Georges Clemenceau

Premier of France (1906-1909, 1917-1920)

• Born: September 28, 1841
• Birthplace: Mouilleron-en-Pareds, France
• Died: November 24, 1929
• Place of death: Paris, France

Clemenceau played a major role in French politics from 1871 to 1919. Although he influenced the nation’s political course several times, Clemenceau is best known for his role as premier during the last eighteen months of World War I, when his determination to win inspired France despite enormous adversity.

Early Life

Georges Clemenceau (jawrzh kleh-mahn-soh) was the eldest son of Benjamin and Emma Gautreau Clemenceau. The family eventually consisted of three sons and three daughters. Oddly, as the region was strongly Roman Catholic, the patriarch was an atheist and his wife Protestant. Georges followed his father in religion and in his leftist political views.

Clemenceau’s early education was at home, but in 1853 he enrolled at the lycée in Nantes. On graduation in 1858, he entered medical school there. In 1861, he transferred to Paris. Although he was graduated in 1865, he had spent so much time getting acquainted with leftist political circles participation in an 1862 demonstration cost him two months in jail that he got a poor residency. The articles he wrote in the early 1860’s suggest that he had more talent as a political journalist than as a physician.

In 1865, frustrated by unrequited love, Clemenceau went to the United States for four years. At first he lived on a paternal allowance and the proceeds of his articles about the United States sold to the Paris press. When his father cut him off in an effort to get him home, he took a position teaching French at a Connecticut academy. He fell in love with a student named Mary Plummer, and, after some disagreement with her guardian over Clemenceau’s distaste for religion, the two married on June 23, 1869. The match was unfortunate, for after the births of a son and two daughters the two were estranged. Mary had little part in Clemenceau’s life after 1875, and they divorced in 1892. Tales of Clemenceau’s callousness have circulated ever since, but although his wife spent much of the rest of her life in some isolation, there is no real evidence that he mistreated her.

Life’s Work

Clemenceau’s political career began in the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). Personally he had no use for the Second Empire or Napoleon III, but, a determined patriot, he could hardly hope for a French defeat. The disastrous defeat at Sedan, where the emperor himself was taken prisoner, led to the creation of the Third Republic. On September 5, 1870, Clemenceau was appointed mayor of Montmartre. Known for his leftist views, Clemenceau organized the National Guard in his district and forbade religious instruction in the schools. A gulf began to open between the Left and the government, and, when municipal elections agreed to in the face of riots were canceled, Clemenceau resigned his post. A national plebiscite supported the government, but Clemenceau was reelected on November 5. The Left believed that the National Guard was the equal of the professional forces of Prussia, and, when France was forced to accept an armistice on January 28, 1871, Leftists cried treachery.

In February, Clemenceau was elected to the new National Assembly and voted against a peace that was to give Alsace-Lorraine to the Prussians. In March, he attempted to defuse the violence that erupted when the army tried to confiscate some cannons that had been left in Montmartre. He was too late, and two officers were murdered. The Radical Republicans and socialists formed the Paris Commune , intending it to be the nucleus of a national government. On March 19, 1871, the mayors of Paris, including Clemenceau, met with the Central Committee of the Commune; they were ready to represent the city’s grievances before the national government, led by Adolphe Thiers, but not to rebel. Compromise failed, and Clemenceau was crushingly defeated in the ensuing communal elections. Pretending to be an American, he got out of the city for a conference of delegates from republican cities and was thus away during the bloody week of May 21-28, when the government crushed the Commune. For much of the rest of his career, however, he was damned by the Right as a supporter of the Commune and by the Left as a traitor for abandoning it.

For the first four years of the Third Republic, Clemenceau was in the political background. He served on the Paris Municipal Council, becoming president in 1875, and practiced medicine. In February, 1876, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, wherein his calls for amnesty for Communards and increased popular sovereignty quickly established him as one of the leaders of the Left. As Republicans gained more electoral strength, Clemenceau sought to offer the electorate a choice between radical and conservative Republican factions.

