Fall of the Painlevé government

On 13 November 1917 the French government of Paul Painlevé fell. Late in the evening the Chamber of Deputies rejected the prime minister’s motion to postpone interpellations on the espionage and “defeatist” scandals that had been shaking France since the summer. 277 deputies voted against the government and 186 for it. Painlevé, who was also Minister of War, at once announced the cabinet’s resignation. With him went the foreign minister Louis Barthou, who had directed French diplomacy since 23 October. The government had been formed on 12 September and had lasted a little over two months.

The date of 13 November is given by the American New International Year Book, the monthly Current History and the British Annual Register. The British chronology of the war records Painlevé’s resignation under 14 November, which may be because President Raymond Poincaré accepted the resignation and began looking for a successor only the next day. The sources differ slightly on the result of the vote: The Annual Register gives 279 votes to 186, the others 277 to 186.

The last sitting

According to the New International Year Book, on 13 November the Chamber debated the government’s handling of cases of treason and disloyalty, and interpellations were tabled on the matter. The attack was led by deputies of the right and independents, who accused the cabinet of being unable or unwilling to deal firmly with the scandals. Painlevé demanded that the discussion be postponed to 30 November. Such a motion amounted in practice to a vote of confidence, and the government lost it. The socialists of the French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO), who for two months had not supported the cabinet but had usually abstained, this time also voted against. Thus Painlevé lost support from both sides of the Chamber at once.

The scandals

The main cause of the fall was the scandals that had been filling the front pages since the summer. After the affair of the newspaper Le Bonnet Rouge and the resignation of the interior minister Louis Malvy, which had brought down the previous government, others followed. At the end of September the adventurer and financier Paul Bolo, known as Bolo Pasha, was arrested, accused of trying to buy influence in the French press with German money. The American State Department passed the French information that in 1916 the Deutsche Bank had paid more than two million dollars into his accounts in the United States. Bolo’s money went, among others, to the great daily Le Journal, run by Senator Charles Humbert. The press also pointed more and more boldly at the former prime minister Joseph Caillaux, an advocate of an understanding with Germany.

On 4 October, at Malvy’s own request, Painlevé read out in the Chamber a letter from Léon Daudet, editor of the monarchist Action Française, accusing the former minister of treason, including passing information to the enemy before the offensive on the Chemin des Dames. On 16 October the prime minister declared after a meeting of the Council of Ministers that the government considered these charges unfounded, while leaving the courts free to act. Many saw this as an attempt to prejudge the case, and Daudet called the statement “stupefying”. At the beginning of November the police searched the flat of the former head of the Sûreté, Leymarie, who had had to resign after the Le Bonnet Rouge affair, and proceedings were opened against him. According to the New International Year Book, it was widely believed that treasonable activity was increasing, that the government was culpably lenient towards it, and that some politicians of the government camp had improper relations with the suspects. No one exploited this mood more effectively than Senator Georges Clemenceau, who in his newspaper L’Homme enchaîné and in the Senate had for months been accusing successive cabinets of weakness.

War aims and unity of command

The government was also weakened by disputes over war aims. The socialists demanded an assurance that after victory France would claim nothing beyond Alsace-Lorraine, while the right suspected the cabinet of being too yielding. In the October debate on war aims, in which Barthou assured the Chamber that France would demand the return of both provinces and unspecified “guarantees”, the government won a vote of confidence by 288 votes to 137. The American yearbook noted that the majority had clearly shrunk. Current History also listed among the causes of the fall the refusal of Barthou, who would not show the Senate foreign affairs committee a document containing an alleged German peace offer.

On top of all this came the Italian defeat at Caporetto and its consequences. Painlevé was one of the fathers of the agreement concluded at Rapallo, which set up the Allied Supreme War Council. On 12 November, the day before the vote, at a luncheon given by the French prime minister in Paris, the British prime minister David Lloyd George made a speech in which he spoke bluntly of the Allies’ mistakes and lack of unity. His words caused a stir. According to The Annual Register, the Chamber was dissatisfied with the way the government had handled the question of the supreme command, as many deputies wanted a single French commander for all the Allied armies in the west.

The successor

Painlevé’s fall closed another stage in the break-up of the “Sacred Union”. According to some historians, the president in practice had a choice between two politicians: Caillaux, who might seek a compromise peace, or Clemenceau, who promised war until victory and a ruthless reckoning with the “defeatists”. Poincaré disliked Clemenceau, but it was to him that he decided to entrust the task of forming a government. Painlevé returned to high politics after the war, was prime minister again in 1925 and Minister of War in the second half of the 1920s.