Clémenceau, Georges Eugène Benjamin (1841–1929)

French radical politician, prime minister 1906–09 and 1917–20 when he chaired the Versailles peace conference but failed to secure the Rhine as a frontier for France in the treaty.

Elected mayor of Montmartre, Paris, in the war of 1870, and deputy for Montmartre 1876–93, Clémenceau's extreme radicalism and ferocious attacks on opponents earned him the nickname ‘the Tiger’. He was a prominent defender of Alfred Dreyfus through the daily paper La Justice, which he founded after losing his seat in 1893. Elected senator for Var from 1902, as interior and prime minister from 1906 he adopted a moderating stance in settling church–state relations, saw his attempt to introduce income tax defeated, but acted decisively to crush a series of strike movements in industry and agriculture. In 1917 his intervention secured the appointment of Marshal Foch as supreme commander of allied forces.