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# The virtues of command according to De Gaulle

Lucien Jaume, Isabelle Chaize

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Lucien Jaume, Isabelle Chaize. The virtues of command according to De Gaulle. 2023. hal-04863085

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# The virtues of command according to De Gaulle

Lucien Jaume

IN CITÉS VOLUME 6, ISSUE 2, 2001, PAGES 85 TO 92

PUBLISHERS P.U.F.

ISSN 1299-5495

ISBN 2130518915

**Article available online at**
https://www.cairn-int.info/revue-cites-2001-2-page-85.htm

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*The virtues of command*
*according to De Gaulle*

LUCIEN JAUME

"The weapons of war have, in all ages, been the chosen instruments of barbarism. They have assured the triumph of matter over soul, and have laid a dreadful scourge upon mankind. By them the reason has been constantly oppressed, judgment flouted, talent abused. There is no end to the errors they have championed, to the ignorant who have had recourse to them, to the brutes who have employed them" (73).<fnref n="1" /> Which nineteenth-century writer, which disciple of Lamartine or Chateaubriand, thus seems to deny the existence of anything positive in the military order? It was in fact a soldier of the twentieth century: in 1932, Major de Gaulle, drawing partly on lectures he had given at the École supérieure de guerre five years earlier, suggested that weapons had also inspired new lines of inquiry in science and art, that they had "been an instrument of the best and of the worst" (74), and that without them there would have been neither Christianity nor human rights. His book *The Edge of the Sword* presents an astonishing summary of what could be called the political and military philosophy of the future General de Gaulle. Our concern here is the portrait of the

<footnote n="1">1. Charles de Gaulle, *The Edge of the Sword*, trans. Gerard Hopkins (New York: Criterion Books, 1960). We will be referring to this work throughout the article. Quotations are followed by the relevant page number. A small number of changes have been made to the wording of these quotations in conformity with the author's wishes.</footnote>
military leader that gradually emerges over the course of a foreword and five vigorous chapters. The commander described could be Marshal Pétain, who as vice president of the Conseil supérieur de la guerre had appointed de Gaulle to his staff in order to write the book,<fnref n="2" /> but it is more likely to be de Gaulle's own ideal self, as some claimed (angrily) at the time of the lectures in 1927. In any case, the then Major de Gaulle argued directly in those lectures against many of the principles he had been taught at the very same École supérieure de guerre, where he had entered in only thirty-third place and graduated fifty-second out of 129 students.<fnref n="3" />

Literally settling scores with his former professors, the author of *The Edge of the Sword* sets out the necessary conditions for command in the modern era, as well as the individual virtues needed at a time when hierarchy was no longer sufficient as a *foundation* for obedience. As we will see, this portrait of a leader who is rational, fair, and careful to maintain his distance presupposes a certain type of education in which general culture plays an essential role: the empiricism (in fact not exclusive) associated with the first intellectual portrait is followed by the internal, humanist education of the pedagogical project. But does this ideal modern military leader ultimately bear any relation to the figure of the head of state first outlined in de Gaulle's speech at Bayeux in 1946 and later finalized by the constitutional reforms of 1958 and 1962?

The military leader, and above all the great military leader as imagined in *The Edge of the Sword*, must not be judged in light of peacetime conditions but always through the lens of the supreme ordeal that is war. This is a major problem, because civil society, as de Gaulle remarks, does not like hearing about the trials of war; moreover, just as the army has no desire to facilitate the rise of strong personalities,<fnref n="4" /> republican society is not eager to open

<footnote n="2">2. Agreeing to serve as a “writer,” even a “ghostwriter,” did not, in de Gaulle’s view, mean effacing himself completely: Jean Lacouture describes the growing conflict between de Gaulle and Pétain and reproduces the superbly audacious letter that the subordinate sent, in his function as writer, to the commander of the French army (Jean Lacouture, *De Gaulle* [Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1984], vol. 1, “Le rebelle,” 130–45).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. On his disagreements with Colonel Moyrand and Pétain's intervention to have his grade improved from “satisfactory” to “good,” see Lacouture, *De Gaulle*, 119–22.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4. Nor do political parties, as de Gaulle wrote in the third volume of *The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle*, trans. Jonathan Griffin and Richard Howard (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), vols. 1–3; the problem in politics is thus not the same but analogous, particularly regarding the head of state as envisaged by de Gaulle for the Fifth Republic.</footnote>
its arms to soldiers of exceptional stature. The experience of Bonapartism weighs heavily in France. Nevertheless, as de Gaulle wrote in 1934, it is at times of sudden crisis that these leaders are indispensable: "in the tragic hours when the storm sweeps away conventions and customs, they alone stand up, and are therefore necessary. Nothing is of more importance to the State than to produce in its reserve of officers these exceptional men who will be its final resource."<fnref n="5" /> De Gaulle often came back to this topic, to which he even devoted an unpublished text, thus anticipating the scenario he would act out, with full awareness, in June 1940—except that, on that occasion, he had to combine his military role with the political function of someone who "carried French sovereignty with him."<fnref n="6" />

