ABSTRACT
The four years following the collapse of the Fourth Republic in May 1958 were essentially years of preparation for a political rôle that General de Gaulle regarded as going far beyond the premiership of the Government of Public Safety that military and civilian insurgents had called for. General de Gaulle’s own tactics are therefore relevant to any attempt to assess the legitimacy of his return to power. They were characterized by a mixture of caution, subtlety, astuteness and ambiguity, and involved some breath-taking gambles in the matter of timing. Though Algeria was never, constitutionally speaking, a colony, its relation to France was, in General de Gaulle’s mind, essentially part of the general problem of decolonization. To judge by reports of parliamentary debates, the majority of the Deputies were singularly uninterested in this mass of reforming legislation.
