This is the story of an intense and troubled relationship: one of the most intense, most troubled, and most significant of modern times. When our story begins, the French and the British had already had a long and eventful history, and it was already the stuff of legend. The Norman Conquest began a close but fraught connection with the Continent, in which princes and nobles fought for power, wealth and glory throughout the islands and on the mainland, and laid early foundations of national pride, resentment and identity. The struggle peaked in the Hundred Years War (conventionally dated 1328–1453). Legends of cruelty and heroism were created on both sides: the Black Prince, the burghers of Calais, King Harry and the bowmen of Agincourt, the siege of Orléans, and above all the martyred Maid, Jeanne/Joan, burnt by the English in 1431. Her famous injunction to ‘bouter les Anglais hors de France’ (‘kick the English out of France’) was fulfilled in 1453 when the English crown lost its prized possession of Bordeaux (though it still bought the wine). Yet English rule came and went in parts of what is now French territory – Calais, Dunkirk, Corsica – for a long time yet. English and British monarchs continued to describe themselves as kings of France until Napoleon insisted they stop in 1802. Suspicions that they coveted bits of France lingered at least until the First World War. Even now, certain reefs in the Channel can arouse strong feelings. The Scots and the Irish, of course, had a very different relationship, acting on the risky principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. The Franco-Scottish ‘Auld Alliance’ (first concluded in 1295) had a late and deadly flowering in the sixteenth century, in the reign of the half-French Mary, Queen of Scots. Though religious differences complicated matters, later French encouragement of Scottish and Irish resistance to English domination is a recurring element in the first part of this book.
For two centuries after the end of the Hundred Years War, Anglo-French relations mattered less for both sides. The internal and external conflicts caused by the religious turmoil of the Reformation created a new ideological and political world in which France and the British Isles acquired new enemies – variously Spain, Austria and the Dutch Republic. France and the islands were equally racked by bloody religious wars. After the peaceful restoration of Charles II in 1660, French culture gave the tone to London and its court. The three Stuart kingdoms, relatively small and with a newly reinstalled and financially weak monarchy, seemed likely to become satellites of the mighty France of Louis XIV, especially as they shared an enemy, the Dutch Republic. Events, however, took a different and momentous turn in 1688, creating a new era in British and French history, and indeed in that of the world. There our story will begin.
But already we have to pause a moment. We are going to talk about ‘the French’ and ‘the British’. The idea of ‘the French’ seems to pose no problem. They know who they are, and so does everyone else. Yet the boundaries of France, and even the meanings of ‘Frenchness’, are not eternal. That Strasbourg is a French city, and that Brussels and Geneva are not; that Corsicans speak French rather than English; that the French are seen as urbane yet close to the soil, as rebellious and yet respectful of authority; that rugby has as many devotees in Lourdes as in Wigan; that steack-frites is the evocative national dish – all these characteristics, as we shall see in the following pages, owe much to contact with the peoples we will often refer to as ‘the British’. This collective appellation is more of a problem. Some historians believe that the very idea of ‘the British’ was invented in order to fight the French. What were called ‘The Three Kingdoms’ (England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland) became in stages ‘The United Kingdom’ as a direct result of war with France. The fact that vast areas of ‘British’ territory in North America and most of the United Kingdom across the Irish Sea are not now British are also outcomes linked directly or indirectly with the French struggle. What then is the correct term for the lands and peoples north of the Channel? Some writers have suggested ‘the Atlantic archipelago’ or, rather coyly, ‘these islands’. Contemporaries had a variety of terms, including using ‘English’ for everyone – a practice the French generally followed, and often still do. For practical reasons, and because we agree with a recent American historian that ‘it is not always possible to choose the right adjective [because] there is not always a right adjective to choose’,1 we often use ‘British’ and ‘French’, without forgetting that in 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2000 both entities had different boundaries and included different peoples – including many who would have preferred not to belong. Yet this very complication is one sign of how formative the Franco-British relationship was.
This book is not a parallel or a comparative history of France and Britain. It covers only what arises from or affects their mutual contact. That is a great deal: wars, alliances, hatred, coexistence, envy, admiration, emulation – even, sometimes, love. Our account contains all the great historical events that we believe must be there. But we have also included things that we found intriguing, illuminating, or just funny – for this is a story of people, not just of states. We do not always agree, and have included some of our disagreements. We would be delighted if you, in reading this book, were sometimes as surprised, amused, exasperated and moved as we were in writing it.