CHAPTER 22

The Final Days

Old Earth, worn by the ages … Old France, weighed down with history … Old man, exhausted by ordeal, detached from human deeds, feeling the approach of the eternal cold, but always watching in the shadows for the gleam of hope!

— Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre

Student rebellion and labour insurrection, twin progeny of a decade of global social turmoil, reached France in 1968, the tenth year of General de Gaulle’s return to power. Where there had been riots against the Vietnam War in the United States and the celebration across the West of a new youth culture memorialized in the music of the Beatles and the slogan, “Make love, not war,” young people in France turned against what they saw as the ossification of their universities. Their protests against overcrowded classrooms and assorted other dissatisfactions — including the sexual segregation of their dormitories — were quickly matched by demands from industrial workers for better working conditions and higher wages. With the Communist trade unions nervously adjudicating labour strategy, Charles de Gaulle found himself confronting the greatest challenge to his authority since the “revolt of the generals” that followed the crisis in revolt-torn Algeria.

Ten years after Algeria, France was a much different country and Paris a vastly different city from that for which de Gaulle had been the instrument of liberation in 1944. Streets had been renamed in honour of the liberators, old buildings demolished, trees cut down, and entire blocks transformed into shopping centres. New government buildings had gone up in every city across France. At the same time, almost everyone agreed that the stitlted academic bureaucracy of France’s universities needed to be shaken up. Student enrolment had more than doubled to five hundred thousand, but because university study in France was free, there was little money to build the new facilities such numbers demanded. Professors lectured to classes of fifteen hundred students. The sexual permissiveness of the new youth culture found itself in conflict with bourgeois dictates of chastity and modesty. Male students enjoyed raiding female dormitories in intrusions that met little resistance from their occupants. The young people who had most benefitted from France’s economic progress had become its sharpest critics.

In January 1968 the French minister for youth and sport, François Missoffe, had been insulted when he went to the Nanterre branch of the University of Paris to open a swimming pool. His German-born adversary, Daniel Cohn-Bendit — soon to be known as “Danny the Red” for both his politics and his hair — assailed him for having failed to make any mention, in a six-hundred-page report on education, of the sexual concerns of young people.[1] Students were not allowed to have visitors in their rooms or hang pictures on their walls. Nanterre was typical of the new French universities — a structure of concrete slabs built for two thousand students, now occupied by some fifteen thousand.

Students at other universities had similar complaints. In Bordeaux, five thousand boycotted the university canteen. When Nanterre students went into Paris on March 22 to protest the Vietnam War, their demonstration ended in the smashing of windows in the American Express office at the Place d l’Opera. Two thousand young people paraded through the Latin Quarter on April 19 and the next week a right-wing organization attacked student headquarters. Nanterre was closed, reopened after two days, but had to close again when classes descended into anarchic talkfests and argumentative debates. Danny the Red was arrested after having put out a bulletin that contained instructions on how to make a Molotov cocktail.

The protests — and the government’s reaction, which included police repression — quickly escalated. At the Élysée Palace, President de Gaulle exhibited little patience for student agitation. Accustomed to military discipline, he could not understand why the university authorities — who he agreed were exceedingly conservative — could not keep things in hand. Added to his natural authoritarian bent was a strict moral code inherited from his family and buttressed by Mme de Gaulle. His main interest in educational matters was in changing the selection system for university admission by requiring merit testing of applicants. When his education minister, Alain Peyrefitte, announced plans for just such a change, howls of protest came from students all over France. “Dix ans, c’est assez” (Ten years, that’s enough) became the cry, along with “Au revoir, de Gaulle!”

Prime Minister Pompidou did his best to play down the significance of the student turmoil. “Let them sleep together,” he told guests at a lunch in the Matignon. “When they’re doing that, they won’t cause us any worries.”[2] Deciding to free Cohn-Bendit, he remarked, “I’m not the man to put French youth into barracks.”[3] He then got on a plane and flew off to visit Iran and Afghanistan.

