Between traditional monarchy and the republic, Bishop Freppel saw scarcely any middle ground; Bonapartism, with its appeal to the people, seemed to him simply one of the forms of the Revolution.
He was sometimes tempted to reproach the successor of the Count of Chambord for not emphasizing enough the essential difference that separates royalist right from the imperialist system. Royalist right is a historical, traditional, hereditary right, pre-existing and surviving any recognition or acceptance by popular suffrage.
In the imperialist system, on the contrary, the sovereignty of the people is real; its election is not limited to designating the individuals in whom power resides and by whom it is exercised; it creates the right, it is its ultimate reason; and by an inescapable consequence, it can withdraw what it has given, undo what it has done, revoke those it has invested with social authority.
The national will is not merely a condition for the legitimate exercise of a primordial right; it is the first and supreme cause of that right. Bishop Freppel would have wished that the Count of Paris leave no ambiguity on this point in his language, quite convinced that there was none in his thought. From the outset, he did not hide his contempt for the Boulangist movement, for its leader and for its ringleaders.
He reproached the monarchist party for this alliance as a disgrace, and he expected no profit from it. This infatuation with the general seemed to him a folly. In May 1887, he declares that "Boulanger has become a real danger; he appears to be doing something and he is doing nothing at all."
On January 3, 1888 he writes:
"Neither the role of journalist nor that of deputy provides great consolations in the times we live in. The year 1888, barring war, will not differ notably from its predecessor; we will drag ourselves along until the elections. When a monarchist party, in the presence of a constitutional crisis, makes its clairvoyance consist in spending 180 sterile votes on the head of a republican general and that this is the principal effort of its intelligence and its vigor, one can say that it is only good for serving as decoration for the Republic.
What is most urgent is to save the budget for religious worship, the Concordat, the prison chaplains, etc., with the support of the two hundred Opportunists in the Chamber; for if they abandon us out of indifference or spite, everything is lost. My sole objective is there. Let the clergy know it well: only moderate republicans can form the necessary supplement to save the clergy's budget.
Those who practice politics on an income of fifty thousand francs can reason otherwise; but I, who am charged with saving the little people with an indemnity of a thousand francs, know for the moment no other politics than that."
This "Punchinello", this "rake", this Minister of War who inaugurated the cry of "Curates, pack your bags!" seemed to him as unworthy as he was incapable of playing the role of savior. On April 7, 1888 he replies to the director of *L'Océan* who expressed doubts about the value of this politician:
"Your opinion on General Boulanger and on his future is very just. It is an inexplicable infatuation; everyone and everything conspires in his favor, his escapades more than the rest. This will be a new element of confusion for our elections in Finistère, which, added to the Bonapartist element, evidently stronger than three years ago, will make our success more problematic.
Perhaps the deputies of Finistère will understand that instead of combating my influence, they would have acted in their own interest by contributing to strengthening it. I do not need to be a deputy to remain what I am, whereas they will be nothing in case of failure."
Towards the end of that same year 1888, he nevertheless tries to reassure some of his friends who were astonished to see the representatives of the Count of Paris compromised in the revisionist movement:
"The Count of Paris has done nothing to demerit; and if among his partisans, there are some with more or less correct ideas, that has always been found and will always be found. Suppose even that, distant from France, the prince does not always judge situations well, that is not a reason to throw him overboard."
Taking on then political indifferentism and the utopians who imagine they will soon have in France a republic favorable to religion and the Church, he concludes with these words:
"Those people dream of a García Moreno. What an illusion! To bank on such a fanciful hypothesis and abandon a Christian and profoundly moral prince, full of the best intentions, is simply insane. Moreover, they are merely rehashing a pure sophism. They are not asked to become vassals to a party; but it is always permitted, it is even useful and necessary to become vassals to a principle, to a right.
It is for want of making this distinction that they leave us to follow Bishop Guilbert of Bordeaux and the republican prelates. 'Catholics above all!' they cry on every occasion; as if Catholicism and royalism were irreconcilable, in principle; as if, in fact, in France, the best 'Catholics' above all were not generally royalists! This is what Louis Veuillot, with his great sense, had ended up recognizing, after 1870, in a page that deserves to be quoted:
"Henri V is the right, justice, order, the principle necessary for the reconstitution of power, for the re-establishment of order, for the guarantee of common right, social fraternity through the guarantee of religious faith, equality through the guarantee of order, which gives the only living form of equality. He is the territory through the guarantee of strong and sincere alliances. Order, liberty, property, justice and legality, all that resides in him, remains falsified outside of him, crumbles without him. He is essentially, if not what every Frenchman demands, at least what every Frenchman enjoying his reason can welcome with honor and with hope."
