Gare Montparnasse is the landmark on the southern side of the Place du 18 Juin 1940 and the defining edge of the square where The Jackal chooses to shoot Charles de Gaulle. In the novel, the station is more than a transport hub: its forecourt is a public stage for national commemoration, its surrounding buildings form a field of possible firing positions, and its imminent replacement gives the scene a sense of historical time running out even as the old building remains crowded with ordinary life.

Setting and Urban Character

The station occupies the southern side of the square at the end of Rue de Rennes. The forecourt is bordered by dense urban traffic: streams pound down Boulevard de Montparnasse and meet those coming from Rue d’Odessa and Rue de Rennes. Tall, narrow-fronted buildings overlook the square, while the station courtyard is busy with cars and taxis serving tens of thousands of commuters each day. The station is one of Paris’s great mainline hubs, not an isolated monument; its constant movement makes the surrounding space difficult to read as a single, controlled ceremonial arena.

The scale of the site matters to the plot. From the upper floor of a corner house on the western side of Rue de Rennes, the centre of the forecourt is about 130 metres away. The square and station are also set within a wider network of streets and buildings that creates, then limits, possible lines of sight. The station is conspicuous, but its upper office windows are expected to be watched by security personnel, making the building itself unusable to The Jackal as a firing position.

Historical Memory and a Changing Station

The square had formerly been called Place de Rennes. After the Gaullists took power at City Hall, it was renamed Place du 18 Juin 1940, commemorating the date Charles de Gaulle appealed from London to the French after the fall of France. When The Jackal arrives on July 28, he pauses at the new nameplate. The place’s political meaning is not merely attached to the ceremony planned there: it is built into the name of the square and into the associations of the station beside it.

Gare Montparnasse carries its own memories for Parisians of the war generation. The narrative evokes the station’s shadow over events in which Berlin was humiliated and Paris preserved, linking a working railway building to the city’s recent history. At the same time, its future is already visible. Work has begun on foundations for a new station, planned 500 metres farther down the railway line, while the old site is to become an office block and shopping precinct. The old facade was demolished in 1964. In the novel’s 1963 setting, the station is therefore both an active part of the city and a structure approaching disappearance.

The Jackal’s Choice of Position

After surveying other possible sites around Paris, The Jackal treats the square as the certain location for the final public appearance of the President. He assesses the corner buildings where Rue de Rennes opens onto the square, the nearby houses along the street, and the buildings facing Boulevard de Montparnasse. The first few buildings offer possible angles into the forecourt; farther away, the angle becomes too narrow or the distance too great. The station offers an apparent vantage point, but the security presence in its upper offices rules it out.

The Jackal studies the surrounding facades from several positions rather than choosing on sight alone. He watches the houses from the terrace of the Café Duchesse Anne, stays there for three hours, later studies the eastern facades from the Hand Brasserie Alsacienne, and walks along the street inspecting the entrances of apartment blocks he has marked as possibilities. The setting’s ordinary details—cafés, doors, traffic, and commuter movement—become part of a methodical reconnaissance. The station’s importance lies partly in this contrast: the public sees a busy transport district, while the assassin reads its buildings as a set of constrained opportunities.

Ceremony and the Failed Shot

Charles de Gaulle refuses to change his published itinerary, and the afternoon ceremony is fixed for four o’clock on the square in front of Gare Montparnasse. It is the presentation of Medailles de la Liberation to ten veterans whose Resistance service is being belatedly recognised. Security measures reshape the site without removing its public character: barriers are to be erected, the enclosed areas searched, nearby houses and flats checked, and armed watchers placed on rooftops. The ceremony nevertheless draws a massive crowd. On Paris Liberation Day, 75,000 people are occupied with keeping order, while most spectators can barely glimpse the Head of State through the surrounding officials, guards, and police.

The forecourt’s arrangement turns the station facade into one side of a ceremonial enclosure. Cars stand nose to tail along the wall; the ten medal recipients wait by the railings opposite them; officials and members of the diplomatic corps occupy the east side; and the Garde Republicaine fills the west. The band and guard of honour face the assembled veterans. When the ceremony begins, Charles de Gaulle walks forward alone from the crowd to present the medals, making the open space between the groups the scene’s central axis.

Six floors up and about 130 metres away, The Jackal steadies his rifle on Charles de Gaulle as the President pins a medal on a veteran. The shot’s timing is defeated by a small, ordinary gesture: Charles de Gaulle bends to kiss the man on each cheek, and his moving head passes out of the bullet’s line. The round misses by a fraction of an inch and buries itself harmlessly in the softened tarmac of the forecourt. Neither the President nor the nearby officials show that they have heard it; the presentation continues, with La Marjolaine playing as Charles de Gaulle proceeds to the next veteran. Gare Montparnasse thus frames the decisive reversal: a carefully chosen urban vantage and a tightly staged national ritual cannot make the target’s movement predictable, and the public ceremony carries on around the failed assassination.