Gaulle picked up on the simmering discontent in the army after the abandonment of the Suez operation.74 It was the convergence of these two elements – pied noir anger and army discontent – that would eventually cause the fall of the Republic in 1958. But it was not obvious that this would serve de Gaulle’s cause. Algeria had been strongly Giraudist in 1943 and the most radical pied noir activists had no love for the man who had introduced some moderate democratic reform in March 1944 in Algeria.
