Les élections sont prévues pour novembre. Si les Français veulent s'isoler et se couper de leurs alliés, des partis se présentent dans ces élections avec une telle plate-forme. Votez pour eux si vous souhaitez suivre cette voie, car je ne peux pas imaginer le faire moi-même.

Elections are scheduled for November. If the French wish to isolate themselves, and cut themselves off from their allies, then parties will run in these elections with such a platform. Vote for them if you want to follow this path, because I cannot fathom doing so myself.

These are the words that echoed throughout the French Republic as Georges Clemenceau did his best to respond to growing protests and backlash over his continuation of the French anti-Bolshevik campaign in Eastern Europe. While the people remained angry, and French men continued to die in what seemed every day to look more and more like a futile effort, the government repeatedly went back to this, and statements like it, to deflect criticism from a military campaign that seemed to have no end in sight. So the people continued to march, and shout, and hurtle insults at government officials, those same officials dismissed the people as they would a homeless person on the street. They continued to assume that this anger was a passing fad, and that eventually, it would disperse and people would get back to their lives.

But it would not disperse. And it would be the very words uttered by Clemenceau that would prove to be his undoing.

As men across the Republic prepared to go to the polls, groups began to pop up in towns and cities from Calais to Marseilles, mostly made up of veterans from the Great War and members of a number of far-right parties, who looked to "protect" the election results from what they believed to be "communist and radical left-wing meddling". Collecting rifles, pitchforks, and other assorted weaponry, they prepared to "stand guard" at polls across the country to "prevent attacks from communist militias like the ones forming across Europe," groups that would "surely try to put a communist into power and withdraw from the war to allow the Red Army to sweep over Europe and destroy the Republic."

Now, if there hadn't been "communist militias" forming across France, there certainly were now, as members of the SFIO and anti-war veterans began to collect weapons and organize as well, looking to push back against "radical right-wing militias looking to swing the polls in their favor" and "continue the endless wars in the east getting our men killed."

So on both the 16th and 30th of November, 1919, protests and clashes between armed militia groups plagued over half of all polling stations. In major cities, military police often had to intervene after the right wing and left wing militias devolved from protest to violence, and between both days of voting, almost two hundred people had died as a result of the fighting, with almost a thousand injured in the crossfire. Even after the voting was over, France seemed to be sitting at the precipice of disaster, as they awaited the results with bated breath.

Eventually, the results came out. And unfortunately for everyone, they were as inconclusive as possible. Despite winning a combined 50.2% of the popular vote (especially thanks to the surging popularity of the SFIO, who could chalk up much of their success to the pacifist stance of Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, who won his reelection bid against independent challenger Alexandre Mitterand), the left-wing parties finished with just 276 of the 307 to form a majority government, a situation that outraged many of the SFIO and PRRRS supporters who considered this to be a "miscarriage of democracy" caused by the interference of right-wing militia groups. However, the right-wing parties that had taken more parliamentary seats than the left parties ALSO could not form an outright majority, finishing with 298 of the 307 seats needed to form a majority government. It would seem that independent ministers - which had won 39 seats in parliament - would play kingmaker in deciding which party would run the Republic in these turbulent times.

Activist groups on both sides, now armed and angry enough to instigate further violence, declared the elections to be fraudulent, and demanded a new election free of interference. Of course, both sides claimed that it was the interference of the other that changed the outcome of the election, and neither seems willing to back down from the same "protection" schemes that they employed last time. Meanwhile, the government was in chaos, not knowing who should be in charge of what, and seemingly unable to calm the growing unrest throughout the Republic. At the same time, fighting continued in Eastern Europe, and revolts across French Indochina continued unabated thanks to a French government that seemed to ignore the fact that they were happening.

No one seemed to know what would happen next, but whatever happened, it would define the future of the French Republic for years to come.