French army officer and statesman who led the French Resistance against Nazi Germany in World War II, and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to reestablish democracy in France.
In 1958, he came out of retirement as President of the Council of Ministers. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected as President of France later that year, a position he was reelected to in 1965 and held until his resignation in 1969.
Charles de Gaulle was born in Lille, 9 rue Princesse, in the house of his maternal grandparents, November 22, 1890. The third of five children. He was raised in a devoutly Catholic and traditional family. His father, Henri de Gaulle, was a professor of history and literature at a Jesuit college and eventually founded his own school.
The rue Princesse will become for the future General de Gaulle the place of family vacations and games with his cousins.
