France (No Manifest Destiny)

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Kingdom of France Royaume de France Timeline: No Manifest Destiny OTL equivalent: France, Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad, Central African Republic and Gabon
Flag Coat of arms
Motto:  "Dieu protège le roi du peuple!" ("God save the king of the people!")
Anthem:  Marche Henri IV ("March of Henry IV")
France (green)
Capital		Paris
Official languages		French
Demonym		French
Government		Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
-	Monarch	Charles XI
-	Prime Minister	Édouard Philippe
Legislature		Parliament
-	Upper house	Chamber of Peers
-	Lower house	Chamber of Deputies
Formation
-	Reign of Clovis I as King of the Franks	481–511
-	Treaty of Verdun	10 August 843
-	Capetian dynasty	3 July 987
-	Proclamation of the abolition of the monarchy	22 September 1792
-	Restoration of the monarch	3 May 1814
-	Current constitution adopted	18 July 1814
Population
-	2022 estimate	66,109,764
Currency		French franc (FRF)
Drives on the		Right

France, officially the Kingdom of France (French: Royaume de France), is a transcontinental country spanning Europe, South America, and Africa. In Europe, it borders the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra, and Spain; in Africa, it borders Morocco, Tunisia, Spain, The Gambia, Portugal, Togoland, Nigeria, Italy, Sudan, and the Kongo; and in South America, it borders Brazil and the Netherlands. France is a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy, with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centres; other major urban areas include Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, and Nice.

Inhabited since the Palaeolithic era, France was settled by Celtic tribes during the Iron Age. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture that laid the foundation of the French language. After the end of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Germanic Franks formed the Kingdom of Francia, which would eventually become the feudalised Kingdom of France. Throughout its history in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, France was constantly at war with England (later Britain), most notably the Hundred Years' War where England attempted to take over France.

In 1789, after a financial crisis in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution broke out, turning France into a constitutional monarchy and eventually a republic, which was overturned by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804 when he declared it an empire. After ten years of constant warfare, Napoleon escaped to Louisiana and, with pressure from Tsar Alexander I, the Allied powers allowed Jean Bernadotte to become the new king of France. In the late 19th century, tensions rose between France and the newly-unified Germany, and eventually escalated into the Great War in 1914, which the Central Powers won.

TBA

Etymology

Originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or "realm of the Franks". Modern France is still named today Francia in Italian and Spanish, while Frankreich in German, Frankrijk in Dutch and Frankrike in Swedish all mean "Land/realm of the Franks".

The name of the Franks is related to the English word frank ("free"): the latter stems from the Old French franc ("free, noble, sincere"), ultimately from Medieval Latin francus ("free, exempt from service; freeman, Frank"), a generalisation of the tribal name that emerged as a Late Latin borrowing of the reconstructed Frankish endonym *Frank. It has been suggested that the meaning "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation, or more generally because they had the status of freemen in contrast to servants or slaves.

The etymology of *Frank is uncertain. It is traditionally derived from the Proto-Germanic word *frankōn, which translates as "javelin" or "lance" (the throwing axe of the Franks was known as the francisca), although these weapons may have been named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around.

History

French Empire (1804-1814)

Main Articles: French Empire and Napoleonic Wars

Napoleon I, 1804

After Napoleon seized full power in the French Republic in 1799, he began running a military dictatorship within the country. Soon, in August 1802, he was proclaimed First Consul for Life. Ultimately, on 18 May 1804, Napoleon was given the title of "Emperor of the French" by the Senate; finally, on 2 December 1804, he was solemnly crowned, after receiving the Iron Crown of the Lombard kings, and was consecrated by Pope Pius VII in Notre-Dame de Paris.

The coronation was deemed illegitimate by the Great Powers, as Napoleon had no known ties to royal families. Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, as payback, declared himself Emperor of Austria, turning the Austrian state from an archduchy into an empire with all the Habsburgs' holdings such as Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. However, Napoleon managed to win multiple battles against the Holy Roman Empire, and established puppet states, most notably the Confederation of the Rhine. This ultimately caused the institution's dissolution in 1806. As the war progressed, Napoleon continued gaining victories, although the war in Iberia was a major struggle for the French Empire.

In 1812, after the Russian Empire failed to comply with Napoleon's continental blockade of the United Kingdom, the French Emperor launched a major invasion of the country with 600,000 soldiers. Initially, the invasion was a success, although after the burning of Moscow and terrible winter weather, Napoleon ordered a retreat of the soldiers back, while he himself took a quick ride back to Paris to keep the situation at bay. Eventually however, as allied troops entered Paris, the emperor took a boat and escaped to Louisiana, where he proclaimed it a kingdom. With the peace treaty on 30 May, the allies allowed Napoleon to rule over Louisiana.

In the final months of the conflict, however, there was a huge debate about who should return to rule. Initially, most of the coalition powers hoped to restore the Bourbon monarch, although Tsar Alexander I had a different idea. He wanted Jean Bernadotte, a Frenchman who had gotten Sweden against Napoleon, to be coronated as the new king of France. Despite the great powers telling him to reconsider, Alexander I held firm, and eventually they agreed to let Jean become king. On 3 May 1814, Russian troops personally lead by Alexander I himself escorted the new king to Paris, where he was given the name 'John III, King of the French'.