created. That word was _boulangisme_, though it
would be hard to give it a definition in the dictionary. We can
only say that it meant whatever General Boulanger might be pleased
to attempt.

George Ernest Jean Marie Boulanger was born in the town of Rennes,
in Brittany, in 1837.[1] His father had been a lawyer, and was
head of an insurance company. He spent the latter days of his life
at Ville-d'Avray, near Paris; and as he did not die till 1884, he
lived to see his son a highly considered French officer, though he
had not then given promise of being a popular hero and a world-famous
man. General Boulanger's mother was named Griffith; she was a lady
belonging apparently to the upper middle class in Wales. She had
a great admiration for George Washington, and the future French
hero received one of his names from the American "father of his
country." In his boyhood Boulanger was always called George; but
when he came of age he preferred to call himself Ernest, which
is the baptismal name by which he is generally known.

[Footnote 1: Turner, Life of Boulanger.]

In 1851 his parents took him to England to the Great Exhibition.
He afterwards passed some months with his maternal relatives at
Brighton, and was sent to school there; but he had such fierce
quarrels with the English boys in defence of his nationality that
the experiment of an English education did not answer. At the age of
seventeen he was admitted to the French military school at Saint-Cyr,
and two years later was in Algeria, as a second lieutenant in a
regiment of Turcos. His experiences in Africa were of the kind
usual in savage warfare; but he became a favorite with his men,
whom he cared for throughout his career with much of that fatherly
interest which distinguished the Russian hero, General Skobeleff.--

When the war with Italy broke out, in 1859, Boulanger and his Turcos
took part in it. He was severely wounded in his first engagement,
and lay long in the hospital, attended by his mother. He received,
however, three decorations for his conduct in this campaign, in
which he was thrice wounded. On the last occasion, as he lay in
hospital, he received a visit of sympathy from the Empress Eugenie,
then in the very zenith of her beauty and prosperity.

Boulanger's next service was in Tonquin, where on one occasion
he fought side by side with the Spaniards, and received a fourth
decoration, that of Isabella the Catholic.

He was next assigned to home