False Sense of Security Fail: The Maginot Line

I think this link does a fine job of prefacing this post. (see here for an explanation of that if you're curious).

The Maginot Line brings us to one of the most embarrassing events in France's history. It's quite understandable, however, why they would gear up for WWII in such a dramatically dorky fashion. The interim war period of 1919-1939 was rightfully nicknamed the Age of Anxiety, as the promises of the political leaders of the time weren't coming true. Mentally and physically scarred soldiers returned home to find that the goals they thought they were fighting for were had been exaggerated and dramatized. As the scores of worksheets that AP Euro students have to fill out will tell you, Woodrow Wilson's description of World War I as a war "against militarism and absolutism" had started to wear off, and disillusionment was all over the freakin place. In France's case, this uncertainty wasn't only held by citizens. The promises of protection and alliances that the US and Great Britain had made to France weren't being kept, and every government official in France was shakin in his or her little trendy French outfit. After some panicked treaties with Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia between 1921 and 1927, France had done little to calm itself down.

So they decided to hide. Under ground. With a bunch of big forts and guns and stuff above them for protection. Embracing the outdated trench warfare tactics of WWI, they built a pretty hefty set of defenses along the French/German border, curled up into a ball, covered their ears, and waited for all the scaredy-ness to go away. A False Sense of Security Fail was surely in their midst. They didn't bother fortifying the Ardennes Forest, which was an open path into France just north of the Maginot Line, because it was impenetrable. Completely and totally impenetrable, I promise. By this point, Hitler had become the butt head that we all remember him for being, and he had different plans for this lovely forest. To keep the French busy in their little hide and seek game, he sent a decoy force to the attack the Line head on. Then, a second force skipped on through the Ardennes Forest while third a went through Belgium and the Netherlands en route to France. Less than 4 weeks later (on June 14 1940), Paris had fallen. Shucks. Then, 12 days later, France completely checked out of WWII with an armistice treaty with Germany.

St. Helena: Comeback Fail

Napoleon Bonaparte was pretty freakin sweet. Throughout the course of his 15 year dominance over France, the total number of "wins" that he racked up definitely outnumber the total number of "fails." The same could probably be said for Robespierre. Nevertheless, we have here a pretty massive fail on Napoleon's part. The story begins in Corsica, where Napoleon was born to a low level noble family. After a rather high class military and intellectual education, Napoleon's gigantic ambition sent him to France, where he landed the position of Lieutenant in the French army. His exceptional work in a battle for Toulon against the British and his stone-cold-badass achievement of bringing the crazed Parisian mob to a halt (seriously, the "wins" just keep adding up) earned him some major street cred, and the French government decided to assign him the daunting task of invading Britain. He decided to go for Egypt first, messed up pretty badly, and ran away. When he returned to France, his terrific ambition kicked in again and he had his eyes set on taking over the already weak French Directory. A single coup d' etat later, and we have Napoleon, the first consul. Here's where the "wins" start flowing in, folks. A near complete domination over Europe established Napoleon as the first modern dictator ever. Hell yes, bitches. Just as things were looking up, however, they started to fall apart. The Russians' refusal to accept Napoleon's Continental System, a blockade on British trade (that rhymed), led to a very costly war for his Grand Army, and once his forces were weakened, Napoleon's entire empire began to crumble.

But wait. Napoleon Bonaparte isn't done kicking ass. After all the countries that he had previously dominated finally got rid of Napoleon and banished him to Elba (a small island off of Italy), he made a really, really gnarly comeback. "Soldiers of the fifth regiment, I am your Emperor...If there is a man among you who would kill his Emperor, here I am!" shouted Napoleon to a group of troops ready to kill him upon his return to France. Instead of killing him, this brilliant display of awesomeness put Napoleon right back on top. Yet again, however, it wouldn't last. What could have been a gigantic Comeback Win turned out to be a huge Comeback Fail. His forces were defeated again by a combined Prussian and British army, and Napoleon was banished St. Helena, this time for good.

