First oppositions (June 1902 — October 1904) , president of the French Republic, had a fraught relationship with president of the council,
Émile Combes. Since 1902, the President of the Republic
Émile Loubet had strong disagreements with the policies of President of the council,
Émile Combes. He disapproved of the "anticlerical and sectarian" policy of the Combes cabinet, protested against the dismissal of Captain Humbert and regularly discussed with the Secretary General of the Elysee the nepotism instituted by Combes: "Anyone can ask, demand anything they desire, evaluating themselves at such a rate and always finding parliamentary influences to obtain it ”. On 20 March 1903,
Paul Doumer — although he himself was a Freemason — met Loubet to express his concerns about the dominating influence of the Masonic lodges on the government. Supported by a few other Republican politicians — including
Théophile Delcassé — Loubet nonetheless remained in the minority and was powerless to moderate or dismiss Combes. He considered resigning for a period, but the prospect of his replacement by an associate of Combes held him back. In July 1904, Loubet's opposition to the Law of Separation of Churches and State also became public, helping to weaken majority support for the government. In September 1904, the internal stability of Combes' regime deteriorated a little more. In fact, during his speech in Auxerre on 4 September, he pronounced a sentence that would trigger a controversy: "Our political system consists in the subordination of all bodies and all institutions, whatever they may be, to the supremacy of the republican and
secular state”. A lively press campaign was launched: on 7 September,
Le Temps accused him of defending the “tyrant state”; In
Le Matin,
Georges Leygues spoke for parliamentarians tired of Combes'
authoritarianism: “M. Combes has no friends, he only has servants. Our parliamentarianism, which was formerly a system of free discussion, has become under his reign a disciplinary system where everyone must think about order and follow the instructions. It was not worth driving out the monks to reestablish a new congregation in the midst of Parliament, out of which there is no salvation!"; finally, the
Revue des Deux Mondes published on 15 October an anonymous pamphlet entitled
Le Ministère perpetuel, authored by the deputy , member of the
Republican Federation:
During the turmoil of the cards (October 1904 — December 1904) Between 18 October 1904 and 15 January 1905, the Combes government attempted to reform its parliamentary majority, the
Bloc des gauches, while the cards affair experienced new developments at the national level.
Resignation of André and the Mollin affair On 6 November 1904, two days after the stormy session in which General André was slapped, Combes confided to Loubet that he was considering dismissing the Minister of War, whose credit was damaged beyond repair. Eager to provoke the fall of the entire cabinet and not the only resignation of the minister, Loubet argues that it is impossible to separate the government from André in view of the insult he had received and that this would prove the right. At the same time, Loubet began to plan for the next government, which he intends to entrust to Delcassé. André resisted a few days with the support of Combes. Finally, hoping to save his government, Combes forced André to resign on 15 November, without compensation — he was, in the words of
Georges Clemenceau, “Turkish strangled”, and replaced with
Maurice Berteaux, a rising star of the Radical Party, a Freemason and also on good terms with President Loubet. On 17 November 1904, to save the face of the government, Combes tried to blame Captain Henri Mollin for the excesses of the file system, whom General André had forced to resign on 27 October and he declared to the Chamber: "Because an officer of ordinance has devised a detestable intelligence system, should the blame be placed on those he has unwittingly deceived?". Indignant by this disavowal and attempt to make him the
scapegoat for the affair, Captain Mollin withdrew his resignation — which had not yet been published in the
Journal officiel de la République française — and sent a letter to Berteaux asking to appear before a board of inquiry. There was a panic in the Ministry of War: Berteaux, in order not to upset the left, refused to initiate proceedings against Mollin, because it would then be necessary to investigate all the officers suspected of involvement, starting with Commander Pasquier. Consequently, he refused to report the resignation of Mollin. On 5 January 1905, General André, in a letter, tried again to make Mollin a scapegoat, explaining: "I was wrong to report absolutely to this officer for the correspondence to be exchanged [with the Grand Orient] and not to require him to submit all his letters to me first”. He also affirmed that he was not informed that denouncing was practiced between officers, a practice which he said he disapproves of.
