Geoff Beale wrote:
wrote:



Dave wrote:
In all of history has France ever won a war by themselves?

In "all of history" would you, by any chance include the History
of the Holy Roman Empire, the Norman invasion of England, and the
Napoleonic Wars?


Hmmmmm. The guys who staged the successful invasion of England were
the descendents of Viking settlers who had earlier over-run the native
population of Normandy.

They adopted the local language and culture becoming, as was
typical of the Norse wherever they settled, more French than
the French themselves. My best guess would be that by the
time of the invasion of England, there had also been much
intermarriage between the Northmen and the Gauls, as well
as non-marital copropogation hence Guillaume le batard.

Perhaps the Normans benefitted from hybrid vigor...

So the French can't really claim the invasion
of England as theirs.

Care to rethink that? Becuase, if your point is valid
then the US can't really claim to have won WWII either as
the 'Americans' who won that war were almost exclusively
Europeans or descendants of Europeans who had earlier
overun the native population of North America WITHOUT
even adopting to any significant extent American languages
or cultures as had the Northmen in France.

Even more so for the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the
Mexican-American War, the Spanish American War, and WWI,
to name only the declared wars.


....and didn't some guy called Wellington put an end to Boney's wars
too.

Napoleon lost two major battles in his carreer. Waterloo
was one, the Battle of Nations the other. He also lost
major campaigns, in Egypt and in Russia despite not
losing any major battles in either. If you want to regard
the Napoleanic wars as a single war, he lost. If you regard
them as a series of wars, he won many, conquering Italy
and the Austrian-Hungarian empire twice, for two examples.

Of course as others have noted, Napoleon was not French
by birth. He never quite got the hang of speaking French
without an accent. But the Napoleanic Wars were French
Wars, notwithtanding the foreign origins of their Emperor.
The French won many of those, often against numerically
superior forces and after long marches.

--

FF