'Our whole history', proclaimed General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), leader of the Free French during World War II, head of the Provisional Government from 1944 to 1946, founder of the Fifth Republic in 1958, and its first President from 1959 till 1969, 'is nothing but the alternation between the immense sufferings of a dispersed people and the fruitful grandeur of a nation rallied under the aegis of a strong State.'