Sacred Union

{{short description|Political truce in the French Third Republic}}

{{Other uses|Sacred Union (disambiguation)}}

{{use dmy dates|date=July 2024}}

The Sacred Union ({{langx|fr|Union Sacrée}}, {{IPA|fr|ynjɔ̃ sakʁe|lang}}) was a political truce in the French Third Republic in which the left-wing agreed during World War I not to oppose the government or call any strikes.{{Cite book |title=Justifying War Propaganda, Politics and the Modern Age |last=Welch |first=David |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan London |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-230-24627-0 |pages=81 |editor-last=Fox |editor-first=Jo |chapter=War Aims and the 'Big Ideas' of 1914}} Made in the name of patriotism, it stood in opposition to the pledge made by the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), internationalism, and its former leader Jean Jaurès not to enter any "bourgeois war".{{Cite book|first=Jean-Pierre |last=Rioux|title=Jean Jaurès|publisher=Perrin|year=2005|location=Paris}} Although an important part of the socialist movement joined the Union sacrée, some trade unionists such as Pierre Monatte opposed it.{{Cite book|last=Dreyfus|first=Michel|title=L'Europe des socialistes, 1889-1989|publisher=Complexe|year=1991|pages=68}}

On 3 August 1914, Germany declared war on France. The next day, Prime Minister Rene Viviani read an address written by President Raymond Poincaré:

{{quotation

|text=In the coming war, France ... will be heroically defended by all her sons, whose sacred union will not be broken in the face of the enemy{{cite book |lang=en |last1=Smith |first1=Leonard |last2=Audoin-Rouzeau |first2=Stéphane |last3=Becker |first3=Annette |date=2003 |title=France and the Great War, 1914-1918 |chapter=August 1914 and the Union sacrée |publisher=Cambridge University Press |series=New Approaches to European History |isbn=9780521666312 |oclc=50315088 |page=27 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8rbSnt4bgNIC&pg=PA27}}{{efn|{{langx|fr|Dans la guerre qui s'engage, la France ... sera héroïquement défendue par tous ses fils, dont rien ne brisera devant l'ennemi l'union sacrée}}}}

| author = Raymond Poincaré

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This political movement may have been an attempt to create solidarity during a time when the largely pacifist SFIO threatened a general strike, while many French Catholics were slighted by anti-Catholic policies, such as the separation of church and state. Elements of nationalism, that the Germans attacked rather than the French, anti-German propaganda, and a desire to regain the former French territory of Alsace–Lorraine may have provided further impetus for the movement.