Georges Clemenceau Biography

Georges Clemenceau

(Mouilleron-en-Pareds, 1841-Paris, 1929) French politician and journalist.As a journalist and leader of the parliamentary left, he was one of the most influential men in French politics in the late 19th century.During his second term as Prime Minister (1917-1919), he led the war effort that led France to triumph over the Axis powers, and played an essential role in the peace talks that concluded in the Treaty of Versailles, establishing himself as one of the most important figures in politics of his time.

Georges Clemenceau

He was the first of six children from a humble family.Born and raised in a region of strong traditionalism, Clemenceau received, however, from a very young age, the anticlerical and progressive influence of his father, Benjamin, imbued with the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.At the age of twelve he entered the Lycée de Nantes.During his student days in that city, he was introduced, through his father, into the political circles opposed to Napoleon III and met notable men of radical republicanism, such as the great historian Jules Michelet.

In 1861 he moved to Paris to study medicine; settled in the Latin Quarter.There he joined the young republicans of the avant-garde association Agis comme tu penses ('Act as you think').Together with some of his colleagues, he founded the newsletter Le Travail .Shortly afterwards he was arrested and imprisoned for two and a half months for having published an appeal to the Parisian workers to commemorate the anniversary of the Revolution of 1848.After his release, he founded a new newspaper, Le Matin , which was closed shortly after by the police authorities.

After finishing his studies, he went to the United States, in the heat of the Civil War.For the next four years (1865-1869) he stayed most of the time in New York, where he was introduced to progressive political and intellectual circles and was fascinated by the freedom of expression that American democracy had made its banner.He worked as a war correspondent for the newspaper Paris Temps and, at the end of the war, he was employed as a French and horsemanship teacher at a college for girls in Stamford (Connecticut).In 1869 he married one of his students, Mary Plummer, with whom he would have three children.The marriage separated after seven years of living together.

A few days after their wedding, they moved to France and settled as a doctor in La Vendée.Soon, however, his political interests led him back to Paris.In July 1870 Napoleon III declared war on Chancellor Bismarck's Prussia.Two months later, the French army was defeated at Sedan and the emperor captured.Clemenceau joined the demonstrations that, on September 4, 1870, stormed the Palais-Bourbon and proclaimed the Third Republic.

A few days later he was elected mayor of the Parisian district of Montmartre and, on February 8, 1871, deputy by the radical republicans for the National Assembly meeting in Bordeaux.In it he opposed the signing of the peace treaty imposed by Bismarck, which he considered dishonorable for France.His opposition to the terms of the armistice led him to return to the capital, where the revolutionary days of the Commune were being held.He became the mediator between the communal rebels and the National Assembly, which had moved its headquarters to Versailles for the signing of the peace treaty.On March 27, when he did not achieve any progress in the negotiation, he resigned his seat in the Assembly.

In 1876 he was again elected deputy for the electoral district of Montmartre, a position from which he joined Radical Republicans.Soon his eloquence and political cunning made him the leading spokesman for the radical faction.The following year he led the parliamentary opposition against President Patrice MacMahon's attempt to remove the government from its responsibility before the House of Representatives.

In 1880 he inaugurated a new newspaper, La Justice , which became the main organ of the radicals.During the presidential term of Jules Grévy (1879-1887), Clemenceau's political prestige was consolidated by present an implacable opposition to the management of successive governments, some of which it contributed to overthrow.He based his opposition on the attacks against colonial policy in Africa and Asia, which he considered counterproductive for the country's internal development; in 1885 he used this argument to overthrow the government of Jules Ferry with a fiery speech about the French defeat at Tonkin (Indochina).

In the elections of that same year he was again elected deputy, this time by the Var department.Despite being one of the strong men in parliament, he refused to form a government due to not having a sufficient majority in the Senate, but he lent his support to the cabinet of Charles de Freycinet (1886), in which he managed to include General Georges Boulanger, whom he considered an exemplary republican.However, Boulanger soon showed himself to be a recalcitrant Bonapartist and managed to form around him a national-monarchical movement.Clemenceau made boulangerism the new target of his attacks.To counteract his influence, he formed the League for Human Rights to promote progressive social reforms.

In 1887 he succeeded in bringing down the government of Maurice Rouvier by publicly denouncing President Grévy's son-in-law for trafficking in influences.However, he refused the offer to form a government, although he exercised his influence to remove his political rivals from power.His relentless work of harassment and demolition earned him a great number of enemies, who only waited for an opportunity to undermine his credit before the public opinion.In 1892 that opportunity came: due to his friendship with the financier Cornélius Herz, Clemenceau was splattered by the scandal that produced the bankruptcy of the Panama Canal Company.They even accused him of collaborating with the British secret services.

The campaign against him, led by the daily Le Petit Journal , reached its dramatic culmination when, on December 20, 1892, the Boulangerista deputy and writer Paul Déroulède denounced him before the House as the author of Herz.Clemenceau accused Déroulède of lying and challenged him to a duel, from which the two were unharmed.More effective was the judicial process against his defamers: his victory in court forced those who had accused him to resign their seats in parliament.However, the accusations leveled against him had undermined his prestige, and in the 1893 elections, despite carrying out a brilliant campaign, he was attacked from all fronts and defeated.

