Much more successful was that other British invasion of Gaul at about the same time that we’ve just alluded to – the creation of Brittany. Sometimes we take the name Brittany for granted, but in French, of course, it is ‘Bretagne’, the same as Britain itself in the language. And Brittany is called Bretagne today because some time in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, a lot of Brits made their way across the sea to Armorica and settled there. We don’t now know how much violence was used in the process of establishing Brittany. Maybe there was none at all, or maybe there was sometimes just a threat of violence, or maybe sometimes there were actual clashes. Whatever the case, a lot of Brits ended up in a bit of Gaul and took some kind of control, to the extent that the name of the area was changed.
Of course, about this time, the people back in parts of Britain itself had a few incoming settlers and invaders on their own soil to think about. The Saxons, Angles and Jutes turned up, and after the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had established themselves, the Vikings turned up as well.
The Vikings didn’t only turn up in Britain, they appeared in France as well. And some of them managed to repeat the Briton/Breton feat of changing the name of the region where they settled. So the Norsemen became Normans and the place where they settled became Normandy. And, shortly after that, they too decided to head over here and invade us.
In some ways, the Norman invasion worked in both directions. Yes, it brought a bunch of people over here from France and meant that the upper classes in England spoke French for a time, but it worked in the opposite direction as well, in the sense that it automatically gave the first Norman king of England a foothold in France and an intimate involvement in its politics. It was, in other words, a perfect recipe for renewing our interest in invading France.
It’s worth noting that William, the first Norman king of England, didn’t actually die over here. He had already tried to invade Brittany in 1076–77, only to be thwarted by the French King Philip I and eventually he died in France attacking Mantes, in a campaign against allies of the French king. It was in some sense an indication of how much time future English monarchs were going to spend attacking France.
Sure enough, William’s successors soon got in on the act. In 1097–98, William Rufus attacked the Vexin and Maine in France. And in 1105, Henry I took an army to France to try to seize back Normandy, then held by his brother. The army landed at Barfleur in the spring and finally, in 1106, Henry triumphed at the Battle of Tinchebrai. Then war broke out between him and Philip’s successor, Louis. Henry was victorious at the Battle of Bremule in 1119 and the war ended in 1120.
Henry II’s reign opened up new opportunities for English kings to invade bits of France after he inherited Anjou and married Eleanor of Aquitaine. He then gradually extended his lands by selecting from a menu of diplomacy, violence and threat of violence as he saw fit to extend his control. By the time he was finished, he controlled vast parts of western, northern, central and southern France.
So it went on, with varying degress of success. In 1242, Henry III lost the brief Saintonge War to the French. Then along came the Hundred Years War. Confusingly (and, let’s face it, somewhat disappointingly for the pedantic), this wasn’t a single war lasting exactly 100 years, but was instead a scrappy, messy series of campaigns spread out over a period of more than 100 years in total, separated by periods of non-fighting. I’m not going to go into much detail on the Hundred Years War here, partly because France is already going to be the longest section in this book and partly because it’s a war with which many Brits are familiar. So I’ll just say that there were some notable English victories, including Crécy (1346) and Agincourt (1415), and some notable English defeats, including Pontvallain (1370), Paty (1429) and Castillon (1453). At times it seemed like we would win the lot, particularly when Henry V, after Agincourt, was supposed to inherit the French throne, but at the end in 1453 we had pretty much lost the lot. By the time it was all over we were left with little more than Calais.
Nevertheless, the English defeat in the Hundred Years War did not end the English appetite for invading France.
Henry VIII, who had a big appetite for other things as well, made several attempts. It’s quite possible that he had dreams of starting a whole new phase in the Hundred Years War. In 1513, in an alliance with the Emperor Maximilian against France, he was involved in a battle at Guinegate (or Enguinegatte) in France, which became proudly known in Britain (though no doubt not in France) as the Battle of the Spurs, due to the enthusiastic French use of that particular bit of kit for departing the field hastily. After this, Henry took Therouanne and Tournai.
In 1522, he had another go, in alliance with the Emperor Charles this time, sending troops from Calais out to invade Picardy. And in 1523, a large English army under the Duke of Suffolk advanced through the Somme region, and only halted its advance about 50 miles from Paris.
In 1544, Henry invaded yet again. This time his army besieged and took Boulogne. But, frankly, that was about as far as it all got. It was Henry’s last attempt at invading France. Soon his daughter, Mary, would give it a go. She sent an army under the Earl of Pembroke into France to fight alongside the forces of her Spanish husband Philip II against the French.
By contrast, Elizabeth I generally saw Spain as more of a threat than France and therefore spent more time organising military activities against that country instead. Her successor, James I, ordered an invasion of France in the 1620s. It wasn’t a success. The Anglo-French War of 1627–29 was pretty disastrous from our point of view. In 1627, the Duke of Buckingham besieged Saint Martin de Ré for three months, but failed to take it. In 1628, two expeditions were supposed to aid the defenders of La Rochelle against the French king, but neither achieved anything of note.
During the middle of the seventeenth century we had other things on our mind, like the Civil War.
