[AUTOGRAPHED LETTER - FRENCH POLITICAL MAN 19th/20th century
PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC]
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1 letterhead
of the Senate, signed by
Raymond Poincaré
Beautiful letter
"I share your patriotic sadness, and am no less bitter than you,
when I think of the long series of concessions that since the victory we have made to Germany; but let me tell you that in my opinion, our political regime
is completely unrelated to these unfortunate results; a King would not have more authority
as a President of the Republic in peace negotiations;
the only head of state who was able to intervene personally was Mr. Wilson, because he was at the same time time head of government; neither the king of England, nor the king of Italy, nor the king of the Belgians sat at the conference and, in constitutional monarchies as well that in parliamentary republics, executive power actually belongs to ministers; I very much hope that it will be possible, we firmly intend to do so, to remedy the measures that worry you; it is after all under the Republic that France was victorious and all good citizens can group together in the Republic, so that it is not deprived of the fruits of victory..."
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One of the most important politicians of the Third Republic!
He was President of the Republic during the entire duration of the War of 14-18
Raymond POINCARE
1860-1934
1860-1934
Raymond Poincaré
President of the French Republic
February 18, 1913 – February 18, 1920
(7 years old)
Election January 17, 1913
Held numerous ministerial positions
On several occasions he was President of the French Council of Ministers, Minister of Finance,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Public Education of Fine Arts and Cults
French senator
January 21, 1920 – October 15, 1934
(14 years, 8 months and 24 days)
Election January 11, 1920
Re-election January 6, 1924
January 6, 1933
Holder of chair 34 of the French Academy
March 18, 1909 – October 15, 1934
(25 years, 6 months and 27 days)
PRD-ARD political party
Spouse Henriette Benucci
Graduated from
University of Paris
University of Nancy
Profession: Lawyer
Religion Catholic
Raymond Poincaré, born August 20, 1860 in Bar-le-Duc (Meuse) and died October 15, 1934 in Paris,
is a French lawyer and statesman. He is the President of the French Republic
from February 18, 1913 as of February 18, 1920.
Minister on several occasions, president of the Council of Ministers then president of the Republic from 1913 to 1920, Raymond Poincaré was one of the greatest political figures of the Third Republic.
He was also, as President of the Republic, one of the central figures of the First World War, a conflict during which he called Georges Clemenceau to become President of the Council in 1917.
After his presidential term, he was again President of the Council from 1922 to 1924 and from 1926 to 1929.
Childhood, studies, private and family life
Raymond Nicolas Landry Poincaré was born into a wealthy family in Bar-le-Duc on August 20, 1860.
He is the son of Antoni Poincaré (1825-1911), polytechnician (1845), engineer, then general inspector of Bridges and Roads. His mother, Nanine Marie Ficatier (1838-1913), from the family of general-baron Florentin Ficatier, was deeply religious. Raymond Poincaré spent his childhood in the bourgeois house of his grandparents Ficatier, rue du Docteur Nève, in Bar-le-Duc; the latter had made their fortune in Neuilly-sur-Seine
in the timber trade.
Furthermore, he is the great-grandson of Jean Landry Gillon, deputy under the reign of Louis-Philippe.
He is also the nephew of Émile Poincaré, dean of the Nancy medical faculty, the older brother of Lucien Poincaré, director of secondary education at the Ministry of Public Education and Fine Arts, and the first cousin of the mathematician and scholar Henri Poincaré.
Like many people of his generation, he was marked by the defeat of 1870. The parental home was requisitioned by the Prussian occupiers. Following this episode, in 1871, he named his dog Bismarck, in reference to the Imperial Chancellor of Germany. After studying in Nancy, he completed his schooling at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris before continuing his law studies at the Paris Law Faculty. With a degree in law and letters, he became a trainee lawyer and finished major in the bar conference. He also began a journalistic career in the republican press.
Political career
Beginnings
He became secretary to Me Henry du Buit, a famous business lawyer. In 1883, he gave a speech
at the opening of the Conference of Lawyers in which he praised the republican Jules Dufaure, former president of the bar and ex-president of the Council who died two years previously:
“If it is to be hoped that the eulogy of an illustrious deceased awakens in us the desire to imitate him, the simple account of Dufaure's life will contain, I believe, for our generation, a precious example of work, independence and dignity. »
— Praise of Dufaure at the opening of the Conference of Lawyers 1883, Paris Bar
Trained in politics by Jules Develle, of whom he was, for eighteen months, chief of staff at the Ministry of Agriculture in 1886, then elected general councilor of the canton of Pierrefitte in the Meuse, Poincaré forged a reputation as a moderate and conciliatory republican from his first mandate as deputy for the Meuse in 1887.
This does not prevent this son of a polytechnician, who reluctantly entered the political scene,
to establish itself quickly.
In 1895, he opened his firm, which quickly achieved great success and had a very prestigious clientele for press affairs - he was a lawyer for the Paris Press Union -, literary affairs - he was notably the lawyer of the writer Jules Verne - and corporate law - his clients included among his clients the largest industrial and financial companies of the time.
