Wow people need a lesson in history.
First, the American Revolution - without the help of the French, our army would've been very very poorly trained (in fact, it was many OUTSIDERS who came to help train our army at such places as Valley Forge) - poorly funded (our own Continental Congress could barely get anyone in the colonies to pay and needed foreign help) - and without a navy worth a damn.
The French landed veteran, well trained and equiped soldiers in the colonies to fight the British - they were the ones who made a great contingent of the army that fianlly defeated Cornwalis at Yorktown - the last battle on colonial soil.
Need I also mention that:
-Without French (not to mention Holland and Spain which were allied i believe? forgot the exact other nations) fighting the British *outside* the colonies, the British could've focused their most elite troops (rather than just say Hessian mercenaries) in the colonies. The war acutally raged all across the world at this time, in the colonies in the Carribean, as well as in Europe.
-Without the French Navy, the only navy that could defeat the British Navy at the colonies, we couldn't have won the war - Cornwalis was trapped at Yorktown only because his own fleet was prevented from shipping him and his soldiers across the water. If the French Navy wasn't there, the British could've funneled in more reinforcements or escaped to fight another day, in more preferable fighting conditions.
-French engineers and artillery played a crucial role in Yorktown and other battles.
Oh and if you check out Washington D.C. and the statues there - there are many many statues in many places (like across the White House) who are dedicated to many foreign men (French and others- Marquis de Lafayette anyone?) who played the key role in forging this country.
And onto Napoleon:
So Napoleon got his ass kicked back across Russia eh?
Are you saying that he was worthless compared to Russians?
No, I'll tell you the secret the Russians had: General Winter.
You know Hitler made the same mistake, he went into Russia, nearly won, but winter kicked his ass and the Russians finally got the shit together to push em back.
Napoleon made it all the way to Moscow but later had to retreat because of the great distance. The Russian's didn't kick their ass as much as the weather and long distance.
Not to mention that France during the time of his wars did conquer almost all of Europe (Spain being under friendly control, austria prussia and what not were defeated often, as were the British.)
Oh and Napoleon was used by Thomas Jefferson to get favorable actions on behalf of the economy of the States - without French power at that time, the British could've easily impressed our sailors at whim, easily blockaded us, and what not.
Oh and the Napoleonic Wars also distracted British manpower from the War of 1812 - and guess what, the troops sent to the war in North America were hardly the best troops, yet they still nearly defeated the U.S. (burning down Washington D.C.). After Napoleon's first exile, many veteran troops were sent here. Luckily for us, the peace was being settled by then.
Wanna know another thing? World War I. They lost over 1 million men in the First World War. They held their ground often with German troops just 20 miles from Paris. The Western Front would've broken without the French & British working together (not to mention Russians fighting on the East as well).
The French were to be knocked out first by the Schlieffen Plan but it failed and 4 years of the most brutal fighting ever witnessed occured there.
So when a generation of your men, yes 1 million KILLED not to mention thousands more injured, occurs, your people will be pretty pissed regardless of which nation you are.
And everyone loves to talk about how shitty they were in World war II...
Well guess what, the British nearly lost as well. France just didn't have the luxury of an English Channel. The Blitzkrieg could not have been stopped honestly - no army in the world had such powerful armor and airforce and combined arms.
No, the U.S. was a shithole military at the time, ranked #20 in the world. They used flour to simulate grenades.
The U.S. could've entered these wars and helped earlier but it didn't.
And you know what? The French didn't quit - they fought in the Resistance, thousands of them.
To quote General Eisenhower - "The French Resistance was worth divisions of men and armor."
The Resistance played the key roles in the invasion of D-Day by being the ones who sabotaged rail lines, blew up bridges, and helped make chaos in the German supply lines which diverted attention from the landings.
Not to mention that without their intelligence reports and will to fight, we couldve lost thousands of men trying to liberate France, but they often were the ones who fought the Germans in the streets, creating a logistical hell.
And they paid dearly as well - for instance, some Resistance members were suspected in a small village and the Germans wanted revenge.
They rounded the citizens up, put children and women in a church with loud music playing, while they took the men to the woods. They executed the men and burned the church down while lobbing grenades into the crowded church.
You think many Americans today can face such hardships during catastrophic wars? We take shit for granted today. People back then in every nation fought for their lives - we happened to end up top dog after the war, but it could've easily gone any other way.
Then again the victors are the ones who write the history books, and many here appear to have been brainwashed
And i would hardly say twice - we came in the last year of the fighting of World War I and barely fought - i believe it was only in Jan 1918 we really got any major amount of U.S. troops in action there and the war ended in November. We took a whole freakin year just to mobilize troops and get them there.
World War II of course is a duh. I would hardly say anything else.