The Treaty of Bordeaux
Following the cessation of hostilities in mainland Europe, diplomats from the League and the Mitteleuropa met in the city of Bordeaux to discuss the fate of France.
Emperor Napoleon IV had already arrived in France, along with the Cabinet and the National Assembly, almost as soon the Marseilles beachhead had been expanded to offer reasonable security - just as in the last weeks of the French Civil War, Marseilles would become once again the capital of the French state.
With the agreement between the “interested parties”, as they were termed, that Bordeaux, the last refuge of the Communard regime, would be the location for the negotiations the government of the French Empire began preparations to host the negotiations.
While the initial suggestion by the French that the Emperor chair the negotiations was rejected - by both the Spanish and the Germans - the role of the French as the hosts enabled them to attempt to rig the outcome in their own interest. This was something that they took full advantage of - with the German delegation being housed next to the French delegation and a significant distance from the accommodation of the other members of the Mitteleuropa.
This was part of a secret negotiating strategy devised by De Gaulle. Once again stating that France had no friends, only interests, he made arrangements for the French diplomats to make secret contact with the Germans.
This was because the Germans were in an undoubted position of strength - they held Paris and nearly two thirds of metropolitan France in addition to having a military capable of beating the League whilst also continuing the fight against the defiant Union of Britain.
As such, the best that the French and the League could hope for through negotiations was the partitioning of France - the northern half being under German control and the southern half, which was already mostly in French hands, under French control.
This was unacceptable to both the Emperor and De Gaulle. France was ‘one and indivisible’ and cutting the country in two was something that both men were determined to avoid.
Therefore, while the main negotiations took place throughout the 26th, the 27th and the 28th of March on how to divide France between the victorious powers, French diplomats secretly met with German counterparts and conveyed an offer which recently declassified papers reveal was authorised at the highest level of the French government.
The gist of the proposal was simple. The French Empire would regain the entirety of pre-Second Weltkrieg France and, in return, would desert the Catholic League and join the Mitteleuropa - finally ending all prospect of a threat to the German Empire by turning its greatest enemy into an ally and simultaneously robbing the League of any chance of becoming a rival power bloc.
While the German diplomats conveyed this proposal all the way to Kaiser Wilhelm II, it was doomed from the outset. Imperial Germany was dominated by the Kingdom of Prussia - and virulent Francophobia was a strong national sentiment amongst Prussians. The Kings of Prussia had only been able to form the German Empire and become the Kaisers through their defeat of the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian war.
Kaiser Wilhelm ultimately had no interest in the French offer. It would have meant giving up the spoils of victory to a nation who had already shown themselves perfectly happy two betray two alliances as soon as it suited their interests. Additionally, Wilhelm II was a deeply conservative man, deeply proud of his family’s ancient aristocratic history, and viewed the Napoleons nothing more than parvenu upstarts. Coupled with the Kaiser’s own grandiose plans for France, the French proposal was dismissed out of hand.
With his plan in tatters, De Gaulle was forced to accept the partition of France and to focus his efforts on getting the best deal out of the partition that he could.
In this the French had some success. Their possession of Lyon, Bordeaux and La Rochelle were to prove the basis for a successful argument which led to the Germans agreeing to return all of France south of Poitiers to the French Empire - in addition to providing the Empire with the industrial base necessary to compete with occupied France
Nevertheless, it was a bitter disappointment to many Frenchmen when Napoleon IV signed the Treaty of Bordeaux. Under the terms of the treaty a nation which had been united ever since the Hundred Years’ War was brutally split in two.
While southern France would come firmly under the control of the French Empire, with a new national capital in Bordeaux, and a French government, northern France had further turmoil to come.
The Germans established a new French State under a puppet government. The new nation was forced to renounce all of its territorial claims, to cede western Flanders to Flanders-Wallonia, to pay heavy war reparations and to agree to the imposition of a relative of the Kaiser as King Francois III of France.
With two competing French governments and northern France descending into economic chaos following the upheaval of the war, two new power blocs found themselves staring at each other across the new borders. The stage was set for what would become known as the Cold War.
(in Napoleon time,the Holland,Belgium and Part of Yugoslavia are in French Control 
