The French Military as Contrasted with
the English since 1500: Proud Traditions
or a Badge of Shame?
In the midst
of the ferocious Francophobia
surrounding the US-led invasion of Iraq
beginning in March of 2003, it has become fashionable in the United States to cast aspersions at France’s
supposed military pusillanimity at every opportunity. Semi-facetious articles such as “The Complete
French Military History” have sought to attribute to the French a record of
reliable military bungling and failure.
Are the French really such cheese-eating surrender monkeys, exemplars of
abject capitulation, when the historical record is examined in detail? Not at all.
In fact, if one scrutinizes the French military record in comparison
with France’s historic
archrival—England—their
military records aren’t too much apart from each other. To be sure, France
has had a rough stretch over the past two centuries, but in the long view
(since these two nations first jelled, essentially around the turn of the first
millennium A.D.), France
has had a reasonably decent military track record. A closer look reveals that the British as
well as the French have suffered a substantial number of particularly severe
defeats over the past 500 years, including a surprisingly large number in
colonial wars against indigenous forces.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the major military
defeats—including in colonial wars—suffered by the British and French over the
past 500 years. I’ve grouped the
military defeats as “First” through “Third” tier. A first-tier defeat is a categorical,
undeniable military defeat with little in the way of mitigation, and adverse
consequences for the British or French.
A second-tier defeat is a failure with damaging consequences in which Britain or France emerges significantly worse
off after the war but is, for example, saved by allies from total disaster or
is able to at least partially quell a nationalist rebellion. Note that second-tier defeats can be
significantly more devastating than first-tier ones: British military defeats and French military
defeats in the World Wars might be described as second-tier, since in spite of
repeated military failures, the intervention of the US and eventually Russia
(in WWII) helped them to gain a favorable place at the peace table among the
Allies. Nevertheless, the military calamities
suffered by both Britain and France in WWI and WWII were disastrous and
unsustainable in their cost in blood and treasure, and contributed
substantially to the chain of events that destroyed the British Empire and its
French counterpart. (This was especially
so for the British, since they had the option of essentially sitting out—or
participating in a more limited fashion—in WWI in particular.) A third-tier defeat represents a sort of
stalemate that is essentially unfavorable but not too damaging to Britain or
France, as was seen in the various Continent-wide wars fought among European
powers (with shifting alliances) often in the late 1600s and 1700s. These are the classic “gentleman’s wars” in
which kings, queens, and nobles, in addition to raising their own forces,
defrayed mercenary armies to wage battles to adjust the lines on the European
and colonial maps.
England/Britain/UK
First-Tier
British Defeats, 1500-present
-
In 1542-1546, England’s
King Henry VIII suffers defeat in a war against Scotland, costing the English
treasury heavily. (This was prior to the
unification of the English and Scottish crowns.)
-
In 1556-1563, both the English Queen Mary I and Queen
Elizabeth I suffer disastrous military defeats in attempts to capture and
reclaim the province of Calais from France. After French victory over an Elizabethan army
in Le Havre in 1563, the English are never again
able to control land in France,
which the English had claimed since the Hundred Years’ War.
-
Following the Spanish Armada conflict
in 1588, the English suffer a string of disastrous naval and land defeats
against Spain: An English Armada sent to
torch the Spanish Atlantic navy, seize the Spanish treasure fleet, and evict
Spain’s King Philip II from Portugal is defeated
with devastatingly heavy losses in 1589.
In 1595, Spanish naval commander Don Carlos de Amesquita lands on
English soil in the western part of the country and sets fire to Penzance and several other villages before escaping. Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake are
both killed in a fiasco of an English expedition against Spanish
America later that year. In
both 1591 and 1597, English expeditions against Spain
are defeated in the Azores. The net effect of these defeats is that Spain
maintains control of Atlantic oceangoing routes, trade, and its colonies in the
Americas—then under challenge—and only forfeits control of the seas to the
Dutch in the late 1600s, when Spain is bankrupted by inflation and heavy reliance
on the silver trade. The Elizabethan
English are therefore frustrated in their attempts to settle the Americas, and the English must await King James
I’s negotiation of the Treaty of London in 1604 to begin exploration again,
with the first permanent overseas English settlement at Jamestown in 1607.
-
The English under King Charles II are defeated by the
wily Dutch admiral Michiel
de Ruyter in the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665-7 and also the Third, from
1672-3, two naval conflicts which enabled the Netherlands
to retain effective control over Atlantic sea lanes and consolidate and expand
their colonies in the Americas
and East Asia.
