On the night of the 28th a fresh constitutional impasse arose at a meeting convened in the Elysée by President Coty between de Gaulle and the presidents of the Senate and the Assembly. Le Troquer, President of the Assembly, raised a number of constitutional objections to de Gaulle and his terms, some of them seemingly trivial, made a few unfortunate parallels with Vichy and threatened to attempt to form a government himself. De Gaulle riposted that, if the Assembly backed Le Troquer, then "I shall have no alternative but to let you have it out with the paratroops, while I go back into retirement and shut myself up with my grief." In what seems to have been a moment of genuine despair, de Gaulle with tears in his eyes turned to Gaston Monnerville, the Antillean President of the Senate: "Is the return of de Gaulle possible? Is it not possible? After all, you know, France will bury us all. We pass. She alone is eternal. If my return is not possible, I shall go back to my village with my chagrin." The meeting broke up without conclusion. Meanwhile, a fresh ultimatum had reached President Coty from Algiers; either it was de Gaulle by 15.00 hours on the 29th, or "Résurrection" would go in at 01.00 hours the following morning. After a sleepless night and feeling the full burden of his seventy-six years, the President, "this good old Frenchman", as de Gaulle described him, took a decision of immense courage which was finally to break the log-jam. On the morning of the 29th he announced that he had himself invited de Gaulle to form a government and that if this were rejected by the Assembly he would resign. It was the first time since 1875 that a President of the Republic had threatened resignation, and the significance of it was immense.

QUESTION: How close was the 1958 transition to failure or military intervention? The paratroops threat and 'Résurrection' ultimatum suggest the stakes were genuinely high.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 903