Passive simple,when used without auxiliary

Question

I am doing B1 French and reading Camus La Peste( hard going sometimes) On page 173 he says"elles suffirent" which I take to mean they were enough,and I struggled with the conjugation but I found it as passive simple on the Lawless website. I interrogated Gemini AI and it suggested that passive simple is a compound tense requiring auxiliary from etre...despite its name. It also suggested Camus often used passe simple in a stylistic for without the auxiliary. So,is the Lawless conjugation right,and is elles suffirent passe simple, and please,what is going on?

Answer

John,

Laura is correct - the passé simple as a ' simple tense/mood ' is by definition ' simple ', not compound. Others include the present tense, imparfait etc

Only ' compound tenses/moods ' include an auxiliary verb.

https://french.kwiziq.com/revision/glossary/verb-types/verbes-auxiliaires

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/verb-tense/

When I asked Google AI ' was passé simple ever a compound tense ', it answered as expected :

" AI Overview

No, the French passé simple was never a compound tense, but it is a literary equivalent of the passé composé, which is a compound tense: "