You think you know French history. The Revolution. Napoleon. The guillotine. But France's past is wilder, darker and more extraordinary than any highlight reel suggests.
From the medieval battlefields that forged a nation, to the corridors of Versailles, to the smoking ruins of the Paris Commune - French history is an endless procession of towering personalities, catastrophic miscalculations and moments that changed the world forever. Most of it you've never heard.
L'Étranger takes a fresh look at the stories you think you know, and shines a light on the ones you don't. French history from a foreign perspective - told with curiosity, passion and a deep love for one of the most fascinating countries on earth.
Episode 6: The Myth of the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys
A French fleet helped secure American independence. Napoleon brought Europe's greatest military powers to their knees. French soldiers endured the slaughter of Verdun, fought desperately against Nazi Germany in 1940, and continued resisting long after their government had surrendered. And yet, apparently, the French are the cowards. In 2003, as France challenged the American case for invading Iraq, a joke from The Simpsons became something rather more serious. French fries became freedom frie...
1 Jul 2026
Episode 5: Vercingetorix - The Last Free Gaul
Before France, there was Gaul. Long before the France of Joan of Arc, Napoleon, or the Revolution, the territory we now call France was home to something older and wilder. A patchwork of Celtic tribes, Druid priests, and hilltop fortresses. A world that had existed for centuries. And a world that was about to be destroyed. In 52 BC, Julius Caesar was eight years into his conquest of Gaul. He had played the tribes against each other, rewarded collaborators and annihilated rebels, and by the sp...
1 Jun 2026
Episode 4: Cardinal Richelieu - The Most Dangerous Man in Europe
He served a king he privately considered inadequate. Outmanoeuvred a queen mother who thought she had destroyed him. Crushed the most powerful nobles in France, starved a city into submission, and rebuilt French power from the ground up. You probably know Cardinal Richelieu from Alexandre Dumas. The cold, scheming villain in the black robes, pulling strings while the Musketeers blunder around being honourable. It is one of the great villain portraits in literature. It is also almost entirely ...
25 Apr 2026
Episode 3: Joan of Arc - The Girl Who Saved France
A teenage girl from a village no one had heard of walks into a royal court and tells the King of France she has been sent by God to save his kingdom. He listens. In the spring of 1429, Joan of Arc arrived at the court of the embattled dauphin Charles with an impossible mission: lift the siege of Orléans, lead him through enemy territory, and deliver him to Reims to be crowned King of France. She was seventeen years old, had no military training, no title, and no right to be in any room she wa...
18 Apr 2026
Episode 2: The Day the King Lost His Head
A king is put on trial by his own people. And in his final moments, he turns to an Irishman. In January 1793, Louis XVI stood before the National Convention, accused not just of crimes, but of betraying the nation itself. What followed was one of the most extraordinary political moments in modern history. A trial where the verdict seemed inevitable, but the arguments were anything but. Where law, revolution and survival collided in full view of the world. And where the final decision, whether...
9 Apr 2026
Episode 1: The War That Made the Modern World
The war that reshaped Europe began with a diplomatic insult and ended with the collapse of an empire. In 1870, France and Prussia went to war. Within months, Napoleon III was captured, Paris was under siege, and a new German Empire had been proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. In this opening episode, we explore the causes, course and consequences of the Franco-Prussian War. From Bismarck’s calculated provocation to the catastrophic defeat at Sedan, this is the story of how a shor...
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