During the turmoil over the Dreyfus affair, France underwent a humiliating experience with England. The colonial rivalry of the two countries had of late gone on unchecked, embittered as it had been by the ousting of France from the Suez Canal and Egypt. To many Frenchmen "Perfidious Albion" was, far more than Germany, the secular foe. In 1896 a French expedition under Captain Marchand was sent from the Congo in the direction of the Nile. The English afterwards argued that its purpose was to cut their sphere of influence and hinder the Cape-to-Cairo project; the French declared they merely wished to occupy a post which should afford a basis for general diplomatic negotiations for the partition of Africa. The mission was numerically insufficient; it struggled painfully for two years through the heart of the continent, and at last the small handful of intrepid Frenchmen established themselves at Fashoda on the upper waters of the Nile in July, 1898. At once General Kitchener arriving from the victory of Omdurman appeared on the scene to occupy Fashoda for the Egyptian Government. England assumed a viciously aggressive attitude and, under veiled threats of war, France was obliged to recall Marchand (November 4). The outburst of fury in France against England at this humiliation was tremendous. No sane man would have then ventured to predict that in a few years the hands of the two countries would be joined in the clasp of the _Entente cordiale_.
The successor of Félix Faure, Emile Loubet, was elected on February 18, 1899, by a good majority over Jules Méline, the candidate of the larger number of the Moderates or "Progressists" and of the Conservatives. Loubet was himself a man of Moderate views, but he was thought to favor a revision of the Dreyfus case. Among the charges of his enemies was that, as Minister of the Interior in 1892, he had held, but had kept secret, the famous list of the "Hundred and Four" and had prevented the seizure of the papers of Baron de Reinach and the arrest of Arton. So Loubet's return to Paris from Versailles was amid hostile cries of "Loubet-Panama" and "Vive l'armée!"
On February 23, after the state funeral of President Faure, a detachment of troops led by General Roget was returning to its barracks in an outlying quarter of Paris. Suddenly the Nationalist and quondam Boulangist Paul Déroulède, now chief of the Ligue des Patriotes and vigorous opponent of parliamentary government, though a Deputy himself, rushed to General Roget, and, grasping the bridle of his horse, tried to persuade him to lead his troops to the Elysée, the presidential residence, and overthrow the Government. Déroulède had expected to encounter General de Pellieux, a more amenable leader, and one of the noisy generals at the Zola trial. General Roget, who had been substituted at the last moment, refused to accede and caused the arrest of Déroulède, with his fellow Deputy and conspirator Marcel Habert.