France...

France is one of the oldest states in Europe, but France appears only to that name from the Middle Ages on a date difficult to specify irrefutably. It fully recognizes the historical antecedent of Gaul as France, while the European Galia occupied an area slightly larger than today's France. In European hegemonic wars imposed France tried several times and at different times thus faced almost all of Europe (separately or together as a counterweight to French expansionism). Such was the case with Charlemagne (Charles I, "The Great") in the ninth century, Louis XIV ( "The Sun King") in the seventeenth century, and I Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon "The Great") in the nineteenth century.





take from wikipedia.com