Word: massue
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that Algerians had executed three French prisoners in reprisal for the execution of three rebels in Algiers' jail. Driven by uncontrollable fury, thousands of colons surged into the streets of Algiers shouting "The army to power!" and "Vive De Gaulle!" (see below). They were quieted only when General Massu placed himself at the head of a junta with the ominously evocative name of the Committee of Public Safety...
Insurrection broke out first in Algiers, when 30,000 French colons, fearful that a new French government might abandon Algeria, rioted in the streets, sacked the Government Building, and were calmed only when Paratroop General Jacques Massu announced that he had taken power in Algiers in defiance of Paris. That left it up to Paris: to the National Assembly to capitulate or fight back; to the mobs in the street to enlist for or against the battered, precarious Fourth Republic...
Looking around for a tough uncommitted officer to handle the strike and its expected wave of assassinations and counter-bombings, Lacoste chose tall, hawk-nosed Brigadier General Jacques Massu, commander of the 10th Parachute Division. Massu moved in a rock-hard force of 20,000 green- and red-bereted paratroopers, legionnaires and spahis to take over the city of Algiers and its teeming Casbah. Troops stood outside stores and restaurants frisking every passerby, man and woman. All parcels were opened to prevent bombs from being planted in public places by anybody, European or Moslem. At least two soldiers rode every...
...Algeria, however, was already pretty thoroughly bathed in blood -18,000 Algerians and more than 3,000 Frenchmen have been killed this year. Last week French Resident Minister Robert Lacoste concentrated both civil and military police powers in the Algiers area in the tough hands of Brigadier General Jacques Massu, who commanded French paratroops in the Suez invasion. "The battle for Algeria," proclaimed Lacoste, "has reached its final phase...