Which country is the most successful military power in European history? France. If you enter ‘French military victories’ on Google, a cheeky bit of software pops up with the message: ‘Did you mean French military defeats?’ This, plus the ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’ tag immortalised by The Simpsons, plays on the enduring reputation of the French army as cowardly losers. Mais,ce n’est pas vrai! France has the best military record in Europe. The French have fought more military campaigns than any other European nation and won twice as many battles as they have lost. According to historian Niall Ferguson, of the 125 major European wars fought since 1495, the French have participated in fifty – more than both Austria (forty-seven) and England (forty-three). And they’ve achieved an impressive batting average: out of 168 battles fought since 387 BC, they have won 109, lost forty-nine and drawn ten. The British tend to be rather selective about the battles they remember. Our triumphs at Waterloo and Trafalgar and in two World Wars easily make up for losing at Hastings. But the school curriculum never mentions the battle of Tours in 732, when Charles the Hammer, king of the Franks, defeated the Moors and saved the whole of Christendom from the grip of Islam. While every English schoolboy was once able to recite the roll-call of our glorious wins at Crécy (1346), Poiters (1356) and Agincourt (1415), no one’s ever heard of the French victories at Patay (1429) and (especially) at Castillon in 1453, where French cannons tore the English apart, winning the Hundred Years War and confirming France as the most powerful military nation in Europe. And what about Duke of Enghien thrashing the Spanish at Rocroi late on in the Thirty Years War in 1603, ending a century of Spanish dominance? Or the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781 in which General Comte de Rochambeau defeated the British and paved the way for American independence? Under Napoleon, France crushed the might of Austria and Russia simultaneously at Austerlitz in 1805, and, at Verdun in 1916, the French pushed the Germans back decisively in one of the bloodiest battles of all time. The British always prided themselves on superiority at sea, but this was only because they realised they could never win a land war on the Continent. The French army has, for most of history, been the largest, best equipped and most strategically innovative in Europe. At its best, led by Napoleon in 1812, it achieved a feat that even the Nazis couldn’t repeat: it entered Moscow. These remarkable achievements help explain another French military victory. Whether it is ranks (general, captain,corporal, lieutenant); equipment (lance, mine, bayonet,epaulette, trench); organisation (volunteer, regiment, soldier, barracks) or strategy (army, camouflage, combat, esprit de corps, reconnaissance), the language of warfare is written in one language: French. - THE SECOND BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE (Everything You Think You Know Is Still Wrong) by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 06:53:10 +0000
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