Does France actually have the best military record of western nations?

[12th Doctor]

Though I don't buy the "French Pussies" argument, as I have detailed in the past, I have to disagree with several of the author's points.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Which hundred year stretch was this?  It certainly was not the time from 1900-2000.  Nor the time from 1800-1900.  Nor the time from 1700-1800 (the Dutch acctually had more power on the contient than did the French).  Nor the time from 1600-1700, that was the Habsberg era.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Once again, when?  The only time that they enjoyed major power was during the time of Louis XIV, but that was also the era that marked the rise of the Russian Empire, so they didn't enjoy total dominance.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It depends on what you mean.  Much of the Napoleonic Empire was either never really settled down (like Prussia) or they were controled by puppets, not directly parts of the French Empire (as Roman Provinces were), such as Spain.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

His Empire was not French.  Charlamagne was a Norman and his Empire was Christian uniting French and non-French peoples.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So, they dominated at that one point, about 100 years, which means the French were not.  The British were so powerful, that they did not have to worry about threatening other nations in Europe.  No other nation would dream of angering them.

The British had the power to instantly wreck the economy of anyother world power, for more than 15 years, because of their navy.  If they had tangled with the French any time after the Napoleonic Wars, the war would have ended with a wimper from the French.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Wow, this guy lacks serious perspective.  First off, it sounds like he never heard of the Franco-Prussian War, where a disunited Germany soundly defeated the French.  Then, he ignores the fact that the Germans had vast military supeiriority over the French in WWI.  The man power the Entente had over the Central Powers was absolutly staggering.  France would have been crushed in a head to head fight with the Germans.  They were saved by British intervention.  And the Germans still would have crushed the combined Anglo/Franco force if the US had not intervened.  Those two countries were throwing their full might intothe Eastern front, while the Germans were able to bring nearly 8 million troops from the Eastern Front after the Russian surrender.

Also, the fact that the Germans totally conquered the French in WWII seems to be a trivial matter in the eyes of this guy.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The Spanish control 60% of the European land mass and the largest military for almost 200 years.  This guy really has no idea what he is talking about.

[12th Doctor]

To all the French bashers. Do you think that Poland is a useful ally? They certainly didn't last long in World War II? "You forgot Poland"... Blah blah blah....

Again, you are uninfomed.  The reason the Polish crumbled so easily is because they were being attacked from two sides and the British refused to honor their protection pact and send troops.  Polnad is not the easiest country to defend as is, anyway.

Churchill loudly decried the lack of British action as one of the worst travesties commited by the British government.

[12th Doctor]

Worth mentioning is that after 1588, Britain indisputably owned the seas.  Philip II, Napoleon, and Hitler all tried to defeat Britain, and found that they could not overcome such a vastly superior naval force.  Sea power is the lifeblood of Empire, and Britain was the dominant force in Europe from the 16th century onwards and built the largest of the European Empires because of its supremacy on the high seas.  France never really came all that close to defeating Britain at sea, and thus failed to overtake Britain.

This is, of course, best displayed in the fact that, within 150 years of Western colonization, Britian was the undisputed master of North America.  The French could not keep up the naval strength needed to defend their colonial pocession against Britain.

Since European efforts were concentrated on the colonies at the time, it is safe to say that, by ruling them, Britain ruled Europe.  The more you analys the Napoleonic era, the more you realize that the French were doomed to fail.  They simply lack the wealth and the ability to protect what assets they had against the British.

India is another good example.  Not many realize that France was the first to colonize India, but they lost control of the situation very quickly.  Britain picked up the slack, becase they had the resources and the sea power to establish and defend their trading routes.

[12th Doctor]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

As Supersoulty noted earlier, this does not appear to be a valid assertion. At the earliest, the alleged period of French hegemony would begin during the life of Cardinal Richelieu (more specifically, at about the time of the Thirty Years' War). It would come to an end, at the latest, with Louis XIV's conflicts with William III.

People tend to forget that the Dutch were acctualy a world power at one point.

[12th Doctor]

The French were the only thing standing between the Habsburgs and world domination in the 1500s (well, there were also the Ottomans, and the Protestants...)--and they managed to do a decent job of it.  Not too shabby, but not magnificent.

And then came the Wars of Religion, and they faded off the scene once again, killing each other...

Then Henri IV reunified everybody, and everything was good.  Richelieu got involved fighting against the Habsburgs once again in the Thirty Years War, and finally stopped their plans of world hegemony.  Good for them...France was, arguably, the foremost power in the world once they signed peace with Spain sometime in the 1650's (after the Peace of Westphalia).  And then came Louis XIV and the peak of French Power.  The War of Devolution, etc.  France starts encroaching east, taking Alsace-Lorraine, portions of Belgium, etc.  But he runs into resistance in the form of the Dutch, at first...and then the British after his buddies in England mess things up and get the Stadtholder of the Netherlands installed on the throne...and then everybody else (War of the League of Augsburg, which the French don't do that poorly in).  And then comes the installation of the Bourbons in Spain, which everyone was talking about.  And, yes, he did it.  But it wasn't his son (which was what he wanted), it was his brother...so the two crowns were forever separate.  And Louis had bankrupted his country in the process, just as the Habsburgs had bankrupted themselves.  The French lost the War of Spanish Succession (Blenheim, anyone?  There's an accomplishment for the piddly English Army for you--although it did suck at most other times except under Cromwell).  The French did not dominate during the 18th Century...they had cultural hegemony only.  Louis XV was a shadow of his great-grandfather--the ultimate coup comes when the French get conned into supporting the hated Habsburgs in the War of Austrian Succession.  They were still an important power, but they were not the feared hegemon of the 17th Century.

 

As I mentioned before, they might have been prominant after the fall of the Habsburg Empire, but they certainly were not dominant.  The 1500's saw the rise of the Netherlands as a serious global power and this status remained until the mid-1700's, by which time, Britain has become the dominant power in the world.  The Swedes were also a considerable power during this time period.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The problem with Napoleon is that he got too greddy.  But if he hadn't, we wouldn't be talking about him today, so that is kinda a double edged sword.  The more I study the period, the more I think that Napoleon was doomed from the start.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that France and Britain got rocked, militarily, by Russia during that conflict, inspite of both countries having considerable technological superiority over the Russains.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I think that it might be fair to say that, for the past 1000 years, France has been the most consistent European country in terms of power, but the best, they never were.

[12th Doctor]

Worth mentioning is that after 1588, Britain indisputably owned the seas.

While England did defeat the Armada in 1588, I don't think that it necessarily became the world's foremost naval power immediately. I believe that a year later, England sent a similar naval expedition to Spain, and suffered an equally inglorious defeat.

You would be correct.  England's rise was not immediate.  I hate to keep beating this point in, but the Dutch were the formost naval power in the world for most of the 1600's.  The British rise to prominence in that field really did not occure until the 1730's.  Up until that time, Britian's navy was still largely a privateer force.