Queen Elizabeth II, crowned after narrowly defeating a French commoner in a joint referendum combining royalist and republican traditions, reigns from Versailles, takes holidays at Balmoral or Sandringham and uses Buckingham Palace for official visits to the former UK.
The Anglo-French or Franco-Anglais parliament alternates its sessions between Westminster and the Palais Bourbon.
Gendarmes patrol volatile estates side by side with bobbies and tourists flock in their thousands to photograph one another beside Napoleon's Column in what was once Trafalgar Square but is now La Place Austerlitz. Johnny Hallyday performs at least once a month at the Albert Hall while Robbie Williams is the resident star of the Folies Bergères.
Amusing fantasy? Poppycock?
Well, remember all that fuss a few months ago when it was "revealed" that the French government had proposed a union of Britain
and France in 1956, even offering to accept the sovereignty of the
British Queen. For the reference in my link, look at the Comments section
Reports told of the disclosures leaving scholars on both sides of the Channel "puzzled", as if no proposition of the sort had ever been put forward in recent history.
But there was nothing new to it. For my final dip into the remarkable Herbert R Lottman book The Fall of Paris, I draw attention to page 381.
It was June 16 1940. Paris had by now fallen and the French government was in exile in Bordeaux, having abandoned its original out-of-town location on the Loire, and was on the verge of capitulation to the Nazis.
Lottman reports that because Paul Reynaud's cabinet was still not ready to sue for peace, the old military commander Pétain announced his resignation.
Reynaud wanted one more chance to persuade Winston Churchill that if he, Reynaud, were not allowed to seek an honourable armistice, he would be ousted by a new premier willing to agree to whatever Hitler wanted.
Lottman writes:
Churchill didn't fly to France this time. He informed Reynaud by cable that Britain was holidng France to its agreement not to sign a separate peace. But if France would sail its fleet to British ports, His Majesty's Government would let France talk to the Germans.
On the other hand, Britain was also prepared to merge with France in a permanent union, with combined defence, political and financial institutions.
Since the reference is buried away so late, and without ceremony, in Lottman's book, it can safely be concluded that this offer was hardly red hot news even when he wrote it. And bear in mind that the book first appeared in 1992, that is 15 years before the excitement caused by reports, based on "newly discovered documents in Britain’s National Archives", of the French initiative.
And what became of that tentative suggestion of cross-Channel amalgamation?
The documents apparently show that when "the former French prime minister Guy Mollet, a Socialist, discussed the possibility of a merger between the two countries with then British
prime minister Sir Anthony Eden.... Eden rejected the idea of a union
but was more favourable to a French proposal to join the Commonwealth".
Vive la différence!
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