Speaking The Truth Can Have It's Perils

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Gaston Calmette, editor of the leading Conservative newspaper Le Figaro, threatened to publicize love letters between the former Prime Minister and his second wife, written while both were still married for the first time. Henriette Cailloux was not amused.

On March 16, 1914, Madame Cailloux took a taxi to the offices of Le Figaro. After being shown into Calmette’s office, the pair spoke only briefly, before Henriette withdrew the Browning .32 automatic, and fired six rounds at the editor. Two missed, but four were more than enough to do the job. Gaston Calmette was dead within six hours.

https://todayinhistory.blog/2017/03/16/march-16-1914-the-caillaux-affair/

Madame Cailloux was acquitted of all charges. Joseph was eventually arrested for his pro German activities, but was to return to political office, dying in 1944. In 1917, with France bled white of soldiers and money, it became a choice between two men, Cailloux and Georges Clemenceau to lead the nation. Clemenceau, 76, was called 'The Tiger', and once stood up in a trench facing the Germans and shook his fist at them, crying out 'Bastards! Pigs! We're going to kill you all'! Cailloux was in touch with the Germans, to say the least, and would have negotiated an unfavorable surrender, immediately.

This incredible painting is by Robert Delaunay, and was the cover of a Le Petit Journal story on the murder.

(in 1917 the French Army was in full blown mutiny. Other than the cavalry divisions, of the 103 infantry divisions only two stayed completely loyal. Most of the mutiny consisted of troops refusing to attack or go on the offensive, as their lives had been throw away like so much chaff in beyond stupid head-on attacks against the best army in the world. Amazingly, the Germans only got whispers of all this because no captured poilus mentioned it. When Germany attacked the French defenses after they heard rumors of the state of their opponents, they hit the one place where the two loyal French units were holding, at the Chemin des Dames. The attack was easily repulsed and the Germans concluded the whole thing was bollocks anyway.

France lost 1.4 million soldiers dead and 4.2 million casualties.

CDN media

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