ABSTRACT
Devout Catholics continued to feel alienated from the “godless” French state, while republicans remained convinced that the church formed a hostile bloc whose influence had to be kept to a minimum. Devout Catholics continued to feel alienated from the “godless” French state, while republicans remained convinced that the church formed a hostile bloc whose influence had to be kept to a minimum. The government of republican defense was the instrument through which Jaures hoped to demonstrate the possibility of effective cooperation between socialists and republicans. In metropolitan France, the most visible effect of the anti-Dreyfus agitation in 1899 was the welding together of a powerful republican countermovement in response to outrages like the nationalist crowd’s assault on the president of the Republic, Emile Loubet, in early 1899. The Waldeck-Rousseau government was determined to face down anti-republican forces that had surfaced during the Dreyfus affair.
