There were no British losses

There were no British losses.Churchill is said to have noted that the French had finally fought “with all their vigour for the first time since the war broke out”. The Royal Navy force, consisting of three battleships and an aircraft carrier, exploited its advantage ruthlessly: by the end of the battle 1,297 French sailors were dead and four French ships, including three battleships, sunk or disabled. But it was not until the battle near the Belgian village of Waterloo a decade later that Napoleon’s expansionist project finally foundered.The victory that the Duke of Wellington himself classed as “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life” has been immortalised ever since in the popular imagination as the definitive British triumph over France.In fact, the last open battle between the two nations involved seven countries and principalities, and the British merely formed the largest part of a coalition that included the Prussians, Hanoverians and Dutch.The British victory was also only largely achieved after the Prussian general, Blucher, arrived in the dying hours of the battle on 18 June 1815 with 25,000 reinforcements. The British lost no ships and had only 1,691 dead or wounded.The victory, which cost Nelson his life, put an end to any French plan to invade Britain and established British naval domination for a century. It was also a time when mutual French and British loathing was at its most visceral.

As Admiral Horatio Nelson himself put it: “You must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil.”The Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 found Nelson’s 27-strong Royal Navy fleet facing a combined Franco-Spanish force of 33 ships under French command.Nelson’s tactical guile allowed him to disrupt the enemy line and tear apart the French and Spanish vessels and by the end of the fighting, Franco-Spanish losses stood at 22 ships and 14,000 casualties. In this vein, “le weekend” has become “la fin de semaine”, “le Walkman” is “le balladeur” and “l’airbag” can only be expressed as “le sac gonflable”.It’s an uphill struggle. Franglais From its redoubt on the banks of the Seine, the Academie Fran?se has spent much of the past 50 years fighting what it considers the most insidious threat to French culture – the English language.The Academie, legal guardian of the French language, has the power to expunge “les anglicismes” from official documents and publicise gallic alternatives. As one leading French newspaper commented: “You cannot stop the ocean with your hands.” Trafalgar and Waterloo For many historians, the Napoleonic War from 1803 to 1815 represented the clash of French global power at its height with the nascent British Empire. The song was rapidly reissued by another label and became the second-biggest selling single of the year.

Agincourt and Henry V Alongside Trafalgar, the Battle of Britain and Liverpool’s European Cup victory last month, Agincourt has long enjoyed a place in the pantheon of popular British triumphs over nominally superior foes.The defeat on 25 October 1415 of the cavalry-heavy army of Charles VI of France by the archers and pikemen of Henry V of England provided material for jingoistic propaganda from Henry himself to Shakespeare. A study by Southampton University has found that although the 12,000-strong French army was numerically superior, the English numbered 8,000 – far more than previously thought. As the Bard put it in Henry V: “Proud of the numbers and secure in soul/ The confident and over-lusty French/ Do the low-rated English play at dice.”In fact, it was the blood thirst of the English that helped to carry the day and assert control over the French throne until defeat at the hands of Joan of Arc.At least part of the English victory in a muddy field in northern France was due to the ruthlessness of Henry, who ordered all French prisoners to be slaughtered after fearing that his rear was under attack.Recent research suggests English boasts of defeating a French force up to four times the size of the more lightly armed invasion force, have been somewhat exaggerated. Rarely can a song containing a line about kidneys have caused so much controversy. On 16 August 1969, the BBC announced that it had banned the French language hit “Je t’aime … moi non plus” on the grounds that its Hammond organ, heavy breathing and orgasmic moans were “not considered suitable for play”.The song, by British singer and actress Jane Birkin and her French boyfriend Serge Gainsbourg outraged the British establishment. One line, “You come and you go between my kidneys”, was alleged by critics to be a reference to anal sex.

The record company, Phillips, promptly announced it was dropping the record from its catalogue.Not that the British public was bothered. The ban, which originated from a loophole in the 1973 accession agreement for Britain and Ireland, was finally lifted in 2000 after an agreement that such perfidious products as Cadbury’s Flake carry a label stating: “Contains vegetable fats in addition to cocoa butter.” Je t’aime … For 27 years, France – supported variously by Belgium, Italy and Spain – resolutely refused to allow the likes of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to be sold on the grounds that its 5 per cent of non-cocoa fat meant it was not chocolate.In the corridors of Brussels, various attempts were made to foist a new name on British confectionery, from “household milk chocolate” to “surrogate chocolate” to “vegelate”. Chocolate For the confectioners of France, it was the line that could not be crossed – the appearance of British chocolate on their shelves. And that the film which it spawned is a masterpiece, both of cinematography and of propaganda. One hundred years on, for those reasons alone, the Potemkin mutiny deserves to be remembered.. The grounds for many a bar room bore’s protest that the French started it, the arrival of Guillaume, Duc de Normandie, on the Sussex coast on 28 September 1066 heralded the start of 900 years of bloody Anglo-French rivalry.

The Norman Conquest
The grounds for many a bar room bore’s protest that the French started it, the arrival of Guillaume, Duc de Normandie, on the Sussex coast on 28 September 1066 heralded the start of 900 years of bloody Anglo-French rivalry.Duke William, the son of Robert le Diable, at least had a claim to the English throne by asserting that his relative, Edward the Confessor, had bequeathed him the title. What cannot be disputed, however, is that the mutiny was a noble but ultimately futile act that, rightly or wrongly, has inspired and fascinated. They are an ideal to which we aspire.”In Ukraine, which lived through its own “Orange” revolution last year, the fact that the mutiny is considered tainted by Communist propaganda is understandable. But today, long-haired local youths prefer to use the monument’s lengthy base as a mini skateboard park. Thick green weeds throttle the monument’s paving stones, cigarette butts abound, someone has stuck a nightclub flyer to the base and there are traces of graffiti.In a small shady square near the commercial port is another monument to the mutiny – a bust of the martyred Vakulenchuk.