* 1810 – Napoleonic Wars: The French Navy defeats the British Royal Navy, preventing them from taking the harbour of Grand Port on Île de France.

* 1798 – French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile ( Battle of Aboukir Bay ) – Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navy fleet in an unusual night action.

* 1810 – Battle of Grand Port – the French accept the surrender of a British Navy fleet.

The first ironclad battleship, with iron armour over a wooden hull, La Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in 1859 ; she prompted the British Royal Navy to build a counter.

In 1875, the Navy had 21 battleships and 173 warships of other types, ranking as the third largest navy in the world after the British and French navies.

In 1796, during the French Revolution and three years after the declaration of war between France and Great Britain, Étienne-Gaspard Robert met with the French government and proposed the use of mirrors to burn the invading ships of the British Royal Navy.

* Several US Navy ships have been named the or the, the latter being a French translation of his penname " Poor Richard ".

The French Directory investigated a number of strategic options to counter British opposition, including projected invasions of Ireland and Britain, and the expansion of the French Navy to challenge the Royal Navy at sea.

However, the French Navy was dominant in the Mediterranean Sea, following the withdrawal of the British fleet after the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain in 1796.

" Among the anti-government journals in France, the defeat was blamed on the incompetence of the French Directory and on supposed lingering Royalist sentiments in the Navy.

Writing many years later, Bonaparte commented that if the French Navy had adopted the same tactical principles as the British:

The destruction of the French Mediterranean fleet allowed the Royal Navy to return to the sea in force, as British squadrons set up blockades off French and allied ports.

In 1801 the demoralised remains of the French army in Egypt were defeated by a British Expeditionary Force ; the Royal Navy used their dominance in the Mediterranean to invade Egypt without the fear of ambush while anchored off the Egyptian coast.

During the Napoleonic wars the Kingdom of the Netherlands adopted the French code civil in 1809, however the Dutch colonies in the Cape of Good Hope and Sri Lanka, at the time called Ceylon, were seized by the British to prevent them being used as bases by the French Navy.

It is still visited on occasion by fishermen, French Navy patrols, scientific researchers, film crews, and shipwreck survivors.

Since then it has only been visited by sport fishermen, regularly scheduled patrols of the French Navy, and by Mexican tuna and shark fishermen.

The film won the 1954 Prix Jean Vigo, but was banned by French censors for its criticism of French colonialism.

Gerry was from an early time a vocal opponent of Parliamentary efforts to tax the colonies after the French and Indian War ended in 1763, and won election to General Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay ( its legislative assembly ) in May 1772.

In 185 battles that France had fought over the past 800 years, their armies had won 132 times, lost 43 times and drawn only 10, giving the French military the best record of any country in Europe ".

In 2008, Marion Cotillard won the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of legendary French singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, the first French-language performance to be so honored.

At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Entre les murs ( The Class ) won the Palme d ' Or, the first French victory at the festival in 21 years.

The 2000s also saw an increase in the number of individual competitive awards won by French artists at the Cannes Festival, for direction ( Tony Gatlif, Exils, 2004 ), screenplay ( Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, Look at Me, 2004 ), female acting ( Isabelle Hupert, The Piano Teacher, 2001 ; Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist, 2009 ) and male acting ( Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila and Bernard Blancan, Days of Glory, 2006 ).

There he published tables of atmospheric refraction based on Bradley's observations, which won him the Lalande Prize from the French Academy of Sciences in 1811.

Hackman won the Academy Award for Best Actor as the character Jimmy " Popeye " Doyle in The French Connection ( film ) | The French Connection, 1971

The next year, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as New York City Detective Jimmy " Popeye " Doyle in The French Connection, marking his graduation to leading man status.

That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations ( 1933 ), rejected the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm ( 1935 ), won back the Saar ( 1935 ), remilitarized the Rhineland ( 1936 ), formed an alliance (" axis ") with Mussolini's Italy ( 1936 ), sent massive military aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War ( 1936 – 39 ), seized Austria ( 1938 ), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, formed a peace pact with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union in August 1939, and finally invaded Poland in September 1939.

With a large expedition that eventually included 40 000 European troops, and receiving help from white colonists and mulatto forces commanded by Alexandre Pétion, a former lieutenant of Rigaud, the French won several victories after severe fighting.

The French forces won a decisive victory at Rocroi ( 1643 ), and the Spanish army was decimated ; the Tercio was broken.

The battle was won by the Christians, chiefly through the brave attack of 6, 000 French troops led by La Feuillade and Coligny.

On becoming king, Louis issued a constitution known as the Charter which preserved many of the liberties won during the French Revolution and provided for a parliament composed of an elected Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of Peers that was nominated by the king.

Mishra also wrote an original score for French Director Eric Heumann for his film Port Djema ( 1996 ) which won best score at Hamptons film festival and The Golden Bear at Berlin.

