France worship thread

*surrender*

I don't idolize Prussia or Germany, but there is something really aesthetically-pleasing about pre-Second Reich German states. I'm an admirer of German culture in the 18th century and not the jack-booted militarism gone rampant.

Particularly, I really like Bavaria (both Electorate and Kingdom) as well as Saxony (Electorate and Kingdom). Also admittedly, I thought Austria was pretty cool in the 18th century up until the formation of the Dual Monarchy.

France was a real clusterfuck after Waterloo. The Bourbon Restoration was a mistake, Louis Phillip tried his best but couldn't deal with the surmounting problems, the Second Republic was so ineffectual that they willingly allowed the Second Empire to form. And the 2nd Empire was quite possibly the biggest waste of potential that France had.

Instead of wasting precious money and manpower in wars like Crimea, the Italian Wars of Independence, and especially the Mexican invasion, they should've focused on domestic issues while ensuring that France's army could deal with any continental rival. They rushed too recklessly against the German coalition and paid for it dearly.

What France needed after 1815 was a century of peace; little to no wars, no graft or corruption in their government, improvement for workers' rights and wages, build up their economy so that industrialization, commerce, and finance were up to par, and most importantly, actually procreate.

Demographics in 1816 had them at 30.5 million. By 1914, it was 41.6 million. That is fucking pathetic. In nearly a century, they only gained over 11 million? Even with disease, war, and emigration, it should've been at least 50-55 million by the eve of WWI. Britain actually overtook France's population (they were 45 million) by 1914; something that never happened before.

>fight germany to a stalemate

They didn't do it alone

The French army in WW1 had balls of steel. These were men who were outnumbered and outgunned by the Germans yet they fought tenaciously while 1/7 of their country was under enemy occupation.

Germany choose to bring Belgium into conflict itself.

Actually, they pretty much did
British numbers were so ridiculous in the early war that France was virtually alone on the Western Front until the Somme in late 1916
The battle that turned the war into a stalemate (First Marne) was basically won by France alone

I'm currently reading a book that touches upon the lost generation of men that fought in WW1.
I'm feeling really sad right now.

>British numbers were so ridiculous in the early war that France was virtually alone on the Western Front until the Somme in late 1916

Except those British troops were better trained and more effective, France lost English sized armies frequently.

>and especially the Mexican invasion

This one didnt waste much manpower desu
6k death in 6 years of fighting is nothing
The Franco-Prussian War saw heavier losses in single day battles

I agree France's incompetent foreign policy and political instability were a source of major national crisis, but France still admirably maintained their spot as a great power despite numerous setbacks in the 20th century and several wars. They also maintained an amazing empire until the cold war. Then DeGaulle did a good job getting them nuclear in the late 20th century, which helped compensate their loss of international territory.

Iktf bro

This is why I really fucking hate the Great War. 1914 Europe was at the advent of high civilization. In the arts and sciences, they were making great strides. Look at all those men and women that died needlessly in the conflict. All the money and resources wasted. Our development and living standards could be at least a decade or 2 ahead of what is now.

I mean, think of all the countless scientists, engineers, writers, jurists, etc. that frittered their lives away in the trenches and whatnot. Like Henry Moseley; my physics book in HS even mentioned how his life was cut short because of WWI and what breakthroughs he could've done.

After Waterloo, the Concert of Europe had wars, but nothing as destructive like the Napoleonic Wars or the Thirty Years Wars. It allowed the 19th century to flourish and had 1914 been merely the 3rd Balkans War instead of the Great War, things would've been for the better. No Great War means the Nazis and Bolshiviks don't take power; something that Winston Churchill lamented about the utter tragedy of WWI.

>new Battflefield game with WW1 setting
>no French army at launch
>instead they will paid DLC
I'm not even surprised.

Well memed, britshit
British troops were irrelevant as fuck in 1914, deal with it
And by the time Britain started to actually play a role in the war (late 1916) their ebin professional army had died (killed by conscripted German peasants) and they ended up fielding the worst army of the Western Front quality wise (which is why the First Day of the Somme happened)

Maybe not in casualties, but it was a useful venture that shouldn't have been done.

I never understood just how and why France had so much political disturbance. It's mind-boggling how volatile their society was post-Napoleon and even after WW2.

Reminder that Prussia was partly built by French Protestants.

>merely the 3rd Balkans War
Really should have been no war at all.
In my opinion the crisis leading up to it were far more war worthy (if that's a way to phrase it)

The fact they excluded the French and Russians armies only to put the spotlight on the already overrated as fuck British one is deplorable, but what else can we expect from American media?

