I have a better opinion of the Germans than a bad one, but at the same time I cannot help but recognize one (and very large) flaw in them - there are too many of them.
The British are arrogant, the Americans strive to dominate, the Germans are sadistic, the Italians are elusive, the Russians are inscrutable, the Swiss are Swiss. Only the French are amazingly nice. And they are offended.
Pierre Daninos, "The Notes of Major Thompson"
Special hypostasis political myths– myths about the peoples who became your competitors.
Until the middle of the 19th century, in France and England, Germans were considered sentimental romantics who knew how to work well, but, believe it or not, were bad at counting money, and adored families with countless babies, Tyrolean songs and pets.
In the 1860s, it “suddenly” became clear that Germany produced goods best quality than French or English. A competitor appeared, and this caused concern. The sweetest good-natured people with straws in their mouths and beer bellies began to seem not so harmless and cute. In French newspapers, the Germans began to be portrayed as cruel and arrogant, sneaky and greedy.
Jules Verne has a character, a German professor, who is portrayed in a very comedic and unattractive way. Slurping, he devours whole mountains of sauerkraut with sausages, washes it down with lakes of beer, and then sits down to write the article “Why modern French people show signs of degeneration.”
Prussia sought to unite Germany, and France did its best to prevent this, not wanting to lose hegemony in continental Europe, which, in fact, caused the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. It turned out that Prussia mobilized an army twice as large as the French one, and did it in half the time.
Prussian steel rifled guns fired further and more accurately than the old French ones.
Prussian army It was better managed, better supplied and fought incomparably better.
From August 1870 to April 1871 German army completely defeated the French and occupied Paris.
As a result, France ceded Alsace and Lorraine to Prussia and paid a huge indemnity of 5 billion gold francs.
In general, it would be difficult to expect positive attitude French to the Germans of that time, especially if you remember how they behaved during victorious war, which ended, as we know, Paris Commune. The Prussian commander, Bismarck, believed that by not shooting all the prisoners at once - and this is almost a quote - the German army was showing amazing philanthropy. The Germans behaved completely shamelessly in the occupied territory - although, of course, they were far from the Nazis in Russia. It was considered the norm when for every person killed in the rear German soldier they shot one hundred French civilian hostages.
After these events, the black myth of Germany finally became part of the politics of Great Britain and France. Long before the First World War, the image of a German – greedy, stupid, poorly educated, disgusting in all respects – never left the pages of newspapers in these countries.
So what if the level of education and general culture in Germany was higher than English and French? That Germany was the Land of Universities? That German science led the world? The "average" Frenchman and Englishman might well not know this. And propaganda purposefully did its job: it formed the image of a stupid and ignorant enemy.
The Germans were presented as militarists, eager for war with the whole world, nationalists and racists. In the article “The German Dream,” the Times newspaper depicted the “eternal dream” of the Germans to conquer all of Europe. The newspaper reminded that already in early Middle Ages Germanic tribes conquered the British Isles. So their descendants are coming here again...
This is far from historical truth. And the English themselves are descendants not so much of the Britons as of the Germanic tribes of the Angles and Saxons, who even gave their name to their country and people. And the Germans did not at all share the militaristic aspirations of the Prussian government.
In the diaries of V.I. Vernadsky there is a charming description of how in Göttingen a certain young man from the land of the Palatinate showed him, Vernadsky, all kinds of contempt, behaved cockily and insolently.
“Is it really because I’m Russian?!” – Vladimir Ivanovich couldn’t help but think. The next day the offender came to apologize and behaved extremely embarrassed. “Sorry, for God’s sake,” the young man made excuses to his Russian colleague. “I was misled... I was told that you are from Prussia...” So being a Prussian in Germany was not a compliment at all.
For many Germans, united with Prussia “by sword and blood,” Prussia became a symbol of primitivism, a willingness not to negotiate, but to yell. Solve problems with your fist, not with persuasion.
But what does propaganda have to do with that? All of Germany was identified with Prussia. All Germans were credited with a tender love for the barracks, drill, boots and swearing. Every German was portrayed as an evil, narrow-minded sadist.
