"Dave" wrote in message
news:UrPDe.170606$_o.155947@attbi_s71...
In all of history has France ever won a war by themselves?
Yes, a boat load, and we have lost a load too...
- gauls lots to the romans
- capetians got the romans out
- lots of wars that ended up with carolus magnus (800ish) got the french
county (which was rather small at the beginning) to expand from spain to
germany/austria
- split of the kingdom as his Hairs were each given 1/3 of the country, some
more wars some lost, some won that got the coutnry to fluctuate for a couple
100 years..
- Guillaume le conquerant (william the conqueror) won england
- england turns against france, lots of more wars and political games that
got the country boundaries fluctuating a whole lot again...
- end of dark ages
- france boundaries are pretty much what they are now...
- start of expantion of the country through overseas conquests, africa,
canada, US, far east, helped the US to get the brits out...
- most of the overseas territories are lost overtime, from american
possessions (lots to wars and treaties, such as selling of lousiana),
popular uprising (africa, far east)
- while we are in the far east, we got our arse kiked in Vietnam (Dien Bien
Pou) and left, the US said: We are the best and will take care of the punny
little thing... France told them don't! US said: We will show you... we know
the rest....
- napoleon did lots of damages in europe expanding france tremendously, but
at the end, it went back to where it was...
- 1878 do not remember if it was our last king or napoleon 3, but lost a
little bit of the territory on the east, got it back after WW1...
france had lots of victories and lots of defeats too, but at the end, france
is still one of the most influent country in the world, it's territoray is
definitly larger than the small land of the original king (huges capet)
kingdom, so some things must not have been that bad...
Cyrille
wrote in message
oups.com...
After all this circuitous "logic"- which can set one spinning, back to
the apparent initial assumption- that France can be dissed because it
wouldn't tag along with W's let's-have-a-war party. "Freedom fries"
and all that.
Maybe they take a longer historic view of the downside of war? Like
what happened at Verdun? And elsewhere. Maybe they, like the Pope,
saw the folly of what W was selling. Maybe they like to think for
themselves.
Nobody can claim perfection. Those we dissed in the pre-war period,
like Hans Blix, it turns out were seeing and telling the truth about
Saddam's weapons. Sure gives them a leg up on our beloved leaders.
J
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