France

When was France a dominant military power?

Was it only in the age of Napoleon?

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The Gauls at one time contained the Romans and were superior to them militarily. They were only surpassed by the time Caesar arrived, but he was basically a genius so without him they'd likely remain on par with each other for a long time.

Medieval period up until Franco-Prussian.

>the romans conqured gaul because of the genius of caesar and not because of military superiority
read Caesar's commentaries senpai

gaul was curbstomped

Really the area that is now France was a host of most or second most powerful state in Europe from the Frank's until rise of Germany.

a toast to the host who can boast the most roast

The kingdom of France/Frankia was the main powerhouse in western Europe after the germanic invasions until they lost Normandy to England and the English kings slowly started swallowing more and more of France. After the 100 yrs war it bounced back and was again what you'd call a dominant military power until the revolution, and after the revolution it got even more dominant, even if they couldn't stand to Prussia or Germany. During WW2 they were btfo

>nukes
>own Africa
They are right now.

>own Africa
>what is Burkina Faso
Not for much longer user

>couldn't stand to Prussia or Germany

Yeah well considering Prussia got buttfucked during the whole lenght of the Napoleonic Wars (~20 years), I guess one can only safely assume they needed quite some resting time until 1870

Franks were the powerhouse of their day, laying the foundations for Europe.
1066-1477 was France dealing with the issues caused by rebellious and independent minded French nobles.
France emerged from the 100 years war as a powerhouse again, stomping all over Italy.
Oh no, Habsburgs. France gets contained by religious problems and the Habsburgs from the early 1500s to 1643 when the Habsburgs get smashed at Rocroi.
France is then the dominant military power from here until the Franco-Prussian war were after a combination of inept leadership, slower population growth rates and smaller industry sees them fall far behind Germany.

Modern day France is well above the majority of Europe in terms of military (including Germany). The only nation that's comparable is the UK.

Generally speaking, French history is dominated by the French being rather successful warmongering dickbags.

France was busy with the 100 years wars and other things for a long time during the medieval and early modern. They didn't became dominant until the reign of the sun king Louis XIV.

You, i like

>warmongering dickbags.
Thats the Germans.

>Thats the Germans.
French caused more colaition than german ever did mate. French were warmonger(and still are see mali and libya), it's just that hollywood don't care that spanish, german and italian got assraped for century by the western mongol, they just think history begin in 1766.

From 496 to 1789 we're the strongest, then it is just decline

It's only been the germs in modern times. Go back just a bit and any european country will have a history of french agression

Throughout much past thousand years the french were a great threat to the world. It was only after the defeat of Napoleon that this threat of course withered. Passing into decline, they handed that malevolent mantle off to their Teutonic cousin.

this

yeah right.
funny memes.

Agree with your post until this:

>France is then the dominant military power from here until the Franco-Prussian war

Nope. Russia becomes the dominant military power in 1814, which is the year that Tsar Alexander I leads the first foreign army to occupy Paris since the English did in the Hundred Years War half a millennium earlier.

France has been in decline from 1814 until the present day. The strongest military (land) power in Europe has been Russia from the defeat of Napoleon until the rise of Prussia/German Imperial Reich.

For almost its entire history.

>what is Crimean War

Pierre youre garlic stench is showing

Caesar only won by pitting Gallic tribes against each other, and even then he lost a major battle at Gergovia.

>what is Crimean War
Not proof that Russia was not the strongest land power in Europe in that period.

Are you saying that France wasn't the strongest land power during Louis XIV's reign and the 18th century because they lost at Blenheim? Hm?

Who cares about battles, France mostly won the war. Meanwhile Russia got cucked out of its historical ambition by an expeditionary force.

>lets see if this works
The Franks where a Germanic tribe that conquered Paris and surroundings in the 5th century. They made they local gallo-roman leftovers their bitch.

>forgot pic of conquered gallo-roman Untermenschen territory

France lost wars during its period too. The strongest country often loses when it is up against a coalition

Let's have a brief chat about Russian military history since 1900.

>Beaten by Japs in the Russo-Japanese war,
Becoming the first european power to lose a war against an asian power. Although this was largely a naval war, and Russia was at an extreme geographic disadvantage, it was pretty fucking embarrassing.

