Co-founder of Action Française who created the Camelots du Roi and led them for three decades
From January 1934 he led the anti-parliamentary demonstrations in Paris over the Stavisky affair. Yet on the evening of 6 February he did not stay long on the scene, and two days after the deadly shooting he could not be found
Born in Seine-et-Marne in 1872, he began as a man of letters drawn to German philosophy. In 1898, at the height of the Dreyfus affair, he and Henri Vaugeois left an intellectual circle that had turned Dreyfusard, and he wrote the article that first used the name “Action française”; the next year he helped found the movement and, under Maurras’s influence, became a royalist. In 1908 he co-founded the daily L’Action française and that November created the Camelots du Roi, its youth action squads, which he led into the 1930s, including the Stavisky-affair demonstrations of January and February 1934. Under the occupation he published the paper with Maurras in Lyon, backing Vichy, and in January 1945 he was sentenced to five years in prison and national degradation.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1872.01.26Born in Seine-et-Marne; educated at the lycée in Orléans
- 1892–1898Founds and runs the review La Revue jeune, later L’Art et la Vie
- 1898–1899Turns anti-Dreyfusard, founds the Action française committee and joins the founding of the movement in 1899
- 1908–1944Co-founder and co-director of the daily L’Action française
- 1908.11–1939Founds and directs the Camelots du Roi
- 1915–1918Called up to the territorial army and serves at the front
- 1934.01–02Leads the anti-parliamentary demonstrations in Paris over the Stavisky affair
- 1940–1944Publishes the paper with Maurras in Lyon, backing the Vichy regime
- 1944.06Arrested by the Gestapo and held for three weeks at Montluc prison
- 1945.01Sentenced at Lyon to five years and national degradation for intelligence with the enemy
- 1951–1955Directs Aspects de la France
- 1955.09.06Dies at Ferrières-en-Gâtinais, Loiret