Émile Combes
| Émile Combes | |
|---|---|
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| 52nd Prime Minister of France | |
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In office 7 June 1902 – 24 January 1905 |
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| Preceded by | Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau |
| Succeeded by | Maurice Rouvier |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 6 September 1835 Roquecourbe |
| Died | 25 May 1921 (85) Pons, Charente-Maritime |
| Political party | Radical Party |
Émile Justin Louis Combes (French: [emil kɔ̃b]; 6 September 1835 – 25 May 1921) was a French statesman and freemason who led the Bloc des gauches's cabinet from June 1902 – January 1905.
Émile Combes was born in Roquecourbe, Tarn. 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 3 November 1895 he entered the Bourgeois cabinet as minister of public instruction, resigning with his colleagues on 21 April following.
He actively supported the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry, and upon its retirement in 1902 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, partly in response to the Dreyfus Affair. The parties of the Left, 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 left France rather than be persecuted.
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