Defence of the "cardists" Relying on the support of the socialist left, Émile Combes refused to sacrifice the network of informers. But the
Minister of Public Education Joseph Chaumié, feeling the turning tide and wishing to place himself in a future government, broke with this by reprimanding Gaumant, a teacher from the high school of
Gap who denounced officers while trying to concealing his handwriting; the latter was exiled to the
lycée in
Tournon-sur-Rhône. The Keeper of the Seals followed his example and demanded the resignation of , justice of the peace in
Pont-à-Mousson and member of the Council of the Grand Orient de France. This move was too much for the Grand Orient: , ,
Alfred Massé and
Frédéric Desmons, Masonic parliamentarians who were all members of the Council of the Grand Orient de France, intervened with Combes directly. On 17 November 1904, Combes reaffirmed his position by affirming in the Chamber: “[I do not want] to deliver republican officials to vengeance who [have] been denounced by certain papers whose authenticity cannot even be guaranteed. We do not want to lose the propaganda work of five years in one week!". By authority, he forced Vallé to reconsider the sanctions he had pronounced against the informing magistrates, Bernardin and Bourgeuil — former public prosecutor in
Orléans —, and urged his ministers to refuse any concession to the right by moving against informers. At the same time as these pressures on the government, the Grand Orient resumed the offensive: on 23 November, Grand Master
Louis Lafferre gave an interview to the newspaper
Le Matin in which he affirmed that the obedience as a whole was not informed of the registration and called for a purification directed against the right: "It remains to be seen whether
democracy, some day tired of being badly served or betrayed, will not seek to see clearly in its affairs and will not take the broom of the great days, without worrying about the hierarchical path or the virtue of parliamentarians, but only the purification of civil servants, which has been promised to him for thirty years, and which we claim to do without his assistance”.
The "delegates" of Combes '' worried about the generalization of denouncement. To defend his cabinet, Combes tried to regain control by affirming on 17 November that the government is entitled to obtain information from delegates across the country. Derided by the nationalist
Albert Gauthier de Clagny — who quipped “Which delegates? Delegated by whom and for what task? If these are people who must make inquiries in all the municipalities, in good French they are called
snitches"—, the President of the Council retorted: "It is the notable of the municipality who is invested with the confidence of the Republicans and who, as such, represents them to the government when the mayor is a reactionary”. On 18 November, he formalized the system by means of a circular addressed to the prefects: On 22 November, he clarified to his ministers that "so that the political action of the prefects can lead to useful results, it is essential that these senior officials be called upon to express, from a political point of view, their opinion on all the proposals of interest to the staff of the various administrations, in particular with regard to questions of appointment and promotion”.
Georges Grosjean, followed by several other parliamentarians, immediately filed a request for an interpellation on the subject of "the official organization of the denunciation revealed by the ministerial circular of 18 November", set for 8 December. On 1 December, Louis Lafferre, whom Combes chose to reassure the
Bloc militants, gave a speech at the rostrum to justify the Masonic political surveillance of the French Army. Lafferre's thesis was that the government has the right to inquire about reactionary officials; he accused the right of maintaining an atmosphere of
civil war in the country. Interrupted several times, he finally exploded: "We now know from the reactionary newspapers the presumed state of the Army, which has 90% enemies of the Republic if this information is correct. I ask the Minister of War if it is advisable to let this country be guarded by a ''coup d'etat''!", this triggered a prolonged uproar in the hemicycle. On 9 December, the day after a vote in the Senate in which the government obtained only two majority votes, the prefects of Combes were recalled from their departments to "warm up with promises the zeal of hesitant deputies or where appropriate to try to intimidate them."
Jean Jaurès, leader of the Socialists, put his political and moral authority at the service of Combes, as he was also convinced of the need for political control of the Army and fearing that the fall of Combes would definitively disrupt the
Bloc des gauches. They were attacked by
Alexandre Ribot who said "You have lowered everything that was great, generous in this country, that is your crime!" and also
Alexandre Millerand who said "Never a Minister of the Empire, under the lethargic sleep of our freedoms, would have dared to stoop to these abject practices!", the President of the Council managed to gather 296 votes in his favour (and 285 against) by affirming that the Republic was threatened by the maneuver of the right, offering himself a welcome respite.
