Theophile Delcasse: dwarf or giant?
Michel Begon February 2002
Every man has two homelands, his own and then France. Theophile Delcasse passionately loved his small country and especially the Ariege valley of the Ariege, where he was elected 30 years, but the Ariégeois have gradually reviled and insulted, even forgotten, probably because its realism, qualified opportunism, left little place in the collective dream. Delcasse cherished equally passionately republican France, working continually to his redresssement after the capitulation of 1871 and was, according to historians, its largest foreign minister. The two characters, but challenged a local politician and diplomat of the European equilibrium, which was the truth? In fact, the two explained. That was the difference in scale between the rivalries of politicians in the electoral base of the Ariege and the diplomatic field of European powers, which came out two world wars, a personality could be assessed as ambitious Delcasse contradictorily, there as an opponent petty, but here as a visionary giant.
1. The elected unloved of Ariège
Delcasse family was of peasant origin, coming from Pailhès, which still stands, though very dilapidated, the castle of the lord of Pailhès, old friend and host Henry IV, on a bend in the valley of the Lèze, just north of Plantaurel. In langue d'oc, "del broken" means oak. Leaving the land in 1769 settled in the Delcasse Pamiers to carry small businesses. The father of the future diplomat, municipal official, gave art lessons in primary schools in the city.
Pamiers Pierre Theophile was born in March 1, 1852. It was small and swarthy complexion, his round face swelled with a handlebar mustache, which became gray with time, his glasses were not accuse a piercing look, read where some of the morgue, and even contempt it was a hyper-active, hard working, still carrying the briefcase stuffed with documents, a great feather in fact, who made his reputation as a journalist, and lapidary eloquence, with the accent mark oc; we said shy, but his composure was hiding a desire for power, he spoke the dialect fuxéen and sang with farmers, herders or minor Rance old tunes of the country, which we know much more.
Coming from a land where religious wars raged, the family Delcasse was Christianized. Theophilus was a student of the only secular schools of the city's Episcopal Pamiers on a scholarship, then followed from 1863 courses college, but withdrew in 1870 Bachelor of Arts. The capitulation of Napoleon III at Sedan, September 2, 1870, and the proclamation of the Third Republic by Leon Gambetta, September 4, impressed him so deeply that they settled their vocation.
"To this day, he wrote in 1885, I fed my country for an exclusive passion. "
penniless, he became tutor to the high schools of Tarbes and Montauban. In 1874, he obtained his degree in Toulouse letters. Then, as too many of his countrymen, whom the Ariege not very promising future, he reached the capital, to make it private tutor, to be master at the Lycée Saint Louis divisional and, of course, also attend Ariégeois Paris. At the time, Victor Hugo, Prophet of Radical Republic, was at the height of his fame. Writer, then? Delcasse wrote a drama in 5 acts, which he placed at the French Theatre, but that was never played. One could think of Bohemia of Henri Murger, which in 1896 will be Giacomo Puccini's famous opera verismo. Maybe? But Delcasse lived rue Copernic in the 16th arrondissement of Paris closer to its upscale students.
Then the Ariégeois introduced him to Leon Gambetta, born in Cahors, the charismatic former leader of French resistance to the invasion and the current political leader of the opposition to the Order morale Marshal - President MacMahon. Gambetta was looking for young talent to help him regain power. Would it Delcasse journalist serving Republican ideas? Indeed, he published a remarkable chronic foreign policy in the Journal of Gambetta: "the French Republic "And the" Paris ", the" Morning "or" Day ". His talent as a visionary and sharp polemic broke out among the surrounding mediocrity. A little fame began.
But Leon Gambetta wanted to put his men on the field. Politician, then? Delcasse was the unsuccessful candidate of the Republicans in the legislative elections of 1881 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, just nominated for a constituency testimony monarchist. Then, Gambetta died early in 1882, he rallied quickly to Jules Ferry, President of the Council of Ministers from 1883 to 1885. But failed to get noticed.
Would he have better luck at home, significantly more left? Meeting in Paris on radical new member and Freemason of Foix, Gaston Massip, elected in 1881, Delcasse agreed to be his parliamentary secretary. To make themselves known, he gave foreign policy articles in "Little Ariégeois. But in those days, like today, the election expenses were usually hereditary or lifetime. It should be part of the family or no room for intruders!
