France is a country of warriors. With the notable exception of World War II, you will not find a more deadly nation of men. This is a country that did THIS:
France is a country of warriors. With the notable exception of World War II, you will not find a more deadly nation of men. This is a country that did THIS:
It’s hard to for people to put themselves in the position of the French going into WW2. They got CLOBBERED in WW1 and were still trying to recover from that. They were simply exhausted going into WW2...it was not a great situation for them to be in.
Yeah, and how long did that last? :’) Nappy was actually a much better civil leader than he was a military one, if one goes by the results. His victories were early and kicked the British behinds until after he led 500,000 or so to the slaughter in that brutal Russian winter. What a jackass, eh? He loved the trappings of ancient glory, but apparently didn’t learn from the experience of the Persians, described in Herodotus, when they tried cornering the Scythians in what would eventually be the Russian empire.
The French monarchy was *the* power on the European continent for centuries. The Spanish had their huge empire, and during their union with the Hapsburgs the Spanish monarch controlled more of the world’s surface than anyone who has ever lived.
And yet, the Spanish never took on the French or at least not for long, or effectively.
Ivan the Terrible built his military machine by sending people to study French methods.
And much more recently, it was the French who figured out what needed to be done and how men needed to be trained in order to beat the Germans in WWone, but lacked the manpower to do it — so they were the key to the US’ Expeditionary Force’s record-time recruiting and deployment, and made a definite though under-credited contribution to the ultimate victory.