-
The British (English and Scottish crowns had formally
united in 1701) under George III suffered a devastating defeat against colonial
rebels in their North American colonies, allied with the French, Dutch, and
Spanish, in the American Revolution from 1775-83. In addition to losing control over the 13
colonies in North America, the British also lose several island possessions in
the Caribbean, lose Florida to Spain, and see several favorable trade treaty
arrangements from 1763 (the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War, probably
Britain’s most important military victory of the past 500 years—see below)
reversed. Of lesser-known but perhaps
equal historical importance, a French Indian Ocean naval squadron led by
Captain Pierre Andre de Suffren de St. Tropez,
in alliance with Indian forces led by Hyder Ali and then Tippu Sultan, engages
in 5 pitched naval confrontations with squadrons led by British Admiral Edward
Hughes, getting the better of the clashes and thus re-establishing French
control in South India. This is of some
historical significance since South India (Pondicherry
in Tamil Nadu in particular) would become a French cultural and linguistic
outpost within the Indian nation, even after independence from France in the
1950s. Thus as far as India’s
association with European languages and cultures, the link to French on the
southern Indian mainland has helped to prevent India from becoming an Asian
Anglophone outpost.
-
French revolutionary army fighters defeat and expel a
combined invasion force of Russians, Prussians, British, Dutch, and others who
invaded in the 1790s to restore the French aristocracy.
-
In 1806-7, the British suffer two consecutive major
defeats in military expeditions to Argentina,
which permanently thwarts British attempts to colonize South
America. The Argentinian
forces are led by a Spanish general of French origin, Jacques de Liniers (Santiago
de Liniers).
-
1807 proves to be a bad year for the British military,
as the United Kingdom is
again defeated, this time by Mameluke (also Mamluk, Mameluk) forces led by
Muhammad Ali in Egypt,
and evicted from that strategic territory.
Note that these defeats, however, occur in the context of the broader
British victories over Napoleon, which rank as perhaps the British military’s
most significant successes outside of the Seven Years’ War/French and Indian
War 1754-1763, which establishes British colonial supremacy in North American
and India. It was also during this
period that the British essentially took control of India
and defeated their indigenous opponents, while also subduing the peripheral
kingdoms of Nepal and Sikkim. Thus two Hanoverian kings—George II (French
and Indian War) and George III—rule Britain during what is effectively
the country’s military apex.
-
The Victorians suffer perhaps the most disastrous
British defeat of the 19th century when a UK-led army of 17,000 is
almost utterly wiped out in the First
Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-1842, by Russian-supplied and trained, mostly
Ghazali and Pashtun Afghan fighters.
British ambitions for control in Central Asia collapse almost totally
after this defeat, and the region falls within Russia’s sphere of control, with
the badlands remaining essentially independent of colonial rule. An unmitigated military fiasco which is, in
fact, the worst defeat ever suffered by a colonial power against an indigenous
army. It not only provided an edge to Russia in the Great Game for control of the old
Silk Road routes; it effectively locked the Brits out of a resource-rich region
which they had coveted since the establishment of the East India Company in South Asia. The
First Anglo-Afghan War was also almost contemporaneous with the First Opium War
against China, and British
defeat in Central Asia forestalls any British attempts to push their advantage
further against the tottering Manchu Dynasty in the western frontier; Britain soon
focuses its attention elsewhere. The myth
of British military invincibility during Queen Victoria’s reign is permanently shattered.
-
First Boer War, 1880-81. Another decisive British defeat during the
Victorian period, at the hands of the tenacious Boer farmer-warriors in South Africa; the Transvaal
gains independence. Although the British
eventually subdue the Boers in the Second War (concluding in 1902), the Boer
victory in the First War, combined with heavy British losses in the Second,
enable the Boers to win self-rule and relative autonomy within South Africa.
-
British expulsion from Palestine and Israel,
1948, following guerrilla attacks by Stern Gang and Irgun Zvai Leumi fighters. Of all the sites of British decolonization, Palestine is their most painful outside of Aden, with the brutal yet
effective tactics of the Stern Gang hitting both the British troops and civil
administration extremely hard. The Irgun
and Stern Gang are especially successful at targeting and killing or wounding
the British officers garrisoned in Palestine;
indeed, the percentage of senior British officers killed or wounded in Palestine, as a
percentage of their total casualties, is the highest of any British war in the
past 300 years.
