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In France today, Charles de Gaulle is everywhere: in memories, in street
names, in monuments, in bookshops. At the most recent count over 3,600
localities had a public space
– street, avenue, square, roundabout
– named
after him. This puts de Gaulle ahead of Pasteur, who comes a close second
(3,001), and Victor Hugo, who comes third (2,258).1 The grandest space
in Paris, site of Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe, was renamed the Place de
l’Etoile- Charles
de Gaulle immediately after his death. Walking from there
down the Champs-
Elysées,
one soon reaches a statue of de Gaulle striding
resolutely forward. Turning right at the statue, one crosses the Seine to the
Hôtel des Invalides, France’s army museum, which houses a separate
museum exclusively devoted to de Gaulle. Entering this museum is like
crossing the threshold of a sacred Gaullist space.
When an opinion poll in 2010 asked the French to rank the most important
figures in their history, 44 per cent placed de Gaulle top (he accumulated
70 per cent of all choices), far ahead of Napoleon in second place with 14
per cent (38 per cent).2 All politicians, from left to right, invoke de Gaulle’s
name. At the Presidential elections of 2012 he was cited as an example by
both the Socialist François Hollande and his right-
wing
(supposedly
Gaullist) opponent Nicolas Sarkozy
– and by pretty well everyone else.
Even the extreme-
right
Front National, whose founder Jean-
Marie
Le Pen
was once a visceral anti-
Gaullist,
now celebrates de Gaulle’s legacy. But no
contemporary French politician has more consciously sought inspiration
in de Gaulle than Emmanuel Macron, whose official photograph as President
shows him in front of a table on which one book lies open: the Pléiade
edition of de Gaulle’s War Memoirs.