GAULLE Charles de. Autograph manuscript for L'Appel, [ca. 1950]; 32 leaves in-4. Set of drafts for the first volume of the Mémoires de guerre, "L'Appel". As early as 1946, General de Gaulle, having relinquished power, began to write his memoirs, initially in the form of fragments on a particular affair or episode; he worked on them continuously from the early 1950s. The first volume, L'Appel, appeared in October 1954. These are first draft manuscripts, in which the pages, written on one side, are entirely covered, without margins, in small cursive handwriting in midnight blue ink, and are overloaded with erasures and corrections, with large passages crossed out; on some pages, not a single line has not been crossed out and rewritten. Some places and dates have been left blank in the heat of the writing process. These fragments are very different from the final version. Two sets of two sheets seem to correspond to two successive drafts of an abandoned beginning; de Gaulle evokes the moment when he had to take the country's destiny into his own hands in June 1940: "When I was led in 1940 to take the country's destiny into my own hands, it was on a clean slate. While the terms of the armistice concluded by Vichy left me at the enemy's discretion, our political regime had dissolved itself and, through this abdication, had lost all legitimacy. As for its successor, it was infamous from birth, since it existed only by virtue of its renunciation of national independence and the enslavement, to which it had subscribed, of the French State to an enemy. [...] It was therefore in France's vital interest not only to be effectively maintained in the struggle but also to transfer national legitimacy and sovereignty to the fighting side. This, and this alone, would make it possible to recreate a truly French war effort, contributing to the defeat of the enemy while serving and benefiting France alone, to oppose the abuses, encroachments and intentions that our allies would be tempted to commit to our detriment along the way, to safeguard the unity of the nation and that of the Empire, which could only survive by virtue of and around a single central power, and to support our interests in the future settlement of conflicts. In short, we had to rebuild the State from scratch while fighting. That was the task I set myself on 18 June 1940"... A series of 23 pages set out the refusal to accept defeat, and recounted the departure for London, Churchill's support, the Appeal of 18 June, and the beginnings of Free France in Africa (June-November 1940). "It was a question of spreading this plan, albeit from an infinitely worse situation and with initially derisory means. The aim was that France should remain a belligerent, that it should win the war in the same way as our allies, that is to say as a State, and also that at the end of the war it should have recovered sufficient national and imperial unity to avoid a civil war, keep the Empire, begin its reconstruction and take part as a great power in the peace settlements. [...] I could not conceal from myself that the conditions necessary to achieve this goal were extraordinarily multiple and complex. [...] It was clear that in order to have any chance, however slight, of bringing the matter to a conclusion, we would have to place ourselves once and for all at the highest level, that of the salvation of the State, never making any concessions in this respect for the benefit of anything or anyone, French or foreign"... De Gaulle recounted his visit to Ronald Campbell, the British ambassador, in Bordeaux, his decision to leave for London, the handing over of 100.000 francs from the secret funds, the arrangements for his family to leave...". On the morning of 17 June I took off from ... aerodrome with General Spears and my aide-de-camp Captain de Courcel in the British plane that had flown me the day before. After a stopover in Jersey, we arrived in London in the early afternoon. It was a difficult start. Everything had to be done and we had nothing to do it with. The immediate task was to set up a belligerent base in the Empire under French sovereignty, to build up a military force capable of fighting, to establish the necessary moral and material links with France, to gain official recognition for Free France at least from the allied governments and first of all from England, in order to create a central administration to direct the effort in all areas. [...] As early as the 17th, I went to see Mr Churchill and informed him of what had happened in Bordeaux, telling him that there was no need to have any illusions about the outcome of the negotiations that Pétain had begun with Hitler. The armistice would be signed whatever the cost. At the same time I explained to the British Prime Minister my intentions for the present and for the future. He immediately promised me his support. [...] On 18 June, I was able to launch my first radio appeal from London. This appeal and those that followed tended to arouse in the deepest mass of the French people national feeling, horror of capitulation, hope of victory and, consequently, the will to remain in the struggle"... He received orders from Bordeaux to return to France and appear before a military tribunal... He described the difficulties encountered by the British in obtaining the support of the governors and commanders of the territories of the Empire, who had remained loyal to Vichy; the reactions of the French in London; the support of numerous French ships and airmen with their planes; the reticence of the British government towards him... "My thoughts were focused on the future of the French Empire. My thoughts were focused on Africa. However, it was not from North Africa that we could expect anything positive in the general situation at the time [...]