France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war.

The expression France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war joins a remembered wartime appeal to the Jackal’s search for a place to attack Charles de Gaulle. Its significance in the novel is not only historical: recalled beside the square named for the appeal, it helps turn a public landscape of memory into a predicted scene of violence.

Historical Referent

On July 28, while examining possible locations for the attack, the Jackal notices the new name plate at the Place du 18 Juin 1940. It brings back what he had read the previous month: on June 18, 1940, de Gaulle, then an exile, had taken a microphone to tell the French that a lost battle did not mean the war was lost. The expression thus refers to an appeal of resistance and endurance, not simply to a military reversal.

A Name in the City

The square had once been called the Place de Rennes; it was renamed when the Gaullists took power in City Hall. The Jackal’s attention to the plate connects the name’s political history with his practical reconnaissance. Around it, the setting carries further associations: the square stands by the Gare Montparnasse, a station described as laden with memories for the Parisian generation that lived through the war. Traffic streams across the forecourt, while commuters and taxis move through a station still busy with daily life.

From Remembrance to Prediction

The remembered appeal becomes part of the Jackal’s reasoning about where de Gaulle will appear. After surveying the square, the station courtyard, and the surrounding buildings, he concludes that the President will come there on the appointed day. The juxtaposition is stark: a name commemorating a refusal to accept defeat sits within a site the assassin reads as an opportunity. The passage also looks beyond the planned attack: the old Gare Montparnasse is destined for demolition, and the author’s note records that its facade was demolished in 1964. The square’s historical meaning and the station’s coming disappearance give the Jackal’s chosen setting a layered temporality, even as he reduces it to the geometry of a shot.