A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (76 page)

Finally, there was the Commander-in-Chief himself. Challe, loyal but increasingly unhappy, who had done his best under impossible circumstances both to prevent bloodshed and keep the army together during “Barricades Week” now wanted only to return to his interrupted task of smashing the A.L.N. But in de Gaulle’s eyes he was the commander who had not been obeyed. The same week order was restored he despatched a rather curt letter to Challe, beginning, “Given how things went in the course of the Algiers affair,” and informing Challe that he now had other plans for him: to succeed General Ely in the coveted top job of the armed forces. Unimpressed, Challe requested another five or six months to finish the job. De Gaulle said he would require him home before that.

In France, relief at the end of the crisis was reflected by the Bourse marking up share prices by ten per cent and more, while the Sorbonne departed from a century and a half of non-involvement in politics with the science faculty sending the head of state a message of confidence. From the inner entourage of the cabinet, Soustelle alone had persisted with his resignation, to become a dangerous adversary of his former idol; but his disaffection had been growing from well before “Barricades Week”, and had more or less been crystallised by the “self-determination” speech of September. There were also other favourable events to distract attention. Hardly were the barricades down than France—as a kind of consolation prize—announced the successful explosion of her first atomic bomb at Reggane in the Sahara, thereby, in de Gaulle’s eyes, securing for her new international regard. Khrushchev graced de Gaulle with an official visit in March; then, in April, de Gaulle was invited on a state visit to London. Orchestrated by that past master of dramatic occasion, Harold Macmillan, it was the most magnificent reception ever accorded a visiting ruler in the post-war era. Huge Crosses of Lorraine, lit by myriad fireworks, illuminated Buckingham Palace; while de Gaulle rose to the occasion with an address of moving grandeur to the Lords and Commons, jointly assembled in Westminster Hall. “What people”, he asked in closing, “know better than France and Great Britain that nothing will save the world if it is not those qualities in which they excel; wisdom and firmness?” The genuine warmth of the tributes paid him in London had its appreciative echoes in the Paris Press. Later that month he was being lionised in Canada and the U.S.A., followed by rapturous welcomes in French Guiana and Martinique on his return voyage. Next, in May, de Gaulle was to host the long vaunted Summit Conference, attended by the mercurial and unpredictable Khrushchev.

When he had received Macmillan at Rambouillet in March, so soon after surmounting the terrible crisis of “the Barricades”, the British leader found him serenely confident. Pointing out that Charles X had abdicated in the very room in which they were talking, and had then gone to England he added—coming as close to light-heartedness as he was ever capable—that: “Louis-Philippe went off in a fiacre—also to England. Napoleon III went to England, too. He paused—and said that he would no doubt be welcomed.” At few times during his presidency, however, did de Gaulle in fact seem more secure and popular than since his unconditional victory over the Algiers insurgents, matched by goodwill flowing to him from the world at large. When, on the night of 24 January, the French army had shown that it would not suppress the barricades by arms, followed by the week of ugly stalemate, it had looked as if France—and Europe with her—stood on the brink of catastrophe. Four events broke the insurrection: the first was the withdrawal from Algiers by Delouvrier and Challe, with its implied threat that at least part of the armed forces might be prepared to face civil war; the second was the inability of Ortiz and the “ultras” to gain any palpable Muslim support; the third was the chance break in the weather and the deluging rain it brought; and the fourth was the impact of de Gaulle’s speech of the 29th. But of all four it was de Gaulle’s voice that proved the most effective. It had looked a dangerously fine-run thing, but once again his timing had been supreme, and when others had lost their nerve he had shown an inspiring example of dignity and leadership. Almost eagerly—with a vast majority of 441 to seventy-five—the Assembly granted him anew “special powers” for a year.

Yet, despite all this, de Gaulle looked a lonelier figure than ever before; for, if “Barricades Week” had proved anything, it was how brittle an instrument was the army—
his
army—on which to rely for the pursuit of peace in Algeria. As C.L. Sulzberger rightly remarked, “there would have been no such desperate Algerian crisis had France’s professional army been truly loyal to the State. Civilian
ultras
alone were helpless and lacking in effective strength.”

There was virtually no senior officer, not even the
grognard
Massu, in whom de Gaulle could have total trust as long as Algeria was at issue. Thus, if for no other reason, the war had to be finished one way or another, and as soon as possible.

If de Gaulle emerged from “Barricades Week” apparently strengthened, its initiators, the diehard
pieds noirs
, were the total net losers. As Challe wrote in 1967: “I still today consider the affair of the Barricades as an imbecile and tragic mistake by the brave people who wanted to keep Algeria for France…and probably it was the critical moment marking the defeat of the policy of
Algérie française
.” Even at the time, however, it was abundantly clear that the only overall beneficiary was the F.L.N., rescued at a moment when its fortunes were close to their nadir. “Barricades Week” revealed to the whole world a fundamental schism in the French camp; while, in its usual masterly fashion, the F.L.N. managed to conceal its rifts, grave as they were. Moreover, it offered the F.L.N. the hope that eventually de Gaulle would be forced to choose between making peace with them or abdicating to rebels within his own army. Meanwhile, to the Muslim admirers of de Gaulle in Algeria, the fact that for a whole week his authority had been flouted represented a grave loss of face. Delouvrier’s emotional speech had been regarded as sign of total weakness: “He flatters everybody, convinces no one…he begs, he implores, he foresees and predicts, he preaches, he preaches…in the desert,” wrote Mouloud Feraoun. On the whole the Muslim reaction during “Barricades Week” had been, he noted, to “remain at home out of prudence as if it were a question of dirty linen belonging to a neighbour…they are awaiting independence amid a disagreeable
status quo
….” But there could be little doubt now that independence must lie at the end of the road, and that end looked closer than it had at the time of de Gaulle’s “self-determination” promise of the previous autumn.

