Presidents of France 7: Felix Faure (1895-1899)

Felix Faure was born in 1841 in Paris. And unfortunately for him, he is remembered more for the manner of his death than anything he did in his life.  His father was a small scale furniture maker and he himself was a tanner and merchant based in Le Havre, where he became quite wealthy.  At the age of 40 he was elected to the national assembly and sat with the left party.  He was appointed as under-secretary of the colonies in 1882 in Ferry's and later in Tirard's ministry.  He became vice president of the assembly in 1893.  Under Charles DePuy he was appointed minister for the Navy the next year.   

The sudden resignation of the President Casimir-Perier precipitated his rise to President.  He was chosen essentially to prevent the ascendancy of Henri Brisson a perennial candidate who was on the far left and was considered not centrist enough to win. Faure was inoffensive, which was therefore a blessing.  In the year he became President Faure granted amnesty to anarchists who up to then had been living in exile.   In celebration of the Franco-Russian alliance, he received the Tsar on a state visit.   

Captain Albert Dreyfus

The Dreyfus affair broke during his tenure as President, and he sided with those who did not want to reopen the case, which gained him the enmity of pro-Dreyfus politicians such as Georges Clemenceau and the greatest champion of Dreyfus, the writer Emile Zola.  

He died suddenly of a stroke while making love in his office suite with Marguerite Steinheil, then 30 years old. He was 58.  His ingestion of an aphrodisiac containing quinine may have precipitated his death.  Steinheil  was his mistress and was married to a painter , certainly not an uncommon thing for a number of French politicians or even for certain Arkansas governors. 

Marguerite Steinheil

Steinheil went on to have affairs with a number of other important French figures of the age, until finally she married the 6th Baron of Abinger and lived in England.  She also was tried and acquitted for the murder of her stepmother and husband 1909, but with lingering suspicion hanging over her afterwards similar to that surrounding OJ Simpson.

Faure was not mourned by his political opponents who were not above making puns about the supposed sexual behavior that had led to his death.   Georges Clemenceau, perhaps the most famous French statesman of the age, said of Faure that "upon entering the void, he must have felt at home".    He was laid to rest in France's foremost cemetery, Pere Lachaise.

Tomb  of Felix Faure