-
British defeat and expulsion from Egypt and the
Suez region, 1956, following resistance by Nasser’s forces and economic
pressure by the US and USSR.
-
British defeat and expulsion from southern Arabia (Yemen) during the Aden Emergency in
the 1960s. British permanently expelled
as colonial rulers in the Middle East.
Note that these post-WWII defeats are in no way an
indictment of the performance of the British officers and foot soldiers in the
field. In fact, of all the colonial
forces in the aftermath of World War II, the British probably acquitted
themselves with more professionalism and consistent valor than any other. However, the British were so badly damaged
both militarily and economically from the World Wars—and the balance of power
had shifted so much to the US
and USSR
by then—that the British were unable to overcome their adversaries.
Second-Tier British Defeats,
1500-present
-
1594-1603:
Multiple defeats of Elizabethan English forces against Irish soldiers in
Nine Years’ War led by Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell, including at the Battle of the Yellow Ford
(1598), worst defeat suffered by English on Irish soil. Although O’Neill defeated at Kinsale (1601)
he continues guerrilla warfare until making peace with King James I in
1603. When he flees Ireland for
France in 1607, “The Flight of the Earls,” the English are able to assume
direct control. However, Irish
resistance in the Nine Years’ War devastates Ireland and creates a permanently
restive Gaelic population that inhibits English Protestant settlement and
proves a long-term thorn in the English side.
-
1878-1880:
Second Anglo-Afghan War. British
make some advances and are able to obtain relatively favorable terms at Treaty
of Gandamak in 1879, which helps to set Afghan boundaries and gives Britain some control over Afghan foreign
affairs, against Russia. However Afghan resistance again proves fierce
and continues after the Treaty; British defeat at Battle of Maiwand again
causes deep humiliation for proud Victorians.
British overwhelmed both by Afghan flank attacks and artillery volleys,
supplied by Russian allies to Afghan proxies.
Treaty rejectionists persist in fight against British, who withdraw in
1880 again with no territorial gains in Afghanistan.
-
“Mad Mullah” wars, Somaliland,
1901-1921. British repeatedly defeated
by Somali warlord, Muhammad Abdille Hasan.
RAF bombings force Hasan to flee into Ethiopia
by 1921, but Somalia
remains unruly, divided, weak British administration.
-
World War I:
1914-1918. A special case. The British generally look upon WWI as the
most disastrous episode in their military history. Even though American participation in 1917
eventually helps to shift the war in favor of the Allies, British losses in the
war are so severe and disastrous that the British permanently see their hold on
their colonies weakened, and suddenly become the world’s worst debtor when they
had been the biggest creditor. British
defeats at the Somme, Passchendaele, Loos, Kut, and Galllipoli—along with the
Zeppelin bombings of Britain—induce
shock throughout the country and lead to the deaths of nearly 1,000,000
British, with more than twice that number wounded, often grievously. Entire classes at Oxbridge, various British
towns and cities almost wiped out. WWI
is particularly bitter for British since they had the option of sitting out the
war, or participating in a more limited naval/colonial context (German war
plans in Europe explicitly sought not to
engage the British). Thus as a
peripheral participant, Britain
lost heavily. A classic example of why,
in analyzing the outcomes of military conflicts, the most valuable assessment
is measuring a country’s relative political/economic status after as opposed to
before. Thus Britain
and especially France
suffered a major defeat, as WWI was essentially the catalyst that led to the
ruin (premature in the eyes of many historians, in contrast to other empires)
of both the British and French imperial domains.
-
Irish rebellion, 1916-1921. Military and political; British withdraw and
grant Home Rule, though northern
Ireland remains British territory (cause for
terrorism in 1930s and later in century).
-
1919: Third
Anglo-Afghan War. British had again
begun to encroach in Afghanistan
during WWI during period of apprehension about access to trade routes and
material goods in South Asia. Amanullah in Afghanistan
resented British interference in Afghan foreign affairs and declared
independence, assaulting British positions in India. British alliance with Pashtuns checks
Amanullah’s advance but Amanullah is still able to press his offensive. Bloodied from WWI and suffering twice as many
losses as the Afghans, the British assent to negotiations with Amanullah and
withdraw completely from Afghan foreign affairs, retreat from Afghan border
after 1921. Afghanistan,
along with Argentina and Egypt, remains Britain’s most glaring colonial
failure.
