The mantra is really starting to grate now. Stay home, Protect The NHS, Save lives ..

[Burney]

Out of interest, where do you get the idea that the French army surrenders more than the British?

Mostly the 20th century. The refussl to advance after the Nivelle offensive in 1917, 1940, Dien Bien Phu, Algeria. An impressive litany of loss.

And actually, given that it was for most of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries the pre-eminent land power of Europe, France massively underperformed. Largely because it undervalued naval power, spunked all its money on ensuring we lost America (out of sheer spite) and never had the brains to grasp that money wins wars - but they weren’t the last self-aggrandising, quasi-imperial European power to learn that last lesson the hard way.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Mostly the 20th century. The refussl to advance after the Nivelle offensive in 1917, 1940, Dien Bien Phu, Algeria. An impressive litany of loss.

And actually, given that it was for most of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries the pre-eminent land power of Europe, France massively underperformed. Largely because it undervalued naval power, spunked all its money on ensuring we lost America (out of sheer spite) and never had the brains to grasp that money wins wars - but they weren’t the last self-aggrandising, quasi-imperial European power to learn that last lesson the hard way.

Oh, dear God, where to start.

Ok, the thing I've studied at the highest level.

Nivelle. Firstly, as an aside, it's a bit rich to pick the only one of the 4 chiefs who fücked up when the other 3 all won us the war in their own way, Joffre at the Marne (and in '18), Pétain at Verdun and Foch in '18.

But the Nivelle offensives were our fault, in part. That idiotic Easterner DLG wasn't prepared to pay the Butcher's Bill, so when Nivelle said he could win the war without using any GB troops, we lobbied for him to replace the stolid but heroic Joffre.

His successful counter-attack at Verdun was down to the fact that we were drawing all the Hun reinforcements to the Somme.

The Nivelle offensives were a disaster. There weren't enough howitzers or heavies, the prelim bombardment did far less damage than was required and France had it's own first day of the Somme moment as he kept the attack going into fully firing machine guns.

The offensive began on Apr 16 and by May 3 they were mutinying. That's why we fought Passchendaele.

And fair play, Nivelle was an idiot. Once they had a decent leader and were allowed more leave, they calmed down, and the French army saved our arses in 1918 - though tbf, that's cos op Michael hit us. Had they hit the frogs, we'd have saved them.

Foch took control, in part because Haig saw it as the only way to get that muppet DLG off his back, and the French fought heroically during both the Spring Offensive and the 100 Days.

By your logic, we might as well say the Royal Navy are all cowards cos they mutinied on the Bounty.

Oh, and your idea that Louis XIII and XIV should have worked out that paying for continental allies is the way to win wars because that's what GB did in the following century with the BofE and a publicly traded gilts market is just your usual trick of mistaking hindsight for history.

Oh, and trying to use the fact that France defeated us in the War of Septic Traitors as proof that they surrender more than us is silly even by your standards.

Yes, we know it bankrupted them. With hindsight. And that would lead to a revolution. With hindsight.

And then, with all the European powers united against them, the cowardly French thrashed the lot of them for the next 25 years, even though the RN had complete control of the oceans, even though the City of London was undefeated and paying anyone who'd fight for us, even though we had one of our greatest ever generals.

If the sub-human Ruskies hadn't cheated by burning one of their two great cities and surrendered like civilised human beings, then Boney could have imposed a harsher peace than Tislit, stopped the cheating Ruskies buying GB goods* and then come to the Peninsula and dealt with the Iron Duke in person and pushed us back to Torres Vedras again.

The French are not, nor have ever been cowards. Who would you rather have watching your back? An Imperial guardsman or any Yank like a navy seal? And ignore the fact that the Yank would probably shoot you in a friendly fire incident anyway.

*Though when Boney had to order 500k great coats for the Russian invasion, the only country that could fulfil the order was us. So he had to get family members to place the orders on the sly, breaking his own continental system.