By the way, about conquests: it was in the second half of the 19th century that the colonial empires France and England.
You can describe for a long time how the colonialists committed outrages in them - and these were not Germans at all. But it was the Germans who were credited with monstrous cruelty.
During the First World War, British intelligence created a myth that the Germans were eating Belgian children. Naturally they eat, well, they have nothing to eat in the trenches, they catch children.
British journalists wrote that the Germans have a special plant where they process the corpses of enemy soldiers into glycerin, preferring the French and British. There were even witnesses.
The black myths about Germany weakened only in the 1960s, and for a reason that was also political: Germany ceased to be a competitor and became a strategic partner.
In this section I will briefly outline the current, generally accepted understanding of the Hundred Years' War, in order to save the uninformed reader from having to look for this information on his own.
First of all, it must be said that school ideas about the Hundred Years' War as war between England and France which lasted a whole century - these ideas are untenable.
The centuries-old confrontation between England and France is not limited to chronologically The Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) does not boil down to the confrontation between the Plantagenets and the Valois and, ultimately, is not a war between England and France alone. In essence, it was a global pan-European conflict that lasted about three hundred years, which was many countries are involved, and which could well be called a “world war” if it were not still limited to the framework of Europe alone.
Quarrels between England and France began in the 12th century. This was an inevitable consequence of the fact that the Duke of Normandy, a vassal of the King of France, having captured England and becoming its king, remained a vassal of the King of France as the owner of his fiefdom on its territory. So to speak, two in one: on the Island I am sovereign and king, and on the mainland I am a vassal. Such an ambiguous and tense situation could not but lead to conflicts.
And this situation was given a special piquancy by the fact that this vassal owned an indecently A LOT of land.
It turned out like this.
The very origin of Henry (1154-1189, ancestor of the Plantagenets) seemed to symbolize the unification of the British Isles and continental possessions. His mother Matilda came from the Norman dynasty, she was the granddaughter of William the Conqueror. Henry II's father was a French count from the Anjou family. Moreover, in 1152, not yet being English king, Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine Guillaume de Poitiers, who brought him as a dowry huge possessions in the south-west of France - Aquitaine... Thus, approximately half of the French lands came under the rule of the English crown: all of the western part of them, except for an independent duchy on the Brittany peninsula.
The destinies of the two royal houses were closely and intricately intertwined. A particularly alarming note was added to this family-feudal cataclysm by the fact that Duchess Alienor of Aquitaine was not only recognized as the first beauty of the time Western Europe and the richest bride, but also the divorced wife of the French king from the Capetian house, Louis VII (1137-1180).
Of course, all of Europe knew that the initiator of the divorce was Louis VII... Divorce in the 12th century. in a Catholic country was a difficult matter, but the offended husband obtained permission from the Pope to dissolve the marriage (and therefore to lose the huge rich estates in the southwest, which belonged to Alienor by inheritance and were several times larger than the personal possessions of the French king).
"About half of the French lands"! Agree that this is not such a trifle, disputes around which can be settled without resorting to military conflicts. So the war between the Plantagenets and the Capetians was inevitable, and its beginning was only a matter of time. And as soon as France had a small problem with the succession to the throne (the Valois came to replace the Capetians), the Plantagenets immediately declared their rights.
Let me note in passing that the English nobility spoke French. This must be well understood in order to imagine the situation: the English aristocrats of that era are the French who conquered England. English was spoken by the common people in England. From this point of view Hundred Years' War- this is a chain of showdowns between French aristocrats. The lads who remained on the continent wrested the land from the lads, who relocated to the Island. The islanders tried to protest, but ultimately lost miserably and sailed away offended. Here Short story The Hundred Years' War, in a nutshell and without peeking behind the scenes.
I’m not making any discovery here; historians have long understood all this.
However real picture, of course, a little more complicated. Firstly, it is important for us that not only the English Plantagenets fought with the French Valois and Capetians. Many people took part in the case European states, almost half of Europe.
