Ernest Granger
Encyclopedia
Ernest Granger was a French politician, a veteran of the Paris Commune
of 1871, a Blanquist socialist and subsequently a Boulangist nationalist.
. Around this time he became involved in the clandestine revolutionary societies organised by the followers of the incarcerated veteran insurrectionist Louis-Auguste Blanqui. Together with Gustave Tridon
, Émile Eudes
and others, Granger plotted the overthrow of the Second French Empire
. On August 14, 1870, the Blanquists struck, attempting to seize a military arsenal and spark a general uprising; Granger was one of the organisers. The coup was premature, but not long after, Napoléon III, discredited by his conduct of the Franco-Prussian War
(1870-71), was overthrown. Granger, who had avoided arrest after the August uprising, participated in the last demonstration against Napoléon III on September 1 and in the invasion of the Legislative Assembly on September 4, 1870.
. Along with other National Guard commanders who had participated in the insurrection, Granger was relieved of command, but his soldiers re-elected him, and although he was not recognised by the Versailles government, he resumed command of the 159th battalion. Granger participated in the Paris Commune
as one of the representatives of the Blanquist faction. He was given the task of finding and liberating Blanqui (whose location was kept secret by the government), but before he could complete the mission, the Paris Commune was suppressed.
in 1888, replaced him as editor-in-chief of Le Cri du Peuple.) The Blanquists launched a campaign for the release of their aged and infirm leader, and in 1879, they managed to have Blanqui elected to the National Assembly as deputy for Bordeaux. Because Blanqui was still in prison, the election was annulled, but in 1880 he was released. After his release, Blanqui came to live with Granger and died at his home in 1881.
Shortly after Blanqui's death, Granger, together with Édouard Vaillant
and others, founded the Central Revolutionary Committee, the nucleus of the Blanquist party. However, the Blanquist ideology at this time was an unstable combination of radical Jacobin republicanism, egalitarian socialism, anti-clericalism
, ardent national chauvinism
and a strong current of xenophobia
and anti-Semitism
. While this was not an uncommon mixture in French radical politics in the late nineteenth century, the course of events made it increasingly evident that elements of this ideological mixture were in conflict with each other. One faction of the Blanquist movement accented the socialist heritage of Blanqui and moved closer to Jules Guesde's
Marxist party, rejecting anti-Semitism and, at least in theory, endorsing the internationalist principles of socialism. This was the course of Édouard Vaillant. Another faction moved increasingly in the direction of virulent nationalism and anti-Semitism. This was the course Granger took. Although his was the smaller faction, Granger, who had been personally close to Blanqui, considered himself the true standard bearer of Blanquism, and Vaillant a late interloper.
, who, in 1886, embarked on an increasingly powerful campaign for a revision of the constitution. Republicans generally and Blanquists in particular were divided over Boulanger. Many saw him as a latter-day Louis Bonaparte
, whose populist rhetoric barely concealed his caesarian ambitions. They feared that Boulanger was preparing a coup d'état and intended to replace the Republic with his personal dictatorship, and they were alarmed by his financial and political ties to Orléanist monarchists. Other republicans believed the General's protestations of fidelity to the Republic and were attracted by his rhetoric of social reform, his revanchist desire to avenge the defeat of 1871 and retrieve Alsace-Lorraine, his reforms of the army and his anti-clerical gestures. While Vaillant was hostile to Boulanger, Granger was more and more openly sympathetic to the General's campaign.
For awhile, the Blanquists papered over their differences by adopting a policy of official neutrality: the quarrel between Boulangists and bourgeois republicans was a quarrel within the bourgeoisie, in which the proletariat need not take sides. But as Boulanger's campaign gathered momentum, this position became increasingly untenable. The issue came to a head in 1888, when the Blanquists split over the candidacy of Henri Rochefort. Rochefort was a veteran republican with socialist sympathies and personal ties to many Blanquists and ex-Communards, but in the 1880s he had become a supporter of Boulanger and was running as a Boulangist candidate. Granger supported him; Vaillant supported his republican opponent Susini. The breach became irreparable; Granger and his supporters left the Central Revolutionary Committee and formed the Socialist-Revolutionary Central Committee, while Vaillant's followers renamed themselves the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
. Vaillant's party moved further into the socialist mainstream, merging with the Guesdists in 1901 and with the other major socialist factions in 1905 to form the unified socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) political party
. Granger and his group moved further into the slipstream of nationalism and eventually became defunct.
