Émile Loubet
Encyclopedia
Émile François Loubet was a French politician and the 8th President of France.
(Drôme
). Admitted to the Parisian bar in 1862, he took his doctorate in law the next year. He was still a student when he witnessed the sweeping triumph of the Republican
party in Paris at the general election in 1863, during the Second French Empire
. He settled down to the exercise of his profession in Montélimar
, where in 1869 he married Marie-Louise Picard. He also inherited a small estate at Grignan.
. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1876 by Montélimar
, he was one of the famous 363 who on 16 May 1877 (Seize Mai
) passed the vote of no confidence in the ministry of the duc de Broglie
.
In the general election of October he was re-elected, local enthusiasm for him being increased by the fact that the government had driven him from the mayoralty. In the Chamber he occupied himself especially with education, fighting the clerical system established by the Loi Falloux, and working for the establishment of free, obligatory and secular primary instruction. In 1880 he became president of the departmental council in Drôme
. His support of the second Jules Ferry
ministry and his zeal for the colonial expansion of France gave him considerable weight in the moderate Republican party.
He had entered the Senate in 1885, and he became minister of public works in the Tirard
ministry (December 1887 to March 1888). In 1892 President Sadi Carnot
, who was his personal friend, asked him to form a cabinet. Loubet held the portfolio of the interior with the premiership, and had to deal with the anarchist crimes of that year and with the great strike of Carmaux, in which he acted as arbitrator, giving a decision regarded in many quarters as too favourable to the strikers. He was defeated in November on the question of the Panama scandals
, but he retained the ministry of the interior in the next cabinet under Alexandre Ribot
, though he resigned on its reconstruction in January.
by 483 votes as against 279 recorded by Jules Méline
, his only serious competitor.
He was marked out for fierce opposition and bitter insult, as the representative of that section of the Republican party which sought the revision of the Dreyfus affair
. On the day of President Faure's funeral Paul Déroulède
met the troops under General Roget on their return to barracks, and demanded that the general should march on the Elysée. Roget sensibly took his troops back to barracks. At the Auteuil steeplechase in June, the president was struck on the head with a cane by an anti-Dreyfusard. In that month President Loubet summoned Waldeck-Rousseau to form a cabinet, and at the same time entreated Republicans of all shades of opinion to rally to the defence of the state. By the efforts of Loubet and Waldeck-Rousseau the Dreyfus affair was settled, when Loubet, acting on the advice of General Galliffet
, minister of war, remitted the ten years' imprisonment to which Dreyfus
was condemned at Rennes
.
Loubet's presidency saw an acute stage of the clerical question, which was attacked by Waldeck-Rousseau and in still more drastic fashion by the Combes
ministry. The French ambassador was recalled from the Vatican
in April, 1905, and in July the separation of church and state
was voted in the Chamber of Deputies
. Feeling had run high between France and Britain
over the mutual criticisms passed on the conduct of the South African War and the Dreyfus affair
respectively. These differences were composed, by the Anglo-French entente, and in 1904 a convention between the two countries secured the recognition of French claims in Morocco
in exchange for non-interference with the British occupation of Egypt. President Loubet belonged to the peasant-proprietor class, and had none of the aristocratic proclivities of President Faure. He inaugurated the Paris Exhibition of 1900, received the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
in September 1901 and paid a visit to Russia
in 1902. He also exchanged visits with King Edward VII
, with the king of Portugal, the king of Italy and the king of Spain. During the king of Spain's visit in 1905, an attempt was made on his life, a bomb being thrown under his carriage as he was proceeding with his guest from the Opéra Garnier to the Palais d'Orsay. When his presidency came to an end in January 1906, he became the first President of the Third Republic to have served a full term and without resigning a second one
. He retired into private life and died nearly 24 years later. In 1904 he was appointed a Knight of the Norwegian Lion
by King Oscar II.
Changes
Early life
He was born the son of a peasant proprietor and mayor of MarsanneMarsanne, Drôme
Marsanne is a commune in the Drôme department in southeastern France.-Population:-Personalities:It was the birthplace of Émile Loubet , 7th president of the French republic.-External links:*...
(Drôme
Drôme
Drôme , a department in southeastern France, takes its name from the Drôme River.-History:The French National Constituent Assembly set up Drôme as one of the original 83 departments of France on March 4, 1790, during the French Revolution...
). Admitted to the Parisian bar in 1862, he took his doctorate in law the next year. He was still a student when he witnessed the sweeping triumph of the Republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
party in Paris at the general election in 1863, during the Second French Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
. He settled down to the exercise of his profession in Montélimar
Montélimar
Montélimar is a commune in the Drôme department in southeastern France. It is the second-largest town in the department after Valence.-History:...
, where in 1869 he married Marie-Louise Picard. He also inherited a small estate at Grignan.
