The voice of Action Française, the polemicist who pushed a scandal from the page into the street day after day
Through January 1934 his columns called out the implicated deputies one by one, and on the morning of 6 February the paper urged its readers to come to the Chamber that evening. At the front of the columns that filled the square that night were the Camelots du Roi, the action squads of Action Française
The son of the novelist Alphonse Daudet, a medical student turned polemicist, who founded the daily Action Française with Maurras and set its tone. He sat as a deputy for Paris from 1919 to 1924, and his method of personal attack and denunciation left its mark on a generation of French political language. After losing a libel case brought over his claim that the police had killed his son Philippe in 1923, he fled to Belgium in 1927 and returned under an amnesty in 1930. In January 1934 he printed the names of the politicians touched by the Stavisky affair day after day, building the picture of a 'republic of thieves' that carried the paper's readers to the square on 6 February.
Career Timeline
- 1867–1890Born in Paris, son of Alphonse Daudet; studies medicine
- 1900–1908Turns royalist and joins Action Française
- 1908–1942Co-founder and leading writer of the daily Action Française
- 1919–1924Deputy for Paris
- 1923–1927The lawsuits over his son Philippe's death; convicted of libel and flees to Belgium
- 1930Returns under an amnesty
- 1934.01–02The press offensive over the Stavisky affair that produced the demonstration of 6 February
- 1942Dies at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence