Joseph Caillaux

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Joseph Caillaux (30 March 1863 – 22 November 1944) was a French politician of the Third Republic and a leader of the Radical Party. He served as Minister of Finance twice and was Prime Minister from June 1911 to January 1912. He favored pacific, conciliatory policies toward Germany and pushed for tax reform, including the idea of an income tax. His stance angered conservatives and contributed to his resignation after it emerged he had secretly negotiated with Germany without the president’s knowledge.

Caillaux had a long career in public service, studying law and working in the civil service before entering politics. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1898 and became Finance Minister in the Waldeck-R Rousseau government, later returning to the post under Clemenceau in 1906. In 1907 he pushed a wine fraud bill, and as finance minister he strongly supported income tax reform.

In 1914, after Le Figaro published Caillaux’s private letters, his wife, Madame Caillaux, killed the newspaper’s editor. Caillaux resigned as Finance Minister, and his wife was acquitted later that year as a crime of passion.

During World War I Caillaux led a peace faction in the Assembly and sought negotiations with Germany. He was arrested for treason in 1917, convicted by the Senate, and sentenced to three years in prison, with five years’ ban from French territory and ten years’ loss of civil rights. He was rehabilitated after the war and held government roles in the 1920s.

In 1940, he voted to grant Marshal Pétain’s government authority to draw up a new constitution, effectively ending the Third Republic and paving the way for Vichy France. Caillaux died in 1944 in Mamers, France, and is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.