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At the height of the French Wars of Religion, France became embroiled in another succession crisis, as the last Valois king, Henry III, fought against factions the House of Bourbon and House of Guise. Henry, the Bourbon King of Navarre, won and established the Bourbon dynasty. A burgeoning worldwide colonial empire was established in the 16th ...
Louis XV Became the new King of France. 1738: 18 November: Treaty of Vienna: The signing of the treaty ended the War of the Polish Succession. France gained the Duchy of Lorraine and Bar. 1744: 5–10 October: Louis XV visits Strasbourg. It is the first time since 1681 that a monarch goes to Alsace.
In 1914, the territory of France was different from today's France in two important ways: most of Alsace and the northeastern part of Lorraine had been annexed by Germany in 1870 (following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871), and the North African country of Algeria had been established as an integral part of France in 1848.
The kingdom became Europe's dominant cultural, political and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. Throughout the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, France was Europe's richest, largest, most populous, powerful and influential country. [2] In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas.
The First French Empire [4] [a] or French Empire (French: Empire français; Latin: Imperium Francicum) and also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Europe at the beginning of the 19th century.
The Kingdom of France was also ruled in personal union with the Kingdom of Navarre over two time periods, 1284–1328 and 1572–1620, after which the institutions of Navarre were abolished and it was fully annexed by France (though the King of France continued to use the title "King of Navarre" through the end of the monarchy). [2]
To a large extent, modern France lies within clear limits of physical geography.Roughly half of its margin lies on sea coasts: one continuous coastline along "La Manche" ("the sleeve" or English Channel) and the Atlantic Ocean forming the country's north-western and western edge, and a shorter, separate coastline along the Mediterranean Sea forming its south-eastern edge.
In the 3rd century, Western Europe started to be invaded by Germanic tribes from the north and the east, and some of the groups settled in Gaul.In the history of the French language, the most important groups are the Franks in northern France, the Alemanni in the modern German/French border area (), the Burgundians in the Rhône (and the Saone) Valley and the Visigoths in the Aquitaine region ...