The shaking up that the Atlantic Alliance got last month was the work of a single man. And France's claim to dominate Western Europe and to be reckoned with as the leader of a Third Force is also the lengthening extension of that man. Those of his allies who have to deal with le grand Charles sometimes find that their exasperation exceeds their admiration. But any way one looks at it, whether as an ally or as a Frenchman worrying about the chaos that might follow his death, there is a lot riding on the towering man in the Elysée Palace. He is 72, and he has enemies desperate enough to want to kill him.
Last week, as Frenchmen closely followed the news of a trial of would-be assassins of De Gaulle, the government announced a fresh attempt on De Gaulle's life.
Armored Car. The night before De Gaulle was to inspect the Ecole Militaire on the Left Bank near the Eiffel Tower, Paris gendarmes swarmed over the ground, searching the buildings for weapons and interrogating officer students and teachers. De Gaulle showed up next day on schedule, but (in a concession to danger rare for him) cooped up inside an armored Citroën limousine with bulletproof windows. According to the official story from Sûieté headquarters on the Rue des Saus-saies, police had discovered a plot on a civilian's tip, in the nick of time. After interrogating the five suspects, the police indicated that the triggerman was Navy Captain Robert Poinard, 37, who was held for questioning along with his blonde young wife. According to the police supposition, Captain Poinard was to use a carbine with a telescopic sight to kill De Gaulle while he was inspecting the honor guard in the cobbled Ecole Militaire courtyard. Two other officers were also in custody, but the oddest of the suspects was the alleged ringleader, Mme. Paule Rousselot de Liffiac, 55, a pipe-smoking, low-salaried English translator at the school, the mother of six children, who was picked up at her 15-room 18th century château in a town south of Lyon. The Ecole Militaire, where Napoleon learned to soldier, is the top academy for the French military, and a hotbed of anti-Gaullism among the veterans of Algeria who think he let them down.
Shrewd Delay. Algeria was a word much spoken also in a courtroom in suburban Vincennes, where nine would-be assassins were on trial for having tried to kill De Gaulle last August in an ambuscade at Petit-Clamart, a Paris suburb. As has so often happened in France since the Dreyfus case of the 1890s, the trial was not confined to pertinent evidence but blossomed into a national political affair. Very few Frenchmen had much sympathy for the defendants, but many had grave doubts about how they were being tried.