But Gaston Massip died suddenly in the summer of 1885, no son or heir to succeed him. Women, remember, neither voters nor eligible. Suddenly called to replace his boss in the legislative elections of October, received a score Delcasse promising, but was forced to withdraw in favor of the deputy mayor of Pamiers Jules Lasbaysses, yet less well placed in the votes, but better supported by local clans. Against him, they argued their allegiance to Jules Ferry, the incident Lang Son Tonkin had to resign the presidency of the council in March 1885. Was he not allowed in the casino City of Foix through the cries of "Down with the Tonkinese? This image of her colonialist always stick to the skin. In short, his disappointment was enormous: after so much effort, at age 33, be foreclosed as a kid!
Lesson: rooted to the ground. Delcasse was launched January 24, 1886 at the Lodge of the Brotherhood, depending on the orientation of Foix, the same day and raised to the dignities of journeyman and master. Republican and secular beliefs marked him to take over Gaston Massip ing this Freemasonry, held by teachers and revering Jules Ferry already. It was at that time the laboratory of ideas and the backbone of the Republic activist. His ideology is unfortunately not well known, so it retains most of anticlericalism and democratic aspiration, marking of course, but do not summarize his doctrine.
October 26, 1887, Theophile Delcasse married the widow of Gaston Massip. Her name was Genevieve wallet and gave him two children, a son, died because of war in July 1918, and a daughter, who married General Nogues.
Finally, Delcasse could get elected in 1888 general counsel of Vicdessos, with the voices of children from turning rancid. Now well established and candidate of the Masons, he felt more leeway. On a Republican platform and facing the baker, he was elected member of Foix, September 22, 1889, by 10,836 votes in 8086 against the Count of Narbonne-Lara, monarchist candidate. His first speech from the rostrum of the Chamber of Deputies took place November 7, 1890.
A hard work made him known in committee of the political class. In January 1893, at the age of 42, Delcasse was appointed Deputy Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Ribot Cabinet. In this position, he began to implement his ideal of French grandeur and began to annex Madagascar's colonial empire.
was also a strategic position. The Ariège is massively depopulated since 1860 and sought positions outside officials: the settlements he opened the largest markets. And his life became very Delcasse introduce his voters in education, postal, customs or tobacconists. Many Ariégeois, son or daughter the peasantry, began their careers in Algeria as a teacher or a teacher. But more important for him, "lobbyists" (those are the corridors or "lobbies" in English) found in industrial and colonial Delcasse correspondent attentive and effective advocate for their interests, which earned him their support policy. So much so that in June 1898, full Dreyfus Affair (the article "J'accuse" from Emile Zola inspired by Clemenceau, was from January 1898), he became foreign minister and remained so until 1905, successively in the offices Brisson Dupuy Waldeck-Rousseau Combes and Rouvier.
This gentrification, far from flattering the Ariege, displeased many. Caught by diplomacy, Delcasse became scarce. As he descended to Foix, he boarded at the Grand Hotel that was his old friend Benedict Dammazan near the old bridge, the access road took its name. But he no longer met the representatives and leaders. His residence was in Paris, 11 Boulevard de Clichy in the 9th arrondissement, just steps from the Place Pigalle and the Moulin Rouge. Once enriched, he built the magnificent villa Cascatelles overlooking Ax-les-Thermes, which was then City water mundane Ariège. When in 1905 he moved there, it was under a flood of caricatures and satirical epigrams. Worst of all, he traveled his district in automobile, machine threatening and unusual.
Yet he did much to open up the Ariege with modern infrastructure. Parisian influence not only helped to develop the voice tracks of Saint-Girons Foix by La Bastide Sérou and Bram in Lavelanet, but mainly to launch the railway trans-Pyrenees, Foix and intended to join Ripoll in Catalonia through Puymorens, which was however completed until 1929. In truth, the rail service had little commercial interest or tourist. But she answered the collective dream of transforming the Ariege cul-de-sac in international roundabout. But the minister accused the Couserans have diverted to the Val d'Ariege the great trans-Pyrenean road which was promised through the port of Salau!
Delcasse Doubtless he was elected member of Foix almost unanimously in 1893. It was then that things started to unravel when he was minister. Public opinion was moving, not him. He belonged the parliamentary group of Republicans Progress (center), while the Radical party and asserted the radical - socialist (left) was born with Clemenceau and the Socialist Party (far left) around Guesde and Jaurès. By 1896, the demand for a progressive income tax, which écrétât fortunes and reduced social inequality, became insistent and mobilized the masses of Ariege. It was the same battle cry of "Hurry." Now Delcasse voted against! In 1901, Parliament adopted a progressive tax (rather than proportional as before) on inheritances. Promoter this tax reform, the radical and radical-socialist prepared, in addition, a program of industrial nationalization. However there Delcasse never joined.
elections of May 1898 the left radical socialist he opposed the museum curator and poet of Foix Ariège Lafagette Raoul, he fought only 900 votes, 9,256 votes against 8 333. Began a campaign of defamation, referring to vied the "Criminal Delcasse," "the public malefactor," "speculator's indecent," the "trash politics", the "perverse dwarf" etc.. Enough was enough! With the support of the "Dispatch" best shot himself Delcasse 1902 elections by 13,735 votes out of 18,434 voters.
