France



France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various overseas islands and territories located in other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean.

France in Atlantis
France may lay claim to the discovery of Atlantis.

In 1452, the first humans to visit Atlantis were a Breton fishing crew, led by Francois Kersauzon. Subsequently, settlements led by Kersauzon were established in the continent, co-existing relatively peacefully with those established by the English and the Basques. After the province of Britanny was annexed to France in the next decades, the Breton colonies became French possessions. Thus, in a sense, France can claim to have "discovered" Atlantis.

In the 1750s, conflict in Europe spread to Atlantis. France and England were at war, and so the Atlanteans of each respective country went to war as well. Within a matter of months, the English defeated the French forces, and drove France out of Atlantis. France also lost most of its possessions in Terranova and India. From then on, France would be second-best to Great Britain as a power in the world.

France in Curious Notions
France and its allies Britain and Russia were defeated by Germany in the brief war of 1914. France and Britain went to war with Germany in the late 1930s, but were again defeated, which cleared the way for Germany to take full control of Europe.

France in The Disunited States of America
France was one of the world's great powers.

France in The Gladiator
France saw the first popular front in response to Nazi occupation during World War II. While it failed then, decades later, France saw another popular front which turned the country away from the United States and towards Soviet Union, making France among the first countrys in Western Europe to adopt communism.

France in In High Places
France developed very differently in an alternate where the Great Black Deaths killed 80% of Europe's population. It took over two centuries to recover from the demographic loss, and by then, Muslims had invaded and captured much of southern France, including Lyon and Marseille. A charismatic leader named Henri arose with a new message, but the Pope in Avignon and the King of France opposed Henri and executed him as a heretic. Soon after, both men were killed in an accident, and France splintered firmly into several different individual kingdoms, including the Kingdom of Versailles. Henri's followers saw the accidental death of the Pope and the King as a miracle, and his faith was affirmed.

France in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
France was an occupied territory of the Greater German Reich, conquered at the beginning of World War II. The southern half of France came under the collaborationist Vichy France while Germany annexed the northern half and Italy controlled an area in southeastern France. With the Axis victorious in Europe, the Reich annexed Vichy France while its colonies were divided between the Reich, Italy, Japan.

The Vichy government had replaced the motto of the Frence state Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! with Work, Family, Country. Though the older phrase was illegal, many French especially the pre-war generation remembered it as late as 2010. When Fuhrer Heinz Buckliger instituted reforms in the empire, people too young to remember France's independence made use of the old motto as a rallying cry as they protested in the streets.

France in The Man With the Iron Heart
France had been humiliated by its defeat and occupation by Germany at the outset of World War II. It lay under German rule until 1944, when joint American and British forces (along with some French patriots who'd escaped their home) invaded France and began pushing Germany back. Simultaneously, German forces were being devestated in the war against the Soviet Union to the east.

By 1945, the war was over, and France occupied a portion of Western Germany. Unfortunately, the knowledge that France had had to be liberated by the Anglo-Americans was embittering to most of the French government and military. Charles de Gaulle followed a policy of minimal cooperation with his allies, while at the same time imposing a vengeful peace on its zone of Germany.

With the arrival of the German Freedom Front under Reinhard Heydrich, France found itself in the same quagmire as the US, Britain and the USSR. It responded with as much viciousness to the GFF as possible, often rivaling the USSR.

France in Ruled Britannia
France was one of the two great Catholic powers in western Europe; the other was Spain. Despite their shared a religion, the Hapsburg dynasty that ruled Spain considered France an enemy, due to the fact that France was physically between Spain and Spain's European territories. Philip II fought a war with France during his reign. France provided limited support for the Protestant anti-Hapsburg rebellion in the Netherlands in the 1570s and 80s.

France in Southern Victory
France, along with Britain, was a staunch ally of the Confederate States. Emperor Napoleon III supported the Confederate States in the War of Secession, allowing France to install Maximilian I as emperor of Mexico in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, which the defeated United States was unable to enforce. France went down to defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, losing the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. The rapid Prussian victory over one of the architects of the Union's humiliating defeat was one of the factors leading to the eventual alliance between the United States and the German Empire.

