The use of the death machine, called the guillotine, was proposed by the physician and member of the National Assembly, Joseph Guillotin, back in 1791. However, this mechanism was not the invention of Dr. Guillotin, it is known that a similar tool was used before in Scotland and Ireland, where it was called the Scottish Maiden. Since the first execution, in almost 200 years of use, the guillotine has decapitated tens of thousands of people who were executed with this terrible device. We invite you to learn a little more about this killing machine and once again be glad that we live in the modern world.

Creation of the guillotine

The creation of the guillotine is attributed to the end of 1789, and it is associated with the name of Joseph Guillotin. Being an opponent of the death penalty, which was impossible to abolish in those days, Guillotin advocated the use of more humane methods of execution. He helped develop a device for rapid decapitation (decapitation), in contrast to the earlier swords and axes, which was called the "guillotine".

In the future, Guillotin made a lot of efforts so that his name was not associated with this murder weapon, but nothing came of it. His family even had to change their last name.

Lack of blood

The first person to be executed by guillotine was Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, who was sentenced to death for robbery and murder. On the morning of April 25, 1792, a huge crowd of curious Parisians gathered to look at this spectacle. Pelletier mounted the scaffold, painted blood-red, a sharp blade fell on his neck, his head flew off into a wicker basket. The bloody sawdust was raked up.

Everything happened so quickly that the audience, thirsty for blood, were disappointed. Some even began to shout: “Return the wooden gallows!”. But, despite their protests, guillotines soon appeared in all cities. The guillotine made it possible to actually turn human deaths into a real pipeline. So, one of the executioners, Charles-Henri Sanson, executed 300 men and women in three days, as well as 12 victims in just 13 minutes.

Experiments

Devices for decapitation were known even before the French Revolution, but during this period they were significantly improved, and the guillotine appeared. Previously, its accuracy and effectiveness was tested on live sheep and calves, as well as on human corpses. In parallel, in these experiments, medical scientists studied the influence of the brain on various functions of the body.

Vietnam

In 1955, South Vietnam seceded from North Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam was established, with Ngo Dinh Diem as its first president. Fearing conspirators seeking a coup, he passed Law 10/59, which allowed anyone suspected of having communist ties to be imprisoned without trial.

There, after horrendous torture, a death sentence was eventually pronounced. However, in order to fall victim to Ngo Dinh Diem, it was not necessary to go to prison. The ruler traveled around the villages with a mobile guillotine and executed all those suspected of disloyalty. Over the next few years, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were executed and their heads hung everywhere.

Profitable Nazi venture

The rebirth of the guillotine took place during the period of Nazism in Germany, when Hitler personally ordered the production of a large number of them. The executioners became quite rich people. One of the most famous executioners of Nazi Germany, Johan Reichgart, was able to buy a villa in a wealthy suburb of Munich with the money he earned.

The Nazis even managed to get additional profit from the families of decapitated victims. Each family was billed for each day the accused was kept in prison, and an additional bill for the execution of the sentence. Guillotines were used for almost nine years, and 16,500 people were executed during this time.

Life after execution...

Do the eyes of the executed man see anything in those seconds when his head, cut off from the body, flies into the basket? Does he still have the ability to think? It is quite possible, since the brain itself is not injured, for some time it continues to perform its functions. And only when its supply of oxygen stops, loss of consciousness and death occurs.

This is supported by the testimony of eyewitnesses and experiments on animals. So, King Charles I of England and Queen Anne Boleyn, after cutting off their heads, moved their lips, as if they were trying to say something. And the doctor Boryo notes in his notes that, twice addressing the executed criminal Henri Longueville by name, 25-30 seconds after the execution, he noticed that he opened his eyes and looked at him.

Guillotine in North America

In North America, the guillotine was used only once on the island of St. Pierre to execute a fisherman who killed his drinking companion while drinking. Although the guillotine was never used there again, legislators often advocated its return, some citing the fact that the use of the guillotine would make organ donation more accessible.

And although proposals for the use of the guillotine were rejected, the death penalty was widely used. From 1735 to 1924, more than 500 death sentences were carried out in the state of Georgia. At first it was hanging, later replaced by an electric chair. In one of the state prisons, a kind of “record” was set - it took only 81 minutes to execute six men in the electric chair.