On his first visit to Algeria following the return of order, planned originally for the beginning of February but postponed a month by events, de Gaulle betrayed at once how weak he saw his position
vis-à-vis
the military, despite all the appearances of reinforced strength. Disguised with the code-name of “Green Socrates”, de Gaulle’s three-day itinerary studiously avoided Algiers and devoted itself to the army—becoming a second
tournée des popotes
. To various units across the country he gave these categoric assurances: “There will be no Dien Bien Phu in Algeria. The insurrection will not throw us out of this country. Pacify. There is time. No need to be hustled….” Then, in scathing terms, he dismissed Ferhat Abbas’s call for “independence”, terming it “a monstrosity”, which could signify for the country nothing but “misery, a reduction to beggary [
clochardisation
], catastrophe…. When the Algerians will be able to choose, I do not think they will choose that. France must not leave. She has the right to be in Algeria. She will remain there….” In a different key he drew the army’s attention pointedly to the fact of which it seemed so often unaware, namely: “that France is a world power…. There is not only the Algerian affair. I must consider the whole, France in its entirety, both internally and externally. I am responsible for the whole, and the whole is not just the Algerian affair.” Returning, on the last leg of his trip, to the theme of what the Algerians would choose, he said with conviction: “I believe they will say: an Algerian Algeria bound to France.”

These utterances, particularly the harshness of de Gaulle’s tone towards Ferhat Abbas and his stressing of France’s “right” to remain in Algeria, set up a minor earthquake among his entourage at the Elysée. In Algiers, Delouvrier was equally disturbed. On the face of it, he was going back on “self-determination” and everything he had said since. Enquiring journalists were fed lame interpretations that there was no change of policy, that de Gaulle had merely been expressing himself in language tailored for army consumption. This latest set of apparent self-contradictions was well-summed up by the British cartoonist, Vicky, who depicted de Gaulle standing on his head amid a war-torn Algeria, with the caption: “As I was saying last week….”

“Prince de l’équivoque”

At this point one comes back inevitably to the riddle that was as central to the latter stages of the Algerian war as it was difficult to unravel. To one acute French observer in 1960, de Gaulle and his intentions resembled Molière’s Don Juan who had “promised marriage to five or six women and absolutely had to avoid being pinned down by any one of them”. But on which one had he really set his heart? Did he change his mind? If so, when? Why was he always so ambiguous in declaring his intentions? Whole books have been dedicated to the subject, and still the controversy thrives. To Massu, de Gaulle always “intended to pull out, from the beginning”; to Mendès-France, he was for
Algérie française
, from the beginning; to General Beaufre he “made a formula, then saw it didn’t work”; to Louis Joxe, “he seemed always groping”; to Bernard Tricot, he never believed in integration; to Tournoux, he always hoped he could talk the Muslims out of secession; while Harold Macmillan admits, “I was rather alarmed, at one time, that de Gaulle would try to hold on to Algeria. After our experiences I was certain he couldn’t do so.” Who read the oracle aright?

At the heart of the matter lies the complex personality of the most impenetrable, enigmatic statesman of modern times, and much can only be surmised. In that discerning mixture of affection and antipathy which Harold Macmillan reserves for characterising de Gaulle, he recalls that during the Second World War the most popular code-name for de Gaulle was “Ramrod”, a nickname recalling “the famous definition of a man who was alleged to have all the rigidity of a poker without its occasional warmth”. But, unbending as he might be personally, rigidity was not de Gaulle’s most outstanding defect when it came to dealing with Algeria. It will be remembered how, back in 1944, he had emerged as the “man of Brazzaville”, offering liberal prospects of self-government to the Algerians; yet in 1947, the year of the ill-starred statute, he was declaring: “Whatever happens, France will not abandon Algeria…France, of which Algeria is an integral part, is basically very determined to help all its citizens and to remain the master.” By 1955, when the Algerian revolt was well under way and independence in the offing for Tunisia and Morocco, de Gaulle—at least in his statements—had already travelled some way from his 1947 position. In June he was expounding the view that “No other policy but one which aims at replacing domination by association in French North Africa can be valid or worthy of France.” He later qualified this by explaining. “In the first place, I excluded from the realm of possibility all idea of the assimilation of the Muslims into the French population….”

Then, in the period just before his own accession in 1958, he carefully refrained from commitment to any specific panacea for Algeria.

Of his more dramatic or delphic exegeses, some may deserve speedy recapitulation: