DIZY-LE-GROS: President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute Sunday to World War II resistance hero Charles de Gaulle at the site of a key battle he said epitomised French resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.
Macron took time out from directing the country's latest battle, against the coronavirus, to hail his predecessor's courage in taking the fight to Nazi soldiers sweeping across western Europe in the early years of the war.
"De Gaulle tells us that France is strong when it knows its destiny, when it stays united, when it searches the path of cohesion..." Macron said in the town of La-Ville-aux-Bois-les-Dizy in northeast France.
It is near the site of the Battle of Montcornet, where French fighters inflicted heavy losses on German troops and briefly stalled their advance before ultimately being defeated.
Though lost, the battle is considered one of few effective counter-attacks by French soldiers against the Nazis, and de Gaulle himself later said it was the moment that hope returned to the campaign.
Even as the Paris government of the day capitulated before the German military might, a then-unknown colonel de Gaulle embodied the French spirit: "Fiercely free and proud, determined and unwavering," said Macron.
He laid a wreath at a monument honouring France's war dead, and commended the military bravery that ultimately allowed the country to shake off its Nazi occupation.
The president did not wear an anti-virus mask for the occasion to mark the battle's 80th anniversary, but he and a handful of other participants observed a safe social distance.
Europe has been hard hit by the coronavirus outbreak, with more than half the global death toll of over 300,000 in what is described as the biggest crisis since WWII.
The health emergency has seen the continent, and much of the rest of the world, impose strict lockdowns that have devastated economies to an extent not seen in peace time.
Eighty years ago, de Gaulle launched a resistance army from abroad as France's wartime leader Philippe Petain capitulated to the Nazis, which occupied large swathes of the country.
The general-turned president is a personal hero of Macron, who features de Gaulle's war memoirs on his desk in his official photograph, and had the Cross of Lorraine -- a symbol of the Free French Forces -- added to the logo of the Elysee Palace.
Sunday's event was Macron's first official outing unrelated to the coronavirus outbreak in over two months.
He will mark two more de Gaulle anniversaries this year -- his Appeal of 18 June from exile in London for French citizens to resist, and the 50th anniversary of the general's death on November 9.