Soon, however, Pei and his team won the support of several key cultural icons, including the conductor Pierre Boulez and Claude Pompidou, widow of former French President Georges Pompidou, after whom another controversial museum was named.

Adams first won national recognition when he published a series of widely read articles supporting Washington's decision to keep America out of the growing hostilities surrounding the French Revolution.

He won from the front at the Dutch, French and Belgian Grands Prix, where title rival Moss was badly injured in a practice accident that put him out for two months.

There was no European Formula Two championship that year, but Brabham won the Trophées de France, a championship consisting of six of the French Formula Two races.

With the help of a handful of local French administrators and officers, the British, and the Belgian government in exile Charles de Gaulle's Free French won over large parts of the French Empire.

Greek phone service is worse than French, so that it was to be some little time before contact of any sort was established.

he rose at half-past six every morning, made himself some French coffee, had his corn flakes and more coffee, smoked four cigarettes while reading last Sunday's Herald Tribune and yesterday's Pittsburgh Gazette, then put on his high-topped farmer's shoes and walked under a vine bower to his workshop.

In 1720 some Chickasaws massacred the French traders among them, and did not make peace for four years.

In the German Evangelical Church the German title of Abt ( abbot ) is sometimes bestowed, like the French abbé, as an honorary distinction, and survives to designate the heads of some monasteries converted at the Reformation into collegiate foundations.

Even some of the local nightclubs will feature French DJs.

Alain de Lille ( or Alanus ab Insulis ) ( c. 1116 / 1117 – 1202 / 1203 ), French theologian and poet, was born in Lille, some years before 1128.

She is called Marie by some of the French chroniclers.

Antlia was created in 1756 by the French astronomer Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, who created fourteen constellations for the southern sky to fill some faint regions.

Installed at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques ( IHÉS ), Grothendieck attracted attention by an intense and highly productive activity of seminars ( de facto working groups drafting into foundational work some of the ablest French and other mathematicians of the younger generation ).

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ( who was famously mistaken for a " recent American immigrant " by French President Nicolas Sarkozy ), said " descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that.

He wrote another book, Maxims of the Roman Law and some of the Ancient French Law, as Expounded and Applied in Doctrine and Jurisprudence.

However, in the 1930s the French moved it to battalion level and combined it with some tactical fire control.

He was also vital in the development of two important systems in the French Defence, the Winawer Variation ( in some places called the Nimzowitsch Variation ; its moves are 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 ) and the Advance Variation ( 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 ).

Smaller businesses are privately owned by Beninese citizens, but some firms are foreign owned, primarily French and Lebanese.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baroque is derived from the Portuguese word " barroco ", Spanish " barroco ", or French " baroque ", all of which refer to a " rough or imperfect pearl ", though whether it entered those languages via Latin, Arabic, or some other source is uncertain.

This had two aims: firstly to put pressure on the Elector to fight or come to terms before Tallard arrived with reinforcements ; and secondly, to ruin Bavaria as a base from which the French and Bavarian armies could attack Vienna, or pursue the Duke into Franconia if, at some stage, he had to withdraw northwards.

" Palmes, however, attempted to follow up his success but was repulsed in some confusion by other French cavalry, and musketry fire from the edge of Blenheim.

Mérode-Westerloo attempted to extricate some French infantry crowded in Blenheim, but Clérambault ordered the troops back into the village.

" De La Colonie managed to rally some of his grenadiers, together with the remnants of the French dragoons and Greder Suisse battalions, but it was an entirely peripheral operation, offering only fragile support for Villeroi ’ s right flank.

Villeroi meanwhile, was still moving more reserves of infantry in the opposite direction towards his left flank ; crucially, it would be some time before the French commander noticed the subtle change in emphasis of the Allied dispositions.

The disparity of numbers – exacerbated by Villeroi stripping their ranks of infantry to reinforce his left flank – enabled Overkirk's cavalry to throw the first line of French horse back in some disorder towards their second-line squadrons.

Allied squadrons transferred from north to south gave the Allies a 5 – 3 advantage on the plain where some 25, 000 French and Allied cavalry were heavily engaged.

David G. Chandler ’ s Marlborough as Military Commander and A Guide to the Battlefields of Europe are consistent with regards to French casualty figures i. e., 12, 000 dead and wounded plus some 7, 000 taken prisoner.

The majority of the population is French, but there are sizable groups of Italians, Spaniards ( Up to 20 % of the Bordeaux population claim some degree of Spanish heritage ), Portuguese, Turks, Germans and North Africans ..

Conversely, some of the Allied infantry who had just dealt a crushing defeat to the French at the Battle of Waterloo fully expected to have to fight again the next day ( at the Battle of Wavre ).