himself, rapidly grew. He led the Extreme Left in the
Chamber. He was an active opponent of M. Jules Ferry's colonial policy
and of the Opportunist party, and in 1885 it was his use of the Tongking
disaster which principally determined the fall of the Ferry cabinet. At
the elections of 1885 he advocated a strong Radical programme, and was
returned both for his old seat in Paris and for the Var, selecting the
latter. Refusing to form a ministry to replace the one he had
overthrown, he supported the Right in keeping M. Freycinet in power in
1886, and was responsible for the inclusion of General Boulanger in the
Freycinet cabinet as war minister. When Boulanger (q.v.) showed himself
as an ambitious pretender, Clemenceau withdrew his support and became a
vigorous combatant against the Boulangist movement, though the Radical
press and a section of the party continued to patronize the general.

By his exposure of the Wilson scandal, and by his personal plain
speaking, M. Clemenceau contributed largely to M. Grevy's resignation of
the presidency in 1887, having himself declined Grevy's request to form
a cabinet on the downfall of that of M. Rouvier; and he was primarily
responsible, by advising his followers to vote neither for Floquet,
Ferry nor Freycinet, for the election of an "outsider" as president in
M. Carnot. He had arrived, however, at the height of his influence, and
several factors now contributed to his decline. The split in the Radical
party over Boulangism weakened his hands, and its collapse made his help
unnecessary to the moderate republicans. A further misfortune occurred
in the Panama affair, Clemenceau's relations with Cornelius Herz leading
to his being involved in the general suspicion; and, though he remained
the leading spokesman of French Radicalism, his hostility to the Russian
alliance so increased his unpopularity that in the election for 1893 he
was defeated for the Chamber, after having sat in it continuously since
1876. After his defeat for the Chamber, M. Clemenceau confined his
political activities to journalism, his career being further
overclouded--so far as any immediate possibility of regaining his old
ascendancy was concerned--by the long-drawn-out Dreyfus case, in which
he took an active and honourable part as a supporter of M. Zola and an
opponent of the anti-Semitic and Nationalist campaign. In 1900 he
withdrew from _La Justice_ to found a weekly review, _Le Bloc_, which
lasted until Mar