Paris (AFP)

Great big cat of the French policy, the former president Jacques Chirac died on Thursday morning at the age of 86, "peacefully" and "among his family, announced to AFP his son-in-law Frédéric Salat-Baroux.

In front of the last Parisian home of Jacques Chirac, 4 rue de Tournon near the Senate, a CRS truck arrived around 12:20 while the street was being blocked on both sides by police. The journalists began to arrive.

A minute of silence was immediately observed in the National Assembly, as well as in the Senate, where the death was announced in session. The industrialist François Pinault, close friend of the couple Chirac, said in a statement of his "infinite sadness".

The President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, responded by saying that "Jacques Chirac is now part of the history of France." "A France in his image: spirited, complex, sometimes crossed by contradictions, always animated by a relentless republican passion", he added, estimating that France had "lost in him a hero of Alexandre Dumas: charming, fighter and much deeper than he wanted to appear. "

The former head of state was one of the big beasts of the French right whose longevity, between brilliant success and beating chess, has demonstrated an exceptional ability to rebound.

The one who did not appear in public for several years was President of the Republic for twelve years (1995-2007), twice Prime Minister, three times mayor of Paris, creator and party leader and minister to repetition.

His Elyos mandates will remain marked by his "no" to the second Iraq war, the end of the military conscription, the recognition of the responsibility of the French state in the Nazi crimes, the passage to the quinquennium, the cry of alarm ("our house burns") in the face of environmental degradation, a first major victory over the absurd road mortality.

Jacques Chirac had managed to conquer the Elysée - dream of a life for this only son - in 1995 after two defeats (1981 and 1988).

In 2007, weakened by a stroke that struck him two years earlier, he must see Nicolas Sarkozy triumph for which he is far from showing the unwavering fervor of his wife Bernadette.

- Popular, but with a damaged image -

"Loss of memory", "absences", deafness: Jacques Chirac will then appear more and more rarely in public.

His last public release dates back to November 2014, at the Musée du Quai-Branly devoted to the first arts, and which bears since his name.

The former president, weakened but smiling, was alongside one of his successors, François Hollande. Ironically, the former leader of the RPR had indicated three years earlier that he was going to vote for the Socialist in the presidential election, against the outgoing Sarkozy.

Particularly popular since he left power, Jacques Chirac had suffered bitter failures. In 1988, dreadfully beaten by François Mitterrand, his wife Bernadette was desperate that "the French do not like (her) husband".

Twelve years later, the dissolution which was to consolidate its majority in the Assembly provoked a humiliating defeat of the right.

It was finally on the legal ground that the political animal had been damaged: protected by the immunity attached to the presidential term, it had been overtaken by the judges after its withdrawal from politics. In 2011, he became the first former head of state sentenced to criminal, two years imprisonment suspended, for a case of fictitious jobs at the City of Paris.

After leaving the Elysée, Jacques Chirac lived in Paris, with his wife Bernadette, in an apartment on the banks of the Seine, loaned by the family of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, one of the friendships woven over the years. He went regularly on holiday in Morocco.

He had two daughters, Laurence, anorexic since his youth died in April 2016, and Claude, who was his communications advisor.

© 2019 AFP