Political career
At the crisis of 1870, which brought about the Empire's end, he became mayor of Montélimar, and thenceforward was a steady supporter of Léon GambettaLéon Gambetta
Léon Gambetta was a French statesman prominent after the Franco-Prussian War.-Youth and education:He is said to have inherited his vigour and eloquence from his father, a Genovese grocer who had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie. At the age of fifteen, Gambetta lost the sight of his right eye...
. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1876 by Montélimar
Montélimar
Montélimar is a commune in the Drôme department in southeastern France. It is the second-largest town in the department after Valence.-History:...
, he was one of the famous 363 who on 16 May 1877 (Seize Mai
16 May 1877 crisis
The 16 May 1877 crisis was a constitutional crisis in the French Third Republic concerning the distribution of power between the President and the legislature. When the Royalist President Patrice MacMahon dismissed the Opportunist Republican Prime Minister Jules Simon, parliament on 16 May 1877...
) passed the vote of no confidence in the ministry of the duc de Broglie
Albert, 4th duc de Broglie
Jacques-Victor-Albert, 4th duc de Broglie was a French monarchist politician.-Biography:Albert de Broglie was born in Paris, France, the third child and eldest son of Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie, a liberal statesman of the July Monarchy, and Albertine, baroness Staël von Holstein, the fourth child...
.
In the general election of October he was re-elected, local enthusiasm for him being increased by the fact that the government had driven him from the mayoralty. In the Chamber he occupied himself especially with education, fighting the clerical system established by the Loi Falloux, and working for the establishment of free, obligatory and secular primary instruction. In 1880 he became president of the departmental council in Drôme
Drôme
Drôme , a department in southeastern France, takes its name from the Drôme River.-History:The French National Constituent Assembly set up Drôme as one of the original 83 departments of France on March 4, 1790, during the French Revolution...
. His support of the second Jules Ferry
Jules Ferry
Jules François Camille Ferry was a French statesman and republican. He was a promoter of laicism and colonial expansion.- Early life :Born in Saint-Dié, in the Vosges département, France, he studied law, and was called to the bar at Paris in 1854, but soon went into politics, contributing to...
ministry and his zeal for the colonial expansion of France gave him considerable weight in the moderate Republican party.
He had entered the Senate in 1885, and he became minister of public works in the Tirard
Pierre Tirard
Pierre Emmanuel Tirard was a French politician.He was born to French parents in Geneva, Switzerland. After studying in his native town, Tirard became a civil engineer. After five years of government service he resigned to become a jewel merchant...
ministry (December 1887 to March 1888). In 1892 President Sadi Carnot
Marie François Sadi Carnot
Marie François Sadi Carnot was a French statesman and the fourth president of the Third French Republic. He served as the President of France from 1887 until his assassination in 1894.-Early life:...
, who was his personal friend, asked him to form a cabinet. Loubet held the portfolio of the interior with the premiership, and had to deal with the anarchist crimes of that year and with the great strike of Carmaux, in which he acted as arbitrator, giving a decision regarded in many quarters as too favourable to the strikers. He was defeated in November on the question of the Panama scandals
Panama scandals
The Panama scandals was a corruption affair that broke out in the French Third Republic in 1892, linked to the building of the Panama Canal...
, but he retained the ministry of the interior in the next cabinet under Alexandre Ribot
Alexandre Ribot
Alexandre-Félix-Joseph Ribot was a French politician, four times Prime Minister.-Biography:He was born in Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais.After a brilliant academic career at the University of Paris, where he was lauréat of the faculty of law, he rapidly made his mark at the bar...
, though he resigned on its reconstruction in January.
President of the French Republic (1899–1906)
His reputation as an orator of great force and lucidity of exposition and as a safe and honest statesman procured for him in 1896 the presidency of the Senate, and in February 1899 he was chosen president of the republic in succession to Félix FaureFélix Faure
Félix François Faure was President of France from 1895 until his death.-Biography:Félix François Faure was born in Paris, the son of a small furniture maker...
by 483 votes as against 279 recorded by Jules Méline
Jules Méline
Félix Jules Méline was a French statesman, prime minister from 1896 to 1898.-Biography:Méline was born at Remiremont. Having taken up law as his profession, he was chosen a deputy in 1872, and in 1879 he was for a short time under-secretary to the minister of the interior...
, his only serious competitor.
He was marked out for fierce opposition and bitter insult, as the representative of that section of the Republican party which sought the revision of the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
. On the day of President Faure's funeral Paul Déroulède
Paul Déroulède
- Early life :Déroulède was born in Paris. He was published first as a poet in the magazine Revue nationale, with the pseudonym "Jean Rebel". In 1869 he produced, at the Théâtre Français, a one-act drama in verse named Juan Strenner.- Military career :...
met the troops under General Roget on their return to barracks, and demanded that the general should march on the Elysée. Roget sensibly took his troops back to barracks. At the Auteuil steeplechase in June, the president was struck on the head with a cane by an anti-Dreyfusard. In that month President Loubet summoned Waldeck-Rousseau to form a cabinet, and at the same time entreated Republicans of all shades of opinion to rally to the defence of the state. By the efforts of Loubet and Waldeck-Rousseau the Dreyfus affair was settled, when Loubet, acting on the advice of General Galliffet
Gaston Alexandre Auguste, Marquis de Galliffet
Gaston Alexandre Auguste, Marquis de Galliffet, Prince de Martignes , was a French general, best known for having taken part in the repression of the 1871 Paris Commune...
