CHAPTER 21
The Republic of de Gaulle
The destiny of France is to irritate the world.
— Jean Giraudoux, author and diplomat
Charles de Gaulle’s return as head of the government of France brought a rapid shift in the country’s status in the world. Suddenly, this almost mythical figure out of the Second World War was casting a long shadow as he stood abreast the ramparts of France. As the world faced the new decade of the 1960s, the Big Three — the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union — quickly became the Big Four, as France reclaimed a position of global influence. From setting off nuclear explosions in the Sahara, to extricating the nation from Algeria, blocking Britain’s entry to the European Common Market, and withdrawing French forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), de Gaulle began the decade playing what François Mauriac described as his “trump card” — his declaration of independence from American foreign policy.[1]
For all de Gaulle’s determination to recast France in the world, however, he realized when he moved into the Élysée Palace that the country was economically “on the verge of disaster.”[2] It would take a series of economic plans to get France growing again. In just three years, the country would achieve “a triumph of expansion and stability,” with annual growth having nudged the 8 percent mark — the strongest in French history.[3]
De Gaulle’s return brought a collective sigh of relief to France. The general’s opponents, including the Communists, were tempered in their response. His insistence that he rule with direct powers while a new constitution was being written left no doubt that the Republic of de Gaulle would be very different than anything known in the past. The First Republic, established in 1792, lasted only twelve years before devolving into the Napoleonic Empire, and the Second Republic of 1848 met a similar destiny after only four years. The Third Republic, born in the defeat of 1870 and destined to be remembered as “La Gueuse” (The Slut), was the longest lasting, but died in the ashes of the Pétain regime after the defeat of1940. Its successor, the Fourth Republic, survived de Gaulle’s retreat to Colombey, and then expired unmourned. “The Fourth French Republic died quietly today in its twelfth year,” the New York Times reported on October 4, 1958. “The funeral services were private.” It was a marvel, especially to Americans, inheritors of a constitution written in 1787 that had endured a civil war and remained intact after twenty-seven amendments, that a country that produced the brilliance of a Le Corbusier, a Matisse, or a de Maupassant could not, until the advent of Charles de Gaulle, devise a system of government to survive the mismanagement of those entrusted with it.
Perhaps the new Republic’s main difference from past manifestations of French republicanism was that it reduced the power of a squabbling Parliament — the National Assembly and the Senate — to an emanation of the presidency. De Gaulle’s insistence that the president be elected by direct vote of the people, an innovation that required a referendum that won overwhelming support, demonstrated his unique capacity to use this tool of presidential popularity to gain his ends. The fact a referendum would ultimately bring about his resignation was not something that he or anyone else could foresee.
Memories of the liberation and an appreciation of de Gaulle’s determination to turn around a conquered people lay at the root of his support. However, as Janet Flanner would write, “it was by his words that de Gaulle took control of France.”[4] The peculiar de Gaulle style that combined the image of an autocrat with the dedication of a servant worked as effectively on radio as it did on television. The renowned literary figure André Malraux, de Gaulle’s minister of culture and intimate admirer, saw the change de Gaulle brought to the nation as “a revolution of French institutions — accomplished without the shedding of a drop of blood.”[5] Malraux, whose six-hundred-page reflection, Antimémoires, had been the hit of the fall literary season, was perhaps overlooking the loss of life in Algeria that had brought de Gaulle back to power.
Neither Charles de Gaulle nor Yvonne were enamoured of living in the Élysée Palace, the eighteenth-century mansion at 55 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré that King Louis XV had given to his mistress Mme de Pompadour, and that had been used as a dance hall during the Revolution. They were assigned a suite of five large rooms outfitted with heavy, dark furniture. It overlooked a well-manicured garden, but Yvonne complained they could never take a quiet walk there because of the constant presence of the Gardes Républicains. She also worried that their neighbours could see into their windows, which she ordered shuttered. Most of their meals were cold when they were served because of the great distance they had to be brought from the palace kitchen. In desperation, Yvonne bought a kettle that she used to boil water for tea. She complained about the scantily clad cherubs depicted in frescoes on the walls of the general’s office, and also about the popular new mini skirts worn by young women. When she asked her husband to have them banned, he had to patiently explain there was nothing he could do.[6]
One of Yvonne de Gaulle’s few pleasures came in choosing the recorded music that was played during receptions; she particularly liked Vivaldi and opted for selections by him or by Handel. Receiving state visitors, however, left her cold. When the president of the Congo Republic, Fulbert Youyou, a defrocked Catholic priest arrived wearing a white cloak designed by Dior, she couldn’t help but notice that beneath his robe he carried a revolver. She refused to pose for pictures with such a “miscreant.”