First of all, throughout all the centuries of the Anglo-French confrontation, Scotland was France's ally on the Island. As soon as the British resumed fighting against the French, as they were stabbed in the back from the north. And it wasn't coincidence. There was a military treaty between the kings of Scotland and France, which was constantly renewed.
Natalia Basovskaya: The Hundred Years' War. Leopard vs lily
The reasons for Scotland's position are absolutely clear. The relatively great successes of centralization in England led to the fact that feudal expansion became characteristic feature its policies are somewhat earlier than in other countries. The first targets of the expansionist aspirations of the English feudal lords under Henry II were England's closest neighbors: Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. In the middle of the 12th century. part of Wales lost its independence in the 70s. Colonization of Ireland began. In the British Isles, only Scotland maintained its territorial integrity and actively resisted the advance of the English monarchy. In the struggle for independence, she naturally turned to seeking outside support. This coincided with the interests of the French monarchy, which needed support in the inevitably upcoming struggle with the Plantagenets.
In April 1173, the French king and the Earl of Flanders invaded Normandy, and the Scottish army began a war in the north of England... This marked the beginning of a long and difficult political struggle, in which the Kingdom of Scotland and the County of Flanders were to play a prominent role...
Step by step, France wrested from England the bulk of its continental possessions. If in 1176 the king of England belonged good half France (and not just half, but the best half in a climatic sense), then after the war of 1204-1208, only Gascony (the same homeland of the famous D'Artagnan) remained with England on the mainland.
Natalia Basovskaya: The Hundred Years' War. Leopard vs Lily:
In 1204, Alienor of Aquitaine died, the Castilian king Alfonso VIII immediately sent troops into Gascony, which, according to the treaty thirty-five years ago, was supposed to go to Castile as a dowry for the daughter of Henry II. Essentially, Castile took part in the war on the side of France... Through great effort, John managed to drive the Castilian garrisons out of Gascony. Decisive role The Gascon cities played a role in this, firmly linking their trading interests with England. It first appeared here great value growing Anglo-Gascon economic ties in the political fate of the French southwest. Just like the experience of military-political rapprochement between France and Castile, this factor became one of the most important in Anglo-French relations somewhat later - approximately from the middle of the 13th century.
Strictly speaking, it is not very clear why all these events are not attributed to the battles of the Hundred Years' War. At a superficial glance, they are practically no different from the events of 1337-1453, which are their logical continuation.
After all, what happened? Just in mid-XIV and in the first half of the 15th century, the aristocratic group of the Plantagenets tried to take revenge by recapturing from the aristocratic group of Valois the lands that had been squeezed out of them in early XIII century. Both times they initially had absolutely stunning success, and then suffered an equally crushing defeat. Ultimately, England lost the Hundred Years' War, eventually losing all its lands on the continent, including Gascony.
And after his crushing defeat on the continent of England and on her island she experienced bloody feud, known to everyone as “The War of the Scarlet and White Roses.” In form, the War of the Roses was dynastic struggle between the divided branches of the Plantagenet dynasty - Lancaster (Scarlet Rose) and York ( White Rose).
If you understand the internal logic of the War of the Roses, it becomes obvious that in this civil war the parties were clearly divided into the “party of peace” (Scarlet Rose) and the “party of war” (White Rose). The "Whites" (Yorks) were dissatisfied with the recent defeat in the Hundred Years' War and persistently demanded that the banquet be continued. “Whites” were the attacking side in this civil war, striving for power. They temporarily gained power, but soon lost it again.
There is an interesting historical fact, that when the “Whites” had to flee England, they fled to Burgundy, which then included Flanders. Flanders is what is now Belgium and parts of the Netherlands. We will have to talk specifically about Flanders and its role in the Hundred Years' War, because it is very large. Throughout the Hundred Years' War, Scotland always fought on the side of France, and Flanders always fought on the side of England.
The “Scarlet” (Lancasters) at the time when they suffered defeats and had to flee, fled either to France or to Scotland. That is, the friends and enemies were the same, it was just that the war moved from the international stage to the civil stage.
Roughly speaking, the “Scarlet” were at that time on the side of France (“the peace party”), and the “White” were on the side of England (“the war party”).