>Beaten by Germans in the First World War,
Sure, the Germans sent Lenin to fuck things up, but the Russians still lost in every conceivable way.

>Being beaten by themselves in the Russian Civil War
I'm not wrong.

>Beaten by Poles in the Polish-Soviet War
lol

>Narrowly beating Finland to achieve a pyrrhic victory in the Winter War
This would be like the US military invading New Zealand and getting their asses kicked. No, actually this is worse than that.

>Not foreseeing their ideological arch-enemies (the Nazis) attacking them in 1941, and losing hundreds of divisions before finally being able to push the Germans back in World War Two. Then launching a similar surprise attack on the Japs and curb-stomping them.
Russia's only victory on that half of the century.

Okay now let's look at post 1950.

>Mass-murdering Hungarian protestors in 1956
Nice victory Russia.

>Getting kicked in the balls by afghani dirt farmers
Hahaha

>Losing thousands of men in the Chechen wars
HAHAHAHAHA

>Perform embarrassingly bad in the 2008 invasion of Georgia, realising that their communication and combined arms co-ordination was about on par with a warband of African Bushmen.

Russia's economy is smaller that Italy. They spend less on their military than the UK does and only slightly more than France. Russia is a joke.

Except it also won plenty. Russia literally just lost.

Sure hans


Now you can go suck my dick like i trained you to do

And don't forget that if i see any sacred tree in your shithole(my clay) the next i come i will beat your pagan ass

there was only a "military superiority" because of caesar's genius, newfriend

>nope. russia.

wrong, vatnik

And?

ESL?

Gauls were already seen as the greatest warriors of their time. They sacked Rome, conquered the Balkans where they defeated the Greeks and Macedonians, and Gauls were known as the best gladiators and mercenaries all the way to Egypt. But they were always split into a multitude of warring tribes, which is what Caesar exploited to conquer Gaul.

After the fall of Rome, the kingdom of France that emerged on the land of Gaul conquered the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Alamans, the Muslims, the Lombards, the Bavarians, and the Saxons, became the hegemonic power of Western Europe, and turned out to be the only Dark Age state to survive.

After that there was a period of collapse, but the power lost by the French kingdom was gained by the French nobility, which made its own expeditions, conquering England, Southern Italy, parts of Africa, and the Holy Land. France itself reemerged as a strong centralised power during the 12th century, and came to rule Western Europe once again after defeating the Angevins. In the 13th century, the House of France, through various branches, ruled most of Europe.

Then France tore itself apart again in the Hundred Years War. It rebuilt itself after that, and while it became once more the most powerful single nation of Europe, it was overshadowed by the Habsburg Empire which covered most of the rest of the continent. France began to systematically chip away at Habsburg power, and finally succeeded in breaking it with the Thirty Years War, which left France once more as the hegemon of Europe.

France remained on top throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and even when it collapsed into a state of revolution, bankruptcy, and civil war, it continued to defeat the huge unanimous coalitions assembled against it, going on to conquer most of the continent. This overextension eventually caused its fall, but it remained the main power in continental Europe until the unification of Germany, which with a larger active population and French military methods managed to defeat France, but was in turn defeated by France with the help of its allies.

Today France is severely reduced like all European nations, but remains the first military power of Europe, and among the first world wide.

>I mean it's not like the Gauls crushed the romans at the battle of Allia and then proceeded to sack the shit out of Rome in any way, right ?

You mean like the Franks, the germs that took over the Gauls?

Give a quick read to the Caesar's books on Gaul, the enmity between the French and Germans started when the Romans used Gallic auxiliaries to stomp the Germanic invasions, and went on all the way up to the Franco-Prussian war where Bismack turned the tide in favor of the Germans, the French pretty much raped their way through the German states for centuries, Hans

>Being beaten by themselves in the Russian Civil War
What do you mean?
>Narrowly beating Finland
I admit that the Winter War was poorly planned and executed. However, "getting their asses kicked" is wrong. They won even though it took more time and resources than they expected.
>Getting kicked in the balls
The same as US in Vietnam
>Losing thousands of men in the Chechen wars
The chechens still lost more
>Perform embarrassingly bad in the 2008 invasion of Georgia
This has to be a joke. Georgian forces surrendered in less than a week.

End of 30 years wars up until WW2

No?

