When we tally the 10 blunderful moments of French military history, it’s tempting to point out that the English word “surrender” comes from the French *surrendre*. Yet many forget that “victory” derives from French *victoire*, “battle” from *bataille*, and even “war” is a mash‑up of *were* and *guerre*. As Kipling once observed of the French, “Their business is war, and they do their business.”
10 Blunderful Moments of French Military Mishaps
10 Courtrai, 1302
If medieval duchies and counties aren’t your specialty, picture Flanders—today part of Belgium—as a former French possession. Early in the 1300s the county was split: the aristocracy bowed to French authority, while the bulk of the populace yearned for self‑rule, a sentiment they demonstrated dramatically on May 18, 1302 by slaughtering every French resident of Bruges.
King Philip IV, known as Philip the Fair, responded with a punitive march into Flanders, placing the command in the hands of Robert II of Artois. Robert mustered what was, at the time, one of France’s largest field forces: more than 2,500 heavily‑armored knights and nobles, backed by elite infantry of at least 4,000 men.
Outside the walls of Courtrai, a lightly‑armored Flemish militia of roughly 10,000 men awaited Robert’s advance. These peasants wielded pikes and *goedendags*—short spears meant to knock riders from their horses. They picked their battlefield wisely: a river shielded their rear, while a tangled network of ditches and marshes fortified their front. Some French knights warned against assaulting such a fortified spot, but Robert brushed them off, boasting, “A hundred horses are worth a thousand men.”
The clash opened with a futile volley of arrows from both sides. Once the arrows ran out, the Flemish fell back to their prepared line, planting their pikes firmly into the earth. The French knights ordered their foot soldiers aside and surged forward. Though the ground slowed the charge, it didn’t halt it—until the Flemish pikes met the horses, halting them dead in their tracks, while the soggy terrain turned to mud that trapped the riders. Repeated charges met the same stubborn resistance.
In just a few hours the French force was annihilated, with more than 1,000 knights—including Robert II of Artois—lying dead. A few surviving French soldiers attempted to defect to the Flemish side, only to be cut down for the very spurs on their boots. To celebrate the triumph, the Flemings gathered roughly 500 pairs of those spurs and displayed them in churches across the region.
9 Crecy, 1346
Flemish freedom proved fleeting. By the 1340s the English and French were squabbling over who should control Flanders and the French crown, among other disputes. Naturally, their debates were settled with swords and arrows rather than diplomacy.
In 1346, King Edward III of England led his army across the Channel, spending months raiding the French countryside before Philip VI finally caught up with them near the village of Crécy. Edward’s force numbered 11,000 men, including 7,000 longbowmen. He chose a gentle rise for his troops, backed by a river on one flank and dense, impenetrable woods on the other.
Philip’s army, estimated between 30,000 and 60,000 soldiers, surged onto the battlefield in chaotic fashion late in the day. Disregarding Philip’s command to postpone the attack until morning and lacking proper reconnaissance, an ill‑coordinated mass of crossbowmen and heavy cavalry barreled toward the English line.
The initial crossbow barrage fell short, prompting a torrent of English arrows in response. English bowmen could release about five arrows per minute, dwarfing the crossbowmen’s one or two. The decimated crossbowmen fled, while French knights, impatient, charged without waiting for their infantry to clear the ground. Yet before the knights could close in, the English longbows felled their horses, forcing the remaining riders to retreat.
The French persisted, launching fifteen additional charges, none of which managed to disturb the English formation. The slaughter was staggering: more than 1,500 French knights and 10,000 foot soldiers fell at Crécy, while English losses were limited to roughly 100 men.
8 Nicopolis, 1396
During the 14th century, the Ottoman forces cut through the Byzantine army as easily as a hot knife through butter. Seeking to reverse some Byzantine defeats and keep the Ottomans at bay, French knights spearheaded a crusader expedition into northern Bulgaria, targeting the Ottoman stronghold of Nicopolis.
The coalition of French and Hungarians, probably around 20,000 men strong, laid siege to the city. A string of blunders sealed its fate. The crusaders neglected to bring any siege engines, so ladders and mining proved useless against the massive fortifications, forcing them to rely on starving the defenders.
During the wait, the crusaders omitted any reconnaissance to monitor the approaches to Nicopolis for a possible Ottoman relief force. This lapse allowed Sultan Bayezid to slip his troops unnoticed to the city’s outskirts, sandwiching the crusaders between the fortress and the Ottoman army.
Leadership fell not to the most seasoned commander but to the highest‑ranking noble: a green 23‑year‑old French knight named Jean de Valois. Valois had never faced the Ottomans, yet his French pedigree and knighthood convinced him to thrust his heavy cavalry into a reckless frontal assault against the unscouted Ottoman position.