Death of Gabriel Syveton and Ms. Loubet's file ''. The drawing represents the reconstruction of the drama carried out by the investigators. Following the incident of 4 November,
Gabriel Syveton was prosecuted for his physical attack on the Minister of War; his friends, eager to make his trial a platform against the government, voted with the majority of deputies in favor of lifting his parliamentary immunity. On 8 December 1904, the day before his trial before the
Seine Assize Court, the nationalist deputy was found dead — asphyxiated —, his head was found resting in his fireplace, covered with a newspaper, with the gas pipe from the radiator in his mouth. The nationalists,
François Coppée and André Baron in the lead, denounced this as a Masonic assassination. However, the investigation concluded that it was
suicide, and
Jules Lemaître admitted before the examining magistrate that Syveton had taken 98,000
francs from the
Ligue de la patrie française of which he was the treasurer, money which was subsequently returned by his widow. It seemed that Syveton committed suicide after being threatened with revealing his embezzlement and the possible affair he had with his daughter-in-law, the thesis of the investigators was joined by the nationalists
Léon Daudet,
Louis Dausset,
Boni de Castellane and
Maurice Barrès, who accused the government of being behind the moral pressure exerted on Syveton which caused him to commit suicide. On 21 December, another twist emerged:
Le Temps reveals that the entourage of the President of the Republic was listed by Commander Pasquier: in the file concerning Commander Bouillane de Lacoste, Loubet's ordering officer, it was written: "The clerics are all-powerful in
Montélimar. Bourgeois, industrialists, civil servants, magistrates, officers, are clericals. However, this clerical world has always supported Mr. Loubet, because of his tolerance. It is therefore in this world, by connections, by the family relations of
Mrs. Loubet, who are very clerical, that the President took two orderly officers”. The publication of this card put the government in a very embarrassing position. On 23 December, read this intelligence report out in the Chamber and exclaims: “The Chamber will not be in solidarity with the denunciation. She has a duty to stop the espionage at the door of the Head of State!"; Minister Berteaux, very embarrassed, explained that Pasquier swore never to have written this card, an explanation rejected by
Paul Deschanel of the
Democratic Republican Alliance, who added: “They claim that republican officers must be covered. What is the Republic doing in this? I doubt that the men who engage in such practices have a drop of Republican blood in their veins."
Fall of the Combes cabinet Jean Guyot de Villeneuve was at the origin of the final maneuver which brought down the Combes government. Since Combes formally refuses to punish informers, the nationalist deputy shifted the debate to the field of the national order of the
Legion of Honor: on 9 December, he protested against the officers who denounced their comrades, some of whom "carry the sign of honor: will they be allowed to wear it?". Individual complaints had already been addressed to the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor, General , but Combes had endeavored to cover the first legionaries incriminated, including
Paul Ligneul, mayor of
Le Mans. A petition is circulating in
Paris, coordinated by General , former Grand Chancellor of the Order. On 28 December 1904, the request was addressed to General Florentin: “The undersigned ask you, Mr. Grand Chancellor, to bring the matter before the Council of the Order and to make public the solution(s) that will take place for all the legionaries incriminated or who could still be. France and the whole world need to know that there are in the Legion of Honor neither defamers, nor slanderers, nor liars, and that, if, unfortunately, there were some, there are no more now."; a complaint was filed for misconduct against honor. The 3,000 signatories, all holders of the Legion of Honor, had in their ranks many "good republicans", influential figures such as
Émile Boutmy, but also a large number of soldiers. In fact, it was a dangerous document for the Combes government. At the same time, the government was maneuvering behind the scenes to circumvent General Florentin. On 16 December, Combes sent the
Keeper of the Seals,
