ng from chartreuse to hair-restorers and
dentifrice, had enabled them to amass enormous sums held in mortmain.
The power of this money was great in politics and the anti-Clericals
cast envious eyes on these vague and mysterious fortunes. There were in
France at the time almost seven hundred unauthorized "congregations."
Against the Assumptionists in particular the Government took direct
measures early in 1900, such as legal perquisitions, arrests, and
prosecution as an illegal association.

The campaign went on through the year 1900, the Exposition of that year
helping to act as a partial truce. The expedition of the Allies to China
to put down the Boxer rebellion also diverted attention.
Waldeck-Rousseau was sincerely desirous of bringing about a pacification
of feeling in the country, and he felt bitter practically only against
the Jesuits and the Assumptionists. He even succeeded in carrying
through Parliament an amnesty bill dealing with the Dreyfus case and
destined to quash all criminal actions in process, whether of
Dreyfusites or anti-Dreyfusites. The former fought the project
vigorously on the ground that it opposed a new obstacle to ultimate
discovery of the truth, but they were unsuccessful. Waldeck-Rousseau
remained at heart, none the less, a believer in Dreyfus's innocence and
in spite of his amnesty project, he could not always hide his true
feelings. In consequence he offended his Minister of War, General de
Galliffet, Dreyfusite as well, but tired of the struggle now that the
Rennes trial had made the task of rehabilitation apparently hopeless.
Galliffet resigned his office and was succeeded by General Andre, a
politician soldier, who started out at once to purge the army
drastically of its Clericalism.

Waldeck-Rousseau's Associations project was fairly mild. He had no
desire for a violent break with the Vatican, and the wily and diplomatic
Leo XIII probably so understood well enough in spite of his protests.
But, as debate and discussion went on, the measure became more severe.
Waldeck-Rousseau had originally planned a bill dealing with
authorization and incorporation of associations in general, in which he
refrained from any specific allusion to religious bodies of monks and
nuns, thereby assimilating them with other groups. As finally voted and
promulgated in July, 1901, the law made provisions for the privilege of
association in general, but made the important additional stipulations
that no relig