France

>Good geographical

Are you serious

After the Pope made Charlemagne Emperor of the West he set up a noble military class that incentivized imperial expansion, conquest, looting. Essentially creating the militarism that wound up producing too many French knights than the land could support, which then became a secondary motive for the Crusades.

I don't believe he was but "Muh land and resources are to blame for everything :DDD" is even worse.

Not that guy, but why is that wrong?

You don't even know what the great man theory is. The Great Man theory proposes that some people are just such powerful individuals that they will naturally rise to power and do great deeds and alter history. This is not the same thing as saying Charlemagne was influential.

Anti-Great Man people don't deny that powerful individuals have shaped history but emphasize society's role in molding these great men. The Great man/no great man argument is about HOW some men became so influential, not whether there were great men or not because there were.

I.E Justinianus was influential to history, no one can deny this. But was he able to achieve this level of influence because of his own great skill or because Anastasius had made the necessary economic and governmental reforms before him? Why was Anastasius able to do those reforms?

I'm not denying that certain people in History have been influential, but the original response was just "Charlemagne".

That sounds reasonable, but Charles realm was much bigger than just France.

Why didn't this militarism naturally develop in other kingdoms or atleast those who were part of Charles realm?

>What caused France to be the main military power of the Early Middle Ages up until the 19th century?
France proceeded towards the formation of a modern-day nation State in advance compared to other countries, this is quite effective for the purpose of recruiting soldiers, spreading a common national identity and other ideological shit, compared to earlier forms of government.

Military tradition means said ideology-filled recruits are drilled and employed effectively.

Shut the fuck up Frog.

Britain was the strongest ever since the 18th century. We could naval blockade any state into absolute submission.

WE

I'm not even a Frog you rotten-toothed anglo.

Go pick up your daughter from the Paki sex ring and leave historical discussion alone for a while

WUZ

EMPEREE

There is nothing wrong with what that fucker said.

When Franks took a huge swath of the Gallic Provinces they took with it almost-intact Roman infrastructure (i.e. cities) in addition to large swathes of agricultural land.

Let's throw in the fact that the Franks managed to consolidate their realm unlike other Germanic successor states in Ex-Roman land.

>no savage neighbours besides Germans
>big population
>big land
>resources
>good infrastructure left by Romans
>early Christian traditions
They simply rolled lucky nation bonuses. :^)

t. Johann

no, I'm actually a polack.

got nothing against older France, I only despise modern era Frencucks.

>>no savage neighbours besides Germans
>Christian spanish invaded constantly
>Moorish spanish invaded constantly
>Bretons being bretons
>English being invading every other century
>Flanders rebelling every single century

Germans weren't alone

France is "surrounded" by the Three most powerful nation in Europe aka Spain, """Germany""", and England and don't forget easily invaded France because they have foot in the other side of the Rhine.

>and and don't forget
and and don't forget the germans*

FTFM

I'm French and I'd say our real dominance was from 1643 to 1815
Spain was the main military power in Europe during the 16th and early 17th century

Top kek
The strongest european nation through history is a contest between France, Spain and Russia, but Britain is absolutly out of the equation
Your country literally never won an european war on its own and its greatest achievement is conquering nogs with spears in the 19th century

He means "geography" in the sense that France has a pleasant climate, mostly well-defendable borders (though that's mostly part of France's policy to actively attain those borders) and even today a stupidly high agricultural output. It could sustain a large population.

What also helps is that the kings of France managed to increase the power of the monarchy throughout the Middle Ages, preventing the disaster scenario that was the Holy Roman Empire. They were united, wealthy and had more than enough food to spare.

They had shitty neighbors, of course, but the strength of its geography is why France was allowed to exist and flourish in spite of that. Spain was broken, Germany was France's traditional punching bag and England never managed to beat France without significant outside help (and even then they tended to fail).

The biggest disaster to France's position of power was the unification of Germany. Their disunited punching bag now had all the advantages France had (other than strong agriculture, but they compensated for that with an even stronger industry).

Let's not forget that until the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain and "Germany" might as well have been one and the same: part of the Habsburg dynasty.

castles
knights templar
mercantilism
interest banking
clovis
charles martel
charlemagne
geographical location
>huns
>mongols
>vikings/saxons
>spain/islam/castile
>rome/ostrogoths/visigoths
>every other barbarian horde that stuck their tip into it

and it maintained this point until all that anarchism eventuall shifted the centre of the universe to HRE around FBI's coronation

4 March 1152 coronation
>Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor - Wikipedia, the free >encyclopedia
>en.wikipedia.org220 × 275Search by image
>Frederick sends out the boy to see whether the ravens still fly.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

Bigger dicks = superior military skills

Hence why the French, Mongols and Anglo historically dominated everyone.

Modern Mongolians have the smallest dicks by comparrison

-One of the largest populations
-very Fertile land (which probably resulted in said large population)
-rigid but pretty well structured gov't (until the republicans screwed it up)
-lots of pride for the above reasons so moral was usually high constantly
-in a geographical position that allows France to fuck with its neighbors but not have too much ability for its neighbors to fuck with it
-pretty good monarchs

Nope.jpg

First off, I was referring to France's ancestor: The Frankish Kingdom.

Frankdom is one of the first large organized Eurobenis kingdoms following the Western Roman Decline. Surrounded by
>Germanic Paganshit tribes in the East.
>Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms up north.
>Unstable Visigoths busy getting raped by Muslims.

So France literally started on a well founded power-base.

>Eurobenis

Please go on.

'N'

More like those three nations had to become powerful in order to survive being France's neighbors.

SHIEEEET

>Why didn't this militarism naturally develop in other kingdoms or atleast those who were part of Charles realm?

