When was the last time the French won a war?

Question

There's a joke floating around that the last time the French won a war was during the French revolution and that's because they were fighting the French!
It got me thinking and I couldn't remember the last time that France won a war. World War I and II don't count because in those cases England, America, and the Soviet Union did most of the work.
So when was the last time that France won a war?

Answer 1

It's not just a joke.

As any serious student of history is apt to find out once he/she decides to research it for him/herself, the last time the French won a non-civil war, without the help of an even greater number of allies, was some time before they were conquered by the Romans, if then.

For a very entertaining analysis of the facts, all one needs do is go to google (yahoo doesn't allow this), type in "french military victories" and click the 'I Feel Lucky' button, which will lead you to the page I've listed below.

In my own personal opinion, the reason France as a country hasn't been swollowed up time and time again like what happened from the Romans, is that France is the epitome of agricultural wealth, and that instead of spending all their time fighting, they spent most of their time garnering mass amounts of food and tremendous varieties of foods, and were mostly able to BUY their way out of warfare by bribing the enemy with some form of tribute, until that enemy wound up losing to, and buffering France from, some other enemy.

So, even though it is true that France has failed to win any wars on its own since at least before their fall to the Roman Empire, France is NOT by any means a joke.

Answer 2

French Wars Won

Answer 3

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If you're talking individually, then it would be the Sino-French War with China. It lasted from 1884-1885 and completed the annexation of Vietnam which was a Chinese protectorate. The decisive battle was the Battle of Fuzhou, in which the French annihilated the (brand new) Southern Chinese Fleet. The Chinese claim though, that they thought the French had asked for a truce and didn't realise until it was too late.... Either way, they won the war, but didn't get everything they wanted because of the amount of effort they had to put into defeating China, arguably the weakest major independent nation in the world at the time.

Answer 4

I think it was the victories of the Napoleonic wars, or France's conquest of its colonial empire - in Africa and southeast Asia - in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The French empire was about 12 million km in area...for comparison, that's about the size of modern China. Otherwise, it would be the American Revolutionary War, 1775 to 1783. The war was fought to a stalemate in the colonies, with the colonials winning the war on land, and the British winning the war at sea. But because the British won the war at sea, the colonies would have eventually lost; since the British would block exports of cotton, and prevent war materiel from reaching the colonies. Had the war gone on longer, the colonies would have eventually lost; except for the intervention of France. BTW, re 'massive allied assistance'....It's difficult to find a European nation that fights a war alone. Since King William's War (1690), European nations have always fought as part of big alliances. Britain claims to have 'stood alone' against Hitler for a time, but even then, was recieving lots of food and war material from her colonies, and the US. Britain (in her history) was usually allied with the Netherlands, Portugal, or Prussia; France was usually allied with the Ottoman Empire; Spain was usually allied with Austria.

Answer 5

The answer is World War I. The French did the vast majority of the fighting, killing and dying on the Western Front. The Russians surrendered. The Brits fought side by side with the French for all four years. The US showed up in the 4th Quarter and helped put the Allies over the top.

Make a point to visit Verdun the next time you want to question French martial prowess. There should be enough graves there to satisfy you. Especially since more French died there than we lost in the entire Second World War.

Honestly, the First World War and its devastating impact on the French has much to do with their current view of war. After 4 years of industrialized slaughter the French realized that war is about death...nothing more and nothing less.

Answer 6

France like America has fought in a lot of similar places despite the anally retentive french knockers who post asine remarks about the French, they are still Allied with NATO there Airforce is in service in Afghanistan today.

Np other country in WW1 on the Western front took such military or civilian casualties as the French, closely followed by the Belgians and the Russians on the Eastern Front.

French casualties in WWI.

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 Military made 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: 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 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 soldiers died, not to mention the number of French citizens who died as war prisoners, forced labourers, 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.

Answer 7

France did suffer greatly during both world wars. However on their own I do not believe they would have survived as a country. As for the French Foreign Legion. The reason they had success was because they were made up of foreign fighters.

Answer 8

Cote d'Ivoire - January 2003
French peace-keeping forces succeed in stabilization of lawless western border

Battle of Maysalun - 1922
French forces rout the Syrian army.

Battle of Foochow - 1884
French navy forces utterly destroy the Chinese navy

Battle of Solferino - 1859
The French are victorious over the Austrians

Answer 9

Actually, US Involvement in WWI came very late. We didnt get one single US made Artillery Piece, Aircraft, Tank to the front before the Armistice. Our Troops fought well, but there wasnt enough to make a tremendous difference in the short time we had forces fighting.

France did the Heavy Lifting during that war, google Verdun. So I would give them that, more so than Russia which signed a truce with Germany.

Oh, by the way the Soviet Union didnt exist during WWI

Answer 10

The French Revolution.

Answer 11

Mainland would have been the early Napoleonic but did lose that in the end; the war in the 1870's was the Franco-Prussian and they lost that, so by themselves would be the colonization of French Indo-China I would guess. Of course using the same criteria the Americans last won the Spanish American in 1898 and the British would go back to the late Napolonic Wars I would guess.