Putting this initial difficulty to one side, what are the virtues required for military command? The first is the ability to recognize and address the needs of a specific situation: de Gaulle repeatedly praised the empiricism (in his words) inherent in the act of war. "The essential role, therefore, which a commander is called upon to play, is that of assessing the conditions of every special case as it occurs. He who knows them, who can appreciate them at their true value and exploit them to his own advantage, will be successful. He who neglects them or is incapable of utilizing them, will be beaten. An action will be fought successfully only if the commander has a keen eye for contingencies" (79–80). The first chapter of *The Edge of the Sword* opens with an identical claim ("War is an activity in which the contingent plays an essential part" [15]), one that runs counter to the "a priori doctrines" so dear to French military training: the Maginot line and the decision to adopt a defensive posture were part of these a priori theories. Borrowing from Bergson the idea of embracing "the fluid, the unstable, and the changeable" (16) and of the need to be on guard against the shortcomings of discursive intelligence, de Gaulle even compares the military leader to an artist guided by intuition. Nevertheless, he writes, "instinct" will never be enough on its own; the military leader must also have a talent for synthesizing information so as to put each element in its

<footnote n="5">5. Charles De Gaulle, *The Army of the Future* (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976), 173.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6. “Préparer la guerre, c’est préparer des chefs,” text from 1921 or 1922, in De Gaulle, *Le Fil de l’épée et autres écrits* (Paris: Plon, 1999). **Translator’s note:** Our translation. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of cited foreign language material are our own.</footnote>
correct place, a fairly uncommon skill.<fnref n="7" /> Finally, synthesis is only fruitful when accompanied by introspection, the ability to ignore the pressures of the situation: “That is why great men of action have always been of the meditative type. They have, without exception, possessed to a very high degree the faculty of withdrawing into themselves” (23).

The first virtue of the military leader thus involves an internal dialectic: an eager observer of the external world and its circumstances, he is also a meditative, inward-looking man. The second quality is even more unexpected: the true leader, in his position, knows how to disobey orders when necessary. With no compulsion about comparing the great commander to the daring genius (Galileo), the isolated explorer (Columbus), the creator of new rules (Boileau), in short to the inventor, de Gaulle quotes an English minister who said of a worthy admiral that “He has all Nelson’s qualities but one: he doesn’t know how to disobey!” (45). The military leader who has what de Gaulle calls “character” will not obey inappropriate, unfair, or absurd orders. The French army also needed to be able to delegate and decentralize while maintaining the necessary discipline: “Should initiative in all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, vanish, should the appetite for responsibility and the courage to speak out be diminished, should character be at a discount, it would not be long before the army found itself in a state of complete paralysis” (51). Excessively detailed orders quickly become obsolete and so suffocate the most essential virtue of management at any level: a sense of initiative.<fnref n="8" /> Following the dialectic between order and freedom that was at the heart of the liberal thought of the Coppet group (particularly Necker and Constant), de Gaulle lays out the following requirement: “If only each, at his own level, will show a willingness to act on his own account, taking facts and not textbook instructions as his guide, will concentrate his efforts on *doing* what has to be done, rather than on truckling to his superiors, will make it a rule to never conceal his opinions when they should be expressed; if only, at all costs and in every department, character is held in honor,