. [...] So it was not in North Africa that we could think of establishing the first French belligerent base. We had to start with Black Africa. There was no shortage of encouragement. Numerous telegrams and collective demonstrations, particularly in Dakar, St Louis, Ouagadougou, Abidjan, Lomé, Douala, Brazzaville and Tananarive, proved that, in the face of public indignation, Vichy's authority could be swept away, provided we helped from outside. It was towards this goal that my efforts were immediately concentrated"... Then came the British attack on the French fleet at Mersel-Kébir: "it was a terrible blow to our plans. Recruitment of volunteers suffered immediately. [...] Above all, the attitude towards us of the authorities in the Empire and of most of the naval and military elements guarding it changed from hesitation to disapproval. Vichy, moreover, made no mistake about exploiting the event to the full. In short, it became much more difficult to rally support for Black Africa. [...] My plan was to act first on the colonies of the Equatorial Africa group: Chad, Ubangi, Congo, Gabon and Cameroon. These territories were accessible to us from British Nigeria and Belgian Congo. On the contrary, their distance from Metropolitan France and North Africa meant that they were not very susceptible to Vichy influence"... De Gaulle sent René Pleven, Major Parant and Lieutenant Hettier de Boislambert on a mission to win over Cameroon; he added Captain de Hauteclocque, who had just arrived from France: "Having appointed him battalion commander, I could only give him time to collect his colonial equipment and to let me know that he was taking the nom de guerre of Leclerc [...]. [...] The Pleven mission was to operate mainly in Chad and Cameroon. But it was also necessary to seize the Congo itself, and in particular Brazzaville, the capital of Equatorial Africa; this is what I charged Colonel de Larminat with"... Thanks to them, "most of the Equatorial Africa-Cameroon block was rallied without the shedding of a single drop of blood. Unfortunately, Gabon remained detached from the whole"... De Gaulle then decided to leave for Africa... "As a last resort, I am bringing with me the best of my knowledge and experience. As a last resort, I would bring the entire French expedition to Cameroon, via the port of Douala, in order to build up forces to take part in the Eritrea campaign against the Italians and to reinforce Chad with a view to future operations that I was planning against southern Libya. We left on [31] August. I myself had embarked on the Westerland with a reduced and improvised staff. Spears accompanied me, delegated by Churchill as liaison officer, diplomat and informant. I left in England the embryo of a central administration sufficient to deal with current affairs. One page is devoted to the Resistance and the events of October 1941: "In the immediate term, the Resistance helped to weaken the enemy by carrying out coups de main such that their effects justified the losses. On the other hand, and on pain of being decimated or decapitated without compensation, it had to avoid attacks carried out at random, at the whim of individuals, which triggered reactions from the enemy [...] Thus, speaking on the radio on 23 October, I declared: "It is absolutely normal and absolutely justified that the Germans should be killed by the French. If the Germans did not want to die at our hands, all they had to do was go home... As long as they have not succeeded in reducing the universe, they are sure to become corpses or prisoners... [...] as soon as we are in a position to attack, the necessary orders will be given...". Two days later, as the invaders had just massacred fifty hostages in Nantes and Châteaubriant and fifty in Bordeaux, I added: "By shooting our martyrs, the enemy thought he was going to frighten France. France will show him that she is not afraid of him. And I invited "all French men and women to cease all activity and to remain motionless wherever they may be, on Friday 31 October from 4 to 4.05 a.m.; this gigantic "garde à vous", this immense "national strike" showed the enemy the threat that envelops him and proved French fraternity". In fact, the demonstration was impressive in many parts of the occupied zone. This strengthened my resolve to prevent the resistance from turning into anarchy, but to make it a well-organised and controlled whole, without however breaking the initiative which was its driving force, or the compartmentalisation without which it would have risked disappearing, at any moment, completely and in one fell swoop"... Finally, a series of 3 leaflets return to the need to rally France around him "as a whole in resistance against the enemy and in independence from all others. In the extreme shortage of men and resources in which I found myself for a long time, this attitude was difficult to maintain. [...] To succeed, it was first necessary that, in the absence of official and constitutional legitimacy, the French people as a whole should give me the support of their minds and hearts that was firm enough to withstand all the shocks of events, and to give me the authority that neither the laws nor the means gave me. This condition was fulfilled. A sort of mental and moral agreement was established between the French people and myself"...