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What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 1.Â
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 30th October 2009
We have pondered on the British, but what about the French.Agincourt? Moscow or Waterloo perhaps, Sedan, or their surrender in 1940. Or maybe Dien Bien Phu.
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Message 2
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 30th October 2009
Oops, sorry for the spelling mistake in the title. Wecould do with editing on these pages for things like that.
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Message 3
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Friday, 30th October 2009
I'd have to go with 1940.
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Message 4
Posted by Thomas_B (U1667093) on Friday, 30th October 2009
According to the feelings of the French itselves, it was Sedan, because the defeat took place in their own country. This could be said as well for 1940, but the difference is, that the French hasn´t been that willing to fight the Germans (which has caused many complaintes by historians).
From my point of view, it was more 1940 because on that defeat followed four years of occupation.Link to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 5
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Friday, 30th October 2009
Moscow or Waterloo perhaps For the Russian campaign of 1812, I would definitely nominate Maloyaroslavetz. Having been repulsed there, the demoralized Grand Armee was forced to retreat along the devastated Old Smolensk road, which spelled out its inevitable demise. By comparison, the battle was a far cry from that at Borodino in terms of intensity and casualties, and the decision not to persist to break through really meant strategic surrender.
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Message 6
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 30th October 2009
Strange how both sides claimed victory at Borodino, while thev French did take (An empty) Moscow.
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Message 7
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Friday, 30th October 2009
Hi Thomas,
The French seem to have suffered many defeats in their history, this once proud nation.
I guess you need to experience some defeats to keep your feet on the ground. Else a nation can become too cocksure of itself.
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Message 8
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Friday, 30th October 2009
Strange how both sides claimed victory at Borodino Technically, the French carried the day by pushing the Russians from their fortified positions. However, Napoleon failed to eliminate inferior in numbers and presumably weaker in pitch battle Russian Army as a formidable obstacle to removing Alexander from power.
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Message 9
Posted by Thomas_B (U1667093) on Friday, 30th October 2009
Hi Tas,
Well said, and what springs to my mind is the Vietnam experience of the USA which has traumatised the whole nation in that time. But nevetheless, we have been happy to have the US-Forces here in West-Germany to keep the Soviets out. We will never forget about that and thanks to the new US-President Obama, your country will get its good reputation back as it had before G. W. Bush.
The French seem to have suffered many defeats in their history, this once proud nation.Â
This remindes me on the Napoleonic period, when he went from one victory to another until the Russians has stopped him, so it went with Germany in WWII, when the Soviets stopped Hitler. Well Kaiser Wilhelm II. was also an risky man, but didn´t went as far as it happened in WWII.
From that historical experiences I would state that history is sometimes like a pendle, which gives a country all that back what a country have done, not right now, but sometimes surely. But just less people think in that way, so every rise too high, has a falling deep.
What I regard as miracle is the German-French Friedship, established in the 1960s by De Gaulle and Adenauer, because after some centuries of arch-enemyship, nobody would have expected that.
Kind Regards
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Message 10
Posted by Stepney Boy (U1760040) on Friday, 30th October 2009
What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
The problem is that there were so many ??
Regards
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Message 11
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Friday, 30th October 2009
The problem is that there were so many ??Â
Visiting Versailles recently, there is a big room with paintings of famous French victories throughout history. I say famous, but from a French perspective as I had not heard of a lot of them (and I've read a fair bit on military history over the years). It's amazing how insular one's knowledge can be! For example, I was told only a couple of days ago about the English Armada which sailed to Spain the year after the Spanish Armada. I had to look it up, and lo-and-behold it was a Spanish victory! Amazing that we don't get to hear of our own defeats so readily.
Anyway, back to the OP:
If Agincourt needs to be considered, I think that Crecy and Poitiers need to be in there too.
But I'll go along with Sedan and 1940 for me - especially with the signing of the surrender in 1940 in the same railway carriage that WW1 was ended in.Link to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 12
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 30th October 2009
When a big nosed French President was dined in state in the Great Hall at the Palace of Westminster, the British faced (Or more to the point the French President) faced a problem. Both walls have painting showing British victories over the French. It was decided that he would (As a general) face the one of Trafalger, a defeat for their navy.
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Message 13
Posted by Stepney Boy (U1760040) on Friday, 30th October 2009
Re message 11.
I was told only a couple of days ago about the English Armada which sailed to Spain the year after the Spanish Armada. I had to look it up, and lo-and-behold it was a Spanish victory! Amazing that we don't get to hear of our own defeats so readily.
