Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

measures to defend the Republic, including an anti-sabotage bill. During these days Robert Schuman impressed everyone with his air of calm. Jules Moch was equally resolute. He knew that he had less than a week to bringthe country under control. If public order collapsed, then de Gaulle might make a move which could trigger the Communists into civil war. But de Gaulle preferred to stand back while his two enemies, the Communists and the government, fought it out.
    In the
hémicycle
of the National Assembly the Communists yelled insults at Robert Schuman and his government. Schuman’s service in the German army in the First World War was thrown at him.
    ‘There’s the Boche!’ cried Duclos.
    ‘Where were you a soldier in 1914, Prime Minister?’ shouted Charles Tillon, one of the Black Sea mutineers of 1920.
    ‘Prussian! German!’ screamed Alain Signor, the author of the cringing letter to Stepanov in the Kremlin.
    The barrage of insults swelled and slackened in the course of the marathon sessions. Deputies of other parties flung back their own jibes, reminding the Communists of Stalin’s alliance with Hitler. Every resentment and suspicion from the Occupation surged to the surface.
    Sunday, 30 November, the second day of the session, was very cold and foggy. The streets of Paris were empty. ‘All seems quiet today,’ wrote the British ambassador in his diary. ‘It isn’t revolution weather.’ Marie-Blanche de Polignac refused to cancel her traditional Sunday-night musical salon.
    Monday was another day of fog. No aeroplanes could land or take off, so, with the train strike, no diplomatic bags could get through. Roger Martin du Gard, demoralized by cold meals and the lack of water and heating, found the atmosphere of the city ‘sinister’; he could not wait to escape to Nice as soon as the trains began to run again. Nancy Mitford, who swung like many between alarm and disdain for alarmists, expressed her exasperation at the way the British press were reporting the French troubles with a streak of
schadenfreude
. ‘I told the
Times
man,’ she wrote to her sister Diana, ‘he really must point out that blood is not actually pouring down the gutters.’ The electricity failed again, and Artur Rubinstein’s concert that night took place by candlelight.
    On the third day of the marathon session in the National Assembly a Communist deputy, Raoul Calas, took over the tribune to speak. He appealed to the army not to obey the murderers of the people, a clear case of incitement to mutiny. Édouard Herriot, the president of the National Assembly, announced that it was his duty to maintain respectfor the law. A resolution for Calas’s exclusion was then passed in spite of Communist protests. The session was suspended amid pandemonium.
    Calas still refused to leave the tribune. His fellow Communists crowded round to protect him and offer support. The stalemate continued through the night. Shortly before six in the morning, Colonel Marquant of the Garde Républicaine arrived with a written order from Herriot to expel Calas. But each time Marquant began to advance on the tribune, the Communist deputies burst into the Marseillaise. On hearing the national anthem, the Colonel had to spring to attention and salute. As soon as they stopped singing, he tried to move forward once more, but again the Marseillaise broke out and he had to return to the salute. Finally, Colonel Marquant reached the tribune and gently took hold of Calas’s arm. ‘
Je cède à la force
,’ said the deputy.
    The session which had started on 29 November did not end until 3 December. During its course, the balance of power tipped decisively in favour of the government. Already there were signs of the strike cracking, with non-Communists returning to work despite the violence threatened and used against them. Then, in the early morning of 3 December, a small group of Communist miners in the north destroyed their own cause. Hearing that a train full of riot police was on its way and acting on their own initiative, they sabotaged the Lille–Paris line near Arras by dislodging twenty-five metres of track. Instead of a troop train, however, they derailed the Paris–Tourcoing express. Sixteen people were killed in the crash and thirty were seriously injured. News of the disaster reached Paris in the morning. By the afternoon, there was no traffic in the Champs-Élysées and the city appeared in a state of siege, with armed police at every