Georges Thiébaud

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File:Georges Thiébaud ca. 1890.jpg
Georges Thiébaud, c. 1890

Georges-Eugène Thiébaud (16 March 1850 – 21 January 1915) was a French journalist and politician. He and comte Dillon launched an American-style press campaign in favour of général Boulanger.

Biography

On March 16, 1850, Eugène-Georges Cial was born of unknown parents at no. 20, rue Pargaminières, in Toulouse. Eight years later, he was officially recognized by Auguste Thiébaud (1833–1900), a lieutenant in the 1st Artillery Regiment, and by Joséphine-Aricie Balla (1826–1890), the older sister of Agnès-Catherine-Aménaïde Rey-Balla, an opera singer and wife of the composer Jean-Étienne Rey. In reality, Lieutenant Thiébaud was not the father of the child.[1]

Later, Aricie Balla married Count Marie-Eugène-Raymond-Alfred de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1827–1905), son of Alfred de Montesquiou-Fezensac, grandson of Pierre de Montesquiou-Fezensac and nephew of General Anatole de Montesquiou-Fezensac. The Count raised his wife's natural child as his own son, but the two men's relationship deteriorated after 1890 over Aricie's inheritance, which ended in a criminal trial.

On April 19, 1882, in Autry (Ardennes), Georges Thiébaud married Marie-Antoinette-Julie-Blanche Délouette (1859–1932). The couple had a daughter, Marie-Raymonde-Cécile (1882–1960).

After studying law, Georges Thiébaud went into political journalism, managing monarchist newspapers such as Le Courrier des Ardennes and Le Petit Moniteur.

A "Jeromist" activist, that is to say, a leftist Bonapartist,[2] but more attached to the plebiscitary principle than to the restoration of the imperial dynasty, he became interested in the experience of the Republican Right in 1886.

The previous year, he had run unsuccessfully in the legislative elections, ending third place on the conservative list of the Ardennes, behind Adrien de Wignacourt and the Bonapartist Étienne de Ladoucette. In the evening of the first round, Thiébaud had come ninth (five seats were to be filled)[3] with 26,026 votes. In the second round, he received 32,503 votes (8th place). The opportunist list withdrew in favour of the five radical candidates, and only the latter were finally elected.[4]

As early as 1887, Thiébaud was one of the first supporters of General Boulanger and intervened on the latter's behalf with Prince Jérôme,[5] discreetly organizing a meeting between the two men at Prangins on January 1, 1888.[6]

A talented orator, he gave conferences developing the Boulangist ideology and took the initiative of presenting the general's candidacy in the by-elections of February 26 and March 25, 1888.[7] On May 2, 1888, he joined the steering committee of the League of Patriots (LDP), which Paul Déroulède had just put at the service of the "revisionist" cause (the Boulangistes wanted to revise the constitutional laws in order to replace the parliamentary regime by a strong executive based on universal suffrage).

Concerned about Boulanger's links with the royalists from the spring of 1888 and on bad terms with Count Dillon, the movement's great organizer, Thiébaud broke with Boulanger when the latter, accused of plotting by the government in power, suddenly went into exile to escape possible arrest (April 1889).[8] Thiébaud even went so far as to present his own candidacy against that of the general in the legislative election of Clignancourt, but he only received 496 votes because of the hostility of the Boulangists who had remained faithful to their leader. One of the latter, Henri Rochefort, faced Thiébaud in a duel.[9]

File:Toast à la France. Les chefs de la Ligue des Patriotes.jpeg
Thiébaud (far left, 2nd row) among the "leaders of the League of Patriots" (photo montage from the early 20th century)

From 1895 onwards, Thiébaud drew closer to Édouard Drumont and the Anti-Semitic Youth, whose ideas he shared and whose anti-Dreyfusism he then supported against the influence of Protestantism. He also dreamed of turning the Anti-Semitic Youth into a large anti-Protestant league.[10] In the legislative elections of 1898, he was defeated in Carpentras by the radical-socialist Delestrac, but with an honorable score (5,396 votes, or 44% of the vote).[11] In January 1899, he joined the French Homeland League (LPF)[12] and became one of its speakers.[13]

