fficiently strong to obtain a majority which would
enable it to rule alone, the politics of a long succession of years
turned upon the adoption of one or the other of two lines of
tactics--the coalition of the two republican divisions to the end that
they might rule as against a Conservative minority (the so-called
policy of "republican concentration"), and the allying of one of these
groups with the Right against the other Republican group (spoken of
commonly as a "pacification"). The first "concentration" ministry was
that of Brisson, formed in March, 1885; the first "pacification"
ministry was that of Rouvier, formed in 1887. In the middle of the
nineties some attempts were made to create and maintain homogeneous
ministries. The Bourgeois ministry of 1895-1896 was composed entirely
of Radicals and the Meline ministry of 1896-1898 of Moderate
Republicans. But at the elections of 1898 the Republican position in
the Chamber broke down and it was necessary to return, with the Dupuy
ministry, to the policy of concentration.

Meanwhile, in the early nineties, from the Conservative and Republican
extremes respectively had been detached two new party groups. From the
ranks of the Conservatives had sprung a body of Catholics who, under
papal injunction, had declared their purpose to rally to the support
of the Republicans; whence they acquired the designation of the
"Rallies." And from the Radical party had broken off a body of
socialists of such consequence that in the elections of 1893 it
succeeded in carrying fifty seats.

*359. The Bloc.*--A new era in the history of French political (p. 331)
parties was marked by the elections of May, 1898. Some 250 seats, and
with them the effectual control of the Chamber, were acquired by the
Radicals, the Socialists, and an intermediary group of Radical-Socialists.
The Moderate Republicans, to whom had been given recently the name of
Progressives, were reduced to 200; while the Right retained but 100.
The Socialists alone polled nearly twenty per cent of the total
popular vote. The remarkable agitation by which the Dreyfus affair was
attended had the effect of consolidating further the parties of the
Left, and the _bloc_ which resulted not only has subsisted steadily
from that day to the present but has controlled very largely the
policies of the government. The first conspicuous leader and spokesman
of the coalition was Waldeck-Rousseau, premier from 1899 to 1902, and
its first