Pateira

On 28 April 1969,  Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (1890 - 1970) steps down as president of France after the defeat of a referendum to transform the Senate into an advisory body while giving extended powers to regional councils. Some said this referendum was a self-conscious political suicide committed by de Gaulle after the traumatising events of May 1968.

Chales de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces from his London exile during World War II.  On 13th November, 1945, the first Constituent Assembly unanimously elected de Gaulle as head of the French government. He held the post until resigning on 20th January, 1946.  He returned to politics in 1958 when he was elected president during the Algerian crisis and founded on 28 September 1958 the French Fifth Republic and served as its first President.

De Gaulle decided that France should have its own atom bomb and repeatedly blocked Britain's attempts to join the European Economic Commnunity.  In 1966 de Gaulle withdrew France from the integrated military command of NATO.