France was a key player in the politics of Europe and had been since the middle ages. With an overseas empire that had, at one time, consisted of large parts of Canada, America, the Caribbean as well as territory in Africa and Asia, France had substantial sway over what occurred in most continents. France had joined the TUPA Independence War on the side of the TUPA to take the sword to their old enemies, the British. France, a monarchy with a large landed aristocracy, found itself supporting a strongly Republican and radical (some would say anti-monarchist) nation. Years later, with the advent of the Great Spanish Civil War, France intervened to support their allies in the failing Spanish monarchy but took heavy losses by doing so. The Spanish monarchy was perhaps the most traditional monarchy in the whole of Europe with church and state having a strong relationship and the king wielding absolute power. France’s alliances with two completely different ideologies, combined with a series of military defeats and mounting maintenance costs from overseas colonies, left the French population heavily divided with many strongly supporting the monarchy with an almost fanatical love for their king and others in favor of overthrowing the royal family and creating a new French republic.
Such differences in views spelled disaster for France as royalists openly clashed with Republicans in the streets. The French military was sent in on multiple occasions to break up huge mob battles between groups of royalists and revolutionaries. Some counties of France had populations which almost completely supported the monarchy. Counties like Brittany and Normandy. However, the king had fallen out of favor in more urban regions with the majority of Parisians against the hereditary rule. Finding himself surrounded by enemies, King Louis XV chose to relocate his palace from Paris to Rennes in Brittany for his own safety, ordering new fortifications to be constructed.
The military too was divided with many veterans from the campaigns in Spain supporting the idea of a French republic. Newer and fresher regiments, however, remained strongly supportive of King Louis XV’s rule over France. In some cases, regiments found that their officers had views that differed to those of their men which led to several accounts of officers being shot ‘accidentally’ by their own troops.
As widespread rebellion began to take place, Republican sympathizers in the French armed forces split off, forming their own regiments flying the new French tricolor. King Louis XV found himself left with the fanatical though untested newer regiments of the French military as Republican troops and rebels marched to besiege the fortress city of Rennes…