De Gaulle tired of having state visitors to his home and ordered that the nearby Hôtel de Marigny be bought to accommodate them. “I do not like encountering kings in pyjamas in my corridors,” he is said to have commented. As often as possible, the de Gaulles retreated to Colombey, using a government aircraft that took them there in about an hour. At Colombey, he received his family, wrote his speeches, read books, walked under the “immensity of the sky,” and restored his “peace of mind.”
De Gaulle’s first task as president was to name a prime minister and assemble a Cabinet. Their seating around the Cabinet table reflected their influence. Opposite de Gaulle sat Michel Debré, his prime minister. On his right he placed André Malraux. Couve de Murville, who had been ambassador in Bonn, Germany, and had been called back to become minister of foreign affairs, sat nearby. De Gaulle’s chef du cabinet was the reliable Georges Pompidou, while his aide from London days, Geoffroy de Courcel, headed a staff of forty-five as secretary-general to the Presidency. De Gaulle ran his Cabinet meetings with a firm hand. He concedes in his Mémoires d’espoir that anyone could ask to speak in Cabinet and the requests were always granted, but after hearing them, he would “give [his] own view of the matter and formulate a conclusion.” Later, he would draw up a “summary of decisions” and would tell Malraux, his minister of culture, what should be released to the public.[7] Between Cabinet meetings, all the ministers visited de Gaulle in rotation, “each of them giving me an account of what he was doing and taking cognizance of my intentions.” In de Gaulle’s mind, the system he’d set up ensured that “relations with my government were continuous and extensive.” He kept himself “at a distance, but by no means in an ivory tower.”
De Gaulle worried about “the Parisian monster” that had emerged since the war — a capital whose population had increased by a million and a half. “A decision had to be made. I made it.”[8] The Paris Region was created, subdivided into seven départements, with unified planning to be applied over all districts, especially the “problem-ridden” suburbs. Although by no means a one-man government, de Gaulle showered his ministers with notes on every conceivable subject. His interests ranged from plans to move the food market of Les Halles — “the stomach of Paris” — out of its age-old location, to establishing admission standards for overcrowded universities.
The economy was also an issue. Earlier, de Gaulle had devalued the franc by 17.5 percent (its twelfth devaluation since the war) and instituted a new, “heavy franc,” equivalent to one hundred old francs. Economic issues would always be close to de Gaulle’s heart as he sought to strengthen the country’s economy and upgrade its global standing. Not all his initiatives were successful. When he called for reform of the international monetary system and a return to the gold standard, he was met with opposition from nearly every capital and his scheme went nowhere. At home, he deplored “the anxiety of the employers, the revolt of industrial workers, the anger of farmers, the irritation of shopkeepers, the fury in the public services, the distress of the civilian population, and the poverty of the military.”
Economic rejuvenation and the war in Algeria may have dominated discussions in de Gaulle’s Cabinet, but it was the larger world stage with which he was preoccupied. His return to power restored for the moment the unique Second World War triumvirate of de Gaulle and Harold Macmillan, now prime minister of Britain, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, since 1953 the president of the United States. Both had been steadfast supporters of the general during the difficult years when the Free French movement was asserting its birthright as the only legitimate French opposition to a common foe, and as the future government of France. De Gaulle realized, however, that the world situation was very different from what it had been in the immediate postwar years. For all the West’s obsession about the aggressiveness of Moscow, it would be “madness” for Moscow to launch a global conflict that would end in “wholesale destruction.” France, rather than acting with the “docility” it exhibited during de Gaulle’s absence, needed now “to act on its own in Europe and the world.”[9]
The foreign visitors were not long in making their way to the Élysée Palace. Macmillan came in June 1958, and the two argued about Britain’s wish to open up the European Common Market, then emerging out of earlier economic agreements between France, Germany, and the Benelux countries.* The Italian prime minister followed.
