why haven't the french won a battle or war since napoleon?

Answer 1

If you knew your history you'd know that France has been victorious in a few wars since the Napoleonic era. For example, France and the UK defeated Russia in the 1854-1856 Crimean war thus preserving Turkey's territorial integrity and keeping the Bear's paws off of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. France also bled itself white again with Britain to win World War I, at the cost of 1.3 million French and one million British Empire dead. This loss of manpower combined with a low birth rate was one of the main reasons why France was unprepared to fight when invaded again in 1940.

Answer 2

Have you no grasp of what happend to the French during the First World War? They exhibited as much valor, sacrafice and courage as well as any fighting soldier in the world.
The French rallied and stopped the Germans on the Western front - and read up on the accounts of Verdun while you are at it. The leadership in WWII was deplorable, I just don't think they psychologically prepared or well led - but the German Blitzkrieg was a new and unanticipated military doctrine that revealed weaknesses in the organizations and use of armor , decentralized command, and other inefficiencies the Germans were able to exploit. But this does not characterize the French people.

Please don't generalize. While you are at it you may want to review the actions of the French Foreign Legion in Africa. The standards of that mlitary organizations were as good as any and better than most.
And as far as Indo China went, the US was defeated too
wasn' it?

Answer 3

because so many people answered your question very good I will try to not repeat them. But let me only say that they have won many wars and many many battles . The firs WW is their biggest achievement but if you take Napoleon the third before the French/German war he manage to win every conflict ! The Crimean war is also an example ! But if you are asking why they don't have great victories , its because people like Napoleon are one per age and their life and actions determine that age. I think it will be unfair if the French had two history giants for such a short period;)

Answer 4

Funny, they were on the winning side in WW1, in which the Battle or Verdun cost then half a million dead!!! More info on the French in WW1:

World War I cost France 1,357,800 military dead,
4,266,000 military wounded (of whom 1.5 million were permanently maimed)
and 537,000 made military prisoner or missing --

exactly 73% of the 8,410,000 men mobilized, according to William Shirer in "The Collapse of the Third Republic."

Some context so you can understand what the above means: France had 40 million citizens at the start of the war; six in ten men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight died or were permanently maimed.

10% of the active population and 3,5% of the total French population died on the battlefields.

As a comparison, if this were to happen now in the United States, the number of casualties would reach 10 million.

There would also be 680,000 widows and 760,000 orphans.

Throughout Europe, the number of crippled soldiers amounted to 6,500,000.

Between 1914 and 1918, the drops in births in France is estimated at 1 million.

Regarding WWII, between 1939 (when war was declared by France and the United Kingdom) and 1940, 120,000 French soldiers died, not to mention the number of French citizens who died as war prisoners, forced laborers, deported civilians or in acts of resistance against the Nazis during the German Occupation.

The amount of suffering occasioned by WWII in France is impossible to assess and should not be forgotten.

Its easy to sit back and gloat when the American homeland did not suffer any attacks during WW1 or WW2!!!

Answer 5

The French tend to be very adept at small unit operations, in particular in low intensity conflict where there are few battles and fewer wars. In particular, the Foreign Legion regiments (I10 of them) and the parachute regiments are generally held in high regard in military circles.
To the extent that anybody won anything in World War I, the French "won" at Verdun. They also singlehandedly liberated Corsica in 1944 and General de Lattre de Tassigny's army played an important role on the Western Front in 1944-45. A French armored division also participated in Desert Storm as part of XVIII Airborne Corps; clearly a victory although also primarily an American one, and French special operations forces had been, from the U.S. arrival there until quite recently I understand, in Afghanistan sharing our level of success in routing out the Taliban.
But some of their defeats have been magnificent as well: the defense of the Loire by the Cadets of Saumur in 1940 and the paras at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 are as extraordinary as their parallels in American military history: the VMI cadets at New Market in 1864 and the Marines at Khe Sahn in 1967.

Answer 6

They have numerous victories to their credit since Napoleon. And Napoleon alone won more wars and battles than about 75% of the other countries in the world.

Food for thought... or are you busy ordering Freedom Fries and dumping Bourdeux into the toilet?

Answer 7

Because Napoleon was an outstanding Military/Emperor!
He started all the battles he ever fought, and no French leader has started those kind of conflicts ever since. Having trained with the French Army, it only has one major problem, The French Government! France has a good core of very good NCOs and Officers, but the rest of their army is made up of conscripts. Every able-bodied French male has to complete one year of military service, weither he wants to or not. Most don't want to be there, and it shows. Most of them are really cool, they just had other things going on and had to drop them to play soldier for a year.
But just like the Germans, Italians, and Japanese, France has learned some very hard lessons about starting wars, now if we can just get CNN to do the same!

Answer 8

Because they do things like build up on their German-French border with lots of good equipment and barriers to prevent a Nazi invasion, but do not know that the Nazi Army will by pass the French-German border, and go through the Belgian French border. They actually have a good military, but their tactics and decision making at the higher levels of the French government seem to be flawed.

Answer 9

You could ask the same question about the USA and get the same answer, or not bother to turn up till they know which side will win, like the USA 1917-18, 1941-45 how is that Sporadic? just as an extra every French town, village or hamlet has a war memorial, just gaze upon the amount of men lost from just one village it would bring tears to your eyes whole families of menfolk gone.

Answer 10

I am not sure they haven't but at least they did the right thing and had the courage to stand up to Hitler along with Britain,NZ,Canada and Australia while USA procrastinated about joining in.