Georges Clemenceau, photographed by Nadar • WIKIMEDIACOMMONS As soon as he entered politics in the noise of the guns of the Franco-Prussian war, Georges Clemenceau played with the verb with great power, both in his articles for La Justice then from L’Aurore , at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and The Chained Man during the First World War, than in the gallery of the Chamber and then of the Senate, where he became the “deader of ministries”. Unlike Jaurès, who confronted him until 1914, Clemenceau placed words at the service of action, which saw him take on the decisive functions of President of the Council (Prime Minister) twice, from 1906 to 1909, then from 1917 – in the middle of the war and in the midst of a crisis, where he earned his nickname “Tiger” – until 1920, when parliamentarians refused “Father Victory” access to the presidency of the Republic. The fierce attacks of the "Tiger" Three nicknames, therefore, which are embodied in famous speeches where, even more than the political leader and the government leader, the warlord is essential. While chairing the Army Committee in the Senate, on December 22, 1916 he challenged Aristide Briand, in charge of the government since October 1915. The attack was fierce:Clemenceau denounced the "kind of artificial optimism bearing on all things, which made believe that, while our soldiers were being killed in the mud, the rear could cheerfully take things". Briand overthrown on March 17, 1917, it was the turn of his successor, the radical Paul Painlevé, to be swept away on November 13, 1917. The time had come for Clemenceau. The President of the Republic Raymond Poincaré resolves to call his longtime adversary, noting that a "dynamic of rallying", according to the historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, operates in his favor among the deputies. He appeared before the Chamber "with the sole thought of an integral war", anticipating his famous "I am making war", launched in this same hemicycle on March 8, 1918. But his speech of November 20, 1917 also announced his declaration victory of November 11, 1918, by the certainty of "the day, from Paris to the humblest village, [where] gusts of acclamations will welcome our victorious standards, twisted in blood, in tears, torn by shells, magnificent appearance of our great dead. And to conclude:“This day, the most beautiful of our race, […] it is in our power to do so. » The last chance equation The magic of the word becomes an expression of will for Clemenceau. His government program is part of this last chance equation. It is invested while the loss of confidence is general in the nation. France is "in the midst of a crisis, military, political, social", notes the historian Jean-Jacques Becker. The failure of the general offensive on the Chemin des Dames on April 16 led to waves of mutinies and the dismissal of General-in-Chief Nivelle in favor of General Pétain. The dizzying rise in prices that same spring led to major strikes. The pacifist temptation, or at least the hope in a peace of compromise, is progressing in public opinion until it reaches a majority of French people. While the nation's morale picked up during the summer, it fell again on the announcement of new Allied defeats, including that of Caporetto on the Italian front, while the American contingents who landed at the end of June cannot yet compensate for the disengagement of Russia, which has passed under the Bolshevik regime. Politically, the governments are proving to be increasingly weak, and the general staffs are overwhelmed. The continuation of the war seems compromised even though it remains the only way out of the conflict. The choice of Clemenceau is therefore imposed on Poincaré as on all the deputies who vote for the investiture, with the exception of the majority of the socialists of the SFIO, frightened to see a "strikebreaker" gaining power. More than a head of government, he takes on the dimension of a warlord. Not only does he proclaim the latter absolute and sacred, but he acts as a commander-in-chief concerned that the armies as well as the nation obey him as one man. To do this, he exercises an iron authority over his government, made up of second-rate personalities. He relies on a circle of followers ready for any sacrifice, including Georges Mandel, his chief of staff, General Mordacq, his military adviser, and Jules Jeanneney, his deputy at the Ministry of War, whom he granted. The omnipotence of the executive The carelessness that had culminated under Briand and Painlevé was followed by an organization of government work piloted from the Hôtel de Brienne, rue Saint-Dominique. Clemenceau retains control over military, financial and diplomatic matters, and over the Ministry of the Interior. Parliamentary control is no longer really exercised:the President of the Council governs without the Chambers, which he informs little about and before which he