De Gaulle: in the shadow of a giant (part 2)

November 9, 2020 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of General de Gaulle.

From the close-knit team that he formed with his wife Yvonne, to his intimate dramas, through his sometimes playful personality, in this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars offers you offers to discover the man behind the myth.  

The three women in the general's life

Behind the hero, the soldier and the head of state, there is a man, a son, a husband and a father who has always protected his intimate and family life.

Before his wife Yvonne, another woman had a great influence on him.

This is his mother, Jeanne Maillot, who died a month after the appeal on June 18.

After this historic message broadcast from London, the name of his son was censored by many newspapers in France ... But at his funeral, near Rennes, the church was full.

We knew who she was: a patriot.

She was 79 years old and had been a widow for seven years.

From her own parents, she had learned, at the age of 10, the humiliation of a defeat and a capitulation, that of 1870, in the trap of Sedan ...  

Having become a mother of five children, she asks them to pray every evening for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France.

In this small woman, frail in appearance but of great courage, patriotism and Catholicism are inseparable.

In 1918, his four sons emerge alive from the appalling cataclysm of the First World War.

A few hours after the call of June 18, 1940, the priest of his Breton village told him that he heard the message from a French general, on the microphone of the English radio.

He does not know who this officer calling for the Resistance is.

She replies: "But Monsieur le Curé, I know him, this general! He's my son!"

Yvonne, whom many French people will nickname "Aunt Yvonne" when her husband becomes President of the Republic, is the archetype of discretion.

Her marriage to Charles de Gaulle is said to be "arranged" as is still sometimes done in the twentieth century.

Gaston Bonheur, who was one of the directors of Paris-Match, recounted the scene of the meeting, in 1920, between the officer of 1 meter 93 and the young Yvonne Vendroux, 1 meter 58, around a tea: "She was with her parents. De Gaulle, all embarrassed by his tall stature, held his cap, gloves, toast and cup on his knees. What was bound to happen happened: he spilled his tea on the young lady's dress. "

A bad start?

On the contrary !

To her parents, Yvonne declares: "It will be him or no one".

They were married five months later, on April 6, 1921. If the couple, in the eyes of the world, seemed physically unbalanced, "they liked each other from the start because, one like the other, they took it upon themselves. as they were "writes journalist Mariana Grépinet in a recent and magnificent special issue of Paris-Match, edited by Patrick Mahé.

And the great reporter Georges Menant, in November 1970, after the death of the general, to recall, in the same weekly, that this couple: "Before becoming anything, the de Gaulle would always be, she in the roundness, him in its stiffness, genuine people. "

To his wife, the general had written: "My dear dear little wife, and also my friend, my so brave and so good companion through a life which is a torment. Well supported on the other physically and morally, we will go very far out on the sea and in life for better or for worse. "

The de Gaulle take responsibility, but with modesty.

We know that their private drama was their third child, their daughter Anne, born in 1928. "She was not like the others".

For Anne, with Down's syndrome, writes Denis Tillinac, in his fascinating Dictionary of the General's Lovers "the general will mobilize the resources of his tenderness without exhausting them".

Yvonne speaks of "little Anne", her father of "poor little Anne" for whom he invents refrains that make her smile.

And he takes her on his knees, for example on the beach of Bénodet, in Brittany, in 1933. Anne is 5 years old.

She listens to her father in a folding, costumed, which has kept his hat on the brim up on the beach.

He sings… She is facing him.

She almost looks cheerful.

Of this touching scene, we have preserved a photo which sums up the drama lived with infinite kindness. 

At 20, Anne, so beloved, died in the arms of the general, carried away by a double pneumonia.

Before walking away from the tomb where his daughter's coffin has just been lowered, Charles de Gaulle places his hand on his wife's arm, frozen with pain and sorrow.

And he has this beautiful word: "Don't cry… Come on, Yvonne, now she's like the others…"

The general and the women 

De Gaulle has often been accused of anti-feminism.

It has also been suggested that he would have had affairs before his marriage, like Marshal Pétain, who was his mentor in the early twenties.

Nothing unusual about that, but no proof has ever been provided.

Later, when some spoke of penknives in the marital contract, Yvonne replied, jokingly: "He wouldn't have time!"

In France, the left-wing parties, despite being in favor of female emancipation, have long opposed the right to vote for women because they fear that they will only vote for those who defend conservative positions.

And, in fact, this was often the case until the Second World War, even if by 1936, several women sat in the government of the Popular Front.

It should therefore be remembered that in France, on April 21, 1944, General de Gaulle, head of Free France, decided that French women were henceforth voters and eligible.

He thus recognizes the essential role they played in the Resistance.

