CARNOT, MARIE FRANCOIS SADI (SAD') (1837 4th president of the 3rd French Republic, son of L. Hippo lyte Carnot, was born at Limoges on Aug. II, 183 7. He was edu cated at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussves, and then obtained an appointment in the public service. He was entrusted in 187o with the task of organizing resistance in the departments of the Eure, Calvados and Seine Inferieure, and made prefect of the last named in Jan. 1871. In the following month he was elected to the National Assembly by the department Cote d'Or. In Sept. 188o he became minister, and again in April 1885, passing almost immediately to the Ministry of Finance, which he held under both the Ferry and the Freycinet administra tions until Dec. 1886. When the Wilson scandals (see GRiWY) occasioned the downfall of Grevy in Dec. 1887, Carnot became a candidate for the presidency, with the support of Clemenceau and others who desired to see a president who had no connection with the politics of the market place. He was elected by 616 votes out of 827. The internal situation was a critical one, the stability of the State being threatened by the Boulangist agitation, but Boul anger was exiled in 1889. Carnot had but one other serious crisis to surmount, the Panama scandals of 1892, which, if they greatly damaged the prestige of the State, increased the respect felt for its head, against whose integrity none could breathe a word. On June 24, after speaking at a public banquet at Lyons he was stabbed by an Italian anarchist named Caserio and expired almost immediately. The horror and grief excited by this tragedy were boundless, and the president was honoured with a splendid funeral in the Pantheon, Paris.
See E. Zevort, Histoire de la Troisieme Republique, tome iv., "La Presidence de Carnot" (Paris, 19o1) ; A. A. G. Hanotaux, Histoire de la Troisieme Republique (1904, etc.).