The prime minister’s approach may well have worked if the Communist Party had not abandoned its early opposition to the student strikers, whom it had put down as “false revolutionaries.” After raucous May Day demonstrations by the Communist-led Confédération Général du Travail (CGT) on Europe’s traditional day of labour, a one-day token strike at Sud Aviation escalated into a countrywide general strike. Before it was over, ten million workers were off the job and stores were running short of food and other essentials. Rising unemployment and inflation had been eating away at the gains of the working class; labour’s concerns were suddenly to be married to the youthful revolt against government authority.

On May 13, the day that peace talks between the United States and North and South Vietnam opened in Paris, ten thousand demonstrators marched on the Sorbonne. That night, students erected barricades and pelted police with stones. Police responded with tear gas, and after hand-to-hand fighting, the student barricades were demolished. In Kabul, Prime Minister Pompidou received word of the violence and booked a quick passage home. His first move was to get de Gaulle’s approval for the reopening of the Sorbonne. He won it, reluctantly, and Pompidou went on the air to express “deep sympathy” for the students. He assured de Gaulle that he could safely reopen the universities and deal with student concerns.

“If you win, so much the better, France will win with you. If you lose, too bad for you,” de Gaulle warned him.[4] The Sorbonne reopened the next morning and was immediately occupied by students. Red flags were flown from statues and plans were made for a “people’s tribunal” to try the police. A mass march to the Place de la République was matched by similar parades in other cities. The police made hundreds of arrests.

Why did Charles de Gaulle choose this moment to embark on a long-scheduled visit to Romania? He had been assured by Pompidou and others that the prime minister’s soft line would eventually bring the students around. More important, de Gaulle saw an opportunity to strengthen ties with Romania, where dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was tugging at his Moscow tether. On May 14, the day of de Gaulle’s departure, walk-outs flared throughout the country and, with the support of the Communist-led CGT, a general strike was underway. In Bucharest, de Gaulle got word that the Odéon, the national theatre on the Left Bank, had been occupied by demonstrators. After making speeches calling for “the end of opposing blocs” in Europe, de Gaulle decided to head home, a day early.

In Paris, de Gaulle met with his key ministers and made it clear he was furious over what had happened. He wanted the police to clear demonstrators out of all sites they’d occupied. Told this could lead to deaths, he agreed to limit action to the Odéon. Then de Gaulle dropped an expression that has been debated for its true meaning ever since: “La reforme, oui; le chienlit, non.” In common usage, the term “chienlit” refers to “shitting your bed,” but de Gaulle biographer Jonathan Fenby believes the president was using it in its classical sense, to mean a carnival or masquerade.[5] In either case, de Gaulle was fed up. He made a seven-minute broadcast promising workers and students more “participation” in decisions affecting them. A referendum on such matters was promised for June 16, but the speech changed no one’s mind. The first fatality occurred when a young man died after being hit by a tear gas canister in Lyon. It was time to settle. Encouraged by the minister of social affairs, Jacques Chirac, the employers’ federation agreed to a 35 percent rise in the minimum wage and a 10 percent across-the-board wage increase. None of this was good enough. Demonstrations continued throughout the country. The bitterness of the workers came home to de Gaulle when Mme de Gaulle returned from a shopping trip to say she’d been shouted at and insulted.

Charles de Gaulle was bored with the minutiae of government and his health was beginning to trouble him. He suffered from a distended stomach and tired easily. At the height of the crisis, he had to take time out to reflect. Cancelling a Cabinet meeting, he passed word that he was going home to Colombey for a day. Instead, he made a secretive flight to Baden-Baden, the French base in Germany, where he met with the one-time commander of forces in Algeria, General Jacques Massu. The president’s absence threw his Cabinet into turmoil. Where had de Gaulle gone and what was he up to?

