Minister
It was in the capacity of War Minister that Boulanger gained most popularity. He introduced reforms for the benefit of soldiers (such as allowing soldiers to grow beards) and appealed to the French desire for revenge against Imperial Germany - in doing so, came to be regarded as the man destined to serve that revenge (nicknamed Général Revanche). He also managed to quell the major workers' strike in Decazeville. A minor scandal arose when Philippe, comte de Paris, the nominal inheritor of the French throne in the eyes of Orléanist monarchists, married his daughter Amélie to Portugal's Carlos I, in a lavish wedding that provoked fears of anti-Republican ambitions. The French Parliament hastily passed a law expelling all possible claimants to the crown from French territories. Boulanger communicated to d'Aumale his expulsion from the armed forces. He received the adulation of the public and the press after the Sino-French War, when France's victory added Tonkin to its colonial empire. He also vigorously pressed for the accelerated adoption, in 1886, of the new and technically revolutionary Lebel rifle which introduced for the first time smokeless powder high-velocity ammunition.
On Freycinet's defeat in December of the same year, Boulanger was retained by René Goblet at the war office. Confident of political support, the general began provoking the Germans: he ordered military facilities to be built in the border region of Belfort, forbade the export of horses to German markets, and even instigated a ban on representations of Lohengrin. Germany responded by calling to arms more than 70,000 reservists in February 1887; after the Schnaebele incident (April 1887), war was averted, but Boulanger was perceived by his supporters as coming out on top against Bismarck. For the Goblet government, Boulanger was an embarrassment and risk, and became engaged in a dispute with Foreign Minister Émile Flourens. On May 17, Goblet was voted out of office and replaced by Maurice Rouvier. The latter sacked Boulanger, and replaced him with Théophile Adrien Ferron on May 30.
Read more about this topic: Georges Ernest Boulanger
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