Education
École Polytechnique.
military minister officer politician
École Polytechnique.
Loyal to the laïque Third Republic, he was anti-Catholic, militantly anticlerical, a Freemason and was implicated in the Affaire Des Fiches, a scandal in which he received reports from Masonic groups on which army officers were practicing Catholics for the purpose of denying their promotions. According to Piers Paul Read, "The information, as it came in, was entered on cards or fiches. These would be marked either Corinth or Carthage -- the Corinthians being the sheep who should be promoted and the Carthaginians, the goats who should be held back.
Officers loyal to the republican ideals were encouraged to report the opinions voiced by their colleagues in the mess."
In 1904, Jean Bidegain, the assistant Secretary of Grand Orient de France, secretly sold a selection of the Fiches to Gabriel Syveton of the Ligue de la Patrie Francaise for 40,000 francs.
The resulting scandal led directly to the resignation of French Prime Minister Emile Combes.
A bachelor officer who went to Mass was by definition of a reactionary disposition.
