There were dubious allegations of an unknown agent provocateur (possibly of the F.L.N.?) firing those first fatal revolver shots, and Ortiz—not unnaturally—claimed that the gendarmes were to blame. But all the evidence, added to the disparity of the casualties, indicates that the culprits lay among the trigger-happy band of Ortiz, firing with or without orders. Challe in his memoirs admits that the manoeuvre of the gendarmes was a “gross error”. The excuse offered by Colonels Broizat and Dufour (unsatisfactorily vague even in their testimonies before the “Barricades Trial”) was that their two élite regiments had been held up by Lagaillarde’s barricade in the university. But in fact Broizat’s line of march ran through the tunnel that passes underneath the university buildings, out of reach of the barricade, while Dufour’s lay well clear of the whole area. It was plain from both the preceding and subsequent events that the colonels’ disastrous tardiness stemmed from a desire to avoid at all costs any clash with the insurgents.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1099