Isabelle Tombs - That Sweet Enemy: The British and the French from the Sun King to the Present

The French and the British from the
Sun King to the Present

Robert and Isabelle Tombs

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Published in the United Kingdom in 2006 by William Heinemann

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Copyright Robert and Isabelle Tombs, 2006

Robert and Isabelle Tombs have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 434 00867 2
ISBN 13: 978 0 434 00867 4 (from January 2007)

BLOWING BUBBLES

The Whale and the Elephant

Back from the Brink: Towards a New Entente Cordiale , 19024

THE TUNNEL: BOWING TO PROVIDENCE

HIGHER, FASTER, DEARER: THE CONCORDE COMPLEX

Part IV: Conclusions and Disagreements

To our late fathers, Denis and Joseph: once comrades in arms
without knowing it.

To our mothers, Kathleen and Yvonne,
who ignore the Channel.

About the authors Robert and Isabelle Tombs

From Blenheim and Waterloo to Up Yours, Delors and Hop Off You Frogs, the cross-Channel relationship has been one of rivalry, misapprehension and suspicion, even of loathing. But it has also been a relationship of envy, admiration and even affection. Before 1815, France and Britain were traditional enemies, with open warfare between the two a constant occurrence. Yet at the same time, anglophilia has been as much a French tradition as anglophobia, and francophilia as much a British tradition as francophobia. In the nearly two centuries since the final defeat of Napoleon, while France and Britain have not fought on opposing sides and have spent much of that time as allies, that alliance has been almost as uneasy, as competitive and as ambivalent as the generations of warfare. Their rivalry, both in peace and war, as enemies and as allies, for good and ill has shaped the modern world, from North America to India in the eighteenth century, in Africa, the Middle East and SE Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it is still shaping Europe today. Robert and Isabelle Tombs magisterial book, by turns provocative and delightful, stimulating and witty, always fascinating, tells the rich and complex story of the relationship over three centuries, from the beginning of their great struggle for mastery in 1688 during the reign of Louis XIV, to the second Iraq War and the latest enlargement of the EU. Rich both in information and ideas, it tells of wars and battles, ententes and alliances, but also of food, fashion, sport, literature, sex and music. Its cast ranges from William and Mary to Tony Blair, from Voltaire to Eric Cantona, from Major Thompson to Nicole and Papa, its sources from ambassadorial dispatches to police reports, from works of philosophy to tabloid newspapers, from memoirs and guidebooks to cartoons and films.

Britain and France have fought many times, whether in British victories such as Blenheim (better remembered in Britain) or French victories such as the battle of Fontenoy (better remembered in France). They have fought alongside each other victoriously as at the Alma and the Marne - and have shared disaster as at Gallipoli and the Somme and on occasion both at Dunkirk. And they have quarrelled as allies, whether during WWI and WWII or over their long contest to further their widely different intentions for the EU. Their collaborations off the battlefield and away from politics have been equally varied from the first railways to Concorde and Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkins Je taime. Moi non plus.

That Sweet Enemy is itself a product of Anglo-French cooperation and occasional inevitable dissension. Robert Tombs and Isabelle Tombs (ne Bussy) met as students in Paris and live in Cambridge. Their book brings both British humour and Gallic panache to the story of their two countries, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, in triumph and in defeat, in dominance and in decline. The result is a triumph, which will appeal not only to scholars of history, language and culture but equally to admirers of Voltaire and Peter Mayle, of Dickens and Francois Truffaut, and fascinate all cross-Channel travellers, whether armchair or actual.

Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance
Guided so well, that I obtained the prize,
Both by the judgment of the English eyes,
And of some sent from that sweet enemy, France;
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance,
Town folk my strength; a daintier judge applies
His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise;
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance;
Others, because from both sides I do take
My blood from them that do excel in this,
Think Nature me a man at arms did make.
How far they shoot awry! the true cause is,

Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face

Sent forth her beams, which made so fair a race.

Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella , Sonnet XLI, 1591

Mallary. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland.

Farewell!, 1793 (etching), James Gillray,/ Courtesy of the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford;/Bridgeman Art Library.

Documents from the Royal Archives are quoted by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen.

The generosity of the Leverhulme Trust made possible an indispensable years sabbatical leave, which colleagues in the History Faculty and St Johns College, Cambridge, kindly supported.

One of the great pleasures of writing this book has been the number not only of friends, colleagues and acquaintances, but of people we have never met, who have given generously of their advice, knowledge and time. Our greatest thanks go to those who have been willing to read and comment in detail on substantial extracts: David A. Bell, Steven Englund, M.R.D. Foot, Iain Hamilton, Robin Harris, Dick Holt, John Keiger, Charles-Edouard Levillain, John Morrill, Helen Parr (who also allowed us a preview of her recent book), Simon Prince, Jean-Louis Six, John Ranelagh, Dennis Showalter, and three fellows of St Johns, Sylvana Tomaselli, Bee Wilson and John Harris.