From March 26 to 28, King Charles III is making his first official visit abroad to France since his accession to the throne on September 9, 2022. His mother, Elizabeth II, had made five state visits – in 1957, 1972, 1992, 2004 and 2014 – in France, the European country where she had been most often, on a state trip or during private stays.
A look back at the ceremonial tours of the deceased queen, Francophile and Francophone, on our soil.
In this year 1957, the President of the Republic, René Coty, needs a great diplomatic success to enhance the tarnished image of France after the failure of the European Defense Community and the fiasco of the Suez expedition. . Obviously, the French need to escape the concerns of the present, in particular the difficulties of the new president of the council, Guy Mollet, beset by the war in Algeria and the independence of Morocco and Tunisia, not to mention of the ministerial instability of the Fourth Republic. In addition, in London, Prime Minister Anthony Eden hid from the Queen and the House of Commons the collusion of 10 Downing Street with the French and Israeli governments to occupy the waterway nationalized by Nasser. This omission played a significant role in Anthony Eden’s forced resignation in January 1957 and his replacement by Harold Macmillan. The state visit of Queen Elizabeth II to France, from April 8 to 10, 1957, will allow the two countries to enhance their damaged diplomatic prestige.
Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, the young sovereign was welcomed at Orly by Coty and his wife before joining the Élysée. During the banquet at the Louvre, she addresses the guests in French. The president bends over backwards to meet the queen’s wishes. During dinner, she tells Coty that she has never seen the Mona Lisa. Fifteen minutes later, the painting is brought to her for her to admire. In defiance of protocol, at the end of the meal, the guests rush to the royal table. Faced with the crush, the sovereign remains unmoved, replying to her companion, who asked her if she was fine: “Just right. »
The Parisian program also includes the Hôtel de Ville, a boat trip on the Seine, the Palace of Versailles and the Renault factory in Flins. In Lille, after a ceremony at the war memorial, the sovereign visited the flower market on the Grand-Place before going to a textile factory in Roubaix. She received a tremendous ovation from the workers, “most of whom are undoubtedly on the far left,” said a member of the royal entourage.
In all likelihood, the public is dazzled by the splendor of a monarchy dating back to the dawn of time, as evidenced by the huge crowds, among the largest in post-war France. Outside the Palais Garnier, the police had to intervene to protect the official convoy.
At the time, while France was plunged into one of its chronic ministerial crises, the United Kingdom was proud. The end of restrictions, education reform, falling unemployment and rising living standards, and the strengthening of the “special relationship” with the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower underline the country’s recovery from the dark period of the immediate post-war period and the upheavals of the decolonization of the greatest empire of all time. After a hesitant start, the 30-year-old queen has gained confidence.
It was also in France, at Pentecost 1948, that Princess Elizabeth made her first trip outside the United Kingdom to represent her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. She had certainly left her country for the first time in 1947 to go to South Africa, but it was then a dominion of the crown.
The trip was not official. Due to the restrictions in force between 1945 and 1954, Her Royal Highness could not buy new dresses for the occasion. Still because of austerity, George VI had discreetly asked to limit the dinner at the Élysée to only four courses, compared to eleven when the king came in 1938. The four-day tour: Versailles, the Trianon, Fontainebleau, private party at the Tour d’Argent, despite her pregnancy – she was pregnant with Charles –, had been led at a hellish pace. “La p’tite princesse”, as Tout-Paris calls her, had gone to Chez Carrère, the famous cabaret on rue Pierre-Charron, to listen to Piaf, the Compagnons de la Chanson and Henri Salvador, among others. Elizabeth had danced slow dances and waltzes with Philip.
At the Élysée, Elizabeth had refused cigarettes and liqueurs and, out of courtesy, everyone in attendance had gone without tobacco for two hours. Ignoring protocol, President Vincent Auriol, a former member of the Popular Front, told Agence France-Presse after the reception: “I was particularly touched by his grace, his charm, his modesty, his nobility. The only shadow, General de Gaulle had not been invited to the reception given at the British Embassy. The Foreign Office was afraid of alienating Auriol by welcoming this intransigent adversary of the Fourth Republic whom the visitor had encountered during her exile in London during the war.
“There is, I believe, a lesson to be learned from the history of our two peoples. We have the right to offer it to a world so tragically upset. Those who want it will find the lessons that hold within them the promise of a better future for Europe,” she said, in French, during the visit to the British exhibition at the Galliera museum. The commissioner of the demonstration was a certain Georges Pompidou.
