ulanger, whose hesitation at critical moments (rather than effective Republican countermeasures) doomed his movement.
Brogan said that during the formative decades of the Third Republic, "no Ministry would serve the general interest except at great political risk" (167-168). The country was sharply divided between Paris and the countryside, between the forces who harked back to the ancien regime, the Catholic Church, the landed aristocracy and other traditional propertied interests and the Army on the right, and a disenchanted but growing left which was divided among various socialist, anarchist and syndicalist factions. The shifting Republican center represented the middle classes and a vision of a liberal, secular, modernizing society. Its politicians all too frequently served only narrower vested interests and were frequently not only ineffective in governing the country but also venal. Serious scandals involved very high officials and deputies, such as the Wilson Scandal of 1887 and the Panama Scandal of 1892. In the latter half a million middle cla
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