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France at a Glance
Where did it all go wrong?
Your step-by-step guide to the history, heroes and legends of France, from 25,000 B.C. to 2000 A.D., that made the country what it is today.
28,000 B.C.
Cro-Magnon notation, possibly of phases of the moon, carved onto bone, discovered at Blanchard, France.
2500 - 50 B.C.
Celtic Bronze Age. France is populated by tribes of British, finger-sniffing Celts. Life is so miserable the only fun is invading the neighbours. In 390 B.C. one tribe under Brennus pops over the Alps and sacks Rome.
Brennus: The Sore Winner
“Quintus Sulpicius conferred with the Gallic chieftain Brennus and together they agreed upon the price, one thousand pounds' weight of gold - the price of a nation soon to rule the world. Insult was added to what was already sufficiently disgraceful, for the weights which the Gauls brought for weighing the metal were heavier than standard, and when the Roman commander objected, the insolent barbarian flung his sword into the scale, saying 'Vae victis' - 'Woe to the vanquished!”
52 B.C.
Lutetia is built, the future Paris.
58 - 51 B.C.
The Gallic Wars
With 43,000 men, Julius Caesar over-runs the place, conquering 800 towns, subduing 300 tribes and selling one million people into slavery. Finally, he defeats a union of Gauls, under Vercingetorix at Alesia. Gaul is absorbed into the Roman Empire.
Vercingetorix: The Main Feature
“Chieftain of the Arverni Gauls, led the great Gallic revolt against the Romans in 53-52 B.C. Breaking a previously given allegiance to Rome, he unified the tribes with a dramatic new strategy - systematic retreat from fortification to fortification after burning towns and crops before the Romans' advance. Caesar eventually caught up with him at Alesia. Vercingetorix surrendered and was imprisoned in Rome for five years, before being publicly displayed at Caesar's triumph in 46 B.C. As a show-stopping climax to the celebrations, Caesar had him strangled.”
400 A.D.
With the Roman Empire in decline, Gaul suffers raids from tribes over the Rhine. One set of tribes, the Franks, beats off competition from Vandals, Visigoths and Huns to claim the place. Merovingian King Clovis weans the inhabitants from worshipping rivers and sacred pigs to Christianity.
Clovis: Don't Cross Me
“The soldiers had borne away from a church, with all the other ornaments of the holy ministry, a vase of marvellous size and beauty… The king pointed to this vase, and said: 'I ask you, O most valiant warriors, not to refuse to me the vase in addition to my rightful part,' … One of the soldiers raised his battle-axe aloft and crushed the vase with it, crying, 'Thou shalt receive nothing of this unless a just lot give it to thee' … When a year had passed he ordered the whole army to come fully equipped to the Campus Martius… The king came to the breaker of the vase, and said to him, 'No one bears his arms so clumsily as thou,' and, seizing his axe, he cast it on the ground. And when the soldier had bent a little to pick it up the king raised his hands and crushed his head with his own axe. 'Thus,' he said, 'didst thou to the vase at Soissons'”
751
Martel's son, Pépin the Short, elected first Carolingian king. Pépin's son, Charlemagne, becomes king in 768 A.D. and, running against the entire grain of French history, successfully invades Germany.
Pépin II ("Pépin the Short"): Little Man, Big Tool - Frankish monarch, mayor (741-751) and king of the Franks (751-768).
“Perhaps surprisingly, Pépin the Short (Charlemagne's father) was a mighty warrior. Though only 3'6" tall, Pépin carried a two-handed sword which measured six feet in length”
800
France is raided by Vikings who burn Paris. Charles the Simple pays them off by giving them Normandy. Becoming Normans, they invade England, becoming English. The English reinvade France. Only when Richard I of England decides invading the Holy Land is more of a challenge than invading France does France's Philip II get his country back.
Charles the Simple: Pays off the Normans
“Rollo the Dane refused to kiss the foot of Charles when he received from him the duchy of Normandy. 'He who receives such a gift,' said the bishops to him, 'ought to kiss the foot of the king.' 'Never,' replied he, 'will I bend the knee to anyone, or kiss anybody's foot.' Nevertheless, impelled by the entreaties of the Franks, he ordered one of his warriors to perform the act in his stead. This man seized the foot of the king and lifted it to his lips, kissing it without bending and so causing the king to tumble over backwards. At that there was a loud burst of laughter and a great commotion in the crowd of onlookers”
1209
Pope Innocent III launches the Albigensian Crusade in southern France to destroy the heresy that the earth is just as bad as hell. 500,000 dead later, he wins without necessarily proving his point.
1305 - 1378
Avignon Papacy. French King Philippe IV accuses Pope Boniface VIII of sodomy and goes to war with the Church until he gets a Frenchman, Clement V, elected. The papacy is moved from Rome to Avignon, and the next six popes are all French.
1337 - 1443
Hundred Years' War
The English invade France, not having done it for a while. Humiliating French defeats follow at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415). France's bacon saved by the Lorraine teen proto-Goth Joan of Arc, who breaks the English siege of Orléans. The English leave, pausing only to burn Joan at the stake.
Joan of Arc: Mother of Anglophobia
“Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there.”
