Sacred Union Broken

Union sacrée, the political truce that hold the French Republic together during the war, finally breaks.

Union Sacrée was a political truce for the time of war, signed (metaphorically) by all major political groups in the French Republic. All of them wanted to erase the shame of 1870, and that was the best way to achieve that. It held for eight years. Eight hard and often disastrous years, despite millions of casualties.   There were many reasons for that. Notably, pacifist socialists were contesting it almost openly. Catholics also weren't overly fond of the Republic as a whole, due to its secularism and rather left-leaning government. What's more, openly anti-pope remarks of the current prime minister infuriated many. It would hold until the end of the war... if it ended earlier on. Now, however, Paris fell. The war seemed over - and France lost.   The country almost fell into pieces following the fall of Paris, and the Union Sacrée fell with it. Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister (from the Radical-Socialist Party) seized almost dictatorial power in hope of saving the country, which was opposed by at least several groups - from some democrats that saw this as a repeat of the Jacobines seizing power, to the political right surrounding the Action Française, that saw the whole mess as a fault of the socialists - and disliked Clemenceau rather personally.   The French Republic changed into a de facto dictatorship under the 'emergency' cabinet of Clemenceau. Right-wing oponents mostly drifted into a vast bloc surrounding the Action Française movement that later on began having increasingly close ties to the papacy and the Holy League. It was in no way more positive towards the Central Powers, though.