Salan was brilliantly defended by Tixier-Vignancour, and on the eighth day of the trial a verdict of guilty, but “with extenuating circumstances”, was read out to a packed court; the sentence was life imprisonment, but Salan’s life was saved. His supporters broke into an ecstatic Marseillaise in the courtroom; at the Élysée de Gaulle erupted in rage at the judges’ leniency, and four days later had the tribunal suppressed.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1643