Philippe Henri Xavier Antoine de Gaulle (28 December 1921 - 12 or 13 March 2024) was a French admiral and senator. He was the eldest child and only son of General Charles de Gaulle, the first President of the French Fifth Republic, and his wife Yvonne. He was the last living child of General de Gaulle.
De Gaulle was born in Paris on 28 December 1921 and was baptised on 8 June of the following year in the Church of St. Francis Xavier in the 7th Arrondissement. He was educated at the Collège Stanislas de Paris, where his father had also studied, and subsequently joined the French Navy. According to Charles de Gaulle, Philippe was named after his family ancestor Jean-Baptiste de Gaulle, though it has been claimed that he was named after General Philippe Pétain, of whom his father was a great admirer.
A student at the École Navale at the time of the invasion of France in 1940, he did not hear his father's appeal of 18 June, but escaped to the United Kingdom and declared his allegiance to Free France, joining the Free French Naval Forces. During the Second World War he fought in the Channel campaign and in the Battle of the Atlantic. Promoted to sub-lieutenant in 1943, de Gaulle participated in the Battle of France (1944–1945) as a platoon commander of the Régiment Blindé de Fusiliers-Marins, an armoured regiment of marines of the 2nd Armoured Division. On 25 August 1944, he participated in the liberation of Paris and was sent from the Montparnasse Station to carry the order to obtain the surrender of the Germans entrenched at the Palais Bourbon in the premises of the National Assembly. Risking being shot if things went wrong, he negotiated among them, alone and unarmed. He fought in the Vosges during the winter of 1944–1945.
De Gaulle died during the night between 12 and 13 March 2024, at the age of 102. He was preceded in death by his sisters Elisabeth de Gaulle and Anne de Gaulle, the former who died in 2013 and the latter in 1948, and his wife Henriette de Montalembert Cers, who died in 2014. He was survived by his sons Charles de Gaulle II, Yves de Gaulle, Jean de Gaulle, and Pierre de Gaulle.