Family traditions

The executioner profession was despised in France, they were shunned by society, and merchants often refused to serve them. They had to live with their families outside the city. Because of the damaged reputation, there were difficulties with marriages, so the executioners and members of their families were legally allowed to marry their own cousins.

The most famous executioner in history was Charles-Henri Sanson, who began to carry out death sentences at the age of 15, and his most famous victim was King Louis XVI in 1793. Later, the family tradition was continued by his son Henri, who beheaded the king's wife, Marie Antoinette. His other son, Gabriel, also decided to follow in his father's footsteps. However, after the first beheading, Gabriel slipped on the bloody scaffold, fell from it and died.

Eugene Weidman

Eugene Weidman was sentenced to death in 1937 for a series of murders in Paris. On June 17, 1939, a guillotine was prepared for him outside the prison, curious spectators gathered. The bloodthirsty crowd could not be calmed down for a long time, because of this, the execution even had to be postponed. And after the beheading, people with handkerchiefs rushed to the bloody scaffold to take the handkerchiefs with Weidmann's blood home as souvenirs.

After that, the authorities in the person of French President Albert Lebrun banned public executions, believing that they rather arouse disgusting base instincts in people than serve as a deterrent for criminals. Thus, Eugene Weidman became the last person in France to be publicly beheaded.

Suicide

Despite the falling popularity of the guillotine, it continued to be used by those who decided to commit suicide. In 2003, 36-year-old Boyd Taylor from England spent several weeks constructing a guillotine in his bedroom that was supposed to turn on at night while he was sleeping. The headless body of the son was discovered by his father, who was awakened by a noise similar to the sound of a chimney falling from the roof.

In 2007, the body of a man was discovered in Michigan, who died in the forest from a mechanism he built. But the most terrible was the death of David Moore. In 2006, Moore built a guillotine from metal tubing and a saw blade. However, the device initially did not work, Moore was only seriously injured. He had to make his way to the bedroom, where he had 10 Molotov cocktails stashed away. Moore blew them up, but they didn't work as planned either.

The guillotine has been in use for over two hundred years and has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people. Some of them were desperate criminals, while others were simply revolutionary. Among the victims are aristocrats, kings and queens. More than just an efficient killing machine, the "holy guillotine" served as a symbol of the French Revolution. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, she terrified everyone. But there are also facts that few people know about.

The roots of the invention go back to the Middle Ages

The name "guillotine" is associated with the last decade of the eighteenth century, but in fact the story begins much earlier - such execution machines have existed for many centuries. For example, a decapitation device called the "plank" was used in Germany and Flanders in the Middle Ages, and in England there was a sliding ax that was used to cut heads in antiquity. It is likely that the French guillotine was inspired by two devices - the Italian Renaissance mannaia and the famous "Scottish maiden" that claimed the lives of one hundred and twenty people between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Evidence also shows that primitive guillotines were in use long before the French Revolution.

It was originally developed as a more humane method of execution.

The origin of the French guillotine dates back to the end of 1789, when Dr. Joseph Ignacy Guillotin suggested that the French government adopt a more humane method of execution. The guillotine was generally against the death penalty, but since its abolition was not even considered at that time, he decided to propose a method of quick decapitation, which would be more humane compared to decapitation with a sword or ax, which was often delayed. He helped develop the first prototype, a machine conceived by French doctor Antoine Louis and built by German engineer Tobias Schmidt. For the first time the device was used in April 1792 and immediately acquired the name "guillotine" among the people, to the horror of the creator. Guillotine unsuccessfully tried to distance himself from the invention during the mass executions of the last decade of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the nineteenth, members of his family even petitioned the government, but also to no avail.

Executions were a public spectacle

During the Terror, thousands of enemies of the French Revolution were killed with the blade of the guillotine. Some viewers complained that the machine was too fast and accurate, but executions soon came to be considered great entertainment. People came to Revolution Square to look at the work of the guillotine, its device was sung in songs, jokes and poems. Spectators could buy souvenirs, a program with the names of the victims, or even eat at a nearby restaurant called Guillotine Cabaret. Some came every day, especially a group of women who came to each execution and knitted during breaks became famous. Even the theater lost popularity amid the executions. Many people spoke their deathbed speeches, some danced on the way to the scaffold. The enthusiasm for the guillotine faded by the end of the eighteenth century, but this method of execution remained in use until 1939.