Parliamentary
He entered politics in 1887, being elected deputy in the Meuse department;
he is then the youngest in the hemicycle. In 1892, he was rapporteur of the Finance Committee, at the time of the Panama scandal, and was re-elected the following year.
At thirty-six years old, he had already been minister three times: of Public Education (1893), under Dupuy, then of Finance in the second Dupuy cabinet, after the electoral victory of the moderates (1894-1895), and again in charge of Public Education, in the Ribot cabinet, in 1895. He is a supporter of secularism but far from radical anticlericalism. He indeed advocates a “neutral school”, whose vocation would be to produce true patriots.
Poincaré then became one of the prominent leaders of the moderates, who wore the “progressive” label which replaced the old label of “opportunism” used by Gambetta and Jules Ferry.
Over time, these “progressive republicans” move from the center left to the center right,
following the phenomenon of disaster.
During the Dreyfus affair, he adopted a cautious attitude. First of all, he is one of those who wish to suppress a scandal that they consider contrary to reason of state. He finally joined the Dreyfusard camp, more out of legalism (an attitude consisting of sticking strictly to the letter of the law) than out of conviction.
Although republican and secular - a sure sign, in the Belle Époque, of belonging to the left - Poincaré nevertheless remained cautious towards the left, and remained very moderate. In June 1899, the President of the Republic Émile Loubet approached him as President of the Council. But he was unable to bring together the different republican tendencies to form a government, while Clemenceau declared:
“Poincaré's gift is not to be disdained: it is intelligence. He could do remarkably
next to someone who would provide the character”
So Poincaré advises Loubet to instead call Waldeck-Rousseau6, who is forming a Republican Defense cabinet. Nevertheless, Poincaré opposed this and even more, after the victory of the Bloc des gauches in the elections of 1902, the anticlerical policy of Émile Combes. As a member of the Liberal Democratic Alliance (center-right), however, he generally supports the Combist cabinet.
Later, it was to the Senate that Poincaré decided to run. He was elected senator in the Meuse in 1903.
In the upper house, although everyone recognizes his vast classical culture, his speeches are considered monotonous served by a high-pitched voice. He left the Senate in 1913, when he was elected to the Élysée,
then resumed his functions in 1920 until 1934, the date of his death.
In 1906, Clemenceau, who nevertheless considered Poincaré a little too soft - it was he who invented
the expression “Poincarism” in his weekly Le Bloc of March 15, 1902 — nevertheless offered him entry into his government. Poincaré, perhaps out of animosity, refuses.
Much more because of its proximity to the literary world than because of its literary notoriety
(he had until then published only three modest studies), he was elected to the French Academy in 1909.
He is also a teacher at HEI-HEP schools.
President of the Council: first government (1912-1913)
In January 1912, he was appointed President of the Council and formed a government of moderate republicans with Briand at Justice; Théophile Delcassé to the Navy; Jules Pams at Agriculture; Albert LEBRUN in the Colonies and Léon Bourgeois in Work and Social Security. He took over the portfolio of Foreign Affairs and gave himself the diplomatic line of rapprochement with England, the consolidation of the alliance with the empire of the tsars and firmness with Germany. The Parisian press then gave him a flattering reputation for determination.
From August 6 to 12, 1912, he made an official visit to Russia as part of the Franco-Russian alliance.
and attends military reviews.
As Armand Fallières' presidential mandate draws to a close, Poincaré presents himself as
candidate in the 1913 presidential election. The President of the Council is in the running against the President of the Chamber, Paul Deschanel, and the President of the Senate, Antonin Dubost. With Clemenceau, the radicals support
Jules Pams, the Minister of Agriculture, a personality considered to be faded and whose candidacy essentially aims to counter Poincaré.
According to republican tradition, a preparatory vote takes place to choose the candidate from the “republican camp”; the “moderates” (right-wing Republicans) on one side, and the socialists on the other, however, refuse to participate.
In the third round, Pams won with 323 votes against 309 for Poincaré, classified on the left at the time (Dreyfusard, secular, he had married civilly, then religiously in 1912). Republican discipline would have wanted him to withdraw, having been beaten in these primaries, and this is what a delegation led by Combes and Clemenceau asked him to do.
But Poincaré refuses, knowing that during the official vote, he would be supported by the Republican right:
he therefore presented himself at Versailles, and was elected on January 17, 1913 in the second round, with 482 votes against 296 for Pams and 69 for the socialist Édouard Vaillant. Clemenceau will maintain a tenacious grudge against Poincaré for not having respected republican discipline, which he himself will respect during the presidential election of 1920.
President of the Republic (1913-1920)
His mandate as head of state will obviously be marked by the First World War,
during which he was the architect of the sacred political and social Union, alongside René Viviani,
by Aristide Briand then by Georges Clemenceau.
Start of the Great War
He pushed Russia to be firm during his official trip to Russia from July 13 to 23, 1914, in order to
strengthen alliances two weeks after the Sarajevo attack. With Briand and Clemenceau, and against Jaurès
and the SFIO, Raymond Poincaré supports the three-year law, which extends military service to three years. In exchange, he conceded to the Parliament hostile to the war a progressive income tax, the debate of which opened in the Senate on July 3, 1914, a few days after the Sarajevo attack. However, it is a measure that is very little appreciated even in his own party. It was thus nicknamed “Poincaré la Guerre”, notably by Édouard Herriot.
