Editing Free France (section)

===Armistice===
On 19 June, {{nowrap|de Gaulle}} again broadcast to the French nation saying that in France, "all forms of authority had disappeared" and since its government had "fallen under the bondage of the enemy and all our institutions have ceased to function", that it was "the clear duty" of all French servicemen to fight on.{{sfn|Munholland|2007|p=11}}

This would form the essential legal basis of {{nowrap|de Gaulle}}'s [[government in exile]], that the armistice soon to be signed with the Nazis was not merely dishonourable but illegal, and that in signing it, the French government would itself be committing treason.{{sfn|Munholland|2007|p=11}} On the other hand, if Vichy was the legal French government as some such as [[Julian T. Jackson]] have argued, {{nowrap|de Gaulle}} and his followers were revolutionaries, unlike the [[Dutch government-in-exile|Dutch]], [[Belgian government-in-exile|Belgian]], and other [[governments in exile]] in London.{{sfn|Jackson|2001|p=31, 134–135}} A third option might be that neither considered that a fully free, legitimate, sovereign, and independent successor state to the [[French Third Republic|Third Republic]] existed following the Armistice, as both Free France and Vichy France refrained from making that implicit claim by studiously avoiding using the word "republic" when referring to themselves.{{Citation needed|date=December 2017}} In Vichy's case, underlying reasons were compounded by ideals of a {{lang|fr|[[Révolution nationale]]}} stamping out France's republican heritage.

On 22 June 1940, Marshal Pétain signed an [[Second Compiègne|armistice with Germany]], followed by [[Franco-Italian armistice|a similar one with Italy]] on 24 June; both of these came into force on 25 June.<ref>P. M. H. Bell, ''France and Britain 1900–1940: Entente & Estrangement'', London, New York, 1996, p.&nbsp;249</ref> After a parliamentary vote on 10 July, Pétain became the leader of the newly established authoritarian regime known as [[Vichy France]], the town of [[Vichy]] being the seat of government. {{nowrap|De Gaulle}} was [[trial in absentia|tried ''in absentia'']] in Vichy France and sentenced to death for treason.<ref>Axelrod & Kingston, p. 373.</ref> He, on the other hand, regarded himself as the last remaining member of the legitimate Reynaud government and considered Pétain's assumption of power to be an unconstitutional coup d'état.