A quiz question · medium
On 16 February 1899 the President of France, Félix Faure, died suddenly at the Élysée Palace. The circumstances were sufficiently embarrassing that the official cause of death has been politely revised ever since. Felix Faure died of?
The President's mistress Marguerite Steinheil was in the office; she escaped via a back staircase before the household discovered him. The official press release described the death as 'cerebral congestion' — true in the most literal possible sense. Faure's political project had been to consolidate French presidential authority, partly in opposition to the campaign to clear Alfred Dreyfus's name; his death within months of the case's climax was politically convenient for the Dreyfusard side. Steinheil resurfaced a decade later, on trial for two murders. She was acquitted.
Read the full story →From the story
The French President Who Died on the Job Félix Faure had ambitions of being Caesar. On a February afternoon in 1899, he became something else.
Related questions
- What were the circumstances of French President Félix Faure's death in 1899?
- What was the verdict in Marguerite Steinheil's 1909 trial for the murders of her mother and her husband?
- What killed Émile Zola in his Paris bedroom on 29 September 1902?
- On the morning of 14 July 1789 a Paris mob stormed the medieval fortress that has given France its national holiday ever since. They were expecting to free hundreds of political prisoners. They actually found seven. Who were the seven?