The American Secretary of State, the redoubtable John Foster Dulles, architect of containment and advocate of the cordon sanitaire behind which Russia would be confined and constrained, came that summer. Dulles reported back to Washington that the general was determined to demonstrate that France was still of “considerable importance” in the world. “The proof is that you are here today and I am also here,” de Gaulle told Dulles. He recognized that the United States could not alone defend the world against a hostile Soviet Union and that “all the nations of the free world had to contribute.” For that reason, de Gaulle urged, the scope of NATO should be extended to Africa and the Middle East.** After lunch, he returned to the subject of France’s role in the world. The French people must feel they were citizens of a world power, de Gaulle told Dulles, or “France would quickly degenerate.” On the subject of Algeria, de Gaulle recognized that the age of colonialism was past but that it was necessary to move slowly; it might take another ten years to resolve things there. (In fact, the French would be out of Algeria in just four years.)[10]
What was probably de Gaulle’s most important meeting with a foreign head of government, however, came that fall when West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer arrived at La Boisserie to spend the night. Adenauer had asked for the meeting and de Gaulle told his son, Philippe, it was safer for the German to come to the general’s country home rather than risk riots in Paris. After all that Germany had done to France, it was time for reconciliation.
Adenauer, fourteen years older than de Gaulle, a Catholic like his host, had been dismissed as mayor of Cologne by the Nazis. He had been twice jailed, and had been forced to rely on the welfare of friends when he was denied the right to practise law. He’d built the German Christian Democratic Party almost from scratch after the war and had come to ask de Gaulle if either country could “reach a genuine long-term understanding.” De Gaulle, for all the traditional French fear of a revived Germany, saw that it was time “to reverse the course of history.” It was too soon, however, to think of German reunification; more pressing was the need to begin integration of the European community under the leadership of France and Germany without in any way extinguishing “their individual personalities.”[11] (Both countries had signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957 that established the European Common Market.) De Gaulle and Adenauer would exchange some forty letters in the coming years and meet on fifteen occasions. Their most poignant moment saw the two Catholics come together in the ancient cathedral of Rheims, France — damaged by German shellfire in the First World War — to pray that “the deeds of friendship might forever supplant the miseries of war.”
De Gaulle reached the apex of his foreign policy offensive when he conceived the idea of calling together the leaders of the Big Four — Eisenhower, Macmillan, and Soviet chief Nikita Khrushchev, with himself as host — to a summit meeting in Paris. It would provide the opportunity to tackle what de Gaulle saw as the great questions of the day: nuclear disarmament, the future of Germany, and the provision of aid to under-developed countries. Putting the four most important players in the world around the same table and on French soil would be a diplomatic coup for de Gaulle and would also ensure that France’s view was heard and taken into consideration.
De Gaulle laid the groundwork for the summit by inviting President Eisenhower to Paris in September 1959. Huge crowds turned out for the president’s visit. De Gaulle told Eisenhower that France would remain faithful to the Atlantic alliance but that it had to have its own nuclear force de frappe and would soon be exploding an atomic bomb. As well, France had to maintain control of its own armed forces and therefore could not accept their integration into NATO. Eisenhower returned in December for a pre-summit meeting with de Gaulle, Macmillan, and German chancellor Konrad Adenauer. De Gaulle visited London and in March played host to Khrushchev for a ten-day state visit to France. April saw de Gaulle travel to Canada and the United States and he was back in Paris in time to prepare for the first session of the summit meeting on May 16.
Things started to go wrong even before the opening of the summit. On May 1, a United States U2 photo-reconnaissance plane was shot down over the Soviet Union and its pilot, Gary Powers, was taken prisoner. The State Department maintained that Powers had strayed into Russsian air space due to a navigational error, but it was clear he had been on a spying mission. Khrushchev reacted with fury. When he arrived at the Élysée Palace, he handed de Gaulle the text of a statement announcing he could take no part in the conference unless Eisenhower made a public apology to the Soviet Union. He also insisted the president undertake to punish those responsible, and promise there would be no more such flights.