In the late 1870’s, Clemenceau began a campaign for leadership of the Radical Republicans. He established a newspaper, La Justice, to express his views, created a party organization, and began making speeches in and out of Parliament. Like most political journals, Clemenceau’s had a patron, Cornelius Herz, but, unlike many legislators, Clemenceau did not do favors in return for the money. The target of his campaign was a Radical Republican victory in 1885. The issues were constitutional reform, the condition of the working class, and colonial policy. Clemenceau wanted an elected judiciary and the abolition of the senate whose members served for life. Although the senate was made an elective body, by 1885 Clemenceau found such reform was not of popular concern. Although not a collectivist, Clemenceau supported trade unions and improved conditions for workers. He became more conservative over time, but during the 1880’s he inspired some of the younger French socialists, such as Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum. In the mid-1880’s, however, the major issue was colonial expansion in Tunis and Indochina. Clemenceau argued that the profits of colonies did not offset their expenses; that colonial conflict would divert military resources from European preparedness; and that aggressive colonialism would produce friction with England, leaving France alone against Germany. In March, 1884, just as the premier Jules Ferry was making secret arrangements with China over Tonkin, Clemenceau, justifying his reputation as a brutal debater, crushed the government with information about military setbacks that later proved false. A caretaker government was appointed and a spirited electoral campaign followed, leading to elections in October of 1885. The Republicans, however, could not agree about issues or candidates, and the result of the first ballot was the biggest victory for the Right since the early 1870’s. The feuding Republicans managed to combine their lists of candidates for the second ballot, resulting in a chamber divided in thirds: Right, Opportunists (moderate Republicans), and Radicals.

Clemenceau was perhaps lucky that his attacks on Ferry had angered enough Republicans that he got no office. The parliament of 1885-1889 was marked much more by scandal than reform. Efforts by Ferdinand de Lesseps to duplicate his Suez Canal building success in Panama led to failure and many bribes and special favors for legislators to ensure the profits of those at the top before the company fell. Also, in 1888, General Georges Boulanger, who had risen in politics as a protégé of Clemenceau, began to attack the failure of the republic to make reforms. A popular military hero, Boulanger, secretly in league with the royalists, seemed about to stage a coup. The Republican legislature, belatedly aware of the danger, trumped up charges against his lieutenants, causing Boulanger to panic and flee. Clemenceau then successfully initiated legislation that would force Boulanger’s faction to form a structured party, which it lacked the unity to do. The Radicals had been forced to help the government without getting any reforms and lost much of their separate identity. The popular reaction was a drift to the Right, and so there would be no constitutional reforms before the defeat in World War II resulted in a new constitution.

The elections of 1889 reduced the influence of the Republicans and Clemenceau. Then three years later, the aftermath of the Panama Canal scandal virtually ruined him. No one ever directly charged Clemenceau with misconduct, but his longtime friend and backer Herz was involved and had even attempted to blackmail government figures. Right-wing politicians, perhaps seeking revenge for the defeat of Boulanger, damned Clemenceau by association, using the charges to defeat him at the polls in August, 1893.

Clemenceau, forced out of politics, embarked on a career as a man of letters. He wrote almost daily for La Justice, until it failed in 1887, and often for other papers, and, before returning to politics, produced a novel and a play. His most important publications were the volumes of essays La Měleé sociale (1895) and Le Grand Pan (1896).

The Dreyfus affair , which arose because of the indictment and hasty conviction for espionage of Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jew who had ever served on the French general staff, provided a cause that helped Clemenceau to focus his writing. His style improved markedly, and in the last years of the century he was writing almost daily about l’affaire. When Émile Zola, whose article “J’accuse” (1898) had made Dreyfus a national concern, was tried for libel, Clemenceau was allowed to join the defense team even though he was not a lawyer. Dreyfus was convicted largely because of anti-Semitism and sent to Devil’s Island. Even after his innocence had been established, there was resistance to changing the verdict.

Clemenceau had once again become an influential figure, and in 1901 Le Bloc, a weekly newsletter written entirely by him, began to appear. Aimed at an elite audience, it was influential, but only a year later he gave it up to campaign for a senate seat, which he held for the rest of his political life. On March 14, 1906, he became minister of the interior. Clemenceau was quite influential from the beginning and became premier on October 9. The government has on occasion been criticized for failing to advance the program of the Left, but it accomplished much in adverse circumstances. Without battles over church-state relations and the Dreyfus affair, the Left had no unifying cause. There was no majority for a coalition of the far Left, and so the cabinet was made up of mostly moderate Republicans. Over its three years, this cabinet managed to nationalize the western railroad, get an income tax bill through the chamber (it failed in the Senate), and start work on an old-age pension bill that was finally passed in 1910. It was a respectable set of reform efforts for a government based on moderates.

