104 Facts About Georges Clemenceau

Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920.

Georges Clemenceau achieved these goals through the Treaty of Versailles signed at the Paris Peace Conference.

Georges Clemenceau instilled in his son a love of learning, devotion to radical politics, and a hatred of Catholicism.

Georges Clemenceau's mother was a devout Protestant; his father was an atheist and insisted that his children should have no religious education.

Georges Clemenceau was a lifelong atheist with a sound knowledge of the Bible.

Georges Clemenceau became a leader of anti-clerical or "Radical" forces that battled against the Catholic Church in France and the Catholics in politics.

Georges Clemenceau's position was that if church and state were kept rigidly separated, he would not support oppressive measures designed to further weaken the Catholic Church.

Georges Clemenceau went to Paris to study medicine and eventually graduated with the completion of his thesis "De la generation des elements anatomiques" in 1865.

In Paris, the young Georges Clemenceau became a political activist and writer.

Georges Clemenceau was graduated as a doctor of medicine on 13 May 1865, founded several literary magazines, and wrote many articles, most of which attacked the imperial regime of Napoleon III.

Georges Clemenceau maintained a medical practice, but spent much of his time on political journalism for a Parisian newspaper, Le Temps.

Georges Clemenceau taught French in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and taught and rode horseback at a private girls' school in Stamford, Connecticut, where he would meet his future wife.

Georges Clemenceau had attended the school where he taught horseback riding and was one of his students.

Georges Clemenceau was the daughter of Harriet A Taylor and William Kelly Plummer.

Georges Clemenceau then had his wife stripped of French nationality.

Georges Clemenceau had returned to Paris after the French defeat at the Battle of Sedan in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Second French Empire.

Georges Clemenceau ran for election to the Paris Commune council, but received fewer than eight hundred votes and took no part in its governance.

Georges Clemenceau was in Bordeaux when the commune was suppressed by the French Army in May 1871.

Georges Clemenceau first held the offices of secretary and vice-president, then he became president in 1875.

In 1876, Georges Clemenceau stood for the Chamber of Deputies and was elected for the 18th arrondissement.

Georges Clemenceau joined the far left and his energy and mordant eloquence speedily made him the leader of the radical section.

From 1876 to 1880, Georges Clemenceau was one of the main defenders of the general amnesty of thousands of Communards, members of the revolutionary government of the 1871 Paris Commune who had been deported to New Caledonia.

The "reconciliation" envisaged by Georges Clemenceau could begin, as the remaining deported Communards returned to France, including his friend Louise Michel.

In 1880, Georges Clemenceau started his newspaper, La Justice, which became the principal organ of Parisian Radicalism.

Georges Clemenceau chose to represent the latter in the Chamber of Deputies.

When General Boulanger revealed himself as an ambitious pretender, Georges Clemenceau withdrew his support and became a vigorous opponent of the heterogeneous Boulangist movement, although the radical press continued to patronize the general.

Georges Clemenceau had declined Grevy's request to form a cabinet upon the downfall of the cabinet of Maurice Rouvier by advising his followers not to vote for Charles Floquet, Jules Ferry, nor Charles de Freycinet, Clemenceau was primarily responsible for the election of an "outsider", Marie Francois Sadi Carnot, as president.

Georges Clemenceau remained the leading spokesman for French radicalism, but his hostility to the Franco-Russian Alliance so increased his unpopularity that in the French legislative elections of 1893, he was defeated for his seat in the Chamber of Deputies after having held it continuously since 1876.

For nearly a decade after his 1893 defeat, Georges Clemenceau confined his political activities to journalism.

Georges Clemenceau's career was further clouded by the long-drawn-out Dreyfus case, in which he took an active part as a supporter of Emile Zola and an opponent of the anti-Semitic and nationalist campaigns.

Georges Clemenceau decided to run the controversial article that would become a famous part of the Dreyfus Affair in the form of an open letter to Felix Faure, the president of France.

Georges Clemenceau served as the senator for Draguignan until 1920.

Georges Clemenceau sat with the Independent Radicals in the Senate and moderated his positions, although he still vigorously supported the Radical-Socialist ministry of Prime Minister Emile Combes, who spearheaded the anti-clericalist republican struggle.