The next day, the four delegations eyed each other warily as they met in a high-ceilinged chamber next to de Gaulle’s office. De Gaulle had put President Eisenhower and his aides opposite him, the Soviets on his left, and the British on his right. Khrushchev took the floor and repeated his demands, adding that a planned visit by Eisenhower to the Soviet Union would have to be cancelled. Eisenhower looked contrite, and read a long statement in which he said the flight of the U2 plane had been a defensive measure, and in any case it would not happen again.
De Gaulle tried to smooth things over; he noted that two weeks had elapsed since the U2 incident, giving ample time to settle things before the summit meeting. In any case, “At this very moment a Soviet satellite is passing over France eighteen times in every twenty-four hours. How do we know it is not taking photographs?”[12]
Khrushchev retorted: “What devil drove the Americans to commit this heinous act?”
De Gaulle told him there were many devils in the world. He then proposed that the Russian and American sides meet privately to settle the issue, in the hope the summit could resume the next morning. When the three Western leaders arrived the next day, there was no sign of Khrushchev. The Russian leader was busy holding a press conference in which he again denounced the Americans. The summit was finished, an international fiasco that foreshadowed the further tensions that would arise as the Cold War heated up. Despite the disappointing outcome, no one attached blame to de Gaulle. Neither would any leader attempt again to organize such an ambitious gathering of world figures.
“The successor was John Kennedy.” On this laconic note, Charles de Gaulle introduces us to the man who replaced General Eisenhower as president of the United States. We might think from the brevity of de Gaulle’s words that the two had a cool relationship, but such was not the place. While de Gaulle disdained Franklin Roosevelt and felt gratitude to Eisenhower for his wartime support, he looked on John Fitzgerald Kennedy as a man who, but for “the crime which killed him, might have had the time to leave his mark on our age.” A few weeks after disastrously intervening at the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy arrived in Paris “brimming over with dynamism, he and his dazzling and cultivated wife forming a remarkably attractive couple.”[13]
Soon after meeting Kennedy, de Gaulle became aware that “the attitude of the United States towards France had undergone a very decided change.” The day had passed when Washington insisted on regarding Paris as “just another of its protegés.” Kennedy acknowledged France’s independence and offered de Gaulle “a share in his projects.” Their one area of disagreement was Vietnam, where de Gaulle was advising the president that “he was taking the wrong road.” Having been brutally bled in that Far East state, de Gaulle cautioned Kennedy that if he persisted in escalating operations there he would “sink step by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire.”[14] As events would prove, de Gaulle was unable to deter him.
During the visit, JFK famously referred to himself as the “man who accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to Paris,” acknowledging the attention Jacqueline Kennedy had received for her beauty, sophistication, and her fluency in French. In conversations recorded later, Jackie Kennedy intimates that de Gaulle “came on” to her. However, he remained politically discreet when she asked him whether he had gotten along best with Churchill or Roosevelt. “With Churchill I was always in disagreement but we always reached an accord,” he told her. “With Roosevelt I was always in agreement but we never had an accord.” Of Yvonne de Gaulle, Jackie Kennedy found a woman who was uncomfortable in her role of hostess. She found Yvonne “sweetly going through” the formalities, but tired of having to bear her official duties. When Jackie commented on how beautiful the tablecloth was at their state banquet, Yvonne replied, “the one at lunch was better.”
After Paris, President Kennedy travelled to Vienna for his first meeting with Nikita Khrushchev. The Russian premier’s truculent behaviour, begun in Paris a year before, continued; the Soviet leader did everything he could to intimidate the president, treating him as little more than an errand boy. Their future dealings would be on a far more equal level. De Gaulle concluded that Kennedy was a man “who inspired immense hopes.” He seemed to be “on the point of taking off into the heights, like some great bird that beats its wings as it approaches the mountain tops.”[15]
Both Kennedy and de Gaulle were to become the objects of hatred and violence, although history would carry them to different destines. In de Gaulle’s case, the end of the war in Algeria had left the proponents of Algérie française more fiercely determined than ever to exact revenge on the architect of their betrayal. At a secret meeting in Rome of the commanders of the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS), Georges Bidault took over its leadership, Colonel Antoine Argoud was put in charge of operations in France, and Jacques Soustelle took on responsibility for operations abroad. A series of bank robberies followed, and on July 3, 1962, playing in deadly earnest, a “military court” of the OAS handed down a death sentence on General de Gaulle for “the crime of high treason.”