True, but that is what you get when history is written by the victors.
Regards
Spike.Link to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 14
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Friday, 30th October 2009
All
I would agree with the French themselves, and vote for Sedan.
In 1940, the French were half-expecting defeat (something that was rapidly picked up by the more attentive of the British - Brooke was doubting their resolution as early as the beginning of November 1939).
In 1870, the French expected to win. Louis Napoleon had created an army supposed to imitate the Le Grand Armee and dominate Europe. The French actively sought the war, intending to crush Prussia, end the trend toward German unification and ensure French hegemony for a generation, if not forever. That France would achieve this in short order was widely believed not just in France but in the rest of the world. At the start of the war, the British saw the Germans as the underdog and British public opinion was on the side of the Hun! (Well, the Queen was married to one of the blighters, after all.)
Once the war started, the French leadership, military and civil, did nothing right and were resoundingly crushed on the sacred soil of France itself, and humiliatingly occupied, the ruling class supine and reliant on their conquerors to sacrush the revolutionary mob in their own capital. The only glimmer was, as ever, the tenacity of the poilu.
After the war, France would always need at least one major ally in order to prevail against her enemies (or rescue her from enslavement, as turned out to be the case seventy years later).
Sedan and the war as a whole has generated a huge body of navel-gazing in French literature (Boule de Suif, anyone?)and historical writing, possibly only matched by all the American writing on Vietnam.
I don't think anything else in her history, not even the great medieval battles, comes close.
LWLink to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 15
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Friday, 30th October 2009
Of course, it is really, REALLY annoying that the most humiliating defeat in French history was not inflicted by us Brits.
But quantity has a quality all of its own.
LWLink to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 16
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Friday, 30th October 2009
its all very well slagging down the French (and why not of course - thats what life is all about lol) for their defeats - but they came because they were land based
1940 may well have been a defeat - but it was for us and would have been equally humiliating if the hun could have carried on - yet again the channel saved us
crecy agincourt and potiers were bad - but the 100 yrs war was a home win
dien bien phu seemed bad at the time but they went out in a blaze of glory - and the usas later performance puts it in perspective
what i really want - is a humiliating defeat to the level of isandhlwana or singapore
stLink to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 17
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 30th October 2009
ST, I would have thought the retreat from Moscow would be up with them. 600'000 thousand men marched into Russia,less than 100'000 staggered out. strangely though The Little Big horn and Issandhlana had two things in common. Both had leaders who believed their own press, and both men turned down the use of Gatling guns. The difference a battery of those things would have made could have turned both battles.
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Message 18
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Friday, 30th October 2009
hi gf
yes indeed the napoleonic war on russia was a bloody nose (actually more a complete hemorrhaging )-
but again it was a land war - there was no way we could have got near what the french did even though it was a defeat
stLink to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 19
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 1st November 2009
Although the Russian campaign of 1812 ended (or rather was the beginning of the end - the final coups de grace were delivered at Leipzig in 1813 and, later, in an attempted replay, at Waterloo in 1815) Napoleon's dreams of imperial glory there was no real difference between that and Blenheim in 1704 or Rossbach and Leuthen in 1757.
There is no comparison with that and the Battle of France (to treat the whole campaign as a a single battle, as Churchill and De Gaulle did rhetorically, rather than simply the succesful German breakout at Sedan) in 1940 which lost the French the sovereignty that they held for almost 500 years which Joan of Arc had impelled them to seize at Orleans in 1429.
The difference between 1940 and Verdun in 1916 was not a matter of tactics or strategy on either side but more the difference in the willingness of the French to defend their native land from external assault. Field Marshal von Manstein was not exhibiting false modesty when he said after the war when talking about the German operation of Sichelschnitt, separating the French army from the BEF and then encircling it:
We just did the obvious thing; we attacked the enemy's weakest point. The hopeless French reconaissance won us the Battle of France; just thatÂ
The only comparable defeats would be the three English victories at Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415) and the Prussian victory at Sedan in 1871 but none had quite the devastating consequences on the French national psyche, which still continue to this day, that 1940 had.
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Message 20
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Sunday, 1st November 2009
Allan
I think the Anglophone world tends to neglect the impact of defeat in the Franco-Prussian War on the French.
This is in part because we were not directly involved (although Phil Sheridan accompanied Bismark as an observer and advised him to "leave them nothing but their eyes to cry with", a remark which made him about as popular with the French as he was in the South of his own country). It is also because it is not an accessible conflict to English speakers - the only standard historical works are Michael Howard's "Franco-Prussian War" (an excellent read), and Alistair Horne's "The Fall of Paris". 1940, by contrast has a huge number of studies (albeit few from the French perspective).
