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Counting on Women. It was all to no avail, and there were small signs that near the end, De Gaulle's understanding of the French people had not failed and he suspected the outcome. At his regular Wednesday Cabinet meeting last week, he wryly told his ministers: "In principle, we will meet again next Wednesday." He taped his final TV appeal, then departed Paris for Colombey, prepared not to come back to the Elysee Palace again if the vote went against him. Every final poll indicated a defeat, even his own Interior Ministry's private poll. But the number of undecideds was large. It was hard to believe that ultimately De Gaulle would not triumph. All his grand gestures—ending the Algerian war, vetoing the British entry into the Common Market, withdrawing militarily from NATO, refusing to devalue the franc—had been dramatic. So, too, was his defeat.
The Gaullists had prayed for rain on referendum day, believing that the more Affluent voters, who tend to be Gaullists, might go away on a sunny weekend rather than vote. The general's followers counted on the women, always Gaullist supporters in heavy numbers, to turn out. They hoped for a heavy turnout, so that the field would not be left to the opposition. The rains came; 53% of the vote was female; the turnout was 80%, equal to the heaviest voting during the 1968 crisis. Still De Gaulle lost, indicating how much he had misjudged the unhappiness, dissatisfaction and mood of his countrymen. At the same time, what De Gaulle's cause lacked was the context of crisis. If Frenchmen had felt themselves in real trouble, they might have rallied to De Gaulle again. Now they were unhappy with De Gaulle and no longer frightened of a future without him.
The polls closed at 8 p.m. in France. The first result in was from the tiny Norman village of Champ de la Pierre, normally a Gaullist stronghold. It was an ominous 22 to 6 against the proposal. However not until 8:31 at the Ministry of Interior, where the votes were being tallied, did the nons forge into the lead, as a ministry official announced in a flat voice that the negatives were now some 35,000 ahead, out of some 4.6 million votes cast. From that point, De Gaulle never caught up again and the margin began to widen.
Breaking the News. It was left to Premier Maurice Couve de Murville to break the news. Shortly before 11, his diplomat's face creased with uncharacteristic emotion, he went before the TV cameras. "It is with profound sadness," he said, "that I have learned the result of the vote. It is an event of seriousness that will very soon become apparent to the whole of France and throughout the world. General de Gaulle was at the center of our political and national life, re-establishing peace, restoring the state and ensuring the stability of power."
The Premier was of course correct in his litany of what De Gaulle had wrought for France in the years of the Fifth Republic. So sure was De Gaulle's hand in the Elysee, and his own conviction of style, that it is difficult to recall the pre-Gaullist days when France was in constant turmoil. In a sense, De Gaulle was a victim of his own success. He so restored the confidence and self-assurance of his nation that, finally, it decided that it was ready to go on without him.