De Gaulle wanted to be sure he had the support of the military; otherwise, he would have to resign. He told Massu that if the Communists stormed the Élysée Palace they would find no one there. De Gaulle must have felt as depressed and hopeless as the day he had withdrawn Free French forces from Dakar. He might step down and go far away — as far as Canada, perhaps? General Massu told de Gaulle he could count on the army, and that he should fight on. An understanding was possible; de Gaulle agreed to a pardon for General Salan and other outcasts from Algiers. Then Massu added the decisive pronouncement: “Go back. There is nothing else to do. You are still in the game; you’ve got to stay in it.”[6]

It was all de Gaulle needed. Reassured, his spirits bucked up, he returned to Colombey by plane. He walked the grounds of La Boisserie with Mme de Gaulle, enjoyed a good dinner, and set about writing a speech for broadcast the next day. He flew to Paris in the morning. At half past four on May 30, a Thursday, he went on the radio to tell the nation that he was not quitting, that he was dissolving the National Assembly and new elections would be held, and that he was postponing his promised referendum. De Gaulle spoke with authority and conviction. His speech called for “civic action … everywhere and immediately to assist the government.” De Gaulle followers sprang to work. Within an hour, the streets of Paris began to fill with his supporters. A vast assemblage marched down the Champs-Élysée from the Arc de Triomphe, headed by André Malraux and Michel Debré. There was no sign of Prime Minister Pompidou, but other admirers were there, including eighty-two-year-old François Mauriac. Estimates placed the crowd at half a million. Outside the presidential palace, fifty thousand stood to chant, “De Gaulle, you are not alone!” The legend lived; the man of June 18 had spoken once again, and the people listened.

By the middle of June, the last of the strikes and student demonstrations, claiming four lives in all, had petered out. In the elections that month, the Gaullist party — the Union des Démocrates pour le République (UDR), as it was now known — won a historic victory. By securing 354 of the 487 National Assembly seats, the UDR gained the biggest majority ever attained in France. The economy would have to absorb the costs of the raises won by the workers.

De Gaulle, true to his admonishment to Pompidou about failure, chose a new prime minister. He settled on Maurice Couve de Murville, former minister of foreign affairs, briefly minister of finance. Pompidou continued to let it be known he was available for the presidency whenever de Gaulle might choose to retire. To de Gaulle, Pompidou seemed to be pushing a bit hard. The fissure between the two of them widened in the wake of scurrilous talk about Pompidou’s wife. There had been rumours linking her to a sex scandal. Investigation showed there was nothing to the allegations, but Pompidou would never forgive de Gaulle for what he felt was the general’s complacence in dealing with the rumours.

Faced with unemployment approaching the million mark, the government in the fall of 1968 set out to achieve economic growth through easy credit and an increase in the money supply. The franc was held at parity. When these policies threatened to set off a flight of capital, the budget was slashed, but for the first time, more money was allocated to education than to defense. De Gaulle, however, was not satisfied. His goals became the framework for the postponed referendum. Workers would be given the means to participate in the management of their companies. Regional governments would be reformed throughout France. And the Senate would be reorganized, with membership to be drawn from business, cultural organizations, and community groups. This Gaullist view of democracy held but one problem: it would be bitterly opposed from every power base in the country, from trade union chieftains to corporate executives and their boards, to say nothing of most of the political leadership.

Amid this turmoil, de Gaulle kept his focus on France’s international relations. He had twice rejected Britain’s application to enter the Common Market, and now watched with satisfaction the strengthening economic ties between its six members. The invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops following a brief “Prague Spring” gave him further evidence that his hoped for European détente would take a long time to be realized. In the Middle East, where de Gaulle had strong memories of France’s protectorate role in Lebanon and Syria, the rise of Israeli influence had become a concern to him. When an Israeli commando unit destroyed Lebanon’s commercial air fleet in a raid on the Beirut airport, de Gaulle felt compelled to act. The raid had been in retaliation for an attack on an El-Al airliner in Athens carried out by Palestinians based in Lebanon. De Gaulle, without consulting any of his ministers, ordered an embargo on all arms shipments to Israel. He also approved sending arms to the breakaway region of Biafra in Nigeria, perhaps seeing a breakup of the former British colony as an advantage to France’s African interests. The revolt, however, was put down.

De Gaulle began 1969 with a tour through Brittany. He hoped to relight the flame of enthusiasm that previous tours of French regions had brought, but there was little excitement among his audiences. Breton separatists chided him about his remarks in Quebec, shouting they wanted to be free, too.

