(3 of 3)
Among the Missing. For all his anger at Massu, De Gaulle had certainly not minimized the risk involved in firing him. Late in the week, after meeting at the Elysée Palace for three hours with France's top military and civilian leaders in Algeria, the general reaffirmed in unyielding language his offer of Algerian self-determination. But as a sop to the settlers, he also ordered the establishment of speeded-up military courts for trying terrorists. (Previously he had insisted that even terrorists caught in the act be given full judicial rights.)
But with the shooting on the Boulevard Laferrière, all hope of passing off the Massu affair by adroit politicking was dead. At the news of the Algiers fighting, De Gaulle came rushing back to Paris from a quiet weekend at his country home in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. Hastily, his government slapped a ban on public meetings throughout France, reportedly set security agents to looking for ex-Premier Georges Bidault in case he should try to get to Algeria to rally his right-wing admirers—just as Gaullist Jacques Soustelle did in May 1958. Sadly, Frenchmen recognized that the Algerian rebels had gotten just what they wanted: an all-out test of the authority wielded by Charles de Gaulle and his Fifth Republic.