rarely speaks. As for the President of the Republic, he is kept at a distance from the conduct of business. The omnipotence of Clemenceau and of the executive power that he knew how to constitute is verified through a series of commitments in the service of integral war. This must be imposed on the French, combatants or not, who must be kept away from the temptations of pacifism. Its most prominent figures, the former Minister of the Interior Louis Malvy and the former President of the Council Joseph Caillaux, are the target of state trials, carried by opinion campaigns of which Clemenceau had already taken the initiative at the start of the war, exploiting without qualms the offensives of the tenors of the extreme right, such as Léon Daudet, or of the nationalist right, such as Maurice Barrès. In his battle for victory, Clemenceau upsets the role of the various institutions, not hesitating to set aside the decisions of the two Chambers, even the President of the Republic, and to conduct opinion campaigns. He uses the same springs against the radical deputy Paul Meunier, guilty according to him of defending the "right of soldiers" and of having called in 1915 for an end to the state of siege. Target of the French Action, the latter was arrested on November 5, 1919 and died following a detention of more than two years. The offensive against pacifism thus enabled Clemenceau to gain the support of the extreme right, and to eliminate political rivals at little cost. The "integral war", he also leads in domestic politics. This all-powerful executive remains part of a parliamentary system that allows extraordinary situations calling for dictatorial powers. Clemenceau, if he frequently speaks in the name of the Republic and of France, has little regard for democratic life. He is above all aware of the task for which he has been invested and to which he devotes all his time, all his energy. His return to power has the desired effect. The morale of the nation is restored, confidence in action returns, strikes come up against the panoply of weapons used by Clemenceau to break them. Paying the “blood tax” Chief of war in front of the nation, Clemenceau innovates little in terms of strategy and military command. He maintained his support for Pétain and Foch, the latter becoming in March 1918 Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies. On the other hand, he dismisses a number of generals, in order to fully exercise his authority as a warlord. Clemenceau perceived better than anyone the importance of the psychological springs leading a nation to victory. While the war is radically transformed with the rise of new weapons, such as the tank and the air force, the French government and general staff are focusing on human resources. The African colonies are put to the test, while the hunt for "ambushers" grows. Clemenceau remains imbued with the conception of the "blood tax", which France must pay, a condition of victory that he finally offers to his fellow citizens after the resistance of the Allied forces to the general offensive launched by the German Empire in the spring of 1918. On the surface, Clemenceau seems as resolute in peace as in war. At the conference which opened in Paris on January 18, 1919, he concentrated in his hands all the negotiating powers of France; he does not inform the parliamentarians or the President of the Republic of the talks. Yet he decides not to continue the war in peace. He chooses moderation, accepts the armistice against Poincaré's will, refuses to humiliate the vanquished. After distrusting it during the conflict, he returned to democratic life, resigning himself to resign on January 18, 1920, in the face of opposition to his candidacy for the presidency of the Republic. Find out more Clemenceau, J.-B. Duroselle, Fayard, 1988.Clemenceau, M. Winock, Perrin, 2011.Clemenceau, warlord, J.-J. Becker, Armand Colin, 2012. Suddenly “the Old Man” appears in the trenches The Tiger's famous visits to the trenches, to meet the soldiers who nicknamed him "the Old Man", provided striking images of the conflict. A 76-year-old man, dressed in a heavy black cloth suit, with his woolen hat and his cane, close to the enemy lines, with the soldiers and their officers. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle estimated that in 360 days of war, Clemenceau devoted 90 days to "this exhausting activity". His first visit as Chairman of the Council took place on January 19, 1918, near Perthes, in the Marne. According to the historian, it had an "extraordinary impact", both among the combatants and at the rear. The direct knowledge of the war that he gained from his travels convinced him of the merits of the new strategy initiated by Pétain, namely the establishment of solid positions in the second and third lines and the end of the myth of the impregnable first line. , which led to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of infantry.V. D.
