Ecole Militaire assassination plot

The Ecole Militaire assassination plot was a planned rooftop shooting of Charles de Gaulle during a ceremony at the École Militaire on the Champ de Mars. Uncovered on February 14, the day before the scheduled event, it exposed another threat to the president amid the OAS campaign and showed how an intended public appearance could become a test of security as well as resolve.

Background and Intended Attack

The plot emerged as the OAS campaign against de Gaulle was gathering force. Its operations chief in exile, Antoine Argoud, had helped inspire the earlier Petit-Clamart plot; the broader campaign also employed propaganda and terror, including plastic bombs in cinemas and cafés. The evidence places the École Militaire plan within this atmosphere of repeated assassination threats, without identifying Argoud as its organizer.

The intended attack was timed for de Gaulle’s entry into the hall on February 15. A gunman positioned among the eaves of an adjacent building was to shoot him in the back. The plan therefore depended on access to the Academy and a concealed firing position overlooking the entrance, rather than on an attack during the ceremony itself.

Discovery and Arrests

The authorities uncovered the plot on February 14. Those later tried for it were Jean Bichon, artillery captain Robert Poinard, and Madame Paule Rousselet de Lilac, an English-language teacher at the Military Academy. Georges Watin was meant to be the trigger-man, but he escaped once again. Police found a rifle fitted with a sniper scope at Poinard’s flat and arrested the three people who later faced trial.

The investigation also revealed a failed effort to get Watin and his weapon into the Academy. The conspirators had consulted Warrant Officer Marius Tho about how to bring them in; he went directly to the police. His intervention supplied a crucial break in a plan whose execution required both a concealed weapon and a way past the institution’s security.

De Gaulle’s Attendance and the Plot’s Effect

De Gaulle kept the appointment and attended the military ceremony at the appointed time on February 15. He made one concession to the danger: he arrived in an armoured car, although the protection was deeply distasteful to him. His attendance preserved the public engagement the plot had threatened, while the altered vehicle made the threat visible in the arrangements surrounding it.

The plan was described as extraordinarily amateurish, but its failure did not make it trivial. It angered de Gaulle, who summoned Interior Minister Roger Frey the next day and insisted that the assassination attempts had gone far enough. The episode thus joined the physical danger to the president with a political consequence: another exposed plot strengthened the pressure for a more forceful response to the OAS campaign.