A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle

by Julian T. Jackson

In 1875, France became officially a republic for the third time. Scarred by the short-lived fate of France’s two previous republics (1792–9, 1848–51), the leaders of the Third Republic set about instilling in the French people the idea that the identity of their nation was inseparable from republicanism. In 1879, the revolutionary hymn the ‘Marseillaise’ became France’s national anthem;