Now this question of income tax was fundamental to the social choices offered by universal suffrage. Spontaneously through the free play of marriages, inheritances, redemptions and speculation, the family estates tend to magnify, focus, and social inequality to increase. The nineteenth century France had neither the progressive tax on income or tax progressive inheritance, but especially property taxes or indirect, which does not draw a redistribution of income, social inequality as it went far between the great fortunes, mainly land and the peasants and craftsmen, encircled barriers to grant; Emile Zola stigma in his Rougon-Macquart, by attracting unimaginable hatred and this inequality grew even arouse the fiercest struggles of classes, the Republican hostility toward the aristocrats' war on castles, peace to the cottages, and especially anti-clericalism, attributable to "the covenant of the sword and brush," and that the clergy still paid on the state budget. Remember this violence to understand the past, almost a century after the law Caillaux of 1914, establishing the progressive income tax, greatly compressed social inequality, to an extent that would not imagine without the statistical tax.
However, positions for or against income redistribution, the beginning of what is now called the "European social model" does not display so clearly and dressed in trademark ideological respectively anticlericalism and ultramontanism, pacifism and militarism. As land ownership and mining is proclaimed Catholic and royal, his opponents were anticlerical and republican. As she directed his son cadet military career and stood against Germany, "hereditary enemy", at least since Louis XIV, his detractors were pacifists and advocated the Franco-German rapprochement. Seem like reading keys. Author of the Income Tax Act, Joseph Caillaux was the target of a fantastic media campaign, led by Le Figaro, and became even accused of treason for Germany, then condemn this masterpiece in 1920. But Theophile Delcasse, because he represented the property, the clergy and the army, found himself pushed willy-nilly into the camp of the supposed "warmongers".
The national press was left even more terrible than the press Ariege. Not content to call it "Talleyrandicule" (The Dawn, 23 March 1905), Georges Clemenceau wanted to see him in the hand of the pope, "the titular head of government on behalf of Rome against the French Republic" (The Dispatch of February 7, 1904). And Jean Jaurès denounced "the monstrous gnome in his cave, accumulating flammable paper one day to turn the fire of war" (L'Humanité, 15 December 1911).
His desire to focus more on foreign affairs, to be relieved of election campaigns and get a lifetime seat in the Senate set fire to the powder Ariege. He not only asked Senator radical socialist Auguste Delpech to selling its mandate, but he dared to run against him in 1903 before the college of elected county, elsewhere to make them fight. However, that Auguste Delpech was and remains recognized as a major theorist of Freemasonry, having multiplied books and articles against Rome and many polemic against the priests. His face lay ascetic obviously opposed to opportunism Delcasse. His program was the income tax and the prohibition of religious education, which measures Delcasse showed reluctance.
After his disappointment in the Senate, it did not seem more frequent the Lodges, and the Lodge of the Brotherhood Latin pronounced his removal, December 30, 1908. The archives of the Grand Orient retain some very derogatory material for the minister, sometimes called a "traitor." However, the divisions between the Brothers and delcassistes antidelcassistes weaken sustainable Masonry Ariege.
June 6, 1905 Compelled to leave the ministry, under pressure from Kaiser Wilhelm II's personal, about the case of Morocco, became Delcasse put some time on leave from the Chamber of Deputies. In the vote of the Law of 9 December 1905 on the separation of Church and State, which excluded priests Public Service and therefore doomed to live poorly, he was absent. Supporters of the clergy were grateful to him. Easier for him were the elections of 1906 and it could even be elected president of the council of Ariege.
Even in exile mountain, Georges Clemenceau continued its condemnation and named a prefect to lose his orders. In vain! President in 1909 of a parliamentary commission to examine the weaknesses of the French Navy, Delcasse issued a report to the House if he did drop the critical firm Clemenceau, 20 July 1909. Therefore, an implacable cold war drew in Ariège two parties Republicans against each other: Progress against Radical Republicans and Socialists Socialists, anti-Delcassistes Delcassistes cons ...
In the 1910 legislative Theophile Delcasse not the that prevailed for 299 votes, ie by 9419 votes against 9120 Raoul Lafagette.
