Bataille de Gravelotte
16 août 1870
Jules Descartes Ferat
Musée Carnavalet, Paris
Wars: From Prehistory to the 20th Century
Over the centuries and with their swords, they created France ...
France
The dynasty of the Franks, founded by Clovis in 458, lasted for several centuries. Initially a barbaric power, this dynasty gradually embraced Christianity with time.
In the V century, the Franks fought and conquered the Visigoths, the Burgondes and the Ostrogoths, and expanded their empire.
In the VIII century, the Merovingian dynasty was defeated by the Carolingians. Charles Martel, in 732, put an end to the incursions of Muslim warriors from Spain .
In 800, Charlemagne was crowned emperor by the pope, but France only became known as Francia Occidentalis in 843, when the empire was divided in accordance with the Verdun Treaty.
In the X century, France experienced other disorders following the invasions by the Hungarians, the Saracens and the Normans. To make peace with the Norman invaders, the ‘’easy-going’’ Charles III decided to cede Normandy , in the form of a principality, to their leader, Rollon.
From the XI to the XIII century, William, Duke of Normandy, conquered England , and later on, France , under the reign of the Capets, emerged victorious in the Bouvines Battle of 1214 and became the most powerful monarchy in Europe . Her prestige grew even further with the Saint-Louis crusades.
In the XIV century, the Hundred-year War, which broke out between England and France , inflicted severe damages on France , which suffered several military defeats at Crécy, Poitiers , and Agincourt .
In the XV century, thanks to Joan of Arc, Charles VII reconquered and expanded his kingdom.
The XVI century was initially marked by wars against Italy , characterized by the 1515 Marignan victory, followed by the 1525 Pavia debacle, and then religious wars and massacres of Protestants.
In the XVII century, France fought the Thirty-year War, at the end of which defeated Spain ceded to her Artois , Roussillon , and then Franche-Comté. Later on, the Fronde revolt started.
Louis XIV decided to carry out annexations which resulted in conflicts with several European countries.
During the XVIII century, precisely in 1756, the Seven-year War against England began. France lost Canada , Louisiana and India , but nonetheless got Lorraine and Corsica .
The last decade of the century witnessed the French Revolution. In 1792, a coalition of foreign troops invaded France but was defeated at Valmy and Jemmapes. In 1793, an uprising broke out in the Vendée against the Convention and was mercilessly suppressed causing 100,000 victims. In 1794, the French defeated the Austrians at Fleurus.
In Egypt , in 1798, a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte scored a victory over the Pyramids.
The XVIII century dawned with the advent of Emperor Napoleon I in 1804. Under his reign, France lived the most spectacular saga of her military history, with a multitude of battles and glories, several victories, such as those of Austerlitz , Iéna, Friedland, Wagram , to name just a few. Napoleon, the “Petit Caporal” (Little Caporal), equally suffered a few defeats, notably that of Waterloo , which, in 1815, finally brought his reign to an end.
From 1830 to 1847, King Louis-Philippe conquered Algeria .
In 1854, Emperor Napoleon III joined the Crimean War which lasted for two years and, in 1859, he ventured in the Italian War. In 1862, he undertook the Mexican Expedition, which turned out to be a fiasco in 1867. In 1870, the emperor declared war against Prussia , which ended with the defeat of Sedan and the loss of Alsace as well as part of Lorraine .
During the last years of the XIX century, the 3rd Republic, which came after the reign of Napoleon III, embarked on a policy of colonial conquests in Sub-Saharan and North Africa as well as in Indochina and Madagascar .
The contemporary period
The beginning of the XX century witnessed in 1904 the birth of the French-British entente cordiale, which grew stronger by the year, while across the Rhine a strong Pan-German spirit gradually developed and augured the advent of the First World War, which broke out ten years later.