France attempted to pull the United States into another war against Britain less than a decade after the end of the Revolutionary War and, when the Americans we

France attempted to pull the United States into another war against Britain less than a decade after the end of the Revolutionary War and, when the Americans weren't interested, sent privateers to interfere in Anglo-American trade, leading to a naval conflict known as the "Quasi-War" in the late 1790's. The pop-culture reputation of the French as surrendering cowards is, I would agree, a poor representation of what happened in the Second World War. What happened in the Second World War was that the Third Republic was absolutely filled with fascist sympathizers, Anglophobes, and other willing collaborators. The problem wasn't an unwillingness to fight so much as an unwillingness to fight Germany in particular in an alliance with Britain. Unfortunately, this doesn't exactly make France look like a very good ally, either. Nor does the time France unilaterally withdrew their troops from NATO in the 1960's because they, once again, wanted the option of making a separate peace.