A light rain was falling on the evening of August 22, a Wednesday, when de Gaulle emerged from a day-long meeting of his Cabinet where the Évian Accords and the resettlement of the pieds noirs had been discussed. De Gaulle stood briefly atop the steps outside the Élysée Palace before descending to a black Citroën DS parked at the curb. Yvonne de Gaulle was with him, as was his son-in-law, Alain de Boissieu. De Gaulle’s driver, Francis Marroux, a former policeman who had been at the wheel when an attempt had been made to blow up the car the previous September, waited, his motor idling. De Boissieu got in beside him while the general and Yvonne took their places in the back seat. Unnoticed across the street from the Élysée, a man carrying a motorcycle helmet interrupted his examination of an antique shop window to observe the departure. The presidential car drove off, followed by its escort vehicle flanked by two motorcycle outriders.
Marroux was following the same route, in reverse, that he had driven that morning when he’d brought the de Gaulles in from the airport at Villacoublay, sixteen kilometres to the southwest. They’d flown in from Colombey and would be returning home by the same means. The drive out of Paris was uneventful, the streets nearly empty with most Parisians still enjoying their August vacations. After crossing the Pont Alexandre III bridge and passing through the Porte de Châtillon, Marroux approached the crossroads at the Avenue de la Libération in the grungy industrial suburb of Petit-Clamart. It was eight minutes after eight and cars were turning on their headlights in the reduced visibility of the approaching dusk and the light drizzle that was falling. Observing their approach, a man later identified as Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, a disillusioned army colonel, waved a copy of the right-wing newspaper L’Aurore from the window of his Simca 1000. It was a signal to the dozen men, ten of them armed with automatic rifles, who lay in wait in four vehicles two hundred metres down the road.
When the assassins opened fire, de Boissieu shouted to Marroux to speed up. “Straight ahead, in the middle, Marroux, straight through!” Looking back at his in-laws, he screamed, “Pere, baissez-vous!” (“Father, get down.”) The fusillade of bullets had blasted the Citroën’s windows, blown out two tires, and smashed its gearbox. De Gaulle and Yvonne were covered with shards of glass and the smell of burning rubber filled the vehicle. De Boissieu caught sight of the last of the attack vehicles, its windows lowered with two gunmen who were shooting at them with their pistols. With the car “swaying dangerously like a motor-boat on the sea,” he asked Marroux if they could make it to the airport. The driver said he would try.
Three minutes later, the car pulled up beside the tarmac at Villacoublay. De Gaulle got out and calmly inspected a waiting army guard of honour before boarding the plane. “It was touch and go this time!” he remarked.
Yvonne de Gaulle, worried about the brace of chickens she had bought for lunch in Colombey the next day, said “Don’t forget les poulets. I hope they’re all right.” Policeman standing nearby wondered if she was referring to them; poulets being the Parisian nickname for police.[16]
That evening, de Gaulle phoned his prime minister, Georges Pompidou, to say “My dear friend, these people shoot like pigs.”
Miraculously, none of the nearly two hundred bullets fired at General de Gaulle’s car had touched any of its occupants. Fourteen bullets had entered the vehicle, some passing within centimetres of the heads of de Gaulle and his wife.*** De Gaulle had merely nicked his fingers as he brushed glass from his suit, leaving a spot of blood on his collar. That evening, one of the assault cars containing guns and ammunition was found nearby. A bomb that had been set failed to go off. By mid-September, all but three of the would-be killers were under lock and key.