). He served one term; in 1893 he did not stand for re-election. In the late 1890s, the Dreyfus affair
further divided Granger from the mainstream of French republican socialism. The majority of French socialists followed Jean Jaurès
in supporting Alfred Dreyfus
, the Jewish officer falsely accused of spying for Germany, or at least maintained a policy of neutrality between the "bourgeois" Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards (as Vaillant and Guesde did). However, some veteran republicans sided with those who condemned Dreyfus as a traitor. Granger was one of these. The anti-Dreyfusard campaign became increasingly openly anti-Semitic. Granger proclaimed himself, 'like Blanqui and Tridon, ... philosophically an anti-Semite' and professed his sympathy for Édouard Drumont
, himself a former socialist who had migrated to the extreme nationalist right of the spectrum and was the chief apostle of anti-Semitism in France. Mainstream socialists saw in the anti-Dreyfus campaign an assault on the Republic and noted the anti-Dreyfusards' ties to royalist politicians; the Dreyfus Affair helped cement the socialists' official opposition to anti-Semitism and racism. By contrast, the Dreyfus Affair propelled Granger and a handful of others like him fully out of the mainstream of French socialism and republicanism and into currents which paved the way for French fascism
in the twentieth century.
Granger did not live to witness the event which led to an eruption of nationalism in France and across Europe, torpedoing the official internationalism and anti-militarism of the Second International
and dividing the mainstream socialist movement: the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
of 1871, a Blanquist socialist and subsequently a Boulangist nationalist.
Early Life: Blanquism under the Second Empire
Ernest Henri Granger was born in Mortagne, into a lower middle class family of peasant stock. He was educated at the Lycée in Versailles and studied law before breaking off his studies to devote himself to political activism. In 1866 he was imprisoned for the first time for seditionSedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
. Around this time he became involved in the clandestine revolutionary societies organised by the followers of the incarcerated veteran insurrectionist Louis-Auguste Blanqui. Together with Gustave Tridon
Gustave Tridon
Gustave Tridon was a French revolutionary socialist, member of the First International and the Paris Commune and anti-Semite.-Blanquism and the International:...
, Émile Eudes
Émile Eudes
Émile Eudes was a French revolutionary, Blanquist socialist and participant in the Paris Commune.-Early life:Émile Eudes was born on September 12, 1843, in Roncy in the English Channel. He began his medical studies in Saint-Lô and stubsequently moved to Paris to specialize in pharmacology. As a...
and others, Granger plotted the overthrow of the Second French Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
. On August 14, 1870, the Blanquists struck, attempting to seize a military arsenal and spark a general uprising; Granger was one of the organisers. The coup was premature, but not long after, Napoléon III, discredited by his conduct of the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
(1870-71), was overthrown. Granger, who had avoided arrest after the August uprising, participated in the last demonstration against Napoléon III on September 1 and in the invasion of the Legislative Assembly on September 4, 1870.
The Paris Commune
In 1870-71, Granger was a co-editor and contributor of the Blanquist journal La Patrie en Danger. He also commanded the 159th battalion of the National Guard and attempted to rally the French to resist the German army at all costs. On October 31, Granger and his battalion participated in an armed occupation of the Hôtel de Ville, ParisHôtel de Ville, Paris
The Hôtel de Ville |City Hall]]) in :Paris, France, is the building housing the City of Paris's administration. Standing on the place de l'Hôtel de Ville in the city's IVe arrondissement, it has been the location of the municipality of Paris since 1357...