Now a republic, France also supported the Confederates in the Second Mexican War but, unlike Britain, committed very few military forces to North America beyond a naval raid on Los Angeles, California.

France later joined the CS, Britain, and Russia in the Entente and was invaded and defeated by Germany in the Great War.

Following the war, and the harsh peace terms imposed by the Germans, the French turned to the revanchist monarchist party Action Francaise to restore France to its former position of power. Charles XI became King and cooperated with his fellow Entente revanchist leaders in the rearmament of the Entente. Jake Featherston sent Anne Colleton to France as special ambassador plenipotentiary in 1934. She returned to Virginia in August 1936 aboard the new ocean liner Charles XI with an agreement from the French government.

With Britain, France supported the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War and defeated the German-backed Monarchists. Upon the death of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in 1941, France launched an attack on Germany which it had coordinated with similar attacks by Britain and Russia.

The Entente was able to maintain the offensive until 1943. Although initially the most belligerent of the Entente, France quickly became a junior partner to Britain. Germany halted the Anglo-French force drive in the Netherlands, and turned it back. Early in 1944, Paris became the second Entente capital destroyed by a German superbomb. Charles XI was killed. His successor, Louis XIX, was initally defiant, but soon sued for peace.

France in The Two Georges
France and Spain were partners in the Holy Alliance. As such, France controlled North Africa west of the Ottoman Empire and Central Africa excluding the costal regions which were British African Possessions and Portuguese Angola and Mozambique. It did include the Island of Madagascar. France also controlled Indochina. It had lost New France (renamed the province of Quebec) to Britain during the Seven Years' War and so had no North American possessions.

France in Worldwar
France had been conquered by Germany in 1940 as part of World War II, and though the Race controlled southern France during the Conquest Fleet's invasion of Earth, France was recognized as part of the German Reich under the terms of the Peace of Cairo. Under German rule, southern France was a largely lawless area where smugglers, pickpockets, ginger dealers, thieves, political subversives, German secret policemen and members of the Race lived in close quarters.

During the period, a nation known as Free France existed on the Pacific island of Tahiti.

Following Germany's defeat in the Race-German War of 1965, the independent Fourth Republic of France was created. This government relied on the Race's protection.

France in "Before the Beginning"
France played a substantial role in changing the course of human history when Inspector Jacob Dreyfus demonstrated that the Jews were indeed God's chosen people. France was one of the first countries to convert en masse to Judaism.

France in "The Catcher in the Rhine"
On his visit to France, a young American tourist, to his horror, was served snails. The experience left the young tourist with a poor impression of the French.

France in "Ils ne passeront pas"
France steadfastly refused to let German forces pass Verdun, making that battle the longest and most horrible battle of World War I. Indeed, French soldiers Pierre Barres and Jacques Fonsagrive had been through such atrocity that when God's judgment came (as foretold in the Book of Revelation), they assumed they'd been the victims of a German weapon, and reacted quite blasely, killing all of the demonic creatures that appeared in No Man's Land.

France in "Les Mortes d'Arthur"
France was the leading country of United Europe with French being its official language. In addition, French had once more become the lingua franca of international relations. No one was considered educated unless they could speak good French. Otherwise, they were viewed as parochial.

France in "Someone Is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy"
France was the scene of the fourth crime in which a throne room and antechamber are stolen from Versailles, causing the Space Patrol to delegate Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash to investigate the series of crimes.

France in "Uncle Alf"
France met defeat at the hands of Germany in 1914, when General Alfred von Schlieffen personally oversaw his plan for a two-front war.

In 1929, France was still occupied by the Kaiserreich and quite restive. Sergeant Adolf Hitler was sent to Lille, France to capture communist agitator, Jacques Doriot. He was disgusted by the degraded status of the French, and was quite confident that Germany had done the right thing in occupying the country.