Assassination of Jean Jaurès

He was attacked by Raoul Villain at 9:40 pm while he dined at the Café du Croissant on rue Montmartre in Paris's 2nd arrondissement, close to the newspaper's headquarters.

Following the death of Jaurès, the majority of the French political left rallied to the Sacred Union, including many socialists and trade unionists who had previously refused to support the war.

After the attack on Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the European states were gradually drawn into a new international crisis by the play of alliances, leading to the outbreak of World War I within a month.

On July 14, at the SFIO's extraordinary congress, which met until the 19th, he expressed confidence in the will of the working class and its representatives in the main countries to oppose the conflict, including through the weapon of the general strike.

[3] This earned him an attack from a newspaper like Le Temps, which on July 18 accused him of supporting the "abominable thesis that would lead to disarming the nation at a time when it was in peril", to which he replied in L'Humanité that "the strike would also paralyze the aggressor".

[4] He learned with concern of the growing number of commitments made as part of the Franco-Russian Alliance to be celebrated in St Petersburg by President Poincaré and Prime Minister Viviani between July 20 and 23.

On July 25, he came to support Marius Moutet, the Socialist candidate in a by-election in Vaise, a suburb of Lyon, and gave a speech denouncing the "massacres to come".

In a somewhat surreal atmosphere, most of the delegates, including Hugo Haase, co-chairman of the German SPD, expressed confidence in the ability of the people to avoid war.

After consulting with friends and family such as Charles Rappoport and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Jaurès went to the Chamber of Deputies, where he was informed of the Austrian mobilization and the declaration of a state of threat of war (Kriegsgefahrzustand) in Germany.

At the same time, Viviani was unavailable, as he was receiving the German ambassador, Count von Schoen, who had come to convey his government's ultimatum to France: to say by 1 p.m. on August 1 whether it was in solidarity with Russia.

Beforehand, he went out to dinner at the Café du Croissant on rue Montmartre, with his newspaper colleagues, including Pierre Renaudel, Jean Longuet, Philippe Landrieu, Ernest Poisson and Georges Weill.

Observing from the street the café room where he had spotted Jaurès dining, hidden by the curtain, the assassin fired two shots: the first penetrated the parietal region of the head, the second lost itself in the woodwork surrounding a mirror.

[14] Doubtless convinced of the necessity of his action since the previous December, he matured his deed throughout July, bought a Smith & Wesson revolver, practiced shooting, wrote a few incoherent letters, located the socialist leader's home, his newspaper, the café where he was a regular.

[14] For many months, even years, the nationalist press and representatives of the "patriotic" Leagues (such as Léon Daudet and Charles Maurras) had been raging against Jaurès' pacifist declarations and his internationalism, and singling him out as the man to be shot, because of his past commitment to Alfred Dreyfus.

Similarly, the rallying of many radicals to the Republicans and representatives of right-wing parties to elect Poincaré as President of the Republic in January 1913 also testified to the political shift underway.

[16] While the assassinated leader's relatives and socialist activists in Paris and Carmaux were shocked ("They've killed Jaurès"), and some right-wing extremists rejoiced loudly, all historical research shows that the population generally reacted with sadness to an event that symbolized the tipping point into uncertainty and fear of the horrors of the now inevitable war.

[17] The government, which met during the night, initially feared violent reactions in the major cities, and detained two cuirassier regiments in the capital, awaiting their departure for the border.

[18] On August 1, at 2:25 pm, so as not to prevent workers from rallying to the war by decapitating the unions, and reassured by the reaction of the CGT's national bodies, Interior Minister Louis Malvy decided, in a telegram addressed to all prefects, not to use the notorious Carnet B, kept by the gendarmerie in each département, listing anarchist, syndicalist or revolutionary leaders who were to be arrested in the event of conflict, having expressed the intention of hindering the war effort.

Jaurès's long time political rival Count Albert de Mun condemned the assassination and sent a "touching" letter to his widow expressing his condolences.

On Sunday August 2, as Jean-Jacques Becker, who has compiled a wide range of sources, puts it, the French were "almost equidistant from consternation and enthusiasm, combining resignation and a sense of duty".

[24] Only a small minority, including socialist Charles Rappoport and trade unionist Pierre Monatte, rejected the war and the union sacrée.

In December 1914, the only German MP to oppose the vote on war credits was Karl Liebknecht, who with Rosa Luxemburg helped found the Spartacus League of anti-war socialists.

[28] On March 14, 1919, a fortnight earlier, the 3rd Paris Council of War, a military court, sentenced Émile Cottin, the anarchist who had shot Clemenceau several times on February 19, to death.

On June 3, 1923, at the inauguration of the Carmaux statue by his friend Anatole France, Édouard Herriot, leader of the Radical Party, suggested to the government that Jaurès' remains be transferred to the Panthéon.

[33] In 1924, Herriot became President of the Council of the Cartel of Leftists government, supported by the socialist SFIO party on the basis of a pacifist, anticlerical and social program against the policies of the National Bloc.

[34] Édouard Herriot, Paul Painlevé, as well as Léon Blum and Albert Thomas, supporters of this government, had begun their political careers during the Dreyfus affair, and these Dreyfusards had been strongly influenced by Jaurès.

In addition to family and friends, the wake was attended by officials: Édouard Herriot and his ministers, cartel deputies and senators, and delegations from the CGT and the Human Rights League.

The official procession, preceded by the red banners of the socialist sections, was opened by delegations from party organizations mingling with the constituted bodies.

[36] In the November 24 issue of L'Humanité, Paul Vaillant-Couturier wrote of the days of May 1871: As you march past the Panthéon, salute, with the memory of Jaurès, one of the bloodiest battles of the Commune.

You can only drive it out with weapons in your hands.To underline the fact that there was no (or no longer any) national consensus, Action Française organized a tribute on the same day to Marius Plateau, general secretary of the Camelots du Roi, assassinated in January 1923 by Germaine Berton, an anarchist militant who had justified her act by saying she had wanted to avenge Jaurès.

The crowd in front of the crime scene. An ambulance is visible on the right.
Raoul Villain , Jaurès' murderer.
Alexander Izvolsky, Russian Ambassador to Paris.
L'Humanité , August 1, 1914.
Louis Malvy , Minister of the Interior.
Édouard Vaillant at Père-Lachaise cemetery .
Anatole France.
Jean Jaurès monument in Carmaux.
Jean Jaurès' tomb in the French Panthéon .