Bastien-Thiry compared himself to the officers who had tried to kill Hitler, but claimed he had intended only to take de Gaulle prisoner so he could be tried. His argument convinced no one and he was condemned to death. De Gaulle refused clemency, on the grounds that the gunmen had fired on a car containing a woman, they had endangered the lives of innocent people in other cars at the scene, and that Bastien-Thiry had taken no personal risk in the affair, merely raising his newspaper to alert his accomplices. On March 11, 1963, Bastien-Thiry was shot at the prison in Ivry-sur-Seine, clutching his rosary. The general wrote but briefly of the incident in his memoirs: “So let de Gaulle continue his course and his vocation.”[17]
Less than a month after being fired on at Petit-Clamart (in what by one count was the eighteenth attempt on his life), de Gaulle took to the air to announce plans for a referendum to provide for election of the president by popular vote. “When my own seven-year term is over … the President of the Republic will thenceforward be elected by universal suffrage.”[18] De Gaulle had extended the vote to women in the first election after the war, and now he was further stamping the Republic of de Gaulle in his own image. “As always,” he told the people of France, “it will be for you to decide.” The Communists and others, objecting to further empowerment of the office of president, again attacked de Gaulle with the charge that he wanted a dictatorship. The referendum carried by a 62 percent Yes vote — not the triumph de Gaulle had wished, but approval by a substantial margin.
The French — and the people of the world — were caught up by a far more worrisome prospect once the heat of the referendum campaign had died away; the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. On October 14, an American U2 aircraft returned from a flight over Cuba with photographic evidence that the Soviet Union was building missile bases in Cuba. Resisting the urging of his war hawks to send attack planes, President Kennedy ordered a naval embargo of the island. When Kennedy’s emissary, Dean Acheson, arrived at the Élysée Palace on October 22 with maps and photographs of the installations, de Gaulle told him, “Put your documents away; the word of the President of the United States is good enough for me.”[19] De Gaulle’s reaction demonstrated his high degree of confidence in Kennedy.
A year later, John F. Kennedy was dead, assassinated by a gunman in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. There had been discussions before Kennedy’s death of another meeting with de Gaulle. Speaking the day after the assassination to his Cabinet, de Gaulle said that Kennedy “was one of the very few leaders of whom it may be said that they are statesmen.” De Gaulle flew to Washington for the funeral. His tall, gaunt figure was seen in the front line of the funeral march. De Gaulle was the first foreign visitor to be received by the president’s widow. She impulsively snatched a white marguerite from a bouquet and held it out to him. He kept it in his pocket until his return to Paris.[20]
Along with that flower, de Gaulle was also forced to abandon his thoughts of Kennedy and of what the American president might have achieved in the future. France’s present needs, in particular, the needs of its economy, demanded his attention. A series of French economic plans, designed by de Gaulle’s economics advisor Jacques Rueff and backed enthusiastically by the general, brought rapid improvement in French living standards that by 1964 were one-third above their 1959 level. No longer was de Gaulle deploring the disaffection of the population. A “stabilization plan” introduced in 1963 had cut inflation in half (from 6 to 3 per cent) and would help France move toward a balanced budget. As Janet Flanner would tell her New Yorker readers:
This year’s end finds President de Gaulle on a peculiar pinnacle of lonely leadership — lonelier by far than the isolated eminence he has always contrived for himself. In a little more than a twelvemonth, through the brutal loss of President Kennedy, the unexpected sacking of Nikita Khrushchev, and the sequestration into old age of Sir Winston Churchill, de Gaulle has emerged as the unique familiar, powerful political and historical figure left on the Western world’s governing scene. As encouragement, the miraculous fiscal prosperity of his Fifth Republic, now entering its seventh year, has reached new amplitudes. Today, France is one of the richest nations.[21]
The year was notable for de Gaulle for one other event: his prostate operation. At seventy-three, he was beginning to suffer the inevitabilities of passing years, but he recovered quickly and was ready, in 1965, for the ultimate test of political gamesmanship: winning office via the ballot box. This was the first and only time that de Gaulle would submit himself to a vote of the people; his previous attainments of high office had come through appointment by the French Committee of National Liberation (1944); appointment by President Coty (1958); and approval by an elite college of electors (1959). He stood above party politics, refusing to become personally involved in the Gaullist Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR) that protected his interests in the National Assembly. De Gaulle faced two competitors in 1965 and he expected to win handily in the first round of voting on December 5. The result, however, gave him but 44 percent of the ballots. François Mitterrand, benefitting from the backing of the Socialist Party, collected 32 percent, and 16 percent had voted for Jean Lecanuet of the Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP). Stunned by the results, de Gaulle spoke of resigning. In the second round campaign, he went on television but refused to hold public rallies, while Mitterrand was drawing large crowds across France. On December 19, however, de Gaulle was safely re-elected with 54.5 percent of the vote.