After that, the threats of the Central Powers became more pressing. Jean Jaures and threw their ultimate pacifist alarms. In 1911 was voted the military service of 3 years. The history gave reason to Theophile Delcasse. For legislative April 1914, the Chairman gave the instruction Doumergue he was reelected by acclamation, because his defeat and abroad have been misinterpreted.
The German declaration of war brought down the Kaiser's personal veto. Delcasse was recalled to the government, he said Foreign Affairs. He won his last diplomatic successes, but no more stand the blindness of his colleagues, he isolated himself, a nervous disease, it is said, affected him.
The ordeal of his son felt permanently. Officer aviator, he fell behind the German lines and was captured. Perceiving that they held the son of the personal enemy of William II, the Germans persecuted. Consumptive, he was badly treated. And when he was near death, Germany sent him to a Swiss sanatorium, where he died, July 26, 1918, without her parents have seen.
At the age of 63 years, Theophile Delcasse left the government and politics since 1915. He died in London February 22, 1923. The parliament decided a state funeral.
His grave is in the Ariege, but at the Montmartre cemetery in Paris, under the epitaph: "For France, everything, forever." There is a pretty street in his name in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, near the Church of St. Philippe du Roule.
2. The greatest diplomat that France had
The trial of French historians is unanimous. Not only had the Theophile Delcasse intellectual and moral stature of a statesman, but he scored diplomacy European footprint personal and endowed the France of the system of alliances that made the 1918 victory. Before 1890, the "system Bismarck of the Triple Alliance separated our country after 1905, the" system Delcasse "the European balance of encircling Germany.
"typical case, writes Peter Renouvin, which affirms the personal role of a man, his temperament and his sense of national destinies."
Without doubt, the pacifists have long complained that they French imperialism in general and in Theophile Delcasse particular have, causing Germany, caused the Great War and, by extension, the second world war. But this personification of the phenomenon of war is no longer appropriate. A century later, we know that the hostilities resulting from the uneven socio-economic development of peoples and that this uneven evolution obeys probabilistic laws, such as the Pareto law. Except to curb the growth in inequality, it is to predict the future war, by arming themselves. Lessons of Dunkirk, Pearl Harbor, Auschwitz and Manhattan (September 11, 2001) are compelling in this regard.
Socialists with Jean Jaures, and the Communists with Marcel Cachin, claimed possible to prevent war by arbitration conflict prevention and disarmament. They trusted the proletarian internationalism to bring peace to the imperialists, the arms dealers and their politicians. Hence the terrible attacks against Theophile Delcasse public in the gallery of the House first, then post-mortem, contributing to his forgetfulness. However, the second and third International succumbed precisely the clash of rival nationalisms.
Arguably, however, that the system was trying to pacify Delcasse foreign relations of France, in order to spare the sympathy of the world and isolate the few powers Francophobe. Is not that always the same diplomacy seductress who is at work?
Helped great ambassadors, like the brothers Paul and Jules Cambon and Camille Barrere, Delcasse took everything in hand. Too busy with the Dreyfus affair, and especially the dispute between the income tax, the political class gave him a free hand to engage France and secretly the future.
Vis-à-vis Russia, Delcasse passed August 9, 1899 bilateral agreement, implying that France would come to the aid of the Tsarist empire if Austria or the Ottoman Empire interfered Balkan status quo, but in consideration that Russia would support France in its efforts to regain Alsace and Lorraine. To better appeal to St. Petersburg, he opened wide the financial market to the famous Russian bonds, which would subsidize the development of Siberia, and displays a benevolent neutrality during the revolution of 1905 and the Sino-Japanese War. He remained Russians in this particular sympathy for France, which explains a lot.
Vis-à-vis Italy, he obtained first his neutrality by the secret agreement of 10 July 1902 and in 1915, its military commitment to allies. Speaking Italian italophile said, Delcasse pleased the leaders of the peninsula, committed at the time, too, in anti-clericalism (the "Tosca" by Puccini from Sardou's drama!), But not too displeasing the Vatican because it continued to fund the teaching congregations abroad. The price paid was to concede to the South Tyrol, Italy and Fiume (Rijeka) and Tripoli.
Vis-à-vis Spain, he was conciliatory to the point of sharing it with Morocco and to promise the construction of railway trans-Pyrenean that would bring Barcelona to Toulouse. This was the golden age of friendship. Catalan or Castilian artists, not least, namely Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Salvador Dali, Juan Miro and Juan Gris, came to work and sell in Paris, specifically Boatel Laundry Montmartre.