Medieval France successed Europe from Rome between Clovis to Barbarossa. French knights ruled the roost.

>FN
God this picture is cringeworthy. But anyway, 20 year rule

France, for as long as it has been an at least semi-centralized polity, has been a dominant economic power in Europe. This is partly due to geographic advantages (France has very good farmland/climate and its borders are flanked by mountains on many sides), and partly due to a legalistic tradition.

Now to answer your question, the foremost factors in determining the strength of a nation's military are their forces, and their force multipliers. France can support a high population due to its geography and climate, which means high potential manpower, and also large urban centers which can house centers of military production as well as a healthy cottage industry. Those are its forces. For most of history its force multipliers consisted only of up-to-date military technology so there's no issue there. Of course in the modern era there is the French navy and Air Force.

So I would say that France has always been at least a significant military power for all of its history. Its fundamentals are just too good to ignore, it has too much manpower and industrial capacity to ever not have significant potential. The French have always known this and leveraged it to their benefit, whether through antagonism, deterrence, or getting a better bargain in an alliance.

As for when they were dominant, you simply have to compare them to the other major population centers nearby in the continent: Iberia, Germany, and Italy. Scandinavia, Russia, and Anatolia are too far away to bother considering and comparing France to Britain isn't worthwhile because Britain's navy prevents France's land army from being brought to bear anyway.

By my count, then, France has been "dominant" in its neighborhood from ~500 to 1328, then from 1659 to 1715, then again under Napoleon. In theory France also dominated the continent just after WW1 but they were so exhausted by war it's debatable if anyone was dominant at all.

I'd argue it was the dominant European power from the time of Philip Augustus up until the Franco-Prussian War.

Judging from my vacations it looks more like Africans own France.

Don't lump us with the Fr*ench nigger, we're a pure race with a unbroken line of basedness

Nope we raped the romans and destroyed their Ten Laws

Only in certain suburbs which absolutely everyone avoids
They are social outcasts and everyone think they're disgusting pieces of shit who deal drugs and shoot people

lol no

Fr*nch submit to their sandniggers and niggers overlord and gladly accept to be called and mongrelized with them

Are you even French ?
Unless you're a fully integrated black or muslim ( 90% of the time coming from the oversea French territories, they have litteraly no accent, aren't muslims and live like the average westerner ), people are gonna give you weird looks, avoid you or outright call you a terrorist.

>third-largest nuclear arsenal
>second most militarily powerful NATO country
>global power projection from the Pacific to sub-Saharan Africa

It still is.

what fanfic are you reffering to?

>dominant
>conquer 30cm of land and call it a victory

saxons got btfo by the united franks under charles the great, the first time a people/group was perceived as todays germans was the eastern franks under louis the german after the partition of francia in 843.

see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Francia

the absolute STATE of that country

Right, the kingdom of france just emerged on former
gaul and hast absolutely nothing to do with the germanic francian tribe

>implying there even was french and germans in roman times
>implying both the german and the french nation didn't mainly stem from the franks

there certainly were no french, but of course everything that wasn'r roman in the north was a tribe of germans

the french are a more contemporary formation, even the english can be said to in spirit be older as a people

Yeah, but Franks where a Germanic tribe too, and they conquered many germanic tribes, plus the gauls.

>Gaul
>Francia
>France
France didnt exist before the 9th century

>b..but the chechens still lost more
my fuckin sides

This.
Almost all western, middle, northern and central european nations plus italy were formed by one or more germanic kingdom(s) that were emerged after the late roman migraton period when germanic tribes settled in western (and to a much lesser extent eastern) roman territory.
These people weren't germans, they were of germanic descent, todays germans are a nation/people which was formed by several germanic tribes around the late 800s under louis the german and later otto the great

Why were germanic tribes so based and are we all the eternal germanic?

Yeah, facts are really funny

Because most germanic tribes learnt to fight over centuries among themselves, against the celts and romans and later as roman auxiliaries. When romes power declined and the huns attacked from central asia, the germanic tribes settled in roman provinces and superseded the romans as rulers. Some went as far as tunisia and installed germanic kingdoms.
>Are we all the eternal germanic?
Not only, but if you are a white from northern, central, western europe, an italian or logically some american descending from these groups it's very likely you have at least some germanic ancestors.