A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (75 page)

That night, at eight o’clock, de Gaulle made his long-awaited television appearance. With deliberate effect, he was dressed in the uniform with its two stars, familiar to so many of the army whom it had inspired two decades previously; the face was strained but determined, the fists clenched. With measured gravity he began: “If I have put on my uniform today to address you on television, it is in order to show that it is General de Gaulle who speaks, as well as the Head of State.” He first of all firmly repeated his September decision: “the Algerians shall have free choice of their destiny”. When peace comes,

This will not be dictated to them. For if their response were not really
their
response, then while for a time there might well be military victory, basically nothing would be settled. On the contrary, everything can be settled and, I believe, settled in France’s favour, when the Algerians have had an opportunity to make known their will in all freedom, dignity and security. In short, self-determination is the only policy that is worthy of France. It is the only possible outcome.

Condemning the Algiers insurgents as “aided in the beginning by the accommodating uncertainty of various military elements, and profiting from the fears and feverish passions stirred up by agitators”, he endeavoured to allay the fears of the
pied noirs
, raising his voice in passion: “Frenchmen of Algeria, how can you listen to the liars and the conspirators who tell you that in granting a free choice to the Algerians, France and de Gaulle want to abandon you, to pull out of Algeria and hand it over to the rebellion?” Nothing would bring him greater joy, he added with persuasive eloquence, than if the Muslims would choose from the three options offered them “the one that would be the most French”—but just what did he mean?

Next he turned to the army, for whose benefit he had donned his own uniform that night, speaking in the most severely paternal terms:

What would the French army become but an anarchic and absurd conglomeration of military feudalisms, if it should happen that certain elements made their loyalty conditional? As you know, I have the supreme responsibility. It is I who bear the country’s destiny. I must therefore be obeyed…. This having been said, listen to me carefully…no soldier, under penalty of being guilty of a serious offence, may associate himself at any time, even passively, with the insurrection. In the last analysis, law and order must be re-established…your duty is to bring this about. I have given, and am giving, this order.

After a loaded pause, de Gaulle’s harsh tone gave way to a note of imploring appeal: “Finally, I speak to France. Well, my dear country, my old country, here we are together, once again, facing a harsh test.” If he, de Gaulle, were to yield to “the guilty ones, who dream of being usurpers”, then France “would become but a poor broken toy adrift on the sea of hazard”.

It was one of de Gaulle’s finest speeches, a performance of hypnotic wizardry.[
3
] The impact on Frenchmen of all walks of life throughout France was nothing short of magical. Nothing new had been said, not a single concession offered; yet it was as if, after an appallingly long week of perplexity and the nightmare of civil war, or fascism, here was the catharsis, the clear call to duty, that all Frenchmen had unknowingly been waiting for. Once again de Gaulle had got his timing superbly right. Within minutes of his ending, telegrams and messages of endorsement flowed in by the thousand to the Elysée; in Algeria, the first quarter of an hour brought Delouvrier forty declarations of loyalty from army units, including one from a Dragoon colonel offering to place his tanks at the immediate disposal of the authorities to crush the insurrection. As the Chartists had been turned back from marching on the House of Commons by rain, so too the weather in Algiers now reinforced de Gaulle’s cause. On the barricades his speech was heard during a thunderstorm, which, says de Gaulle, “seemed symbolic”. Nothing is more miserable than Algiers under wintry rain, and now the skies opened to deluge the wretched insurgents with cataracts of icy water; huddled sodden under umbrellas or raincoats stretched out to make a tent, crouched in doorways or under trees, they listened to de Gaulle in a wet misery of defeat. “I watched men and women break down and cry with impotent rage,” records Edward Behr. In the Elysée, Bernard Tricot murmured to himself: “
C’est gagné
.”

Rain and despair on the barricades

It was won, though the barricades dragged on through another forty-eight hours. Morale slumped as the rain continued to lash down. Men of the 25th Para division, in from the
bled
and less sympathetic towards the “ultras”, began to replace Dufour’s and Broizat’s regiments of the 10th. The fraternisation ended, contacts were slowly cut between the insurgents and their food-bearing kindred as the new troops placed their own tight cordon round them. Grim and frightened faces peered out over the barricades, which now more than ever seemed to symbolise the isolation from the rest of the world of the “ultras”, men with little henceforth left to defend. Captain Sergent of Dufour’s 1st R.E.P. was implored by a distraught
pied noir
woman: “You’re not going to attack them, are you? They’ve done nothing wrong. They want to remain French. That’s all….” Sergent remained one of the minority of French officers to be less moved by de Gaulle’s address than by “the pathetic tone of these simple and sincere people”. He told his colonel that he was ready to cross the barricade with his whole company, but Dufour dissuaded him brusquely: “You don’t understand anything about revolutionary war. We’ve won some points. This phase is finished….”

For such army dissidents as Sergent (and Colonel Dufour himself), there would be other “phases” to come. In Paris, the half-forgotten General Salan was called to Debré’s office the day after de Gaulle’s speech. Earlier he had offered to lead a conciliatory mission to Algiers, but without response. He was now told curtly to abstain from any intervention, receiving the hint that his own retirement from the active list was not far off.

Inside the headquarters of Ortiz and Lagaillarde an atmosphere resembling the Twilight of the Gods prevailed on 30 January. A last bitter, reproachful encounter took place between the two leaders; Ortiz, utterly exhausted and in tears, accusing the army of betrayal and Lagaillarde of being a maniac; Lagaillarde, contemptuous of Ortiz—“that dish-wipe”—and declaring that whatever Ortiz did he himself would never surrender. The university laboratories were full of explosive chemicals, and he would blow up the whole quarter and himself with it, rather than submit in shame. The last hours of the barricades revolved around a Lagaillarde preoccupied by medieval considerations of honour; the fate of the
pied noirs
in Algeria for whom, ostensibly, the barricades had risen, was largely forgotten. Meanwhile, in Paris de Gaulle was seething at Delouvrier’s apparent sloth to end matters. On the telephone that evening, he decreed: “The time for discussion is over, Delouvrier. One must not be afraid to cause bloodshed if one wants order to reign and the state to survive.”

