The Affair of the Cards () was a political scandal which broke out in 1904 in France, during the Third French Republic. It concerned a clandestine political and religious filing operation set up in the French Army at the initiative of General Louis André, Minister of War, in the context of the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair and accusations of anti-republicanism made by leftists and radicals against the Corps of Officers in the French Army (which was at the time the largest land army in Europe) who accused it of being a final redoubt of conservative Catholic and royalist individuals within French society.
From 1900 to 1904, the prefectural administrations, the Masonic lodges of the Grand Orient de France and other intelligence networks established data sheets on officers, which were sent to General André's office in order to decide on which officers would be allowed to receive promotions and advance up the military hierarchy, as well as be awarded decorations, and who would be excluded from advancement. These secret documents were preferred by General André to the official reports of the military command; this allowed him to set up a system whereby the advancement of republican, masonic and "free-thinking" officers was ensured and those who were identified as nationalist, Catholic or suspected to be sympathetic to any of the various strands of royalism would be hampered. For the Grand Orient and the cabinet of André, the purpose was to ensure the loyalty of the Officer Corps to the ruling regime of the Third Republic.
The scandal was unveiled to the public on 28 October 1904, when challenged the government in the Chamber of Deputies and revealed the filing system established by General André and the Grand Orient, producing in support of his accusations files which had been purchased from , deputy of the secretary-general of the Grand Orient. The Minister at first denied having any knowledge of these actions, but during the meeting of 4 November 1904, Guyot de Villeneuve produced a document which directly incriminated André; the meeting was stormy and the nationalist deputy Gabriel Syveton slapped the Minister of War, triggering a tussle on the floor.
The scandal had a major significance in French politics. The twists and turns and revelations of the affair followed one another for several months, while the press regularly published the files in question. Despite the support of Jean Jaurès of the French Socialist Party and the republican Bloc des gauches, the Émile Combes government collapsed on 15 January 1905, due to the pressure from the affair. The Maurice Rouvier cabinet, which succeeded him, formally condemned the system, pronounced symbolic sanctions and pursued a policy of rehabilitation. Nevertheless, the card system continued after 1905, no longer based on spying from the Grand Orient but on prefectural information and backed by the practice of political pressure. In 1913, the Minister of War Alexandre Millerand put an end to it definitively.
This political filing system, in addition to causing a certain moral and political crisis within Dreyfusard circles, which were divided on the priority to be given between the defense of the Third French Republic and the protection of freedom of conscience for all (including those they disagreed with), also weakened the French military high command, due to more than ten years of discrimination in the advancement of officers, which had consequences that were difficult to assess during the first months of the First World War.
Background
Dreyfus affair
Since the establishment of the Third Republic, the French Army had kept itself relatively aloof from the political struggles which pitted the monarchists against the partisans of the Republic, a confrontation which ended in the latter's final victory in 1879 with the change of the Senate. Although it did not allow itself to be tempted by the adventurism of a coup d'etat, the officer corps of the Army was nonetheless seen as anti-republican, a vision which was reinforced by the outbreak of the Dreyfus affair. The refusal of the military high command to let the truth come out as well as the haughty attitude of the officers called upon to testify at Dreyfus' second trial led the Republicans to make accusations. The Republicans described the army as a "state within a state" where scions of conservative families (ethnically French and religiously Catholic) could make successful careers when other fields were closed to them. Also, since the beginning of the Dreyfus affair — even since the Boulangist crisis — the right had begun to embrace nationalism and the defense of the Army, while the left placed itself under the banner of an anticlericalism informed by Continental Freemasonry and — at least in part — anti-military sentiment.
Nationalist agitation in 1899, contemporary with the Dreyfus affair, convinced the left that the Republic was in danger. The attempt of the poet Paul Déroulède who, betting on the anti-Republican sentiments of the Army, tried unsuccessfully to encourage General 's troops to march on the Élysée Palace during Félix Faure's funeral on 23 February 1899, made the republicans fear for the worst. Also, the "government of Republican Defense" of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau and then the cabinet of Émile Combes (himself a Freemason, quotes belonging to the Grand Orient de France) sought to entrench the regime by proceeding with a "purification" of any institutions which were considered anti-Dreyfusard, the foremost target among which was the Army.
