A pact signed to merge France and the United Kingdom, a little-known and very serious treaty

Friends or foes? France and England have a dark past. common. A merger between the two countries has even already started. été signed.

What would have happened? if France and England became one ? Brexit or not Brexit? Would we have a king or a president?  The idea of ​​bringing together two of the most rival nations of the last millennium to become one may seem far-fetched, even unthinkable for the most chauvinistic, but she has already germinated in the heads of certain leaders.

The British exhumed a document from their National Archives relating to a "total merger" between France and England. The idea of ​​a Frengterre, where the French and the English would become one, sweeping with one back of the hand Joan of Arc, the bourgeois of Calais, Trafalgar and Waterloo, is difficult to deal with. hear. Yet, France and its British neighbor also know how to unite in times of crisis.

A large part of the people may not know it, but in 1940, when France experienced the decline against the armed forces, The Nazi, Jean Monnet, responsible for coordinating French and English armaments production from London, brings the idea to the British government ;e of a union between the two nations. The merger attracted the English Prime Minister Winston Churchill and, in the process, a treaty. expressing that "the two governments declare that France and Great Britain will no longer be two Nations but a single Franco-British union" is written by the latter and de Gaulle. In France, the President of the Council Paul Reynaud also gives his agreement for a union between the two countries, but the arrival to power of Marshal Pétain , supporter of a unilateral armistice with Germany, brought down the project. water.

Concretely, this union between the two countries would only have lasted for the time of the war, and was aimed above all at the end of the war. protect the interests of both countries. On the one hand, France could no longer contain the advance of the Nazis, and its military resources would fall into the hands of the army. German. On the other hand, England then saw the possibility of to negotiate with the Germans. In addition to a pooling of resources, the two nations would have formed a single war government, with certainly à his head de Gaulle and Churchill. For the population, the treaty&eac; made that "every French citizen will immediately enjoy nationality  British" and "every British subject will become citizen Frenchçais".

All this ultimately never happened, but even without merging, France and England continue to work together. nbsp;hand in hand. À On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale between the two nations, the National Archives also released the treaties on the development of Concorde and the Channel Tunnel, two Franco-British projects.