1572 - 1589
Wars of Religion between Protestant French (under Henry III) and Catholic French (under the Duc de Guise) triggered by the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Parisian Protestants. Both Henry and the Duc de Guise get each other assassinated. The warring factions unite around a compromise candidate, Henry IV. He is assassinated in 1603.
1617
Louis XIII crowned at the age of 17. He starts a fashion for wearing wigs by using one himself to conceal his baldness.
1624
Cardinal Richelieu becomes principal minister.
Cardinal Richelieu: Minister of Death
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
1642
Blaise Pascal invents the Pascaline - an automatic calculator.
1643 - 1715
Aged 4, Louis XIV becomes king with Cardinal Mazarin, his mother's boyfriend, as principal minister.
Louis XIV: The Sun King Unextinguished
“How many baths did France's King Louis XIV take? Three: the first when baptized, the second when a mistress insisted, and the third when a doctor lanced a sore on his bottom and ordered him to soak the wound in a tub of water. Louis XIV also suffered from phimosis - an abnormal growth of foreskin - which made erections painful. After refusing to have an operation on religious grounds, Louis eventually consented to surgery and his marriage was consummated (after seven years) on his 23rd birthday.”
1667 - 1714
Louis loses the War of Devolution (1667-1668) to the Spanish; the Dutch War (1672-1678) to the Spanish, the Austrians and the Dutch; the War of the Grand Alliance (1688-1697) to the Spanish, the Austrians, the Dutch, the English, the Portuguese, the Swedish and the German princes; and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) to the Austrians, etc. Overall, France loses most of its possessions in America, India, Italy and the Low Countries and is left bankrupt.
Louis XIV: Bigger than God?
“In August, 1704, news was brought to Louis XIV of the French army's brutal defeat by Marlborough's forces in the Battle of Blenheim. 'How could God do this to me,' he cried, 'after all that I have done for him!?'”
1682
Royal court moves to Versailles, which takes forty years and one billion livres to construct and costs 25% of France's annual income in upkeep.
1683
Louis demands that all women in France must give birth lying down on a table with "stirrups".
1685
Louis revokes the Edict of Nantes to please his pious mistress, Madame De Maintenon. 200,000 Huguenots leave the country.
1715
Louis XIV dies in bed of gangrene, fully dressed and in a three-foot long wig.
1762
Rousseau's Social Contract published.
1789
French Revolution, storming of La Bastille. 40,000 die in a wave of massacres to enforce "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" if necessary at the point of the guillotine.
Maximilien Robespierre: The Biter Bit
“Pity is treason”
1794
Robespierre overthrown and end of Reign of Terror.
1799 - 1815
The Revolution ends when Napoleon Bonaparte enters Paris and becomes First Consul. In 1804 he makes himself Emperor, creating a powerful central administration in France and extending his empire throughout Western Europe. Rebuffed in Russia, Napoleon is defeated at Leipzig in 1814.
The Worship of Napoleons
“So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable”
1815
Escaping from imprisonment on Elba, Napoleon re-enters Paris, the beginning of the "100 Days". Defeated at Waterloo, he is exiled to Santa Helena, an island off the coast of Africa.
Napoleon: Blind-sided
“The curious incident of the shooting party… Napoleon, who was a better hand with a field-gun than with a fowling-piece, accidentally shot Marshal Massena in the eye. With characteristic readiness, the emperor put the blame of the accident on Marshal Berthier, who, with characteristic readiness, accepted the blame, while Massena, who lost his eye, with characteristic tact accepted the transference of blame”
1852
Napoleon I's nephew crowned as Emperor Napoleon III.
1870
France declares war on Prussia to prevent the unification of Germany, and is crushed. The Prussians capture Paris and annex Alsace and Lorraine. Napoleon III abdicates and the Third Republic is inaugurated.
1889
Eiffel Tower built.
1914 - 1918
World War I
Massive casualties in trench wars in North-Eastern France (1,350,000 killed). With British and American assistance, France fends off the German invasion.
1939 - 1945
World War II
Germany occupies France. Vichy regime established. General de Gaulle, Under-Secretary of War, establishes government-in-exile in London
1944
Allied forces land at Normandy leading to liberation of France. de Gaulle sets up provisional government. Purge against former collaborators.
1946 - 1958
Fourth Republic - marked by economic reconstruction and potential civil war after France loses wars in both Indochina and Vietnam.
1958
de Gaulle returns to power and founds the Fifth Republic.
1968
May - Parisian student protests escalate into national strike.
1981
Socialist candidate François Mitterrand is elected president.
1995
Jacques Chirac elected president, ending fourteen years of socialist presidency.
1996
France attracts international condemnation by conducting a series of nuclear tests in the Pacific.
2002
January - Euro replaces Franc, first minted in 1360.
2002
May - Jacques Chirac re-elected president, trouncing National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round of voting. Le Pen's showing in the first round sends shockwaves across France and Europe and galvanises French voters into mass street demonstrations.
“Vote for the Crook not the Racist”
2005
January - France rejects the new European Constitution on the grounds that it will dilute France's dominance over the other twenty-four members of the European Union.
