Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger (29 April 1837 – 30 September 1891), nicknamed Général Revanche ('General Revenge'), was a French Army officer and politician. An enormously popular public figure during the second decade of the Third Republic, he won multiple elections. At the zenith of his popularity in January 1889, he was feared to be powerful enough to establish himself as dictator. His base of support was the working-class districts of Paris and other cities, plus rural traditionalist Catholics and royalists. He advocated revanche (revenge on Germany), révision (revision of the constitution), and restauration (restoration of the Orléanist monarchy).
The elections of September 1889 marked a decisive defeat for the Boulangists. Changes in the electoral laws prevented Boulanger from running in multiple constituencies, and the aggressive opposition of the established government, combined with Boulanger's self-imposed exile, contributed to a rapid decline of the movement. The decline of Boulanger severely undermined the political strength of the conservative and royalist elements of French political life; they would not recover strength until the establishment of the Vichy regime in 1940. The defeat of the Boulangists ushered in a period of political dominance by the Moderate Republicans.
Academics have attributed the failure of the movement to Boulanger's own weaknesses. Despite his charisma, he lacked coolness, consistency, and decisiveness; he was a mediocre leader who lacked vision and courage. He was never able to unite the disparate elements, ranging from the far left to the far right, that formed the base of his support. He was able, however, to frighten republicans and force them to reorganize and strengthen their solidarity in opposition to him.
Boulanger was born on 29 April 1837 in Rennes, Brittany. He was the youngest of three children born to Ernest Boulanger (1805–1884), a lawyer in Bourg-des-Comptes, and Mary-Ann Webb Griffith (1804–1894), born in Bristol to a Welsh aristocratic family (the Griffiths of Burton Agnes). His brother Ernest enlisted in the Union Army and was killed in action during the American Civil War. After attending the Lycée of Nantes, Boulanger entered the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in 1855, graduating and entering the French Army in 1856.
Boulanger first saw action in 1857 in Kabylia, during the French conquest of Algeria. He fought in the Austro-Sardinian War (he was wounded at Robecchetto con Induno, where he received the Légion d'honneur) and in the Cochinchina campaign, after which he became a captain and instructor at Saint-Cyr. During the Franco-Prussian War, Boulanger was noted for his bravery, and soon promoted to chef de bataillon; he was again wounded while fighting at Champigny-sur-Marne during the Siege of Paris. Subsequently, Boulanger was among the Third Republic military leaders who crushed the Paris Commune in April–May 1871. He was wounded a third time as he led troops to the siege of the Panthéon, and was promoted commander of the Légion d'honneur by Patrice de MacMahon. However, he was soon demoted (as his position was considered provisional), and his resignation in protest was rejected.
With backing from his direct superior, Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale (incidentally, one of the sons of former King Louis-Philippe), Boulanger was made a brigadier-general in 1880, and in 1882 Minister of War Jean-Baptiste Billot appointed him director of infantry at the war office, enabling him to make a name as a military reformer (he took measures to improve morale and efficiency). In 1884, he was promoted to general of division and appointed to command the army occupying Tunisia, but was recalled owing to his differences of opinion with Pierre-Paul Cambon, the political resident. He returned to Paris, and began to take part in politics under the aegis of Georges Clemenceau and the Radicals. In January 1886, when Charles de Freycinet was brought into power, Clemenceau used his influence to secure Boulanger's appointment as War Minister (replacing Jean-Baptiste Campenon). Clemenceau assumed Boulanger was a republican, because he was known not to attend Mass. However Boulanger would soon prove himself a conservative and monarchist.
It was in the capacity of Minister of War that Boulanger gained most popularity. He introduced reforms for the benefit of soldiers (such as allowing soldiers to grow beards) and appealed to the French desire for revenge against Imperial Germany—in doing so, he came to be regarded as the man destined to serve that revenge (nicknamed Général Revanche). He also managed to quell the major workers' strike in Decazeville. A minor scandal arose when Philippe, comte de Paris, the nominal inheritor of the French throne in the eyes of Orléanist monarchists, married his daughter Amélie to Portugal's Carlos I, in a lavish wedding that provoked fears of anti-Republican ambitions. The French parliament hastily passed a law expelling all possible claimants to the crown from French territories. Boulanger communicated to d'Aumale his expulsion from the armed forces. He received the adulation of the public and the press after the Sino-French War, when France's victory added Tonkin to its colonial empire.
He also vigorously pressed for the accelerated adoption, in just first five months of 1886, of a new rifle for the technically revolutionary smokeless powder Poudre B developed by P. Vielle two years earlier. Essentially, that backfired: the hastily developed 8×50mmR Lebel cartridge became an unprecedented high-velocity ammunition but due to its double taper and rim the French firearm development was handicapped for decades to come, and the hastily designed Lebel Model 1886 rifle, essentially a strengthened Kropatschek rifle from late 1870s, became obsolete much faster than any of the magazine rifles of other European militaries that followed during late 1880s and 1890s (before Boulanger, the French military planned to adopt a much more modern design as well). Boulanger also ordered to produce a million rifles by May 1887, but his proposal on how to achieve this was entirely unrealistic (even with the best efforts in manufacturing it took several years).
On Freycinet's defeat in December of the same year, Boulanger was retained by René Goblet at the war office. Confident of political support, the general began provoking the Germans; he ordered military facilities to be built in the border region of Belfort, forbade the export of horses to German markets, and even instigated a ban on presentations of Lohengrin. Germany responded by calling to arms more than 70,000 reservists in February 1887. After the Schnaebele incident (April 1887), war was averted, but Boulanger was perceived by his supporters as coming out on top against Bismarck. For the Goblet government, Boulanger was an embarrassment and risk, and became engaged in a dispute with Foreign Minister Émile Flourens. On 17 May Goblet was voted out of office and replaced by Maurice Rouvier. The latter sacked Boulanger, and replaced him with Théophile Adrien Ferron on 30 May.
The government was astonished by the revelation that Boulanger had received around 100,000 votes for the partial election in Seine, without even being a candidate. He was removed from the Paris region and sent to the provinces, appointed commander of the troops stationed in Clermont-Ferrand. Upon his departure on 8 July, a crowd of ten thousand took the Gare de Lyon by storm, covering his train with posters titled Il reviendra ('He will come back'), and blocking the railway, but he was smuggled out.
The general decided to gather support for his own movement, an eclectic one that capitalized on the frustrations of French conservatism, advocating the three principles of revanche (revenge on Germany), révision (revision of the constitution), and restauration (restoration of the monarchy). The common reference to it has become Boulangisme, a term used by its partisans and adversaries alike. Immediately, the new popular movement was backed by notable conservative figures such as Count Arthur Dillon, Alfred Joseph Naquet, Anne de Rochechouart de Mortemart (Duchess of Uzès, who financed him with immense sums), Arthur Meyer, Paul Déroulède (and his Ligue des Patriotes).