Returning to Paris, he announced that his much-promised referendum would be held on April 27, a Sunday. From the beginning, it was evident that so many groups had become disaffected with the general that the referendum would prove a hazardous venture. Business was alarmed at the increasingly socialist bent of the government, the proponents of Algérie française would never forgive de Gaulle, and the Jewish community was shocked and frightened by his position on Israel. Three days before the referendum, the general told Michel Debré, “The dice have been rolled. I can do nothing more. I have no more illusions.”[7]

He went on television to appeal for a yes vote, but told viewers that a defeat would make it impossible for him to carry on. “Your reply is going to determine the destiny of France,” he said in a sonorous but aging voice. “If I am disavowed by the majority of you, my present task as chief of state would obviously become impossible [and] I would immediately stop exercising my functions.”

On the weekend of the referendum, de Gaulle went home to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. It rained that Sunday, a cold spring day, and he and Mme de Gaulle bundled up to go to vote at the municipal office. Late that night, Bernard Tricot, the long-serving secretary-general in de Gaulle’s office, phoned with the results. The referendum had been defeated, 53 percent to 47. The general would not have been surprised; he had prepared a resignation statement for just such an eventuality. At ten minutes after midnight, Agence France-Presse carried the bulletin: “I am ceasing to exercise my functions as President of the Republic. The decision takes effect at noon today.”[8]

The fact de Gaulle had been able to hold nearly half of the vote was impressive, considering the wall of opposition that had built up against his policies. There has never been a satisfactory explanation as to why de Gaulle insisted on this fourth referendum. The issues were largely of the general’s own making, and could have been dealt with in other ways. Was de Gaulle acting out an unconscious political death wish? His old contemporaries were all dying off, one by one — Churchill in 1965 and Paul Reynaud in 1956 — and he was not only tired, but lonely.

In the days after the referendum, de Gaulle took only a few visitors at La Boisserie, preferring to spend his time going over his files and planning the next volume of his memoirs, to be called Mémoires d’Espoir. Eighteen days after the vote, he finally left Colombey for an unannounced overseas visit. He and Mme de Gaulle were bound for Ireland for a recovery vacation that would also give the general the opportunity to meet with his distant Celtic relatives, the MacCartans. Landing in Cork, they stayed, in all, at three different resorts, concluding their trip in Dublin.

De Gaulle was received by the president of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, eighty-five years old and blind. They were joined by about thirty of de Gaulle’s “cousins,” who confirmed that he was indeed a descendant of the MacCartans killed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. “I raise my glass to a united Ireland,” de Gaulle said in toasting his relatives and his native country.[9] He had done it again, speaking out on the internal affairs of another country, Ireland having been divided between the independent south and its northern counties, Ulster, that remained part of the United Kingdom. That night, de Gaulle was feted at the French Embassy. By the time the de Gaulles returned to France, the Republic had a new president. Georges Pompidou led the first round ballot on June 1 with 45 percent of the vote and on June 15 he handily beat the centrist candidate, Alain Poher, collecting 58 percent of the vote.

As if unable to settle his feet or his spirits, de Gaulle and his wife soon set out on a second trip, this time to Spain. June found them travelling from the verdant north of Spain to the arid south of a country that de Gaulle had always wanted to see. Finally, it was home to La Boisserie, this time to stay. It was as it was when he was awaiting the call. Silence filled the house and he wandered the grounds, staring at the stars at night, steeped “in the insignificance of things.” He encouraged family visits, and the voices of his son, Philippe, daughter, Elisabeth, their spouses, and children often filled the house.[10]

In August, the de Gaulles took a brief trip through the Vosges, returning to learn on September 1 of the death of another old friend, François Mauriac. His passing saddened the general, Mauriac being one of the two men — the other being André Malraux — whom de Gaulle felt best knew and understood him.

