Quote Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost View Post
I've seen a formal response as written by the French

guaranteed to wind up the English.
The response is obviously an English product. Under the guise of taking stabs at Britain, it confirms the British in their view of the world. Very funny though.


Speaking of winding up, let's have a go at it:

17 - We know that English history books describe the Hundred Years War as a string of consecutive, devastating victories over the French. Which was so tedious to the enterprising English national character that they decided one day to pack up and go fight elsewhere in search of real challenges.
In reality, you suffered devastating defeat. To a peasant woman. After which England never dared to challenge 'the continent' again.

18 - Instead, English troops were from then on send all over the world in search of peaceful, rock-and-stick armed natives against which the English could pretend to be phenomenally great soldiers.

19 - If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. If French-speaking, Catholic Frenchmen, from France, under the leadership of a man listening to the name Guillaume le Bâtard, consider themselves French and pay hommage to the King of France, they are French. No matter how much it hurts English pride that it took a mere handful of Frenchmen from the duchy of Normandie only two weeks to subdue the whole of England. If the Normans are 'Vikings', then the English are Germans and Barack Obama is Irish.

20 - The Swiss Celts, the Italians, the Germans, the Norwegians, the Danes, the French - pretty much everyone - has at one point or another conquered Britian.
An invasion of Britain having thus come to be considered as challenging a conquest as 'easy Émilie' from the rue de Paradis, nobody has bothered invasion anymore for fear of being thought gay.

21 - France had a reformation over the philosophical debate over the nature of free will, praedestination, and divine providence. England had a reformation to make it possible for a man to fornicate with eight women.

21 - Napoleon posed a huge threat to the existing order of Europe. Not even the combined armies of Prussians, Russians, Spanish, Italians, Austrians could stop him. That is, until the one realm Napoleon could never conquer joined up with the continental allies and defeated him in a closely contested battle, after which he was send into exile. Honour to whom honour is due: the gods of the Russian winter are undefeatable.

Oh, and Napoleon later briefly returned from exile for three months. Marching a ragtag, untrained army of teenagers and crippled veterans north, he was quickly stopped at the insignificant battle of Waterloo and returned into exile.

22 - Wellington was a military genius, second only to Napoleon! Think about it, how many generals can make it their distinct goal to avoid open battle at all costs? And then manage to succeed in this despite the whole of Europe being one big battlefield for a quarter of a century? It is amazing to think how he consistently managed to find the exact few spots were he was safe from the French troops.

23 - French and British imperialism both set about to conquer the world. albeit in a very different manner. France send ideas and freedom, Britain shipped its undesirables abroad.
As a consequence, the French Code Civil rules Latin America, French liberty and equality rules in north America, French language invigorates Africa, French human rights and democracy are spread in the EU.
Whereas the entire British imperial legacy consists of a few Britons toasting under the Australian sun or freezing in the Canadian plain.