Aristide Briand becomes prime minister of France

On 30 October 1915 France had a new government. At its head was Aristide Briand, until then deputy prime minister and minister of justice, who also took over the foreign ministry, vacant since Théophile Delcassé’s departure. President Raymond Poincaré signed the decrees appointing the cabinet just before midnight on 29 October, after the resignation of René Viviani’s government, which is why some sources date the formation of the government to that day. The next day the new cabinet was complete.

An experienced politician

Briand, born in 1862 in Nantes, began as a lawyer and socialist activist. In 1905 he was the rapporteur of the law on the separation of the Churches and the State, and in 1909–1911 and again in 1913 he had already headed the government. He was regarded as a master of compromise, a superb orator and a politician able to reconcile quarrelling parties. During the war he was one of the most ardent supporters of an expedition to the Balkans. As early as the winter of 1914–1915 he argued that the Entente should send troops through Salonika to help Serbia and win over the Balkan countries, and in the summer of 1915 he persuaded General Maurice Sarrail to take command of this expedition.

He took on the task of forming a government on the evening of 25 October, when Viviani admitted that he could not reconstruct his cabinet. The talks lasted several days. Some of the politicians invited refused, the socialists made it a condition that they would not sit in the same government as certain politicians of the right, and at one point Viviani himself wanted to withdraw from politics altogether. The Chamber of Deputies showed growing impatience. Finally, on 29 October, Briand completed his government, and late in the evening he brought the decrees to the president for signature.

A government of old statesmen

By the standards of the Third Republic the new cabinet was an exceptionally broad coalition. Briand wanted in this way to broaden the sacred union (Fr. union sacrée) concluded in August 1914. No fewer than seven former heads of government sat in it. The 86-year-old Charles de Freycinet, Léon Bourgeois and the 80-year-old Émile Combes entered the government as ministers of state without portfolio, and Jules Méline became minister of agriculture. Alexandre Ribot continued to run the finances. Former prime ministers too were Viviani, who became minister of justice and deputy prime minister, and Gaston Doumergue, who remained minister for the colonies. The socialist Jules Guesde and the Catholic conservative Denys Cochin also became ministers of state. The presence in one cabinet of Cochin and Combes, who as prime minister in 1902–1905 had pursued a fierce anticlerical policy, was meant to symbolise the reconciliation of all camps in the face of war. The American press wrote that for the first time a real coalition government had been formed in France.

The most important changes concerned the military ministries. The much-criticised Alexandre Millerand was replaced at the Ministry of War by General Joseph Gallieni, and Admiral Lucien Lacaze took over the Ministry of Marine. The mathematician Paul Painlevé became minister of education. The experienced diplomat Jules Cambon remained secretary-general of the foreign ministry; he declined the post of under-secretary of state, pleading his lack of parliamentary experience. Missing from the government, however, was Georges Clemenceau, the fiercest critic of successive cabinets, who within a few days was attacking the new ministers in the press.

A programme of unity

Briand promised “unity of front”: closer cooperation of the government with the army and parliament and, above all, better coordination of action with the allies. On 29 October, at Briand’s request, Poincaré obtained from the new minister of war a promise that the commander-in-chief, Joseph Joffre, would keep his freedom in conducting operations. The new government inherited from its predecessor the most difficult problem of the autumn of 1915: the Serbian army was retreating under the blows of the Germans, Austrians and Bulgarians, and the expedition to Salonika was too weak to help it. Briand’s cabinet lasted until December 1916, and Briand himself remained prime minister until March 1917.