Georges Clemenceau supported the formation of scientific police by Alphonse Bertillon and founded the Brigades mobiles led by Celestin Hennion.

Georges Clemenceau ordered the military against the strikers and repressed the wine growers strike in the Languedoc-Roussillon.

Georges Clemenceau's actions alienated the French Section of the Workers' International socialist party, from which he definitively broke in his notable reply in the Chamber of Deputies to Jean Jaures, leader of the SFIO, in June 1906.

Georges Clemenceau was defeated on 20 July 1909 in a discussion in the Chamber of Deputies on the state of the navy, in which bitter words he exchanged with Theophile Delcasse, the former president of the Council whose downfall Georges Clemenceau had aided.

Georges Clemenceau was succeeded as premier by Aristide Briand, with a reconstructed cabinet.

Between 1909 and 1912, Georges Clemenceau dedicated his time to travel, conferences, and the treatment of his illness.

Georges Clemenceau went to South America in 1910, traveling to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.

Georges Clemenceau published the first issue of the Journal du Var on 10 April 1910.

At the outbreak of World War I in France in August 1914, Georges Clemenceau's newspaper was one of the first to be censored by the government.

Georges Clemenceau suggested transportation of T G Masaryk's Czechoslovak Legion from Russia to France s c "North trip" as first.

Georges Clemenceau was a vehement critic of the wartime French government, asserting that it was not doing enough to win the war.

Georges Clemenceau's stance was driven by a will to regain the province of Alsace-Lorraine, a view shared by public opinion.

Georges Clemenceau argued that even German restitution of Alsace-Lorraine and the liberation of Belgium would not be enough to justify France abandoning her allies.

For many years, Georges Clemenceau was blamed for having blocked a possible compromise peace, but it is clear from examination of German documents that Germany had no serious intention of handing over Alsace-Lorraine.

In November 1917, at one of the darkest hours for the French war effort in World War I, Georges Clemenceau was appointed to the prime ministership.

Georges Clemenceau governed from the Ministry of War on Rue Saint-Dominique.

Churchill later wrote that Georges Clemenceau "looked like a wild animal pacing to and fro behind bars" in front of "an assembly which would have done anything to avoid putting him there, but, having put him there, felt they must obey".

When Georges Clemenceau became prime minister in 1917 victory seemed to be elusive.

Georges Clemenceau did not have close links with any parliamentary leaders and so, had to rely on himself and his own circle of friends.

Georges Clemenceau nominated General Henri Mordacq to be his military chief of staff.

Georges Clemenceau was well received by the media, because they felt that France was in need of strong leadership.

Georges Clemenceau wanted to surrender to Germany and negotiate a peace, thus Clemenceau viewed Caillaux as a threat to national security.

Georges Clemenceau believed, in the words of Jean Ybarnegaray, that Caillaux's crime "was not to have believed in victory [and] to have gambled on his nation's defeat".

The claims that Georges Clemenceau's "firm government" was a dictatorship found little support.

Georges Clemenceau was still held accountable to the people and media.

In 1918, Georges Clemenceau thought that France should adopt Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, mainly because of its point that called for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France.

Georges Clemenceau was sceptical about some other points including those concerning the League of Nations, as he believed that the latter could succeed only in a utopian society.

Georges Clemenceau would speak to them and assure them that their government was looking after them.

The German line continued to advance and Georges Clemenceau believed that the fall of Paris could not be ruled out.

Georges Clemenceau adamantly opposed these opinions and he gave an inspirational speech in the Chamber of Deputies; the chamber subsequently voted their confidence in him by 377 votes to 110.

Georges Clemenceau was embraced in the streets and attracted many admiring crowds.

Georges Clemenceau was viewed by the French public as a strong, energetic, positive leader who was key to the allied victory of 1918.

At their first meeting, Georges Clemenceau realized that Wilson was a man of principle and conscience.

The powers agreed that since the conference was being held in France, Georges Clemenceau would be the most appropriate president.

Georges Clemenceau had an unassailable position of full control of the French delegation.

Georges Clemenceau excluded the president of France, Raymond Poincare, keeping him in the dark on the progress of negotiations.

Georges Clemenceau excluded all parliamentary deputies, saying he would negotiate the treaty and it would be parliament's duty to vote it up or down, after it was finished.