It was a popular children's toy.

Often, children were also taken to executions, and some played with miniature guillotines at home. In the last decade of the eighteenth century, a half-meter high guillotine, with an imitation of a blade, was a popular toy. Children executed dolls, and sometimes rodents, which is why in some cities it was decided to ban such entertainment for fear that it would have a bad effect on the children's psyche. Until that moment, guillotines had already spread to the tables of the upper classes, where they cut bread and vegetables.

The executioners were famous all over the country

The more popular such an execution became, the more famous the executioners became. During the French Revolution, every executioner was a famous person. People discussed how well the executioner handled the mass execution. The job was a family affair. For example, the Sanson family had several generations of executioners - members of the family worked in positions from 1792 to 1847, and among their victims were King Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. From the nineteenth to the twentieth century, the most famous were Louis and Anatole Deibler, father and son, who jointly carried out the procedure from 1879 to 1939. The names of the executioners were often chanted in the streets, and their working uniform became fashionable attire.

Scientists have conducted creepy experiments on the heads of victims

From the very beginning, people have been wondering if the head retains consciousness. Doctors asked the victims to blink after the execution to demonstrate that they could still move, some burned their heads with the fire of candles. In 1880, one of the doctors even tried to pump blood into her head to bring her back to life.

The guillotine was used by the Nazis

The guillotine was in use not only during the years when the French Revolution was blazing. During the Third Reich, on the orders of Hitler, sixteen and a half thousand people were guillotined.

The last time it was used was in the seventies of the twentieth century.

The guillotine was not abolished until the end of the twentieth century. The last to be executed was the murderer Hamid Dzhandubi, who was sentenced in 1977, and in 1981 a state ban on such a punishment was issued.

Exactly 75 years ago in France, on the street, with a confluence of curious people, the last execution on the guillotine took place - the execution of Eugene Weidmann, a famous serial killer.

As it turned out later, what was happening was filmed with a hidden camera, so today we still have the opportunity to watch the original video of the execution on the guillotine.

The last publicly executed earthling was born in German Frankfurt am Main in September 1908. Eugene Weidmann's father was an entrepreneur - he was quite successful in exporting. The future killer spent his childhood in his hometown, and went to school here. However, with the outbreak of World War I, he was sent to live with his grandparents. It so happened that at the same time Eugene began to engage in theft.

Growing up, he shied away from military service, which is why he first went to Paris, and then to Canada. In North America, Weidman had to spend a year behind bars - he was caught on a robbery; After the conclusion, he was deported to his homeland.

In Germany, Eugene continued to commit crimes (which would later lead him to a sad outcome - it was he who would become the person killed during the last public execution on the guillotine), this time he was given 5 years in prison for robbery. In a prison cell in Saarbrücken, he made new acquaintances - it was here that he found two accomplices in his future atrocities. They were Roger Millon and Jean Blanc.

After serving time, the trio decided to "cooperate". As a way of earning a livelihood, they chose to extort ransoms from wealthy French tourists they had kidnapped. The criminal company rented a villa near the capital of France in the picturesque town of Saint-Cloud - there they intended to hide the unfortunate victims.

But the first experience of abduction failed - the tourist they attacked put up strong resistance and was able to escape. But the second attempt was successful.

In the midst of the summer of 1937, Eugene Weidmann meets a dancer and ballet teacher from New York, Jean de Coven, who came to visit her aunt. They met at one of the exhibitions in Paris, where Weidman worked as a translator. Pretty, dressed in the latest fashion, Jean immediately came to the attention of a hardened criminal who called himself Siegfried.

During a romantic date at the villa, Weidman strangled the girl. Together with accomplices Millon and Blanc, the body of the murdered woman was buried in the garden of the villa, taking several hundred dollars and francs belonging to her.

Shortly thereafter, Aunt Jean received a letter from the gang demanding a $500 reward to spare her niece's life. The woman immediately contacted the police, but the search for the missing did not yield results. A few days later, the brother of the deceased dancer Henry arrived in France and filed an advertisement in which he offered a solid reward of 10 thousand francs for any information about the whereabouts of his sister. But that didn't work either.

