France on Monday celebrated Bastille Day with all the usual pomp and circumstance. But some of the influential rural barons of Crédit Agricole seemed far more busy with their plot to storm their own banking Bastille. Their aim is to secure more influence inside the French “green bank,” as Crédit Agricole is popularly known, and unseat the current top management.

But the management, led by chief executive Georges Pauget, is fighting back. Rather than engage in a long war of attrition, Mr Pauget, a former paratrooper, has decided instead to go on the offensive and resolve the internal conflict once and for all. He will on Tuesday ask for a vote of confidence from his board. If he does not get it, he will resign and so probably will Crédit Agricole’s chairman René Carron. Other top managers could also decide to go. In short, the top management of France’s largest bank would be decapitated.