The French women vote for the first time a year later, on April 29, 1945, in municipal elections.

In the mid-1970s, women conquered the fullness of their political rights in almost every country in the world. 

French women owe de Gaulle another right that must not be forgotten: the pill.

It's Yvonne, torn between tradition and modernity, who pushes her husband to say yes to contraception.

The project was then carried by the one who was Minister of Health in 1967: Lucien Neuwirth.

For a man of the general's generation (he was 77 at the time) and his family and social background, questions of sexuality are a source of unease.

It's simple: we don't talk about it.

Nevertheless, by state duty, the president accepts what his private morality condemns.

One might think that it was the fate of little Anne that changed the opinion of this couple of fervent Catholics ... 

It is likely that Mme de Gaulle, a priori distant from the generation of young girls of the twist and yé-yé, was discreetly informed and was upset when she learned of the tragedies of illegal abortions.

It is said that the general would have been surprised if the pill was reimbursed.

He would have grumbled: "So, are we going to reimburse the trifle?"

Eight years later, Giscard and Chirac impose the Veil law, against the opinion of part of their electorate.

If Charles de Gaulle was not a ladies' man, he nevertheless appreciated shapes as much as uniforms.

When Brigitte Bardot, a great admirer of the general, went to the Elysée on December 5, 1967, her hair down and her hussar outfit, with wide pants and a toggle jacket, he fell in love with her.

Delighted, he slips a good word to her: "What luck, Madam! You are in the military and I am in civilian clothes."

From Jackie Kennedy to Grace of Monaco, all the women received at the Elysee Palace during official visits are under the spell of the general, a seducer in spite of himself.

There is an old-fashioned courtesy in him that allows him features of humor that never fall into vulgarity.

An example told to me by the historian Claude Dulong, wife of the resistant, hero of French Indochina and Minister of Veterans Affairs Jean Sainteny.

Invited to the Elysee Palace at the beginning of the week for the reception of an African Head of State, she returns there at the end of the week for the gala in honor of the King and Queen of the Belgians, Baudouin and Fabiola.

A little embarrassed, she admits: "Mr. President, you have already seen me in this dress ..." De Gaulle puts her at ease: "Well, Madame, that proves that she is yours!"

The general was a man of the world.

On June 8, 1960, in formal attire, after a performance at the Chaillot theater, he shared a glass of champagne in good company: he was surrounded by Marlene Dietrich, Danielle Darrieux, Maria Schell and Sylva Koscina!

In June 1961, he was made a knight serving Jackie Kennedy who, he said "knew the history of France better than the French".

Another example, on October 21, 1963, at the gala dinner in honor of the Shah of Iran, the general, very lively, jokes at length with his neighbor the Empress Farah who tells him how happy she is to speak French, in memory of his studies in Paris.

The enemy of the "forces of money"

One of the general's character traits was his probity.

He never benefited financially from his glory or power.

When he left the government in January 1946 at the age of 56 to begin his "crossing of the desert", he quietly announced that he was giving up his retirement as an officer.

He condemns the regime which has disappointed him.

He doesn't want to owe her anything.

La Boisserie requiring work after the occupation and the damage caused by the Germans, he rented a pavilion in Marly, the rent of which was paid by the Estates, that is to say by the State.

He will reimburse the sum to the nearest cent.

In London, England lends him money.

He reimburses everything and lives on his pay. 

The success of the Mémoires bookstore did not change the household treasury either: all copyrights are paid to the Anne de Gaulle Foundation, created and installed in the Yvelines after the young girl's death. .

This is still the case today.

If, at Matignon and then at the Elysee Palace, the general demands that the government or the state maintain its rank, it is without greed or extravagance.

And when he receives his family or his in-laws for lunch, it is at his expense, calculated in a very precise way.

De Gaulle was wary of money, he saw its ravages in dishonest hands ... 

This distance and elegance never left him.

In 1969, having decided to visit Spain, he realizes that in the hotels where he stays with his wife and his aide-de-camp, everything has already been paid, probably on Franco's orders.

So, at each stay, he calculates the price of the night, the meals and gives the corresponding sum to the staff, as a tip.

Bibliographic resources: 

Denis Tillinac,

(Plon, 2020)

Patrice Gueniffey and Lorraine de Meaux (direction),

(Perrin, 2017)

De Gaulle et Nous

, Special edition of Paris-Match, editor-in-chief Patrick Mahé, September-October 2020

François Kersaudy,

(Perrin, 2001)

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"At the heart of history" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast

Author and presentation: Jean des Cars

Production, distribution and edition: Timothée Magot

Director: Jean-François Bussière

Graphics: Karelle Villais