efficiency that Mussolini had succeeded in instilling into Italian youth; in addition, as the scandals multiplied, the Croix de Feu had adopted a more blatantly anti-Republican attitude. The patrician colonel himself was certainly no rabble-rouser like Hitler. A British journalist says of him: ‘His head was too narrow and unimpressive, his voice was too high, his diction too elaborate for mass appeal. His gestures were those of a romantic actor, not a tribune. He was too genteel.’ Nevertheless, to the Left wing in France Colonel de la Rocque had come to epitomize everything that it understood, loathed and feared in the meaning of the word Fascism.
During the week that followed the fall of the Chautemps Government on 27 January 1934, tension had been rising in Paris. Enraged by the revelations of the Stavisky case, de la Rocque met with leaders of the other right-wing leagues to co-ordinate a march upon the Assembly. On 5 February there were demonstrations and various collisions with the police. The next morning, L’Action Française carried the most provocative headlines: ‘The thieves are barricading themselves in their cave. Against this abject régime, everyone in front of the Chambre des Députés this evening.’ At about 6 p.m. the firstshock-troops, consisting largely of the Camelots du Roi and with a number of grands mutilés veterans placed conspicuously to the fore, attempted to force their way through police barriers drawn up on the Pont de la Concorde. They hurled bottles, stones and sections of lead piping at the police, and when the mounted police charged, the hocks of their horses were slashed with razors tied to sticks. Meanwhile, inside the Chamber the new Government, headed by Édouard Daladier, was still struggling to get a vote of confidence. By 7.30, the police were becoming increasingly hard-pressed, and, after three warnings, they received the order to fire. Seven demonstrators were killed outright, and a large number wounded. Though driven back as far as the Opéra, a counter-attack brought them once more to the Concorde. The police opened fire a second time, but it was not until midnight that the Deputies could reckon they were safe from a repetition of 3 September 1870, when the Palais Bourbon had been stormed and the Government overthrown by a Paris mob outraged by the news of Louis-Napoleon’s defeat at Sedan. Out of 40,000 demonstrators, 16 had been killed and at least 655 known to be wounded; well over 1,000 policemen received injuries.
Nevertheless, the next day Colonel de la Rocque proclaimed from his secret battle H.Q.: ‘The Croix de Feu has surrounded the Chamber and forced the Deputies to flee.’ The proclamation infuriated the leaders of the other leagues, who considered that de la Rocque’s men had played only the most prudent of parts in the battle. But the impact that the Colonel’s braggadocio had upon the Left wing was even more dramatic. Suddenly, in the heated atmosphere of the moment, it seemed as if a new General Boulanger had arisen. Fears were greatly exacerbated on the afternoon of the 7th when, with extreme precipitance, Daladier resigned. Ex-President Gaston Doumergue, now aged seventy, took his place at the head of a ‘National Government’ with – as a special sop to the anciens combattants of the Right-wing leagues – seventy-seven-year-old Marshal Pétain, the ‘Hero of Verdun’, as its Minister of Defence. It was the first time since 1870 that the mob had brought about the fall of a French government, but, alas, notthe last time that a disastrous display of weakness by Daladier would bely his nickname, ‘the bull of Vaucluse’. Of his resignation, Daladier explained feebly: ‘otherwise we should have had to shoot’.
On 6 February the Communists, sharing de la Rocque’s detestation of corrupt Republican politicians, had also taken up cudgels against the Government. One eye-witness actually saw a Camelot du Roi and a Communist, each recognizable by
During the week that followed the fall of the Chautemps Government on 27 January 1934, tension had been rising in Paris. Enraged by the revelations of the Stavisky case, de la Rocque met with leaders of the other right-wing leagues to co-ordinate a march upon the Assembly. On 5 February there were demonstrations and various collisions with the police. The next morning, L’Action Française carried the most provocative headlines: ‘The thieves are barricading themselves in their cave. Against this abject régime, everyone in front of the Chambre des Députés this evening.’ At about 6 p.m. the firstshock-troops, consisting largely of the Camelots du Roi and with a number of grands mutilés veterans placed conspicuously to the fore, attempted to force their way through police barriers drawn up on the Pont de la Concorde. They hurled bottles, stones and sections of lead piping at the police, and when the mounted police charged, the hocks of their horses were slashed with razors tied to sticks. Meanwhile, inside the Chamber the new Government, headed by Édouard Daladier, was still struggling to get a vote of confidence. By 7.30, the police were becoming increasingly hard-pressed, and, after three warnings, they received the order to fire. Seven demonstrators were killed outright, and a large number wounded. Though driven back as far as the Opéra, a counter-attack brought them once more to the Concorde. The police opened fire a second time, but it was not until midnight that the Deputies could reckon they were safe from a repetition of 3 September 1870, when the Palais Bourbon had been stormed and the Government overthrown by a Paris mob outraged by the news of Louis-Napoleon’s defeat at Sedan. Out of 40,000 demonstrators, 16 had been killed and at least 655 known to be wounded; well over 1,000 policemen received injuries.
Nevertheless, the next day Colonel de la Rocque proclaimed from his secret battle H.Q.: ‘The Croix de Feu has surrounded the Chamber and forced the Deputies to flee.’ The proclamation infuriated the leaders of the other leagues, who considered that de la Rocque’s men had played only the most prudent of parts in the battle. But the impact that the Colonel’s braggadocio had upon the Left wing was even more dramatic. Suddenly, in the heated atmosphere of the moment, it seemed as if a new General Boulanger had arisen. Fears were greatly exacerbated on the afternoon of the 7th when, with extreme precipitance, Daladier resigned. Ex-President Gaston Doumergue, now aged seventy, took his place at the head of a ‘National Government’ with – as a special sop to the anciens combattants of the Right-wing leagues – seventy-seven-year-old Marshal Pétain, the ‘Hero of Verdun’, as its Minister of Defence. It was the first time since 1870 that the mob had brought about the fall of a French government, but, alas, notthe last time that a disastrous display of weakness by Daladier would bely his nickname, ‘the bull of Vaucluse’. Of his resignation, Daladier explained feebly: ‘otherwise we should have had to shoot’.
On 6 February the Communists, sharing de la Rocque’s detestation of corrupt Republican politicians, had also taken up cudgels against the Government. One eye-witness actually saw a Camelot du Roi and a Communist, each recognizable by
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