A spectre is haunting France — the spectre of a coup d’état

The coup d’état has come home with a vengeance. When, a few weeks ago, a plot was allegedly uncovered to overthrow the King of Jordan, one of these leading articles was devoted to “A brief history of coups”. The point was to show how real or imagined conspiracies have been used to crush opposition — in Turkey, for example — and the danger of loose talk about coups in mature democracies, such as Israel or the United States. It never occurred to me that the military might be contemplating a takeover in France, the country that gave us the term “coup d’état”. Yet such appears to be the case.

In an open letter, 20 retired French generals have warned of an impending “civil war” with political Islam, resulting in “intervention by our comrades on active service”. The letter appeared in Valeurs Actuelles, a Right-wing magazine, and is also signed by another 80 retired officers from the armed forces and the gendarmerie. Claiming widespread support in the military, they call for the elected government of Emmanuel Macron to be replaced by “politicians who take into account the safety of the nation”.

One politician has wasted no time in answering the call of the generals. Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally and Macron’s main rival in next year’s presidential election, invites these and other discontented officers to join her campaign. While she stops short of endorsing a coup, Ms Le Pen evidently shares their view that France is on the brink of “disintegration”. As Macron’s supporters were swift to point out, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen began his long political career when a cabal of generals tried to mounted a coup against General de Gaulle in 1961 to prevent the then President from abandoning colonial Algeria. Though their attempt failed, the cause of l’Algérie Francaise lived on in the shape of Le Pen’s National Front, founded a decade later in 1972. “Sixty years to the day after the putsch by the generals against General de Gaulle, the mask is slipping,” commented Agnés Pannier-Runacher, the industry minister. “Marine Le Pen is far-Right and it’s the same story as 60 years ago.”

However, today’s generals may have another leader in mind: one of their own. Four years ago, the newly-elected President Macron forced General Pierre de Villiers to resign after the then chief of the defence staff protested publicly over budget cuts. Since then, the General has published a thinly-veiled political manifesto in book form, L’équilibre est un courage (roughly, “Fairness takes courage”), calling for a restoration of French sovereignty vis à vis the European Union and a return to patriotism in politics. His brother, Philippe de Villiers, is a nationalist politician and former presidential candidate, but has never been able to extend his appeal beyond his aristocratic conservative base. The General has denied any ambition to stand in next year’s election, but in a France bitterly divided between two movements — Macron’s centrist La Marche and Le Pen’s National Rally — there could be an opportunity for a soldier to pose as a unity candidate.

If that was indeed his plan, General de Villiers may find that his admirers in the military have jumped the gun. By denouncing “the Islamists of the hordes of the banlieue [housing estates]” and warning of an imminent “explosion”, they are deploying the divisive language of Ms Le Pen, at a time when France is mourning the murder of a female police officer by a Muslim terrorist. Such inflammatory rhetoric is more likely to ignite the civil war they claim to fear than to avoid it. For all the simmering resentment of provincial France, few want a return to the violence of the gilets jaunes protests two years ago. Despite his unsteady handling of the Covid crisis, Macron was elected by an overwhelming majority in 2017 and polls suggest that he is on track to be re-elected for a second term. Talk of a military coup is most likely to rally support for the President as the defender of democracy. 

The predicament France faces today is very different from that of 60 years ago. Then, the Fifth Republic was only three years old; some still hankered after the authoritarian rule of Marshal Pétain and his wartime Vichy regime. But the real hero of the war, Charles de Gaulle, fulfilled the need for military leadership, though to do so he not only had to crush a mutinous cabal but also to survive a serious assassination attempt in 1962. The legitimacy of the Fifth Republic has proved to be more durable than that of its predecessors, not least thanks to a constitution that confers plenary powers on the head of state that have thus far been more than sufficient to deter an insurrection. 

Yet as France prepares to commemorate the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death next week, among the many ambiguities of his legacy is the fact that this most famous of all Frenchmen came to power in the archetypal coup d’état. It will be awkward indeed for Emmanuel Macron to pay tribute to the general who led the Grande Armée across Europe, knowing that today’s generals may be plotting to overthrow the Fifth Republic, just as Napoleon did the First. There is an irony, too, in the fact that Macron’s political style does show traces of what became known as Bonapartism, after Louis- Napoléon, a nephew of the great Napoleon, the first elected President of France, who in 1852 mounted his own coup d’état and made himself Emperor Napoleon III. Though his reign ended in disaster — defeat in the Franco-Prussian War cost him his throne — the Bonapartist temptation has never entirely disappeared. It re-emerged in both world wars and was manifest again in the cult of General de Gaulle up to and beyond his death. 

Macron has consciously modelled himself on de Gaulle, not least to emphasise the contrast between his own legitimate rule and the dubiously democratic antecedents of Marine Le Pen. Now that the military has re-entered the French political arena, the President will have wasted no time in ensuring the loyalty of the armed forces. A spectre is haunting France — the spectre of a coup d’état. The imperative is clear. Emmanuel Macron must rise to the occasion: not only to save his presidency, but to save France.

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