.
The golden cypher in the middle of the white stripe is made of the interlaced letters C and P.
Ivan Sache, 30 September 2004
![[Faure's standard]](../images/f/fr_prfxf.gif)
Félix Faure's standard - Image by Željko Heimer, 27 September 2004
On 17 January 1895, the Congress (Deputees and Senators)
gathered in Versailles to elect the new President. Félix Faure
was elected in the second round among several candidates, including
Brisson, Dupuy and Waldeck-Rousseau, and was rapidly nicknamed
Président-soleil ("President-sun") or Félix
le Bel ("Felix the Handsome") because he enjoyed splendor and
garish festivities.
Faure warmly encouraged colonialism. On 30 September 1895,
Antananarivo was seized by the French troops and
Madagascar was annexed on 6 August 1896.
In September 1898, almamy
Samory, who had constituted a powerful empire in upper
Côte-d'Ivoire, was captured and France annexed all the lands
bordering the Niger river. In order to fight against British
expansion in Africa, the French government approved the proposal of
Commandant Marchand to link Dakar (Senegal) to Djibouti. The Marchand
mission reached Fachoda, in the upper valley of Nile, on 10 July 1898
and hoisted the French Tricolore on the ruined fort of the village.
In early September sirdar Kitchener reached Fachoda with
20,000 men and hoisted the Egyptian
flag on the fort. On 3 November, Marchand was ordered to evacuate
Fachoda. In March 1899, France signed a convention by which all its
claims on Sudan were withdrawn.
Faure established strong links with Russia. Tsar Nicolas II
officially visited Paris in October 1896, being the first important
foreign sovereign to visit France since the 1870 disaster. In August
1897, Faure officially visited St. Petersburg and called Russia and
France deux nations amies et alliées ("two friend and
allied nations").
The infamous Dreyfus case tainted Faure's presidency. Captain
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was allegedly accusated of spying
for Germany. After a forged trial, he was sentenced to demotion and
deportation to Devil's Island, off the coast of
French Guyana. The Dreyfus case motivated a
major clash in France between the Dreyfusards and the
Anti-Dreyfusards. Evidence of the forgery accumulated and more
and more people asked for the revision of the trial and the
rehabilitation of Dreyfus. Félix Faure, who was opposed to the
trial revision, died on 16 February 1899.
Faure is today more famous for his death than for his political
career. He died in the palace of Elysée during a tryst with
his friend Madame Steinheil. A famous story tells that a chambermaid
screamed: Le Président n'a plus sa
connaissance and was answered by another one Elle est partie
par l'escalier de service. The pun is based on the double sense
of connaissance, meaning both "acquaintance" and
"consciousness". Therefore, the first maid meant to say "The
President has no longer his consciousness". The second maid
understood "The President's acquaintance is no longer here", and
answered "She left by the backstairs".
Faure's funerals were also tragi-comic. During the ceremony, the
ultra-nationalist Déroulède attempted a coup and tried
to march on the Palace of Elysée with his fellows of the
Patriotic League. The coup aborted and Déroulède was
arrested.
The flag used by Président Félix Faure is
kept in the private archive HCC (Habillement, Couchage, Casernement - Outfit, Bedding, Barracks) of the Direction du Commissariat de la Marine (Direction of the Admiralty Board) in Toulon.
The golden cypher in the middle of the white stripe is a nice
combination of two mirrorred F letters placed in saltire. The resulting X pattern is not coincidental and probably refers to the X of Félix.
Félix Faure had more than one monogram. On 6 October 1896, he offered a dinner to the Emperor and the Empress of Russia during their official visit to France. On the cover of the menu of the dinner, Faure's monogram is much more complicated in its ornementations than the very geometrical, rectilinear monogram applied in the middle of the President's flag.
Ivan Sache & Armand du Payrat, 9 July 2001
![[Flag of Poincaré]](../images/f/fr_prrpo.gif)
Raymond Poincaré's standard - Image by Željko Heimer, 30 September 2001
Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934) was the cousin of the great mathematician
Henri Poincaré (1854-1912). He was elected General Councillor and then
Deputy for the department of Meuse (Lorraine) in 1887. Due to his
authority and his competence, he was appointed three times Minister
(Finance Minister, 1893 and 1894; Minister of State Education, 1895)
before reaching the age of 40, which was fairly unusual at his time.
