History of France
Premodern history
Inhabited since the Paleolithic era, the territory of Metropolitan France was settled by Celtic tribes known as Gauls during the Iron Age. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture that laid the foundation of the French language. The Germanic Franks arrived in the fifth century and formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France in 987. Since then, France has seen the rule of different dynasties, eventually leading to the Bourbon dynasty coming into power during the 16th century. By then, France started to establish a burgeoning worldwide colonial empire.
Philippine period (1715-1794)
Rule of Philip VII (1714-1763)
French Succession Crisis of 1714
The unfortunate death of Louis the Great Dauphine, King Louis XIV's eldest son, had caused changes in the French line of succession. Next in line was the Great Dauphine's brother, Philip d'Anjou. Initially having a claim to the throne of Spain, the Spanish had installed Charles III as King. Philip d'Anjou thus retained his right to inherit the French throne.
Upon his father's death in 1714, Philip d'Anjou became King of France, ruling as Philip VII. France under his rule would see an increased resentment against the British and the Austrians, whom he believed had manipulated and strong-armed him out of his right to inherit the Spanish throne. Under his rule, France's colonial ventures in North America were expanded. More settlers were sent to prevent French claimed territory from being absorbed by Britain and the Dutch Republic.
France in the Great Silesian War
Relations with the Prussians
Philip VII also sought closer ties with Prussia, a burgeoning German power that threatened and challenged Austria. In 1748, Prussia's Frederick II had confided to Philip VII about his desire of taking the region of Silesia from the Austrians. Philip VII pledged his support to Frederick II, eventually leading to the Great Silesian War (1750-1755) and the ultimate demise of France and Philip VII's prestige.
Augustine period (1795-1815)
Valentine period (1815-1874)
The Ligurian branch of the Bourbons, known as the House of Bourbon-Grimaldi became the new ruling house of France in 1815. They held the three major titles of Duke of Orléans, Duke of Valentinois, and Prince of Monaco, giving them influence and prowess in court.
Rise to power
In 1733, Princess Louise Hippolyte - the reigning sovereign of Monaco - married the Duke of Orléans, a French noble and decendent of King Louis XIII through his second son Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. He took the throne of Monaco in 1738. Antoine II, Prince of Monaco, greatly developed the family's reputation among the French by spending the majority of his time in Versailles. This would come back to bite him, as he was murdered during the French Revolution in 1795.
His brother, Antoine III, would then presume control of his brother's titles. He begrudgingly cooperated with the Augustinian regime while silently maintaining ties to the traditional French aristocracy. In 1800, his son, the Marquis of Baux Louis Giuseppe married the a legitimate great-great daughter of Louis the Great, fille de France Princess Marie Blanchefleur du Bourbon. Upon Antoine III's death in 1803, the now-Louis III ascended to princedom and dukeship - now with a more senior Bourbon princess at his side. The House of Bourbon-Grimaldi cooperated with Austria, the Palatinate Germans, and the Dutch in order to ultimately oust Augustine Spiga from power in the 1810s.
The Strike at Fountainebleau
From 1809, Louis III made strategic alliances with the Duchess of Joyeuse and members of the French gentry. When Augustine's regime fell to their knees, the Monacan prince hired a disgruntled soldier named Cesar de Thury to murder the Count of Provence, who he saw as a major threat to his planned ascension. On a September afternoon in 1814, the Count of Provence was shot while leaving the Palace of Foutainebleau for Paris. He was then bludgeoned repeatedly in the head and his horse set on fire. The assassin, de Thury, was assaulted by the Count's bodyguards before biting one's finger off. He then promptly escaped but was arrested in Sens.
Chosen as the new dynasty
The Monacan prince, Louis III, reached Paris with his wife before any of the more senior Bourbon heirs had. He then negotiated with ambasors from all of the European Great Powers for several months, before being recognized as the new King of France in 1815. This decision was took when it became clear that King Henri V, the more senior Bourbon monarch in the Americas, had minimal intention of returning to Paris under the current circumstances.
Louis III of Monaco was coronated as Louis XV of France in the June of 1815, choosing Louis as the primary and only regnal name of his line. The the House of Bourbon-Grimaldi was commonly referred to as the Valentine dynasty (French: dynastie Valentinoise, Genoese: dinastîa Valentìn) after one of their ducal titles, the Duke of Valentinois.
