MR Philippe Seguin, the outgoing speaker of parliament, set the tone on the fatal night of the June 1st election when he predicted "a fight with knives" within President Jacques Chirac's Gaullist centre right movement.
First they were massacred in the election, with 102 parliamentary seats lost to their leftwing enemies. Then the leading members of the Rally for the Republic (RPR), the neo Gaullist party founded by Mr Chirac in 1976, turned on each other.
The "knife fight" has developed into open civil war between Mr Alain Juppe, the former prime minister and president of the RPR, and Mr Seguin - whom President Chirac anointed to replace Mr Juppe as prime minister designate in the last hours of the campaign. Little niatter that the knives are sterling silver designer cutlery, wielded in a flurry of power breakfasts and lunches. You would have thought Mr Juppe would resign as president of the RPR in the wake of his election Waterloo. Everyone expected Mr Seguin to take his place, but Mr Chirac was apparently afraid that the "fat and jovial" (Mr Juppe's words) mayor and deputy from Epinal would use the office as a lever to prise the 2002 presidential nomination from him.
So in a declaration to the press on Tuesday evening, Mr Juppe announced his intention to remain at the head of the party, at least until an extraordinary session is called in the autumn.
Apparently at Mr Chirac's insistence, Mr Juppe chose the bumbling outgoing interior minister, Mr Jean Louis Debre, as his new deputy.
That was too much for Mr Seguin and his ally, the scrappy Corsican born former interior minister, Mr Charles Pasqua. Mr Pasqua said it was the duty of Mr Juppe and Mr Debre, as the architects of the right's defeat, to withdraw.
Mr Seguin told his troops that he had wanted to "spend a few moments with you far from the capital, far from its plotting". He knew they had fought hard, and he didn't want them to lose hope.
By yesterday afternoon, 55 of the 139 surviving RPR deputies had signed a petition demanding that Mr Seguin replace Mr Juppe as head of the RPR.
Among the signatures was that of Mr Pierre Mazeaud, an eminent RPR parliamentarian and longtime associate of Mr Chirac. "However thankless political life is, he (Mr Juppe) must go," Mr Mazeaud said. Even the former prime minister and mayor of Lyons, the somnolent Mr Raymond Barre, said that Mr Chirac "must now pay the price of failure".
The third important Gaullist faction is led by the former prime minister, Mr Edouard Balladur, and his sidekick, the former budget minister, mayor and deputy for Neuilly, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy. For the moment, the "Balladuriens" are keeping their powder dry.
They were punished for the past two years for supporting Mr Balladur against Mr Chirac in the 1995 presidential election. They were snubbed and kept out of office, but suddenly the Seguinistes need their help for the coup, while the Chiraquiens want cannon fodder for the countercoup.
Even, in mortal danger, it is hard to forgive old betrayals to get the Balladuriens on his side, Mr Juppe tried to promote Mr Sarkozy to number two in the RPR. Despite the peril of the insurrection, Mr Chirac couldn't stomach the idea. "Never, as long as I live, will Nicolas Sarkozy be secretary general of the RPR," the President told his entourage.
Two other right wing parties are watching the RPR's internecine war with great interest. The racist, extreme right National Front - which would have won 77 seats in parliament if the election were by proportional representation - wants to be admitted to the main stream rightwing family. And the Union for French Democracy (UDF), allied with the RPR, has quietly resolved its own post election crisis.
"The RPR is so absorbed in settling accounts that we couldn't wait until they had finished," Mr Pierre Andre Wiltzer, the spokesman of the UDF said. "We would have risked even more disorder in the opposition."