. Along with other National Guard commanders who had participated in the insurrection, Granger was relieved of command, but his soldiers re-elected him, and although he was not recognised by the Versailles government, he resumed command of the 159th battalion. Granger participated in the Paris Commune
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
as one of the representatives of the Blanquist faction. He was given the task of finding and liberating Blanqui (whose location was kept secret by the government), but before he could complete the mission, the Paris Commune was suppressed.
Exile and Return: Blanquist Politics Between Socialism and Nationalism
Granger escaped England, remaining in exile in London until an amnesty enabled him to return to France. In the late 1870s and 1880s he was one of the principal editors of the Blanquist journal Ni Dieu ni Maître (Neither God nor Master). (He also contributed to L'Homme Libre and, after the death of Émile EudesÉmile Eudes
Émile Eudes was a French revolutionary, Blanquist socialist and participant in the Paris Commune.-Early life:Émile Eudes was born on September 12, 1843, in Roncy in the English Channel. He began his medical studies in Saint-Lô and stubsequently moved to Paris to specialize in pharmacology. As a...
in 1888, replaced him as editor-in-chief of Le Cri du Peuple.) The Blanquists launched a campaign for the release of their aged and infirm leader, and in 1879, they managed to have Blanqui elected to the National Assembly as deputy for Bordeaux. Because Blanqui was still in prison, the election was annulled, but in 1880 he was released. After his release, Blanqui came to live with Granger and died at his home in 1881.
Shortly after Blanqui's death, Granger, together with Édouard Vaillant
Édouard Vaillant
Marie Édouard Vaillant was a French politician.Born in Vierzon, Cher, son of a lawyer, Édouard Vaillant studied engineering at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, graduating in 1862, and then law at the Sorbonne. In Paris he knew Charles Longuet, Louis-Auguste Rogeard, and Jules Vallès...
and others, founded the Central Revolutionary Committee, the nucleus of the Blanquist party. However, the Blanquist ideology at this time was an unstable combination of radical Jacobin republicanism, egalitarian socialism, anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...
, ardent national chauvinism
Chauvinism
Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It is an eponym of a possibly fictional French soldier Nicolas Chauvin who was credited with many superhuman feats in the Napoleonic wars.By extension it has come...
and a strong current of xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
and anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
. While this was not an uncommon mixture in French radical politics in the late nineteenth century, the course of events made it increasingly evident that elements of this ideological mixture were in conflict with each other. One faction of the Blanquist movement accented the socialist heritage of Blanqui and moved closer to Jules Guesde's
Jules Guesde
Jules Basile Guesde was a French socialist journalist and politician.Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Guesde and Paul Lafargue, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles...
Marxist party, rejecting anti-Semitism and, at least in theory, endorsing the internationalist principles of socialism. This was the course of Édouard Vaillant. Another faction moved increasingly in the direction of virulent nationalism and anti-Semitism. This was the course Granger took. Although his was the smaller faction, Granger, who had been personally close to Blanqui, considered himself the true standard bearer of Blanquism, and Vaillant a late interloper.
Boulangism and the Split in Blanquism
The conflict between Vaillantists and Grangerites brewed for some time in the Central Revolutionary Committee. It was intensified by the rise of General Georges BoulangerGeorges Boulanger
Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger was a French general and reactionary politician. At the apogee of his popularity in January 1889 many republicans including Georges Clemenceau feared the threat of a coup d'état by Boulanger and the establishment of a dictatorship.- Early life and career :Born...
, who, in 1886, embarked on an increasingly powerful campaign for a revision of the constitution. Republicans generally and Blanquists in particular were divided over Boulanger. Many saw him as a latter-day Louis Bonaparte
Louis Bonaparte
Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Prince Français, Comte de Saint-Leu , King of Holland , was the fifth surviving child and the fourth surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino...
, whose populist rhetoric barely concealed his caesarian ambitions. They feared that Boulanger was preparing a coup d'état and intended to replace the Republic with his personal dictatorship, and they were alarmed by his financial and political ties to Orléanist monarchists. Other republicans believed the General's protestations of fidelity to the Republic and were attracted by his rhetoric of social reform, his revanchist desire to avenge the defeat of 1871 and retrieve Alsace-Lorraine, his reforms of the army and his anti-clerical gestures. While Vaillant was hostile to Boulanger, Granger was more and more openly sympathetic to the General's campaign.
