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Poujade sped around France, talking, always talking. "In 1945 we liberated France," he shouted. "Now we are going to liberate the French." He demanded cessation of tax inspections and forgiveness of tax violators, sent an ultimatum to Premier Edgar Faure himself. While Poujade watched scornfully from the visitors' gallery, the Premier and Deputies of France caved in, gave Poujade not all but most of his demands. When Poujade took off his coat preparatory to donning a sweater and leaving, the Assembly president was so nervous that he pushed the riot-call button, which summons the Republican Guard on the run and locks all the Assembly doors. Today Poujade has only to take his coat off and look around for the Garde to get a laugh from his crowds.
Alarmed at last, Premier Faure sent an emissary to Poujade to try to buy him off, with money from the secret funds French Premiers have always used to buy off trouble (as Colonel François de la Rocque of the prewar Croix de Feu was bought off). Faure's offer (according to Poujade) was $280,000 and a seat on the Economic Council of the Republic. Poujade refused. Belatedly the government brought suit against him for "organization of collective refusal to pay taxes." With this authority, detectives rummaged through Poujade's files, ransacked his offices, tapped his phones, even searched his mother's house in Saint-Céré. Faure hoped to turn up some hidden and sinister backers of Poujade, but the detectives turned up nothing. The government lacked the resolution to press its case before election in the face of 1,000,000 maddened shopkeepers.
Campaign Commandos. Poujade prepared for the election by leasing a 30-room hotel outside Saint-Céré, where he ran ten-day training courses for hundreds of picked followers. He created an amateur army of commandos who flung vegetables and abuse at rival speakers or broke up their meetings. He broadened his appeal, organized affiliates for peasants, youth, workers, professionals. He preached only discontent, "throw the rascals out." As it wore on, his campaign grew vaguer. "My program is to have no program," he declared. He put up 819 candidates, made each take an oath never to take a position not approved personally by Poujade under penalty of "all the punishments reserved for traitors." What punishment did he intend? "Very simple, hanging," said Poujade breezily, and grinned.
The Assembly had never seen a group like the 53 Poujadists elected. None had ever been in the Assembly before. They ranged from hard-boiled ex-paratrooper Jean-Marie Le Pen ("I suppose I am different. I like women") to voluble Andre Gayrard, director of the national confederation of butchers. Some had been Resistance fighters, other collaborators or members of the fascist Croix de Feu. Most were small grocers, bakers, mechanics, shopkeepers; and each of them obeyed Little Pierre. Poujade leased a small hotel near the Louvre to house them, held a three-day conference to teach them parliamentary procedure. "See, my boys, now you listen to Little Pierre," he told them. from the gallery.