THE END OF GENERAL BOULANGER. T HE suicide of General Boulanger
is not an event of importance, for, politically, the man had been dead fot at least two years. His followers did not care that he was living openly, and even boastfully, in double adultery ; that he received money from every source, and that all he received had a taint of some kind ; or that he had pledged himself to be the executive agent of half-a. dozendifferent factions : but they were shocked by the want of nerve—not physical nerve, but the nerve which goes to character—betrayed in his flight before M. Con stans. He was dead to Frenchmen from that moment, and might now be dismissed to his grave with a mere record of his death, but that his career was so singular and so characteristic an episode in the history of France. His sudden and marvellous rise to the popularity which in modern States is power, is by no means so inex- plicable as it is now the fashion to declare. He was a distinguished officer, remarkable alike for energy, for wounds, and for capacity in managing a depart- ment, when, in January, 1886, M. de Freycinet, who wanted a popular soldier in his Cabinet, made the successful Director of Infantry his Minister of War. In that capacity he effected some reforms in the interest of the conscripts, which made him favourably known to the whole Army, and, indeed, to every household in France ; and three great parties, all sick of the existing Govern- ment, all detesting Parliamentarism, and all longing for a man to be their instrument, turned to him with hope. The "patriots," who longed to begin the revanche, and who, as the Schniibele incident showed, were immensely stronger both in Paris and the Army than they have ever been since, fixed on him as a soldier who had never been de- feated, and might therefore lead them to victory ; the Extreme Liberals, including the Socialists in the great cities, wanted a dictator to carry out their ideas with rapidity and decision, told thought he might be the man ; and the Monarchists, misled by the Comte de Paris, who does not judge men well, believed that he might play the part of General Monk. The General, with an adroitness for which, as he failed, he is now denied all credit, accepted the offers of all three parties ; organised the patriots into a bodyguard of fifteen thousand effective men ; so captured the Comte de Paris that his friends advanced £120,000 for election expenses ; and. so convinced the Ultras that he was at heart an Ultra, that they supported him to a man, and that M. Henri Rochefort still feels, or professes, furious confidence in his political honour. When, therefore, the chance arrived, and he stood in January, 1889, for Paris, in spite of the deadly resistance of the Government, and of the bourgeois Republicans, he polled 245,236 votes against 162,875 for the official candidate. The blow paralysed M. Floquet's Ministry, which understood well that, if Paris rose for this man, the private soldiers might refuse to fire; and if General Boulanger had marched on the Alp& and declared himself head of a Provisional-Govern- ment, he might have mastered the State, have obtained a plebiscite, have declared war for the provinces, and have ended an Emperor or a suicide, according to the result of the campaign. He was implored by those who hoped to use him, to take this course ; but he shrank back, a new Government was installed in which M. Constans was the leading figure, and the General, who had no hold on the parties except the belief of each that he would do its work, and who needed, therefore, continuous success, suddenly fell. M. Constans, a strong man with few scruples, had detected the want of nerve within his character ; he conveyed to him a threat of arrest and of a trial for peculation—he had used, it was said, funds at his disposal as Minister of War—his mistress, Madame Bonnemain, urged him to avoid a prison ; and he fled, to sink at once into the comfortable lethargy, with pleasant rooms, many cooks, and an adoring mistress, which is the ideal and the end of so many suc- cessful Frenchmen. The death of Madame Bonnemain, as it happened, she having provided all the pecuniary means for his inglorious later life, deprived him at once of his comfort, his cooks, and his mistress ; and as he could not live without those alleviations, he shot himself through the head, choosing, of course, for the scene of his self- execution his mistress's tonibstone in the cemetery.
For the nature of the man was essentially histrionic, and he comprehended France as a successful actor does his audience. He understood quite clearly the part he was to play, that of a Henri Quatre, and he made himself up to play it, intrigued with the Reds (instead of the Catholics), courted the Monarchists (as Henri had done the Royalists), and made the only party to which he really belonged, the ultra-Chauvinists, believe in him as the Huguenots did to the last in the great Bearnais. If he had succeeded, and recovered the provinces, he would have gone on with the . part, have cheated all the factions as the Bourbon did, and have lived a showy head of the State, with many fine horses, many cooks, many mistresses, and many pretty words for the private soldier and the man too poor to be contented. Unfortunately for himself, he could not be Henri Quatre, but only an actor trying to play Henri Quatre's part, and still more unfortunately, he knew it. Nothing but an inner sense of incapacity can explain his conduct in the great crises of his life. The accusation of cowardice, now so constantly made, is absurd in the face of his record, which is that of a man passionately desirous to rise by exposing himself to wounds and death whenever promotion was to be obtained. He did not fear, but he did not believe himself fitted for the great part he was acting, shrank when he might have made it a reality, shrank when he might have been the hero-captive, shrank when his return on the eve of the elections might have upset all the calculations of the Government, and shrank when he had to face life in solitude and failure. He was only an actor dressed as a Prince, and when he had to be princely in political daring or personal endurance, he preferred, and knew that he preferred, to be a com- fortable bourgeois, with "a reduced establishment" of two valets, three cooks, a stable, and the rest of it. To the last, however, the accurate histrionic instinct remained, and instead of dying because he would not live uncom- fortable, he died in the way Frenchmen think sublime on the stage, a middle-aged Romeo on the tomb of a mature and wealthy Juliet. He could never have been a great man under any circumstances, for he lacked backbone in his character ; but he had keen percep- tions, he could administer, and if he had but believed completely in himself, he might have governed France, and perhaps affected the history of the world. The only lessons of his career are that audacity is essential, as both Danton and Lord Beaconsfield taught, to any great success, and that it is in the very nature of France to regard an in- dividual chief as an alternative to any conceivable scheme of government. The Republic will " consolidate " itself more and more strongly—until the man arrives.
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