We see the Fall of France in 1940 as the more humiliating, because it the one we know about - it was Hitler's War, we Brits had Dunkirk, and the Americans were waiting for the right moment for the Greatest Generation to rescue the world.
But, in 1940, France was not expecting victory and although occupied, was one conquered nation along with almost all the nations of Europe. She could also claim to have been betrayed by British perfidity and US selfishness (it is an article of faith that the French will never again be the Anglo-Saxons' expendable shield). They also helped to liberate themselves - a whole Army, no less. And the relatively quick rise of the EEC put France back at the top in world diplomacy.
In 1870, France had no one to blame for her predicament but herself. She sought war with Prussia, she was not facing an alliance of powerful enemies. The only major battle her forces won, Rezonville, was a tactical victory but a strategic defeat. She lost position and territory (to make it worse, apart from the economic loss, it was the last piece of Napoleon's gains remaining). She then suffered forty years of political, economic and social decline, with only a sullen and half-hysterical desire for revenge and the distractions of colonial warfare to sustain her, and that ended in the worst war in her history.
The Musee de L'Armee in Paris was originally set up based on a collection of Napoleonic unforms and equipment assembled by a military artist who specialised in mythologising the glories of French defeat. It is worth visiting to compare how 1870-71 is represented and, indeed, in the new section, how the French experience of WWII comes across. It's their history, and they don't reach the same conclusions as us.
(When I was last there, I overheard two English rugby fans contemplating a Viet Minh battle flag. "But, protested one" the French weren't in Vietnam. It was an American war." Says it all, really.)
Cheers
LWLink to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 21
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Monday, 2nd November 2009
Re message 11.
I was told only a couple of days ago about the English Armada which sailed to Spain the year after the Spanish Armada. I had to look it up, and lo-and-behold it was a Spanish victory! Amazing that we don't get to hear of our own defeats so readily.
True, but that is what you get when history is written by the victors.
Regards
³§±è¾±°ì±ðÌý
It's not written by the victors in this case, it's a question of being selective of what's written about and taught in history lessons. Just as we are unaware of many English and British defeats, so a lot of French people are unaware of Azincourt (as they call it) and Crecy.
I used to work with a Frenchman and noticed one day that it was the anniversary of Agincourt. In typical cross-Channel leg-pulling I mentioned this, only to be met with a blank look. So I tried the French name. Again, blank look.
As a rule, a nation tries to blot out many of its defeats and remember its victories. Human nature I guess. I'm more likely to remember the great victories of my football team over one of the big boys of the Premier League than a dismal loss to a non-league team.Link to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 22
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Monday, 2nd November 2009
As Mayors Attendant, along with my Mayor, we were showing a party of French students round the townhall on St. Georges Day, and ad was the norm, we all wore red roses. When asked why the Mayor pointed out that it was our Saints day. The teacher looked at at blankly.The Mayor could not resist and replied."You know, cry God for Harry, England and St. George. When be kicked your butts at Agincourt."
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Message 23
Posted by George1507 (U2607963) on Monday, 2nd November 2009
Agincourt was a victory, but it was only a BATTLE.
Agincourt was part of the Hundred Years WAR, which ended in a very decisive home win, as Stalteriiosk says.
Sort of like being one up at half time and then losing 6-1.Link to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 24
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Monday, 2nd November 2009
Agincourt was a victory, but it was only a BATTLE.
Agincourt was part of the Hundred Years WAR, which ended in a very decisive home win, as Stalteriiosk says.
Sort of like being one up at half time and then losing 6-1.Â
Exactly. Try mentioning the Battles of Formigny and Castillon to English people and they won't be too knowledgable about those battles.Link to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 25
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Monday, 2nd November 2009
Surely then the same can be said of Singapore. It doesn't really matter because it didn't effect the final victory.
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Message 26
Posted by George1507 (U2607963) on Monday, 2nd November 2009
It just goes to show that we don't give our kids a balanced view of history. We sort of assemble a few glorious victories, some far reaching inventions, ignore loads of bad stuff and then let them get on with it.
French kids probably learn about Formigny and Castillon, but haven't heard of Azincourt.
And no doubt, on some French history board, they'll all be sniggering over a thread called grandes défaites militaires anglaises.Link to this forum: What was France's most humiliating deafeat.
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Message 27
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Monday, 2nd November 2009
It doesn't matter who wins the most battles, only who won the last.
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