But where de Gaulle differed from the Action Française vision of the world was in his readiness to judge different periods of French history pragmatically and unideologically. He was ready to find virtues in any regime, or any individual, that had successfully defended French grandeur. For this reason he writes warmly of Lazare Carnot, the revolutionary leader and member of the notorious Committee of Public Safety, who reorganized the French armies in 1793–4. Thanks to Carnot, writes de Gaulle, the revolutionary Republic ‘renouncing the illusions which on two occasions came close to throwing
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