Info about coinage is added in italics in each section.France, or the French Republic (République française) is a nation in western Europe bordering Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Spain, Andorra, and the UK (only via the Channel Tunnel). It has a population of some 67 millions (rounded) as of December 2017.
Tricolore flag of France, in use with reversed colours from 1790, and as shown from 1794 to 1814/5, and since 1830.
History
Early History (Antiquity - 1789)
(Future link to pre-1795 French WCC here)
The history of France stretches back to antiquity; Gallic tribes encountered Greek and Roman settlers, and were conquered by Julius Caesar with the defeat of Vercingetorix in 46 BC. The region of 'Gaul' came under Roman rule for the next few centuries, until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. The first candidate for a 'founding date' of France as a nation-state is 496 AD, with the conversion of Clovis, King of the Franks to Christianity. The Frankish Kingdom expanded in centuries to come, defeating the Moors at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD, and reaching it's peak under Charlemagne from 768-814 AD, after which the empire splintered into 'West', 'Middle' and 'East' Francia, the first of which would evolve to become the state known as 'France'.
In 987, another candidate for the 'founding date' of France occurred in the form of Hugues Capet's founding of the Capetian Dynasty with his election that year. This form of governance would last, through the absorption of Angevin (English) possessions, smaller duchies and kingdoms such as Normandy and Brittany into the French sphere of influence, until 1328, when the lack of an heir saw the House of Valois come to the throne of France. The Middle Ages were marked by (almost) constant warfare with other kingdoms such as England (1337-1453), and in the Italian states (1494-1498). The Middle Ages are considered to have ended in France in the reign of François I (1515-1547), who brought Renaissance culture (such as Da Vinci and 'La Joconde') from Italy into France.
The 16th Century brought about a period of religious turmoil to France; conflicts between French Protestants (Huguenots) and Catholics saw events like the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572), and threw France into a period of political ambiguity, with relatively weak monarchs. Many Huguenots emigrated to Protestant countries, like England. It was also here that the first French colonial possessions were set up in the New World, to which Jesuit missionaries flocked under the support of Cardinal Richelieu. The French 'Wars of Religion' ended in 1589 with the ascension of a Bourbon King, Henri IV to the throne of France, famously saying 'Paris is worth a Mass'. France, however, remained administratively feudal and divided until the reign of Louis XIV 'The Sun King' (1643-1715), who famously constructed the fabulous palace of Versailles, and won numerous wars that shook the Peace of Westphalia (1648), such as in 1672 against the Dutch.
The 18th Century dawned with the fading Sun King still in power; having concluded relatively unfavourable treaties to end the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713). The child monarch Louis XV (1715-1774) succeeded him, and went on to fail to live up to his predecessor's glory, by concluding another unfavourable peace for the War of Austrian Succession at Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). The suppression of free speech and the press during the age of the Enlightenment highlighted the despotic tendencies of the monarch, and the loss of French possessions in America and India to Great Britain in the Seven Years War (1754/6-1763) deepened the rift between the Bourbons at Versailles and the people of France. By the time the young Louis XVI (1774-1792) succeeded him, France was deep in debt; yet borrowed millions more to finance the War of American Independence (1777-1783) to get back at the British. By 1789 the nation's coffers were in turmoil, and a series of bad harvests had raised the price of grain, and the discontent of the populace along with it.
(Throughout this period France and it's predecessor forms used the Livre Tournois from 781 onwards, which was denominated in a similar manner to other pre-decimal European currencies, in multiples of 3. More information will be available in a future pre-1795 France WCC.)
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Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815)
The (most famous) French Revolution that occurred in 1789 was initially an uprising of Parisian mobs, disgruntled at the King's shutdown of the Estates General, who famously stormed the Bastille prison, symbol of the King's absolute power, on the 14th of July. This was followed by rumours of grain hoarding at Versailles; in response les poissards, or the women who worked in the Paris fish markets, marched to Versailles and demanded the King relocate to Paris. At this stage, the Revolution was headed towards a constitutional monarchy, and by 1791 a new flag was created, slavery abolished and the clergy and nobility's privileges abolished. The rising political atmosphere, contributed to by the extremist Jacobins, a failed attempt at escaping to the border by the King, and the threat of war from the conservative, reactionary European monarchies of Austria and Prussia, led to the King's deposition by the National Assembly, and on the 22nd September 1792 the First French Republic was proclaimed.