Meanwhile, Weidman killed a man again. On September 1, 1937, he hires driver Joseph Coffey to take him to the French Riviera. On a forest road, the killer shot a man. This time, 2.5 thousand francs became his prey.

Weidman committed his next murder two days later. Together with Million, under the pretext of a job offer, he lured the nurse Jeanine Keller into the forest. In a hidden cave in Fontainebleau, Weidmann killed a woman by shooting her in the back of the head. The state of the criminals was replenished by 1,400 francs, they also took a diamond ring from their victim.

In mid-October of the same year, Eugene Weidmann and Roger Millon planned a meeting with the aspiring theater producer Roger Leblond, promising him to become sponsors of his author's show. The meeting for Leblond ended with a bullet in the back of the head, and the villains got hold of 5 thousand francs.

At the end of November 1937, the list of Weidmann's victims was replenished with a new name. His friend Fritz Frommer, whom Eugene met during his last imprisonment, was shot and robbed. The man was buried in the garden behind the villa.

Five days later, Weidman cracked down on Raymond Lesobre, a real estate agent who was showing Eugène, who posed as a very wealthy client, a luxurious villa in Saint-Claude. As a result, the killer got another 5 thousand francs.

This atrocity was the last for Weidman. Before the last execution on the guillotine (the video of which you can see below), there was not much time left.

The business card he left in Lesobra's office allowed law enforcement officers to get on his trail of blood.

One day, returning home, he saw policemen waiting for him at the door of the house. Veidman invited them to enter the house, opened the doors and politely let them in. Then he fired three shots at the employees of the national security department. Luckily, the injuries were not very serious, the police were able to twist and neutralize the killer.

When Weidman came to, he confessed to all his crimes. But the only murder he regretted was that of dancer Jean de Coven.

Soon, Weidman's accomplices were detained, and the bodies buried in the garden of the villa were also found.

The case of the Wedman gang became the most sensational since the criminal case of Henri Landru, nicknamed Bluebeard, which took place 18 years earlier.

Weidmann and Millon were sentenced to death, and Blanc was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

On June 16, 1939, Albert Lebrun, President of France, commuted Million's execution to life imprisonment and rejected Weidmann's pardon.

There were a lot of people who wanted to see the execution of the bloody villain with their own eyes. In an effort to occupy the best places for viewing, the public has been gathering on the square since the evening. The noise of the huge crowd even reached Weidmann's cell. There were so many people that in order to install the guillotine, the forces of the national guard had to be called in to help.

Before the execution, Veidman staged a real theatrical performance - on the square in front of the crowd, indicatively, with hysteria, he prayed to God for forgiveness.

On June 17, 1939, the head of Eugene Weidmann was cut off by a guillotine, it happened in Versailles, on the square near the Saint-Pierre prison.

Eugene Weidman was born in 1908 in Germany. He started stealing at a young age and eventually grew into a professional criminal.

He served five years in prison for robbery. While serving his sentence, he met his future accomplices - Roger Millen and Jean Blanc. After being released, they began to work together, kidnapping and robbing tourists in the vicinity of Paris.

The group robbed and murdered a young New York City dancer, a chauffeur, a nurse, a theater producer, an anti-Nazi activist, and a real estate agent.

As a result, the police found Weidman. The offender managed to wound them with a pistol, but he was still arrested.

December 21, 1937
Vaidman is taken away in handcuffs after being detained.
Photo: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

June 17, 1938
Eugene Weidman shows the police the cave in the forest of Fontainebleau where he killed Jeanine Keller.
Photo: Horace Abrahams/Getty Images

March 24, 1939
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

March 1939
Weidman at trial in France.
Photo: LAPI/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

March 1939

March 1939
Special telephone lines are installed in the courthouse.
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

After a high-profile trial, Weidmann and Millen were sentenced to death, and Blanc to 20 months in prison. Millen's sentence was then commuted to life imprisonment.

On the morning of June 17, 1939, Weidmann was taken to the square in front of the Saint-Pierre prison, where a guillotine and a noisy crowd were waiting for him. Among the audience was the future legendary actor Christopher Lee, then he was 17 years old.

