Charles de Freycinet

Louis Charles de Saulces de Freycinet (born November 14, 1828 in Foix ( Ariège ), † May 14, 1923 in Paris ) was a French politician. Between 1880 and 1892 he was Prime Minister of the Third Republic four times for a total of about three and a half years , at the same time Foreign Minister in his first three terms, and at the same time Minister of War in the last. Between 1877 and 1915 he was minister in various departments in a total of eleven other governments and twice chairman of the defense committee of the French Senate.

Charles de Freycinet (around 1910)

Life and work until 1870

Freycinet was born into the family of a Protestant senior finance official. One of his uncles was the explorer Louis de Freycinet , another uncle, Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet, and his son Charles-Henri-Auguste de Saulces de Freycinet each made it to the position of admiral . He started studying engineering at the École polytechnique when he was seventeen, finishing sixth in his class, which gave him the freedom to choose his future job. In the years 1852 to 1858 Freycinet worked in a managerial position (including manager) in various regional transport administrations in the French province, including in Mont-de-Marsan , Chartres and Bordeaux (from 1854), where he became the granddaughter of a previous city councilor in September 1858 MPs married. In 1858 he moved to the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi as director and manager of the railway operations service , where he proved to be a good organizer. However, he was at the end of 1862 by Emperor Napoleon III. recalled to the civil service and together with other engineers sent on scientific as well as political trips, including to Great Britain (1863), Mexico , Belgium and the Prussian Rhine Province (1868). He was then appointed by Émile Ollivier to a decentralization commission chaired by Odilon Barrot , which was appointed for the purpose of preparing an administrative reform . At the same time, he participated as a member of the general council in the regional self-government of his home country, the Tarn-et-Garonne department .

"Delegate of the Minister of War" 1870/71

After the fall of Napoleon III. and the proclamation of the republic on September 4, 1870, the new interior minister Léon Gambetta deposed the prefects of all departments and appointed republicans to these posts. After a long conversation with Freycinet, who had not yet emerged as an enthusiastic Republican, Gambetta appointed him prefect for Tarn-et-Garonne in the deep south-west of France. However, on October 10, 1870, he was appointed by Gambetta, who had meanwhile been sent to Tours by the Government of National Defense and who had also taken on the post of Minister of War.

As the “delegate of the minister” (for example: State Secretary) he organized and coordinated the war efforts of the unoccupied part of France during the following months of the Franco-Prussian War , whereby Gambetta gave him every freedom of action. From practically nothing he created a new army of around 600,000 men, divided into Corps 15 to 24, and equipped them with everything necessary. These included maps of France, which had to be photographed from a single copy of a collection, because the Napoleonic army administration had printed a sufficient number of maps of the intended area of ​​operations in Germany, but not maps of the border area, let alone the interior of the country. In addition, he reorganized the central military administration and created a highly professional structure with the "civil genius corps of the army", staffed by architects , engineers and other specialists in similar professions, responsible for securing supplies , expanding the rear connections and necessary fortification work.

His organizational talent received unlimited recognition, after the war also by the German Chief of Staff Moltke , but his interventions in the planning of military operations resulted in almost nothing but failures, which culminated in the debacle of the Eastern Army under Bourbaki . Freycinet, who had never served himself and did not visit a fighting unit during the war, had unrealistic ideas about the combat and marching skills as well as the real strength of the newly formed units and attributed the setbacks solely to the commanding generals whose objections to his orders were he did not take notice. Many commanding generals were offended and some important officers were forced to resign or, like Bourbaki, driven to suicide. In addition, unlike on the German side, the recipients of the orders were not given any insight into the overall planning, so that they could not solve problems on site while taking the overall objective into account.

Professional politician from 1876

After five years without any public office, Freycinet was elected to the French Senate for Paris in January 1876 , and he held this mandate continuously until 1920. There he first joined the left Republicans . Later he was one of the moderate Republicans .

The following year, it summoned Prime Minister Jules Dufaure as Minister of Public Works . In this capacity, Freycinet was responsible for the roads, railways and shipping canals. By the end of 1879, Freycinet tried to bring the road and rail network up to date. According to their own statements, “the capital of each department should have a fast connection to Paris”. So he presented a plan according to which all French should have access to the railroad to support economic development and open up less developed areas.

On July 17, 1879, the "Freycinet Plan" became law and was supported with a special budget of 500 million francs . With this, railways and canals were bought up to a large extent as well as newly built, or the construction was subsidized by the large railway companies. The French rail network grew from 29,600 to 39,400 kilometers by the time the plan was finally implemented in 1914 with 180 new routes. This meant that all sub-prefectures and all important cities in France were connected to the railroad, albeit in many cases only with narrow-gauge lines of low loading capacity.

With the so-called Freycinet-Péniche he created a standard for the barges of the French inland navigation. The ship's dimensions are 38 × 5 m with a draft of 1.80 m and result in a loading capacity of around 300 tons. This class of ship became the norm for the canals built in France at the end of the 19th century . The corresponding lock dimensions are 38.50 × 5.10 m.

Freycinet was also involved in the planning of the Transsahara Railway . Tunis ( Tunisia ) should be connected to Lake Chad as directly as possible . An extension was to lead along the Niger via Timbuktu ( Mali ) to Dakar ( Senegal ). However, the ambitious but unrealistic project was put aside after an expedition to explore a suitable route through the Ahaggar Mountains was decimated by the Tuareg . This event, felt by many French as a national disgrace, contributed to Freycinet's replacement as Prime Minister .

