on a worthless adventurer as their leader.

General Boulanger had been first "invented" as a leader by the extreme
Radicals, and especially by Clemenceau, the _demolisseur_ or destroyer
of ministries. Then, being gradually abandoned by them, he went over to
the anti-Republicans and took heavy subsidies from the Monarchists,
while continuing to advocate, at least openly, an anti-parliamentary,
plebiscitary Republic.

Early in 1888, in February, the candidacy of Boulanger to the Chamber
was started in several departments. The electioneering activities of a
general in regular service and sundry deeds of insubordination on his
part finally caused the Government, as a disciplinary measure, to retire
him. The result was that his partisans raised a cry of persecution, and
his actual retirement gave him the liberty to engage in politics which
his service on the active list had prevented. In April Boulanger was
elected Deputy in the southern department of la Dordogne and the
northern le Nord. His plan of campaign was to be candidate for Deputy in
each department successively in which a vacancy occurred, thus
indirectly and gradually obtaining a plebiscite of approval from the
country. At the same time he raised the cry in favor of militarism, not
for the sake of war, he said, but for defence. He attacked the impotence
of Parliament and, as a remedy, called for the dissolution of the
Chamber and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly to revise the
constitution. His opponents raised the answering cry of dictatorship and
Caesarism. The election in the Nord was particularly alarming because of
Boulanger's majority.

Boulanger now had both Moderates and many Radicals against him,
including the Prime Minister Floquet, and was, on the other hand,
supported openly or secretly by the Imperialists and Monarchists,
advocates for varying purposes of the plebiscite. The Royalists, who
thought their chances of success the most hopeful, wanted to use
Boulanger as a tool to further their designs for the overthrow of the
Republic. Not only did he receive funds from the pretender, the comte de
Paris, but an ardent Royalist lady of rank, the duchesse d'Uzes,
squandered millions of francs in furthering Boulanger's political
schemes as leader of the Boulangists: the "National Party" or
"Revisionists."

In June, 1888, Boulanger brought forward in the Chamber a project for a
revision of the constitution. He advocated a single Chamber, or, if a