For awhile, the Blanquists papered over their differences by adopting a policy of official neutrality: the quarrel between Boulangists and bourgeois republicans was a quarrel within the bourgeoisie, in which the proletariat need not take sides. But as Boulanger's campaign gathered momentum, this position became increasingly untenable. The issue came to a head in 1888, when the Blanquists split over the candidacy of Henri Rochefort. Rochefort was a veteran republican with socialist sympathies and personal ties to many Blanquists and ex-Communards, but in the 1880s he had become a supporter of Boulanger and was running as a Boulangist candidate. Granger supported him; Vaillant supported his republican opponent Susini. The breach became irreparable; Granger and his supporters left the Central Revolutionary Committee and formed the Socialist-Revolutionary Central Committee, while Vaillant's followers renamed themselves the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
Socialist Revolutionary Party (France)
The Socialist Revolutionary Party was a French Blanquist political party founded in 1898 and dissolved in 1901. It is indirectly one of the founding factions of the French Section of the Workers' International , founded in 1905....
. Vaillant's party moved further into the socialist mainstream, merging with the Guesdists in 1901 and with the other major socialist factions in 1905 to form the unified socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
. Granger and his group moved further into the slipstream of nationalism and eventually became defunct.
Nationalism and anti-Semitism
In the late 1880s, Granger contributed to the journal L'Intransigeant. In 1889 Granger's committee entered into an electoral alliance with the Boulangists. They divided the electoral districts between them, and Granger was elected to the National Assembly for the 19th arrondissement of Paris (SeineSeine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
). He served one term; in 1893 he did not stand for re-election. In the late 1890s, the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
further divided Granger from the mainstream of French republican socialism. The majority of French socialists followed Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
in supporting Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish background whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French and European history...
, the Jewish officer falsely accused of spying for Germany, or at least maintained a policy of neutrality between the "bourgeois" Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards (as Vaillant and Guesde did). However, some veteran republicans sided with those who condemned Dreyfus as a traitor. Granger was one of these. The anti-Dreyfusard campaign became increasingly openly anti-Semitic. Granger proclaimed himself, 'like Blanqui and Tridon, ... philosophically an anti-Semite' and professed his sympathy for Édouard Drumont
Edouard Drumont
Édouard Adolphe Drumont was a French journalist and writer. He founded the Antisemitic League of France in 1889, and was the founder and editor of the newspaper La Libre Parole.- Early life :...
, himself a former socialist who had migrated to the extreme nationalist right of the spectrum and was the chief apostle of anti-Semitism in France. Mainstream socialists saw in the anti-Dreyfus campaign an assault on the Republic and noted the anti-Dreyfusards' ties to royalist politicians; the Dreyfus Affair helped cement the socialists' official opposition to anti-Semitism and racism. By contrast, the Dreyfus Affair propelled Granger and a handful of others like him fully out of the mainstream of French socialism and republicanism and into currents which paved the way for French fascism
Far right leagues
The Far right leagues were several French far right movements opposed to parliamentarism, which mainly dedicated themselves to military parades, street brawls, demonstrations and riots. The term ligue was often used in the 1930s to distinguish these political movements from parliamentary parties...
in the twentieth century.
Granger did not live to witness the event which led to an eruption of nationalism in France and across Europe, torpedoing the official internationalism and anti-militarism of the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
and dividing the mainstream socialist movement: the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
Further reading
- Biographies des Deputés de l'Assemblée Nationale, 1889-1940. Online at: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/biographies/1889-1940/Lettre_G/Pages%20de%20G_2.pdf
- Hutton, P.H., The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition: The Blanquists in French Politics, 1864-1893. Berkeley, 1981.
- Mazgaj, P., 'The Origins of the French Radical Right: A Historiographic Essay.' French Historical Studies 1987.
- E. Granger Papers, ca. 1865-1895. Held at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.