Reign of Louis XV
Le Marais Scandal
Independence of Saint-Domingue
Reign of Louis XVI
Colonialism in the Niger Delta
With the collapse of European slave markets in the 1840s, French merchants ventured into the Niger Delta, aiming to enter the palm oil industry. In the following decades, France would appoint a Consul-General to Calabare. The discovery of quinine in the 1850s reduced the risk of lethal disease and allowed French explorers and merchants to expand their colonial interests. In 1858, the Belmont expedition established relations with the principalities of Zazzau and Kano.
Second Republic (1874-1877)
Communard Revolution
New egalitarian ideas compilled into an ideology called communardism rocked France in the 1870s. Coming from France's intellectual circles, the concept of communardism would win over the French public's following and lead to the bloody murder of King Louis in 1873. The heir died shortly after due to a falling accident. With the monarchy rapedly declining in popularity, the radical communard party Société des Amis de la République (often shortened to the Société) occupied the power vacuum. The party leader, Étienne Thévenet, declared the establishment of the Communard Republic of France, espousing hardline communard ideals and rejecting all forms of religion and aristocracy. Thévenet envisions a united Europe that transcends racial and linguistic boundaries, united under the ideals of communardism.
As the first step to achieve this, Thévenet looked to the tiny principality of Belgique to the northeast. Belgique was a pre-dominantly French-speaking Wallonian principality and already had a growing communard movement within. Thévenet supported Belgique's communard insurrection in late 1874 with the French treasury, and the revolution became successful. Belgique was incorporated as a new département of France by Christmas eve of 1874. The Christmas Uprising is a regional holiday in the present-day French sudivision of Belgique.
1877 Coup and British intervention
Great Britain began to grow worried about the new government's success. In 1876, attempts by the Société to spread the revolution to central Europe and the Italian states were made but were stopped by an alliance of European powers led by Austria and Britain. By early 1877, the radical Société des Amis de la République was removed out of power by the Parti Communard de France (PCF), a moderate Communard faction, with the support of Great Britain. The PCF established the 3rd French Republic and sought peaceful coexistence with the British and other European powers. This led to a mending of relations between the British and France.
During the crisis, Great Britain was able to occupy several French possessions in the Caribbean and India. However, the new government was allowed to keep its new département of Belgique, as was the will of the local Walloon populace.
Third Republic la véritable (1877-1908)
Dictatorial period (1908-1938)
While technically the later half of the Third Republic era, Dictatorial France strayed greatly from the republic's original communard values.
The shift towards authoritarianism
Term of President Saunier
In Europe, France's diplomatic situation was precarious. By 1900, they were still friendly and indebted to the British for helping them establish their government in the 1870s. However, constant British intervention in areas of France's sphere of interest started to strain relations. This was further exacerbated when Britain sanctioned and supported the Venetian annexation of the Papal Adriatic in 1908. This catalysed the shift towards an anti-British political climate only a few months before the French National Elections.
In November 1908, Hervé Saunier, a staunch anti-British writer and professor from Paris, was proclaimed as France's new president. Saunier was known as more of a theorist than a statesman, more concerned with the ideological aspects of running France. As such, Saunier often delegated duties and appointed fellow party members to run the government's various institutions, also creating new ones during his tenure.
Rule of Desmarais (1910-1928)
In 1910, Saunier appointed François Desmarais as the Grand Marshal of the French Republican Military. Desmarais was a political ally of Saunier, who previously served as Governor-General of Kampuchea before returning to France in 1909. Saunier believed that a robust military apparatus was required to protect France's republican institutions. Ironically, Desmarais' appointment saw the increase of the military's role in French governance. Desmarais put down political opposition against Saunier or the Communard Party. Intimidation and political coercion were commonplace throughout the 1910s. During the 1914 elections, Hervé Saunier was reelected to the presidency, but his victory was widely contested. It was widely believed that Desmarais had intimidated his opponents and the tallying committee to secure his power. Regardless of this, Desmarais' was still widely popular among the public.
In 1919, Desmarais and Saunier had a feud over Desmarais' increasing influence. Shortly after this falling out, Desmarais founded Le Avant Garde, a political alliance consisting of anti-British, pro-military nationalists. The political tensions culminated in a coup d'etat staged by Desmarais and the army on September 2, 1919, only a year before the next elections. Desmarais abolished the presidency. Desmarais' popularity with the French people gave him his legitimacy to rule. He would lead as the Grand Marshal of France until his ultimate demise in 1928.