Following his re-election, de Gaulle told his cabinet that “The regime had to go through the trial by fire. It has emerged well-tempered.”
Yet another conflagration, entirely of de Gaulle’s own making, lay not far in the future. Charles de Gaulle considered that France’s surrender of Canada to the British in 1763 had been an abandonment of its children, and that it was now “France’s duty to help” Quebec, the home of the French in that country, become “at last master of its own fate.”[22] Like distant, unheard trumpets, Quebec and France had said little to each other in the centuries since the Treaty of Paris. That was about to change.
Following the conquest, Britain, by the Quebec Act of 1774, had confirmed the rights of the French “habitants” to their Catholic religion, language, and civil laws and customs. From the time the British North American colonies joined in Confederation to create modern Canada in 1867, French-speaking citizens have formed a majority in Quebec. As a result of their “revenge of the cradle” — compensation for their defeat by the British on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec City — the French-speaking population grew from sixty thousand to six million by 1967.
In 1960, travelling to Canada for the first time as president of France, de Gaulle was welcomed by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and his old wartime comrade General Georges Vanier, who had become governor general. On his earlier visits, de Gaulle had poured praise on Canada for its wartime achievements. This time, as he went to Quebec City and Montreal, he was more conscious of the profusion of Quebec flags adorned with the fleur-de-lis symbol, “beside the very rare Federal flags.”[23] De Gaulle’s meeting with Diefenbaker, a populist Conservative from the western plains who spoke no French, gave him the opportunity to highlight the need for Canada to “solve the problem posed by the existence within her borders of two peoples, one of which was French and must, like any other, have the right to self-determination.”[24]
De Gaulle debated for months whether he should accept the invitation of the Canadian government to travel to Montreal for the opening of the World’s Fair in 1967 — known as Expo ’67 — that coincided with celebrations marking the centennial of Confederation It was finally the prospect of a sea voyage and the opportunity to remind Canada that it had a French minority in need of liberation, that convinced him. “I will hit hard,” de Gaulle told his son-in-law, Alain de Boissieu. “Hell will happen, but it has to be done.”[25] After a stopover in St. Pierre, de Gaulle arrived in Quebec City aboard the French cruiser Colbert on July 23, a Sunday. He spoke that night at a formal banquet, saying France had come to assist “at the advent of a people who want, in every domain, to make up their own mind and to take its fate in its own hands.”[26] The next day, he travelled 270 kilometres from Quebec City to Montreal along the old Chemin du roi of French Canada. Huge crowds gathered along his route, often bursting into the singing of “La Marseillaise.” He repeated the same message in every town: “It is France’s duty to help you. She has owed you something for a long time.”
In Montreal, half the population of the world’s second-largest French city turned out to welcome de Gaulle. People filled every street leading to the Hôtel de Ville. Signs proclaiming “Vive le Québec Libre”— the slogan of a small nationalist party — were prominent in the crowd. Buoyed by the boisterous welcome, de Gaulle felt the weight of his seventy-seven years lifting from his shoulders.
He asked the mayor, Jean Drapeau, a confirmed federalist, if he could speak from the balcony. “No,” Drapeau said, there was no microphone. An aide appeared mysteriously and led the general to the balcony where a microphone that Drapeau had ordered disconnected, had been hooked up again by a radio broadcaster. As de Gaulle looked out into the twilight of the Champs-de-Mars below him, the crowd cheered and then fell silent.