<footnote n="7">7. A point he underlined in 1917 in a speech given in captivity: “Synthetic minds, in other words minds suited to generalization, capable of constantly distinguishing the essential from the incidental [...] are very rare” (in De Gaulle, *Lettres, notes et carnets* [Paris: Plon, 1980], vol. 1, 461).</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8. On the virtue of resistance and the refusal of passive obedience, it is striking how closely aligned he is with a liberal like Benjamin Constant (*Principles de politique*, chapter XI). See my study: “Droit, État et obligation selon Benjamin Constant,” *Commentaire* 87 (fall 1999): 711–15.</footnote>
encouraged, and demanded, then, and then only, will order be restored
and flourish" (52). A state of mind at odds with the military dictatorships
emerging at the time (which were closely observed by de Gaulle), but all
the more difficult to win acceptance for because the French people had
only recently discovered it: "For a hundred years French society lived in
constant dread of everything that seemed risky, remote, or changeable. But
now a new wind is blowing. Our countrymen have become enterprising,
hungry for adventure, eager for renewal. A century ago the Frenchman's
ideal was to occupy a safe position in the civil service, to stay home, to
imitate those who had made a success of their lives. Today his taste is for
making money, covering great distances, and avoiding the beaten track"
(47-48). We might ask whether the society of the Third Republic was
indeed driven by this entrepreneurial spirit, by the "initiative and the taste
for responsibility" (48) that de Gaulle believed, or pretended, to see in it.<fnref n="9" />
The third virtue of the great military leader consists of his ability to win the
*trust* of his subordinates, as explained in the chapter entitled "Of Prestige."
In contrast to the politician, who seeks *popularity* (a strategy analyzed in
the last chapter), the military man derives prestige from his achievements,
his personal worth, just like "our athletes who owe success only to their
own endeavors" (56). But as a form of influence wielded by one man over
others, "there can be no prestige without mystery" (58): the leader speaks
little and often maintains his silence, "the prudence of the wise and the
sense of fools" (59). In contrast to the volubility of the politician, and at
a time when "authority is undermined when it is swamped under floods
of paper or drowned in torrents of oratory" (60), the military leader is all
the more respected for speaking only when expedient: Condé at Rocroi,
Hoche in his precocious maturity, Bonaparte, the most esteemed generals
during the Great War—all spoke rarely. This silence also testifies to the
leader's inner life, which was discussed above, and in that sense points to the
fourth virtue: the military leader must “aim high, show that he has vision,
act on the grand scale, and so establish his authority over the generality
of men who splash in shallow water” (64). We can see here the outlines
of the Machiavellian model about which de Gaulle had thought deeply:

<footnote n="9">9. Compare with this remark made in confidence to many of his colleagues: "I've always 'acted as if,' in order to raise the French people up" (to Alain Peyrefitte and to Bernard Tricot, who reported it to us).</footnote>
"The perfection preached in the Gospels never yet built up an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardiness, and cunning" (64). Such is the price of grandeur: the military leader is forgiven as long as his authoritarianism, which can sometimes be quite blatant, does not become arbitrary. Here, again, he differs from the behavior seen in dictatorships, which in de Gaulle's fascinating analysis are linked to the massification of modern society.<fnref n="10" />

A reader of Bergson, Valéry, perhaps of Tocqueville, and very likely of Tarde, the de Gaulle who wrote *The Edge of the Sword* was a sociologist advocating a culture of individuality, in other words a humanist education for officers. Outlining a plan to reform the École supérieure de guerre, he wrote in 1926 that "To encourage the *development* of personality through the methodical exercise of the faculties of reflection, judgment, and decision-making, must be the sole law of the education offered at the École."<fnref n="11" /> Eight years later, in *The Army of the Future*, he stated: "The real school of leadership is therefore general culture. Through it the mind learns to act in orderly fashion, to distinguish the essential from the trivial, [...], in short, to educate itself to a level where the whole can be appreciated without prejudice to the shades of difference within it."<fnref n="12" /> He followed with the famous expression: "At the root of Alexander's victories one will always find Aristotle." De Gaulle often maintained that Alexander's conquests could not be explained solely on the basis of military skill because they had mobilized a certain national spirit, that of Hellenism, to produce a transfer of civilization, a moral and cultural gestation in foreign lands.

In sum, therefore, the military leader is as rational as he is empiricist, as authoritarian as he is ready to support the initiatives of others; he keeps himself concealed while "exuding authority, as though it were a liquid" (57). All these virtues are characterized by an internal dialectic that protects against hubris: the worthy leader is not a voracious dictator but, on the contrary, a man who is well aware of his limits (in intuition, in action, in his power over men). He is very close to what Aristotle called the wise

<footnote n="10">10. See, for example, in *La France et son armée*, his description of the sociological factors that laid the groundwork for the blaze of war in 1914: "The uniform, agglomerated, hurried life to which the mechanics of the century subjected the people of the time, prepared them in advance to tolerate mass levies, etc." Trade unionism itself is analyzed as a quartermaster of wartime mobilization.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11. *Lettres, notes et carnets*, vol. 2, 262.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12. De Gaulle, *Army of the Future*, 171.</footnote>
man.<fnref n="13" /> That is why he understands the proper domain of the *politician*, who is the subject of the final chapter: between armies and political power, it is always the second that must decide and motivate. De Gaulle never changed his mind on this point—except in extreme cases where political power destroys itself, losing its *legitimacy* by allowing its territory to be invaded and treating with the enemy. For example, he was effusive in his admiration for Rossel, who refused to accept the armistice in 1870 and paid for it by being shot by the counterrevolutionary Versaillais. Similarly, of those on the Committee of Public Safety in 1793, his admiration was reserved for Carnot (and not the terrorists). The final chapter of *The Edge of the Sword*, “Of Politics and the Soldier,” has been described as a caricature of the politician. In fact, de Gaulle saw the elected politician in a democracy as someone who depends on public opinion, who proceeds by cunning, always driven by the “dominant concern with the effect to be produced,” always displaying “the appearance of weighing others in terms not of their merit but of their influence” (106–7). It was his recognition of the fact that politicians must also, in their own way, apprehend “the fluid, the unstable, and the changeable.”

