rotectorate in Egypt. Here Boulanger's desire to conduct things
in a military way led to disputes with the civil authorities, and
he returned to France in 1885, where M. de Freycinet, then head of
a new Cabinet, made him Minister of War. He at once set to work
to reform the army. He told his countrymen that if they ever hoped
to take revenge upon the Germans (or rather _revanche_; for the
words do not mean precisely the same thing), they must have their
army in a much better state of preparation than it was in 1870.
Instantly a cry arose in France that General Boulanger was the man
who sought a war with Germany, and who would lead French armies
to the reconquest of Alsace and Lorraine. The French peasantry have
never been able to accept the loss of Alsace and Lorraine as an
accomplished fact; they look on the retention of those provinces
by the Germans as a temporary arrangement until France can at the
right moment wrest them out of her powerful rival's hand.

Boulanger's popularity rose to fever-heat. The Boulanger March,
with its song, "En revenant de la revue," was played and sung in
all the _cafes chantants_ of Paris. The general rode a black horse
as handsome as himself. Some one has said, "As a political factor,
Boulanger was born of a horse and a song."

In 1886 he advocated the exile of the Orleans princes and the erasure
of the Duc d'Aumale's name from the list of French generals. For
this he was reproached with ingratitude to the duke, who had once
been his commanding officer. His own letter of thanks for kindness,
favors, and patronage was produced, and Boulanger could only defend
himself by pronouncing it a forgery.

He made many changes in army regulations, which increased his popularity
with the army. One was all order to the men to wear their beards,
and as in the French army soldiers had always been obliged to shave
except when on active service, this was interpreted, in the excited
state of public feeling, into an intimation of the probability of
a speedy declaration of war. As War Minister, the general also
extended the time when soldiers on leave might stay out at night,
and relieved them from much of the heavy weight that on the march
they had had to carry. He broke up certain semi-aristocratic clubs
in the regiments which controlled army opinion, and gave more weight
to the sentiments of the sub-officers.

But before long the Ministry, in which he represented the War
Department, came to an end,