Raymond Poincaré is said to have declared that he wanted to preserve peace by ordering a 10 km distance from the Franco-German border of the covering troops in July 1914. However, this order was described as "purely diplomatic" and "for English public opinion", and was officially lifted on August 2, 1914, 24 hours before the German declaration of war.
Recent historiography has shown that Poincaré bears a real share of responsibility in
the death of the “European concert” as it existed in the 19th century
During the war
On August 4, his message was communicated to the Chambers by René Viviani:
France “will be heroically defended by all its sons, nothing of which will break the sacred Union before the enemy,
and who are today fraternally united in the same indignation against the aggressor, and in the same patriotic faith.” He participated in the ceremony of transferring the ashes of Rouget de Lisle to the Invalides
on July 14, 1915, in which he gave a famous speech in which he explained his vision
of the outbreak of the First World War.
He does not hesitate, sometimes at the risk of his life, to come to the front (mainly in the Meuse and the Somme) in order to judge the morale of the troops and the displaced populations. He visited on several occasions the part of Alsace which had become French again on August 7, 1914: at the Col de la Schlucht, in Thann, Masevaux, Saint-Amarin
and Dannemarie between February 11, 1915 and April 10, 1916.
Despite everything, the population was bitter in the face of the hundreds of thousands of deaths: in 1917, a photographer from the newspaper L'Humanité, during a visit to a military cemetery alongside the United States ambassador, caught a grin and published a photograph of Poincaré, nicknamed him:
“Poincaré, war, the man who laughs in cemeteries. »
At the end of 1917, he appointed the radical socialist Clemenceau, whom he did not like but whose firmness of character he admired, as president of the Council. His role then became more discreet, and he even complained, in his writings, of being pushed aside. However, he retained a certain influence: according to the historian Michel Winock, a certain form of cohabitation took place between the two men.
In the last weeks of the war, he was in favor with Pétain of pursuing the Germans to their homes while Clemenceau, who considered that the war had been sufficiently deadly, wanted to obtain an armistice as soon as possible. He is subsequently literally excluded by Clemenceau
negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles.
After the war
His presidency is well known to us, notably through his memoirs in ten volumes. In the service of France which he published between 1926 and 1934. We discover a head of state disillusioned by the limitations of his function. Unlike his predecessors, he strives to go beyond the role of representation and moral magisterium which is then that of the President of the Republic, by making his personal opinion known and by acting through intermediaries. It must nevertheless remain within the constrained framework to which the dominant interpretation of the Constitution limits it.
After the presidency (1920-1934)
Return to the Senate and Presidency of the Council: second and third governments (1922-1924)
In 1920, while his mandate was not completed, he was elected senator of the Meuse, then became chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Aristide Briand having resigned from the presidency of the Council following criticism of his positions on foreign policy at the Cannes Conference, Poincaré agreed to become President of the Council again in January 1922,
at the request of the President of the Republic, Alexandre Millerand.
He is not appreciated by the left. On January 26, 1922, in a speech in Charenton, Paul Vaillant-Couturier attacked him: “He is the man of militarism and the petty bourgeoisie. He is the defender of the petty bourgeoisie who carry Russian values. He is above all the one who, through his secret diplomacy,
will unleash a new war on the country tomorrow. »
Faced with Germany, which refused to pay war reparations, Raymond Poincaré resorted to force, occupying the Ruhr. But his policy of budgetary rigor made him unpopular and, in 1924, after the victory of the Left Cartel, he had to submit his resignation, just like President Millerand.
President of the Council: fourth and fifth governments (1926-1929)
He was called back to head the government in 1926, faced with the scale of the financial crisis.
He then formed a cabinet of national unity, retaining Briand in Foreign Affairs, and returning to a policy of financial austerity; the germinal franc is replaced by the Poincaré franc of a value five times less, a devaluation which is limited to ratifying the real exchange rate. However, he managed to present a balanced budget, which would not happen until 1965. Ill and tired, he resigned in 1929.
In June 1931, he was elected president of the Paris Bar Association,
but resigned the following October.
Death and funeral
Senator, he died on October 15, 1934, at his home, located 26 rue Marbeau, in the 16th arrondissement.
Due to the couple's precarious financial situation, Parliament had to vote for a pension for his widow.
His national funeral took place in Paris on October 20 in the presence of President Albert LEBRUN , Gaston Doumergue, members of the government and foreign missions including Nicolas of Romania.
He was buried on October 21 in Nubécourt, in his native department of Meuse, after a funeral in the village's Saint-Martin church celebrated by Monseigneur Ginisty, bishop of Verdun.
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1 sheet of white paper, folded in the center forming 4pp.,
2 handwritten pages
(folded: about 21x13.5cm)
Paris, July 13, 1921
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[Provenance from Georges or Louis Boulay]
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Good general condition
cf. visuals...
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Rare and beautiful document
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