Why did France have such a poor choice of allies all the way through history ?

>Franco-Spanish
France has always been a cancer for Spain

Before the diplomatic revolution you had the Franco-Prussian alliance - which was pretty okay - but after the partitioning of Poland - a longtime French ally - relationships soured and they did a u-turn on their traditional alliance. After this came the Austro-French alliance - with Prussia turning to the Brits because of Silesia and the 7 years' war. Then the revolution came and everything changed, somewhat. After Napoleon Talleyrand was able to secure a French/British/Austrian alliance against Prusso/Russian aggression during the Saxon/Polish crisis, but Napoleon returned and the alliance fell through. After that it was a slow coming together of both British and French interests which had many bumps in the road but ultimately created a liberal entente.

Basically French allying policy was the dane as the US' is nowadays. A matter of geopolitics and usefulness.

France has been a cancer to literally every country in Europe, besides maybe Portugal or something

Actually we gave freedom and democracy to all of you

>occupy everything on the left bank of the Rhine
>turn the German states on the right side of the Rhine basically into vassals
>put some of your useless family members as kings in charge of said states
>do the same stuff to all european countries in your reach

WE WUZZ FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

kek at that pun

Fighting school girl kidnapping terrorist scum.

Scotland, Ireland, and the USA because of the rivalry with England. Poland and Belgium because of the rivalry with Germany. Ottomans because of the rivalries with Germany and Russia.

In short, France is a "top dog" nation, it's rivals are the other "top dogs" so it's choice of allies is fairly limited.

This.
Your allies are naturally going to be mid card at best if you yourself are top shelf against your main enemies who are top shelf.
In Europe usually when two of the great powers team up against the third, the latter has to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get henchmen as most minor nations will side with two great powers over one.
See Germany in WW1/2 with shit tier Austria and Fascist Italy as your battle buddy, France with Spain as its shit hombre, and Britain (though usually allying with one of the other great powers due to it's necessity to maintain the balance of power in Europe for its IR policy) allys with Japan during the end of its pax.

European international relations can be summed up as three major powers all not wanting the others to get too powerful so the weaker two team up against the stronger one till the powers have realigned before they themselves realign their alliances whilst lesser nations take sides more often than not with the winners.

Say what you will but France, Germany, and England and the best things to happen to Europe and when England leaves the EU it will hurt the little European countries the most as France and Germany will stomp all over them now that the Balance has been ruined.

because France is incompetent

the French in general are a weakness to any alliance

France WAS the poor choice in allies

>support anglo colonies
>don't expect them to be anglo

really in hindsight what did you expect

>the French in general are a weakness to any alliance

Especially when the alliance is against them

>Scotland useless
Scots were fucking great mercenaries

>Ireland useless
1798 was miscommunication on both sides

>Poland epitome of uselessness
Battle of Warsaw

>USA turned around and fucked france
We were paying money to the King of France and government of France. The King was killed and the government was remade.
Anybody who says we should've kept paying them approves of other Gib Medat tier behavior.

>belgium doesn't count
Why?

>ottoman empire were bad guys
What does with have to do with being a poor choice of ally?

French are the useless allies, really. Just look at how they betrayed Czechoslovakia in 1938.

>constitutions
>codes of laws
>more civil liberties
Pretty free to me

It's the opposite. France has nearly always had a good diplomatic hand except for the few times they couldn't because most everybody else was against them.

Alliance with Scotland kept a thorn on England's side for centuries and tremendously influenced the terms under which Great Britain would eventually unify.

In the Middle Ages it prevented both Papal and Emperor dominance over European affairs by being perfidious. It also capitalized on every opportunity to acquire clay and remove anglo from the continent through useful opportunistic alliances sometimes (Genoa, Castille, the Pope) and sheer brilliant diplomacy other times (the Burgundians). It totally worked 10/10.

In the XVI it managed to pull an alliance with the Ottomans, German Protestants and the Netherlands to resist Spanish dominance. It worked.

In the XVII it allied England to gangbang the Netherlands, and Sweden, Ottomans and Protestants to knock out the HRE and Spain. And it effectively did.

In the XVIII it allied Prussia first, then Austria and Russia later to keep things smooth in central Europe, and Spain to counter the English overseas. Sort of worked in the end (until the French revolution fucked absolutely everything up)

In the XIX France managed first to pull out of the absolute rogue-tier status after Napoleon to slowly become again the center of international diplomacy- until Napoleon III fucked everything up and Prussia/Germany rekt them. But then even so once again France recovered and it was French diplomacy what built the network leading up to the Entente and victory in WWII + revanche on Prussia/Germany.

In 1920-30s French position was much more sketchy. Ideally they would have tied the knot around Germany much better with a validated, effective network of alliances with Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania and understanding with the USSR. But by then France was a bit of a puppet with one hand tied in the back by the Eternal Anglo, who was the one making the calls.

it was usually an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of deal with France, especially in the case of Scotland for instance. They were opposed by almost everybody around them so they made allies with whoever they could.

