French–German enmity John Tenniel:Au Revoir! , Punch6 August 1881 French–German enmity [1] (French: Riva lité fra nco- allemande German: Deutsch–f ranz ösische Erbf eind- schaft) was the idea of unavoidably hostile relations and mutualrevanchismbetweenGermansandFrench people that arose in the 16th century and became popular with theFranco–Prussian War of 187 0–1871. It was an im- portant factor in theunification of Germanyand World War I, and wa s finall y ov er come af ter World War II, wh en unde r the influen ce of the Cold War cordial French– German relations became the key to European integra- tion. 1 Suppo sed or ig in s The rivalry and cultural differences between Gauls and Germans – the pre- Roma n cul ture s that grad uall y evolved intoFranceand Germany– were noted by Julius Caesar in hisOn The Gallic War. Romans, Carthaginians and man y oth er cultu re s f re- quently employed Gaul tribesmen as guides and transla- tors. The Gauls frequently raided Roman territory, most spectacularly in 390/387 BC (390 BC being the tradi- tional and 387 BC a probable year), seizing Rome itself after theBattle of the Allia and accepting a sizeable ran- som for the release of the city. Gaul its elf had strate - gic importance both because of its geographic position as well as a source of revenue, mercenaries and slaves. The Germanictribes, by contrast, remaine d more isol ated and fracti ous. Germany lay f arther from the Roman do- mai n and wa s we ll- pro tec ted by the str ong na tura l bar rie rs of theAlps, theRhineand Danuberivers, and the dense forests. Therefore, the expanding Roman Empire turned its attentions to Gaul first, culminating in Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in 50 BC. Be ca use of it s cl oser pr ox imit y to Rome and le ss formidable geographic obstacles, Rome was able to con- solidate its control of Gaul. For the next three centuries, until the Crisis of the Third Century, Gaul was an in- tegra l part of the Roma n Empire. Gau l gradua lly be- came Romanized, its people adopting Roman customs and mel ding their own indig enous tongu es with Latin to produceOld French, which through the Middle Ages evolved intoFrench. Germany, on the other hand, was never full y Romanized. Western Germany, known to the Romans as Germania, was not integrated into the Empire until the 1st century AD, and the Romans gave up trying to conquer and Ro- manize the eastern half of Germany after the disastrous Battle of Teutob urg Forest . Cultural diff ere nce s betw een the Gau ls and Germans conspired with the dramatically different extent of Ro- manization to establish the two cultures as distinct and discrete entities during the late Roman Empire and early Middle Ages. The Franks, themselves a Germanic tribe, abandoned much of the linguistic and cultural legacy of their Germanic forbears after having conquered Gaul and in time became distinct from other Germanic tribes east of the Rhine. The Car olin gia n Empir e est ab li she d in 800 by Charlemagne ac hi ev ed a tra ns ito ry pol iti cal uni ty, but the death of Cha rlemag ne’ s son Lou is the Pio us mar ke d it s de mis e, as in 843 the Car oli ngi an re alm was divided into three parts by the Treaty of Verdun. Short-lived Middle Francia, the weak central part under Emperor Lothair I, wa s soo n sp li t agai n. Its nor the rn Lotharingiapart on both sides of the language border became a bone of contention between the western and eastern kingdoms that developed into the modern nations of France and Germany. France maintained a much more outward-looking geopo- litical role through the Middle Ages, fighting wars against 1