-
1920s: British
promise independence to Arabs under Ottoman Turkish rule (Lawrence of Arabia)
but renege after WWI and try to establish direct control over Mesopotamia (Iraq,
constituted by Sir Percy Cox). Iraqis,
furious, rebel—Shiite and Kurdish insurgencies cause thousands of British casualties,
and despite RAF terror bombing of Iraqi villages the Kurds, in particular,
cannot be subdued, and the British withdraw without being able to impose direct
rule. King Feisal, a Sunni Arab
Hashemite, effectively gains control and is acceptable enough to the British
that they do not attempt to directly retake Baghdad.
There is a British occupation during WWII that is resisted by the local
population and which again leads to a quick withdrawal. Even British indirect rule over Baghdad is removed when
the monarchy is overthrown in a bloody coup in 1958. British Iraq resembles Vietnam for the USA or
France for Algeria—a combination of political blunders, broken promises,
reprehensible atrocities (the terror bombing campaigns that have sullied the
names of Arthur “Bomber” Harris as well as Winston Churchill, who was colonial
administrator in Iraq), and military defeat that have permanently besmirched
the reputation of the nation.
-
WWII: See WWI
above. Although US/Russian intervention
eventually helps to bail out the Allies, British devastation in WWII is
horrific, destroys British colonial power.
Unlike the First World War, the British probably do not have an option
to sit this one out; although such a claim has been advanced by some (and
Hitler may indeed have had no plans to invade Britain, until Britain’s entry
into the war in 1939), Hitler’s invasion of the Continent poses a threat akin
to Napoleon’s in the early 1800s, with even greater brutality in the
cities. This time, however, the British
suffer the horrific effects of the Blitz which devastate towns, countryside,
and industry in London, Coventry, and other cities. Although immediate Nazi amphibious attack is
staved off with Battle of Britain, Luftwaffe aerial bombing continues
relentlessly and only subsides when Hitler focuses attention on main target of Soviet Union.
Aerial bombings flare again later, along with ship battery attacks on
British cities and V-2/V-1 terror rockets which devastate much of London. Combined with tremendous destruction of
British shipping by U-boats and Nazi battleships and cruisers, Britain is
devastated to degree not seen since Norman Conquest. In Pacific, British suffer unmitigated
disaster when Japanese defeat British air, sea, and land forces and conquer Singapore in 1942, subsequently expelling
British from Malaya and Burma. Singapore declared by Churchill as
“worst British military disaster.” Singapore akin to Fall of France, devastates
British Empire in Pacific and Indian
Oceans. Physical devastation in Britain (postwar gas lines, homes in rubble,
food rations) and bankruptcy—combined with harsh American terms for
Lend-Lease—deprive Britain
as well as France
of means to retain overseas holdings.
Though Britain does
make some attempts to maintain control of overseas colonies, they are feeble
and frequently defeated (Palestine, Egypt, Aden). As with WWI, analysis of before-and-after
economic/political status show that Britain—and
Europe in general—severely damaged and ruined
by the war.
Third-Tier British Defeats/Stalemates,
1500-present
-
War of the Grand Alliance/War of the League of Augsburg: 1688-97.
A fairly complex and confusing affair.
Louis XIV of France
wished to expand power at expense of Dutch and Holy Roman Empire; English and
Dutch crowns then aligned (William of Orange, in Netherlands,
was King William III of England
as well). Early French naval victories
later reversed by English; French victories on land against English, Dutch,
Holy Roman Imperial armies. War
eventually stalemated; English Continental ambitions against Louis XIV
frustrated as he expands kingdom at the expense of English and their allies,
but Louis continues series of very costly wars for French Empire.
-
War of the Austrian Succession: Yet another immensely confusing affair,
1740-48, waged in part as a result of Louis XIV’s prior Continental and
colonial ambitions which were then furthered by his successor, Louis XV. King Louis allied with Frederick the Great of
Prussia (whom the French would oppose in the Seven Years’ War), Bavaria, Spain,
Saxony, and Savoy in Italy, and they were together opposed by an
alliance of Austria, Britain, and Hanover,
with Savoy
eventually defecting. Basically one long
drawn-out stalemate with Louis making some nominal gains (Frederick
in Prussia probably emerging
as the biggest winner), and Maria Theresa in Austria
securing her leadership of Austria
and showing that the Hapsburg domains could be defended.
