Everything about Emile Combes totally explained
Émile Combes (1835 - 1921) was a
French statesman, charged in 1902 of the constitution of the
Bloc des gauches 's cabinet.
Biography
Émile Combes was born in
Roquecourbe in the
Tarn département. He studied for the priesthood, but abandoned the idea before ordination. His anti-clericalism would later lead him into becoming a Freemason. He was also in later life a spiritualist.. He later took a diploma as a doctor of letters (
1860). Then he studied medicine, taking his degree in
1867, and setting up in practice at Pons in
Charente-Inférieure. In
1881 he presented himself as a political candidate for
Saintes, but was defeated. In 1885 he was elected to the senate by the
départment of Charente-Inférieure. He sat in the Democratic
left, and was elected vice-president in 1893 and 1894. The reports which he drew up upon educational questions drew attention to him, and on
November 3 1895 he entered the
Bourgeois cabinet as minister of public instruction, resigning with his colleagues on
April 21 following.
He actively supported the
Waldeck-Rousseau ministry, and upon its retirement in 1903 he was himself charged with the formation of a cabinet. In this he took the portfolio of the Interior, and the main energy of the government was devoted to an
anti-clerical agenda. The parties of the Left in the chamber, united upon this question in the
Bloc republicain, supported Combes in his application of the law of 1901 on the religious associations, and voted the new bill on the congregations (1904), and under his guidance France took the first definite steps toward the
separation of church and state. By 1904 through his efforts, nearly 10,000 religious schools had been closed and thousands of priests and nuns fled France rather than be persecuted.
He was vigorously opposed by all the Conservative parties, who saw the mass closure of church schools as a persecution of religion. But his stubborn enforcement of the law won him the applause of ordinary left wingers, who called him familiarly
le petit père. Finally the defection of the Radical and Socialist groups induced him to resign on
January 17 1905, although he hadn't met an adverse vote in the Chamber. His policy was still carried on; and when the
law of the separation of church and state was passed, all the leaders of the Radical parties entertained him at a noteworthy banquet in which they openly recognized him as the real originator of the movement.
Changes
15 November 1904 - Maurice Berteaux succeeds André as Minister of War Further Information
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