Clemenceau then immersed himself in journalism, becoming, after an initial stage of discouragement, one of the most respected and influential political commentators in the French press.This activity allowed him to display his excellent gifts for political analysis, his vast culture and his many contacts with the intellectual world of the time.A great friend of some of the most important writers and artists of his time, he was immortalized by Jean-François Rafaëlli, Auguste Rodin and Claude Monet, for whom he organized a major exhibition at the Tuileries after the First World War.His book on the history of the Hebrew people, At the foot of Sinai , featured illustrations by the brilliant Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

But, without a doubt, his main contribution to the journalism of his time were his articles on the Dreyfus affair, which shook France between 1894 and 1906.At first, Clemenceau was convinced of the guilt of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, accused of selling state secrets to Germany.But, once certain of his innocence, he undertook a tireless campaign in favor of their liberation, through his publications La Justice and L'Aurore (founded in 1897), in which he harshly attacked the anti-Semitism of the French army and clergy.Between 1900 and 1902 he expanded his journalistic work with the creation of a new weekly, Le Bloc. His vehement defense of Dreyfus restored his prestige among the Radical Republicans.In April 1902 he obtained a seat in the Senate, which he would occupy without interruption until his retirement in 1920.

In 1902 the most fruitful phase of his long political career began.From his first speech before the Upper House, he vigorously defended freedom of expression and conscience, as well as the complete separation between Church and State, radically opposing the interference of the Vatican in French affairs and the state monopoly on education demanded by the Socialists.

In 1906 he accepted the interior ministerial portfolio in the cabinet of Ferdinand Sarrien.That same year he consolidated his position as "strong man" of France by sending the army to suppress a strike by miners in the department of Pas-de-Calais that threatened to cause serious social unrest.This was the cause of his complete break with the socialists and evidenced his turn towards a more conservative political position.When Sarrien presented his resignation in October 1906, Clemenceau replaced him as head of the Council of Ministers.

His first term was characterized by the strengthening of ties with Great Britain through the Entente formed in 1907.Shortly after, a dispute between France and Germany, originated when the French government tried to consolidate its supremacy over Morocco, caused a growing tension between the two countries.The mediation of Austria-Hungary made it possible to reach an agreement in February 1909 (Algeciras Conference), by which the economic interests of Germany in the North African country were recognized, while the French political hegemony over it was assured and strengthened the Anglo-French alliance.

This meant the beginning of the international isolation of Germany.Despite its triumph over German pretensions, the Moroccan question caused a serious ministerial crisis, which pitted Clemenceau and the influential foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, against each other.On July 20, 1909, Clemenceau was forced to resign, losing the support of the House.

After his departure from the government, he dedicated himself to traveling through South America (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil), where he gave lectures on democracy.In 1911 he returned to the Senate and actively collaborated in the foreign affairs and army commissions.Persuaded that Germany was preparing for war, he tirelessly advocated rearmament, both from his rostrum in the Senate and from the pages of his new newsreel, L'Homme Libre , founded in 1913.

When the First World War broke out in July of the following year, Clemenceau launched an appeal for the defense of the fatherland and for a supreme war effort, which caused the closure of L'Homme Libre in September 1914.Two days after its closure, the newspaper reappeared under the title L'Homme Enchaîné ('The man in chains'), a publication that suffered constant mutilations by the censorship.

Clemenceau around 1919

In the Senate, Clemenceau continued to demand more arms, more ammunition, more soldiers and better management of the country's resources, with the sole objective of winning the war.At the same time, he appealed to the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, to involve his country in the war, which he finally did in April 1917.

Despite his efforts to instill in the French society a "spirit of victory", the prolongation of the war left the country dejected and at the limit of its human and economic resources.The pacifism adopted by the radical left became the new target of Clemenceau's attacks.In November 1917, in an attempt to remedy the critical situation in the country, President Raymond Poincaré entrusted him with the formation of a government.

Clemenceau was 76 years old at the time, but this did not prevent him from launching himself energetically into the task of putting all the resources of France at the service of a single objective: the defeat of Germany.He managed to convince Britain and the United States to establish a unified command, and in May 1918, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch was appointed sole commander of the Allied troops.Despite the defeats suffered in May of that year, Clemenceau continued to defend the need to maintain the war effort at all costs.

On November 11, 1918, Germany signed the armistice that sealed its defeat in the First World War.For Clemenceau, this became a historic revenge against the Germany that had humiliated France in 1871.Along with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and President Wilson, he was one of the main protagonists of the Paris Peace Conference (1919).

Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George at Versailles (1919)

Faced with the position of greater tolerance defended by diplomacy American, demanded the imposition to Germany of a very tough peace treaty.Not only did he get the return of Alsace and Lorraine, but he also got full German disarmament and the payment of exorbitant war reparations to be accepted.Finally, as a symbolic culmination of his personal patriotic crusade, he demanded that the peace agreement be ratified in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where, in 1871, Bismarck had had the audacity to proclaim the Second Reich.

However, Clemenceau's performance at the Versailles Conference aroused the suspicions of the French National Assembly, sided by the prime minister in the peace talks.The November 1919 elections resulted in an Assembly largely opposed to Clemenceau's continuation as head of government.The following January he was defeated in the elections to the presidency of the Republic and, as was the norm after the election of a new head of state, he was forced to leave the leadership of the Council of Ministers.

This meant his definitive withdrawal from political life.He left Paris and moved to Bel-Ebat, the seaside villa he owned in La Vendée.Between September 1920 and May 1921 he made a trip to India, where, despite his respectable age, he dedicated himself to hunting tigers.In November 1922 he made one last trip to the United States, where he led a campaign against the progressive distancing of that country from European affairs.

Back in Bel-Ebat, he devoted himself to reading and writing his latest works: Demosthenes and Au soir de la pensée. His Memories: Greatness and misery of a victory , were, to a large extent, a response to the attacks launched against him by his old ally, Marshal Foch.They would be published posthumously in 1930.Georges Clemenceau died in his Parisian apartment at the age of 88.