-
War of 1812 (American War), 1812-1815: US declared war
on Britain in the wake of forcible British impressments of American sailors for
service in British fleet, British trade blockades, claims of British assistance
of native Americans. Though often
portrayed as a US victory in
American textbooks, it was more of a stalemate between the British and
Americans; the British were clearly predominant on land, while the US held the edge at sea, in the freshwater
battles in the Great Lakes. US succeeded in razing York
(Toronto), capital of British North America in
present-day Canada, while
British managed to burn down much of Washington,
D.C. (the last time the US was
successfully invaded, before September 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda). However American victory at Lake
Erie and Plattsburg led to respect and acceptable terms with
Treaty of Ghent. Battle
of New Orleans
(Andrew Jackson vs. Edward Pakenham of the British) was humiliating British
defeat; occurred after treaty but perhaps ensured no reneging on terms.
Note that the British also suffered defeats in Indonesia and Vietnam in the immediate aftermath
of WWII. I’ve hesitated to include these
here because in both of these cases, the British were acting in more of a
supportive role for their colonial peers (the Dutch in Indonesia, the French in
Vietnam), and thus the failure in each case was more of a long-term Dutch and
French debacle, respectively; yet the British objectives were not fulfilled, in
any case. How about the rap sheet for France?
France
First-Tier
French Defeats, 1500-present
-
Italian Wars, much of the early 1500s: These had started in the late 1400s, with the
French pitted basically against the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire’s German and
Italian forces (often mercenaries), Papal armies, and Hapsburg Spaniards by the
1500s. While there were some French
successes, these wars generally constituted a series of humiliating disasters
for the French. The Battle of Pavia in
1525 was a major French debacle and, followed by French failure in Naples, led to the unfavorable Treaty of Cambrai in 1529,
which compelled the French to cede gains in Italy. Two more wars, in 1542-44 and 1556-7, again
led to French defeat. Spain would be Europe’s
dominant power as a result, until the French decisively defeated the Spanish in
several battles (including the Battle of Rocroi, 1643) during the Thirty Years’
War.
-
Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War in North America, 1754-1763): Probably France’s worst and most
consequential military defeat in the past 500 years. The French were allied with Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Russia
against Prussia and Great Britain. Note that it was in this war that George
Washington, of the British colonial forces, first distinguished himself; along
with Edward Braddock, he had led an assault on Fort
Duquesne (modern Pennsylvania) and had suffered a French
ambush which he only narrowly survived.
The British won a series of naval victories that broke the French
maritime forces in both the Caribbean and India,
and Robert Clive began the British Empire in India in 1757. Eventually the French were decisively
defeated by the British and the American colonists in the Battle of Quebec on
the Plains of Abraham of 1759, while on the Continent Frederick the Great of
Prussia overcame valiant efforts by French forces to block Frederick’s always clever offensives. It was this war that gave much of North
America to the British, and also compelled the French to forsake their colonies
in the Caribbean and India
(many of which they would regain after participation in the American
Revolutionary War). As the British
seized Florida from Spain,
the French were compelled to cede Louisiana,
west of the Mississippi River, to Spain as compensation. (The French later regained Louisiana in 1803
but immediately sold it to the USA.) An
unmitigated disaster for the French, and it was from this point that the British Empire (as we generally recognize it) began; the
vast domains of the Victorian period were largely acquired by the Hanoverians
in the previous century. Notice,
however, that outside of the Italian Wars, this was perhaps the only “first-tier
French defeat” in a 250-year span; indeed, France had a superior military
record to England/Britain up to the mid-1700s, when French military power began
to wane until briefly revived during the Napoleonic period.
-
1802: Napoleon’s
forces suffer humiliating defeat at the hands of freed black slaves in Haiti, led by
Toussaint L’Ouverture. Defeat here helps
to encourage Napoleon to relinquish the Louisiana
Territory in a fire sale to the USA, an act of
momentous historical significance.
-
Napoleonic Wars, 1803-1815. Napoleon conquered much of Continental Europe
with his brilliant generals and remarkable personal leadership on the
battlefield, only to cough it all up upon his disastrous invasion of Russia in
1812, for which Alexander I had deftly prepared (with the help of the Russian
winter). After this fiasco, Napoleon
suffered a further defeat at the hands of British and Prussian forces at Leipzig (Battle of
Nations) in 1813. After escape from
Elba, Napoleon was again defeated at Waterloo,
modern Belgium, by Wellington and von Blücher in 1815, and confined to St.