Ernest Vallé to the Grand Chancellor to ensure that the complaints were filed away without further action. Florentin resisted, however, retorting "that it was not up to him, the Grand Chancellor, to dismiss of his own accord the complaints formulated by members of the order, when they aimed at serious faults against honor; that denunciation was one of these facts; that he had, consequently, regularly seized the council of the order of the complaints which had reached him, and that the procedures would be continued." He specified that complaints concerning soldiers would only be investigated after the decision of a military disciplinary council — according to the regulations —, those concerning civil servants would only be examined after the opinion of the Minister — in accordance with
case law —, but that all the others would be referred to the Council of the Order. The next day, Combes summoned Florentin and threatened to dismiss him, but the General did not allow himself to be intimidated and obtained the support of Loubet. Spurred on by the hierarchs of the Grand Orient, Combes refuses to allow the slightest informer to be condemned. Also, he came into conflict with the President of the Republic. On 5 January 1905, the revelation of government pressure on Florentin by
Le Temps — the leak came from Loubet's entourage — put Combes in a position of embarrassment. On 9 January, the Council of the Order of the Legion of Honor summons Begnicourt, a retired commander, to respond to cards of which he was the author. On 12 January, the Council unanimously decided to strike Begnicourt from the executives of the Legion, a decision known in Paris the next day. The government was "forced into an inextricable situation, it which had undertaken to take no action against any informer whatsoever". , photographed by
Eugène Pirou in 1905. The mandate of the President of the Chamber,
Henri Brisson was coming to an end,
Paul Doumer put forward his candidacy on 10 January 1905. The latter immediately specified that this approach was directed against the Combes cabinet and "the corrupt practices of which it uses" and not against Brisson personally. The poll was held on 12 January; the vote being done by secret ballot, the pressures which the presidency of the Council usually used were ineffective and moderate republicans took advantage of this to precipitate the fall of Combes: Doumer was elected against Brisson with a majority of 25 votes. There was a strong reaction on the left: Doumer was qualified as a “traitor” and was subsequently excluded from the Grand Orient de France. The election of Doumer proved that Combes had lost control of the House. The latter made his final emotional plea on 13 January, prophesying a lasting crisis if he is forced to leave power: “It is not a crisis of ministry, but a crisis of majority which would open tomorrow. I have before me a coalition of impatient hatred and hatred, hatred attracts ambitions”. On 14 January, when the
progressive Republican Camille Krantz asked him if he will allow Begnicourt to be condemned, Combes deferred to the President of the Republic: "It is up to him alone to make his intentions known". The agitation of the Chamber wa at its height;
Alexandre Ribot thundered: “There is a responsible ministry, I imagine! You have just discovered the President of the Republic!", Combes and Vallé got entangled in their explanations. On 15 January, the day after this stormy meeting, Émile Combes announced to Loubet the resignation of his government, a resignation that he officially submitted to the Council of Ministers on 18 January, Loubet having had to be absent due to the death of his mother.
Formation of the Rouvier cabinet , published on the front page of
Le Pèlerin, 6 February 1905. President Loubet, to choose a successor to Combes, came under significant pressure from the
Bloc des gauches. The latter indeed wanted "a Combes ministry without Combes", without any radical dissident or a former minister who served under
Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau. However, many Republicans wanted to be more pragmatic and distance themselves from the scandal. Thus, the former vice-president of the Senate
Pierre Magnin declared to
Armand Fallières: “Tell the President that the first thing to do is to settle the affair of the files; we republicans have had enough of being called spies or friends of spies; the program of the new cabinet does not matter; at this point in the legislature, it is secondary, we will vote on the bills as we wish; but let this dirty business be liquidated as soon as possible; the man who is most capable of doing it is Rouvier ”. Despite his marked personal preference for Delcassé, Loubet gave in and on 21 January 1905 appointed
Maurice Rouvier as President of the council.