Robespierre: Suicide Fail

Maximilien Robespierre came to power during the radical stages of the French Revolution, and is pretty much wholly responsible for the fact that they were the most radical time periods of the Revolution. After the increasingly powerful Jacobins started to become upset with how moderate the Nation Assembly was turning out to be, they decided they had had enough (double had, LOL). The Paris Commune, a radical group composed mainly of Jacobins, rose in power and eventually overthrew the Legislative Assembly (the government that the Nation Assembly had established). The National Convention was set up (yes, they decided to use National in the name yet again), and was heavily dominated by people adhering the the opinions of the Jacobins and the Paris Commune. After executing the king and going to war with Austria, they had successfully screwed up France, and chaos ensued.

Robespierre then jumped in so he could, well...ensue more chaos. The National Assembly established the Committee of Public Safety to attempt to restore some type of order, and they placed Robespierre right on top. He pretty much just did whatever he wanted to. On his orders, huge amounts of people who were deemed not nationalistic enough were executed in the streets of Paris with the handy dandy Guillotine, a weird ass new calender was invented, the cathedral of Notre-Dame was converted to the Temple of Reason, and, to sum things up, France basically erupted into even more mayhem.

It was this blatant use of terror that achieved Robespierre extreme amounts of awesomeness. You may think it impossible, but it eventually proved to be too much awesomeness. Robespierre's peers in The National Assembly were scared that he would eventually start killing them too, so they turned against him and decided to put him on the guillotine. In a last second effort to die with dignity, Robespierre attempted to shoot himself in the face, but missed. What a loser. He ended up knocking half his face off, living through it, being guillotined, and earning a Suicide Fail.

Louis XVI: Monarchy Fail

It must have been tough to be a Louis. The pressure of living up to number 14 was probably a lot to deal with. Look at him up there on that horse. What a man. What a SUN KING. Not to mention how awesome those kicks are that he's rockin there.

None of the other Louis-s could come close, and this can clearly be seen in the portraits painted of them. Louis VIV's eldest son, Louis, was nicknamed the Grand Dauphin of France because he was really fat. The eldest son of this Grand Dauphin, known was Louis Duke of Burgandy, brings to mind the Breeding Fail that was Carlos II with his less-than-attractive appearance. Louis XV, Louis XIV's successor, was way too girly. This finally brings us to Louis XVI, who took the throne after Louis XV. He kinda looked like a chubby penguin.

Louis XVI came up pretty darn tootin short of Louis XIV's legacy. The French people were done living within the confines of the brutal Estates system by the time he rolled around. The First Estate Estate (important clergy members, stinkin rich, don't pay taxes) and Second Estate (nobles, stinkin rich, don't pay taxes) were reaping the benefits of their lavish lifestyles while the Third Estate (pesants, artisans, townspeople, etc, stinkin poor, pay all the taxes) were working to provide those benefits for them with very little reward.

We have the Americans to thank for getting this Monarchy Fail started. Without their revolution against Britain and the accompanying French military support, the French throne wouldn't have plunged into a huge debt. After the failure of two consecutive Director-Generals of France (Jacques Necker and Charles Alexandre de Calonne) to solve this financial problem, Louis XVI made a bold move and assembled the Estates General for the first time in 175 years. In doing so, he fundamentally weakened the power of French throne, and our Monarchy Fail had officially begun. The angry Third Estate seized this chance to finally break out of their oppressed state. However, their calls for voting by each individual of the parliament went unheeded, and voting by Estate was heeded instead. Lots heeding was going on. Instead of giving up, the Third Estate delegates heeded on over to a Tennis Court, declared themselves the National Assembly, and promised to keep meeting until they had written up a new constitution for France. Shortly after, an unexpected win by the underdog Parisian mob during a revolt at the Bastille legitimized the Third Estate as a dangerous political force. Louis XVI was now forced to recognize the National Assembly, and the Monarchy Fail gathered some speed. The new constitution that France ended up with didn't please everybody, however, and a new, more radical political group named the Jacobins rose in power. The National Assembly set up the Legislative Assembly as the new government of France in 1791 only to have it overthrown by these new radicals, and their first order of business brings us back to Louis XVI for this Monarchy Fail's grand finale.

It's regicide time, y'all! The Jacobins had set up the National Convention as the new government, and two political associations had formed within it. The Mountain faction supported Louis's execution, while the Girondon faction supported the opposite. Needless to say, the Monarchy Fail was complete when the people of France rejoiced in seeing Louis's head swing right off his body.