Long disputed, the predominantly German-speaking region of Alsace or Elsaß was annexed by Germany in 1871 ; after World War I, it was reintegrated into France.

Corsica was annexed to France in 1780.

It was also the capital of an independent state under Edward, the Black Prince ( 1362 – 1372 ), but in the end, after the Battle of Castillon ( 1453 ) it was annexed by France which extended its territory.

Bordeaux adhered to the Fronde, being effectively annexed to the Kingdom of France only in 1653, when the army of Louis XIV entered the city.

They drew up the first map of the island and annexed it to France.

In 1938 Germany annexed Austria and Italy assisted in Germany in resolving the diplomatic crisis between Germany versus Britain and France over claims on Czecholslovakia by arranging the Munich Agreement that gave Germany the Sudetenland and was perceived at the time to have averted a European war, these hopes faded when Hitler violated the Munich Agreement by ordering the invasion and partition of Czechoslovakia between Germany and a client state of Slovakia in 1939.

It became a secundogeniture of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, who were deposed for the Bourbon-Parma in 1801, themselves deposed in December 1807 when Tuscany was annexed by France.

It was annexed to the kingdom of France in 1674.

In 1798, revolutionary France under the Directory annexed Geneva.

The terms for the peace inflicted upon the Spanish kingdoms in the Treaty of the Pyrenees ( 1659 ) were harsh, as France annexed Northern Catalonia.

In October 1940, Gauleiters Josef Bürckel and Robert Wagner oversaw the almost total expulsion of the Jews into unoccupied France not only from the parts of Alsace-Lorraine that had been annexed that summer to the Reich, but also from their Gaues as while.

The Kerguelen Islands, along with the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul, and the Crozet archipelago were officially annexed by France in 1893, and were included as possessions in the French constitution in 1924 ( in addition to that portion of Antarctica claimed by France and known as Adélie Land ; as with all Antarctic territorial claims, France's possession on the continent is held in abeyance until a new international treaty is ratified that defines each claimant's rights and obligations ).

Under the Continental System, the bank went into bankruptcy and from 1811 to 1813 Lübeck was formally annexed as part of France until the Vienna Congress of 1815.

During the War of the First Coalition, Luxembourg was conquered and annexed by Revolutionary France, becoming part of the département of the Forêts in 1795.

France annexed Madagascar in 1896 and declared it a colony the following year, dissolving the Merina monarchy and sending the royal family into exile on Reunion Island and to Algeria.

France accepted the existence of the Principality of Monaco, but annexed 95 % of its former territory ( the areas of Menton and Roquebrune ).

In 2002, a new treaty between France and Monaco clarifies that if there are no heirs to carry on the dynasty, the Principality will remain an independent nation, rather than be annexed by France.

* 1808 – The Republic of Ragusa is annexed by France.

Although the British Army had established a base at King George Sound ( later Albany ) on the south coast of western Australia in 1826 in response to rumours that the area would be annexed by France, Perth was the first full-scale settlement by Europeans in the western third of the continent.

The Republic of Alba was created in 1796 as a French client republic in Piedmont before the area was annexed by France in 1801.

In June, during the last days of the Battle of France, the Soviet Union forcibly annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and then annexed the disputed Romanian region of Bessarabia.

* Bar, a historic duchy of both the Holy Roman Empire and the crown of France ; see Counts and Dukes of Bar

To his concerns regarding his new heir, Louis, who had been destined for the monastic life of a younger son ( the former heir, Philip, having died from a riding accident ), was added joy over the death of one of his most powerful vassals – and the availability of the best duchy in France.

Rather than act as guardian to the Duchess and duchy, he decided, he would marry the duchess to his heir and bring Aquitaine under the French Crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and the Capets.

From 1487 to 1491, France attacked and defeated Brittany, an independent duchy.

During John's reign, England lost the duchy of Normandy to King Philip II of France, which resulted in the collapse of most of the Angevin Empire and contributed to the subsequent growth in power of the Capetian dynasty during the 13th century.

In the ensuing War of the Grand Alliance, France was forced to give up the duchy, which was returned to the Habsburgs by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697.

The Bourbons of France held a strong claim to Luxembourg, the Emperor of Austria on the other hand had controlled the duchy until the revolutionary forces had joined it to the French republic ( he reportedly was not enthusiastic about regaining Luxembourg and the Low Countries, being more interested in the Balkans ).

On April 25, 1507, as a member of the Gymnasium Vosagense at Saint Diey ( German: Sankt Didel ) in the duchy of Lorraine ( today Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France ), he produced a globular world map and a large 12-panel world wall map ( Universalis Cosmographia, both bearing the first use of the name " America ").

He enjoyed the support of his great-uncle, Archbishop Robert, as well as the king of France, Henry I, enabling him to succeed to his father's duchy.

At the very time of Leo's accession Louis XII of France, in alliance with Venice, was making a determined effort to regain the duchy of Milan, and Leo, after fruitless endeavours to maintain peace, joined the league of Mechlin, on 5 April 1513, with the emperor Maximilian I, Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Henry VIII of England.

Anjou () is a former county ( in the sense of being ruled by a count, from c. 880 ), duchy ( 1360 ) and province centred on the city of Angers in the lower Loire Valley of western France.

Its status was elevated to that of a duchy for Prince Louis, the second son of John II of France, and remained as such until the Revolution.

Finally, in 1149, after crushing a last attempt at revolt, he handed over the duchy to his son Henry Curtmantle, who received the investiture at the hands of the king of France.

On 17 February 1332, Philip VI bestowed it on his son John the Good, who, when he became king in turn ( 22 August 1350 ), gave the countship to his second son Louis I, raising it to a duchy in the peerage of France by letters patent of 25 October 1360.

Before the French revolution, prior to the integration of the Duchy of Brittany into the Kingdom of France, Rennes was the capital of the duchy, with the other historical capitals of Brittany's Ducal period being Nantes and Vannes.

Anne jealously guarded Brittany's autonomy, but the duchy was eventually fully merged with the French crown through the marriage of her daughter Claude of France to the French King and the so-called Union of Brittany and France under Claude's son.

The expulsion, which was not reversed until 1656, followed a precedent set by other European territorial princes: Philip II of France had expelled all Jews from his own lands in 1182 ; John I, Duke of Brittany, drove them out of his duchy in 1239 ; and in the late 1240s Louis IX of France had expelled the Jews from the royal demesne before his first passage to the East.

Geoffrey and Matilda held the duchy conjointly until 1149, then ceded it to their son, Henry, which event was soon ratified by King Louis VII of France.

The Duchy of Upper Lorraine (, ; ) was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany.

With the marriage of Francis I of France to Claude, the daughter of Anne of Brittany, the definitive overlordship of Brest – together with the rest of the duchy – passed to the French crown.

This alliance emboldened William to challenge Emperor Charles V's claim to Guelders, but the French, mightily engaged on multiple fronts as they were in the long struggle to against the Habsburg " encirclement " of France, proved less reliable than the Duke's ambitions required, and he was unable to hold on to the duchy ; in 1543, by the terms of the Treaty of Venlo, Duke William conceded the Duchy of Guelders to the Emperor.

By January 1851 the parties were able to agree that the action of the opera would be moved from the royal court of France to a duchy of France or Italy, and some of the characters would to be renamed.