Helena in the South Atlantic. Napoleon overplayed his hand by inviting the
fierce resistance of the Prussians and Russians. Britain,
as in many cases before, was protected by the English Channel; Napoleon’s
appetite was focused on the Continent, and he had little interest in mounting a
naval expedition specifically targeted against Britain. This was perhaps in error, since it gave Wellington a free hand to
help lead Spanish guerrillas in the Peninsular Campaign. Also, Horatio, Lord Nelson caused continual
misery for Napoleon at sea. Napoleon had
stalemated Britain but he
blundered into Russia, and
Czar Alexander I’s cleverness helped give the Prussian army the necessary
breathing space to smash Napoleon on the Continent until Waterloo.
Napoleon also sold the Louisiana Territory to the USA in 1803 for money,
an act now seen by most historians to be a foolish and short-sighted blunder on
his part that effectively foreclosed French colonial ambitions in much of North
America (though the French did retain Quebec and some lands in eastern
Canada). A very important historical
figure whose actions revolutionized the legal and political systems of Europe
and the Americas, brought about many liberal reforms, encouraged science (if
indirectly), increased French cultural and linguistic prestige, and—perhaps
most inadvertently—encouraged the nationalist movements that would lead to
German and Italian unification. Yet
Napoleon ultimately led his country into a humiliating defeat, and he cost France its most valuable North American
territory with the sale of Louisiana. Interestingly, as noted above, the British
had their own share of defeats in the Napoleonic Wars—though not against the
French. The British were vanquished by
the Argentinians and Egyptians in 1806-7, who managed to repel or throw off all
their colonial masters.
-
Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71: Absolute humiliation for the French at the
hands of Otto von Bismarck of Prussia,
who had proven himself virtually invincible and invariably crafty in his
military and diplomatic strategies.
-
Dienbienphu, Vietnam, 1954:
Next to British defeat in the Anglo-Afghan War in 1842, and Italian
defeat at the Battle of Adowa in Ethiopia, 1896, this was the worst
debacle suffered by a western colonial power against indigenous forces.
-
Suez,
1956—see above. The French joined the
British in the bungled invasion of Egypt in 1956, and suffered similar
damaging consequences.
-
Algeria,
1960s: Little introduction needed. The French had failed to appreciate the
nationalist sentiments of the Berber and Arab Algerians, and wound up mired in
an expensive, humiliating campaign against Algerian guerrillas that brought
about international opprobrium.
Second-Tier
French Defeats, 1500-Present
-
Dutch War 1672-78.
(Third Anglo-Dutch War, see above, occurred within this context—England was allied with France against the Netherlands.) French expansion into the Spanish Netherlands
(basically parts of present-day northern France
and Belgium)
had earlier been checked, in the War of Devolution (see below), by a Protestant
Dutch-Spanish-English alliance despite French successes. Louis XIV in France
swore to overrun and destroy the Dutch
Republic, and while he achieved some
successes against the Dutch, he was thwarted in his land invasion of the Low Countries when the Dutch flooded the dikes and
blocked the advance of the French army.
The Dutch also repeatedly defeated the French (often allied with English
ships) in a series of naval engagements, and even took some French colonies in
the West Indies. While the French did acquire the
Franche-Comté region on the Continent, I’ve labeled this a second-tier (rather
than third-tier) French defeat since Louis effectively failed in his ambitions
to crush the Dutch republic and seize its overseas possessions. However, he did succeed in effectively
bankrupting the Netherlands.
-
War of the Spanish Succession, 1701-1714. Technically a British defeat since France
essentially saw its candidate take control of the Spanish throne. More of a stalemate that, in real terms, led
to British gains overall, with remarkable British and allied victories against
the French (e.g. Blenheim, 1704, with John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough,
triumphing in splendid fashion over French forces) and more financial woes for
French than British. Also, this war led
to the displacement of French Acadians (present-day Nova
Scotia) to Louisiana—ancestors
of the Cajuns. Another of several
examples of Louis XIV’s military profligacy in France,
though his impact is high and he inspires awe throughout much of Europe after this war.
This is ironically the period of greatest French cultural and linguistic
influx into other nations and languages of Europe,
yet I’ve included this as a second-tier French defeat (and British victory)
since the British, overall, emerged the better of the two combatants.