Raspberry Rule (1928-1939)
Before his death, he appointed Camille Laframboise, a military general and political ally of Desmarais, to succeed him as Grand Marshal. Camille Laframboise's domestic policies proved to be harsher than his predecessor, alienating some supporters of Le Avant Garde. Despite this, he was still moderately popular among the communards of France.
He was known to be more diplomatically-minded than Desmarais. Under his rule, France warmed relations with Austria due to the common threat of British influence in the European mainland (primarily Italy). Laframboise was known to the west as Le Maréchal; he and his strongman persona was commonly a subject of political mockery and caricature in British and Italian spheres of influence.
The Great War
Remise de L'État (1938-1950)
Occupation of France (1938-1944)
After the defeat of the Tripartite Coalition, the French state was jointly occupied by the Netherlands, Rhineland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. The states of Arpitania and Piedmont were liberated their government were reorganized under the oversight of the British, while Lombardy's lost Alpine territories were returned.
In the closing of the Great War, Grand Marshal Camille Laframboise was murdered during the Battle of Paris. The First Auxerre Convention in early 1939 formally disestablished the French Communard Republic.
The four occupying powers had different objectives and motivations in their occupation of France. The Netherlands and Rhineland went on a policy of dismantling French industry and hauling the means of production back to their country, drastically stammering the industrial output in their occupation zones. The British focused on political rather than economic goals, putting in place measures to decrease the influence of communardism, and propping up local administrative leaders that were aligned to the British. The Portuguese had a more passive policy, which focused on the rebuilding and repairing of France.
All occupying powers, however, agreed to eventually unify France under a single government, and they did so in 1941, formally ending the occupation of France. However, the former occupying nations still had a huge military presence in the country until 1944. Henri Dormoy, a supporter of the Cordial League, was appointed to the presidency of France.
Fourth French Republic
1944 Elections
In the 1944 elections, Dormoy was re-affirmed as the nation's president, narrowly beating his opponent. He supported and continued the efforts of the British to curb the influence of communardism. Along with this, he restored freedom of speech in France and granted clemency to former political prisoners who were arrested during Laframboise's dictatorial regime. The ban on National Republicanism in France was lifted in 1946. Despite these efforts, Dormoy was later known in history to be a weak and indecisive leader, contributing to France's political instability during the 1940s and 1950s.
Cavendish Affair (1945) & Monarchism in France
In 1945, a conspiracy led by elites to restore monarchism in France was uncovered. Several bankers, clergymen, and other elites had conspired to orchestrate a coup d’etat in Paris, with the ultimate goal of abolishing the newly independent Fourth Republic of France and restoring a Capetian dynasty to power in France. The scandal also implicated elites from outside France, including the Banks of England, of Saint-George, and Providence, and also involved high-ranking politicians from New France, Genoa, and Britain (most notably William Cavendish, prime minister of Britain at the time). The conspiracy proved to be unsuccessful, but lived on to be one of the most highly-publicized international scandals.
The 1949 elections and the rise of the National Republican Party
The discovery of the Cavendish scandal paved the way for the disenfranchisement of the French people towards Britain and its allies. National Republicanism grew even more popular within the population as a result. By 1948, the National Republican Party of France (French: Parti National Républicain de France; PNRF) had a huge following, mostly within the younger generation in the urban centers of France. In the 1949 elections, National-Republican candidate Jean-Jacques Caillat was elected as president of France. Caillat declared himself to be a moderate National Republican, but held suspicions against Great Britain. This drew ire from Britain, and it was not long before Britain decided to intervene.
Return to dictatorship (1950-19xx)
Charenton coup d’état (1950) and military dictatorship
Merely months after the national republican victory in the 1949 French elections, military leader and decorated war hero Fulgence Morel has overthrown the French state in the Charenton coup d’état. Morel, a man intent on dismantling the post-war status quo, accused the national republicans of rigging the election and possessing illicit ties to the Russian government. Morel’s triumph spelled the end of Russian influence in France and the beginning of a hostile, conservative policy against national republicanism. In December 1950, Great Britain formally recognized Morel's rule over France. Morel would undisputedly rule over France for nearly a decade, and the legacy of his coup of the Fourth Republic would dominate the politics of the nation. In the 1950s, things started to change and soon calls for democracy came to a head in the later half of the decade, Great Britain pressured Morel to step down and conduct elections in 1960. However, the elections were marred with electoral fraud, leading to the election of Morel's right-hand man, François Deveraux, as the president of France. The dictatorial political climate of France did not change after the 1960 elections, and Morel still served an important role in the government as the Minister of the Interior.
