France

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**France** was a human nation located on Earth in the Sol System. It was located in Western Europe, separated from Great Britain by the English Channel and bordering Germany to the east. France had a west coast on the Atlantic Ocean, while its south coast bordered the Mediterranean Sea. France also administered overseas territories including French Guiana in South America, several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and an interplanetary colony on the planet Venus in the Sol System.

During the Iron Age, the area that is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls. The area was annexed by the Roman Empire in 51 BC. The Germanic Franks arrived in 476 and formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France in 987.

France was a major European power from the High Middle Ages onward. Beginning in the 16th century the Kingdom of France began to establish a global colonial empire, which by the beginning of the 20th century was the second-largest in the world next to that of Great Britain. France was also one of the first countries after Britain to industrialise during the early 18th century. Several significant technological innovations of the early Industrial Revolution originated in France, the most notable being the steam car invented by former French Army captain Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot. The first airship was also designed in France.

However, the Kingdom of France's costly participation in global conflicts including the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence left the country in a precarious economic situation by the end of the 18th century. This was one of the factors which led to the French Revolution in 1789, resulting the collapse of the absolute monarchy and the emergence of one of the first modern republics.

Following the revolution, France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under the leadership of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. During the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon brought much of continental Europe under French control. However, a combined French and Spanish fleet of airships and steam battleships was decisively defeated at the Battle of Trafalgar by a British Royal Navy battleship fleet in 1805, preventing Napoleon from attempting an invasion of Britain. In 1812 Napoleon suffered another setback when his campaign against the Russian Empire failed disastrously. Napoleon was defeated in 1814 after an ensuing uprising of European monarchies against his rule. The Bourbon monarchy in France was restored, however Napoleon returned from exile and briefly took power again in 1815. Napoleon was finally defeated later in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. The defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars led to nearly a century of global dominance by France's main rival, Great Britain.

In the decades after the fall of Napoleon, France underwent a period of relative decline and experienced significant political instability. The discredited Bourbon monarchy was overthrown in the July Revolution of 1830, which established the constitutional July Monarchy. The July Monarchy was subsequently overthrown in the February Revolution of 1848, which was part of a wave of revolutions that swept throughout Europe during the same year.

In 1862, France became only the third country in the world after Britain and Russia to successfully conduct a manned orbital spaceflight. This mission was launched from a spaceport established in French Guiana in South America.

In 1870, France suffered a decisive and embarrassing military defeat against the North German Confederation, an alliance of German states led by Prussia, in the Franco-Prussian War. The conflict was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. France attempted to invade Prussia with a force of tanks, artillery pieces, steam-powered fighter and bomber aircraft, and airships. However, at this point the Prussians revealed their *Wunderwaffe* — a large number of liquid-fueled long-range rockets which were used to decimate the attacking French army. The remainder of the French force was quickly defeated by the land and air forces of the North German Confederation. At the same time, the Prussians launched a daring attack against the main French strategic rocket base in Toulouse by firing rockets from submarines positioned in the Mediterranean. The entire French long-range rocket arsenal was destroyed in the strike, with the exception of a single rocket which the French managed to launch in time. After this rocket hit Stuttgart in Württemberg, Prussia retaliated by attacking Amiens in France with its own rockets. With France having no long-range rockets left available, and Prussia threatening to attack Paris, France was forced to surrender. France was forced to cede Alsace-Lorraine to the North German Confederation following the Treaty of Frankfurt. The defeat was so severe that it led to the collapse of the French Second Republic and the establishment of the French Third Republic to replace it. Prussia's victory in the Franco-Prussian War resulted in the unification of Germany as the German Empire. The increasing power of Germany in Europe led France and Great Britain to form closer diplomatic ties.

In 1877 France commissioned its first Brunel drive powered spaceship, which was named the *Liberté*. *Liberté* was used to conduct the first manned flyby of the planet Mercury in 1877 and 1878.

In 1885, in an effort to catch up with other nations such as Britain, Russia and the German Empire in the space race, France simultaneously launched two fleets of Brunel drive-powered ships to Mars and Venus, making its first landings on those planets. 30 personnel were sent on the Venus expedition, while 50 were sent to Mars. French astronauts landed in the jungles of Lakshmi Planum on Venus in 1886, after a 306-day voyage. French astronauts remained on Venus for one year before returning to Earth, arriving by 1888. The Mars expedition landed near the base of Olympus Mons, the tallest planetary mountain in the Sol System, in 1887. The French expedition spent one year on Mars, before returning to Earth in 1889. The explorers discovered further evidence of an extraterrestrial civilisation that once existed on both planets, including ruins and artifacts. Both expeditions were successful in growing crops.