Le Départ de 1792, the most recognisable of four sculpture groups on the Arc de Triomphe d'Étoile (finished in 1836)
Meanwhile, the advancing Prussian Army had been chased out of France by French troops at the Battle of Valmy (1792), and it was in this atmosphere of uncertainty that the first symbols of this genesis of Republican France were born, such as the aforementioned tricolore banner, and the revolutionary anthem 'La Marseillaise', sung by volunteers from Marseille as they marched through Paris on their way to the front. From 1793 onwards France would be at war with changing coalitions of the other European powers arrayed against her for almost a quarter of a century. It was also during this time of political instability that the Revolution took a dark turn from ideological progressiveness into paranoid hunts for traitors to the Republic, known as the Reign of Terror, which eventually claimed some 60,000 lives, including the former King Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, and even that of the Jacobins' own leader, Maximilien de Robespierre by 1794.
Eventually the Terror wound down when political stability was restored in the Thermidorian Reaction, in the form of a 'Directory' of five directors by 1795; the situation on the battlefield also improved as France defeated a counter-revolution in the Vendee; annexed enclaved smaller states, the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), and created the Batavian Republic as a French client state. Spain joined France, and peace was signed to end the War of the First Coalition.
However by 1797 war had resumed as a newly promoted Corsican artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte was named head of the Army of Italy, sweeping into the Italian peninsula and creating numerous puppet states such as the Cisalpine Republic (Northern Italy), Helvetic Republic (Switzerland), and the Parthenopean Republic (Naples), as local revolutionaries rose to join the French troops and ousted their pre-war monarchs. A second British-funded coalition officially declared war in 1798, and Napoleon's invasion of Mamluk-held Egypt and Malta that year was cut short by Horatio Nelson of the Royal Navy, who defeated the French fleet at Aboukir Bay. Napoleon then abandoned the Army in Egypt and returned to France in 1799, to launch the coup of 18 Brumaire, and use force to name himself 'First Consul of the Republic'.
Le coup d'État de 18 brumaire - Napoleon is pictured, with soldiers amongst representatives.
Napoleon's return to France had been amidst political turmoil within the Directory; but after consolidating power under his new (almost dictatorial) title, he won a great victory at Marengo (1800) against Austrian forces, leading to peace with the German States in 1801, and with the rest of the Coalition in the Peace of Amiens (1802). The uneasy peace lasted hardly a year when war broke out between Britain and France in 1803, as the War of the Third Coalition began. The new Jefferson administration, friendly to France after John Adams' in the Quasi War (1800-1802), was sold the Louisiana Territory following news of the renewed slave revolt in Santo Domingue (Haiti after 1804) made Napoleon uncertain of France's colonial future in the New World. He was crowned Emperor the following year, and followed it up with a crushing blow to the Holy Roman Empire's forces in 1805 at the Battle of Austerlitz, and again at the twin Battles of Jena and Auerstadt, leading to the thousand year old patchwork entity's dissolution a year later.
However, the destruction of the French fleet at Trafalgar by Nelson prevented the invasion of Britain by French troops, who continued to win battle after battle on land due to the levée en masse mobilization of men. By 1807, the War of the Fourth Coalition had ended in the Treaties of Tilsit, with decisive French dominance of the European continent up to the Vistula, following the defeats of Russian forces at Eylau and Friedland. New client states like the Duchy of Warsaw, successor of the partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, were set up, and a 'Continental System' formed to embargo the British into submission. For this reason, Napoleon invaded Spain and Portugal in 1808 to enforce it, beginning a gruelling guerilla war known as the 'Peninsular War'. A Fifth Coalition declared war in 1809, and swiftly ended with the Austrian Empire's defeat at Wagram, and the harsh treaty of Schoenbrunn. France now stood at the zenith of her power in Europe.
The First French Empire at it's height, 1810-1812
In 1812, the Russian Empire under Tsar Alexander left the Continental System, which was hurting Russia's economy; as a result Napoleon gathered half a million troops of the Grande Armée in Warsaw, and set off on a Russian campaign. The French were victorious, but retreating Russians scorched the earth, harassing French supply lines and engaging in guerilla warfare. Despite the capture of Moscow, and victory at Borodino, no peace offer came from the Tsar; and Napoleon was forced to retreat from Moscow, facing the harsh Russian winter, and constant attack from Cossack troops.
The loss of most of the Grande Armée led to a renewed Sixth Coalition being assembled against Napoleon, who once again raised an army, but was defeated by overwhelming Coalition forces at the Battle of Leipzig (1813). By March 1814, Coalition forces stood on the Seine; Napoleon's Armies lay defeated in Spain as well. His abdication to Elba saw a brief 'First Restoration' of the Bourbon dynasty under Louis XVIII, younger brother of the guillotined Louis XVI. As the Congress of Vienna convened to draw up the future map of Europe, Napoleon snuck out of Elba and onto French soil in February 1815. He was defeated shortly after by Coalition forces at Waterloo under the Duke of Wellington, and exiled to St. Helena.