“I am going to tell you a secret that you will not repeat,” he began. “This evening, here, and all along my route, I found the same kind of atmosphere as that of the liberation.” The crowd roared. After a few more remarks, he ended abruptly: “Vive Montréal. Vive le Québec!” Then he was to repeat himself, adding just one word: “Vive le Québec … libre!” It was the addition of that single word, libre, the slogan, Mayor Drapeau would remind de Gaulle, of an opposition separatist party, that would transform the visit into an international incident. Overlooked by the Canadian media was the fact that during his speech de Gaulle had four times cried out, “Vive le Canada.”[27]
The prime minister of Canada, Lester Pearson, watched de Gaulle on television that night. “I could hardly believe my ears when I heard the words he uttered,” he wrote later.[28] The next day Pearson issued a statement and went on TV to assert in French that “some of the President’s declarations tended to encourage the small minority of our population whose aim is to destroy Canada and, as such, they are unacceptable to the Canadian people and her government.” The people of Quebec needed no liberation, he added, recalling the blood Canada had spilled in helping to rescue France in two world wars.
Pearson said he was still looking forward to talking to de Gaulle, but the general had other plans. Told of Ottawa’s reaction, he attended a lunch in his honour, wrapped up a quick visit to the French pavilion at Expo, and embarrassed but defiantly proud, boarded a plane to fly back to France.
De Gaulle’s comments caused consternation across Canada. The Winnipeg Free Press headlined: “De Gaulle Shouts Separatist Slogan.” The next day, the Lethbridge Herald bannered across its front page: “DE GAULLE GOES HOME.”
In Paris, even de Gaulle’s own Cabinet, accustomed to the calculating politics played constantly in France, were largely critical of him. “He’s crazy,” said one minister. “This time he’s gone too far,” said another. Others blamed de Gaulle’s advancing years, recalling his characterization of Marshall Pétain: “Old age is a shipwreck.” Some observers noted that France also had separatists in its midst — Basques in the south and Bretons in the north. France’s two most important newspapers were critical. Le Monde called de Gaulle’s Canadian visit “a humiliating misadventure” and Le Figaro criticized his interference in the internal affairs of another country.
De Gaulle told his Cabinet that things in Canada were not yet settled. “They’re only just beginning. It’s a great matter … a generation determined to become its own boss in its own country.” At a press conference later that year, de Gaulle continued to defend his remarks. Problems between the French and English in Canada would only be solved, he said, with the “advent of Québec as a sovereign State, master of her own national existence.” To bring that about would require “solidarity of the French community on both sides of the Atlantic.”[29]
Seen from the perspective of the decades that have since passed, de Gaulle’s comments of 1967 might hardly be considered prophetic.**** But given the circumstances of that era, his words represented nothing less than an intellectual shot across the bow. They fuelled the nationalistic spirit of a rapidly changing Quebec, a region that was throwing off its old sectarian culture (as France had already done) and through its “Quiet Revolution” was transforming itself into the most socially liberal region of Canada. The Parti Québécois, dedicated to independence under the guise of “sovereignty,” would arise to take power in 1976. It would conduct two vaguely worded referendums, one in 1980 and the other in 1995. Both would fail — the latter by a breathtakingly small margin of 50.6 percent “No” to 49.4 percent “Yes.” In the meantime, Canada had become officially a bilingual country. It also brought its constitution home from the United Kingdom, with inclusion — at the insistence of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau — of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
After the 1995 referendum, the federal government adopted a Clarity Act that recognized the right of a province to leave Canada, but only after a referendum with a “clear question” had won the support of a “clear majority.” A later federal government, seeking reconciliation between English and French, enacted a law recognizing the Quebecois population as representative of “a nation” within Canada. The extent to which de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec Libre” cry may have foreshadowed or influenced these events is arguable. What cannot be denied is that the Gaullian intervention marked one of the few occasions when a head of state had knowingly injected himself into an internal debate of a friendly nation.
* Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg.
** As later occurred with NATO involvement in Afghanistan.
*** The car has since been exhibited at the Musée Charles-de-Gaulle in Lille, the General’s birthplace.
**** In the Quebec election of April 7, 2014, the separatist Parti Québécois suffered its most crushing defeat since its first election in 1970, gaining only 25 percent of the popular vote and losing power to the federalist Liberal party.