Rouvier's policy of appeasement Rouvier formed a government from which members of parliament who had spoken out against Combes, even if only once, were excluded. However, he did not continue the previous Cabinet's unconditional defense of informers from the affair. Under his leadership, and although
Henry Bérenger threatened in '''' reprisals from the radicals — "will find in our ranks more than one !" —, the Minister of Justice signed on 27 January a decree striking out from the executives of the
Legion of Honor, the commander Begnicourt. On the same day, the Council of Ministers laid off General — commander of the
9th Army Corps, sitting on the
Superior War Council and a freemason belonging to the
Grand Lodge of France — who was personally implicated in the scandal (he had boasted in a letter to Narcisse-Amédée Vadecard, that he had managed to exile a commander and four captains to undesirable posts on the eastern border). However, to appease the left, Generals de Nonancourt and — who publicly expressed their outrage when the scandal had been revealed — were also dismissed. On 27 January, during his ministerial declaration, Rouvier promised an end to the interference by Freemasonry in government bodies, but condemned "the violent formal notices formulated by the opponents of the Republic [...] without worrying about whether, to ensure their triumph, they do not risk compromising national defense and dividing France herself”; the symbolic actions taken against Begnicourt and Peigné were presented as sufficient and Rouvier refused to hit "the republican officials who, in good faith, may have been mistaken". He obtained a majority of 373 votes, with 99 against, his support being equally divided between on the one hand
radical-socialists, radicals and republicans, members of the
Bloc, and on the other hand, conservatives,
progressive republicans and dissident radicals, originating from the common opposition to Combes. Rouvier also managed to get Jean Guyot de Villeneuve to stop publishing further files; the nationalist deputy agreed to comply in exchange for promises of the government to abandon political discrimination in the Army and reparations for officers who were hampered in their career advancement due to the political-religious discrimination of the affair of the cards. To do this, Guyot de Villeneuve tabled a bill to set up a military commission in order to obtain career upgrades for the officers targeted by the denunciation, but the Minister of War refused, promising only to examine individual cases. On 11 July 1905, the President of the Council continued his policy of appeasement by presenting to the Senate a bill of amnesty concerning offenses and contraventions in matters of elections, strikes, meetings, the press, convictions in the (which concerned the ) and finally — this is the main thing — of libels. The discussion in the House was heated and some parliamentarians point out that this amalgamation is problematic from a legal point of view because on the one hand, the acts of denunciation incur disciplinary and non-legal sanctions and, on the other hand, the stain against a person's personal reputation cannot be whitewashed by law. However, the law was passed on 30 October 1905.
Mollin's revelations Despite the appeasement efforts of the Rouvier government and the hope of republicans that public attention on the affair could now be put to rest, the cards affair experienced some twists and turns during 1905, with some old scores still to settle. The first of these was the publication by Captain Henri Mollin of a series of articles in
Le Journal, in February 1905, in response to André's letter of 5 January. These articles were brought together by Mollin — assisted in his task by the journalist — and published as a book called
The Truth on the Affair of the Cards, published in March. Mollin made a certain number of new revelations — with sufficient precautions to avoid being attacked in court — and these later relaunched the scandal. He began by accusing
Charles Humbert with covert words of having stolen documents from André's cabinet and of having handed them over to Jean Guyot de Villeneuve (which was later proven to have occurred). He also accused General André of having consulted "the summary of more than three thousand files from both the
Grand Orient of France [and] the prefectures", while the latter claimed not to have had more than forty files in front of him. Mollin recalled the interview André had with
Frédéric Desmons (Grand Master of the Grand Orient) on the establishment of the card system; finally, he blamed Lemerle who assisted him in the filing service and was himself not penalized for this. He then attacked General
Alexandre Percin, whom he accused of being the real man in charge of the file system, of having intrigued against the minister and finally of having, leaving the cabinet in March 1904, copied the political files of the 300 officers of the division he was to take command of. Finally, Mollin revealed that Jean-Baptiste Bidegain had redacted certain documents by recopying them, in particular by removing the favorable mentions present on the files of certain officers presented as conservatives. Thus, , then lieutenant-colonel of the , was described "reactionary and convinced Catholic" on the file of Bidegain, while he is presented as "reactionary and convinced Catholic, but very benevolent for his men who esteem him a lot” in the equivalent Grand Orient file. It therefore seems that a certain number of files published in the press are therefore "rigged and truncated", in Mollin's words. Due to the destruction of cabinet files by General André, it is nevertheless impossible to estimate precisely the proportion of files redacted in this way.