Didn't it? The Eastern Franks that would eventually form the HRE spent several centuries raiding and expanding into Eastern Europe.

Did France just was a succesful WW1 germany for most of it history.

The reply I got was that a huge factor was this militarism, so logically other realms that adopted this would be militaristically on par with France.

That happened though. As the Spanish, English, and German kingdoms increasingly adopted French customs, they each became expansionist and belligerent. The only reason they weren't immediately or quickly on par with France was because France was already very large, very fertile, and long developed and urbanized by the time these other states began expanding.

Spain routinely lost wars to France. Practically every war in the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th century was everyone and their mother i.e. Spainards, Italians, Portuguese, Germans, Austro-Hungarians, etc...had to routinely make coaltions and alliances to match France, and usually failed at it.

France was the dominant European power for the longest period of time following the fall and collapse of the Western Roman Empire until the mid 19th century.

Did France make good use of it's time as a hegemon of Europe or pissed it all to the wind?

Yes.

It managed to spread its culture and influence the rest of Europe for most of that period, so I guess they succeeded? I mean what else does one really do with hegemony?

>France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Poland all remain heavily Roman Catholic thanks to France's military and political dominance for most of modern European history
>Civil Code
I'd say it did good. We consider even today French to be a "high culture" language by European standards.

Thank you for your answers, it has helped me understand a lot more about European history.

Wtf I'm an Ouiaboo now.

But as a last question, why all the Ottomans of all people?

Surely there could have been some one else they could help stick it to the Assburglars?

*ally the Ottomans

Are you talking about the Franco-Ottoman alliance? That one just made sense when facing an empire as extensive as the Hapsburgs. At that point the only state that wasn't France itself that could match them was the Turks. Most of the Protestants came to the same conclusion, which is why so may of their pirates that moved into the Mediterranean ended up alongside or even joined up with the Barbary corsairs.

Raw, throbbing, and virile manhood.

Weren't there any others who could be used to screw over the Assburglars?

Yes, and the French reached out to them all. There was an attempt at a Franco-Polish alliance that fell through because of the Battle of Pavia suddenly meant Poland wasn't sure France would be of much help if it had to fight Austria and Russia. France also allied with Ottoman Hungary, and technically made attempts for the same with England but that was complicated by Henry VIII and Scotland.

>But as a last question, why all the Ottomans of all people?

Besides the above, it's partly because the Habsburgs were so busy demonizing Francis I for his support of anti-Hapsburg elements and claimants in Italy, Poland, and Hungary that they started slandering him as a Turkish ally before he ever made an overture to the Ottoman Sultan. This happened often enough that it actually started seeming like a good idea.

>The Habsburgs memed an event that screwed them over into existence

How fucking retarded can this royal family get?

Don't get me wrong they have done impressive things but this is some serious retardation.

On a slightly related note, what was the political atmosphere in the Iberian peninsula before Habsburg domination?

I remember Skanderbeg becoming a vassal to the King of Aragon so I guess they were pretty Anti-Ottoman.

It's just a consequence of how far-reaching Hapsburg militant diplomacy had gotten. When everyone is either with you or against you, all the people who are against you suddenly have something in common. The 16th and 17th centuries are really amusing. Whether directly or indirectly you had English and Dutch pirates, Iberian Moriscos and North African corsairs, German Protestant princes, Polish and Hungarian nobles, the English, the Turks and their Balkan vassals, and the French all theoretically on one side against the Spanish and Austrian crowns.

I can't speak much on 15th century Iberian politics, and the five minutes I've spent reading up on it only lets me say 'it's fucking complicated.'

>I can't speak much on 15th century Iberian politics, and the five minutes I've spent reading up on it only lets me say 'it's fucking complicated.'
Towards France is easy. Aragon opposes France as their interests collide in Italy, while Castille has been a allied to France since the Trastamara dinasty took the power. Portugal alligned towards England during that same time.
Navarre is a special case cause its a Peninsular kingdom but since the XIII Century it has been ruled by various different French houses (even by the Capets themselves), so it was a French satellite heavely dependant on foreign support to not fall to the other kingdoms.
And then you have Granada, legally a vassal to Castile it keeps her independence by paying a tribute in gold and playing the Christian kingdoms agaisnt each others.

This would make sense if France wasn't constantly the aggressor in the franco-habsburg conflict. Francis had no excuse.

France had land trade routes and southern sea routes

>what was the political atmosphere in the Iberian peninsula before Habsburg domination

Civil war, more civil war, then war against moors and against the french.

By the way, it makes more sense that you may think for Skanderbeg to ally the king "of Aragon" because he also was the king of Sicily and the specific one that ruled during Skadenberg's life resided in Italy the last years of his life.

Spain: dealt with muslims for 700 years didn't even think of France until after that.

England: The only power they actually had to deal with and the french often used the scots as a distraction so the English had to fight on two fronts

Germany : wasnt United and was france's punching bag for most of history

Also at some point you have what you could call a curious "proxy war" between Portugal and Aragon in the form of the war of castilian succession, where Isabella got the crown supported by Aragon against the will of the king of Portugal who supported and was married with the other pretender.

"Sadly" for the aragonese Isabella was not the kind of woman that accepted his husband being the real ruler (and probably that's why she had more support since castillians wouldn't have aproved to be ruled by Fernando). Had the portuguese side won, I think the capital of Spain would be Lisboa and not Madrid (or any castilian city).

>Spain: dealt with muslims for 700 years didn't even think of France until after that.

Simply false. France had conflicts with the Crown of Aragon from the start.

>We could naval blockade any state into absolute submission
>Couldn't beat some rowdy colonies where the majority of the population didn't even support the revolution