(See Cover)
As in Roman days, the revolt to bring down the regime began with the generals taking power in the provinces, and waiting for the capital to fall of its own weakness.
Insurrection broke out first in Algiers, when 30,000 French colons, fearful that a new French government might abandon Algeria, rioted in the streets, sacked the Government Building, and were calmed only when Paratroop General Jacques Massu announced that he had taken power in Algiers in defiance of Paris. That left it up to Paris: to the National Assembly to capitulate or fight back; to the mobs in the street to enlist for or against the battered, precarious Fourth Republic.
In the Paris streets loudspeakers rasped out the orders of tough Maurice Papon, recently brought from Algeria to become police prefect of Paris: "Use your clubs! Use your clubs!" His men complied. In the Place de la Concorde a mob of 6,000 right-wingers led by burly ex-Poujadist Jean-Marie Le Pen -sporting the tricolor sash of a Deputy and the green beret of his old paratroop regiment -came face to face with rifle-toting police drawn up in columns four deep. For a time the mob hesitated. Then, with cries of "Algeria is French!" and "Throw the Deputies into the Seine!", the rightists made a wild rush for the Concorde bridge leading to the National Assembly. In minutes, they reeled back in flight, blinded by gas grenades, battered by rifle butts, clubs and fists.
After this setback to the right, the left took its licks. In the hallowed "proletarian" section of Paris between the Bastille and the Place de la Republique, 2,000 Communists roamed the streets shouting, "Fascism shall not pass!" A woman stepped out from behind one of the Red commandos to jeer at the police: "Sa-lauds!" With a roar, a squadron of 30 flics charged. The plainclothesman leading them hit the jeering woman squarely in the mouth. The rest of the mob faded away.
The thwacking of Papon's night sticks and the defiance of the Algerian generals could not be heard in the sleepy (pop. 365) village of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, 150 miles southeast of Paris. But these were expectant sounds that reverberated in the imagination of Colombey's first citizen, a towering man of 67 with an equine face and the stiff, awkward movements of a French career soldier. And they were sounds that drove him at last to pick up the telephone, an instrument he dislikes, and summon an aide from Paris to receive a typically laconic statement: "For twelve years France, at grips with problems too harsh for the regime of political parties, has pursued a disastrous course . . . Today, in the face of the troubles that again engulf the country, it should be known that I am ready to take over the powers of the republic."
The Politician of Catastrophe. In a tense situation, suddenly close to civil war, these proud, cryptic words stirred hopes, fears and questions throughout France. The government-run national radio network broke into a musical program to flash the message. A special edition of France Soir, the nation's largest evening paper, disappeared from the newsstands like birdseed scattered before a flock of starlings. In near panic, Speaker Andre Le Troquer of the National Assembly called upon all Deputies who were out of town to return to Paris at once.