"See *L'Univers* of October 17, 1872; and I could allege many other passages just as explicit. This testimony cannot be evaded, unless one claims that the great writer no longer knew the value of words and that a principle essential and necessary for the reconstitution of France and for the liberty of the Church among us ceased to be an essential and necessary principle by a simple change of persons. Let others do him this injury; it will not be me!
At bottom, all this world of political indifferentists is Boulangist, as, moreover, are most of the deputies of the right. If nothing else puts an obstacle, I believe in the success of the friend of Rochefort and Laisant. He will be elected in forty departments. With him, you will have war and a second dismemberment of France. After which, it will be necessary to recall the Bourbon-Orléans; but they will return diminished to reign over a France even more diminished than they. That is where Boulangism, patronized by Messrs. de Mun, de Martimprey, de Mackau, etc., will lead."
Such was the thought of Bishop Freppel on the famous "parallel action" and the result he expected. Resolved to combat a persecuting government and anti-Christian legislation, he wanted no revolt, no treason. Without realizing his predictions to the letter, the future has not proven him wrong.
Towards the end, however, to yield to repeated entreaties and by a spirit of discipline, he made some concessions and transmitted the following directive to *L'Océan* of Brest and to *L'Anjou* (newspapers) on February 14, 1889.
"You must not be mistaken: as a result of the politics of the Count of Paris and his advisors, General Boulanger is master of the terrain. It will therefore be necessary to consider this advent as an accomplished fact, and not to launch into invective. 'You wanted it, Georges Dandin!' one will be able to reply to those who, instead of channeling the general discontent towards and for the benefit of the monarchy, did everything to let General Boulanger benefit from it.
What must be combated above all, at the present hour, is the Opportunist-Radical republic which has persecuted us for ten years. It must be demolished. As for the monarchy, I regard it as adjourned by the fault of the prince and his preferred advisors."
To Mr. Ghavanon, a little astonished by this apparent change, he gave these resigned explanations: Paris, April 10, 1889.
"I understand very well that you are disoriented; one would be less, in the troubled situation we find ourselves in. The event of the present hour is the struggle of the Opportunist-Radical Republic against Boulanger. As our objective is equally the fall of these oppressors, we necessarily appear to support the general.
As for the monarchy, it is not in question and one speaks no more of the Count of Paris than if he did not exist. The fact is that in the upcoming elections, we will be able to speak neither of royalty nor of empire, otherwise the conservative party falls into dissolution. It can only be a question of religious persecution and the ruin of our finances; these two points will have to form our electoral platform. The Count of Paris has arrived at this result by dint of towing General Boulanger. It was not I who gave him this advice! It is therefore necessary that all the efforts of our provincial newspapers tend to demolish the Opportunist-Radical party.
From now until the elections, royalists, Bonapartists and Boulangists will have to work to constitute for the future Chamber a conservative majority capable of seizing the ministry and revising the school laws and other measures of oppression taken by the republicans of September 4. We have no other immediate goal, and to attain it, unity of action is necessary.
It is politics a bit down-to-earth; but it is that which the Count of Paris seems to have adopted after the death of the Count of Chambord. He does not believe his party strong enough to overthrow the current regime by itself: hence alliances and conjunctions which are astonishing at first glance, but which nevertheless have their reason for being in the situation of France."
Bishop Freppel did not like the multiplicity of groups; he very little appreciated the idea of a Catholic party, constituted on the parliamentary ground with the aim of defending by all legal means the interests of religion and the family. The union of conservatives, although imperfect and somewhat artificial, seemed to him alone possible and moreover sufficient.
An active league whose adherents would retain, in other respects, and notably from the monarchical point of view, their freedom of conviction and action is a chimera; it will not even succeed in formulating a clearly defined religious, social, economic program; at most it will produce some academic speeches; but it is not with that that one rallies the masses.
He explained himself clearly on October 28, 1889.
"I do not want a Catholic party, a new element of division added to so many others. Moreover, we have only suffered too much from the thesis of political indifferentism. All that has no other goal than to give an exaggerated prominence to cumbersome personalities. More than ever, the monarchy is for me the only chance of salvation that remains for France. The republicans will make us no serious concession."
And when the German Centre Party was objected to him, whose leader Windthorst was his friend:
"There is no parity," he replied; "in Germany they are in agreement on the form of government, and it is precisely that which divides us."
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As for the republican regime, he wanted it at no price. Without doubt, he admitted that this form is legitimate, in itself, like any other; elsewhere, in Switzerland, in America, it can be appropriate to the national temperament. Among us, it has never been, it is currently, it will never be, unless profound changes occur in our character and our tendencies, anything but the political form of atheism and war on Catholicism.
Source: Bishop Freppel – Reverend Father Cornut – 1893