No More Paving Blocks

As the 780 grim-faced insurgents emerged from behind their barricades to surrender to troops of the French Foreign Legion, an easy fate awaited all but one of them. The exception, bearded Insurgent Leader Pierre Lagaillarde, smiling faintly, watched the others climb slowly into waiting army trucks. Ahead of Lagaillarde himself, at Charles de Gaulle's insistence, lay an airplane flight to Paris, prison, and charges of attacking the security of the French Republic.

It was the help from the French army that had kept the revolt alive. "For the first three days," said one of Lagaillarde's lieutenants last week, "officers and men from the paras came inside the barricades and drank beer with us. Some of them even gave us their spare submachine gun magazines and cases of grenades. They put army ambulances at our disposal, and with these we toured the town, filling them up with arms and ammunition."

Changing the Guard. What turned the tide, it became clearer last week, was not only De Gaulle's unyielding television speech (TIME, Feb. 8) but the replacement of the loth Paratroop Division, first by less friendly paratroopers, then by German-speaking Foreign Legionaires. Abruptly, fraternization ended, and in the sector held by followers of spivvish Algiers Cafe Owner Jo Ortiz, the insurgents began to drown their growing uneasiness in liquor--a frivolity that so outraged Ideologist Lagaillarde that he broke off contact between his own forces and those of Ortiz. Finally, after the revolt began to break, Ortiz himself sneaked away over the rooftops of downtown Algiers.

Abandoned by Ortiz, betrayed (as he saw it) by the army, Lagaillarde reluctantly negotiated surrender terms with a Foreign Legion colonel. The bargain: any of Lagaillarde's men willing to lay down arms could go home at once; those who wanted to prove their eagerness to "die for France" (except Lagaillarde himself) would be enrolled in the Legion. But once removed from their leader's magnetic fervor, and subjected to the discouraging prospects of enlistment and the pleas of tearful relatives, most of Lagaillarde's fighters lost their martial ardor. In the end, only 127 of them signed up for a token six months' hitch.

Contamination Problem. Ignominiously as the uprising ended, it left the European ultras of Algiers no wiser and just as dissatisfied as ever. While Moslem workmen repaved the streets around the insurgents' redoubt--with asphalt instead of cobblestones to prevent future barricade building--extremists boasted that they had plenty of weapons stashed away "for next time."

Aware that the struggle was not over, De Gaulle moved swiftly against the right-wing European settlers. A new public prosecutor, specially briefed by De Gaulle himself, flew into Algiers from Paris. Five ultra organizations, including those headed by Ortiz and Lagaillarde, were banned, and 27 ultra leaders jailed or placed under house arrest. .Among them was ex-Vichyite Alain de Serigny, owner of the inflammatory I'Echo d'Alger, who was snatched off one of his own freighters as it left Algiers.

Determined to end what he dryly termed "the obliging incertitude of some military elements," De Gaulle also fired Algiers' security official, Army Colonel Yves Godard, summoned at least three other key colonels to Paris to explain their behavior. To prevent further "contamination," the Defense Ministry decided to abandon Algiers as a major troop base. As for General Massu's old roth Paratroop Division, now reportedly bound for service on the Tunisian border, the word was that it will "never again return to Algiers."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.