Petit-Clamart attempt date: August 22, 1962

Petit-Clamart attempt date: August 22, 1962, fixes the earlier attack on Charles de Gaulle at the Petit-Clamart roundabout. Its importance in the novel extends beyond the failed shooting: the attempt becomes the opening point of a chain that reaches forward to the threats and manhunt surrounding the 1963 Liberation Day ceremonies.

The Date and the Attempt

The novel identifies the earlier attack by its relationship to the later action: the events of 25 August 1963 take place one year and three days after the attempt at Petit-Clamart. That interval establishes August 22, 1962, as the date of the earlier attack. Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry and his men had tried to shoot Charles de Gaulle at a roundabout; the 1963 narration recalls the attempt as a failed but consequential act.

From Failed Attack to Continuing Crisis

The narrative explicitly links the 1962 attempt to the later events, describing it as the start of a chain that would not end until the afternoon of the 1963 summer Sunday. The date therefore functions as more than a point on the chronology. It marks the beginning of a sequence whose consequences persist after the original plotters’ action has ended, carrying the threat against Charles de Gaulle into a later and distinct assassination scheme.

The Date in the Manhunt Narrative

The novel’s subsequent account turns from the earlier attack to the machinery assembled to find the new assassin. Claude Lebel receives a directive from the Minister of the Interior, broad access to information and the resources of the officials around him. He organizes a secret office with Caron as his assistant, then seeks help from foreign police while admitting how little is known about the suspect. Later, records of Alexander James Quentin Duggan’s crossings into and out of France and his hotel stay become part of the search. These investigative episodes belong to the later crisis, not to the events of August 22, 1962; their placement after the remembered attempt shows how the earlier attack frames a renewed danger to the same head of state.

Temporal Significance

The contrast between the two August dates gives the sequence its shape: a failed attempt at Petit-Clamart is recalled from the vantage point of a later, heavily attended commemoration in Paris. On that later day, tens of thousands of police and security personnel work to control the crowds, while Charles de Gaulle moves through dense protective ranks. By setting the two episodes exactly one year and three days apart, the novel makes the earlier attack a measure of how long the danger has endured—and how the memory of one attempt shadows the next.