Weidmann was placed in the guillotine, and the chief executioner of France, Jules-Henri Defurneau, immediately lowered the blade.

The crowd reacted violently. Solemnly jubilant, many tried to break through to the decapitated body to soak handkerchiefs in Weidmann's blood as a souvenir. The scene was so horrifying that President Albert Lebrun banned public executions. He stated that instead of serving as a deterrent to crime, they awakened baser instincts in people.

The guillotine was originally conceived as a quick and relatively humane way to take a life. It continued to be used in closed executions until 1977. In 1981, the death penalty was abolished in France.

In June 1939
Weidman in court.
Photo: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

June 17, 1939
Weidmann is led to the guillotine. He passes by the chest in which his body will be taken away.
Photo: Keystone-France/Getty Images

June 17, 1939
A crowd awaiting Weidmann's execution gathered around a guillotine near the Saint-Pierre prison.
Photo: AFP/Getty Images

June 17, 1939
Weidman in the guillotine a second before the blade drops.
Photo: POPPERFOTO/Getty Images.

The last public execution on the guillotine took place on July 17, 1939. But for another 38 years, the "Widow" (as the French familiarly called this killing machine) conscientiously performed its functions of cutting off heads. True, the public was no longer allowed to such spectacles.

Hamid Jandoubi, a pimp of Tunisian origin, was guillotined in a Marseille prison in September 1977. The crimes he committed caused a violent reaction in society and resumed the interrupted discussion about the death penalty.

Four years later, François Mitterrand abolished the death penalty.

He hobbled to the place of execution on one leg. With the first glimpses of the morning, September 10, 1977, 31-year-old Hamid Dzhandubi, a pimp and a murderer, was dragged to the scaffold. In order to bring him to his knees under the guillotine, the guards had to unfasten the prosthesis on which he used to limp after a factory accident that cut off his leg. In the courtyard of the Marseille prison "Beaumet" he asked for a cigarette. Before he finished smoking, Dzhandubi asked for another one: it was a Gitan brand cigarette, just the one he preferred. He smoked slowly, in complete silence. Later, his lawyers will tell that after the second cigarette he wanted to take a few more puffs, but he was refused: “Well, no! Enough, we were already lenient with you, ”grumbled the important rank of the police responsible for carrying out the execution. Well, what can you do? Jandoubi laid his head on the chopping block. The blade went down at 4:40.

Who remembers Hamid Djandoubi today? However, he takes his place in the annals of French justice, as the last person sentenced to death, whose sentence was carried out. Convicted of raping, torturing and deliberately murdering his 21-year-old mistress, Elisabeth Bousquet, he became the third man to have his head blown off his shoulders during the seven-year presidency of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Before him, this fate befell Christian Ranuzzi (July 28, 1976) and Jerome Carrein (June 23, 1977). Djandoubi was the last person the president refused to pardon, saying: "Let justice be done." Justice turned out to be surprisingly very fast: on February 25, 1977, the jury of the city of Bouches-du-Rhone considered his case for only two days and sentenced him to death. And five months later he was already guillotined.

Hamida Jandoubi arrived in Marseille 9 years before his execution, in 1968. At that time he was 22 years old. For the first time in his life, he traveled outside his homeland - Tunisia. Very quickly he got a job - he became a rigger and easily integrated into French society, which, after the May events of 1968, somehow immediately became more modern. In 1971, as a result of an accident, he not only lost his leg, but also broke down mentally: his friends said that the guy had become a completely different person - cruel and aggressive. With women, Jandoubi, who had previously had a reputation for seduction, became rude. Unexpectedly discovering in himself the talent of a pimp, he succeeded in involving several girls in prostitution, whom Dzhandubi literally terrorized. Elisabeth Busquet's refusal to give in to the demands of her lover, who sent her out into the street to catch clients, literally infuriated him: he yelled at her, beat her ... As soon as he got out of prison, where he was put after a complaint filed by Busquet, he began to threaten her.

Attorney General: "It's the devil in the flesh!"

