France and England, decided enemies of Putin | EUROtoday
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Rlet's dream: the subsequent president of the Ve République wouldn’t go, as is customary, to Berlin for its first diplomatic go to, however to London. Where, on the balconies of the residences within the adjoining streets of Buckingham Palace and Downing Street, the Union Jack and tricolor flags would fly.
France and England, the Bouvard and Pécuchet of Europe because the starting of the twentieth centurye century, would reconnect with the spirit of Carlton Gardens, the General's headquarters in London, the place, regardless of the capitulation of Paris, Churchill nonetheless wished to imagine within the resurrection of the one nation able to being as free as England.
An Anglophile head of state
Signed in 1904, the Entente Cordiale, whose a hundred and twentieth anniversary is being celebrated, accomplished a century of rapprochement, measured however fixed, between a republic and a monarchy which, because the Revolution, had been at warfare with one another for twenty years. The argument ended. Louis-Philippe had lived in London and made reconciliation with Albion one in all his priorities.
Her efforts paid off since, in a context of inheritance instability and liberal revolts in Europe, relations relaxed and Victoria went to French soil, to Louis-Philippe's second house, the Château d'Eu, in Normandy. A primary for an English sovereign since Henry VIII.
READ ALSO Russia-NATO: the reality lastly revealedAfter the July Monarchy, France as soon as once more selected as head of state an Anglophile, who additionally spent a few years in exile in London: Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. Who would grow to be Napoleon III in 1852. This reign opened with a spectacular staging of the brand new alliance with a warfare waged collectively towards Russia in Crimea.
Two years later, Victoria was welcomed with unprecedented splendor in Paris, which, for the event, introduced out its most stunning dishes: Versailles, Invalides, city corridor, all below the frilly crinolines, the hairs of the mustaches on the imperialism and the martiality of the frock coats.
Countering German ambitions
The Anglophilia of Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III was not sufficient to deliver collectively the most effective enemies. The defeat towards Prussia, the lack of Alsace-Lorraine and the humiliating proclamation of the German Empire within the Hall of Mirrors had given France a brand new hereditary enemy.
Abbé Cauchon, organizer of the trial of Joan of Arc, Duke Marlborough, ancestor of Churchill and terror of the armies of Louis XIV throughout the War of the Spanish Succession, Nelson, murderer of Villeneuve at Trafalgar, Wellington, conqueror of Napoleon at Waterloo, have been made out of date in file time by Bismarck and William.
READ ALSO Democracies all the time win the warfareThe Entente Cordiale signed in 1904 resulted from a mix of things, the decision of colonial conflicts, but additionally, it’s much less recognized, from a need of the 2 international locations, decided to thwart the German ambitions which, for various causes , dissatisfied them. It was additionally the image of a uncommon second of Anglophilia and Francophilia on each side of the Channel.
History doesn’t keep in mind it, at the very least the treaties say nothing about it, however a reciprocal consciousness could have taken place. The Germany of the Hohenzollerns, that’s to say of Prussian inspiration, carried inside it the contempt for tradition, the cult of probably the most rudimentary pressure, the vengeful intuition in direction of a hated Christianity, and, in fact, frenzied anti-Semitism.
Being uneducated, a purpose for disgrace
Joseph Roth demonstrated this in his good article printed in 1933, “The Autodafé of the Mind”. And it’s miraculous that on such floor the gracious Weimar Republic emerged, which, on the dimensions of Prussia, is taken into account the exception to the rule.
READ ALSO Democracies all the time win the warfareEngland and France aren’t exemplary, however freedom of the thoughts, artwork and tradition on the whole have by no means been held in contempt. And this, whatever the regime and the period. Princes wished artists round them and have been conscious of their significance to the status of their reign. Erasmus corresponded with Henry VIII, Molière was near Louis XIV, and Napoleon Bonaparte was the primary head of state to be represented in entrance of libraries. In London as in Paris, being uneducated was a purpose for disgrace.
France and England have made errors, typically severe ones, however they’ve all the time allowed vulnerability and have, inside their society and on the coronary heart of their historical past, wholesome habits with out which there isn’t a actual freedom. : insolence, contradiction, so many limits to the hubris of any energy. And there may be nothing shocking that right now they’re the decided enemies of Vladimir Putin.
“The Autodafé of the Mind”by Joseph Roth, Allia editions, 2019, 48 pages, 3.10 euros.
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/la-france-et-l-angleterre-ennemies-determinees-de-poutine-09-04-2024-2557272_24.php