American cultural domination is the reason why British history is so overrated
They're the ones who created the meme of redcoats being elite troops (in order to make their revolution appear glorious) and many other memes regarding Britain's "greatness"

It's amazing how Prussia managed to exist. A remnant of a Teutonic outpost in a sea of Slavs and Balts; it should've been extinguished long before Brandenberg took helm.

No Prussia might actually allow a more liberalized German reunification in the 19th century. It's true that with the absence of Prussia, there'd be no vital member of the Coalition at Waterloo, but doubtless, there'd be another German state to take its place. Prussian militarism and its autocracy was really the bane of Europe in the 1700's thanks to Frederick the Great up to Wilhelm II.

Actually the company making that game is Swedish but I get your point.

Don't be naive
EA is the mastermind, DICE is but a pawn

are there more of these or only the french and german ww1 wojaks?

I agree, but that region was already going into flames. They already had 2 Balkan Wars and nothing wasn't gonna be settled until another war which would decimate the regional powers there.

The fact that the heir to Austria-Hungary was assassinated by a Serb is what forced a major power to step into the Balkan powderkeg. That was a huge mistake. A war amongst Romanians, Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Serbians, Albanians, and Montenegrins is fine because they're not to bring the rest of the world to ruin but once a major player like Austria stepped in, no shit Russia and others would join too.

Brandenburg would simply remains a small weak German state like Mecklenburg without the militarism and autocracy.
The Habsburg would still rule the Empire.

>When you went from being a retarded prussiaboo to a french wikiwarrior to hates on countries contributions to the WW1 war effort

Come back when you leave puberty

True, the Austrians would still be Holy Roman Emperor, but I'm willing to imagine that somebody would still come along and amalgamate the broken states into a powerful nation that isn't quite saber-rattling as Prussia, but not ineffectual as Austria.

Or it's very possibly we might see a Gross-Deutschland like pan-Germanists envisioned with Austria fusing with the divided German states of the decrepit HRE. But they have to be sure to give gradual independence to their non-German holdings because those are too much of a clusterfuck. At best, forms a customs and currency union with the Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, etc. to institute free lines of travel, commerce, and communication in a regional Habsburg commonwealth.

...

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What's the book called? I'm interested

I would be fine with an Eastern Front DLC but the fact that there is no french faction in the base game is pure bullshit

You don't constantly kick Coalition ass if you're an army of weak-willed bitches. The French armies of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras were full of zeal and training.

I'm a huge fan of the Sharpe books, but it really irks me that the layman thinks French troops are pushovers. The uniqueness of the Peninsular War with Spain's broken terrain that didn't allow Napoleonic tactics to work effectively, Spanish guerrillas constantly harassing French supply and communication, the British codebreakers decrypting every bit of French dispatches, and the fact that the Royal Navy controlled the seas (useful for a large peninsula) which allowed constant resupply and reprovision.

Had the British army faced Napoleon's legions in 1805 to 1812 in Germany, Austria, or Russia, they would've gotten curbstomped. People also forget that Napoleon lost a lot of good soldiers and officers due to years of war so no shit their quality eroded over time. Not to mention even Napoleon was no longer the guy he was after 1807. He barely won at Wagram and it was no masterful display of movement and tactics. Going to Russia was a fucking mistake that costed him BIG time.

Whatever he had left in the 1813, 1814, and 1815 campaigns were a hulk of his prime war machine that won at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, and Auerstedt.

bave men, needless sacrifice. alls fair in love and war

t.Frenchmen

>Voltigeur
If there's one mistake that I can never forgive Napoleon for, it's not equipping his Voltigeurs and Tirailleurs with rifles. He felt that the slow-loading time was a detriment; BIG fucking mistake. His German allies included Jager troops, but he should've made sure his own Frenchmen had sharpshooters with long-range weapons.

Can you imagine if all the brave Frenchmen that died from 1792 to 1918 hadn't died? They would've breeded even more strong and intelligent men to fight in wars; men that France desperately needed in WW2.

t.British "man"

Lasalle was too good for this world.

>I'm a huge fan of the Sharpe books, but it really irks me that the layman thinks French troops are pushovers.

Never read the books but I watched the movies and basically they're just Rambo movies in Napoleonic Wars setting
Seeing Sharpe and his two mates take down entire cavalry units in every movie almost make them feel like a comedy

In reality, French troops were of far superior quality than British ones which is why they managed to stall them in Spain for 6 years despite being outnumbered most of the time

Oh yeah that dude. He's the main reason why Hussars are my favorite type of cavalry in that period.

>In reality, French troops were of far superior quality than British ones which is why they managed to stall them in Spain for 6 years despite being outnumbered most of the time
Not at first.