However, by 1658, we again had forces fighting in France, and not just fighting in a battle in France, but fighting on both sides in a battle in France. This was the so-called Battle of the Dunes near Dunkirk. Allied with the French, on this occasion, were some of Cromwell’s forces. While fighting alongside the Spanish was a selection of some of the Royalist Forces of the exiled Charles II. The French and Cromwell’s troops won.
By the end of the century, we were back in action in France. The Nine Years War of 1688–97 saw us attack France with rather varied results. We had successes, but there was also the disaster of the attack on Brest, in which a large force landed in an attempt to take Brest, only to find itself unable to advance in the face of heavy fire and unable to retreat either. Losses were heavy.
In the War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–14, we were back once again. In September 1709, the Duke of Marlborough won the bitterly fought battle of Malplacquet and in 1711 he proved that the defensive Lines of Ne Plus Ultra (No Further) were rather misnamed when he crossed them and took Bouchain.
In the War of the Austrian Succession, we were at it yet again. We had another amphibious disaster, landing troops to try and take Lorient, but failing even though the defending forces were weak.
Then there was the Seven Years War, in which (despite some distinctly unhappy previous experiences) we took to ‘amphibious descents’ with gusto. For instance, we landed forces and attacked both St Malo and Cherbourg.
During the Amercian Revolutionary War, we fought assorted naval actions off the French coast, such as the Battle of Ushant off Brest in 1778.
We come at last to the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. I hope I’m not rushing too much, but there is a lot to get through on France. Early on, in 1793, British forces advanced into north-east France. We had some successes, like the Battle of Famars, which allowed us to besiege Valenciennes, and the little battle at Villers-en-Cauchies. But eventually the loss of Austrian support led to the collapse of the campaign and British forces having to retreat all the way to northern Germany, from where they were evacuated by sea. That’s a long retreat.
Th
ere were a variety of naval and amphibious actions in French waters during the wars: for example, the occupation of Toulon by Hood in 1793, and the landing on Corsica in 1794, which resulted in the brief Anglo-Corsican Kingdom of 1794–76.
It took a long tine to beat Napoleon, but by late 1813, while other Allied armies were advancing from the east, Wellington, having fought his way across Spain, was about to launch his invasion of southern France. In October, at the Battle of the Bidassoa, he smashed his way through Soult’s lines and into France. A string of battles followed and by April 1814 he was ready to assault Toulouse, that had once been part of Henry II of England’s lands all those centuries ago. Wellington’s men suffered heavy casualties in the assault on 10 April, and they didn’t take the city that day. But after Soult had withdrawn from the city, Wellington entered it on 12 April and the same day news of Napoleon’s abdication arrived.
In 1815, after the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington was to invade France again, this time, for a change, from the north-east, not from the south-west. He entered Paris on 7 July 1815.
This brings us to the twentieth-century battlefields of France.
I’m not really even going to attempt to deal here with the suffering, sacrifice and bravery shown by so many Brits in two world wars in France. It is a subject too vast and important for this modest book. I’ll simply mention a few brief details.
We’ve all heard of some of the First World War battles fought by Brits on French soil. The Somme campaign is the obvious one, but there are others which are less well known and which deserve to be better known. For instance, there was the bitter fighting to stem the German Spring Offensive in 1918 and the dramatic battles in the last Hundred Days offensive of the war, which saw the German Army thrown into retreat and included important actions such as The Pursuit to the River Selle.
Similarly, in the Second World War there are the actions we all know about, like Dunkirk and D-Day. However, there are a large number of other battles involving Brits in France that deserve to be remembered. In this category fall the 1940 Battle of Arras, in which British troops launched a counter-attack against the advancing German forces and gave them a serious shock; the Raid on St Nazaire in March 1942; the tragic Raid on Dieppe, in which so many Canadians and Brits, but particularly Canadians, died; the heavy fighting in Normandy after D-Day; and the invasion of the South of France, in which British paratroopers formed part of the 1st Airborne Task Force.
4
GABON TO HUNGARY
Gabon
Like most of the African coast, Gabon’s waters have seen plenty of activity from British ships. In the Battle of Cape Lopez in 1722, for example, HMS Swallow under Captain Chaloner Ogle (great name) defeated the only slightly less impressively named pirate Bartholomew Roberts. It was all over rather quickly for Roberts since his ship the Royal Fortune, unfortunately for it, rapidly took two massive broadsides from the Swallow, killing Roberts. The pirates fought on but eventually 272 were taken prisoner.
When we went from slaving nation to anti-slaving nation, our West Africa squadron intercepted a number of ships in Gabon’s waters.
During the Second World War, we helped liberate Gabon, then part of French Equatorial Africa, from Vichy French control. In autumn 1940, while Britain was still fearing German invasion, our navy was in action far to the south. In late October, Free French forces from Cameroon penetrated 70 miles across the border into Gabon. Then on 7 November, HMS Milford, with cruisers HMS Delhi and HMS Devonshire, deployed in support of Free French landings at Libreville. The Vichy French submarine Poncelet fired a torpedo at Milford. Luckily for us, but unluckily for Poncelet, the torpedo failed to explode and when the submarine surfaced it was hit by a shot and the crew were forced to surrender, all except the captain, De Saussine, who went down with his ship. On 9 November, after heavy fighting, Free French troops entered Libreville and on 12 November Vichy French forces in Gabon surrendered.
