Pilgrims recall de Gaulle's grandeur

Charles de Gaulle's favourite word was grandeur, and it was for its simplicity and grandeur that he purchased a vine-covered, two-storey house called La Boisserie here in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises in 1934. It nestles on the edge of this tiny village, high on the plateau where Lorraine, Champagne and Burgundy meet. "Vast, rough and sad horizons," de Gaulle wrote of his refuge. "Woods, farmland and melancholy fallow fields; outlines of ancient, very worn and tired mountains; tranquil villages of modest means, such as mine, whose town squares and souls have not changed for centuries." From his garden, the general wrote, "I reach out to the wild depths where the forest takes over, like the sea beating against a promontory."

Gen de Gaulle was born in November 1890, and died in November 1970. A few days ago, Gaullist parliamentarians came to Colombey on an annual pilgrimage, the principal rite of their personality cult to the general who refused to capitulate to Nazi Germany.

"Nothing is lost," he prophetically told his compatriots in a BBC broadcast from London on June 18th, 1940. "In the free world, powerful forces have not yet come into play. One day, these forces will crush the enemy. On that day, France must be present at the victory."

With his obstinate insistence that French grandeur and independence be recognised, the future president would annoy world leaders for the rest of his life. While French parliamentarians filed through his library at Colombey in silent reverence, silver-framed black-and-white photographs of kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, stared down from atop the bookshelves.

Churchill inscribed his image with a cold, "To Gen Charles de Gaulle, from Winston Churchill". The greatest cross he had to bear during the war, Churchill said, was the Cross of Lorraine - the symbol de Gaulle adopted for his Free French Forces.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was equally scathing: "He thinks he's Joan of Arc," the US president said on hearing of de Gaulle's wartime demands for assistance. Only one leader - the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer - inspired enough trust to be invited to La Boisserie while de Gaulle was alive.

As you drive towards Colombey, an enormous 45 metre-high Cross of Lorraine dominates the skyline. The monument, made of Breton granite and Alsatian bronze, was completed 18 months after de Gaulle's death. "There exists a pact 20 centuries old between the grandeur of France and the liberty of the world," says the general's quotation engraved at the base.

Huddling in their coats against the morning cold, the Gaullist leaders of the Rally for the Republic (RPR), the political party which claims descent from the general, were dwarfed by the giant cross before them. In the 900-year-old church where Gen de Gaulle's funeral was held in 1970, Father Andre Lambert tried to comfort the despondent politicians. "Let us not be discouraged by clouds on the horizon," the priest said in his memorial Mass. "Let us not be discouraged by the opinion polls."

"De Gaulle is still here," says a poster inside the nearby museum, where photographs recount the life of the man who galvanised the French resistance, returned as president in 1958 to deliver France from the instability of the Fourth Republic, ended the Algerian war and granted independence to 13 other colonies. It was de Gaulle who nationalised big state companies, gave women the right to vote and established the French social security system.

But his successors in the RPR are fast losing their opportunity to leave their own mark. President Jacques Chirac squandered the party's parliamentary majority in a disastrous snap election last June. Mr Philippe Seguin seized control of the party the following month, but the bickering and back-stabbing continued all the way to the general's graveside. "We have not been in such dire circumstances since (the fall of France in) 1940," a deputy with a flair for hyperbole told me.

"I helped Chirac found the party in 1976," another deputy said. "He campaigned for me in every election. When he became president, it was glorious. Now we feel orphaned, alone. We have no leader." And Mr Seguin, I ventured? The deputy shrugged. "The better you know Chirac," he said, "the more you like him. Seguin comes across well on television, but he is horrid to everyone." Mr Seguin had shown his famous bad temper that morning, in the train from the Gare de l'Est. When a French woman reporter asked him a question, he snapped at her: "Your channel claims I was responsible for the election defeat, that I plunged the RPR into crisis. Why should I talk to you?"

That the RPR is in crisis is clear. The Gaullists' newsletter shut down last summer, after 35 years in publication, for lack of funding. Mr Seguin plans to abandon the RPR's elegant headquarters in the rue de Lille for cheaper lodgings. And next January's party conference will try to conjure up a new name for the floundering movement.

But if the Gaullists want to imitate the general's spectacular political comebacks, they will need more than bitter pilgrimages to his shrines at Colombey. Gaullism is about French independence, sovereignty - and of course, grandeur. The RPR's rhetoric has not convincingly reconciled these with globalisation and European integration; if one of its squabbling politicians finds the answer, he could yet inherit the general's mantle.