100 year war. French-Indian war (your pardon I don't know the French name for it). World War I. These are actually the basis of my opinion. In each of those conflicts the French soldier/warrior preformed not just well but greatly and at high cost. French generals however... To clarify my position I am not accusing the French of cowardice. Anything but! I'm accusing them of bad luck in their leaders, which isn't their fault.
Well, to be fair, I remember once reading that during the campaigns in Germany against Napoleon after his defeat in Russia, the allied armies were ordered to deliberatedly seek out French forces lead by generals other than Napoleon himself and decline battle with the emperor under all circumstances...a doctrine which resulted in a long string of victories.
However, I would contest that I doubt that french generals performed any worse (or better) than their average european counterparts during any given war, which is to say that for every battle lost to incompetent or nonexistent leadership I'm pretty certain there exists a british or german counterpart.
I have a number of Norwegian and Russians friends who would be surprised to hear that only us Anglos make French jokes. Although I'm told Czech jokes are common in central Europe.
Hm, I probably got a wrong impression from the internet as I don't have much experience with Russians. The point I wanted to make was simply that it's likely a country-specific opinion.
The 700s may indeed be early but frankly as far I am concerned Martel is French enough. Besides which it was the Franks who laid the foundations of France, so why not include them?
They more or less laid the foundations for all of western europe, not only France considers itself to be descendant from them, Germany also regards the Frankish realm as its foundation and the battle of Tours as "their" victory for Christianity. So I think the Franks predate modern nationality a bit (albeit only slightly) and still belong to the period of the decline of the antique empires which consisted of multiple modern nationalities. I'm surely no master historian, though.
World War II was a bit of a aberration and it's unfair to slap France for it when just about everyone on the continent got gut punched into submission.
It's not only unfair, it's also really irrational. The world expected an exact rematch of WW1 even though
a) Germany this time didn't have to fight a two-front war after the quick take-out of Poland.
b) France had suffered much more under WW1 than Germany and among other things actually fielded a smaller army than in 1914.
c) there was no capacity in allied pre-war planning for any offensive action while nearly all important french industry was concentrated in immediate vicinity to the likely front
How should France have won under
those circumstances without extremely devoted British assistance?