De Gaulle was a prickly a**h***, but he wasn’t personally all hat and no cattle. He was an extremely able man.
His problem at the time and later was that he was leading the French, who were in a very poor way.
De Gaulle was all about the interests of France, come what may, no matter what.
Agree with you about the man’s personal qualities of courage and a devotion to country that was Jean d’Arc like. My all hat and no cattle was in reference to his demand that the provisional government of a divided and broken France be treated as an equal ally. And in terms of a frustrating SOB to deal with he never came up to Montgomery’s level. Reading the histories and memoirs every allied commander who had to deal with de Gaulle, and not a few of his French colleagues, seemed to end up despising him. But the people of France loved him.