Georges Clemenceau said he believed that Germany had won the war industrially and commercially as its factories were intact and soon its debts would be overcome through "manipulation".

When negotiations reached a stalemate, Georges Clemenceau had a habit of shouting at the other heads of state and storming out of the room rather than participating in further discussion.

On 19 February 1919, as Georges Clemenceau was leaving his apartment, a man fired several shots at the car.

Georges Clemenceau believed that Germany's possession of this territory left France without a natural frontier in the east and thus, was vulnerable to invasion.

Lloyd George insisted on a clause allowing for the early withdrawal of allied troops if the Germans fulfilled the treaty; Georges Clemenceau inserted Article 429 into the treaty that permitted allied occupation beyond the fifteen years if adequate guarantees for allied security against unprovoked aggression were not met.

Georges Clemenceau believed that France was entitled to the region and its coal mines after Germany deliberately damaged the coal mines in northern France.

Wilson resisted the French claim so firmly that Georges Clemenceau accused him of being "pro-German".

Rather than recognizing territories of the Austrian-Hungarian empire solely within the principles of self-determination, Georges Clemenceau sought to weaken Hungary, just as Germany was, and to remove the threat of such a large power within Central Europe.

Georges Clemenceau realised that any compromise would anger both the French and British citizens and that the only option was to establish a reparations commission that would examine Germany's capacity for reparations.

Georges Clemenceau now had to defend the treaty against critics who viewed the compromises he had negotiated as inadequate for French national interests.

Georges Clemenceau replied that he was sure the Senate would ratify both and that he had inserted Article 429 into the treaty, providing for "new arrangements concerning the Rhine".

Georges Clemenceau said that he knew the treaty was not perfect, but that the war had been fought by a coalition and therefore, the treaty would express the lowest common denominator of those involved.

Georges Clemenceau claimed criticisms of the details of the treaty were misleading; that critics should look at the treaty as a whole and see how they could benefit from it:.

Georges Clemenceau said that any attempt to partition Germany would be self-defeating and that France must find a way of living with sixty million Germans.

Georges Clemenceau said that the bourgeoisie, like the aristocracy before them in the ancien regime, had failed as a ruling class.

However, Georges Clemenceau did not intend to campaign for the post, instead he wished to be chosen by acclaim as a national symbol.

Georges Clemenceau resigned as prime minister as soon as the presidential election was held and took no further part in politics.

Georges Clemenceau took a holiday in Egypt and the Sudan from February to April 1920, then embarked for the Far East in September, returning to France in March 1921.

Georges Clemenceau met Lloyd George and said to him that after the armistice he had become the enemy of France.

In late 1922, Georges Clemenceau gave a lecture tour in the major cities of the American northeast.

Georges Clemenceau defended the policy of France, including war debts and reparations, and condemned American isolationism.

Georges Clemenceau was well received and attracted large audiences, but America's policy remained unchanged.

Georges Clemenceau condemned Poincare's occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 as an undoing of the entente between France and Britain.

Georges Clemenceau wrote two short biographies, one of the Greek orator Demosthenes and one of the French painter Claude Monet.

Georges Clemenceau penned a huge two-volume tome, covering philosophy, history, and science, entitled Au Soir de la Pensee.

Georges Clemenceau was spurred into doing so by the appearance of Marshal Foch's memoirs, which were highly critical of Clemenceau, mainly for his policy at the Paris Peace Conference.

Georges Clemenceau only had time to finish the first draft and it was published posthumously as Grandeurs et miseres d'une victoire.

Georges Clemenceau was critical of Foch and of his successors who had allowed the Versailles Treaty to be undermined in the face of Germany's revival.

Georges Clemenceau died on 24 November 1929 and was buried at Mouchamps.

Georges Clemenceau was a long-time friend and supporter of the impressionist painter Claude Monet.

Georges Clemenceau was instrumental in persuading Monet to have a cataract operation in 1923.

For more than a decade, Georges Clemenceau encouraged Monet to complete his donation to the French state of the large Les Nympheas paintings that now are on display in the Paris Musee de l'Orangerie.

Georges Clemenceau took an interest in Japanese art, especially Japanese ceramics.

Georges Clemenceau collected approximately 3,000 small incense containers, which are now in museums.