Sex, blackmail and murder in the highest circles
on the eve of the First World War...!


On the morning of March 16, 1914, the editor-in-chief of the Paris newspaper "Le Figaro", Gaston Calmette...



...in his office a prominent lady from the better French circles as a visitor:

This is Henriette Caillaux...



... the wife of former French Prime Minister (1911 and 1912) Joseph Caillaux...:



Madame asked for this appointment because a highly explosive story slumbers in the journalist's desk drawer, which is likely to destroy the Cailloux couple socially:

Monsieur le Ministre, Minister of Finance of the French Republic for a year, was not always married to his current wife, but previously to another.

In the final phase of this marriage he had already had a secret affair with his current wife, who was then still called Raynouard, and the two had exchanged hearty love letters.

Of course, that alone was not a public scandal, neither in France nor anywhere else - if Cailloux had not been a minister and also quite far "left" and also politically crossed paths with the "Figaro" editor-in-chief, who was more "right-wing":

In those days, on the eve of World War I, Cailloux vehemently opposed the - expensive - extension of service in the French army from two to three years, which would have increased the standing army of France by about a third and many military and politicians, given the threat posed by the German military potential seemed absolutely necessary.

The editor-in-chief had now devised a perfidious method to break Cailloux's resistance to military reform:

For a lot of money he had acquired from obscure sources several of the love letters that Henriette Calloux had written to her then lover (and now husband) when he was still married to the other woman. Letters like this one...:



And now the "journalist" was threatening to publish these letters in his newspaper if Cailloux did not give up his opposition to military reform!

The finance minister has left no doubt that he has no intention of giving in to this blackmail!

Henriette Cailloux is therefore in despair, her social reputation is far more important to her than her husband's political principles, and she now visits the editor-in-chief to demand the return of her letters, if necessary to buy them for a lot of money in order to prevent the threatening scandal!

When editor-in-chief Calmette remains firm, the desperate woman suddenly pulls a revolver out of her handbag - and shoots the newspaper man in his office...:



Now the scandal is there, and it is tremendous!





A day later, Cailloux has to resign from his ministerial post, his wife is arrested...



... and brought to justice...:





But Joseph Cailloux, like so many politicians, is a lawyer, and a good one at that, educated at an elite university.

In the trial that followed, he took over his wife's defense and uncovered the dirty extortion maneuvers of the murdered "Figaro" editor-in-chief during the trial!




Public opinion changes abruptly, Cailloux and his wife are now seen as victims and have the sympathies of the French on their side!

Through a brilliant plea, Cailloux gets his wife acquitted because of - as the verdict literally says - "uncontrollable female emotions"!



Of course, the three-year military service in France now passes unchallenged in Parliament - and it comes just before the German invasion!

After the First World War, Calilloux became French Minister of Finance three more times (1925, 1926 and 1935) and died in 1944 without having compromised himself in any way through collaboration with the Vichy regime.


Henriette died a year before him.

End of the story.

Very dangerous!