Charles de Gaulle - Death

Death

On 9 November 1970, two weeks short of what would have been his 80th birthday, Charles de Gaulle died suddenly, despite enjoying very robust health his entire life (except for a prostate operation a few years earlier). He had been watching the evening news on television and playing Solitaire around 7:40 PM when he suddenly pointed to his neck and said "I feel a pain right here" before collapsing. His wife called the doctor and the local priest, but by the time they arrived he had died from a ruptured blood vessel.

His wife asked that she be allowed to inform her family before the news was released. She was able to contact her daughter in Paris quickly, but their son, who was in the navy was difficult to track down and so the President, Georges Pompidou was not informed until 4:00 AM the next morning and went on television some 18 hours after the event to inform the nation of the general's death. He said simply: "General de Gaulle is dead. France is a widow."

De Gaulle had made arrangements that insisted that his funeral would be held at Colombey, and that no presidents or ministers attend his funeral – only his Compagnons de la Libération.

Despite his wishes, such were the number of foreign dignitaries who wanted to honour de Gaulle that Pompidou was forced to arrange a separate memorial service at the Notre-Dame Cathedral, to be held at the same time as his actual funeral. Among those at the memorial service were 63 present or former heads of state, including US President Richard Nixon, Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny, British Prime Minister Edward Heath, the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the President of Italy, representatives of 17 of France’s former African colonies and the reigning monarchs of Ethiopia, Iran, The Netherlands, Belgium, Monaco and Luxembourg. Also in the congregation were David Ben-Gurion, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, former West German Chancellors Ludwig Erhard and Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, Marlene Dietrich and US Senator Edward Kennedy, who remembered de Gaulle's immediate decision to attend the funeral of his brother John following his assassination in 1963. The Chinese leader Mao Zedong was unable to attend but sent a wreath. The only notable absentee was Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau, possibly because he was still angry over de Gaulle's cry of "Vive le Quebec libre" during his 1967 visit.

The funeral on 12 November 1970 was the biggest such event in French history, with hundreds of thousands of French people - many carrying blankets and picnic baskets - and thousands of cars parked in the roads and fields along the routes to the two venues. Special trains were laid on to bring extra mourners to the region and the crowd was packed so tightly that those who fainted had to be passed overhead toward first-aid stations at the rear.

The General was conveyed to the church on an armoured reconnaissance vehicle and carried to his grave, next to his daughter Anne, by eight young men of Colombey. As he was lowered into the ground, the bells of all the churches in France tolled, starting from Notre Dame and spreading out from there.

Madame de Gaulle asked the undertaker to provide the same type of simple oak casket that he used for everyone else, but because of the General's extreme height, the coffin cost $9 more than usual. He specified that his tombstone bear the simple inscription of his name and his years of birth and death. Therefore, it simply says: "Charles de Gaulle, 1890–1970".

The French newspaper Le Monde referred to the days after his death as "a planetary mourning." At the service, President Pompidou said "de Gaulle gave France her governing institutions, her independence and her place in the world." André Malraux, the writer and intellectual who served as his Minister of Culture, called him "a man of the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow."

His family has turned the La Boisserie residence into a foundation. It is currently the Charles de Gaulle Museum.