against crown, town against country, the country against the center, and France against its neighbours. It has been wryly observed that all French men love France, but decry all other Frenchmen for demeaning her.
There is the central theme of French's history: the French created France almost in spite of themselves.

France Geography

If France history is complex and diverse, so too is the geographical landscape over which it unfolded. Even the great plain stretching from beyond the Rhine River to Brittany and south to the Pyrenees is cut by deep river valleys, high plateaus, and the low hills of the Armorican Massif. It covers roughly three quarters of the country in a triangle. The Atlantic and English Channel coasts form two sides, and a line of westward facing hilly escarpments from Toulouse in the south to Verdun in the northeast form the third. The other quarter consists of hills and mountains.
The Alps and Pyrenees, with the Mediterranean coastline between them, define France's southern and south eastern frontiers; and the Vosges, Massif Central, and Ardennes are rugged hills which break the landscape also in the east and south. Geographical detail varies greatly from one region to the next: the sheer walls of the Pyrenees, the soaring peaks of the Alps with Mont Blanc over 4000 metres, bizarre volcanic cones in the Puy de Dome of the Massif Central, park-like expanses in the Loire Valley, wooded hills in the Paris Basin, flat plains to the east of La Rochelle, granite cliffs on the Breton coast, marshlands in Burgundy, and treeless plateaus in Champagne, to mention only some of what catches the eye.


France Climate

All of the country escapes extremes of heat and cold, save the highest Alpine peaks; but a damper, cooler climate prevails across the north and north east, while dry, hot, Mediterranean conditions characterize the south and south west. Wine is produced nearly everywhere, but the principal areas are in the warm Mediterranean or semi Mediterranean areas: the Loire Valley south and southeast to the Languedoc region, and along the Rhone River between Lyon and Arles. Mediterranean France also is subject to the legendary Mistral and Sirocco winds. The llictral is a cold, winter wind originating in the central plateau, which blows down the Rhone Valley. The Sirocco, either moist and warm or dry and hot, blows out of North Africa. Both are said to produce unusual, even bizarre, behaviour among people living in the areas affected.

Climate and geography influenced the course of French's history, but did not dictate it. A mild climate and vast, rich agricultural plains, plateaus and river basins made France attractive to settlement and then to acquisitorial competition from Neolithic times to the present.

Rivers

Long river systems (the Loire is over 1000 kilometres long) provided direction and invitation for migration, trade, invasion, and conquest and still more acquisitorial competition. France, on the extreme western edge of the European continent, lies at the end of a great plain extending unbroken north and east to western Siberia. It has been a highway for the movement of peoples and cultures for thousands of years. Only the Rhine separates France from this plain to the east, and the Rhine has proved no barrier at all. Meanwhile, four great river systems quarter France, three of them in the great plain area. They served as conduits for the settlements and movement of peoples, To some extent the history of France can be written in terms of how the Saone Rhone, the Garonne, the Loire, and the Paris Basin (Seine) evolved from areas of primitive habitation into centres of warring duchies, counties and kingdoms. Only the Rhone drains into the Mediterranean. The others follow the gentle slope of the western and northern plains to the Atlantic. Over the centuries, this Atlantic orientation has prevailed, for these are the richest watersheds. The economic and political centre, when there was a centre, lay northward, and eventually the Paris Basin emerged as the hub around which the wheel of the French nation revolved. [1]. "


Celtic Gaul

"The Romans so named the region of modern France which was populated after 1000 BC by a metal age people from northern and central Europe, known generically as Celts. Their identity is not precise, since `Celtic' connotes variously race, language and tribe, and the Greeks and Romans used Celts interchangeably with Gauls to denote the people of the region. Julius Caesar, who described Gaul as being in three parts, recognized only one of the three as truly Celtic. Even so, in Roman eyes the Gauls were Celts; and whether they were called Belgae, Cimbri, Alemanni, Boii, Marcommani, Arverni, or some other name, they were much the same. Only the Aquitanians (Iberians) were descriptively different, and the Belgae were said to be different, but probably were not. Perhaps the Romans' practical turn of mind led to lumping the peoples of Gaul together into this Celtic category for convenience.

More is known about the Celts, or Gauls, than any other western European people from this epoch. If Neolithic dwellers left megaliths and pots, Celts left weapons, armour, tools, ornaments, traces of language and other evidence of a lively, wide-ranging cultural, political and economic life. Gold and other precious metals were widely used, though for decoration as much as for money. Caesar, Gemranicus, and other Roman travellers identified them as tall, blond or red haired Nordic types, organized into a complex social political system. More recently, archaeologist Daphne Nash described this system as warrior agrarian, in which peasant labour was the most important source of social wealth and was appropriated by the nobility through contractual and military relationships; in short, a structure similar to later feudalism.

The Greek geographer, Strabo, from his vantagepoint at Massilia, the Greek colony which would become Marseille, depicted a trading network encompassing the four river systems, the English Channel, and western and southern England. It began with the Celts and was co opted by early Greek and Roman traders. The first century cross channel wine trade was a thriving concern, indicating that `our claret, chianti or vino tinto, is very much old wine in new bottles'.[2]. "

References:

[1], [2] Robert Cole," A Traveller's History of France". London: Cassell A Windrush Press Book, 2002.