Briefly, Valois’s audacity paid off as the French drove Bayezid’s cavalry from the battlefield. However, this thrust brought his men into the lethal range of Ottoman archers, halting the advance dead in its tracks. Seizing the chaos, the Ottoman forces enveloped the French, while simultaneously assaulting the Hungarian reserves still entrenched in Nicopolis. Almost the entire crusader army was captured or slain.
7 Fishguard, 1797
Amid the French Revolutionary Wars against Britain, General Lazare Hoche devised a three‑pronged assault on the United Kingdom aimed at unsettling English dominance. The plan called for French troops to land in England and Ireland, bolstering an Irish uprising and stirring unrest among England’s lower classes. Two of the three columns never reached Britain and turned back to France. The third, diverted by storms from its Bristol route, finally touched down at the tranquil Welsh port of Fishguard.
To win over the English populace, the French appointed Irish‑American William Tate—veteran of the American Revolution—to lead the expedition. Tate’s force was a rag‑tag mix of slaves, convicts, and POWs, totaling about 1,800 well‑armed men. Yet Fishguard offered no opposition. Tate positioned his troops outside the town and sent them out to forage, but they soon abandoned discipline to guzzle stolen wine. Inebriated French soldiers roamed the streets, and a lone Welshwoman wielding a pitchfork managed to capture at least a dozen of them.
When the locals finally realized an invasion was underway, the Welsh mustered their militia. Around 400 men—and a comparable number of women—dressed in their traditional red coats and black hats rallied to defend Fishguard. Confronted with what Tate perceived as an overwhelming force, he chose the only sensible option: surrender.
6 Aboukir Bay, 1798
As Napoleon set out to dominate Egypt, his supporting fleet lingered anchored in Aboukir Bay, east of Alexandria. While Bonaparte’s campaign threatened Britain’s Mediterranean trade routes, the French navy there was complacent, believing an English counter‑attack was unlikely in the near term.
Nevertheless, in August 1798, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s British fleet sailed in to confront the French. The French had failed to post adequate coastal lookouts, leaving them blind to the approach. Their formation was weak: thirteen ships of the line were spread thinly across the bay, leaving sizable gaps. Shore batteries offered no aid, as Admiral Brueys had anchored beyond their effective range. Moreover, Brueys’s crews were understrength, many plagued by disease.
Nelson arrived at the French anchorage at twilight and promptly ordered an assault. The French were so unprepared that oil and paint were left exposed on the deck of their flagship.
Nelson’s vessels slipped through the French fleet’s sieve‑like formation, raking the bewildered enemy with broadsides. A cannonball struck an open oil pool aboard the French flagship, igniting a blaze that quickly engulfed the ship; its powder magazine detonated, crippling the French naval effort.
By nightfall, Nelson had captured or destroyed eleven of the French’s finest ships. British losses amounted to a few hundred casualties and no vessels. Napoleon’s army found itself stranded in the Near East; Bonaparte and a handful of generals fled, boarding a swift transport back to France. The remaining troops were forced to seek refuge aboard British ships.
5 1804
Haiti—then known as Saint‑Domingue—entered the 19th century under the control of former slave Toussaint L’Ouverture. By 1801, Napoleon, having solidified his rule, set his sights on the island. He could not tolerate a lucrative French colony falling under a black insurgent’s command.
To subdue Toussaint, Napoleon dispatched his brother‑in‑law, General Charles Leclerc, with 30,000 French troops across the Atlantic. Upon landing, Haitian rebels chose to scorch their own towns before the French and wage a guerrilla campaign from the thick interior jungle. Leclerc proved an adept commander, swiftly capturing most guerrilla leaders. However, while the French could engage the rebels, they were ill‑suited to combat yellow fever, which struck and killed roughly half of Leclerc’s forces. With L’Ouverture still at large, Leclerc made a fateful move.
Leclerc summoned L’Ouverture to a fraudulent peace talks, seized the revolutionary, and shipped him to a prison in the Alps. This desperate blunder only inflamed the uprising further, and Leclerc himself later fell victim to yellow fever before achieving any lasting pacification.
4 Bailen, 1808
During the spring of 1808, Spain was driving out the French occupation troops that had recently overrun the nation under Napoleon’s orders. To suppress the Spanish insurgency, General Pierre Dupont was sent from Madrid to seize the port of Cádiz. Reinforcements bolstered his force to roughly 23,000 men.
Around the midpoint between Madrid and Cádiz, Dupont paused near Bailén after discovering that the road ahead was dominated by Spanish guerrillas. While he considered retreating to Madrid, the Spanish seized the passage. Concerned about being isolated from French command in the capital, Dupont dispatched 10,000 troops under General Vedel to reclaim the route. By splitting his forces, Dupont inadvertently allowed the larger Spanish army to encircle him, cutting off half his troops.