After leaving prison, on the night of July 3-4, 1974, Hamid Dzhandubi kidnaps Elisabeth Busquet at gunpoint. Having brought her to his home, he throws her on the floor and beats her severely with a stick, then with a belt. Then he rapes her, burns her chest and genitals with a cigarette: Jandoubi saw similar massacres carried out by gang leaders in the criminal environment of Marseille. The agony of the unfortunate lasts for hours. The executioner decides to kill her. He douses her with gasoline and throws a burning match. Does not work. Being overwhelmed
determined to end the victim, he literally drags her body to his beach house, located in Lançon-de-Provence. There, in the presence of two underage girls who live with him and whom he forces into prostitution, Dzhandubi strangles his victim. In the eyes of girls - horror. A few days after the discovery of the corpse, one of the juvenile prostitutes betrays him to the police.
Dzhandubi is not on the run for long: a few months later he is arrested and imprisoned in Marseille prison. In the hope of softening the hearts of the judges, he does not deny what he has done and admits all the facts; he is even ready to participate in the reproduction of the circumstances of his crime. The police also arrest two underage accomplices and imprison them in the women's section of the Beaumett prison. For them, this becomes a real relief - they are so afraid of revenge! “As soon as I saw them,” one of the lawyers will later say, “I thought that I would meet absolutely repressed creatures. I thought that after reading the case with a description of the torture that the victim suffered, they would be tormented by remorse. In fact, they looked completely different, they were relaxed, because the prison, after the hell in which they lived lately, seemed to them a real paradise! In November 1974, the lawyer succeeded in obtaining their release from custody, and in February 1977 they were fully acquitted.

The whole of France is closely following the trial of Jandoubi, and some newspapers even compare him to Adolf Hitler. Since he faces the death penalty, various organizations are activated to abolish the death penalty, this "barbaric and useless method that brings disgrace to the country." Both lawyers for the defendant, one of whom, Emile Pollack, is considered the best in Marseille, are doing their best to avoid the death penalty. They look into his past, look for extenuating circumstances, tell the story of a boy who "was gentle, hardworking, obedient and honest" but whose life was broken after an accident. "It's the devil in the flesh!" - Prosecutor General Shovi answers them, who is not at all convinced by the arguments given by the lawyers. However, they do not convince psychiatrists either: in their opinion, Hamid Dzhandubi "represents a colossal social danger," although his intelligence is rated as "above average." This expertise is critical. The verdict of capital punishment, unanimously handed down by the jury, was greeted with applause.

"French justice will no longer kill anyone"

On March 16, 1981, during the television program "Cards on the Table", François Mitterrand, the Socialist presidential candidate, utters the words "against the death penalty": "I state this directly, without hiding my opinion," he says, although all polls public opinion shows that the French are not ready to part with the guillotine. This is a turning point in the election campaign, but fate is on Mitterrand's side. On March 10, 1981, he was elected president. And on July 8, Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy announces the abolition of the death penalty. The parliament, assembled in an extraordinary session, votes in favor of this decision on September 18, after Minister of Justice Robert Badinter delivered his instantly famous speech: “Tomorrow, thanks to you, there will be no more of these shameful murders, conducted early in the morning, under cover of secrecy, in French prisons. Tomorrow the bloody page of our justice will be turned.”

The page, stained with the blood of Elisabeth Bousquet, victim of the deadly insanity of Hamid Dzhandubi, “one-legged, who,” as Badinter will remind the deputies, “whatever terrible crimes he committed, showed all the signs of a mental disorder, was also turned over, and who was dragged to the scaffold, removed from it prosthesis". On February 19, 2007, during the presidency of Jacques Chirac, the abolition of the death penalty was recorded in the Constitution. At Versailles, where parliament met to vote in favor of this change to the basic law, 26 out of 854 parliamentarians voted against it.

Jacques EXPERT, Elise Carlin

Translation by Alexander PARKHOMENKO and Vladislav Krivosheev

In the photo: the detention of Dzhandubi; Jandoubi (sitting) with friends in Marseille; the house where the killer lived; during an investigative experiment; a letter from the prosecutor of the republic, which confirms the president's refusal to pardon Jandoubi.

* The May events of 1968 - a social crisis in France, resulting in demonstrations, riots and a general strike. The students were the shooters. He led, ultimately, to a change of government, the resignation of President Charles de Gaulle and, more broadly, to huge changes in French society.