France



""Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France."

-- Charles de Gaulle

Translation: "All my life I have had a certain idea of France.""

""Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity)"

- The French Republic's motto

The French Republic and its predecessors.


 * Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys (a common stereotype)
 * French Films
 * French Literature
 * Useful Notes/Les Grandes Ecoles
 * Snails and So On

Geography
 * The City of Light (Paris)
 * Le Métropolitain (Paris's transit system)
 * Departemental Issues (Administrative divisions of France)

History and Politics
 * Le Cops Sportif (French police)
 * L Etat Cest Moi (Louis XIV and the other Louises)
 * The French Revolution
 * Vive La Revolution (timeline of the Revolution)
 * Napoleon Bonaparte ('cause The Napoleon is a different trope)
 * The French Colonial Empire
 * French Political System
 * Gauls With Grenades
 * The Ultimate Resistance (French nuclear weapons)
 * World War I
 * World War II
 * La Résistance
 * Les Collaborateurs

the French national anthem
"Allons enfants de la patrie

Le jour de gloire est arrivé

Contre nous, de la tyrannie

L'étendard sanglant est levé (bis)

Entendez-vous dans les campagnes

Mugir ces féroces soldats

Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras

Égorger vos fils et vos compagnes"

"Aux armes, citoyens

Formez vos bataillons

Marchons, marchons

Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons"

--

"Let us go, children of the motherland

The day of glory has come

Against us the tyranny

Has raised its bloody standard (bis)

Can you hear in the countries

These ferocious soldiers bellowing

They come into your arms

And cut your sons and wives' throats"

"To arms, citizens

Form your batallions

Let us march, let us march

So that an impure blood flows in our furrows"

It was written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle as a military song during the 1792 war against European royalist forces. The "impure blood" is a topic of contreversy: one interpretation is that it designates the blood of the patriots who sacrifice themselves for freedom, opposed to the self-proclaimed "pure blood" of the nobles. Another, opposite one, is that it is the blood of the enemy.

This is the first verse of seven (in the final version). Rest assured: they are all equally violent.