(The Livre Tournois continued to be used, but from 1795 onwards the Franc was in use as a decimalised currenncy, with 100 centimes equalling 1 Franc. The Franc received a set value in 1800 under Napoleon, and stayed that way (the Franc Germinal) until the last silver LMU standard Franc coins were minted in 1920. Coins minted initially carry 'Republique Française' until about 1806, when the Republican pretence was dropped and the 'Empire Français' designation replaced it until 1815.)
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Revolution and Counter-revolution (1815-1870)
At the Congress of Vienna, France was restored to her 1792 borders, with small exceptions. Louis XVIII (1814, 1815-1824) was once again restored to the French throne, and Revolutionary/Republican and Bonapartist symbols were banned. France was once more under a Bourbon monarch, but not completely alike the pre-1789 Ancien Regime. The new Bourbon restoration was a constitutional monarchy, and under Louis XVIII it remained (relatively) as such.
However upon his 1824 death, his brother, Charles X (1824-1830) came to the throne with a far more reactionary attitude, interfering with legislative decisions and being more absolutist than his brother had been. As a result, a second Revolution was launched in the summer of 1830, as anti-royalist establishments were cracked down upon. The 'Trois Glorieuses' saw the King deposed, and in a political compromise, the crown was handed to the cadet branch of the Bourbon line, the more liberal House of Orléans, under Louis-Philippe I (1830-1848). He was crowned 'King of the French' in a popular gesture of support.
'La Liberté guidant le peuple' by Eugène Delacroix, 1830, in the Louvre. Often misattributed to the 1789 revolution.
France had been allowed to keep a 'patchwork' of colonial possessions (islands) around the globe by the Congress of Vienna; and a conquest of coastal Algeria had been undertaken by Charles X from 1827-1830 before he had been deposed. Louis-Philippe continued this undertaking, and in 1837 news of the fall of Constantine boosted French colonial prestige. Meanwhile at home, despite the promises of Louis-Philippe to follow the Charter of 1830, a 'bourgeois' domination of the French political scene during the Industrial Revolution resulted in unhappy Republican revolutionaires (famously failing to overthrow the Orléanists in 1832's June Rebellion, as depicted in Victor Hugo's Romanticist novel Les Misérables).
As the July Monarchy went on, it seemed to walk further and further from the principles of the 1830 revolution; and by 1846, bad harvests had caused lowered faith in the government. As increased support for liberal movements all around Europe compounded the issues facing the survival of Louis-Philippe, his attempt to bar public meetings in a volatile political climate saw the 1848 Revolution erupt, as part of a wider liberal uprising all around Europe, known as the 'Springtime of Nations'. Louis-Philippe abdicated, and the Second Republic was proclaimed on 26th February 1848.
A tribute to the Revolutions of 1848; note the various tricolore flags being paraded
The Second Republic's brief history (1848-1852) was dominated by one man, who returned from exile to run for President in 1848; Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the former Emperor. He did become President of the young Republic, but in a seeming reflection of his uncle's coup of 18 Brumaire, launched his own coup in December 1851, which gave him the power to amend the constitution to his own liking. A staged referendum then gave him the title of 'Emperor', and on the 2nd December 1852, the Second Empire was proclaimed under Napoleon III.
This new regime was similarly censor-heavy, but to his credit Napoleon III encouraged the industrialisation of transportation and industry in France, building thousands of miles of railways, and renovating the city of Paris under Baron Haussmann into one of grand boulevards and parks. The Second Empire also saw a proactive role of France in the European stage; as regional disputes in the dying Ottoman Empire led to the collapse of the 'Concert of Europe' that had existed since 1815, Napoleon III joined the British and Turks in the Crimean War (1853/4-1856), and also engaged in empire-building projects abroad, with the establishment of colonies in Indochina and West Africa. An effervescence of art in the form of Impressionism also occurred in this period.
The Second Empire existed in a period of fervent nationalism sweeping Europe; in 1859 France concluded a pact with the Count of Cavour, representative of Sardinia-Piedmont; and at the Battle of Solferino, Franco-Sardinian troops defeated the Austrian Empire, allowing for Sardinia-Piedmont to unify the Italian states under the banner of the House of Savoy by 1861. Similar nationalist calls for unification were also growing in the German Confederation, where Austrian hegemony had been nullified by Prussian victory in the Seven Weeks' War (1866). This same war that transferred Venetia to Italy, unified some 30 German kingdoms into the 'North German Confederation' under Prussian leadership, which soon became a hostile contender to tip the European balance of power.
And indeed, after tensions rose following the threat of Prussian intervention in the Glorious Revolution in Spain, France and the German states went to war in 1870 over Bismarck's tailoring of the Ems Telegram to be as provoking as possible. Inefficient mobilisation and outdated rifles saw the French Army defeated by the Germans at Sedan, where Napoleon III himself was captured. The Provisional Government proclaimed by Leon Gambetta following the Emperor's capture soon evolved into a Third Republic, as Prussian troops besieged the city of Paris. The capitulation of Paris in mid 1871 coincided with the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles, thus ending the Franco-Prussian War.
