Republican France 737became a potent political ideology. Bonapartists emerged from obscurity to
tout Napoleon Ill's cousin, Prince Napoleon Bonaparte (1822—1891), as a
potential savior. Some nationalists began to think that the republic was too
weak to ever recapture Alsace and much of Lorraine from Germany. This
concern with “revenge” against Germany reflected the passing of national
ism from the liberal left to the right wing in France.
The Boulanger Affair was in some ways the birth certificate of the new
right in France, the Dreyfus Affair its baptism. In 1887, French rightists
began to place their hopes of overthrowing the republic on the dashing fig
ure of General Georges Boulanger (1837—1891), who had risen rapidly
through the ranks to become minister of war. His bellicose noises about
recapturing Alsace-Lorraine pleased nationalists while irritating Bismarck.
Conservatives now were convinced that they had found the man who could
overthrow the republic, restore the monarchy, or establish a dictatorship.
Flattered by all of the attention, Boulanger allowed his name to be put for
ward as a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies.
The political movement on behalf of Boulanger was arguably the first
mass political campaign in France. Funds provided by a wealthy royalist
widow helped inundate the country with electoral posters and busts and
statues of the dashing general. His supporters battled their political ene
mies in the streets, bringing unprecedented violence into an electoral cam
paign and drawing on rising nationalist anti-Semitism, although there were
only about 80,000 Jews in a population of 40 million in France. For exam
ple, Parisian shopkeepers, frustrated by the economic depression, fearful of
workers' consumer cooperatives, and losing clients to department stores,
swung their support to right-wing nationalist parties, convinced by right
wing polemicists that ‘Jewish capitalists” were responsible for their plight.
Boulanger was elected in by-elections in several districts, but because he
was in the army, he was ineligible to serve in the Chamber of Deputies. At
this point, no one was sure what exactly Boulanger represented, no one
probably less than the general himself. If his campaign money came from
the right, many of his votes at first came from the left. The Opportunist
government sent Boulanger to central France to remove him from the polit
ical limelight of the capital.
A political scandal cast a further shadow on the government, giving
another twist to the term “opportunist.” A prostitute revealed that the
Legion of Honor medal was being peddled to the highest bidder. It turned
out that one of the most successful salesmen was Daniel Wilson, the ruth
less son-in-law of President Jules Grevy, who resigned.
All of this added to a feeling among some observers that the Third
Republic was already at the end of its rope. The government declared Gen
eral Boulanger retired. But this now left him free to run for the Chamber of
Deputies, and he was elected deputy from Paris. To his right-wing follow
ers, it seemed that a perfect occasion for a coup d'etat had arrived. In Janu
ary 1889, triumphant crowds gathered in the street, calling out Boulanger's