How France Was Born

 

Ahh, France. We owe so much to that culture. 

For example, we owe croissants to the French. Croissants! Try to pronounce that word correctly. Try it again. With a French accent, please! No cheating, I can see you! If, after trying this 3-5 times, you still don't feel like eating a croissant right now, then you're not a human. You're probably an android or something! Have a doctor examine you, just in case, to make sure you're a human being.

We owe Iznogood to them.

Izno... what?

Sorry, I forgot I'm probably the only person on the planet who reads that series. Never mind!

But how did that fascinating civilization come into being?

Remember Celts? Those interesting people we extensively talked about HERE? Well, during the 6th century BC, one of those tribes, the Gauls, began inhabiting the region nowadays known as France, pestering Ionian Greek settlers who had in the meantime founded Massalia, the first organized French city.

As you all know (after all, I guess that, as opposed to Iznogood, Asterix is a series read by everyone), Gaul was eventually conquered by the Romans. But don't think that everything is black and white. Don't think that the Romans were just a mob who woke up one morning and decided to go and ruin the lives of the sweet, innocent Gauls who were minding their own business singing along with birds in the sunshine.

But, Asterix says the Romans were the bad guys and...

Asterix was written by French guys, honeys. What did you expect? In war, everyone believes that their nation is right.

The truth is that, by the time Julius Caesar had fully subjugated the land in 52 BC, by suppressing the revolt of the Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix (yeah, stupid spell checker, I know this does not exist in your dictionary; stop underlining), the Gauls and the Romans had been at each other's throats for centuries.

In 390 BC, Aruns, a guy from Clusium, who had grown bitter because his wife had decided that the Prince of Clusium fucked her better than he did, went to Gaul to sell products and whine about his adulterous wife while he was at it.

And even though the Gauls were not good enough at psychology to offer Aruns some proper counselling, they were exceptional fighters nonetheless. So they went like, 'Why not go to that city and kick some butt?'

The Romans sent ambassadors to help the Clusians (how nice of them!). However, Quintus Fabius, one of the ambassadors, who was presumably a little hot headed, killed a Gallic leader. One thing led to the other and the Gauls attacked Rome.

The Gauls won. Moreover, pretty easily. In fact, so easily that even they were dumbfounded by how easily they had pulled it off. (If only it was that easy for me to turn my novels on Amazon into best sellers!😔) Luckily for the Romans, the Gauls left them alone when the former paid the latter a ransom.

Anyway, as we said above, the Romans finally conquered the land during the 2nd-1st centuries BC. Gaul remained a Roman province until the 5th century AD, when it started being invaded by Germanic tribes, mainly Franks. Yeah, you guessed right, those were the people France was named after.

Croissant! Speak it again, honeys!

 

At first, the Franks founded several kingdoms. Until they were united under King Clovis I. That guy declared that he would become a Christian if he won against the Visigoths. Jesus did him the favor and Clovis won. The monarch kept his word and was baptized in 508. (Speaking of which, I wonder whether it will work if I declare I'll become a Christian if Ariana Grande knocks on my door and begs me to marry her. Should I give it a shot, folks? I mean, it worked for Clovis...)

After Clovises death, for centuries, Francia (the Kingdom of the Franks) was constantly divided and reunited, due to bickering between heirs. And while the aforementioned heirs were too busy bickering and watching porn, powerful dignitaries called mayors of the palace assumed true power.

In 751, one of those mayors, Pepin the Short, decided to overthrow the worthless Merovingian dynasty and officially become what, in essence, he already was: a king. 

Pepin's son, Charlemagne, expanded his territories into a vast empire. But that's another story!

Charlemagne was succeeded by his son, Louis I (aka Louis the Pious). Judging by how many kings of this name ruled France over the centuries, I guess that French queens had a fetish for naming their children Louis. I'm pretty sure that, when, during sex, the respective king wanted to make his spouse cum, he yelled something like, 'If you have a son, we will christen him Louis.' And then, the respective queen would go like, 'YES, I'M CUMMING!'

After Louises death, in 840, his three sons engaged into warfare for quite a long time, each of them wanting the vast Carolingian Empire all to himself. After endless bickering, they realized that there were enough lands for everyone to be happy, so they shared the empire with the Treaty of Verdun (843). (-Moral 1: What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end. -Moral 2: Sharing is caring.)

The lands that Charles the Bald received constituted the Kingdom of France. And so, the story of that kingdom begins... next time!

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See you next time!