French History

Dreyfus / biografíasyvidas.com

Dreyfus was born into a Jewish family in France in 1859. The fact of his Jewishness was to prove a main factor in his future. He chose the army as a career, and became an officer. In 1894 he was accused of passing military information to Germany, a traditional enemy of France for centuries. The accusers claimed they found writings in Dreyfus’ own hand revealing important military secrets. A court martial found Dreyfus guilty; he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the jail on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. This notorious internment camp was used by the French to get rid of her worst criminals, and was almost impossible to escape because the island was (and is) circled by maneating sharks.

Later a new army chief was apppointed, one Colonel Picquart, who discovered in 1896 that the court martial had been a farce, and that the real spy had been Major Esterhazy, who moved in illustrious circles. Picquart was promptly sent to serve in Tunisia and in effect instructed to keep his discoveries to himself. Thus began the ‘Dreyfus Case’ – one of the most intriguing in the history of France. (more…)

/ en.wikipedia.org

He was a descendant of Louis XIII (the king in The Three Musketeers), and the eldest son of the Duke of Orléans. Both father and son openly supported the French Revolution, and actually voted for the death of Louis XVI. Both liked to be called Philippe Égalité, inspired one assumes by the revolutionary chant ‘Liberté, Fraternité, Égalité. At the age of nineteen he fought in the French Revolutionary Wars (q.v.) at Valmy and Jemappes, but with his commander Dumouriez plotted to restore a French monarchy, albeit a constitutional one. Unfortunately his father was blamed for this and despite his nickname of Égalité he was arrested and guillotined in 1793. Young Philippe was just twenty years old.

Exiling himself to the safety of Austria, he stayed, gaining a reputation as an homme du monde, until he returned to France in 1814, where he found himself extremely rich, mainly due to the Milliard of King Charles X. This was compensation paid officially by the government to those emigrants who had left France before or during the Revolution and had had their lands sequestered. Philippe was very much the man about town, elegantly dressed if a bit of a fop; he had ten children whom he is said to have cherished, and an easy way with the ordinary people of Paris. (more…)

Aristide Briand ( en. wikipedia.org)

The essential difference between a (strictly) democratic republic and a monarchy is that the first is a government elected by people who have the correct age and the right to do so, accepting that the politicians chosen then elect among themselves a President who will preside over the people and them. Almost all, though not quite all monarchies embrace a hereditary Head of State – a descendent within a royal family which may or may not be a dynasty. Both presidents and monarchs hope to be popular with the population they rule. If they prove unpopular with the politicians they will be removed by them under one pretext or other – often by violent means. This seems to be a rule of History.

The radical Republic that governed France between the end of the 19^th century until 1940 was both stable and conservative, though plagued by sometimes bewildering changes of administration. No party could rule without the support of the Radicals, suitably armed with doctrines composed by the appropriately named Léon Bourjeois in his book La Solidarité published in 1896. This volume, not much discussed today, tried to find a middle way between socialism and capitalism, in an attempt to replace the outmoded idea of laissez-faire, roughly translated as ‘Let sleeping dogs lie’ – the classic conservative view. (more…)