In 1887, in a development reflective of warming diplomatic and economic ties between Britain and France over the previous several decades, the Channel Tunnel was opened between Dover in England and Calais in France.

In 1892, France established an alliance with its former enemy, the Russian Empire. The establishment of this alliance was motivated by the growing power of the German Empire and the establishment of the German-led Triple Alliance.

In 1895 France established its first interplanetary colony. Located around the banks of a large river running through Venus' Lakshmi Planum jungle, the settlement was named "Vénus Français" and initially had a population of around 200 settlers. In the following year, France also established a larger colony with 800 settlers at the base of the Olympus Mons mountain on Mars, which was named "Mars Français". French miners working near the base of Olympus Mons later discovered a hidden tunnel system buried deep within the mountain. French explorers noted that the tunnels seemed to be identical to those found by British explorers beneath a large pyramid structure at Schiaparelli City, which they had been exploring since 1892. Despite being thousands of miles away from each other, scientists speculated that the two tunnel systems were connected, part of a single massive underground network of tunnels running deep underneath the planet. After contact was made with survivors from the Venusian Empire, it was revealed that the buildings and tunnel systems on Mars had been constructed thousands of years ago by Venusian settlers on the planet.

By 1900, France's interplanetary colonies on Mars and Venus had a combined population of around 5,000. During 1900, an extensive French expedition into the tunnels beneath Olympus Mons discovered a large underground city, similar to but smaller than the city found by the British beneath the Schiaparelli City pyramid. The French team discovered additional examples of technology, spacecraft and weapons which were later revealed to have been constructed by the Venusian Empire. These were shipped back to France for study. While navigating the huge subterranean settlement, the explorers found several houses and small buildings with ancient paintings on the interior walls which appeared to depict apocalyptic events. It was later revealed that these paintings were created by survivors of the Venusian Civil War, which effectively ended the Venusian civilisation.

In 1904, reflecting improving Franco-British relations, France signed an alliance agreement with Great Britain known as the Entente Cordiale.

After Britain's discovery of the Mons Piton site on Luna, France launched a major expedition in 1904 to explore Luna's surface in search of additional Venusian technology and artifacts. Despite this, no evidence of the Venusian Empire on Luna other than the Mons Piton site was ever discovered. However, the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 led Britain to allow French scientists to meet with the Venusian survivors and inspect examples of Venusian technology at Mons Piton.

In the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905 and 1906, France and Britain rebuffed a German attempt to diplomatically challenge French control over Morocco. This crisis came to be seen as one of the major events which eventually led to the outbreak of the Great War.

In 1907, the French President was invited by Britain to meet with survivors of the Venusian Empire while they were visiting London.

In 1908, France launched the first of its *Danton*-class orbital weapons platforms.

By 1914, France's interplanetary colonies on Mars and Venus had a combined population of around 66,000. During that year, the Great War broke out after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Ground and air forces of the German Empire launched an attack through Belgium toward France, in an attempt to rapidly knock France out of the war. However, the German advance was stalled by defending British and French forces, leading to a two-year stalemate dominated by mostly static trench warfare in Belgium and in northeastern France. In 1916 Great Britain, France and the Russian Empire launched a surprise attack using a fleet of armed space capsules and rockets directed at the orbital weapons platforms of Germany and its allies. It was hoped that destroying most of the German-led alliance's fleet of orbital weapons platforms would leave Germany with no way to retaliate against an attack by the Allies' own orbital weapons, forcing Germany to surrender and ending the war. However, the surprise attack was detected by German forces soon after it began and the leaders of Germany and its allies ordered their weapons platforms to open fire on Allied cities and military targets before they could be destroyed. After the German and German-allied battle stations began firing, the Allies ordered their own orbital weapons stations to fire on Germany and its allies. Many long-range rockets were also used by both sides to strike each other. The short exchange of orbital kinetic weapons and rockets left most of Europe destroyed. Tens of millions of civilians would eventually die from the strikes themselves, as well as from the resulting breakdown of food, water and electricity supplies in addition to outbreaks of disease. The use of chemical shells in many of the orbital projectiles and rockets left some parts of Europe uninhabitable for several years. A ceasefire was soon agreed to between the belligerents of the Great War.