Le siège de Paris (1884) depicting the allegorical representation of France and the tricolore banner in 1870.
(During the political changes of this period, the Franc Germinal remained the currency of France; the monarchists kept the Franc, but various changes to the design of the coins were made throughout the 19th century, reflecting the then-political situation, such as the changing titles of Napoleon III between 1852 and 1870.)
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Republicanism in France (1870-1914)
In 1871, France's new Third Republic, was intended only to be a placeholder government until a new heir of the former Légitimiste royal branches could be found that was acceptable to the French people. In 1875, the new government's legislative bodies were formed; and by 1879, the Republic had become a stable political institution, and as Adolphe Thiers remarked; 'The form of government that divides us the least'. The last attempted Royalist coup was in 1877; and throughout the 1880s, a liberal, left-leaning centrist French Republicanism took on a centerstage role in the political scene. It was also by far the most free (press-wise) government of all the regimes that had existed since the idealist 1st Republic.
The Republic was shaken by a series of crises in the late 19th century; most notably right-wing General Georges Boulanger's attempts at a coup; his defeat in 1889 considerably weakened right-wing royalist elements in France. There was also the Panama scandal in 1892; when the French company building a canal in Panama went bankrupt, and the government hushed up the worst of the losses. Triumphs for France in this period known as the 'Belle Époque', however included the gifting of the Statue of Liberty to the United States; and the completion of the Eiffel Tower, tallest manmade structure in the world until the completion of the Chrysler Building four decades later. Expressionist painters and later, Art Nouveau contributed to the cultural enrichment of this era.
Throughout the later 19th century, industrialisation had produced medicines, weapons, trains and boats able to penetrate the deep jungles and inhospitable terrain of sub-saharan Africa; as a result a 'Scramble for Africa' had begun in earnest at the Berlin Conference of 1884, as a dozen European powers scrambled to advance colonial claims in competing areas. France expanded through West Africa from Dakar and Grand-Bassam, enclaving many British, Portuguese and German colonies in the same region as those new possessions met with French Algeria and French Gabon, splitting the Congo basin between France and Belgium in 1885, and deposing the Malagasy Merina monarchy in 1895, making Madagascar a French colony.
In Asia too French Indochina was expanded following wars with the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Siamese empires; in 1893 Laos was annexed, and by 1904 French Indochina covered the present day countries of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia along with a treaty port in China acquired in 1898. Colonial disputes lead almost to war with the United Kingdom, as the Fashoda crisis in 1898 broke out, but was resolved in Britain's favour.
Depiction of the French-Hova War for Madagascar (1894-1895) in a contemporary magazine.
By the turn of the 20th century, France was the most politically stable that it had been for generations; there was however the divisive Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906), pitting anti-semitic, clerical, (usually) right wing factions against the pro republican, pro-Dreyfus 'Dreyfusards', eventually resolved in 1906 with Dreyfus being exhonerated of false charges. This radicalisation of left-leaning Republicans lead to the separation of church and state in 1905.
However, despite political change at home, French foreign policy in the Belle Époque was dictated by a spirit of revanchism against Germany, particularly a desire for the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, lost in 1871 to the German Empire. This led to the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894 out of mutual fear of growing German industrial and military might, and the young Kaiser Wilhelm II's sabre-rattling over a crisis in Morocco in 1905 and 1911. The 'Entente Cordiale' was reached with Britain in 1904 despite French popular support for the Boers in South Africa; and to link it all, in 1907 Britain and Russia reached an agreement, linking France's two allies into the 'Triple Entente', arrayed against the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. By the summer of 1914, two Balkan wars had raised the temperature amongst the two alliances, and the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand triggered a system of alliances that dragged all the European powers into the maelstrom.
(Throughout this period the Franc Germinal was still in use; France had joined the LMU (Latin Monetary Union) in 1865, and as a result minted it's coins to similar standards as many other European nations of this time.)
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World Wars (1914-1945)
Upon the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Empire invaded Belgium to bypass the French defences, hoping for a quick victory against France so they could focus on Russia before she could fully mobilise. However this violation of neutrality saw the United Kingdom join the war on the Entente's side. Belgian resistance was more than expected, so French mobilisation was able to rapidly deploy and invade Germany, although their famous 'pantalons rouges' made them easy targets for German soldiers, and the army fell back with heavy casualties. General Joseph Joffre's reservists were famously rushed out of Paris by taxis to stop the advancing German Army at the 'Miracle' of the Marne; by September the 'Race to the Sea' had ended with the BEF and French Army outflanking the Germans, and both sides dug into trenches that stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea.
