FREE FRENCH was the name given to the Frenchmen led by Charles de Gaulle (q.v.) who developed an organisation to continue the fight against the Germans after the French surrender of June 1940. In so doing they repudiated the authority of the French govt, which had moved to Vichy. They were based in London and included not only fugitives from metropolitan France but whole provinces of the French African empire. In 1941 they set up a French National Committee which claimed the status of a pre-provisional govt and organised non-communist branches of the French Resistance. In 1943, against U.S. suspicion, de Gaulle established his committee in Algiers and later it became a real provisional govt with substantial forces. Its badge, the Cross of Lorraine, commemorated Joan of Arc.