On the eve of Félix Faure's funeral, Thiébaud tried in vain to get involved in Déroulède's preparations for a coup d'état, but he was nevertheless searched by the police on February 26, 1899. On August 12, 1899, during the big raid against the nationalist leaders, he decided to flee. He was included among the defendants in the indictment of the Attorney General Bernard at the beginning of the High Court proceedings, but he was dismissed by the senators on October 30. He was not included in the indictment.[9]

In July 1900, Thiébaud was the candidate of the LDP in a legislative by-election provoked by the death of the deputy of Niort, Amédée de La Porte. Competing against another opposition candidate, the melinist Toutant, Thiébaud came in third place behind the latter and far behind the radical Gentil.[14] This failure was due in particular to a lack of understanding of the political situation in the country. This failure was due in particular to a poor campaign and to the clumsy support of Déroulède. Déroulède rejected from the outset any contribution of non-Republican votes, which also led to Thiébaud's ouster from Le Gaulois.[9] A new attempt in 1902, made in the 2nd district of the 15th arrondissement of Paris, was no more successful, due to the hostility of certain important cadres of the LDP and the LPF: with 4,294 votes (40% of the votes), Thiébaud was defeated by the outgoing deputy, the socialist Emmanuel Chauvière.[15]

Having fallen out with all his former comrades before the 1906 elections, he left the political scene.[16]

Captain of territorial artillery, Thiébaud was named Knight of the Legion of Honor in January 1914. However, his age and state of health prevented him from serving at the beginning of the World War I. The advance of the German troops forced him to flee his house in Autry, which was sacked by enemy soldiers. Demoralized by the loss of his papers and very weakened by an infectious flu that aggravated a heart disease, he died at No. 215 of the Boulevard Saint-Germain on January 21, 1915. After a funeral celebrated in the church of Sainte-Clotilde and in the presence of many personalities, he was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.[17]

The day before his death, Thiébaud had called Maurice Barrès to his bedside and confided to him: "I had four daughters, four ideas: Boulangism, nationalism, my campaign for Panama, — I believe that it is the crime of this regime to have let Panama escape from France, — and then my demonstration that secularism is Protestantism."[18]

Works

  • M. Taine et le prince Napoléon, leur controverse sur Napoléon, leurs conclusions sur la France contemporaine (1887)
  • Le Parti protestant, les progrès du protestantisme en France depuis 25 ans (1895)
  • Au-devant de Marchand (1899)
  • La Patrie française (1900)
  • Le Palais de la gabegie, étude à fleur de peau de la situation municipale et des finances de la ville de Paris. Le devoir nationaliste à l'hôtel de ville (1900)
  • Souvenirs d'un publiciste (1908-1909). Les Secrets du règne (1909)

Notes

  1. ↑ Le XIXe siècle (19 mars 1891), p. 1.
  2. ↑ Joly (2005), p. 379.
  3. ↑ Le Gaulois (5 octobre 1885), p. 1.
  4. ↑ Le Gaulois (20 octobre 1885), p. 3.
  5. ↑ Joly (2008), p. 227.
  6. ↑ Garrigues, Jean (1992). Le Boulangisme. Paris: PUF, p. 23.
  7. ↑ Garrigues, Jean (1992). Le Boulangisme. Paris: PUF, pp. 30–31.
  8. ↑ Joly (2005), p. 380.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Joly (2005), p. 381.
  10. ↑ Joly (2008), p. 287.
  11. ↑ Le Rappel (24 mai 1898), p. 2.
  12. ↑ Le Temps (7 janvier 1899), p. 2.
  13. ↑ Joly (2008), p. 308.
  14. ↑ Le Matin (23 juillet 1900), p. 1.
  15. ↑ Le Matin (12 mai 1902), p. 1.
  16. ↑ Joly (2005), p. 382.
  17. ↑ Le Gaulois (24 janvier 1915), p. 2.
  18. ↑ Barrès, Maurice (25 janvier 1915). "Les "Ultima verba" de Georges Thiébaud," L'Écho de Paris, p. 1.

References

  • Joly, Bertrand (2005). Dictionnaire Biographique et Géographique du Nationalisme Français (1880-1900). Paris: Honoré Champion, pp. 379–84.
  • Joly, Bertrand (2008). Nationalistes et Conservateurs en France (1885-1902). Paris: Les Indes Savantes.

External links

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