La Marseillaise

La Marseillaise is the familiar patriotic song that sounds during the Liberation Day ceremonies at the square in front of Gare Montparnasse. In the novel, it binds remembrance of France’s wartime resistance to a present-day public ceremony—and to the Jackal’s attempt to turn that ceremony into an opportunity to kill Charles de Gaulle.

The song and the square’s memory

On July 28, while examining possible sites for an attack, the Jackal visits the square at the southern end of Rue de Rennes. Its name, Place du 18 Juin 1940, recalls the date when Charles de Gaulle, speaking from exile in London, urged the French not to regard a lost battle as a lost war. The new nameplate catches the Jackal’s eye, and he pauses over the history attached to the place. The song is not heard in this earlier scene, but its later appearance belongs to the same field of national memory: the square is both an urban space under inspection and a site charged with the story of resistance.

The Jackal surveys the square, its traffic, the buildings overlooking it, and the busy forecourt of Gare Montparnasse. The station itself is marked by change: its old façade is destined for demolition, with a replacement station planned farther down the line. Against this temporary setting, the square’s commemorative name and the ceremonies held there make the past publicly present. The contrast gives La Marseillaise a particular force when it is heard at the event: remembrance is not confined to a plaque or a name, but voiced collectively in the very space the assassin has studied.

A public song in a state ceremony

For Liberation Day, Charles de Gaulle refuses to alter his published itinerary despite the threat to his life. The afternoon ceremony is scheduled for four o’clock in the square before Gare Montparnasse, where he is to award medals to ten veterans of the Resistance. The event draws enormous crowds, while 75,000 police and security personnel work to control them. Most spectators can barely see the President as officers, officials, and bodyguards surround him.

As the ceremony begins, trumpets sound and several people in the crowd take up the familiar chant of La Marseillaise. The song makes the gathering more than a formal presentation: it gives the crowd a shared patriotic expression as the state commemorates liberation and recognizes Resistance service. Its public, collective character stands in sharp contrast to the concealed violence planned nearby. The Jackal, watching from a room above the square, uses the ceremony’s predictable arrangement as a firing opportunity.

The anthem and the assassination attempt

The ceremonial space is organized with precision. Cars stand nose to tail along the station façade; the ten medal recipients wait opposite them by the railings; officials and diplomats occupy one side of the forecourt, and the Garde Republicaine stands on the other. The band plays La Marseillaise as the Jackal raises his rifle and selects the veteran who will receive the first medal. At the song’s close, the narrative marks the transition with the last notes of the National Anthem giving way to silence and the Guard’s command.

Charles de Gaulle then advances alone toward the line of veterans, apart from the minister introducing them and the official carrying the medals. The Jackal aims at him from six floors up and 130 metres away. Just as he squeezes the trigger, de Gaulle bends to kiss the first veteran on both cheeks; the sudden movement makes the shot miss. The song has accompanied a ceremony that brings national memory, public authority, and individual acts of recognition into a single staged scene, but the attempt is defeated by a customary gesture that interrupts the assassin’s carefully fixed sightline.

Narrative significance

La Marseillaise recurs in two related forms: as a chant taken up by people in the crowd and as the music of the official ceremony. That movement from collective voices to a precisely ordered state event helps frame the scene’s central tension. The ceremony presents a nation commemorating liberation; the Jackal treats its schedule, participants, and arrangements as tactical conditions. The song therefore marks the distance between the meaning the gathering publicly claims and the violent purpose hidden within it, without making the anthem itself a cause of the plot.