At the same time the Russians were faster than expected in mobilising, and invaded East Prussia, forcing the Germans to re-deploy troops from the Western Front. Both the British and French brought in large amounts of colonial troops from West Africa, India and the British Dominions, while colonial garrisons swiftly occupied the German overseas colonies. By 1915, fronts had been opened in Gallipoli, Palestine, the Caucasus, the Alps, and even the Far East, as more and more nations joined either side of the conflict. Meanwhile, on the Western Front, troops faced freezing temperatures amid miserable living conditions in frontline trenches; this was compounded by the advancement of new weaponry deployed by both sides, such as poison gas, aerial bombing, machine guns, and tanks. This technology paired with antiquated tactics is usually blamed for the high casualties suffered by troops in advances when going 'over the top'.
Colourised photograph of the French 114e régiment d'infanterie in 1918 posing with their tattered battle flag.
Massive attacks were planned by both sides in the spring of 1916, with the Germans pushing hard at Verdun, which quickly became a symbol of both determined French resistance, and of the gruelling slog the Western Front had become; the Allies launched the Somme offensive that July to relieve pressure on Pétain's forces at Verdun. By the beginning of 1917, the French army was near mutinous, with some battalions refusing to fight; these were quelled by reforms in the command system. Morale was improved by news of the United States entering the conflict following the Zimmermann Telegram. Meanwhile, the Russians, who had suffered far worse casualties, had revolutions of their own in February and October, the former toppling the Tsarist regime, and the latter resulting in Bolshevik takeover of the Provisional Government, and eventually Bolshevik Russia leaving the war to fight a civil war of it's own. This allowed the Germans to transport millions of troops to the West.
However by the spring of 1918, tens of thousands of troops of the United States Expeditionary Forces were pouring into France every day to bolster the Allied lines, and the Ludendorff's Spring Offensive failed to beat the clock; despite coming back into sight of Paris, by September 1918 the Allies were advancing on all fronts. Germany's other allies of Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire were capitulating; the Austro-Hungarian Empire imploded, and following the Kaiser's abdication, and the establishment of a Republic, at 11am on the 11th November 1918 an armistice coordinated by Maréchal Ferdinand Foch came into effect on the Western Front, ending the so-called 'War to end all War'.
At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, representatives of France (Georges Clemenceau) and the victorious Allied powers met to draw up the peace and postwar map of Europe, eerily reminiscent of the Congress of Vienna a century earlier. Conflicting national interests, however, meant that much of the final peace was the product of endless compromise and bargaining, a peace that satisfied no one. The German delegation was not invited to negotiate the treaty, but presented with it instead, leading to the Treaty of Versailles to become know as the hated 'Diktat' in Germany, who was to return Alsace to France, lose all her colonies, pay heavy reparations, and was demilitarised greatly. The Peace Conference also recognised the many states that had emerged from the implosion of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires in defeat and revolution respectively; such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. However, territorial disputes amongst these neighbours meant that tensions remained uneasy in a region of weaker states.
Poster for the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the originator of the modernist style of Art Deco
Despite this, throughout the 1920s, as the smaller territorial wars (in Russia, Turkey, Ireland, etc.) in the aftermath of the Great War ended, and Woodrow Wilson's 'League of Nations' was launched on the basis of collective enforcement of international peace. The international push for disarmament reflected the desire of nations not to ever have such a destructive war again; it was all pushed along by the economic boom of the 1920s, fuelled by the United States becoming the lynchpin of the world economy, despite her political isolationism. In 1923 France had occupied the Ruhr when Germany was unable to pay reparations; but by 1925, Germany and France had signed a 'Locarno Pact' recognising their frontier; in 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact committed it's signatories to an International Disarmament Conference, to 'outlaw war forever'. A new younger generation grew up challenging pre-war social norms in the Années folles as Art Deco, jazz, and the style of the 'garçonne' (flapper) became (American-inspired) cultural icons of the 1920s in France and elsewhere.
The prosperous era of international cooperation broke down following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, heralding the start of a decade long international economic depression that affected nations operating with American loans (such as the already unstable German Weimar Republic). France's economy was not as affected by the crash of 1929 as some other nations were; it's currency had devalued since the end of the War.
Despite this, France, who had regained her status as the foremost power on the European continent after the War, and was the primary military backbone of the League of Nations, now slashed her military budget, and took a distant interest from world affairs, to tackle domestic political division. The traditional left-right division in the Republic was now accentuated by the addition of extremist positions, with communists on the left, and fascists on the right both opposed to the 3rd Republic's relative liberalism. French politics in the 1930s were very chaotic, with some cabinets hardly lasting a few hours; indeed, too chaotic to unify the nation in the face of the rise of totalitarianism in neighbouring Germany in 1933.