Ortiz decamps: Lagaillarde marches out

The following day, Sunday a week after the tragic fusillade, journalists observed an army chaplain dispensing Holy Communion to the insurgents from a makeshift altar made of
pavé
blocks. That same day a bomb, prematurely blowing up and killing its F.L.N. carrier, provoked an alarm that Lagaillarde was carrying out his threat. Meanwhile, Delouvrier was using Colonel Dufour—the officer most respected by Lagaillarde, the ex-para—to “negotiate terms”. By that night a most remarkable “deal” had been concluded. Lagaillarde’s men would be permitted to march out of their “Alcazar” as “soldiers”, bearing arms, and would be accorded full honours by Dufour’s 1st R.E.P. But they would not be allowed to march through the town; instead, they would be loaded into trucks and transported inconspicuously out to the R.E.P. base at Zéralda, where those who so wished could opt to join a unit attached to the Foreign Legion and fighting with them out in the
bled
.[
4
] There would be a free pardon for all—except the leaders of the insurrection. These were to surrender themselves to French justice.

By Monday morning, 1 February, Ortiz had vanished, never to be seen in Algiers again. But at midday Lagaillarde marched out of the “Alcazar”, with flags flying and in full military order. In a brief farewell to his supporters he said, “
Ne regrettez rien
. You can’t win them all—but a man is never vanquished when he retains deep within himself the will to fight.” He embraced his father, who was in U.T. uniform, and was then flown off to the Santé prison. Alain de Sérigny, who later joined him there on account of the support his
Écho d’Alger
had given the insurgents, declares perhaps extravagantly: “If there was one man in this sinister affair, it was he, and if there was any grandeur, it was on his side.”

At the very moment Lagaillarde was surrendering, a coldly furious de Gaulle was on the telephone to Delouvrier, accusing him of “showing too much indulgence. Finish it off for me, and quickly.”

“
Mon général
, I have been able, up to now, to avoid bloodshed…. Please continue to have confidence in me….”

In the middle of the conversation an aide came into Delouvrier’s office with the news of Lagaillarde’s surrender. After he had relayed this, de Gaulle’s only comment was: “
Merci
, Delouvrier.”

That evening he received the German Ambassador with the words: “We have just lived through a somewhat disturbed week. Now, let’s look at the problems of Europe.”

[
1
] One of the more curious and less easily explained sidelights of the Algerian war was the presence in its more violent aspects, on both sides, of so many from a profession dedicated to the saving of human life.

[
2
] It was ten days later, on 3 February, that he made his “Winds of Change” speech in Cape Town.

[
3
] Watching the speech on the television set of a Paris bistro, I vividly recall how tears were brought to the eyes of most of those in the room, including cynical foreign journalists, when de Gaulle uttered those words of semi-mystical communion, “
Eh bien, mon cher et vieux pays, nous voici donc ensemble, encore une fois
….” I do not remember any fighting, wartime broadcast of Churchill having a greater effect.

[
4
] Called the “Alcazar Commando”, the unit, some 120 strong, operated on active service for a few weeks, then was quietly disbanded.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“This Prince of Ambiguity”

Where will he lead us, this prince of ambiguity?

Robert Buron, 10 March 1960

The morning after

ON the day of Lagaillarde’s march-out the centre of Algiers resembled an abandoned battlefield. The streets, stripped of
pavé
, were cluttered with the debris of war. Everywhere lay jettisoned weapons and cartridge belts, discarded uniforms and mess-tins. From the first cafés that opened their shutters, the cheerfully martial airs of
Colonel Bogey
seemed singularly inappropriate to the grim feeling of hangover and defeat that weighed on the European quarters of the city. For the first time the will of Algiers had been defeated by that of Paris. The future looked obscure, if not without hope. With remarkable speed army pioneers got to work, bulldozing the barricades, replacing the
pavé
and covering it with a thick, prophylactic layer of bitumen—as Paris had done after her “troubles” in the nineteenth century. The normality of life returned swiftly, but superficially; beneath remained a deep and unassuageable bitterness.

One by one the principal actors of “Barricades Week” disappeared from the Algiers scene. Lagaillarde, Ortiz, Susini, Martel, Sérigny, Dr Pérez and Dr Lefèvre were all either in hiding or under lock and key, awaiting trial.[
1
] In a second purging of the military de Gaulle sent home three generals—Faure, Mirambeau and Gracieux—and Colonels Broizat, Argoud and Godard. The last, the most experienced of the senior officers of Algiers, left angrily, protesting his loyalty to Challe and Delouvrier (though not, pointedly, to the head of state). His and Gardes’ Cinquième Bureau was closed down; the Territorial Units (U.T.) disarmed and disbanded, their members made subject to military call-up. One seemingly curious omission from the list of
limogeages
was Colonel Dufour of the 1st R.E.P., perhaps the most effectually dissident of the “soviet of Colonels” during “Barricades Week”. Dufour was no doubt “reprieved” on account of his successful arbitration with Lagaillarde; nevertheless, in the ensuing months he was twice to be found at the centre of conspiracies against de Gaulle. Meanwhile, he led his Legionnaires back to the
djebel
and the war for which they all felt better equipped than the “dirty work” in Algiers—though with little enough heart for it any more.