The military history of France encompasses an immense panorama of conflicts and struggles extending for more than 2, years across areas including modern France, Europe, and a variety of regions throughout the world.
According to historian Niall Ferguson , France is the most successful military power in history. It participated in 50 of the major European wars that have been fought since ; more than any other European state. The first major recorded wars in the territory of modern-day France itself revolved around the Gallo-Roman conflict that predominated from 60 BC to 50 BC. The Romans eventually emerged victorious through the campaigns of Julius Caesar.
After the decline of the Roman Empire , a Germanic tribe known as the Franks took control of Gaul by defeating competing tribes. The "land of Francia", from which France gets its name, had high points of expansion under kings Clovis I and Charlemagne , who established the nucleus of the future French state. With an increasingly centralized monarchy, the first standing army since Roman times, and the use of artillery, France expelled the English from its territory and came out of the Middle Ages as the most powerful nation in Europe, only to lose that status to the Holy Roman Empire and Spain following defeat in the Italian Wars.
The Wars of Religion crippled France in the late 16th century, but a major victory over Spain in the Thirty Years' War made France the most powerful nation on the continent once more. In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas. Under Louis XIV France achieved military supremacy over its rivals, but escalating conflicts against increasingly powerful enemy coalitions checked French ambitions and left the kingdom bankrupt at the opening of the 18th century.
Resurgent French armies secured victories in dynastic conflicts against the Spanish , Polish , and Austrian crowns. At the same time, France was fending off attacks on its colonies. Consolation came in the form of dominance in Europe and the American Revolutionary War , where extensive French aid in the form of money and arms, and the direct participation of its army and navy led to the independence of the United States.
