In May 1968, a period of civil unrest happened in France. The protests are often linked to similar movements, which occurred around the same time across the world. They inspired a generation of protest art in the form of songs, imaginative graffiti, posters, and slogans.
On 22 March, far-left groups, a small number of well-known poets and musicians, and 150 students occupied a building at the University of Paris at Nanterre. They held a meeting in the university council room about class discrimination in French society and the political bureaucracy that controlled the university's funding. The university called the police, and the students left. There were more conflicts between students and authorities at Nanterre, and the university was shut down on 2 May 1968. Students at the Sorbonne campus of the University of Paris met on 3 May to protest the closure and the threats to expel several students at Nanterre.
On Monday, 6 May, the national student union, the Union nationale des étudiants de France, as well as the union of university teachers, marched to protest against the police invasion of the Sorbonne. More than 20,000 students, teachers, and supporters marched towards the Sorbonne, which was still sealed off by the police, which charged and hit people with their batons. Most of the crowd left, but some began to make barricades out of whatever was at hand. Some people threw stones and forced the police to retreat. The police then used tear gas and charged the crowd again. Hundreds of more students were arrested.
The next day, secondary school student unions went to the Arc de Triomphe to demand all criminal charges against arrested students to be dropped, the police to leave the university, and the Nanterre and Sorbonne universities to be reopened.
On Friday, 10 May, another huge crowd gathered on the city's Left Bank. When the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité blocked them from crossing the river, the crowd again made barricades, which the police attacked at 2:15 a.m. after negotiations had stopped. Hundreds of people were arrested and injured. They were seen on television the next day.
The government had acted in a way that made people support the strikers. Many French singers and poets joined after the police brutality had come to light. American artists also began to support the strikers. The large union federations, the Confédération générale du travail and the Force ouvrière, called for a one-day general strike and demonstration for Monday, 13 May. More than a million people marched through Paris that day. The police stayed out of sight. Prime Minister Georges Pompidou personally announced the release of the prisoners and the reopening of the Sorbonne, but the protests did not stop.
Students occupied the Sorbonne, declared it an independent "people's university," and went on national television. Many people thought them foolish, but 401 popular action committees were set up in Paris and other parts of France to complain about the government and French society. The demonstrations spread to factories. The unions tried to get people interested in pay rises, but the workers wanted a new government and to get rid of President Charles de Gaulle. Some tried to run their factories themselves. The unions got agreements, which would increase the minimum wage by 35% and all salaries by 10%, more protection for workers and a shorter working day. However, the workers were not satisfied.
On the morning of 29 May, de Gaulle postponed the meeting of the Council of Ministers that was due that day and secretly removed his personal papers from Élysée Palace. He told his son-in-law, Alain de Boissieu, "I do not want to give them a chance to attack the Élysée. It would be regrettable if blood were shed in my personal defense. I have decided to leave: nobody attacks an empty palace." De Gaulle refused Pompidou's request to dissolve the National Assembly, as he believed that their party, the Gaullists, would lose if there was an election. At 11:00 a.m., he told Pompidou, "I am the past; you are the future; I embrace you." He left by helicopter but did not say where he was going. For more than six hours, nobody in France knew where he was.
He had gone to the headquarters of the French Forces in Germany, in Baden-Baden, to meet General Jacques Massu. In the evening, de Gaulle went to his country home in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises.