Alain Delon's letter to de Gaulle and the president's resignation after a negative vote

Letter from Alain Delon to General de Gaulle, written on the eve of de Gaulle's official departure from the French presidency in 1969.

An extraordinary time in the history of Europe, effectively the last season of a truly great France.

Alain Delon writes as follows:

“My General, for many years, thanks to you, I have been proud to be French. This evening, faced with the unconsciousness and ingratitude of more than half of the people, I feel with horror a sense of shame that breaks my heart.
Be pleased to believe me, my General, devotedly and unreservedly yours. Alain Delon”

For a long time the polls had promised de Gaulle a triumphant “yes”, but the unexpected negative result, 52.4% “no”, led to the president's resignation, which he had announced in advance in the event of defeat.

By all appearances, de Gaulle's fate was sealed by world capital after he withdrew France from NATO's military organisation in 1966, announced the expulsion from the country of 29 NATO military bases and 35,000 troops, recognised the People's Republic of China, began building relations with the USSR, and demanded that the United States exchange the 1.5 billion dollars which he called “green scraps of paper” for gold at the official rate of 35 dollars an ounce, extracting from the Americans, by prodigious efforts, more than 3,000 tonnes of gold. All this could not go unpunished for the unbending Frenchman: as early as 1968 a wave of student protests swept the country, and in the end destroyed de Gaulle's political career, despite a decade of extraordinary prosperity and economic growth.