De Gaulle spent a third of each day in his study — where visitors were forbidden to disturb him — and within a year he had finished the next volume of his memoirs, La Renouveau, 1958–1962 (The Renewal). While far less dramatic than his earlier volumes, it quickly sold out its first printing of 750,000 copies when it appeared in October 1970. He had promised one last volume, to consist of seven chapters, but completed only two. He was to have given, in his final chapter, his “personal view on the situation of France, Europe and the world.”[11]

On the morning of November 9, 1970, only thirteen days before his eightieth birthday, de Gaulle rose as usual, put on a dark grey suit, took breakfast, and worked until noon on his memoirs. He and Mme de Gaulle went for a stroll after lunch, having dressed warmly against the cool, windy weather. De Gaulle received his last visitor at 2:30, a young farmer with whom he had exchanged some land. Alone in his study, he wrote a half dozen letters, including one to his son, asking to confirm the cost of land Philippe wished to buy in the south of France. De Gaulle had promised a gift of 400,000 francs to go toward the building of a house. They could work out the details on Philippe’s visit to Colombey at Christmas.

After a quiet supper, de Gaulle went to his study to close the shutters, then moved into the library where Yvonne was at her desk, writing letters. De Gaulle pulled up a chair to the green baize bridge table, picked up a deck of cards and began to play a game of solitaire. He had dealt only a couple of hands when he suddenly put his right hand on his back and cried, “Oh, it hurts here.”[12] As he slumped in his chair, Yvonne and two servants struggled to stop him from slipping off. A doctor was called, while de Gaulle’s driver, Francis Marroux, was summoned from a house opposite La Boisserie. When Dr. Lacheny arrived from the village, he found de Gaulle still breathing, lying on a mattress on the floor. The doctor recorded de Gaulle’s last breath at 7:25 p.m. He concluded he had died of a rupture of the abdominal aorta, the result of an aneurism. A priest rendered the last rites. “He suffered so much these last two years,” Mme de Gaulle remarked. The general had dealt the last hand of his life and perhaps fittingly, he had played it alone.[13]

Mme de Gaulle took charge. The first thing was to call the family. Only then could the news be made public. On hearing of his father-in-law’s death, Alain de Boissieu phoned the Élysée Palace to inform President Pompidou. Philippe de Gaulle left his office at the naval station in Brest, travelled by train to Paris, then by car to Colombey in the morning. At 9:40 a.m., the news agencies broadcast word of de Gaulle’s death. The French Cabinet met and declared November 12 a day of national mourning. President Pompidou went on the air to confirm the general’s death.

Françaises, Français,

Le Général de Gaulle est mort

La France est veuve …

In declaring France a widow, Pompidou was evoking the spirit of a motherland desolate at the loss of its father and mentor. Beginning the next day, a stream of prominent personages made the pilgrimage to La Boisserie. Pompidou arrived in early afternoon and he and Jacques Chaban-Delmas, the premier, spent sixteen minutes in the parlour with de Gaulle’s coffin.

In his will, a copy of which he’d given Pompidou, de Gaulle had insisted on a simple funeral. He was to be buried in the Colombey churchyard beside his daughter Anne. There was to be no national funeral and no speeches were to be made. These dictates were respected, but that did not stop forty thousand people from descending on Colombey on November 12. At four o’clock, twelve young men of the village carried de Gaulle’s white oak coffin to the graveyard beside the church and de Gaulle was laid to rest. A simple pale gravestone read, “Charles de Gaulle 1890–1970.”

France came almost to a stop that day, and the rest of the world paused to take notice. In Paris, the theatres shut down. “All of France has been plunged into mourning,” the Associated Press reported.[14] On the day of the funeral, eighty world leaders, ranging from President Nixon to Soviet premier Kosygin, attended a memorial service at Notre Dame. Cyrus Sulzberger of the New York Times noted in his diary: “I am glad for the old man’s sake that death was swift. He had a horror of the gradual decline. There is a peculiar hollowness in France this afternoon.”[15]

The consecration of de Gaulle to the ages began even before the general had been laid to rest. The illustrated weekly Paris Match published a 150-page memorial edition, “l’Adieu a de Gaulle,” to record that the heart of France had stopped beating. “He had fought with all his strength, fervently, sometimes angrily … caught in the vortex of history.” The Man of June 18 was gone, but the nation that he had transformed would forever bear the imprint of his presence.