A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (61 page)

Coty intervenes: de Gaulle accepts

On the night of the 28th a fresh constitutional impasse arose at a meeting convened in the Elysée by President Coty between de Gaulle and the presidents of the Senate and the Assembly. Le Troquer, President of the Assembly, raised a number of constitutional objections to de Gaulle and his terms, some of them seemingly trivial, made a few unfortunate parallels with Vichy and threatened to attempt to form a government himself. De Gaulle riposted that, if the Assembly backed Le Troquer, then “I shall have no alternative but to let you have it out with the paratroops, while I go back into retirement and shut myself up with my grief.” In what seems to have been a moment of genuine despair, de Gaulle with tears in his eyes turned to Gaston Monnerville, the Antillean President of the Senate: “Is the return of de Gaulle possible? Is it not possible? After all, you know, France will bury us all. We pass. She alone is eternal. If my return is not possible, I shall go back to my village with my chagrin.” The meeting broke up without conclusion. Meanwhile, a fresh ultimatum had reached President Coty from Algiers; either it was de Gaulle by 15.00 hours on the 29th, or “Résurrection” would go in at 01.00 hours the following morning. After a sleepless night and feeling the full burden of his seventy-six years, the President, “this good old Frenchman”, as de Gaulle described him, took a decision of immense courage which was finally to break the log-jam. On the morning of the 29th he announced that he had himself invited de Gaulle to form a government and that if this were rejected by the Assembly he would resign. It was the first time since 1875 that a President of the Republic had threatened resignation, and the significance of it was immense. The President’s announcement “tolled the knell”, says de Gaulle, and it was heard in complete silence by the Assembly. On the 30th de Gaulle agreed to form a government, and—as in the final stages of a painful divorce—a long sigh of relief swept over France—or most of it. That evening, says de Gaulle, “above my house I watched the twilight descend on the last evening of a long solitude. What was this mysterious force that compelled me to tear myself away from it?”

1 June: the Assembly accepts

On Sunday 1 June de Gaulle presented himself to the National Assembly, the first time he had entered it since January 1946. The terms he announced for taking over were: full powers to rule by decree for six months, an enforced “holiday” of the Assembly for four months, and a mandate to submit a new constitution to the country. When the Coty communication was read out, pandemonium reigned; the Communists thumped their desks and shouted, “
Le fascisme ne passera pas!
” For Algeria, the prime cause of his being there that day, de Gaulle proffered no formula—any more than he had done in his previous pronouncements since 13 May. Seated in symbolic solitude on the empty front benches, he was voted into power by 329 to 224 votes. With equal symbolism, a black and violent storm broke out while the vote was in progress. De Gaulle was manifestly disappointed at being unable to obtain a greater show of unanimity from his countrymen’s representatives. Also disappointed were Lagaillarde and the several hundred “volunteers” from Algiers hovering in the bistros near the government quarter, and momently awaiting orders to move in; they would be still more disappointed when the list of de Gaulle’s first cabinet members was released. As de Gaulle left the Assembly and got into his car he seemed to be completely unaware of the rain that was sheeting down. The Gaullist era had begun.

[
1
] It resembled in more ways than one the Ulster Defence Force.

[
2
] On his secret insurrectionary mission to France to prepare for the para landings in May 1958, it was “Baudin” that Lagaillarde chose as his pseudonym.

[
3
] When asked by the author why he had left Algiers before de Gaulle came to power, Lacoste explained, “I didn’t want to leave in disorder, like Soustelle—so I thought it was much better to go in discretion, and not submit enflamed Algeria to another tearing-apart demonstration like that one…. So, I went quietly—no flags—no music. I left my wife behind to give the impression that I would come back; though I had decided, once and for all, to leave.”

