Stalemate in Algiers
Tuesday, 26 January, began on a note of at least negative good news for the government; the army had not crossed the Rubicon, no putsch had started in either Algiers or Paris; there had been no reaction by the Muslims in Algeria, or by the F.L.N. which remained curiously and attentively passive. But Debré reported back from Algiers, thoroughly shaken by what he had seen and heard, and warning that the least false step would lead to formation of a military junta in Algiers. During an emotion-charged tête-à-tête between two old soldiers, de Gaulle, who had just buried his brother, told Marshal Juin: “I am an old man. I too am going to die soon.” Then, before the Marshal could wipe the tears from his eyes, in an abrupt change of tone, de Gaulle declared: “Whatever happens, I cannot give in. I will not give in to a riot…. If I did, I should be nothing more than a marionette and within a fortnight I would have a new uprising, a new ultimatum on my shoulders.” Before the end of the day, both Debré and Guillaumat, the Minister of Defence, had joined Soustelle in offering their resignations—and had them brusquely rejected. De Gaulle also refused to accede to pressure to advance the date of a television address he was to make to the nation, already fixed for Friday, 29 January. Even the loyal courtier, Bernard Tricot, admits that at the time he felt de Gaulle’s intransigence was due more to “pride than to careful calculation”. The whole entourage was in despair at what seemed like de Gaulle’s withdrawal from reality. Yet, in fact, events were to prove that it was de Gaulle who was instinctively, and accurately, in touch with the mood of France. With the passing of each successive day of the crisis, it became evident that public opinion—from Left to Right—was setting solidly behind de Gaulle, solidly against the Algiers insurgents and their dissident allies in the army.
By the 27th, realisation of this vital fact began to dawn upon the colonels in Algiers, with the more radical among them, such as Argoud, assessing that they had now missed the boat in not launching a full-scale putsch during the first hours of the barricades. There had been gestures of solidarity with the insurgents in other centres, such as Oran, where barricades had also been erected, largely distinguished by the entertainment of a famous clown, Achille Zavatta, who happened to be in the city at the time; but all had swiftly crumbled. Bored with the discomfort, indiscipline and empty rodomontades behind Ortiz’s barricades, some of his forces had already begun to fritter away, while the civilian population was also getting fed up with the inconvenience of closed shops and uncleared garbage. Lagaillarde, always in his para’s “leopard” battle-denims and red beret, continued to maintain strict military discipline in his camp; “passes” had to be applied for by “troops” wishing to sleep out in the town; “courts martial” were held, and one actually passed a mock death-sentence on a badly frightened journalist. It was also Lagaillarde who, on the 27th, pulled off a minor coup by liberating from prison Philippe Castille and three accomplices serving sentences for the affaire du bazooka of three years previously. Confidently he declared to the Press: “The Third Republic was born at Sedan and died at Sedan. The Fourth was born in Algiers and died in Algiers. The Fifth is born in Algiers.” But still there was no news that a single senior officer, let alone unit, of the army in France or Germany had come out in support of the insurgents. Headed by Argoud, as always the most articulate, the “soviet of Colonels” now made an ultimate bid, in the presence of Delouvrier, to persuade Challe to join their cause, to force de Gaulle to conform or go.
Delouvrier and Challe withdraw
The thinly veiled threat that he and the Commander-in-Chief might soon find themselves little better than prisoners in their own headquarters helped decide Delouvrier to take a dramatic step: to leave Algiers, together with Challe. At first Challe demurred, on the grounds that it would look like desertion, but later the hitherto extraordinarily close partnership that they had enjoyed reasserted itself, and he agreed. On Wednesday 22 January, Challe broadcast a radio address aimed at the disaffected elements of the army, in which he declared emphatically that “it will continue to fight for Algeria to remain definitively French, otherwise there can be no sense in its struggle…. I repeat: the French army is fighting in order that Algeria shall remain definitively French.” Coming from someone with Challe’s reputation for integrity, the words carried considerable weight among the large majority of French officers; they were never disclaimed by de Gaulle, and the fact that Challe was permitted to utter what was later, in his eyes, revealed to be a lie would have a vital influence on his own conduct the following year.
After four gruelling days of unremitting crisis, with which he was not designed to cope either by disposition or by his training as a technocrat, Delouvrier was near the end of this tether. Late that night he sat down and drafted a highly emotional, and what afterwards seemed a faintly ridiculous, speech, which he taped and left to be broadcast after he and Challe had slipped discreetly out of Algiers the following day. He was leaving behind as hostages, he declared, his wife and son of a few weeks, Mathieu, in the hopes that he would “grow up a symbol of Algeria’s indestructible attachment to France”. Pointing out the folly of the insurrection, he warned the rebels: “In rejecting de Gaulle, you will sink yourselves, you will sink the army and France as well.” But if they would only see sense, said Delouvrier, deferentially describing Lagaillarde’s stronghold as the “Alcazar of the University”, he would go there and shake Lagaillarde and Ortiz by the hand: “Then, together we shall all go to the monument aux morts to pray and weep for the dead of Sunday, dead in the faith that Algeria should remain French and that Algeria should obey de Gaulle….” That day, Thursday the 28th, travelling incognito in a black Citroën, he left Algiers to set up headquarters with Challe at a modest air force base in Reghaia, some twenty miles east of the city.
The turning point: de Gaulle speaks
In Paris de Gaulle was infuriated by the speech and Delouvrier’s offer to shake the rebel leaders by the hand; as with those before him, it looked as if Algiers had “gone to the head” of Delouvrier. But, in fact, the speech and the news that the “authorities” had withdrawn from Algiers together produced an unexpectedly powerful effect on the insurgents, and were to mark a turning-point in “Barricades Week”. The insurgents were dumbfounded by the inexplicable withdrawal, which reminded some disquietingly of the tactics of the Soviet army during the Budapest uprising, reculant pour mieux sauter, then returning to smash ruthlessly the surprised freedom fighters. More of the pied noir militiamen began to disappear from Ortiz’s barricades. In Algiers the wind had changed in more ways than one; on Friday the 29th the skies darkened and rain started to patter down on the over-heated citizenry.
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 th
e 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.
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