Poincaré was very ambitious but also very careful, and refused to take
party on questions that violently divided France, such as the Dreyfus
affair and the anticlerical fight. Accordingly, he was estimated by all
parties. He became a famous lawyer in Paris and the model of the
patriot from Lorraine, which was then partially (Moselle) incorporated
to Germany with Alsace.
Poincaré refused the Presidency of the Council in 1899 and was elected
in the Senate in 1903, where he stayed until 1913. He was elected at
the Académie Française in 1906.
In January 1912, Poincaré was appointed President of the Council by
President Fallières. He succeded Caillaux, who acknowledged his
admiration for Poincaré's culture, knowledge and work skills. Caillaux
was a pacifist, whereas Poincaré promoted firmness against Germany,
keeping for himself the Ministery of Foreign Affairs. Poincaré
strengthened the Entente Cordiale with Britain and the Franco-Russian
alliance.
On 17 January 1913, Poincaré was elected President of the Republic by
the Congress, and immediatly attempted to increase the power of the
President. Poincaré was one of the partisans of the extension of the
duration of the conscription from two to three years.
In 1914, the left parties won the general election and Poincaré
appointed the socialist Viviani as the President of the Council. In
July, during an official visit in Russia, Poincaré was informed of the
Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia. He came back to France where he
promoted the Union Sacrée (Holy Union) of all parties to support the
war against Germany, and was nicknamed Poincaré la Guerre. However,
all the benefit of the 1918 victory was received by Poincaré's old
enemy, Georges Clémenceau (1841-1929), nicknamed Père la Victoire.
In 1920, Poincaré refused to apply for a second President' mandate in
order to come back to the active political life. He was elected Senator
for the department of Meuse and was appointed President of the
Commission for War Reparations, from which he rapidly resigned because
he found the Commission too favourable to Germany. President of the
Commission of the Foreign Affairs of the Senate, he caused in 1921 the
defeat of Aristide Briand's government, found too weak with Germany
during the conference on reparations hold in Cannes.
Poincaré was again President of the Council from January 1922 to June
1924, claiming to defend "the integral application of the treaty of
Versailles". In January 1923, he ordered the military occupation of the
Ruhr district, causing international reprobation. In 1924, Poincaré was
defeated by the Cartel des Gauches but he came back to power in July
1926, leading a national union government, without the Socialists. He
won triumphally the general election 1928 and devaluated the franc the
same year. By the monetary law from 25 June 1928, the new franc,
nicknamed franc Poincaré had 1/5th of its 1914 value.
Poincaré resigned in July 1929 because of health problems and wrote his
memoirs, entitled Au service de la France.
Ivan Sache, 1 October 2004
The emblem placed by Raymond Poincaré in the middle of the white stripe of his personal flag is made of his initials RP in gold, as shown by National Geographic (1917) [gmc17].
Željko Heimer, 30 September 2001
![[Flag of Deschanel]](../images/f/fr_prpde.gif)
Paul Deschanel's standard - Image by Željko Heimer, 10 December 2004
Paul Deschanel (1855-1922) was born in Schaerbeek/Schaarbeek, near
Brussels, where his father had exiled during the Second Empire. Young
Deschanel was Victor Hugo's godchild and grew up in Paris, where his
family came back after the amnistia proclaimed by Napoléon III in 1859.
Paul Deschanel was appointed Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior
in 1876, then Secretary of the President of the Council and Préfet in
1877.
Elected Deputy in 1885, Deschanel presided the Chamber from 1898 to
1902 and from 1912 to 1920. He was an unsuccessful candidate to the
Presidency in 1913 against Raymond Poincaré.
On 16 November 1919, the first general election since 1914 was
organized in France. The center and right parties set up the Bloc
national républicain, whose aims were the strict implementation of the
treaty of Versailles (l'Allemagne paiera, Germany shall pay), the
indemnification of war victims, and the defense of "civilization
against Bolshevism". The latter item of the program was illustrated by
the famous poster showing the "Bolshevik peril" as a scary man with a
knife between the teeth. The picture was intended to recall the
slaughter of the Russian imperial family in Ekaterinburg. The big
strikes that took place in the first months of 1919 also favoured the
Bloc national.