The Clemenceau government had problems at home and abroad. During the Algeciras Conference (1906), which dealt with a German challenge over the growing French role in Morocco, Clemenceau’s determination kept up French resolve. Ultimately, the Entente Cordiale the semiofficial connection between London and Paris held firm, and the Germans backed down. When large-scale strikes led to violence, Clemenceau adroitly combined repression, using troops to keep order, and conciliation, blocking efforts to suppress the Confédération Générale du Travail and supporting reasonable wage and hour demands. Throughout his tenure Clemenceau was faced with labor problems, but, although the socialists were not pleased, his policy was quite successful.

Clemenceau’s fall from power came ostensibly over a question of naval preparedness but was actually a result of personality. He was challenged by Théophile Delcassé, whose efforts to create an English alliance and resist Germany had made him very popular. Instead of defending his own program, Clemenceau attacked his foe, with whom he had previously had personal difficulties. The vote that brought down Clemenceau was really a vote of sympathy for Delcassé. It was difficult for Clemenceau to put personal feelings aside and react purely in political ways. The next few years were quiet. In 1911, Clemenceau spoke against concessions to Germany in the second Moroccan crisis and campaigned for extending the basic term of military service from two to three years, which was done in 1913. He also began to publish a new newspaper, L’Homme libre.

The outbreak of war in August, 1914, led to Clemenceau’s finest hour. At first, however, he was a critic. In the senate and his newspaper, which he renamed L’Homme enchaîné in response to censorship, he demanded a more vigorous prosecution of the war while condemning the tactic of mass assaults. The Left was inclined to seek compromise, and the Right was loyal to the Sacred Union (the nonpartisan war government). By the time the horrendous butcher’s bill from the Western front began to produce disillusionment, he was the only politician who had both criticized the handling of the war effort and demanded an all-out effort to win. His moment came in the summer of 1917 when the bloody failure of the Nivelle Offensive led to large-scale army mutinies. While General Philippe Pétain restored discipline, Clemenceau attacked the government for tolerating defeatist attitudes, which the army blamed rather than admitting that the horrors of the front, added to the disgusting conditions in rest camps, had been the real cause of the revolt. Governments failed in October and November, and Clemenceau was asked to form a cabinet. The members were mostly Republicans, but none of prominence. No one from the Right was included, but that side was strongly supportive in any case. The socialists abandoned the Sacred Union and went into opposition. The result was that Clemenceau was completely dominant and, unlike his predecessors, had no reason to adjust his policy to accommodate the socialists.

At seventy-six in 1917, Clemenceau, who was short and rotund, was still in good physical condition. Fitness had long been important to him, and he was an expert horseman and fencer. He was dapper, with a high forehead and walrus mustache, but his dominant feature was his piercing eyes. His appearance did not belie his nickname the Tiger earned by the ferocity of his debating.

Russia’s withdrawal from the war because of the Bolshevik Revolution freed large numbers of German troops for the Hindenburg offensives of early 1918, but Clemenceau’s oratory helped maintain the French will to fight. By making it clear to unions that he would support wage and condition improvement but crush any hint of pacifism or defeatism, he got such cooperation that the number of days lost to strikes fell dramatically. He pressed the English to increase the proportion of their young men drafted and promoted plans to make the aggressive Ferdinand Foch supreme Allied commander. When things went awry, he backed his generals, refusing to look for scapegoats. He frequently visited the front at considerable personal risk to show the poilus that he cared.

With the arrival of the Americans, the Germans were stopped and the tide ineluctably turned. Clemenceau worked for Allied unity and to ensure that peace arrangements would guarantee French security. He had to balance the idealism of Woodrow Wilson, the practical desires of English prime ministerDavid Lloyd George for a revived Germany in European trade, and the demands of Foch and President Raymond Poincaré for the crushing of Germany. Clemenceau was very influential at the Paris Conference as chair of the Council of Ten (later reduced to the heads of the major powers) and, despite being shot by an anarchist, was able to get much of what he wanted in the Versailles Treaty.

A key question for Clemenceau was security. Foch and Poincaré demanded major territorial cessions by Germany, but, when it was clear that the Allies would not agree, Clemenceau accepted a fifteen-year occupation of the Rhineland and the separation of the Saar from Germany for a similar period with a plebiscite in the latter region to determine its final fate. In return, France was to get an Anglo-American guarantee of its borders. The guarantee was voided by the refusal of the United States to ratify the Versailles Treaty, and Clemenceau had to defend the arrangement as adequate. It bought time to rearm. The other great concern was reparations, and Clemenceau was as guilty as the other negotiators for the impossible burden imposed on Germany. Although more vindictive than the other negotiators, Clemenceau was little more responsible for the treaty’s failure. He had to satisfy the political demands of the electorate and compromise with France’s allies. Even had he wished to, he could not have changed the treaty very much.

