Background
Joseph Caillaux was born in Le Mans, March 30, 1863, scion of a wealthy provincial family. His father, an engineer and an Orleanist deputy, served as France's minister of public works and then minister of finance between 1874 and 1877.
Joseph Caillaux was born in Le Mans, March 30, 1863, scion of a wealthy provincial family. His father, an engineer and an Orleanist deputy, served as France's minister of public works and then minister of finance between 1874 and 1877.
Educated in law and economics, Joseph Caillaux entered the ministry of finance in 1886. After more than a decade as a treasury official, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1898. A moderate Republican, his closest political allies were Alexandre Ribot and Raymond Poincaré. In 1899 Caillaux took the post of minister of finance, his father's old position and one he himself was to hold in numerous cabinets. A figure of inherited wealth and aristocratic demeanor, Caillaux began to emerge as a hero to the Left in 1907 when he proposed a progressive income tax.
Caillaux became a center of national controversy during the Moroccan crisis of 1911, in which he acquired a lasting reputation as pro-German. He was chosen to be premier in June.
Two months before, French troops had marched on Fez and overturned the political balance in Morocco. In July the German government demanded compensation for their lost political rights in this turbulent area of northwestern Africa. A German gunboat, the Panther, was dispatched to Agadir and made the crisis a serious one. Caillaux intervened in the negotiations as war fever rose on both sides of the Rhine. He was thereafter anathematized by nationalist circles for negotiating behind the back of his foreign minister and surrendering a chunk of the French Cameroons to compensate Germany.
Tactless, self-important, openly contemptuous of his colleagues and the procedures of the National Assembly, Caillaux nonetheless found himself with a growing reputation as a republican of the Left as war approached. He was proud of avoiding war in 1911. The following year, he criticized his old friend Poincaré, who was seeking the presidency of France, as a leader who desired a collision with Germany. Caillaux led the unsuccessful fight to prevent military service from being expanded to three years.
In October 1913, he was chosen president of the Radical party. The strong Radical showing in the May 1914 elections—implying the electorate's doubts about Poincare's belligerent style in foreign policy—made Caillaux a strong candidate to become premier. An alliance with Socialist leader Jean Jaurès to form a government seemed about to take shape. Two months earlier, however, a scandal had halted Caillaux's ascent. His wife had fatally shot a newspaper editor engaged in a bitter press campaign against Caillaux.
The press campaign had been attributed to Caillaux's political enemies in the National Assembly and government, notably Poincaré and Aristide Briand. Madame Caillaux's acquittal—her husband had led her defense in court—came at the end of July and seemed to renew the Radical leader's political prospects. In less than a week, war broke out.
Jaurès was assassinated on the eve of mobilization; his killer had also tried to find Caillaux, who fled to his country home. When Caillaux tried to serve as the army's paymaster general, he was harassed by French and British officers. Minister of the Interior Malvy, an old political ally, arranged Caillaux's release from the army. He traveled in Latin America on a food purchasing mission, lived in Italy for a time, and spent most of the next three years residing quietly in the provinces. Anticipating that he would be called to the premiership once Poincaré felt victory was impossible, Caillaux drafted his "Rubicon" project, a scheme for ruling by decree while he made peace.
Caillaux was the logical leader of a French peace movement, but he avoided treasonous contact with German emissaries. His circle of acquaintances, however, included unsavory types like Paul Bolo-Pasha who were linked to the enemy. As a symbol of a "white," that is, negotiated, peace, Caillaux was a target for the Parisian press. The new word "defeatism," with its implication of desiring a German victory, was coined by journalists to be thrown at Caillaux. He was accused of being the de facto interior minister, pushing Malvy to be lenient with pro-German publications.
As the union sacrée crumbled in late 1917, Poincaré was faced with a choice between Caillaux and Clemenceau as premier; the one representing negotiations, the other a fight to the finish. He chose Clemenceau, who quickly launched an attack on defeatists, traitors, and pacifists.
In December 1917, Caillaux shed his parliamentary immunity and asked to be tried by the Senate. He admitted some of his wartime contacts had been imprudent. But he considered his actions innocent: his critics were castigating him for his ideas. He turned aside Clemenceau's quiet warning to leave the country and was arrested in January 1918. He was not charged until October 1918. Tried finally in 1920, Caillaux claimed again to be innocent; he insisted France would find its victory had been purchased at an exorbitant cost. The prosecution offered the "Rubicon" as evidence Caillaux had intended to commit treason.
Nonetheless, Caillaux was convicted only on a minor charge, fined, and banished from France's major cities. The disillusionment with the peace settlement and the popular reaction against the Rhineland occupation of 1923 set the stage for his political rebirth. He was granted amnesty in 1924 and was back as minister of finance the following year. A fixture in the Senate from 1925 onward, he was finance minister again in 1935 and attempted to form a government that year.