de Gaulle, Charles André Joseph Marie (1890–1970)

The British prime minister Winston Churchill, accompanied by General Charles de Gaulle of the Free French, reviews troops in the snow, in England, around 1940. Despite being so closely allied against a common enemy, the two leaders had a rather strained relationship; Churchill is quoted as saying ‘Of all the crosses I have to bear, the heaviest is the Cross of Lorraine’ (the latter being the emblem of the Free French).

French general and first president of the Fifth Republic 1958–69. He organized the Free French troops fighting the Nazis 1940–44, was head of the provisional French government 1944–46, and leader of his own Gaullist party. In 1958 the national assembly asked him to form a government during France's economic recovery and to solve the crisis in Algeria. He became president at the end of 1958, having changed the constitution to provide for a presidential system, and served until 1969.

Born in Lille, he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1911 and was severely wounded and captured by the Germans in 1916. In June 1940 he refused to accept the new prime minister Pétain's truce with the Germans and on 18 June made his historic broadcast calling on the French to continue the war against Germany. He based himself in England as leader of the Free French troops fighting the Germans 1940–44. In 1944 he entered Paris in triumph and was briefly head of the provisional government before resigning over the new constitution of the Fourth Republic in 1946. In 1947 he founded the Rassemblement du Peuple Français, a non-party constitutional reform movement, then withdrew from politics in 1953. When national bankruptcy and civil war in Algeria loomed in 1958, de Gaulle was called to form a government. As prime minister he promulgated a constitution subordinating the legislature to the presidency and took office as president in December 1958. Economic recovery followed, as well as Algerian independence after a bloody war. A nationalist, he opposed ‘Anglo-Saxon’ influence in Europe.

Re-elected president 1965, he violently quelled student demonstrations May 1968 when they were joined by workers. The Gaullist party, reorganized as Union des Democrats pour la Cinquième République, won an overwhelming majority in the elections of the same year. In 1969 he resigned after the defeat of the government in a referendum on constitutional reform. He retired to the village of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises in northeastern France.