Grand Alliance in Bedlam

It is clear that in this milieu monarchism is reduced to a wholly different role than it formerly played. During the Dreyfus affair, everybody regarded the nationalist camp as the headquarters of the coup d’état purely because of the slogans of the daily struggle, even as every reactionary like Méline, Barthous, or Ribot was considered a monarchist without further thought. Closer and calmer examination, however, revealed that the Nationalists presented anything but an internally united and homogeneous political front. On the contrary, this camp was rather a rendezvous of heterogeneous elements with the most varied goals and interests.

In the center, we see the compromised top ranks of the army, the general staff, and its adherents. It is true that these, in their fear of being called to trial before the Republican civil authorities, were driven to rebel against this authority. But fundamentally, they have no serious interest in the reconstitution of the monarchy. On the contrary, it was just in the Third Republic that the army was glorified as never in the past, because of the spread of an idiotic chauvinist cult and through various reforms and special privileges. And the Dreyfus affair itself has best shown that the military heads have, from their own viewpoint, found the Republic to be a paradise. It can easily be demonstrated that a despotism and autocracy of the military chiefs such as existed under the wing of the opportunist Republic cannot be so easily conceived of under a monarchist regime. The military chiefs could not seriously feel a longing for the tight reins of the monarchy. Their anti-republicanism, in this case, was only the natural form of self-defense of swindlers who were unmasked and caught by the Republic.

Next we have the clergy, which has always been on guard under the Republic, watching for an opportunity to strangle it. No doubt the clerics exercized an enormous influence on public opinion, but they were incapable of any action, appearing only as the stage managers and prompters, and not as the actors.

Thirdly, we find a strong anti-Semitic tendency in the petty bourgeoisie, a natural development in France, the land of small enterprises and a Jewry active in the financial world. The agitation against the “Dreyfusards”, as with every reactionary current, provided them with favorable grounds for a nationalist demagogy. But they had no need to declare their allegiance to a Caesarian coup d’état, nor, in fact, did they declare such an allegiance.

Finally, there are the real monarchists. Some represent the peasantry in the most backward regions of France. Others are aristocrats who were forced, during normal times, to conclude an open peace with the Third Republic as “monarchal republicans” – or at least to accomodate themselves quietly to the situation – but who now, taking heart from the crisis, appear on the political scene with their entourage of journalists and littérateurs.

It is to be expected that these elements, impotent by themselves, should, shoulder to shoulder with the papist hierarchy, at once group themselves around the hard-pressed generals, pushing them forward as the storming party and generally using the crisis for their own purposes. Nor is it to be wondered at that this circumstance, together with the rebellious attitude of the compromised general staff, should give the entire camp a tinge of Caesarism. The monarchist tendencies, injecting themselves into the Nationalist camp from without, really found no point of contact whatsoever. Not only was there no important movement in their direction from any class in society, but there was not even a focal point in the form of a seriously regarded pretender to the throne. The one, a First Lieutenant in the Russian Army, leads his obscure existence in a garrison of a provincial city of the Czar’s Empire, and can no longer refer to Austerlitz and Jena as proof of his legitimacy, but must rely on Sedan and Metz. The other, a nonentity who idles about in foreign countries, has a following of a couple of hundred gray-haired men and women whose entire “agitation” consisted of gathering at an annual banquet as they lately did once more to give expression in hackneyed speeches to their hopes in the “course of events”.

Under such circumstances, the united action of this camp had to content itself with whipping up a chauvinist delirium, with Jew-baiting, and with a glorification of the army it surpassed all previous performances. But nearly everything was missing for a serious political act, like the overthrow of the Republic. They lacked internal cohesiveness. organization, a program of action, and above all, an internal development of social conditions which, as in the previous cases, carried the monarchy in its womb and awaited but a coup d’état to give it birth. The Dreyfus affair provided an issue to rally around. It could supply the basis for a monarchist agitation, it could even furnish the political motive for the execution of a coup d’état, but it could not supply the positive forces which were lacking for an overthrow. Monarchism provided the outward coloration, not the content of the crisis.