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Pierre Marie René Ernest Waldeck-Rousseau (December 2,
1846 - August 20, 1904) was a French statesman.
He was born at Nantes. His father, René Valdec-Rousseau, a barrister at Nantes and a
leader of the local republican party, figured in the revolution of 1848 as one of the deputies returned to the Constituent
Assembly for Loire Inferieure.
The son was a delicate child whose eyesight made reading difficult, and his early education was therefore entirely oral. He
studied law at Poitiers and in Paris, where
he took his licentiate in January 1869. His father's record ensured his reception in high republican circles. Jules Grévy stood sponsor for him at the Parisian bar. After six months of waiting
for briefs in Paris, he decided to return home and to joined the bar of St Nazaire early in 1870. In September he became, in
spite of his youth, secretary to the municipal commission temporarily appointed to carry on the town business. He organized the
National Defence at St Nazaire, and himself marched out with the contingent, though they saw no active service owing to lack of
ammunition, their private store having been commandeered by the state. In 1873 he moved to the bar of Rennes, and six years later
was returned to the Chamber of Deputies. In his electoral programme he had stated that he was prepared to respect all liberties
except those of conspiracy against the institutions of the country and of educating the young in hatred of the modern social
order. In the Chamber he supported the policy of Léon Gambetta.
The Waldeck-Rousseau family was strictly Catholic in spite of its republican
principles; nevertheless Waldeck-Rousseau supported the anti-clerical education law submitted by Jules Ferry as minister of education in the Waddington cabinet. He further voted for the abrogation of
the law of 1814 forbidding work on Sundays and fast days, for compulsory service of one
year for seminarists and for the re-establishment of divorce. He made his reputation
in the Chamber by a report which he drew up in 1880 on behalf of the committee appointed to inquire into the French judicial
system. He was chiefly occupied with the relations between capital and labour, and had a large share in securing the recognition
of trade unions in 1884. In 1881 he became minister of the interior in Gambetta's grand ministry, and he held the same portfolio
in the Jules Ferry cabinet of 1883-1885, when he gave proof of great
administrative powers. He sought to put down the system by which civil posts were obtained through the local deputy, and he made
it clear that the central authority could not be defied by local officials. He had begun to practise at the Paris bar in 1886,
and in 1889 he did not seek re-election to the Chamber, but devoted himself to his legal work. The most famous of the many
noteworthy cases in which his cold and penetrating intellect and his power of clear exposition were retained was the defence of
Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1893.
In 1894 he returned to political life as senator for the department of the Loire, and
next year stood for the presidency of the republic against Félix Faure and
Henri Brisson, being supported by the Conservatives, who were soon to be
his bitter enemies. He received 184 votes, but retired before the second ballot to allow Faure to receive an absolute majority.
During the political anarchy of the next few years he was recognized by the moderate republicans as the successor of Jules Ferry
and Gambetta, and at the crisis of 1899 on the fall of the Charles Dupuy
cabinet he was asked by President Émile Loubet to form a government.
After an initial failure he succeeded in forming a coalition cabinet which included such widely different politicians as Alexandre Millerand and General de Galliffet. He himself returned to his former post at the ministry
of the interior, and set to work to quell the discontent with which the country was seething, to put an end to the various
agitations which under specious pretences were directed against republican institutions, and to restore independence to the
judicial authority. His appeal to all republicans to sink their differences before the common peril met with some degree of
success, and enabled the government to leave the second court-martial of Alfred Dreyfus at Rennes an absolutely free hand, and then to compromise the affair by granting a pardon to
Dreyfus. Waldeck-Rousseau won a great personal success in October by his successful intervention in the strikes at Le
Creusot.
With the condemnation in January 1900 of Paul Deroulede and his monarchist and
nationalist followers by the High Court the worst of the danger was past, and Waldeck-Rousseau kept order in Paris without having
recourse to irritating displays of force. The Senate was staunch in support of M. Waldeck-Rousseau, and in the Chamber he
displayed remarkable astuteness in winning support from various groups. The Amnesty Bill, passed on December 19, chiefly through his unwearied advocacy, went far to smooth down the acerbity of the
preceding years. With the object of aiding the industry of wine-producing, and of discouraging the consumption of spirits and
other deleterious liquors, the government passed a bill suppressing the octroi duties on the three "hygienic" drinks--wine, cider
and beer. The act came into force at the beginning of 1901.
But the most important measure of his later administration was the Associations Bill of 1901. Like many of his predecessors, he was convinced that the stability of the republic demanded some restraint on
the intrigues of the wealthy religious bodies. All previous attempts in this direction had failed. In his speech in the Chamber,
Waldeck-Rousseau recalled the fact that he had tried to pass an Associations Bill in 1882, and again in 1883. He declared that
the religious associations were now being subjected for the first time to the regulations common to all others, and that the
object of the bill was to ensure the supremacy of the civil power. The royalist bias given to the pupils in the religious
seminaries was undoubtedly a principal cause of the passing of this bill; and the government took strong measures to secure the
presence of officers of undoubted fidelity to the republic in the higher positions on the staff. His speeches on the religious
question were published in 1901 under the title of Associations et congregations, following a volume of speeches on
Questions societies (1900).
As the general election of 1902 approached all sections of the Opposition united their
efforts, and the name of Waldeck-Rousseau served as a battle-cry for one side, and on the other as a target for abuse. The result
was a decisive victory for republican stability. With the defeat of the machinations against the republic, Waldeck-Rousseau
considered his task ended, and on June 3, 1902 he
resigned office, having proved himself the "strongest personality in French politics since the death of Gambetta." He emerged
from his retirement to protest in the Senate against the construction put on his Associations Bill by Émile Combes, who refused in mass the applications of the teaching and preaching
congregations for official recognition.
His speeches were published as Discours parlementaires (1889); Pour la rebublique, 1883-1903 (1904), edited
by H Leyret; L'état et la liberte (1906); and his Plaidoyers (1906) were edited by H Barboux. See also H
Leyret, Waldeck-Rousseau et la troisieme republique (1908).
This entry was originally from the 1911
Encyclopedia Britannica.
- René Waldeck-Rousseau - President of the Council and Minister of the Interior and Worship
- Théophile Delcassé - Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Marquis de Gallifet - Minister of War
- Joseph Caillaux - Minister of Finance
- Ernest Monis - Minister of Justice
- Jean-Marie de
Lanessan - Minister of Marine
- Georges Leygues - Minister of Public Instruction and Fine
Arts
- Jean Dupuy - Minister of
Agriculture
- Albert Decrais - Minister
of Colonies
- Pierre Baudin - Minister of
Public Works
- Alexandre Millerand - Minister of Commerce, Industry,
Posts, and Telegraphs
Changes
- 20 May 1900 - Louis André succeeds Gallifet as Minister
of War.
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