In partnership with RetroNews, the press site of the National Library of France, The duty offers a series that goes back to the media sources of the France-Quebec relationship, from the War of the Conquest to the visit of General de Gaulle, including Honoré Mercier’s diplomatic tour in Europe. Seventh text.
The Premier of Quebec, Honoré Mercier, arrives in France. The newspaper The Republic discreetly announces this visit in its edition dated December 15, 1890. What is he doing in France? In this century where per capita sugar consumption is increasing at lightning speed, Mercier is talking about “studying the manufacturing processes of beet sugar”, we read at the bottom of a column of news. This industrial mission is in fact entrusted to Nazaire Bernatchez, the deputy mayor of Montmagny, whom the historian Rumilly describes as “a big blood, very rural, happy to have a nice trip”.
Beyond the relative issue of beet sugar, the French tour of Mercier, father of the concept of provincial autonomy, a concept later revived by Maurice Duplessis, was motivated by the negotiation of a large loan. This issue is clarified by The Rochelais Echo from 1er April 1891. For this purpose, Mercier was accompanied by Mr. Joseph Shehyn, the treasurer general of Quebec, a post traditionally reserved for anglophones. The purpose of the loan is considerable. It is set at just over $ 10 million Canadian. It will not be reached. Shehyn must be satisfied with less than half, obtained thanks to the Bank of Paris and that of the Netherlands, at a rate which is not preferential.
Mercier arrives in France at the same time as the telephone. When he sets foot in the land of his ancestors, which does not fail to excite him to the highest degree, the La Rochelle daily speaks of him on the sidelines of an experiment of a “telephone communication” between London and New York. “So far, they have not succeeded, but we have managed to transmit sounds, although unintelligible,” observes the newspaper.
Honoré Mercier takes advantage of the fresh traces left on his passage in Europe, in conservative and Catholic circles, by his friend, Curé Labelle, who died at the start of the year. The Prime Minister is also walking in the footsteps of Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau, the former premier of Quebec who landed in France ten years earlier. Like this predecessor and inseparable conservative rival, the liberal politician impresses his French guests with his haughty bearing. He is received at the Élysée. He was given the title of Commander of the Legion of Honor. He made a detour through Brussels, in order to receive Leopold’s order, which further inflated a pride with which he was already well endowed. His critics also say of Mercier that he has a tendency to take himself for God the father in person.
Seen from Quebec, Mercier’s visit is presented as a triumph. Judging by the French press, it is still on the fringes of the news.
A “French physiognomy”
“Mr. Mercier, whose physiognomy is very French, is a tall man, with black hair and well planted on a largely uncovered forehead”, we read in the daily newspaper. The century of April 15, 1891. He appears everywhere in ceremonial attire, sensitive as much as possible to his image and to all that is likely to enhance it.
“He is a liberal of the day before, a very popular orator, with a tight dialectic”, explains The century by speaking of the one who is presented as “the soul of the Franco-Canadian resistance”.
The politician is fifty years old. He has a perfect command of his mother tongue, notes the French press. “Like all his compatriots, the Prime Minister [du] Quebec, which is of French origin, and whose family has been established in Canada since 1755, speaks the purest French, ”writes the journalist, shortening the Canadian ancestry of Mercier by more than a century, his direct ancestor having left France in 1647.
Back to the roots
From France, the Prime Minister will continue his journey to Rome, where he wears his decoration of Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great when he is received in audience by Pope Leo XIII. . Mercier intends to thank “His Holiness for an honorary distinction that she had deigned to confer on him for the eminent services rendered to the Catholic Church in Canada”, specifies the New Burgundy May 7. For the quasi-theocratic state of Quebec, a visit to Rome goes without saying. It is all the more motivated as Mercier helped to settle a very old dispute with the State: that of the possession of the property of the Jesuits, confiscated by the British authorities during the Conquest of 1760. This is why the Pope gratifies him of ‘another title. Here he is elevated to the rank of Count Palatine.
From May 12, Mercier was on the outskirts of Lyon, greeted with pomp by a fanfare. The Prime Minister, the mustache always well waxed, delivers in this city of weavers his interpretation of the history of French Canadians, of “their struggles for the conservation of their Catholic faith, their laws and the beautiful French language”. Its presence is the subject of a small paragraph in the Loire Memorial, where in the hierarchy of news he apparently counts less than a drowned person found that day in the waters of the Saône.
