Bastien-Thiry’s Petit-Clamart attempt on de Gaulle was an unsuccessful attempt to shoot Charles de Gaulle at the Petit-Clamart roundabout on August 22, 1962. The novel returns to it as both a failed attack and a turning point in the threat surrounding the President: its failure did not end the danger, and the history of attempts helped make ordinary security routines less dependable.

Background and Stakes

The attempt belongs to the wider campaign against de Gaulle described by Marc Rodin. Speaking to a prospective professional assassin, Rodin says that supporters had made six attempts to eliminate the President: three were exposed during planning, one was betrayed the day before it was to happen, and two were carried out but misfired. The account places Petit-Clamart among the attacks that reached execution but failed, though it does not supply a detailed chronology of the other attempts.

The stakes were political as well as personal. Rodin presents the organization’s view that France was ruled by a dictator and that the country could be restored only if de Gaulle died. The Englishman assessing the proposed contract challenges the gap between that rhetoric and the attackers’ willingness to risk their own lives. In his judgment, both Pont-de-Seine and Petit-Clamart failed because no one had been prepared to make the attempt at the cost of certain personal danger. This is his assessment of why the attacks failed, rather than a detailed account of the events at the roundabout.

The Attempt

The novel’s clearest retrospective description places the attempt on August 22, 1962, at the roundabout at Petit-Clamart. Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry and his men tried to shoot de Gaulle there. The attack did not kill him. The available account gives no further operational detail about the men’s positions, weapons, or the course of the shooting, keeping the event’s emphasis on its failure and subsequent consequences rather than reconstructing its mechanics.

Failure and Security Legacy

The attempt’s failure did not restore a sense of safety. In assessing a future attack, the Englishman argues that de Gaulle was forewarned of the general intention to kill him. Security checks, he says, would therefore not lapse into the mechanical routines that might allow an assassin to exploit surprise and escape amid the panic after a shot. He treats the earlier attempts as having made any later operation more difficult: their history had alerted those guarding the President, even though the threat had not been removed.

The novel’s account of the later manhunt shows the practical weight of that legacy. The authorities debate how to protect de Gaulle while he continues to make public appearances, and the eventual security arrangements include steel crowd barriers, searches of ceremony areas and nearby buildings, and armed watchers on rooftops. These measures belong to the later plot, not to the immediate aftermath of Petit-Clamart; they illustrate how the continuing threat and the history of failed attempts shape the state’s response.

Place in the Narrative

The event is recalled on August 25, 1963, one year and three days after the attempt, as the Paris Liberation Day ceremonies unfold. The narration links the attack at Petit-Clamart to a chain of events that reaches its crisis on that later summer day. This retrospective placement makes the earlier failure more than background: it marks the beginning of a continuing sequence of attempted violence, investigation, and heightened protection around de Gaulle.

Petit-Clamart also sharpens the contrast between a failed attack and an unresolved danger. The attackers did not kill the President, but the attempt helped establish that he remained exposed to political assassination. In the novel’s wider conflict, failure is not closure; it is part of the accumulating history that makes the next threat harder to detect and harder to contain.