Map depicting the height of the French Colonial Empire in the interwar era (1919-1939)
The epitome of this political division was the riots of the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1934, when right wing groups clashed with the police in what was feared to be an attempted coup d'état. This led to a unification of the French left under Léon Blum's Popular Front, coming to power in the wake of the Spanish Civil War's outbreak in 1936. The Popular Front began to crumble almost as soon as it came to power, and elements on the right blocked Blum's attempts to intervene on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Even as Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, the divided government could only appease Italy, as France could not afford to antagonise another neighbour.
Then, as Hitler remilitarised the border region of the Rhineland, where Versailles had banned weaponry; France could not afford to act without British support; and was to divided internally to act alone. By 1938, the Popular Front had collapsed completely; the day German troops entered Austria, France was without a government. Prime Minster Édouard Daladier could only follow his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain in appeasing Hitler at the Munich Conference, in the vain hope that war could be avoided. And when it finally became apparent that only force would stop expansionist nations, the budget delegated to rearmament came too little, too late.
War broke out on 3rd September 1939, after no reply was received following the invasion of Poland by Germany, and the United Kingdom and France declared war jointly on Germany. The French reserves were called up; but once again French commanders put their efforts into fighting the last war. The Army poured into the 'impregnable' Maginot Line on the Franco-German border, that had been constructed to be the greatest trench ever. Not even bombing of German industry across the Rhine was permitted, out of fear of reprisal. Even as the winter of 1939 ended with Poland occupied by the Germans and Soviets, and German troops occupied Denmark and Norway the following spring, the Allies did little to react.
The 'Drôle de guerre' (Phoney War) ended abruptly in May 1940 as the German offensive in the West began in the Low Countries. German Army Group A swing through the Ardennes, considered impassable by the Allied Command, as Army Group B feigned a feint into northern Belgium, where the Allies moved their forces into. However, Army Group A broke through at Sedan , lightly defended by the Allies, and raced to reach the Channel, cutting off the Allied Armies in Belgium, which were surrounded, but evacuated from Dunkerque to Britain. As German troops advanced on Paris, Italy too declared war on France, but was limited in it's success. Paul Reynaud's government fell, and a new cabinet was assembled with former war hero Philippe Pétain as head of state a few weeks later, that accepted the German armistice on 22nd June 1940, in the same place the 1918 armistice had been signed.
The famous photograph, 'The Weeping Frenchman' as the French Army's regimental flags depart from Marseille to keep them from falling to enemy hands, 1940
France was now divided between the Occupied Zone, the northern half of the country, and the 'Zone libre' (Free Zone), administered by Pétain's German puppet government from Vichy. Now the new French State (État Français) was a country of socially conservative values; the Republican motto of 'Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité' was now replaced by 'Travail, Patrie, Familie', and there were also repressions on free speech, press, and personal freedoms. The German Occupation authorities reigned with an iron fist in occupied France, arresting and brutalising dissenters, and persecuting 'undesirable' persons in the occupied zone, such as in 1942 at the Vel d'Hiv. Even today, the roles of some collaborators and traitors, especially in their actions during the war, remain highly sensitive and controversial subjects in not only France, but Europe.
'À tous les français', the famous proclaimation by de Gaulle issued in France's darkest hour in mid-1940
Not all had been lost in the disaster of 1940; a relatively unknown Frenchman by the name of Charles de Gaulle had landed in England shortly before the armistice. While in London he set up the Free French Government-in-Exile, with help from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Despite initial missteps like the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir, or the disastrous attack on Vichy-controlled Dakar, the Free French eventually secured the aid of the governor of French Equatorial Africa, Félix Éboué, who declared the allegiance of 'AEF' to Free France. And as the years went on, Free France proved itself to be a worthy adversary, 'converting' French colonies around the world to de Gaulle's cause, and assisting the Allies in liberating Massawa in Italian East Africa in 1941, and in the takeover of Vichy-controlled Syria later that year, to prevent it being used as a base for Axis forces to threaten the Near East.
By mid-1942, the war had become a global conflict, as Axis forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and the Japanese Empire attacked the United States' Pacific base at Pearl Harbour (December 1941), bringing American manufacturing capability to the Allied cause. As Axis forces under Rommel stormed across North Africa, they were held up at the oasis of Bir Hakeim by a small Free French fighting unit; the world would remember this as the first true victory by de Gaulle's cause. As the United States poured troops into Vichy-controlled Morocco in Operation Torch (November 1942), all of French West Africa came under Free French control, as local Vichy commanders were persuaded to join de Gaulle. Axis nations responded by occupying all of the 'Zone Libre', and the rest of the French Navy was scuttled to prevent it falling into Axis hands. Algiers and Tunis stood liberated by the New Year of 1943. Free French forces assisted in the invasion of Italy, and many of it's most ferocious battles, such as at Monte Cassio.
