# Charles de Gaulle **Born 22 November 1890 in Lille; died 9 November 1970 at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises.** The author of the constitution France still lives under, and the reason the French presidency is the office it is. De Gaulle is in this vault for three reasons, none of them Second World War hagiography. ## 1. He is the counter-case to Pétain In June 1940 two career French officers looked at the same defeat and chose opposite things. [[Philippe Pétain]] — de Gaulle's own former patron — signed the armistice and built [[Vichy France]]. De Gaulle flew to London and broadcast the **Appel du 18 juin**, was condemned to death in absentia, and spent four years insisting that a government-in-exile with almost nothing behind it was the legitimate France. **The two men had nearly identical formation and made opposite choices, which is precisely why the comparison is useful.** Collaboration was not the only option available to a French conservative nationalist in 1940. Somebody demonstrated that in real time. ## 2. He built the executive that now transmits the crisis The [[Algerian War]] destroyed the Fourth Republic. In May 1958, with settlers and army officers in revolt in Algiers and a paratroop landing on Corsica, the National Assembly handed de Gaulle emergency powers and a mandate to write a new constitution. The [[French Fifth Republic]] was the result: a president with genuine executive authority, emergency powers under Article 16, and — after the referendum of 1962 — direct election by universal suffrage. He then used it to do the thing the men who installed him had least expected, granting Algerian independence at Évian in March 1962. The OAS tried repeatedly to kill him for it; the **Petit-Clamart ambush of 22 August 1962** came closest. The institutional irony is now the operative fact of French politics: **the strong presidency built to survive an insurrection is the single prize that makes the current far right's project achievable in one election.** ## 3. Sovereigntism before it had a name De Gaulle withdrew France from NATO's integrated military command in 1966 while remaining in the alliance, built an independent nuclear *force de frappe*, vetoed British entry to the Common Market twice (1963 and 1967), and treated European construction as a *Europe des patries* — a Europe of nations, never a federation. That package — alliance without integration, nuclear autonomy, cooperation without supranational authority — is the direct ancestor of every contemporary sovereigntist argument in Europe, and it is invoked by people on both sides of the French divide. The [[National Rally]] claims his legacy on Europe and NATO while descending organizationally from the men who tried to assassinate him over Algeria; the centre-right claims it on institutions. **Gaullism is the most contested inheritance in French politics precisely because it is the only one everybody wants.** ## The End May 1968 shook him badly — he left the country briefly to secure the army's loyalty at Baden-Baden before dissolving the Assembly and winning a landslide. He then staked his office on a referendum on regional reform and the Senate, lost it on **27 April 1969**, and resigned the next day. He died eighteen months later. **He is one of the very few twentieth-century leaders with that much accumulated authority who left because a vote said so.** In a folder about institutional erosion, that is worth recording plainly. ## See Also - [[Philippe Pétain]] · [[Vichy France]] · [[World War II]] - [[Algerian War]] · [[French Fifth Republic]] · [[Jean-Marie Le Pen]] - [[NATO]] · [[European Union]] · [[National Rally]] - [[French History Hub]]