The Percin affair , Senator for
Côtes-du-Nord from 1896 to 1912 raised the Percin affair. Up until this point the nationalists had spared Percin from their attacks, instead focusing on others. The historian François Vindé has advanced the hypothesis that “the files stolen from the Ministry of War had been delivered by Humbert and his friends with the promise that Percin would be spared”. Regardless, whether or not this arrangement had once existed, Mollin's questioning of Percin agitated nationalist circles, which now insisted on Percin's dismissal from Army. Even the deputies of the
Bloc des gauches were "unanimous in recognizing how reprehensible the conduct of General Percin was". Also, the right-wing
Bonapartist senator
Louis Le Provost de Launay called on the government on 30 March 1905 in the following terms: The trap set by Le Provost de Launay was clever, but the government refused to take sanctions against Percin.
Maurice Berteaux replied that, in the interests of the Army, the scandal must end, while Rouvier forcefully affirmed: “We will not send any officer before a board of inquiry. The cabinet will only use the regular organs made available to it by law. What more do you want? You want uninterrupted turmoil until the election. You want to divide the Army; we will not lend ourselves to your attempts”. Thus it seemed that the cabinet feared Percin and the information he kept with him; General Paul Peigné, who had behaved much less reprehensibly (and was later to become a Grand Master of the
Grand Lodge of France in 1910), had nonetheless been stood down from the military. Despite the government's refusal, the Percin affair continued to be discussed and cropped up causing division within the French Army. In April 1905, General refused to shake Percin's hand and disdained the provocation to a duel that the latter addressed to him. To cover up the incident, Berteaux disciplined Percin and Hagron — "whose attitude is highly approved" in the military. In November 1905, General
Joseph Brugère failed to return a salute to Percin, who complained to Minister
Eugène Étienne. Brugère was sentenced for breach of discipline to 15 days of rigorous arrest.
Final turmoil In August 1905, at the repeated urging of the left,
Maurice Berteaux reinstated General Paul Peigné into the French Army, entrusting him with the presidency of the Technical Committee of the
artillery. The event triggered anger from the nationalists; Guyot de Villeneuve announced that he would resume publication of the cards in the press and files a request for an interpellation from the government. However, he changed his mind, which drew upon him critics from the far-right who accused him of being a “coward” and of fearing for his life. On the international stage, the
rise in tensions with the
German Empire then gradually brought the matter of the cards into oblivion, as more pressing matters which effected national security of France were brought to the fore. In February 1906, noting that nothing had changed and that the file system continued, Guyot de Villeneuve put his threat to action in the pages of the ''
. For several weeks, he continued to publish files, which again caused unrest in the provinces. Thus, in Rennes, Mars Abadie, Worshipful Master of the La Parfaite Union Lodge
and reserve officer, was challenged to a duel by lieutenant-colonel du Châtelet and sued by the commander of Robien. This time, however, the Grand Orient and the freemasons were better prepared. In order to protect the authors of the files, they set about a disinformation maneuver: they "constituted a certain number of fake files in which, alongside truthful information, makes salacious and defamatory comments on the supposed customs and character of the officer on file, to whom the document was then sent, accompanied by these few words: This file will be published soon
". The officers who received these files, fearing that their reputations would be soiled with their publication and falsely under the impression that these were genuine files in the possession of Guyot de Villeneuve, put significant pressure on him to stop the publications in L’Éclair'', appealing to patriotism; concerned about the reputation of the Corps of Officers, the latter agreed to put an end his press campaign. Ultimately, the second wave of publication of the cards was a political failure; the deputy was accused of "repeating old stories" and failed to influence the all-important
1906 French legislative election, dominated by the question of the
separation of Church and State. The opposition lost around sixty seats, including thirty from the nationalists; Guyot de Villeneuve failed to be re-elected in
Neuilly-sur-Seine. In fact, the end of the cards affair coincides with the end of the
Dreyfus affair, the latter being rehabilitated on 12 July 1906. In September 1906, Mollin received from the government the post of treasurer of
Upper Senegal and Niger, his Freemason protectors
Lafferre, Desmons, and his ex-father-in-law
Anatole France having made use of their influence. "The negroes of Senegal are going to be initiated into the torture of the cards",
La Patrie commented ironically. As for General Percin, he continued his career without ever being brought to account; in 1908, he was appointed . ==Consequences of the scandal==