Vis-à-vis the UK Delcasse prejudices passed on to the Quai d'Orsay anglophobes, army and public opinion. The Anglophobia was for the time that anti-Americanism remains today: a rejection of modernity and modernization, with an alibi for the aversion of Protestantism. Open and modern, had Ariégeois cure these old! He knew how to appease the 1898 Fashoda incident, grant in 1899 in the United Kingdom in the Nile Valley, and conclude the Agreement of 8 April 1904, the Entente Cordiale, with British support for French claims on the Morocco. Ten years later, Her Majesty's troops will fight on the Somme and Ypres.
Vis-à-vis Germany and Austria, he was instead of brass. Bismarck proved far moderate and rejected any new conflict with France, as the Kaiser Wilhelm II was imbued Pangermanism and dreamed of military glory. Doubtless the French socialists they saw with interest the new German social model, also introduced by Bismarck, which already has Social Security and income tax, but Germany was the other, that of the aristocracy Land and military (the Junkers), who ruled the 2nd Reich. For measuring the ideological incompatibility between the two banks of the Rhine, it may be enough to attend performances of "Vie Parisienne by Jacques Offenbach and" Twilight of the Gods "by Richard Wagner? There are believed to progress through the opening to the world and here one feels the inevitable decline, but we want to conclude in the flashover. Germanist, Delcasse not ignorant!
Pause. reassured by the divisions of France about Captain Dreyfus, falsely accused of treason pro-German the Central Powers took a sudden realization that this Delcasse knotted in silence around them a formidable network of alliances. Berlin and Vienna, he was soon to kill the man, who saw the eye clear and needed to die! In March 1905, the Kaiser Wilhelm issued claims on Morocco and imposed an international conference of Algeciras. Delcasse opposing the emperor received the Chairman Rouvier the "resignation" of the member of Foix. Between 1905 and 1911, Rouvier Caillaux and kept alive hopes of a Franco-German rapprochement, but their attitude of appeasement was reciprocated. The annexation of Bosnia by Austria in 1908 and its preparations for war against Serbia and discouraged. Believing itself is dropped by France, Russia took the field and he had to renew, assign the Embassy of Saint Petersburg to Delcasse itself. Soon, only the Socialists still believed in peace: International Congress of Basel in 1911 and final efforts of Jaures, before his assassination, July 31, 1914.
The diplomatic tension was in 1911 recalled the initiator of the Entente Cordiale in the corridors of power, but only as a minister Navy. Then the military setbacks of August 1914 forced even the Socialist René Viviani to proclaim the Sacred Union, it is true without the right to call and Delcasse the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to strengthen the coalition. Indeed, he rallied Ariégeois Italy. But his extreme lucidity caused a major disagreement. He sharply opposed to the military expedition to the Dardanelles and Macedonia, which was almost a failure, the allies being driven back by the Turkish harassed by komitadkis Bulgarian and decimated by malaria. Leaving government brought down the firm Viviani, both personality embodied the vision and firmness. Sick and disappointed, Delcasse never returned to business.
After 1917 it fell to his worst enemy, Georges Clemenceau, to lead the allies to victory, thanks to the grand coalition Delcasse system. On the Champs-Elysees in Paris, is the bronze statue of Clemenceau, who presides over each July 14 parade of armies.
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Should we cry foul? The merits of Theophile Delcasse were solemnly recognized by his state funeral. But Georges Clemenceau knew better than him going in the direction of history, defending Capt. Alfred Dreyfus ardently or income tax, and taking care of his media image better by his friendships with the Impressionists and Emile Zola thanks his charismatic appearances in the trenches, in full view of cameras. Quarreled with everyone and excluded by the Freemasons, Delcasse found herself too lonely for such a mission.
The General Council of the Ariege wanted to honor him with a symposium held in Foix of 22 to 25 October 1998, with the assistance of the Archives departmental and University of Toulouse Le Mirail, for the hundredth anniversary of his accession to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
But one might wish that, like Joseph Lakanal Delcasse also has his statue is in Foix, or Pamiers.
Bibliography used
Louis Claeys - Two centuries of politics in the department of Ariege (1789 - 1989) - 1994 Pamiers
Proceedings of the symposium held in 1998 in Foix - Delcasse and Europe on the eve of World War I - Departmental Archives of Ariège - 2001
Archives of the Grand Orient de France
Pierre Renouvin - History of International Relations - The nineteenth century Volume 6 - 1955 Hachette
Michel Mourre - Encyclopedic Dictionary of History - Bordas 1986
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