 In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 of them fled, the first third prior to the referendum, in the largest relocation of population to Europe since the Second World War.A motto used in the FLN propaganda designating the pieds-noirs community was "Suitcase or coffin" (""La valise ou le cercueil"") – an expropriation of a term first coined years earlier by "pied-noir" "ultras" when rallying the European community to their hardcore line.The French government claimed not to have anticipated such a massive exodus; it estimated that a maximum of 250–300,000 might enter metropolitan France temporarily.