France has invaded 80 countries since 800AD

[livingdead]

Invading smaller/weaker countries by surprise does not make you a good fighter. When the French met their match in both World Wars, they got ridiculed.


Better record of what? Invading poor countries? Britain has never been humiliated as much as the French...

I am talking about generallly held view that french make bad soldiers, but their performance in various wars is not that bad. (concept of nation state is recent one).

 

[AUSTERLITZ]

Invading smaller/weaker countries by surprise does not make you a good fighter. When the French met their match in both World Wars, they got ridiculed.


Better record of what? Invading poor countries? Britain has never been humiliated as much as the French...

Weaker countries?France/pre-modern gaul has fought the best of superpowers starting from rome and greece.In ww1 the french army performed much better than british.Mind u in blitz 1940 brits originally performed little better than french,poor british performace continued till 1943.They drove out english burgundy alliance in hundred years war.Was eventually defeated by the mighty spanish tercios at pavia under french valois kings,but became the superpower of europe under the bourbons starting from rocroi where conde destroyed the tercios.For every rossbach and sedan there is a jena-aurestadt.The collapse of france in 1870 sedan was less swift than prussia in 1806.They fought europe to a standstill in the revolutionary wars.Austerlitz,freidland,marengo,rivoli,dresden.Against this waterloo and leipzig[massively outnumbered].Remember marlborough and eugene's victories starting from blenheim came when all 3 of louis xiv's great marshals turenne,conde and luxembourg were dead.Vauban invented the bayonet and modern siege warfare.
For british never been humiliated - Lost to spear wielding zulus.Were conquered by the normans under william the conqueror at hastings ,who came from france.And its not like rome didn't rule england for 350 yrs.Surrendered numerically superior army in a impregnable fortress like singapore to japanese.And ofcourse yorktown surrender.Do u think american revolution would have succeeded without french regulars joining forces with the continentals?I maintain french are negatively portrayed due to the 1940 collapse,historically their record is very impressive and no less than say germans or british(british do however seem to have a one on one advantage against french).The french under napoleon remain the only army in history to have entered every major european capital on the continent.[paris,madrid,vienna,berlin,warsaw,moscow,rome]

 

[Cloakedvessel]

France as an (emerging) nation state did not exist before the 16th century, so every (alleged) invasion on this list attributed to France before this time line, is nonsensical.

Dr Gideon Polya has a habit of pulling things out of his hat. His invasion list of the US was just as absurd.

Have a look at the first lines of his run-down.

"Huguenot Massacres" - not an invasion, civil fighting between Catholics and Protestants.

"French Revolution Reign of Terror, 1793-1794" - not an invasion, ideological terror by the state against its perceived enemies.

"Vichy French Jewish Genocide, 1941-1945" - Vichy government's role in the Holocaust can in no conceivable way be termed as an invasion. Ridiculous.

"Hundred Years War, 1337-1437" - How can this be categorized as an invasion by France?! Even if we concede that two nation states were at war - in reality it was a sequence of conflicts born out of a dynastic dispute -, still it would make no sense. French territory was repeatedly invaded, and the battles took place on French territory, not in England.....

There is no objective historiography here, just empty talk for the gullible.

 

[That Guy]

invade 80+ countries since 800AD.

complain about immigrants.

 

[vostok]

France after Napoleon turned into a vassal of Britain. De Gaulle returned briefly national pride to the French, but not for long.

 

[flamer84]

There goes the "chease eating ,surrender monkeys" theory.

Anyway,this french bashing trend was started by the brits and the americans since De Gaulle stopped drinking the kool aid and condocted his own foreign policy.

 

[Porus]

There goes th e "chease eating ,surrender monkeys" theory.

Anyway,this french bashing trend was started by the brits and the americans since De Gaulle stopped drinking the kool aid and condocted his own foreign policy.

"Don't mention it" and "we've beaten them twice" are reserved for Germans. Making fun of Germans has almost become an indispensable part of the Anglo-Saxon culture, whereas in Germany England is almost a nonentity.

 

[flamer84]

"Don't mention it" and "we've beaten them twice" are reserved for Germans. Making fun of Germans has almost become an indispensable part of the Anglo-Saxon culture, whereas in Germany England is almost a nonentity.

Indeed.I would have liked to see the brits and the yanks handle the Wehrmacht on the Western Front without 75% of the german army being handled by the soviets on the Eastern Front.