Clemenceau, Georges Eugene Benjamin

b. 1841; d. 1929

French statesman, born at Mouilleron-en-Pareds, Vendée. Clemenceau studied medicine, first at Nantes and then in Paris, where he took his degree. At the university he was a firebrand republican, noted for his polemics against Bonapartism. Later, Clemenceau went to the USA to study American sociological conditions, maintaining himself by teaching in a young ladies' school, and marrying one of the pupils there. On his return to France, he became prominent during the revolution of 1870 at which period he was mayor of Montmartre and a deputy for Paris at the National Assembly at Bordeaux. Here he voted against making peace with Prussia. By 1876, as the representative of Paris in the Deputies, his biting eloquence marked him out as the outstanding radical spokesman. He brought about the fall of the Gambetta Cabinet in 1882, that of Ferry in 1885, and that of Brisson in 1886. He also played a leading role in the fall of Boulanger. In 1893, defeated in the election, he took to journalism, collaborating in the editing of the Echo de Paris, Figaro, and other journals, and starting his own paper, La Justice. He was chief editor of L'Aurore in 1897 during the famous period of his journalistic activities when he headed the campaign in favour of Dreyfus.

He became senator for the Var in 1903. In 1906 he succeeded Sarrien as premier, but in 1909 after three years of office his government was defeated after a violent debate in which he accused Delcassé of humiliating France in the Algeciras affair. But his government had been generally successful; he had done much in the way of social reform, although he had repressed the miners when they were on strike. He had, besides, greatly enhanced French prestige abroad, especially by his firm attitude towards Germany. His desire to redress the wrong done by Germany over Alsace-Lorraine was life-long.

His early political career is distinguished by its iconoclasm and preoccupation with inter-party warfare. It was the First World War which made Clemenceau a national, almost legendary figure, the symbol of French resistance to German aggression, and, at the end, an unforgiving victor. While in opposition, he was a bitter critic of the administrative shortcomings of successive French war governments. Finally, in 1917, came the formation of the Victory Cabinet under Clemenceau's celebrated slogan 'Je combattrai devant Paris. Je combattrai à Paris. Je combattrai derrière Paris'. In March 1918 he supported Milner in the decision to appoint Foch as generalissimo of the Allied armies.

After the war he presided and directed the proceedings at the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919, where he was tenacious of French security. His enthusiastic support for the Allied policy of fostering the growth of new or enlarged states in central and eastern Europe was actuated chiefly by the desire to create buffer states against Germany, whereas Wilson and Lloyd George were concerned rather with removing causes of friction by the application of the principles of self-determination. In conveying to the German representatives the terms of the treaty, which he did in a few curt words, Clemenceau permitted no oral discussion. His subsequent reply to the written German observations was a typical document, the purport of which was that no peace could be founded on a condonation of the war which Germany had brought about and that reparation by Germany was a sine qua non of justice.

In 1920 he resigned the premiership, was nominated for the Presidency, but withdrew his candidature, and after travelling abroad, settled at his home in La Vendée and devoted his remaining years to his literary work.

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