ABSTRACT
General Boulanger has been dismissed as a comic-opera Bonaparte, as a "Saint-Arnaud of the cafe-concert" in Jules Ferry's apt and cutting phrase. Boulangism is hard to take seriously if one focuses on the person of General Boulanger. From this angle, the affair adds up to disappointing tragicomedy: an ultrapatriotic citizenry nearly catapults into power a dashing but foolish General who in the end prefers romance to politics. The Ligue syndicale was all but swept away in the revisionist campaign. Certainly shopkeepers were viewed by contemporaries as Boulangist sympathizers. Boulangist thinking was a synthesis of nationalist, small-owner and democractic republican commitments, and as such, was tailor-made to a retailer audience that shared the identical values and concerns. The origins of boulevard Boulangism are to be found in a profound revulsion against the commercializing impact on boulevard life of Haussmannization and the revolution du bon Marche.
