General Jacques Massu, who died last weekend aged 94, was one of modern France's best-known military figures - involved in the liberation of Paris, the Suez crisis, and the French wars in Indo-China and, notoriously, Algeria. Rugged, and with a growling voice, everything about him suggested the fighting soldier.
Born into a military family in Chalons-sur-Marne, he graduated from the Saint Cyr military academy, and served in French West Africa. When, after Marshal Pétain sought an armistice from the Germans in June 1940, General Leclerc began to rally the colonies behind de Gaulle's Free French cause, Massu, then a captain, joined him in Chad, Libya and Tunisia.
After the war, he served with Leclerc in Indo-China, trained as a parachutist and carried out assignments in Tunisia and west Africa. Promoted to general in 1955, he formed the 10th parachute division, which he led in successful attacks on Port Said and Port Fouad in the Suez campaign of 1956.
By early 1957, French Algeria was in the turmoil of a war of independence. On January 7th, with the Front de Libération Nationale calling for a general strike, Massu was put in charge of the capital, Algiers, regarded as a centre of terrorist activity.
The French, in what became known as the Battle of Algiers, ruthlessly broke the strike, forcing Muslim shopkeepers to open their premises and others to return to work.
Quickly, however, an international scandal erupted over Massu's use of torture in the suppression of the casbah, apparently with the approval of the French government. The crisis split the French establishment: General Paris de Bollardière was sentenced to 60 days' detention for suggesting that the paratroopers were undermining France's moral values. Nonetheless, the torture continued, and, indeed, in 1971, when Massu published Le Vraie Bataille d'Alger, the first of his five volumes of memoirs, he accepted responsibility for the practice, claiming that it was the only way he could get advance knowledge of terrorist plans.
Although he feared that Paris was about to abandon Algeria, Massu took no part in the rightwing political conspiracies that plagued France in 1958.
He did, however, accept the insurrection of May 13th, and agreed to become the president of the committee of public safety. He denied that this was a coup d'état - for him, it was a manifestation of Algerian opinion - but he agreed with the idea of Operation Resurrection, under which his parachutists could land at Villacoublay airfield, near Paris. In this way, General de Gaulle would be obliged to assume office, and the politicians of Paris would be obliged to accept him. On May 24th, Massu's parachutists seized Corsica, and the fourth republic tottered.
De Gaulle refused to condemn that invasion, but, on May 27th, he gave unofficial instructions that Operation Resurrection should be abandoned. Once in power, he distanced himself from the committee of public safety, except for Massu, who was made prefect of Algiers. But Massu grew uneasy with the uncertainties of de Gaulle's policies, and his talk of "auto-determination". In January 1960, following an indiscreet interview, he was relieved of his command.
Still he refused to join any of the anti-de Gaulle plots, or attempts to seize power in Paris. He accepted that Algeria should become independent, and voted in favour in the referendum of Janury 1961. In 1965, he became commander of French forces in Germany.
Three years later, on May 29th 1968, De Gaulle left Paris, with its students' and workers' demonstrations, for a secret meeting with Massu at his headquarters at Baden-Baden. Some have said that this was a trick to allow the president to disappear, before returning to seize the political initiative. Massu, however, claimed that de Gaulle was ready to resign, and that he had persuaded the president to return with a new confidence and determination.
Massu, however, never quite escaped his Algerian past. Following further allegations about torture he expressed his regrets and he revealed that he and his wife Suzanne had adopted two Algerian children. He had done this, he said, in the belief that French and Algerians could live together.
Suzanne predeceased her husband, as did their daughter. His second wife, Cathérine, whom he married in 1978, survives him.
Jacques Massu: born May 5th, 1908; died October 26th, 2002