-
WWI and WWII—see above, for the British section. France was on the side of the Allies in these
two wars, yet French losses in WWI were so severe—and the humiliation of the
Fall of France in 1940 so great—that the country was unable to overcome the
setbacks, and lost its overseas empire after WWII, alongside the British, who
also endured the loss of their overseas colonies. Unlike the British, the French really had no
choice but to fight in both wars, targeted as they were by Germany; in any case, they emerged
much worse off after the World Wars than before them.
Third-Tier French Defeats/Stalemates,
1500-Present
Essentially the War of the League of Augsburg and the War of
the Austrian Succession, as discussed above.
These did yield French gains under Louis XIV, but were costly and
inflamed the rest of Europe enough to unify
against further French encroachment.
Rather wasteful to French ambitions overall.
Summary and Conclusion
Many readers may compare the
relative size of the British and French empires in the 1800s and assume that
British military superiority was responsible for the disparity in geographical
breadth and population of the two imperial realms. While the British undoubtedly controlled more
of the world in the year 1850 (if indirectly, with the help of local proxies)
than their French counterparts, the French imperial domains taken together were
not too much smaller than the British, and also boasted a truly global
sweep. Moreover, there were many factors
responsible for Britain’s
relatively greater imperial reach, most of which were not related to military
performance. To the extent that the
British Empire of the 1800s was larger than that of the French, this did in
part ensue from British victory in the Seven Years’ War in 1763, but was more
attributable to French failure to adequately colonize and financially support
their North American colonies, and to Napoleon’s sale of the vast Louisiana
Territory to the USA in 1803. (Almost
90% of the territory of the USA, remember, was never within the British Empire;
the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War gave the US territories at the
expense of France and Mexico, after we had already become independent from
Britain.) The British settled their
colonies more heavily than the French, often with religious dissenters and even
debtors, as Americans are well aware from their own history texts. Furthermore, they were better able to
colonize and extend trade networks in distant lands due to their status as an
island nation, which freed them from the threat of Continental land
invasion—something the French did not have.
In the final analysis, then, the
stereotypes of French military fecklessness (at least in comparison to Britain, France’s historical archrival)
simply do not hold water. The French
have indeed hit a rough patch over the last century in particular, yet they can
also boast remarkable instances of fighting prowess, such as their tenacious
stands in WWI and the naval battles of the American Revolutionary War, and
rousing victories, such as their defeat of a multiple combined invasion force
in the 1790s. The British, meanwhile,
had their own series of severe first-tier defeats in the same period, to a
similar extent as those endured by the French—this in spite of Britain’s geographical protection by the English
Channel, which France
does not enjoy. A closer look suggests
one underappreciated reason for this:
The British suffered an enormous number of defeats in their colonial
campaigns, something that the French did not face until Dienbienphu in
1954. This is in part because the
British Empire was larger than the French and the British simply made more
attempts to extend their domains, some of which were inevitably unsuccessful;
yet the sheer number of British defeats at the hands of colonial adversaries
puts the lie to the assumption that British colonial armies (and Western
imperial forces in general) were inevitably superior to native resistance
forces.
Although they were generally
successful in the Indian Subcontinent, the British were vexed in many other
places. From the 1800s onward, the
British were defeated by the Argentinians (twice), the Egyptians (twice), the
Afghans (three times, including the catastrophic defeat of 1842), the Boers,
the Iraqis and the Irish (both in the 1920s), the Israelis, and Yemeni Arab
insurgents (in the 1960s). In addition
to defeats against European opponents with modernized armies, therefore, the
British had a notorious level of difficulty against indigenous fighters in
their colonies or would-be colonies. To
be fair, they often faced surprisingly tough enemies, and against the Afghans and
Yemenis in particular, the French would have likely suffered severe humiliation
of their own. Yet the take-home message
here is the extent to which the British suffered aggravating defeats in the
colonies, which the French (because of the 20th century) are
infamous for.
In conclusion, then, there is no
evidence that the French are uniquely pusillanimous or feeble in their military
tradition, since a side-by-side comparison with the British—the most common
adversaries of the French—reveals a similar record of defeats for them. Both countries had consequential victories
and both suffered humiliating defeats over the past 500 years, with the British
in particular enduring notorious disasters in their colonies. The Francophobic obsession in the USA, which
baits the French and taunts them for cowardice and military fecklessness, has
no basis in the historical record.
n
Wes Ulm
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