[
4
] Soustelle, who says he was in Salan’s office when Dulac returned to render an account of his meeting with de Gaulle, claims that (quoting Dulac) de Gaulle had added “If I do not succeed,
alors faites le nécessaire
.” Soustelle took this to mean that de Gaulle favoured a military take-over if all else failed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“
Je Vous Ai Compris
”:
May–December 1958

The leader must aim high, see big, judge widely, thus setting himself apart from the ordinary people who debate in narrow confines.

Charles de Gaulle, 1932

De Gaulle to Algeria: the “True Cross of Lorraine
”

THUS ended the series of disjointed incidents, accidents and coincidences which comprised the “revolution” of May 1958. De Gaulle had let the country go to the very edge of the abyss and gaze down on the ultimate catastrophe of civil war before putting out a hand to pull it back. Yet what at the time looked like hesitation and procrastination carried to dangerous lengths must now seem like a hand played with consummate skill. By waiting, de Gaulle had come back vested, first of all, in an acceptable degree of legitimacy; and secondly, he had not come back as the army’s man. If it were not for these two factors, it can be doubted whether the Algerian war could have ended without civil war in France.

Nevertheless, those May events in Algiers that led to his coming created illusions sufficient to endanger greatly the immediate path ahead for de Gaulle. On the one hand, Lagaillarde and the more excitable leaders of the
pieds noirs
were left with the dangerously heady conviction that it was their actions that had brought the Fourth Republic tumbling; just as the “ultras” had defeated Blum-Viollette in 1936, sabotaged the statute of 1947, and forced Mollet to withdraw Catroux in 1956. “We were the springboard de Gaulle used to save France,” they said, “and so henceforth he will dance to our tune.” On the other hand, the army leaders in Algeria had just the same feeling; as one of Lartéguy’s para officers remarks in
Les Prétoriens
, it was the first time “that we have won not a battle, but a multitude. We shan’t be able to forget it.” They did not.

Now that the ball was over, it would be difficult for both
pieds noirs
and the army to come down to reality. The trouble was that each separate faction let itself wallow in the hopes that de Gaulle would be all things to all men. In the cynical words of Georges Bidault, everybody from Right to Left, from the army to Bourguiba and even the F.L.N., felt in the first heady weeks of June that they each possessed “a piece of the True Cross of Lorraine”. In his enigmatic utterances the saviour did little to dispel such tenets, so that the eventual disillusion would be all the greater. Critics and adversaries of de Gaulle could—with reason—accuse him of every manner of
volte-face
in his handling of Algeria, but with their eyes blinkered by the immediacy of the war itself they were unable to see on what de Gaulle’s gaze was fixed. From his great height the eyes quested far over the heads of lesser humans to the peaks of a distant promised land. If there was one thing in the pursuit of which he was unwavering all through his life, it was the
grandeur de la France
, dreamed of in those solitary years in the wilderness. In the long term nothing else mattered, or would be allowed to stand in its way, and this should be retained in the mind as a key to all the enigma of his subsequent actions. He would achieve his dream; even though in the course of it Algeria would be lost, had to be lost. Hand in hand with this conviction of
la grandeur
went a certainty that destiny had earmarked him to rediscover it for France.

Visiting de Gaulle in Paris in June shortly after his investiture, Prime Minister Macmillan recorded: “His manner is calm, affable, and rather paternal. But underneath this new exterior, I should judge that he is just as obstinate as ever.” Few would suffer from this obstinacy more than Macmillan himself. And de Gaulle was sixty-seven, having already completed more than the work of one lifetime, and with such notable attributes of age as a nagging awareness of the brevity of time. Also, to the majority of his countrymen, especially those in Algeria, as Tournoux remarks: “The best known of Frenchmen remained the least known…a monolith of indecipherable hieroglyphs”. Thus a sense of destiny, paternalism, obstinacy, courage, enigma, an inherent shortage of sympathy for the predicament of the
pieds noirs
, the impatience of age: these were the qualifications de Gaulle took with him on his first trip to Algeria on 4 June.

