The Bayeux speeches are two speeches delivered by General Charles de Gaulle of France in the context of liberation after the Normandy landings in June 1944 and in the immediate postwar period in June 1946.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,130 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Discours de Bayeux]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|fr|Discours de Bayeux}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

They were spoken in a public square in Bayeux (formerly Place du Château, since 1946 Place de Gaulle).

This section does not cite any sources. (October 2014)

A few days after the Normandy invasion, de Gaulle wanted to set foot on his native soil in one of the first towns liberated. He also sought to increase French (and his own) influence on the impending Allied occupation.

On 14 June 1944, he delivered a speech in Bayeux. The enthusiastic reception by the population confirmed the legitimacy of their struggle and made the United States not place France under their administration. He was able to form a provisional government after the Liberation.

The speech of 16 June 1946 is one of his most important speeches. Two years after the Normandy invasion, in the symbolic city, the first city in continental France liberated by the Allies, where he set foot on French soil in June 1944, de Gaulle gave a speech where he talked about the shape that the French Constitution would have to take.

When De Gaulle appeared on the balcony of the town hall in Bayeux, the public greeted him with cries of "Take power!"^[1]

De Gaulle advocated a reduction in the power of the parliament,^[2] going as far as to say, "It goes without saying that the parliament, which is composed of two chambers and exercises legislative power, cannot be the source of executive power". He said he supported a bicameral parliament with a head of state standing above the parties.^[3] In a state of emergency, the head of state would be the guarantor of national independence and the treaties signed by France.

The ideas that he put forward in his speech would inspire the 1958 Constitution.^[1]

• French Constitution of 27 October 1946
• Constitution of France