In the very Christian trajectory that he gives to his European stay, Mercier takes a break in Chartres. It is received by Mgr Lagrange, who introduces him to the beautiful society. The Prime Minister, he said, “is almost our compatriot through his ancestors, since his first Canadian ancestor came from a small village located on the borders of our department, in Tourouvre: Tourouvre, only by a delicate feeling which honors him. , he wanted to see again, and who made him, as well as the rest that all of Normandy […] the enthusiastic welcome that his patriotism and his person deserved ”.
Present, the correspondent of Journal of towns and countryside evokes thunderous applause following Lagrange’s speech. “If we had no longer remained French,” replies a moved Mercier, “why the Canadian woman, lulling her son to sleep on her knees, she sings to him the old Breton and Norman refrains, and whispers to him. ear, after the name of God, that of France? “
To top it off, Mercier is offered by Mgr Lagrange nothing less than a fragment of the true veil of the Blessed Virgin. The Prime Minister is requested to return the relic, held to be authentic by believers, to Cardinal Taschereau. Mercier has fulfilled his mission, confirms the communications manager of the Archdiocese of Quebec in To have to. The piece of fabric is now kept in a vault of the Notre-Dame basilica in Quebec, on a cushion placed in a gilded metal box.
The Prime Minister makes a detour in Lower Brittany, where he meets General de Charette. This former colonel of the papal Zouaves presented him with 300 papal medals intended for the Canadian Zouaves, who were invited upon Mercier’s return to Quebec to a very large party.
Mercier will also go to Saint-Malo, on a pilgrimage in the footsteps of Jacques Cartier, the sailor from Saint-Malo being crowned with a new prestige in the construction of a national story.
The fall
In Paris, Honoré Mercier takes part in a mass “for the rest of the soul” of Curé Labelle, who died six months earlier following a hernia. This ceremony held at the Sainte-Clotilde church is reported by Gallic June 18. The news floats above a little thread that narrates the fall of an aeronaut who fell from the nacelle of a balloon, about twenty meters above the ground.
It is in this same church that Mercier attends, on June 24, a mass celebrating Saint John the Baptist, the patron saint of French Canadians. In the morning, the politician held a large reception in his apartments on rue des Capucines. An orchestra played “spirited Canadian national tunes” such as Has a clear fountain and Long live Canadians. Among the guests, we note the presence of a descendant of General Montcalm and an equipment of French soldiers, the complete list of which is mentioned in The event June 26.
A diplomatic success, Honoré Mercier’s tour of France marks the peak of the Prime Minister’s career. On his return to Quebec, proud as no one, he floats for a moment on the cloud he touched in Europe. However, he was quickly splashed by the so-called Chaleur Bay scandal, a story of bribes from which his government benefited greatly.
The fall of Mercier finds an echo even in France. “Canadian Corruption”, title The century of August 6: “The embezzlement to which the dispatches allude today […] this time would be attributable to Mr. Honoré Mercier, premier of the province of Quebec, who would have kept for the needs of the Liberal Party 175,000 dollars on the subsidy allocated according to the law to the company of the railroad of the Chaleuse bay [sic], founded by his creatures. “
On December 16, Mercier was dismissed by the lieutenant-governor of Quebec, Auguste-Réal Angers. The two have hated each other for a long time. His Majesty’s representative hastens to entrust the direction of the government to the Conservative Charles-Eugène Boucher de Boucherville, an ultramontane who will be known for having abandoned control of education to the clergy.
Broken, Honoré Mercier was acquitted by the courts. He returned to the room, but died prematurely, in October 1894, at the age of 54. Journalist Arthur Buies asserts that “the public man was tailor-made for true statesmen; he had great and clear views ”, but he adds that“ the private man only had small ”. This prime minister, writes Buies, “was dominated by miserable grudges and a slave to the most ridiculous and grotesque vanities. This execrable vanity spoiled the best qualities of Mercier, and went so far as to transform his patriotism into a veritable provocative ostentation which excited against him even the lowest of the English. “