Meanwhile, the United States had been island hopping in the Pacific, driving back the Japanese Empire with Dutch and Australian aid; and the Soviet Union had defeated the Sixth Army at the historic battle of Stalingrad, turning the tide on the Eastern Front and beginning the long march to Berlin. This all happened while the invasion of Normandy by Allied forces was being planned by Churchill and Roosevelt; and indeed a 'Third Front' was opened up on 6th June 1944 (D-Day), as Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. The Free French landed in Provence, in Operation Dragoon, and carved their path through the Vosges, liberating the soil of the French homeland after four years. As Allied forces foraged ahead from the beachheads, pressing towards Caen and Cherbourg, the people of Paris began an uprising against the occupier; partisan street fighting occurred after four years of suppression. On 25th August 1944, General De Gaulle entered a liberated Paris with the 2e DB of General Leclerc, to a mood of general euphoria.
'Paris ! Paris outragé ! Paris brisé ! Paris martyrisé ! Mais Paris libéré !' - de Gaulle's speech to a liberated Paris
The war continued; Free French troops joined the British, Canadian, American and other allied troops in the West at the Battle of the Bulge, in the same place where the fateful German breakthrough had occurred in 1940 (the Ardennes). French troops pushed into Southern Germany towards the end of the war, and with their British and American allies advanced across the heartlands of the collapsing Reich. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union's Red Army had also advanced from the east and surrounded Berlin. By the time it was all over, the Free French ended their war at Hitler's captured mountaintop retreat in Berchtesgaden. The final dramatic act of the war played out with the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; shortly afterwards Japan announced an unconditional surrender. And then, the war was over.
(During the First World War France continued to use the century-old Franc Germinal, minted to LMU standards until 1920, when the silver franc coins (with Roty's La Semeuse) were replaced by brass coins issued by the 'Chambres de Commerce de France' during the 1920s. During the war, and after it, many French cities and towns issued their own jetons and tokens, owing to coinage shortage until 1931. By 1929 new coins of the 'Franc Poincaré' were being issued, including brass francs (with Morlon's Marianne), silver 10 and 20 francs (with Turin's Marianne), and a gold 100 Francs, all issued at a decreased rate of the 1803 gold standard the Franc Germinal had used. During the occupation, from 1941 onwards aluminium and zinc were used for most coins of Vichy; these carry the 'État Français' legend on the reverse. Free France never issued any coinage that is in the French catalogue other than a 1944 2 Francs Issue. After the war, aluminium coinage with pre-war designs circulated until 1960.)
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Modern France (1945-)
France in 1945 was part of a very different new postwar world. The new world order revolved around two superpowers with fundamentally different ideological stances: the United States, and the Soviet Union. The former League of Nations was disbanded, and a new United Nations created to mediate world peace, of whom's security council France remains a permanent member of. In France, de Gaulle retired from political life in 1946, after the Provisional Government of France was disbanded, and a Fourth Republic set up. Women now had the vote, and France began the process of rebuilding itself. Hopes that the Fourth Republic would be more stable than the Third in it's last years were dashed by the fact that the Fourth Republic's constitution contained many of the same flaws present in that of the Third.
These problems were compounded by the increasing calls for decolonisation in France's overseas colonies, most apparently in French Indochina, where wartime guerilla leader Ho Chi Minh was fighting for Vietnamese independence from French colonial troops. In response to decolonisation, France created the 'Union Française' to offer citizenship and greater equality to her former colonial subjects. France had also created a few separate currencies, that were tied to the French Franc, such as the CFA Franc, and CFP Franc for her colonies' use. The new Fourth Republic was also given a protectorate in the Saarland (as in 1919-1935) for ten years, as well as an occupation zone in Germany and Austria, as well as in Berlin and Vienna, along with Britain, the USA, and the USSR. Industry was moved to France from the Rhineland as part of reparations for wartime damage; but in 1949 French zone of occupation, along with the American and British Zones, was turned into the 'Federal Republic of Germany', or 'West' Germany, in contrast to the Soviet-created, communist 'German Democratic Republic', or 'East' Germany which surrounded West Berlin. Austria would be allowed to become independent and neutral in 1955 when the last occupation troops left.
By 1950 the Cold War had begun in earnest with the division of Europe along the lines of NATO-aligned, 'Western' states, and Soviet-aligned, Warsaw Pact, or 'Eastern Bloc' states. France and other European states had by now realised the value of European integration for the purposes of future peace, and in 1951 the European Coal and Steel Community was founded by six Western European countries, France being one of them. As part of a UN Force, French troops also participated in the Korean War (1950-53), but lost at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu to Vietnamese guerilla forces in 1954, resulting in the Geneva Accords and France's pulling out of Indochina.