When Prime Minister William Henry Waddington replaced Dufaure on February 4, 1879, Freycinet was taken over as Minister of Public Works. After Waddington's resignation on December 29, 1879, Freycinet succeeded him as Prime Minister and also headed the Foreign Ministry. He held these offices until September 21, 1880, since - in contrast to Gambetta - he was always ready to negotiate in his foreign policy towards balance and peace and also in questions of church and state.

When Gambetta became Prime Minister in November 1881, he appointed Freycinet as Foreign Minister. However, he resigned after only one day in office, which ended the political friendship that had existed until then. With effect from January 31, 1882, Freycinet was again Prime Minister as Gambetta's successor. Freycinet had to resign on July 29 of the same year because Gambetta's party did not agree with his policy; It was precisely the Egyptian crisis that brought Freycinet the charge of cowardice.

When Prime Minister Jules Ferry had to resign in April 1885, Freycinet was able to return to the political stage. Under Prime Minister Eugène Henri Brisson he again served as Foreign Minister and was re-elected as Prime Minister after Brisson's resignation in January 1886. At that time he was considered a tactically very skilled politician who enjoyed cross-party reputation.

In the discussions about the separation of church and state , Freycinet held back to a large extent, since he did not belong to the Roman Catholic Church, which was mainly affected by it .

From 1890 to 1892 Freycinet was again Prime Minister. The negotiations to conclude the Franco-Russian alliance took place during this term of office , even if they were only signed a few days after the resignation of Freycinet's fourth cabinet. Freycinet was Minister of War between April 3, 1888 and January 11, 1893 and later again between November 1, 1898 and May 6, 1899. His resignation from this office and thus his retreat into the second tier of politics coincided with that of the Dreyfus- Affair connected: As a seventy-year-old, he no longer felt up to the tough arguments about it in parliament.

In the Briand (5th) cabinet , Freycinet was Minister of State between October 1915 and December 1916 , d. H. in a prominent political position, but without departmental responsibility.

Charles Freycinet died in Paris in 1923 at the age of 94 and was buried in the Cimetière de Passy .

Awards

• 1870: Officer of the Legion of Honor
• 1882: Member of the Académie des Sciences
• 1890: Member of the Académie française (successor to Émile Augier ).

Works

• Traité de mécanique rationelle (1858, 2 vols.)
• De l'analyse infinitésimale (1860, 2nd edition 1881)
• Des pertes économiques en chemin de fer (1861)
• Principes de l'assainissement des villes (1870)
• Traité d'assainissement industriel (1870)
• Essai sur la philosophie des sciences (1896)
• Essai sur la philosophie des sciences (1905)
• La guerre en province pendant le siége de Paris (Paris 1871); - (Ger. And T. Karl von Freycinet, The War in the Provinces during the Siege of Paris: 1870 - 1871. A historical account. Breslau 1872)
• Souvenirs 1848–1878. Paris 1912
• Souvenirs 1878–1893. Paris 1914

literature

• Robert Beck, The Freycinet Plan and the Provinces. Aspects d. infrastructural development d. french Provinces by d. Third Republic. Frankfurt am Main and Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-8204-9791-9 .
• Lyte M. Fozard, Charles-Louis de Saulces de Freycinet: The railways and the expansion of the French empire in North and West Africa 1877-1893. (phil. diss., microfilm) Ann Arbor, Michigan 1976.
• Eduard Hochstrasser, Le Plan Freycinet: On the history and development of the French railways in the second half of the 19th century. (Phil. Diss.), 1977.

Web links

• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Newspaper article about Charles de Freycinet in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} biography on the website of the French Senate , accessed on July 12, 2016.
2. ^ Wilhelm Oncken : The Age of Emperor Wilhelm. (Individual edition: ISBN 978-3-8460-3638-9 ) in: Oncken, W. (ed.): General History in Individual Representations , Fourth Main Department, Sixth Part, Volume 2, Berlin: Grote, 1890 and more, p. 223-228.
3. ^ Wilhelm Oncken : The Age of Emperor Wilhelm. (Individual edition: ISBN 978-3-8460-3638-9 ) in: Oncken, W. (ed.): General History in Individual Representations , Fourth Main Department, Sixth Part, Volume 2, Berlin: Grote, 1890 and more, p. 234-252.
4. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter F. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 16, 2019 (French). 

predecessor	Office	successor
William Henry Waddington Léon Gambetta Henri Brisson	Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of France December 28, 1879 to September 23, 1880 January 30, 1882 to August 7, 1882 January 7, 1886 to December 3, 1886	Jules Ferry (MinPras) / Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire (AMin) Charles Duclerc René Goblet
Charles Thomas Floquet	Prime Minister and Minister of War of France March 17, 1890 to February 27, 1892	Émile Loubet
Jules Ferry	(only) Foreign Minister of France April 6, 1885 to September 11, 1886	Émile Flourens
François Auguste Logerot himself in personal union (see above) Charles Chanoine	(only) Minister of War of France April 3, 1888 to March 13, 1890 February 28, 1892 to January 11, 1893 November 1, 1898 to May 6, 1899	himself in personal union (see above) Julien Loizillon Camille Krantz
Michel Graeff	Minister of Public Works December 13, 1877 to December 21, 1879	Henri Varroy
without	Minister of State October 29, 1915 to December 12, 1916	without