As de Gaulle arrived in his special Caravelle, the sky, recalls Lartéguy, was of “that evangelic blue depicted on certain pious faces”. But in that blue there were already clouds apparent. Those on the Committee of Public Safety who had brought about the advent of de Gaulle were not happy with his first cabinet list; there seemed to be too much concession to the Left (Guy Mollet had been appointed vice-premier); there were too many little-known functionaries among the new ministers (of the activists of May only Michel Debré, made Minister of Justice, had been rewarded). The faithful Delbecque received no post, having offended by openly criticising the first choices, while even Soustelle, as too-dedicated an apostle of
Algérie française
, had been appointed nothing more than “Minister-Delegate” (or “Minister-Relegate”, as the punsters muttered). An angry altercation took place after the hotheads of the C.S.P., Martel and Ortiz, had the temerity to imprison briefly two of de Gaulle’s accompanying ministers while he spoke from the Gouvernement-Général—a barely disguised hint at the limitations of de Gaulle’s power. Then, shortly after 7 p.m., wearing the uniform of a brigadier-general but bare-headed, de Gaulle appeared on the balcony where his name had been so frequently and fervently invoked during the preceding May days. Among the vast, expectant crowd were many Muslims; but behind their impassive, weatherbeaten, unsmiling faces it was as difficult to decipher what was really in their minds as it had been during those euphoric moments of fraternisation in May. Introducing de Gaulle, Salan—showing rare signs of emotion—declared, “Our great cry of joy and hope has been heard!” For a full three minutes de Gaulle was unable to make himself heard. Now followed the opening sentence that was to be repeated, interpreted and misinterpreted over the ensuing years; stretching his long arms in a vast V-sign above his head, he pronounced:

“Je vous ai compris …!”

“Vive l’Algérie française!”

The crowd went wild. Men as well as women wept; Muslims gesticulated with V-signs. In this one phrase de Gaulle had touched the hearts of the
pieds noirs
and established a remarkable harmony with the multitude in the Forum. It may also have saved his life; for there is a story that in an apartment building facing the “G-G” was an expert marksman and an unrepentant Pétainist belonging to a splinter-group of “ultras” who were convinced of de Gaulle’s intention to abandon Algeria. His telescopic sights were aimed on de Gaulle in the first of some thirty assassination attempts. But when he heard the magic words, the would-be assassin leant his rifle up against the wall, listened to the rest of the speech, and finally abandoned his attempt. De Gaulle continued:

I know what has occurred here. I see what you have sought to accomplish. I see that the road you have opened in Algeria is that of renewal and fraternity.

I say renewal in every respect. But, very rightly, you wanted to begin at the beginning; that is, with our institutions; and that is why I am here.

I say fraternity, for you will provide the magnificent example of men who … share in the same ardour and live hand in hand.

Well then, of this I have taken cognisance in the name of France! And I declare that from this day forward, France considers that in the whole of Algeria there is only one category of inhabitants, that there are only Frenchmen in the full sense [
à part entière
], with the same rights and the same duties.

After paying tribute to the “disciplined” French army, he concluded with an appeal to “those who, through despair,” had joined the F.L.N.: “I, de Gaulle, open to them the doors of reconciliation. Never more than here, nor more than this evening, have I felt how beautiful, how great, how generous is France! Long live the Republic. Long live France!”

Those looking for it noted that, despite all the oblique references to “integration”, de Gaulle had specifically neglected to proclaim: “
Vive l’Algérie française!
” But the triumphal tour continued, embracing all the country’s major centres. At Oran on the 6th Captain Pierre Sergent of the Foreign Legion watched with “heart-beating pride” as the Caravelle flew in, with its escort of Mistral fighters in V-formation. There de Gaulle declared, in what seemed like more explicit terms: “Yes, France is here, with her vocation. She is here forever.” That same day, to a vast crowd in the nearby port of Mostaganem, and seemingly carried away by the infectious mood that fed upon itself, in his last address de Gaulle uttered the longed-for words, for the first and the last time:
Vive l’Algérie française! Vive la République!
”