Friendship in the person of Henry VII(Tudor), Earl of Richmond. During the coups and civil strife, both warring houses were generally mutually exterminated. And Henry Tudor could consider himself the dynastic heir of the Lancastrians (according to female line), but his wife was from York. However, at the same time, Henry Tudor arrived English soil, naturally, from France, which became the final winner in this tedious three-century litigation. So everything worked out just fine in the best possible way(for France).
last fight happened in 1485, when the last York, Richard III, glorified by Shakespeare in the drama of the same name as the greatest villain, was killed in battle, and the winner, Henry Tudor, was right there on the battlefield, and took upon himself the crown of England, which had been knocked off the villain’s head.
This, in fact, was the end of all the showdowns between the Valois and the Plantagenets due to the final extermination of the latter.
Thus, the real chronological boundaries of the Hundred Years' War should be considered the years 1204-1485, it should be called Tercentenary, and the general historical meaning can be defined as extrusion families hostile to the French house of Valois the French Plantagenets, the masters of England - squeezing them out as from the continent, so from life in general . This was achieved in full during the “War of the Roses”. As a result of all these three-century adventures, the actual protege of France, Henry Tudor, eventually sat on the English throne. This is what happened on historical scene, in short.
But with this formulation of the question, the picture turns out to be very sad for the patriot of England, because historians, speaking about this conflict, for the most part do not talk about the events of 1204-1485 as a whole, but limit themselves to only one century, calling only the era of 1337-1453 the Hundred Years War , during which England twice very, very decisively and successfully snapped back. So decisively and so successfully that she was on the verge of victory, and even the very continued existence of France as a state independent of England was twice in doubt.
After all, the last Lancaster, Henry VI, English king, was completely crowned in Paris as the King of France. Subsequently, along the way civil war was killed by the Whites (Yorks) in the Tower.
This is very curious historical figure. In his fate all the threads of the Hundred Years War are intertwined, all its tragic opposites are combined - and greatest triumph England in Paris and the deepest fall in its history, colorfully called the “War of the Scarlet and White Roses.”
This is the historical scene.
Now let’s try, if possible, to look behind the scenes of all these events.
Not trusting the Anglo-Saxons, William built castles in the main cities of the counties, demolishing residential and commercial buildings. The population of the cities fell after the conquest of England, and 20 years after the coronation of William the Conqueror, many houses in the cities stood empty. With the reduction in the number of inhabitants, Wilhelm imposed such high taxes on the cities that each resident paid as much as the whole city in the time of Edward the Confessor. For the safety of his regime, Wilhelm major cities created separate colonies of Frenchmen, who apparently did not pay rent and whose presence was met hostility Anglo-Saxons. French colonies The townspeople had their own courts, they were exempt from paying taxes obligatory for the Anglo-Saxons, and they had their own rules, especially the right of inheritance. Royal Court and the barons spoke only French, only French customs were taken into account.
To a large extent, William the Conqueror took all these precautions because he himself did not live in England permanently. His main concern was Normandy, where he continued to be duke and had powerful neighbors. But the main thing is that the Anglo-Saxons still had strong tribal remnants even until the 12th century. there was a custom of blood feud. One can imagine what the attitude of the Anglo-Saxons was towards the conquerors after the bloody massacre in Yorkshire. It is captured in the folk epic about Robin Hood - the legendary robber, fighter against the Norman invaders, chieftain of the forest freemen, consisting of ruined yeoman peasants, i.e. Anglo-Saxons. Robin Hood robbed only the rich, barons, officials, monks, i.e. Normans. He was a faithful defender of the poor, that is, the Anglo-Saxons. According to legend, Robin Hood lived in the 12th-13th centuries, that is, his appearance dates back to the time when the Norman dynasty ended and the baronial unrest of 1135-1153 began. and in England there were many “free forest shooters” (from a bow), to which Robin Hood belonged. It is impossible not to take into account that the first set of poetic legends about him was published only in 1495 and the legend could distort the dates. One thing is important: the people imprinted in their memory hatred of the enslavers.