Gambia, The
The Gambia is now a popular tourist destination for Brits. And it’s been a very popular destination for Britons for rather different reasons for a very long time. Early British visitors primarily were after gold and slaves, and a route to the fabled riches of Timbuktu.
As early as 1588, we were paying the Portuguese for rights in the area. And in the 1660s we managed to get hold of James Island, the home, not surprisingly, of our Fort James. It wasn’t actually called James Island when we took it, but we named it after James, Duke of York, before he became James II and was thrown off his throne.
The French similarly set up a fort at Albreda in 1681, uncomfortably close to James Island for all Europeans concerned. Ahead lay a long struggle for control between the two European powers. The French captured Fort James in 1695. We got it back in 1697. And then the French took it again in 1702.
In 1779, the French took Fort James yet again, but four years later the Treaty of Versailles gave the Gambia River area to us, while keeping Albreda for the French. Finally, in 1857 we got that too.
In 1965, the Gambia became independent and in 2011 James Island was renamed Kunta Kinteh Island to commemorate the slaves who passed through the island.
Georgia
Georgia, confusingly, has the same name as an American state and it’s also a girl’s name. If you say anything about Georgia, there can be a slight pause while people work out which one you’re talking about.
The country’s profile is probably now on the rise in Britain, partly due to the fact that its flag features the red on white cross of St George, and if you’re not looking too closely, it can look like the flag of England.
Georgia is a part of the Caucasus our troops ventured into at the end of the First World War. At about the same time as our second occupation of Baku in November 1918 (see Azerbaijan), we sent a large force to the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi on the other side of the Caucasus. It began disembarking just before Christmas 1918.
Inevitably, the force was not to be home by Christmas. Instead it deployed along the railway to Tbilisi and Baku, and an HQ was established at Tbilisi in January 1919. As with the rest of the south Caucasus operation, British government enthusiasm for keeping troops in Georgia in an increasingly beleaguered position and in an unpredictable local political and military situation, gradually waned, and we pulled out.
Germany
When Brits think of the words Germany and invasion, they tend to think of those desperate times in 1940, when it seemed that the German blitzkrieg, after crushing the French forces, would roll on across the Channel and crush us as well; those desperate times when radar and the bravery of our fighter pilots and navy was pretty much all that was keeping us safe.
This invasion, Operation Sea Lion, fortunately ended up as a non-invasion and didn’t happen. By comparison, what we don’t tend to think so much about is all the times that British forces actually have invaded German territory.
As long ago as the early fourth century, Constantine was leading an army out of Britain and making his temporary capital at Trier in Germany before his push south. And in AD383 Magnus Maximus did exactly the same, even if his attempt was ultimately rather less successful. Or a lot less successful.
Anyway, this section is going to contain a lot about advancing armies and so on, so let’s look at a quiet, peaceful and almost forgotten invasion. Who can name the Brit who was elected King of Germany and died at Berkhamsted? Technically, he was King of the Romans, which is an impressive title in itself, although also a confusing one since ruling the Romans wasn’t what it was all about. Yes, it was Richard of Cornwall, second son of King John, one of those lesser known but fascinating figures that pepper British history. In a close and extensively bribed election in 1256, he fought off hot competition from Alfonso X of Castile to take the title and was crowned by the Archbishop of Cologne at Aachen in May 1257. He didn’t achieve very much as King of the Romans (or as King of the Germans), but it’s an interesting little story nonetheless and an early example of our royal connections to Ger
many.
Assorted minor military operations linked to Germany, or rather to the assorted entities that controlled different parts of what later became Germany, followed after Richard. We clashed with the Hanseatic League, for instance, though most of the clashing was done in the Channel and North Sea. And we sent knights to fight on Crusade with the Teutonic Knights, though most of their fighting was in what’s now Poland or Lithuania.
In the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years War devastated Germany. We didn’t send armies officially but we did send plenty of volunteers to fight unofficially or semi-officially.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century we had graduated to sending official armies. The War of the Spanish Succession broke out because Spain was about to get a French king unless we moved fast. So we did, along with assorted other people also very unchuffed at the idea, particularly the Dutch and the Austrians. And this, of course, is where John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, one of our most skilful ever military commanders, comes in. Most of his fighting was done elsewhere, but in 1704 he launched a successful invasion of German territory in support of the Austrians against combined French and Bavarian forces.
What with Blenheim Palace and so on, Blenheim today somehow seems such an English name that it’s easy to forget it’s actually a place in Bavaria, pronounced not ‘Blenim’ but ‘Blen-heim’ or ‘Blindheim’, because that is what it’s called. On 13 August 1704, Marlborough and his allies crushingly defeated the French and Bavarian forces, and knocked Bavaria out of the war. It also enabled us to capture the Moselle Valley. Shame we didn’t keep it. Lovely views and some gorgeous wines.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 10