In the beginning of the Peninsular War (1808), Napoleon pulled out a lot of the veteran troops to be stationed in Germany (in case of the Austrians or Russians) and sent inexperienced youth. Hence this is why Dupont had to surrender at Bailen.

Later on after the 1809 war, Napoleon was free to send decent soldiers in Spain, but his marshals constantly bickered with one another and were never able to combine forces effectively against the Anglo-Portuguese or against the Spanish.

The Peninsular War was a means for Britain to use its limited army (remember they didn't have conscription) to inflict as much damage to the French with little cost to themselves. It was basically using a conventional army in conjunction with a guerrilla conflict to fight an invader.

Fighting for 6 years deprived the France of manpower and resources that they could've sorely needed in other theaters. Spain was a useful ally that Napoleon had and shouldn't have replaced them with his brother.

>Fighting for 6 years deprived the France of manpower and resources that they could've sorely needed in other theaters
Having more manpower wouldnt have changed the outcome in Russia, it would just have meant more death by starvation

>Spain was a useful ally that Napoleon had and shouldn't have replaced them with his brother.
Spain wasnt even an ally, it was a recently subdued enemy (remember the Pyrenees War)
Napoleon dun goofed when he put his brother on the throne, but the reason he did is because he couldnt trust Spain as it was

The Campaign of 1813 might have been different had Napoleon had those troops and officers that were wasted in Spain. Or even the Defense of France in 1814.

Spain was more useful as Napoleon's stooge than intervening. I'm well aware of the Pyrennes War, but they also contributed to the French fleet (which is why there were Spanish sailors and ships at Trafalgar) as well as paying annual subsidies to France. Not to mention handing over the Louisiana territory to France, who quickly sold it to the US; something the Spanish didn't want to happen.

Napoleon should've realized that committing everyone to the Continental System was more problems than it was worth. Better to try and make peace with Britain (which was possible though not easy) than do that nonsense.

No shit, Germany had close to twice France's population and triple its GDP. Yet on the Western Front, significant British troops didn't arrive until mid 1916, so they basically were holding their own alone against a vastly superior opponent until then (besides the Eastern Front, which was understaffed with Germans and mostly Austria vs Russia anyway).

The amount of troops britain sent were irrelevant.

If you throw a drop of water in very a hot pan, it will evaporate immediately, doesn't matter how cold the drop of water was.

Sure, later on France would have buckled down without reinforcements, but the in the initial phase the merit is all theirs.

What are you talking about ? Look up any image of Napoléon voltigeur, infantry or mounted en croupe, they were always eqquiped like other infantrymen.

See décret 2 complémentaire an XIII (dec. 19th 1805):
art 1: In each line battalion there will be one company of voltigeurs, which will always be the 3rd company, grenadiers accounted
art 6 : The voltigeurs are equipped with a light rifle, the dragon model. Officers and NCOs instead get carbins
art 7: The voltigeurs wear the same gear as line infantry
art 8: The voltigeurs undertaking the same tasks as light infantry, they shall be apt to quickly mount, in one jump, en croupe with a horserider.

Another thing about the voltigeurs is that they were all short, since they were more agile and because they got recruited when everyone taller than 5 feet was already conscripted.

Prob my favourite quote from Napoleon, that shows how maniulative he could get when it comes to grinding meat:
"I created the voltigeurs so as to use short men that conscription couldn't reach. In the same time i opposed short to tall men, as i could oppose white and black men. I would create hunchback companies, if they were many. In a country with lots of hunchbacks, such companies would be appropriate. One would excite their self-esteem, their pride, and it's highly probable they would thus be very brave and selfless.
It was a marvelous idea: I told the voltigeurs: "You are morons, a grenadier is worth sixty voltigeurs !" I told the grenadiers: "You are just big cowards, good to eat, but when it comes to fighting ? Vive les voltigeurs !" With this, you get anyone killed. Voilà la véritable éloquence militaire..."

source: 1789-1815.com/voltigeurs.htm

Not him, but I think he was referring to the firearms used. French line infantry was equipped with smoothbore muskets, as were the light infantry.
Whereas other armies equipped their light infantry/skirmishers with rifles rather than smoothbore muskets

Ah, thanks for clarifying. You need to xp until NCO or Officer to unlock the rifled carbins, to prevent dishonorable hillcamping in the grunt ranks.

>Instead of wasting precious money and manpower in wars like...
quite true but part of the napoleonic mythos was glorification through war and conquest. If napoleon couldn't do that his mystique would have been damaged.

