The man who inspired the Day of The Jackal

Frederick Forsyth’s creation has enthralled audiences on page and screen, but few know the story of Jean Bastien-Thiry

Frenchwoman Hélène Bastien-Thiry says she would only consider watching the much-touted new Day of the Jackal series on one condition: “That it mentions my father.”
Lt Col Jean Bastien-Thiry was the man who mounted the failed 1962 assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle that inspired Frederick Forsyth’s original 1971 book and the acclaimed Fred Zinnemann film starring Edward Fox two years later.
He became the last man in France to be executed by firing squad on March 11, 1963. “I was seven at the time and have few memories of my father other than him bouncing me on his knee,” Bastien-Thiry, 69, says.
“He knew full well that he was going to be shot and it didn’t surprise him not to be pardoned [beforehand]. He was completely committed to his fight. Even in prison, he tried to get out [and had] other plans to carry out another assassination attempt. He had made this life choice in conscience and he died in peace.”
Meanwhile, the fictitious character that Forsyth forged in the wake of Bastien-Thiry’s death lives on.
The hotly awaited, modern-day Jackal reboot has just hit British TV screens, with the reptilian, paid assassin played by Eddie Redmayne facing off against MI6 operative Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch).
The shape-shifting hitman uses prosthetics, wigs and other masterly disguises to evade capture while bumping off a string of targets around Europe, including a fictitious German alt-Right politician and a shady tech billionaire.
While the new series is in many ways a far cry from the original, its creators insist there are various nods to the film and book, such as the scene in which Redmayne conducts target practice with a melon. But it makes no mention, apparently, of Bastien-Thiry.
A devout Catholic and father of three, the French Air Force missile designer nurtured a deep hatred of De Gaulle – France’s wartime leader who resisted Nazi occupation from London – over the General’s decision in 1962 to “abandon” the French colony of Algeria, which was in the throes of a bloody war of independence.
“I remember when Mum told us he’d been shot,” recalls Bastien-Thiry, who runs an association, Le Cercle Jean Bastien-Thiry, in her father’s memory.
“He’d been in prison for some time. So we suspected that the situation wasn’t quite right but his death certainly came as a shock,” she adds. “Our mother told us that he had been part of a military operation involving Charles de Gaulle. For a long time, she said it was a planned abduction and nothing else. Only later did she tell us that it was an assassination attempt.”
The botched hit came at a defining moment in modern French political history amid fears of civil war.
After stepping back from frontline politics in 1953, De Gaulle returned in May 1958 following an insurrection in Algiers by European residents – known as pieds-noirs – who wanted France to retain Algeria at all costs. The leaders of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), meanwhile, were willing to discuss nothing short of full independence.
The French military took control in Algiers and, under pressure from Gaullist militants on the ground, warned Paris to bring back the General or face civil war. Parliament eventually voted to install De Gaulle as Head of State, thus avoiding a coup d’état.
He then travelled to Algiers and famously turned the hostile crowd by saying: “I have understood you.” Many pro-French Algeria militants and the generals who facilitated his return saw this as meaning he would do everything to keep Algeria part of France, as it had been since 1848.
But De Gaulle realised that he had no choice but to end the war, and, when he began peace negotiations with the FLN, French military leaders in Algiers turned against him, forming a rebel faction known as the Secret Army Organisation (OAS), bent on killing their former hero. Among them was Bastien-Thiry.
Forsyth’s novel opens with the assassination attempt on De Gaulle and the lead-up to what was, in real life, Bastien-Thiry’s execution.
Recounting the scene at Fort d’Ivry, in the Paris suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, the journalist and recently avowed MI6 agent writes: “The single ‘whack’ … of the coup de grâce was lost in the rising din of traffic from beyond the walls.”
From hereon the author departs from reality and the book sees French far-Right militants pin their hopes of disposing of the General in the hands of a fictitious British hired assassin unknown to French intelligence: the Jackal.
In truth, it has been calculated that there were up to 30 attempts to assassinate De Gaulle. Some of these were very half-baked – such as the plan in 1961 to shoot him with cyanide bullets from a gun disguised as a camera, and another involving exploding dogs – but two came within a hair’s breadth of success.
The first of these was on September 8, 1961, when a bomb blasted on the road near Pont-sur-Seine in the Aube, north-central France, as De Gaulle’s car was heading towards Colombey. The second was on August 22, 1962, when De Gaulle’s black DS Citroën, passing through the village of Petit-Clamart on the way to Villacoublay airfield, was sprayed with bullets.
