ABSTRACT
In the early years of the Third Republic, L’Appel au soldat (title of a well-known novel by Maurice Barrès, published in 1900) was seen as the most radical solution by those who dreamt of overthrowing la Gueuse’— that ‘slut’ the republic. This wait for the ‘grand soir’ of a coup d’état was a feature of the years between 1870 and 1889, before the failure of Boulangism marked the definitive institution of the republican regime. Thus, for almost 20 years, while hope remained that the monarchy could be restored or that the ashes of the empire could be rekindled, conservative elements in the country continued to hope that a new General Monck would appear: this, in the words of Philippe Levillain, was ‘le rêve du connétable’.1