The Bloc national easily defeated its opponents, mostly the Radicals
and the Socialists. The electoral system increased the importance of
the victory of the Bloc national, which won 2/3 of the seats; the
Radicals lost half of their Deputies, whereas the Socialist increased
their representation. Out of the 616 Deputies, 369 were newcomers.
Since several deputies, mostly from the Bloc national were war
veterans, the Chamber was nicknamed the chambre bleu horizon, as a
reference to the colour of the French uniforms.
The new session of the Parliament opened in a very consensual and
patriotic atmosphere, since deputies from Alsace-Lorraine returned for
the first time in the Palais-Bourbon since 1870. The consensus,
however, broke down for the election of the President of the Republic.
Georges Clémenceau, the architect of the victory, believed he would be
easily elected, without even being a formal candidate. However, the
Parliament mistrusted him. Clémenceau as the President would be very
authoritarian and would rule the country, which was the role of the
Parliament and not of the President at that time. Aristide Briand, who
hated Clémenceau, reminded the Catholic Deputies that Clémenceau was
extremely non-religious, and proposed Paul Deschanel as a better
candidate. Deschanel defeated Clémenceau in a preliminary vote by a
small margin; Clémenceau withdrew from the competition and the public
life.
Paul Deschanel was elected President of the Republic on 17 January
1920. Alexandre Millerand was appointed President of the Council on 20
January 1920 and set up a government with members from the Bloc
national and Radicals, still in the majority in the Senate.
Deschanel's mental health quickly declined. In May 1920, the President
fell out of the window of the Presidential train near Orléans; a
railway worker named Rateau found him walking on the railways, and was
told: Mon ami, ça va vous étonner, mais je suis le Président de la
République ! (My friend, don't be surprised, I am the President of the
Republic!). On 10 September, Deschanel was seen bathing, completely
naked, in a basin of the castle of Rambouillet. He resigned on 21
September 1920, was sent into a convalescent home and was elected
Senator in 1921. He was succeeded by Alexandre Millerand.
Paul Deschanel was a very refined and cultured writer; he was elected
at the Académie Française in 1899.
Ivan Sache, 8 December 2004
The personal flag of Paul Deschanel is shown in the 1923 supplement of
the Album des pavillons, guidons, flammes de toutes les
puissances maritimes [f9r23], first edited by Le Gras in 1858.
The flag is a French Tricolore with the monogram of the President,
the letters P D in gold, in the middle of the white stripe.
A smaller, black and white image published in Emblèmes et Pavillons #1, confirms the design of the flag.
Dominique Cureau & Jaume Ollé, 8 December 2004
![[Flag of Lebrun]](../images/f/fr_prale.gif)
Albert Lebrun's standard - Image by Željko Heimer, 25 September 2004
Albert Lebrun (1871-1950) was appointed several times Minister between
1911 and 1920, and elected President of the Senate in 1931. He was the last
president of the Third Republic, from 1932 to July 1940.
On 6 May 1932, between the two rounds of the legislative election,
President of the Republic Paul Doumer (1857-1932), elected in 1931, was
murdered by Gorguloff. Albert Lebrun, then president of the Senate, was
elected president of the Republic.
The mandate of Albert Lebrun was characterized by a great political
instability and the increase of international threats. The following
list of the presidents of the Council (then equivalent to a Prime
Minister) emphasizes this instability:
Lebrun was reelected President of the Republic on 5 April 1939. On 10 July 1940, the two chambers gave the full powers to Pétain, which de facto ended the Third Republic and Albert Lebrun's mandate. Lebrun brillantly graduated at the Ecole Polytechnique, but he was very unassuming and did not play any significant role in the French politics.
Albert Lebrun's personal flag, as shown in Flaggenbuch [neu92] is a square Tricolore with the golden letters AL in the middle of the white stripe.
Ivan Sache, 25 September 2004