, minister of war, remitted the ten years' imprisonment to which Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish background whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French and European history...
was condemned at Rennes
Rennes
Rennes is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France. Rennes is the capital of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department.-History:...
.
Loubet's presidency saw an acute stage of the clerical question, which was attacked by Waldeck-Rousseau and in still more drastic fashion by the Combes
Émile Combes
Émile Combes was a French statesman who led the Bloc des gauches's cabinet from June 1902 – January 1905.-Biography:Émile Combes was born in Roquecourbe, Tarn. He studied for the priesthood, but abandoned the idea before ordination. His anti-clericalism would later lead him into becoming a...
ministry. The French ambassador was recalled from the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
in April, 1905, and in July the separation of church and state
Separation of church and state
The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....
was voted in the Chamber of Deputies
Chamber of Deputies of France
Chamber of Deputies was the name given to several parliamentary bodies in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:* 1814–1848 during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, the Chamber of Deputies was the Lower chamber of the French Parliament, elected by census suffrage.*...
. Feeling had run high between France and Britain
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
over the mutual criticisms passed on the conduct of the South African War and the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
respectively. These differences were composed, by the Anglo-French entente, and in 1904 a convention between the two countries secured the recognition of French claims in Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
in exchange for non-interference with the British occupation of Egypt. President Loubet belonged to the peasant-proprietor class, and had none of the aristocratic proclivities of President Faure. He inaugurated the Paris Exhibition of 1900, received the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
in September 1901 and paid a visit to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in 1902. He also exchanged visits with King Edward VII
Edward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
, with the king of Portugal, the king of Italy and the king of Spain. During the king of Spain's visit in 1905, an attempt was made on his life, a bomb being thrown under his carriage as he was proceeding with his guest from the Opéra Garnier to the Palais d'Orsay. When his presidency came to an end in January 1906, he became the first President of the Third Republic to have served a full term and without resigning a second one
Jules Grévy
François Paul Jules Grévy was a President of the French Third Republic and one of the leaders of the Opportunist Republicans faction. Given that his predecessors were monarchists who tried without success to restore the French monarchy, Grévy is seen as the first real republican President of...
. He retired into private life and died nearly 24 years later. In 1904 he was appointed a Knight of the Norwegian Lion
Order of the Norwegian Lion
The Order of the Norwegian Lion was a Norwegian order of knighthood established by King Oscar II of Norway on 21 January 1904, "in memory of the glorious events associated with Norway’s venerable Coat of Arms"....
by King Oscar II.
Loubet’s Ministry, 27 February – 6 December 1892
- Émile Loubet – President of the Council and Minister of the Interior
- Alexandre RibotAlexandre RibotAlexandre-Félix-Joseph Ribot was a French politician, four times Prime Minister.-Biography:He was born in Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais.After a brilliant academic career at the University of Paris, where he was lauréat of the faculty of law, he rapidly made his mark at the bar...
– Minister of Foreign Affairs - Charles de FreycinetCharles de FreycinetCharles Louis de Saulces de Freycinet was a French statesman and Prime Minister during the Third Republic; he belonged to the Opportunist Republicans faction. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1890, the fourteen member to occupy seat the Académie française.-Early years:He...
– Minister of War - Maurice RouvierMaurice RouvierMaurice Rouvier was a French statesman.He was born in Aix-en-Provence, and spent his early career in business at Marseille. He supported Léon Gambetta's candidature there in 1867, and in 1870 he founded an anti-imperial journal, L'Egalité. Becoming secretary general of the prefecture of...
– Minister of Finance - Louis Ricard – Minister of Justice and Worship
- Jules Roche – Minister of Commerce, Industry, and the Colonies
- Godefroy CavaignacJacques Marie Eugène Godefroy CavaignacJacques Marie Eugène Godefroy Cavaignac , known as Godefroy Cavaignac, French politician, was born in Paris. He was the son of Louis Eugène Cavaignac...
– Minister of Marine - Léon BourgeoisLéon Bourgeois-Biography:He was born in Paris, and was trained in law. After holding a subordinate office in the department of public works, he became successively prefect of the Tarn and the Haute-Garonne , and then returned to Paris to enter the ministry of the interior...
– Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts - Jules DevelleJules DevelleJules Develle was a French politician. He vwas Minister of Justice and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1893....
– Minister of Agriculture - Yves GuyotYves GuyotYves Guyot was a French politician and economist.He was born at Dinan. Educated al Rennes, he took up the profession of journalism, coming to Paris in 1867...
– Minister of Public Works
Changes
- 8 March 1892 – Godefroy Cavaignac succeeds Roche as Minister for the Colonies. Roche remains Minister of Commerce and Industry.