[2] He fought in the Austro-Sardinian War (he was wounded at Robecchetto con Induno, where he received the Légion d'honneur) and in the Cochinchina campaign,[2] after which he became a captain and instructor at Saint-Cyr.

During the Franco-Prussian War, Boulanger was noted for his bravery, and soon promoted to chef de bataillon; he was again wounded while fighting at Champigny-sur-Marne during the Siege of Paris.

In 1884, he was promoted to general of division and appointed to command the army occupying Tunisia,[2] but was recalled owing to his differences of opinion with Pierre-Paul Cambon, the political resident.

In January 1886, when Charles de Freycinet was brought into power, Clemenceau used his influence to secure Boulanger's appointment as War Minister (replacing Jean-Baptiste Campenon).

A minor scandal arose when Philippe, comte de Paris, the nominal inheritor of the French throne in the eyes of Orléanist monarchists, married his daughter Amélie to Portugal's Carlos I, in a lavish wedding that provoked fears of anti-Republican ambitions.

He also vigorously pressed for the accelerated adoption, in just first five months of 1886, of a new rifle for the technically revolutionary smokeless powder Poudre B developed by P. Vielle two years earlier.

Upon his departure on 8 July, a crowd of ten thousand took the Gare de Lyon by storm, covering his train with posters titled Il reviendra ("He will come back"), and blocking the railway, but he was smuggled out.

The general decided to gather support for his own movement, an eclectic one that capitalized on the frustrations of French conservatism, advocating the three principles of Revanche (revenge on Germany), Révision (revision of the constitution), Restauration (restoration of the monarchy).

After the political corruption scandal surrounding President Jules Grévy’s son-in-law Daniel Wilson, who was secretly selling Légion d'honneur medals, the Republican government was brought into disrepute and Boulanger's popular appeal rose in contrast.

His position became essential after Grévy was forced to resign due to the scandal: in January 1888, the boulangistes promised to back any candidate for the presidency that would in turn offer his support to Boulanger for the post of War Minister (France was a parliamentary republic).

The crisis was cut short by the election of Sadi Carnot and the appointment of Pierre Tirard as Prime Minister—Tirard refused to include Boulanger in his cabinet.

Although he was not in fact a legal candidate for the French Chamber of Deputies (since he was a military man), Boulanger ran with Bonapartist backing in seven separate départements during the remainder of 1888.

Consequently, he and many of his supporters were voted to the Chamber, and accompanied by a large crowd on 12 July, the day of their swearing in—the general himself was elected in the constituency of Nord.

Neither his failure as an orator nor his defeat in a duel with Charles Thomas Floquet, then an elderly civilian and the Minister of the Interior, reduced the enthusiasm of his popular following.

During 1888 his personality was the dominating feature of French politics, and, when he resigned his seat as a protest against the reception given by the Chamber to his proposals, constituencies vied with one another in selecting him as their representative.

Ernest Constans, the Minister of the Interior, decided to investigate the matter, and attacked the Ligue des Patriotes using the law banning the activities of secret societies.

[2] On 4 April the Parliament stripped him of his immunity from prosecution; the French Senate condemned him and his supporters, Rochefort, and Count Dillon for treason, sentencing all three to deportation and confinement.

Boulanger himself went to live in Jersey before returning to the Ixelles Cemetery in Brussels in September 1891 to kill himself[11] with a bullet to the head on the grave of his mistress, Madame de Bonnemains (née Marguerite Brouzet) who had died in his arms the preceding July.

Général Boulanger inspired the 1956 Jean Renoir movie Elena and Her Men, a musical fantasy loosely based on the end of his political career.

He is quoted as the one who authorised the institution of the "Suicide Bureau" in Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Magic Couch", reportedly "the only good thing he did".