FranceIn 1948, in the company of a French-speaking friend from Derry, I eagerly crossed England to cycle through northern France. People were hospitable, with the generosity of those who are poor though relieved, but they muttered of "les sales Boches". And indeed we came upon cemetery after cemetery - French, English, American and Canadian helmets corroding on white crosses. It was as if this fair country, la belle France, had suffered what Newman calls "an aboriginal calamity".
From the very beginning of his history, Alistair Horne stresses the vulnerability of France: "Not even her great but sleepy rivers . . . the Somme and the Marne could prevent an invader from sweeping across the boundless flat plains of northern France."
And then, looking north: "West of the Rhine, all through her history, France had no topographical boundaries on which she could rely."
Of course, Poland and Hungary have suffered a similar plight, located in continental Europe with a good deal of flat open country, prey to any and all invaders, unlike Great Britain or even little Ireland.
The history of France was largely determined by the growth of Paris, which began as a Roman fort, Lutetia, the ruins of which can still be seen today. And the Roman influence is pervasive. "Rome gave Paris her first revolutionary martyr, St Denis, decapitated at the 'Mons Martyrum' . . .", which would become the Montmartre of the artists. When Napoleon declared himself ruler, he crowned himself emperor, complete with the splendid trappings of ancient Rome, and with Trajan's Column to mark his victories. And his descendant, Napoleon III, assumed the same grandiose title. One could even speculate that the grandiloquence of de Gaulle was in the same Roman tradition.
Horne does not seem to have much sympathy for the early Frankish dynasty. Clovis, "who killed off most of his family" and built a church after each murder; Queen Fredagonda, who burned her rivals alive (he sees her as first in a line of bloodthirsty French females, a precursor of Reine Margot and Madame Defarge). Dagobert died of dysentery, but established another tradition by being buried at St Denis. Even Charlemagne is reproached for being "more German than French . . . an absentee ruler who did little for France, or Paris", and ran his empire from afar.
He was not fat, however, as I found out when I sat in his stern coronation chair in the cathedral at Aachen. Louis VI, on the other hand - the first king Horne approves of - was such a huge glutton and boozer that he grew too heavy to be hoisted on to his horse. Despite this handicap, he and his first minister, the Abbé Suger, were largely responsible for initiating and fostering the 12th-century Renaissance. "In France its landmarks and symbols were the soaring Gothic glories of Chartres, Sens, Laon, Bourges, Notre-Dame and St-Denis cathedrals." Horne enlists Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose, as witness to these sermons in stone. But the Abbé Suger was also a hero of the American historian and writer, Henry Adams.
Alistair Horne discovered France at roughly the same time as myself, but as a young soldier. Since then, he has written many books on French history - two on Napoleon, one on the Commune, one on Verdun and, keeping pace with the problems of France, one on the Algerian war. And one on Seven Ages of Paris, a city he rightly regards as the hub of French history. Sections of that volume are absorbed into Friend or Foe, which he describes as "the culmination of a love affair with France . . .that complex, sometimes exasperating, but always fascinating country".
Love stories are usually full of piquant detail, and such is not lacking here, such as the Alexandrine expanse of Louis XIV's camel-like gut ("on his autopsy, his bowels were discovered to be twice the normal length"). And Mirabeau, though ugly, had "surprising success with women", dying after a night with two dancers. Napoleon, on the other hand, thought love or a meal should take only 15 minutes. But then he had other things on his mind.
This is not history as I learned it in the halls of UCD from John Marcus O'Sullivan and Desmond Williams. And even the flamboyant Robin Dudley Edwards, with his high-pitched voice and halo of hair, did not dilate on the sexual proclivities of either the Great O'Neill or Eamon de Valera. Friend or Foe is popular history, which relishes the anecdotal, a genre more common in France , like the work of Andre Maurois and Maurice Druon, for example, both of whom Horne greatly admires.
Not only does he love a rattling good yarn, but he has a remarkable talent for sending shafts of light into history and making connections. As when he reminds us that Verdun was where Petain led and a wounded de Gaulle fell, a situation that would be reversed in the second World War.
But sometimes prejudices show. Horne is fascinated, for example, by the enigma of Mitterrand, whom he sees as embodying the contradictions of modern France, combining Vichy and the Resistance, and managing to maintain a marriage and a mistress while still president. Giscard, however, "is vain and authoritarian . . . a typical product of the elitist hautes écoles". Another intello who merits the tumbril is Sartre: "If ever there was a philosopher guilty of the sin Socrates was accused of, being a false corrupter of youth, Sartre seemed to be it."
Despite an occasional air of condescension, Horne brings to French history an intriguingly wry British perspective. When the impassioned rhetoric of Dominique de Villepin was applauded in the UN, it was countered by the dry, deflating Saxon irony of Jack Straw. Friend or Foe? It still goes on.
John Montague's most recent collection of poetry is Drunken Sailor (Gallery Press, 2004). He is collecting his translations from the French, and this year Agenda will publish A Smile
Between the Stones, from the French of Claude Esteban
Friend or Foe: An Anglo-Saxon History of France By Alistair Horne Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 428pp. £25