In parallel with the fallout from the Dreyfus affair, the Combes cabinet, cemented by Freemasonry (in particular the Grand Orient de France) and spurred on by the Radical Party, launched an offensive against the Catholic Church in France. The Combes government , and prepared the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, which was the strongest anticlerical measure of the early 20th century. This move against Catholicism in French society, under the banner of separation, was closely linked to the Affair of the Cards: the religious convictions of Catholic officers were considered as proof of hostility to the Republic. President Émile Loubet opposed Combes on the advisability of this law. Finally, it was with the aim of avoiding separation that Guyot de Villeneuve exposed the scandal of the files.
Previous Gambetta papers In the first years of the French Third Republic, secret files on the officers of the French Army had already been collected with the assistance of Freemasonry. These “Gambetta papers”, named after the radical politician Léon Gambetta — who had them constituted for the use of the Republicans — contained notes on the military skills and political convictions of the main officers, in two files. The first, completed in the first days of 1876, reviewed the entire Army corps, division by division. The second, compiled in the fall of 1878, reviewed the careers and political tendencies of the officers of the Ministry of War, the School of War, the General Staff of the Army and the Grandes Military Schools.
These files, established by a republican intelligence network supported by Masonic lodges, thus already pointed — well before the Affair of the Cards — to the monarchist officers thought to present a danger to the Republic. After the accession to power of the Republicans, a certain number of generals were dismissed from their commands on the basis of these files, in order to make the military institution more malleable in the hands of the new regime. It was also the dismissals within the Army that provoked the anger and the resignation of Marshal Patrice de MacMahon, President of the Republic from 1873 to 1879.
Nine years later, during the Boulangist crisis, Edmond Lepelletier, founder of the lodge under the Grand Orient de France, proposed to set up committees, directly supported by the lodges and the , who would have been responsible for reporting "the servants of the State disposed to betray and the maneuvers of hiring, corruption, intimidation of monarchists, clerics and their new allies, the Boulangists". But this idea was opposed by the director of La Chaîne d'Union, Esprit-Eugène Hubert (the published review of the Grand Orient de France).Julien Rycx, La Franc-maçonnerie et la crise boulangiste (1886-1891), Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2019, p. 138-139.
Implementation of the card system Appointment of General André to the Ministry of War
Following the resignation in May 1900 of General de Galliffet, the President of the Council Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau appointed — on the advice of Henri Brisson — General Louis André to succeed him at the Ministry of War. This soldier, from the Polytechnic School, was known for his fervent republicanism and his "doctrinaire" character. His mission was to continue the task of his predecessor, namely to liquidate the last turmoil of the Dreyfus affair and to continue with "republicanization" of the Army at lightning fast speed.
To achieve this, Gaston de Galliffet changed the de-centralised methods of advancement in rank in the Army: on the 9 January 1900, he issued a decree to abolish the regional advancement commissions which decided autonomously on the advancement table. Indeed, Galliffet suspected the military high command of partiality; by setting up arms commissions and a higher commission to make proposals, this left the War Ministry full latitude to make a final decision.
These arms commissions having in their prerogatives the exclusion without recourse of the officers considered too mediocre, General André decided on 15 March 1901 to abolish arms commissions to allow the ministry complete freedom of choice. The system set up by André outraged part of the hierarchy, including General Hippolyte Langlois, who said in the Revue des Deux Mondes:
Indeed, General André and his cabinet were determined to promote the advancement of republican officers to the detriment of nationalists and monarchists; persuaded that the military command was being overrun by reactionaries, they were suspicious in principle of reports from the military hierarchy. Paying as much attention to political opinions as to military qualities, General André sought an alternative source of information on officers, and in particular on all subaltern officers who, not enjoying public stature, were only identified in detail in the reports of their superior offices. Having addressed the prefects, André considered their information insufficient and considered their assessments too influenced by local circumstances. Pushed by General Alexandre Percin, his chief of staff, General André then turned to the Grand Orient de France in order to inform him about the political opinions of the officers by clandestine means.
After the triumph of the Bloc des gauches in the legislative elections of 1902, General André was returned to the cabinet of Émile Combes, with whom he initially had good relations and who saw him as an executor of his policy of anti-clericalism in all areas of society. On 20 June 1902, in a circular addressed to the prefects, Combes summed up the action he intended to take in the public service: “Your duty requires you to reserve the favors you have available only to those of your citizens who have given unequivocal proof of loyalty to republican institutions. I have agreed with my cabinet colleagues that no appointment, no advancement of civil servant belonging to your department occurs without your having been consulted beforehand ” . The card system, a rigorous application of this methodology, therefore continued.
Relations between André's cabinet and the Grand Orient