The exceptions ofc were the War of Spanish Succesion and the Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars. It's hard when most everybody else is in a huge coalition against you.

Scotland was an important ally to France

>Anybody who says we should've kept paying them approves of other Gib Medat tier behavior.
According to your retarded logic, France had the right to stop paying its debts, because it was the king's fault, right?

this
as an anglo i finally understand why this board is so biased against anglos, this thread is just fucking dickwashing
>hurr it was because the french are retarded durr
ffs

>the epitome of uselessness, i mean it's the fucking poland lmao, the bullied kid of europe, partitioned so many times nobody's counting anymore

When will ameridumbs finally realize that history doesn't begin in 18th century?

Ignorance/10

France never allied with Ireland because Ireland never existed until 1920. If anything the 1798 thing (and other times) was about supporting rebellions/insurgent movements there.

France never allied Belgium either, unless supporting their independence in 1830 counts as 'allying'. It allied Poland just once or twice, depending on how you look at it. Prior to WWII and with the Duchy of Warsaw which was a French client state. Both of bitter memory for the Poles.

And all of these are rather insignificant alliances-events in the big picture.

>>Scotland
Proud tribal warriors
99% White
Helped us against the Anglos
Auld Alliance

>Ireland
Proud tribal warriors
Helped us against the Anglos
99% white

>USA
Wef freed them to buthurt the Anglos not because we were allies

>Poland
Proud Sarmatian freemen
Helped us against the Teutons
99% white

>belgium
French clay not an ally
Truely useless

>>ottoman empire
Proud scythian warriors
Helped us against the Teutons

>AMERINDIAN TRIBES
Proud tribal warriors
Helped us against the Anglos

Honouring the traditions of French Colonialism

the American natives were France's most effective allies. They're still destroying Anglo society now

I didn't say any of these were formal alliances, I was reply to OP. France WAS a "covert" ally of both Ireland and Belgium long before eithers independence, it's clear that you are the ignoramus here.

>USA
>Strike up an alliance during the Revolutionary war
>French never get off the boat to help
>America saves France the humiliation of being liberated by the English
>France turns around and tries to crash the US economy

Nobody wants to be Frances ally when they keep pulling this shit.

>ireland
>useless
Most of the time it as miscommunication and bad luck for both of us; also the fact nearly all rebellions were done by poor, impoverished, untrained irishmen

Ça

It's hard to be a "covert ally" of a country that doesn't even fucking exist.

Irish rebellions received- very limited -French support between 1688-1815. Nothing before (France was buddy with England), nothing after that (France had lost the game to England and wouldn't dare messing anymore).

"Belgium" was 80% of her history an enemy of France, 19% neutral and the other 1% an "ally" if by ally one means having a sort of anti-austrian revolution, wave the french tricolor and then be annexed by post-revolutionary France.

Your knowledge of history is zero.

>it's hard to be a covert ally of a country that doesn't exist

are you autistic? Assuming the obvious, which is that a 'covert alliance' is a pledge to support independence or a political movement that might gain power in return for a friendly power; what are the following?

>North Vietnam and China
>North Korea and China
>The US and the Mujahadeen

These are all alliances between groups, some of them state-to-(de facto) state, that are not publically announced. What

>decided to hit Submit before I was done calling you a fuckwit

I see you also neglected to mention the French Support of Charles Stuart during the Jacobite uprising and the fact that the entire reason B*lgium exists is because of French agitation amongst the Wallonian, French-speaking component of the Netherlands. There was a considerable movement to join their Catholic brothers in France before Belgium became a more popular alternative.

What about Sweden and Austria?

>North Korea and China
>North Vietnam and China

All sovereign states

>The US and the Mujahadeen

One a sovereign state, the other a militant faction

>Ireland

Neither a militant faction nor a sovereign state before 1920

You're stupid.

>Jacobite uprisings

When did those happens, you moron, before or after 1688?

>French 1830 intervention for Independence of Belgium.

And I already mention it as the only case of "alliance". And it ended the minute after Independence.

Good job, stupid.

youtu.be/ks4w4yPiq9U?t=2m35s

Considering that this is the Malian army, the guys fighting Boko Haram, it's more than logical to not trust their army and to just deploy your own there.

(Start at 2 minutes and 35 seconds to see Malian soldiers in action)

Serval-chan!

America made liberating France their #1 priority in WW2, over their own defense against the Japanese (which had directly attacked the US itself). Postwar it was America sending troops to Indochina (Vietnam) to support pro-European governments there. So your comment doesn't make a lot of sense.

>implying nations need to be states with clearly defined borders

Not your assertion desu, you stated that:

>it's hard to be a 'covert ally' of a country that doesn't even fucking exist

This is objectively untrue