Citroën DS 19

The Citroën DS 19 serves as Charles de Gaulle’s presidential car and as the most exposed object in the failed attempt to kill him. It carries the President through ordinary traffic under official escort, but that public visibility makes it a target: bullets tear into its body, its tyres fail, and its driver must keep it moving. Later, the same unmistakable form appears in the sightline of a new would-be assassin. The car is both practical transport and a recurring image of the danger attached to de Gaulle’s public movements.

The presidential car

At the Élysée Palace, two long black Citroën DS 19s remain after the Cabinet ministers have departed. The first bears the pennant of the President of the French Republic. Francis Marroux, a police driver from the Gendarmerie Nationale camp at Satory, is at its wheel; the second car, also driven by a gendarme from Satory, follows as part of the presidential party. The arrangement establishes the DS 19 not as a private automobile but as the lead vehicle in a guarded public procession.

Charles de Gaulle and Yvonne de Gaulle take the rear seat of the first car, with de Gaulle entering on the right and his wife on the left. Their son-in-law, Colonel Alain de Boissieu, checks that both rear doors are shut before sitting beside Marroux. The second car carries Henri d’Jouder, the bodyguard, and Commissaire Jean Ducret, chief of the Presidential Security Corps. The seating plan places the President and his wife inside the first car, while armed protection and security officials travel in the following vehicle. The DS 19 is therefore at once a family conveyance and the central element in an organized security formation.

At 7:50 p.m., two motorcycle outriders move ahead and the cars leave the palace. Their escort does not clear the roads in advance: traffic remains normal, and police officers must stop vehicles as the procession approaches. From the Faubourg St Honoré, the convoy turns through the Avenue de Marigny, crosses Place Clemenceau and Pont Alexandre III, then continues along the Avenue General Gallieni and Boulevard des Invalides. The DS 19’s route runs through the city rather than away from it; its protection depends on coordinated movement and on the surrounding officers making way in time.

The ambush and the damaged car

The danger built into that public route becomes concrete during the OAS attack of August 22, 1962. As the presidential convoy travels at about seventy miles per hour along the Avenue de la Libération, the attackers fire on the passing car. The account treats the twelve hits the Citroën takes as evidence of the assailants’ marksmanship. Most strike from behind. Two tyres are shredded; although they are self-sealing, the sudden loss of pressure makes the speeding car lurch into a front-wheel skid.

Marroux keeps control by turning gently into the skid and easing off the accelerator. After a brief loss of power, the DS 19 surges forward again toward the intersection with the Avenue du Bois. This recovery matters because another OAS group is waiting there. The car is not simply shielding its passengers: its continued motion carries them through the interval between two attacks. Marroux’s handling turns a mechanical crisis into an escape, while the account explicitly credits his driving with saving de Gaulle’s life.

At the second ambush, Georges Watin fires a submachine gun at the rear of the leading DS, and the broken glass gives him a view of de Gaulle’s profile. D’Jouder tries to fire across the narrow space between the cars, but the driver’s position obstructs his aim. Ducret orders the security car to stay with the President; the convoy passes the attackers and continues toward Villacoublay Air Base. The escort vehicle remains untouched, in contrast to the battered lead car, but neither it nor its occupants can stop the attack as it unfolds.

At Villacoublay, de Gaulle leaves the damaged DS 19, shakes glass from his lapel, and goes around to take his wife’s arm. The car’s right-side tyres eventually give out completely, leaving it riding on its rims. Marroux remains ashen-faced behind the wheel, and Ducret offers him a quiet word of congratulations before turning to the practical work of clearing up. The physical damage records what the presidential party has just survived: shattered glass, failed tyres, and a car that reaches safety only after being kept in motion.

A recurring target in the narrative

The Citroën DS 19 returns as a recognizable feature of de Gaulle’s later motorcade. At a street junction, The Jackal sees two black DS 19s following white-helmeted motorcycle outriders. In the first car, he catches a brief glimpse of the tall President in his charcoal-grey suit. The sight is fleeting, but the car’s shape and position make the target legible to the watcher: de Gaulle is not an abstract political enemy here, but a visible passenger moving through the city in a known vehicle.

That recognition gives the DS 19 a role beyond the 1962 ambush. The first attack has shown how a convoy can be reached on a public road; the later sighting places the same kind of car within The Jackal’s imagined line of fire. His private resolve to see de Gaulle at closer range through a telescopic sight turns the passing limousine into a point of anticipation. The car connects one assassination attempt to the threat that follows, without making the two attacks the same event.

Narrative significance

The Citroën DS 19 concentrates the tension between ceremony and exposure. At the palace, it is identified by a presidential pennant and surrounded by carefully assigned escorts; on the road, it has to share space with ordinary traffic and depends on outriders, police signals, and Marroux’s judgment. Those arrangements offer protection, but the attack shows their limits: bullets penetrate the car, the tyres fail, and the attackers briefly draw alongside it.

Its damage and recurrence also make the vehicle a narrative marker. The failed 1962 attack leaves the car on its rims and its occupants alive; the later glimpse by The Jackal makes the presidential DS 19 part of a renewed threat. Across these scenes, the automobile carries both the fragile human presence of its passengers and the public visibility that puts them in danger.