During the negotiations, Clemenceau was faced with labor unrest, financial problems, and an increasing socialist challenge. There were some dramatic strikes, but on the whole the postwar boom prevented political danger. Although the government seemed in good shape, a change in electoral law made coalitions extremely important, and, since the socialists refused any coalition, the result was a massive victory for the right-center Bloc National in 1919. Clemenceau, despite the prestige of having led the nation to victory, had to resign.

After 1919, Clemenceau took little part in politics, though he did make some effort to help his protégé, André Tardieu. For a decade he devoted most of his time to travel and writing. He composed biographies of Demosthenes and Claude Monet and, most important, Grandeurs et misères d’une victoire (1930; The Grandeur and Misery of Victory , 1930). The latter was in part memoirs but was more intended as a response to Foch, who had continued to criticize the peace settlement and Clemenceau for agreeing to it. He died very early in the morning of November 24, 1929, in Paris.

Significance

Clemenceau was above all a politician. He was devoted to the liberal principles of separation of church and state, support for labor, and popular sovereignty. Although he became more conservative toward the end of his career, his support for those principles never wavered. Part of that conservatism came from his unyielding sense of patriotism, and his conviction that France had to be preparing to defend itself against Germany.

Present at the creation of the Third Republic in 1871, Clemenceau’s combativeness slowed his political rise, for he made enemies more easily than friends. Guilt by association in the Panama Canal scandal also sidetracked his career. He carried on, using journalism to make his opinions known and to regain respect in the political arena. Getting a chance to serve in a government, he effectively furthered the program of the moderate Left. When he fell, he was an elderly man and could have retired with honor.

The summit of his career came in the darkest hours of World War I. Taking almost solo control of the government and war policy, Clemenceau’s enormous willpower stiffened the resolve of the nation to make the final sacrifices and win. His importance to his nation was greater than that of any other war leader in any of the belligerents. His career ended with his influential role at the Paris Peace Conference, at which he did as much as was possible to protect the future interests of France.

Bibliography

Bruun, Geoffrey. Clemenceau. 1943. Reprint. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1962. Part of the Makers of Modern Europe series. Although in places outdated, Bruun’s biography is a good, straightforward narrative that is still worth reading.

Churchill, Winston S. “Clemenceau.” In Great Contemporaries. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1937. Churchill’s eloquence and shrewd insights into human nature are evident in this biographical sketch. Churchill packs much information into a few pages.

Clemenceau, Georges. Georges Clemenceau: The Events of His Life as Told to His Former Secretary Jean Martet. Translated by Milton Waldman. New York: Longmans, Green, 1930. Although not always trustworthy, this book is one of the few sources available for the study of Clemenceau’s early life. It is a must for any biographical research.

Douglas, L. “Clemenceau.” In The History Makers, edited by Lord Longford and Sir John Wheeler-Bennett. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973. Focused on Clemenceau’s importance in the development of French history, this is a good introductory article for those interested in seeing the key elements of the subject’s career.

Jackson, J. Hampden. Clemenceau and the Third Republic. 1946. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979. A useful biography with a political slant. Jackson’s judgments are judicious, and he is at times insightful.

King, Jere C. Foch Versus Clemenceau: France and German Dismemberment, 1918-1919. Historical Monographs 44. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960. Clemenceau was so intimately involved in the entire resolution of World War I that, although this book is really about Franco-German diplomacy, it should be consulted by anyone seeking an in-depth knowledge of him.

Lansing, Robert. “Georges Clemenceau.” In The Big Four and Others of the Peace Conference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921. An eyewitness, Lansing offers an impressionistic but valuable view of Clemenceau’s dominating role at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Although short on biographical data, this article is a very good introduction to the administration of the peace talks.

MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York: Random House, 2002. Examines the intents, goals, and constraints of the people who negotiated the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, focusing on Clemenceau, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, and U.S. president Woodrow Wilson.

Roberts, J. “Clemenceau the Politician.” History Today 6 (September, 1956): 581-591. A popular article focused on Clemenceau’s role in politics. Because so much emphasis is placed on his role in World War I, the article’s emphasis is helpful in establishing a balanced view.

Watson, David Robin. Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography. New York: David McKay, 1976. An excellent scholarly biography. Watson’s volume is perhaps a little short on personal information and at times shows a tendency to be overly favorable to the subject.