France was hit hard by the Great War and the resulting exchange of orbital weapons and rockets. In addition to losing more than one million soldiers in the conventional fighting between 1914 and 1916, at least six million French civilians were estimated to have died, largely as a result of the massive enemy bombardment of its cities. In total, France lost more than 10 per cent of its prewar population and more than 55 per cent of its prewar economic output. The French cities of Paris, Marseilles, Toulouse, Brest and Lyon were all destroyed. The destruction of Paris left many members of France's government and military leadership dead. A new government - the French Fourth Republic - was established in the city of Orléans in 1917. In 1918, after two years of negotiations, representatives of the Great War's belligerent nations agreed to a peace treaty at Geneva in Switzerland which permanently ended hostilities. The French public reacted angrily to the signing of the Treaty of Geneva, which still allowed Germany to keep the Alsace-Lorraine region which had been captured from France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. However, in exchange much of the territory of the German Empire and German allies on Mars and Venus which had been captured by Allied forces early in the Great War was given to France.

France was one of the founding members of the League of Nations in 1919.

For many years after the Great War, a global economic depression left much of the French population rural and poor with inadequate access to housing, food and medical supplies. Many French nationals who had the means to emigrated to countries in North America which had survived the Great War unscathed, such as Canada and the United States. The postwar French government also wasted precious resources fighting costly colonial wars overseas with the remnants of France's military. Many nationalist movements in French colonies across North Africa and Asia had declared independence from France, taking advantage of the political and economic instability in the country. Despite France's efforts to suppress overseas independence movements and preserve its empire, it had lost effective control of most of its overseas colonial possessions within five years. The French Empire is largely accepted to have ended by 1924.

France was a major recipient of economic aid from the United States in the years following the Great War. The purpose of this aid was to strengthen French institutions and prevent a communist takeover of the country, as had occurred in the Russian Empire.

In 1923, a disaffected portion of the French Army attempted to launch a coup against the government in Orléans. The objective of the coup plotters is understood to have been to seize control of the French government and withdraw France from the Treaty of Geneva and the League of Nations so that she could remilitarise and retake the territory of Alsace-Lorraine, which had been lost to Germany in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. However, the coup plotters did not enjoy the support of the public and most of the military, and they were arrested when troops loyal to the government arrived. Despite this, it was clear that the French public viewed the government as unstable and ineffective. The entire French government resigned soon after the coup attempt. After only seven years of the Fourth Republic, a revised system of government known as the Fifth Republic was introduced in 1924. A new government was elected in the same year, which among other initiatives pledged to end the costly and unpopular colonial wars. It took until the middle of the 1940s for France's economy to return to its pre-Great War size.

France was one of the founding members of the European Union (EU), a supranational political and economic union of several European countries, in 1951. The EU established a monetary union using a single currency (the Euro), which replaced the franc as France's currency.

In 1961, the resources of the French civil space research agency were folded into the newly-formed European Space Agency (ESA), a unified space agency formed by the members of the European Union. This gave France access to advanced German plasma rocket propulsion technology. In 1962, the ESA successfully tested a ship powered by a gravity drive.

By the 1960s European integration had advanced rapidly, and French foreign policy was largely directed by the foreign policy of the European Union. France remained a significant military power within Europe. In 1963 France conducted a successful test of a nuclear weapon. France's nuclear weapons program was primarily motivated by the threat posed by the communist Soviet Union.

In 1965, the member states of the European Union made the decision to unify their military forces under a single European command. The French Armed Forces were dissolved, and the resources of the French Earth and space military forces were integrated into the newly-formed European Union Defense Force.

In 1968, the supranational political and economic structures of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations were combined to form the United Commonwealth. The resources of the European Space Agency and the separate space agencies of Commonwealth of Nations member states were combined to form the United Commonwealth Space Agency. The European Union Defense Force of the former European Union and the separate Earth and space military forces of Commonwealth member states were also reorganised into the United Commonwealth Defence Force. The Euro was replaced as the currency used in France by the newly-established currency of the United Commonwealth, the Commonwealth credit.

When the Cramori Empire launched its opening round of attacks on the Sol System using biological weapons in 1976, more than 10 million French settlers were among nearly 130 million humans killed on Mars.

In the wake of the start of the Allied-Cramori War and the Cramori Empire's attempted invasion of the Sol System in 1976, in 1988 the citizens of the member states of the United Commonwealth voted to give the United Commonwealth Parliament and the United Commonwealth Secretariat the powers of a federal government, effectively transforming the United Commonwealth from a supranational political and economic union to a single federal republic. It was thought that granting the United Commonwealth greater economic, political and military control over the resources of its constituent states would be more effective for planetary defence against the Cramori. The French government was therefore effectively absorbed into the United Commonwealth Government in 1988, and France is largely regarded to have ceased to exist as a separate nation-state on that date.