The Constitution of the Fifth French Republic, drafted by General Charles deGaulle, was adopted by referendum in 1958. It institutionalized a separationof powers required by de Gaulle to give legitimacy to the way he came topower, namely through a soft, non-violent coup. With rioting in the streetsof Algiers by the French Algerian population in May 1958, the War fordecolonization began to tear at France's stability. The military turned tode Gaulle, then in retirement, in the hopes of a swift retaliation againstAlgeria's Front de Liberation Nationale. Retaliation it got, though it wasinsufficient to keep Algeria within the folds of the greater Frenchrepublican empire.