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a letter written in black ink on a piece of paper
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453 - Georges CLEMENCEAU (1841–1929).
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Estimate €800 - €1,000
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Description
Georges CLEMENCEAU (1841–1929). Autograph manuscript, Direct Descendant, [April 1914]; 4 pages in-4 on the reverse of Senate-letterhead sheets. A forceful political article published on 18 April 1914 in *L’Homme Libre*. The manuscript contains crossings-out and corrections. Clemenceau singles out the coalition of Aristide Briand, Millerand and Barthou, which, despite a few superficial differences, is an anti-republican triumvirate comparable to Boulangism. Under the guise of resuming diplomatic relations with the Vatican, Clemenceau warns against this resurgence of Boulangism. ‘Mr Briand complained that people had taken the liberty of comparing the regressive movement—which he initiated and led alongside Messrs Millerand and Barthou—with Boulangism. If one were to consider only the outward manifestations, one would indeed find very marked differences. I see, for example, neither the Count of Paris nor the ‘black horse’. For a civilian, the Longchamp parade is not necessarily a suitable setting for a grand display. If one were to consider only this aspect of the matter, one would have to admit that Mr Briand is right. But an entire programme cannot fit into a feathered hat. There still needs to be a head beneath it, and if one were to find both heads in the same cap – so different in the drawings of Mr Briand and General Boulanger – and if their intentions were expressed through a shared critique and ‘programme’, how can one fail to agree that there is a very strong kinship between the two undertakings?’ Whilst the Duke of Orléans ‘does not put himself forward’, the royalist Arthur Meyer lends the press’s support to the triumvirate… ‘As for the Pope and his parish priests, could they fail to work towards the success of the enterprise when they have already been given tokens of goodwill—such as the “Pichonnerie” on Good Friday, or the Tartuffianism à la Barthou— school textbooks, and when they are enticed by the prospect of a resumption of diplomatic relations with the Vatican, enthusiastically recommended by the same Mr Hanotaux as before. The triumvirate thus drags in its wake the same motley yet coherent band as General Boulanger. All those defeated by the Republic, all the representatives of the regimes, laws and principles which the French people, in returning to the republican system, intended to rid themselves of’... Etc. And Clemenceau concludes: ‘Since his “revisionist” candidacy, as it was then called, Mr Briand may have changed his opinions a number of times. His mindset, his inclinations, his views on public life, have remained the same. Changes in terminology, not in feelings or thoughts. Far from slandering him, we are simply trying to reveal him to himself. He is probably not the only one who does not know himself. Events have given us a very short election campaign. It will undoubtedly be enough for the Republic to recognise its own. This very same Republic which Messrs Boulanger and Briand, with one voice, declared ‘uninhabitable’ and which the sons of the French Revolution will continue to shape for the good of all the French people.”
See original version (French)
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About the sale Letters and Autograph Manuscripts – Part II
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Auction time 10/14/2026 at 2:00 PM
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