The soldier cannot do without politicians; for the sake of general order, and particularly the republican order, he must yield to them while maintaining his military expertise: this, in reality, is the message of this final chapter. It is possible to imagine, adds de Gaulle, “training a political, military, and administrative elite, by means of studies undertaken in common,” but “the enlightened views and supreme wisdom from which alone can come an understanding between soldiers and statesmen, cannot be drawn from acquired knowledge any more than they can be imposed by rule” (127). *The Edge of the Sword* concludes by emphasizing the need to give worth the opportunity to appear, whether in the forum or the barracks: “nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are only great when they are determined to be so” (127).

As we have seen, de Gaulle was not of the school of thought that believed well-designed institutions could be an adequate substitute for individuals with strong personal qualities: the former, in his view, could not exist

<footnote n="13">13. The contingent nature of action, the role of inner deliberation, the importance of “impartial judgement”: although he was probably not familiar with *Nicomachean Ethics*, de Gaulle reinvented every aspect of the Aristotelian notion.</footnote>
without the latter. This requirement took on new meaning when, after
the Second World War, he became involved in a constitutional project
“to give the state a head.”<fnref n="14" /> His Bayeux speech sketched the first outline
of this idea: he called for a separation of powers so that the government
could no longer be directly influenced by political parties (which had been
the practice since the Third Republic) and in order to “establish, over and
above political contingencies, an arbitrational function that can ensure
continuity in the midst of change.”<fnref n="15" /> Here, again, the role demands much
of the individual: a mind that can bring everything together without
being blinded by the diversity of circumstances (what de Gaulle called
“synthesis”). He referred again to the distribution of tasks between the head
of state and the government in a press conference on January 31, 1964:
because the president is “the man of the nation, put in place by the nation
to be responsible for its destiny,” he must not be “absorbed relentlessly and
without limit by the political, parliamentary, economic, and administrative
circumstances of the moment. On the contrary, that is the fate, as complex
and commendable as it is essential, of the French prime minister.”<fnref n="16" /> There
is thus some kinship, from the perspective of the philosophy of authority,
between the military commander, who, as we have seen, aims high and acts
on a grand scale, and the head of state, who is “in charge of the essential.”

The final words of *Memoirs of Hope* (vol. 2, uncompleted), emphasize that institutions, although essential, are not sufficient to create the men capable of bringing them to life: “For the virtues of an institution have never at any time or in any sphere been able to compensate for the irremediable infirmity of a leader.”<fnref n="17" /> As a follower of Bergson and Péguy (much more than of Nietzsche), de Gaulle’s Gaullism was based on a specific idea of the *individual*, that is to say, of individuality capable of inspiring trust because it calls for and recognizes freedom in others.<fnref n="18" />

<footnote n="14">14. An expression he used frequently, particularly in *Memoirs of Hope*. For a study of the concept see my article “L’État républicain selon de Gaulle,” *Commentaire* 51 (fall 1990), 523–32.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15. Charles De Gaulle, “Discours de Bayeux,” speech given on June 16, 1946, in *Discours et messages* (Paris: Plon, 1970), vol. 2, 8.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16. This text is included in De Gaulle, *Discours et messages* (Paris: Plon, 1970), vol. 4, 167.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17. Charles de Gaulle, *Memoirs of Hope*, trans. Terence Kilmartin (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), 306.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18. On this concept of trust, see my book *La Liberté et la loi. Les origines philosophiques du libéralisme* (Paris: Fayard, 2000), chapter VI: “Le problème du fondement de la confiance.”</footnote>
## Lucien Jaume

Lucien Jaume, agrégé in philosophy, holder of a PhD in political science, and research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) (French National Center for Scientific Research), teaches at Sciences Po. He is the author of 261 works, 13 of which are books, including on Hobbes (*Hobbes et l'État représentatif moderne*, PUF, 1986), the French Revolution (*Le discours jacobin et la démocratie* [Fayard, 1989]), and liberalism (*L'individu effacé ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français* [Fayard, 1997]; *Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty*, [Princeton University Press, 2013]). He has recently published “De Gaulle et la ‘personne France,’” *La France en récits*, edited by Yves Charles Zarka (PUF/Humensis, 2020), 476–86 and *L'Eternel défi. L'Etat et les religions en France des origines à nos jours* (Tallandier, 2022). He is also the author of the book *La liberté et la loi. Les origines philosophiques du libéralisme* (Fayard, October 2000).

Translated and edited by
Cadenza Academic Translations

Translator: Isabelle Chaize,

Editor: Suzy Bott,

Senior editor: Mark Mellor

IX

*The virtues of command*
*according to De Gaulle*
*L. Jaume*