That De Gaulle and his wife were unharmed was a miraculous escape given the 150 rounds fired.
In both the film and the book, De Gaulle cheats death because he bows just as the Jackal pulls the trigger on his dismountable sniper rifle.
In the real-life assassination attempt on De Gaulle, it was a similar gesture as in the film – bending down – that apparently saved his life and that of his wife Yvonne de Gaulle, also in the car.
As Forsyth recounts, several slugs passed through the bodywork, and one shattered the rear window, passing within a few inches of the president’s nose.
“In the front seat, Colonel de Boissieu turned and roared ‘Get down’ at his parents-in-law. Madame de Gaulle lowered her head towards her husband’s lap. The General gave vent to a frosty “What, again?” and turned to look out of the back window.”
By all accounts, De Gaulle remained unperturbed, and insisted on continuing with the review of the guard waiting for him at Villacoublay. His wife was equally phlegmatic: her immediate concern was whether “les poulets” (the chickens) in the car boot were still intact.
“What’s for sure is that these people were desperate to kill De Gaulle at all costs. So when Forsyth wrote his book, he just brilliantly conflated them all into one slightly imaginary, but perfectly plausible character, the Jackal,” says French wartime historian Julian Jackson, author of A Certain Idea of France, The Life of Charles de Gaulle.
In the novel and film, the enigmatic hitman displays a cold professionalism and meticulous preparation that Bastien-Thiry lacked. The Frenchman’s signal to alert his gang about De Gaulle’s arrival – opening a newspaper – was missed due to falling light and they opened fire too late.
“I think it’s unfair to say this was ill-prepared,” says Bastien-Thiry. “It was very hard to know when the convoy would precisely turn up. Despite the huge level of protection around De Gaulle, my father managed to prepare all this without raising any suspicions in the Air Force where he worked.”
“These were determined military men. Above all, De Gaulle was very lucky,” says Jackson.
“But it is hard to imagine someone more different from the Jackal than Bastien-Thiry. The Jackal is a paid hit man. He’d kill anybody. He’s not a human being, he’s a robot killer.”
“Bastien-Thiry was a man of great conviction. He considered himself like Claus von Stauffenberg, the German army officer who tried to assassinate Hitler. He saw himself as a noble soldier saving the country from a demagogue.”
In April 1961, the OAS seized control of Algiers and threatened to take Paris as well. De Gaulle hit back using the emergency powers permitted by the new Fifth Republic and most of the military refused to side with the rebellious generals.
However, the OAS undertook a wave of bombings and assassinations that left thousands of victims. But the overwhelming majority of the population supported De Gaulle, allowing him to negotiate Algerian independence and defeat the rebel faction.
Bastien-Thiry’s may have been a lost cause based on fantasy but France is still wrestling with the eviction of a million pieds-noirs and the slaying of tens of thousands of pro-French Algerians, called Harkis, by nationalists after the French army pulled out.
“There were so many victims. It happened in appalling conditions. And that’s what our father tried to avoid,” says Bastien-Thiry.
While the assassination bid failed, it provided a wonderful opportunity for De Gaulle to boost the powers of the French presidency.
Buoyed by a wave of popular support after his near-death experience, he successfully won a referendum to elect future French presidents via universal suffrage – a key element of the Fifth Republic, handing Gallic heads of state massive powers that remain to this day.
Meanwhile, his political legacy is intact. Perhaps the most ironic testament to this is that the party of Marine Le Pen, the National Rally – whose previous iteration, the Front National, was founded by her father Jean-Marie, a virulent anti-Gaullist and supporter of Algérie française – now claims to be Gaullist.
Ms Le Pen claims to be the only figure to defend De Gaulle’s doctrine ensuring France carries an independent voice in the world, breaking away from the logic of blocs and speaking to all. She has even sent representatives to put flowers on his grave at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises on the anniversary of his death.
Meanwhile, the legacy of the war in Algeria, whose 70th anniversary was discreetly marked last Friday, remains tortured.
“It’s a cloud, it’s a very difficult memory because it was like a civil war,” says Jackson. “It was a bit like the Ulster problem transported into France. The pieds-noirs could be seen like the protestants of Northern Ireland in relation to the island of Ireland, which poisoned our politics for a century.”