>never understood just how and why France had so much political disturbance. It's mind-boggling how volatile their society was post-Napoleon and even after WW2.

Because they're French!
They recognise their "place" in the world, to a much more realistic degree than the Brits, yet still consider themselves THE most important people on Earth.

It can lead to a lot of problems with the neighbours.

(This is a very bad explanation)

>They're the ones who created the meme of redcoats being elite troops
What?
Literally no-one has ever said this. If anything, the prevailing thought is that redcoats were incompetent retards.

That's probably the most uninformed post about the great war I've ever seen, bar that American claiming they saved France

There is little reason to have anything but French and German wojaks.

Holy fuck the revisionist anti Anglo Frenchboo shilling on this board makes it unbearable, and I'm not even Anglo.

>tfw you start reading history and realize France are the good guys

Enlightening isnt it

Nice try, anglo.

>What's the great war
>American education

Probably because Germany and Prussia look pretty cool superficially.

I don't know where the surrender meme actually came from. Historically, the French have been pretty fanatical when they fought.

>I don't know where the surrender meme actually came from

The Simpsons

>the French have been pretty fanatical

You're godamn right.

What the fuck went wrong...

And WWII, to be frank.

>And WWII, to be frank.

I guess I can see it, but that was the result of being outmaneuvered by German forces more than an unwillingness to fight.

I think it was a better solution than fighting like soviets (fucking commies) and losing millions and millions of soldiers, men, women and children.

I can understand why we (they, I'm not that old...!) did trust Pétain.

The nineteentth and even twentieth centuries were essentially the denouement of the conflict between french revolution's supporters and its detractors and those eho tried to bridge a gap in between

Well the French forces didn't have the luxury of the same strategic depth as the Russians, who, through the molotov-ribbentrop pact, secured territory all the way into Poland. It probably wouldn't have been viable for the French to do what the Soviets did considering Paris isn't terribly far from Belgium.

>Frenchman not Algerian
Kek

>French military tactics

Not the willingness to fight the Soviets ever could of pulled off.

France probably would've collapsed completely if they had suffered roughly 20,000,000 casualties, whether it be civilian or soldier their population during ww2 was like 45 million (i'm roughly guessing here)

As said
it wasn't a viable option

would you say Canadians were a close second or the British?

Why did they have to turn into a republic? Louis XIV was perfect

French voltigeurs were fine, their muskets were more accurate than the British ones due to smaller bore size, and much faster reload. Most armies had their light infantry equipped with muskets as well.

look up la Fronde mate, it was hardly a novelty for France.
France had so many political disturbances it's a miracle she survived that long

Childhood is thinking the French suck because of WW2.

Adulthood is realizing that thinking they're awesome because of WW1 makes more sense.

>I think it was a better solution than fighting like soviets (fucking commies) and losing millions and millions of soldiers, men, women and children.

The Germans were literally going to exterminate the Soviets and resettle their territory with Germans, they had no choice but to fight and fight and fight.

The Soviets actually lost land and materiel equivalent to several times France's TOTAL land and materiel in the first six months of the Eastern Front.

Childhood is idolizing France and Germany. Adulthood is realizing Britain has always made more sense.

Yeah I really envy how they let in so many middle eastern migrants that their country has a terrorist attack every second day.

Childhood idolizing Russian Empire and tzar. Adulthood realizing that Soviet Union have more sense

>to be frank.
The absolute madman

literally nobody likes normans, NOBODY

throwing axes were a meme

wh is the hat floppy on one side but not the other

Sure giving up your country and ruining everything your ancestors worked for is worth your life right? The French are a meme because it is true. They got BTFO in the Franco Prussian war, were incompetent as fuck in WW1 but the troops fought well, and in WW2 let themselves get out maneuvered then wouldn't fight. A country with their population lost only 300,000 men. Basically spitting in the eyes of those who fought in WW1.

Except when you do your research and realize it was their own fault and the French are dogshit and nothing to be admired.

>A country with their population lost only 300,000 men

Which is basically the same number Britain (a country with an even bigger population) lost in the entire war

>He doesn't know the difference between strategy and tactics

>then wouldn't fight
Frenchmen fled in droves to the Colonies and England to fight on.

So you admit Germany was a force to be reckoned with?

Probably that little war during the 40s mate.

The furthest extent of the Continental "First French Empire" was all under the leadership of a Corsican.

So the French can take full credit for the colonial empire and some later African holdings, at best.

...

REEEEEEEEEE! Non-continentals get the fuck out!

>The furthest extent of the Continental "First French Empire" was all under the leadership of a Corsican.

And?
The greatest extend of the British Empire was under a German Queen