We, the French and the English, sometimes quarrel like cousins, but we still respect and understand each other. About some stronger ones negative emotions such as hatred is out of the question at all. The English are our neighbors, although yes, they call us “frogs”, and we call them “roast beef”, there is nothing negative in these nicknames now. We're like " best enemies“, so to speak, we respect each other in a strange way, although in the history of our relations there was a lot of hatred, enmity, and mistrust.
The British are our comrades in the European Union, like any other representatives of European countries.
Although last year England voted for Brexit Brexit (a neologism formed from two words Britain (translated from English “Britain”) and exit (translated from English “exit”)), separation from the European Union, which means moving away from France in including. But this is their choice, the future will show whether they made the right choice...
Personally, I feel more in common between us, the French and the English, than, for example, between the French and the Spaniards... There was a lot of hostility between our peoples in the past, in the present we cannot be indifferent to each other as a nation. The former antagonism has turned into good neighborly relations. Yes, in the past England wanted to conquer France and it succeeded in many ways, but we survived... A few centuries ago we had different cultural codes, but now general history, even the Hundred Years' War, which unites us in something more than with other representatives European Union.
Problems in relationships there are very, very old. I'll try to make it simpler and shorter.
They began with the fact that in 1066 AD, Duke William of Normandy landed on british isle and having won several colorful and not so colorful victories (the most famous and largest - immediately at Hastings) by 1075 he subjugated England. Thus the English royal dynasty turned out to be quite decent holdings in France. Over time, these possessions only expanded. And at some point (more precisely, to early XIV century) it turned out that the English king Edward III had more lands in France than belonged to the new French king Philip IV, which only strengthened his claims to the French throne itself (after all, in addition to this, he was in direct kinship with the former French king).
The result was the Hundred Years' War, in which the invading British initially had a fairly significant lead, but which was ultimately won by France (instructively, primarily due to technical superiority). As a result, peace was concluded, England lost almost all of its possessions on the continent and claims to the throne were forgotten.
The conflict was resolved for about a hundred years. But at the end of the first quarter of the 16th century the English king Henry VIII started a church reformation in his kingdom and Catholic France was not slow to respond to the “oppression of brothers in faith,” starting a whole series of religious wars.
Then there were more conflicts and full-fledged wars for colonies in Africa and the New World (France took a fairly significant part, for example, in the American War of Independence), then Napoleonic ones.
In fact, for the first time as military allies (except Crusades) England and France acted only in the middle of the 19th century, defending Turkey from the claims Russian Emperor Nicholas I to the Balkan Principalities and Istanbul (the conflict is better known as Crimean War). Since then, there have been no significant conflicts between the countries.
The conflict was due to the fact that England wanted to conquer France, there were bloody military actions, the Hundred Years' War...
I don’t remember any special jokes about mutual hostility now, but the British call us “frogs.” Well, actually we French are the only ones in all of Europe who eat frogs, the English find it very strange and disgusting. I myself, however, have never eaten frogs...
Why do the French eat frogs? According to the most common version, since the Hundred Years' War with England, there was a catastrophic shortage of food in the country, and the starving French began to eat frogs and grape snails. There is another version that poor French peasants began to eat frogs in the 11th century to get around the ban. catholic church on eating meat during Lent. But it is also connected with an ancient culinary tradition... For example, in the city of Vittel, every year at the end of April, “La Foire aux Grenouilles” (translated from French: The Frog Fair) is held, where you can try various recipes for frog thighs. Here is the official website of the fair:
We call the English “roast beef” because in the 1970s they cooked and ate only roast beef, and the French made fun of such culinary monotony. But this is not the only reason why such a nickname stuck to them: as you know, the skin of the British very quickly turns red in the sun and becomes really the color of roast beef. I think it's because their skin is very, very white and can't stand the slightest sun. And also during the Napoleonic warriors in the 19th century, the British wore red military uniform and therefore, since those times, they have had a new nickname “lobsters”.
The relations between the two peoples in the present are quite neighborly and friendly; nothing remains of the former enmity. Our military confrontation is long in the past. In addition, do not forget that during the last two world wars we were allies, we fought together against Nazi Germany.