Instead of mounting a decisive breakout, Dupont resorted to a series of weak, fragmented assaults. The Spanish remained unmoved. While Dupont’s forward guard withdrew, Vedel made scant effort to breach the Spanish encirclement surrounding his compatriots. Though Vedel contemplated fleeing, even that appeared overly taxing, so he led his detachment back to Bailén and surrendered.
Dupont himself capitulated, resulting in nearly 18,000 French soldiers surrendering under a Spanish promise that they could return to France. However, after Dupont’s surrender, the Spanish reconsidered and instead imprisoned the French troops.
3 1867
North America in the 1860s was in turmoil. Mexico, mirroring the United States, endured a costly—though inconclusive—civil war. The victorious liberal regime led by Benito Juárez inherited a nation burdened by a bankrupt treasury. Juárez’s decision to cease payments to European creditors set the stage for an extraordinary incursion.
In 1862, France, Britain, and Spain launched a joint intervention to compel Mexico to settle its debts. When the Anglo‑Spanish partnership recognized that Mexico could not conjure money, they withdrew, leaving the French to seize Mexico City. Napoleon III harbored ambitions of establishing a North American empire.
Juárez was deemed “out” while Napoleon III’s preferences were deemed “in.” The French emperor placed the Austrian archduke Maximilian von Habsburg on the Mexican throne. Mexico’s previously vanquished conservative elite greeted the European prince enthusiastically. Yet Maximilian’s popularity was divided. He and his wife exuded glamour, resembling an early JFK‑Jackie duo. However, Maximilian’s progressive policies—favoring indigenous peoples and the poor while alienating wealthy conservatives—won him few allies on either side.
During Maximilian’s turbulent rule, French soldiers patrolling the countryside were the sole source of stability. Napoleon III had pledged these troops to Maximilian via the Treaty of Miramar—a pact used to persuade his “friend” to accept the crown. Yet, as time passed, Napoleon III’s enthusiasm for the Mexican venture waned, prompting him to pull the tens of thousands of troops.
Deprived of the expected French backing, the republican Mexican forces faced no obstacle in confronting the erstwhile monarch. Maximilian was captured and executed. Benito Juárez reclaimed his authority, likely taking satisfaction that his earlier scheme to turn Mexico into a U.S. protectorate had failed.
2 La-Tour, 1870
France opened the Franco‑Prussian War by hastily advancing its forces to the eastern border. After the Prussians decimated that army weeks later, a swift withdrawal westward to assume defensive positions appeared the only logical step. Executing an orderly retreat required competent leadership, but the French army was under the erratic command of Marshal Achille Bazaine, whose directives were famously summarized by a subordinate as, “I spent the entire day in complete ignorance of Marshal Bazaine’s intentions.”
During their westward pullback, the French unexpectedly met a Prussian cavalry contingent of nearly 30,000 horsemen. Though formidable, Bazaine still commanded over 120,000 troops. Nevertheless, the odds did not dissuade the Prussian cavalry, which launched an attack, assuming that nearby Prussian units would hear the gunfire and converge on the battlefield.
As Bazaine wavered, Prussian reinforcements arrived in small waves. The fighting persisted with little gain for either side, and the French still held a four‑to‑one numerical superiority. Bazaine spent the bulk of the engagement pondering how to withdraw to a more defensible location.
A daring, near‑suicidal charge by under 1,000 Prussian cavalrymen finally persuaded Bazaine that the battle was unwinnable. He disengaged, veered away from Paris, and retreated toward the fortified town of Metz. There, General Bazaine and his 115,000 troops became encircled, isolated from Paris and consequently deprived of supplies and reinforcements.
1 Sedan, 1870
To aid Bazaine, who found himself besieged at Metz by a reinforced Prussian army, Napoleon III dispatched the remaining fragments of the French forces.
A weary French army of roughly 130,000 tried to regroup at Sedan, a town situated about 160 km (100 mi) northwest of Metz. As the French awaited their emperor’s arrival to take command, a 200,000‑strong Prussian force encircled the position. The surrounding high ground turned the French into easy targets for Prussian artillery.
When Napoleon finally arrived, the battle was already in progress, and Prussian artillery had devastated French command. Leadership of the French army changed hands like a hot potato, fostering chaos throughout the ranks. Orders were issued, rescinded, and reissued in rapid succession.
Napoleon quickly recognized that his army could not survive the day, let alone reach Metz. He ordered a surrender before the carnage concluded. After a few more disastrous assaults, the French command finally acquiesced to their emperor’s directive.
Approximately 20,000 French troops were killed or wounded, and a comparable number were captured during the day’s combat. An additional 83,000 French soldiers surrendered afterward, along with Emperor Napoleon himself, who was taken prisoner. Though the Franco‑Prussian War was only 44 days old, it should have concluded then. Instead, with Napoleon defeated, the nascent Third Republic refused an armistice and prolonged the conflict for several more months.
J. is currently penning a book on sex, money, intrigue and the like; feel free to contact him if you’re interested.