French prestige was dealt a blow during the Suez Crisis, one of the death thores of imperialism, when the Suez Canal was nationalised by Nasser. That same year, Morocco and Tunisia became independent from France. Syria and Lebanon had already become independent in 1945; now more and more African nations looked about to do the same. At home, meanwhile, the political situation had grown increasingly untenable; the unpopular Fourth Republic's death knell was the 1958 Algerian crisis, triggered by conflict between les pieds-noirs (French Settlers in Algeria) and pro-independence local movements. When the pro pieds-noirs French Army, upset at the left-wing Fourth Republic demanded the return of Charles de Gaulle to power, he became prime minister, and dissolved the Fourth Republic, drawing up plans for the current, Fifth Republic, with a more powerful executive (President) position.
Arms of the 5th French Republic, and of France in official capacity since 1912
The new 1958 constitution of the Fifth Republic sought to unify the country behind a relatively centrist force; it also replaced the Union française with the Communauté française (French Community) which allowed for many African states to become independent in 1960, known as the 'Year of Africa' as dozens of newly independent African nations emerged on the map, many of whom kept close economic and political ties with France, such as the Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), whose president Félix Houphouët-Boigny advocated for the country to use it's French name internationally. These ties remain somewhat controversial amongst international circles today.
Another change that occurred under the Fifth Republic was the revaluation of the Franc; in 1960 the Nouveau Franc began circulating, at the rate of 100 'old' francs to 1 Nouveau Franc with new coinage being issued. The 1960s were initially quite stable under the uniting Charles de Gaulle, with the backdrop of the postwar economic miracle known as the 'Trente glorieuses' (1945-1975). De Gaulle pulled out of the now independent Algeria in 1962, following the Evian Accords; despite support for a French Algeria being the reason for his initial ascension to power, he realised the French hold in Algeria was untenable. In office, De Gaulle pursued his 'politique de grandeur'; he pushed for France to become more un-aligned in a world dominated by Cold War politics, to the dismay of the USA and NATO, which he pulled France out of in 1966, and demanded US troops leave French soil.
Despite being usually considered a Eurosceptic, De Gaulle pushed for Franco-German reconciliation with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, signing the Élysée Treaty in 1963, and entering a common market (of the EEC, formed in 1957) which tripled French exports to her neighbours. Towards the end of his time in power, de Gaulle made decisions that contributed to a decrease in his popularity; in 1967 his speech of 'Vive le Québéc Libre!' was received poorly by Canadian ministers, and following the May 1968 civil unrest by student protestors across France, and criticism of de Gaulle's heavy handedness (such as his attempts to use police force to quell strikers and protestors), despite Gaullists sweeping the 1968 elections, he resigned in 1969 after having become too personally unpopular.
By the 1970s, France was now under the presidency of Georges Pompidou, de Gaulle's successor, then under that of Valery Giscard d'Estaing from 1974 onwards. This was a period of reconciliation with the United States after de Gaulle's anti-Americanism, with the USA aiding in France's nuclear programs, with many large American companies (such as IBM) setting up European branches in France; and during the 1973-4 oil crisis, France was badly effected when energy prices soared during the decade. The 1970s also saw decreased international tension during the era of Détente, as Spain and Portugal embraced liberal democracy. In 1981, François Mitterrand became the first socialist, or left-wing president of the Fifth Republic, and expanded social welfare systems during his term as president. A supporter of European collaboration, Mitterrand saw the European Union expand to include Portugal and Spain; as well as the end of the Cold War and German reunification in 1990, leading to a partnership with Helmut Kohl with the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and the founding of the European Union.
As the new millennium dawned, France adopted the Euro in 2001. France today, remains a major world power in economic, military, and political terms, and famously opposed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 with Germany, under Jacques Chirac. As of the year 2017, France is still a global leader in many fields of technological innovation and scientific prowess, and is currently ranked one of the highest standards of living in the world.
(Until 1960, the old franc circulated in the form of aluminium coins with pre-war designs, with aluminium-bronze coins being issued in 10, 20 and 50 Francs from 1950, and a copper-nickel 100 Francs. In 1961 a new series of coins from 1 centime to a silver 5 francs coin were issued in the 'Nouveau Franc' (NF), with silver being omitted after 1969. 10 Franc coins were introduced in 1974, and 2 Franc coins in 1977. There were also silver 10 and 50 Franc coins minted in silver from 1964 and 1974 respectively (with Dupré's Herculean trio), and from 1982 100 franc commemorative coins in silver. The Euro was adopted in 2001, at the rate of 6.55957 Francs to 1 Euro, and it remains the currency of France today; Francs (incl. banknotes) are no longer convertible into Euros as of 17th February 2012.)
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