CHARLES DE GAULLE (1890-1970) Typed letter signed «C. de Gaulle» addressed to «Monsieur le Gouverneur de Mauduit» [Henry de Mauduit (1897-1974), Governor of the colonies] dated 10 May 1951

1p. on headed paper «Le Général de Gaulle». In French. “You had agreed to stand for election in the Côtes du Nord, but I know that you were only doing so out of duty. On balance I have decided to relieve you of this obligation... I am still counting on you for other tasks...» The legislative elections were held on 17 June 1951 in the Côtes-du-Nord, in a context of political crisis. The French political landscape split into three major political forces: the Third Force, the French Communist Party and Charles de Gaulle’s Rassemblement du Peuple Français, a new political force explicitly rejecting the existing institutional system. The two leading parties, the PCF and the RPF, obtained only one third of the deputies although they had almost half the votes. However, the RPF became the largest party in the Assembly, with 121 deputies. Yvonne Geismar (1904-1989) Loyal Gaullist, attached to the General. She was elected under the RPF label to the Paris city council and sat on the national council of the Gaullist movement in the early 1950s. Lawyer at the Court of Paris, member of the Association of Jurists for a Modern Democracy (AJDM, an association created in 1963, organises dinner-debates with Gaullist speakers and supports General de Gaulle’s candidacy in the 1965 presidential election).