So what happened between 1790-1945?
Revolutionary obliteration of institutions.
The Napoleonic wars, WWI, and WWII. That’s what happened. We never hear the end of Flanders fields and poppies from the British. But French losses were double that. In the battle of Verdun -alone- they had about 25% of the total British dead for the whole war.
And in WWII they were outsmarted by the new German techniques. But in the 6 weeks of the 1940 battle of France they killed at least 25,000 Germans and wounded 11,034. And 85,000 French soldiers died. That’s about 50% more than we lost in Vietnam.... and for them it was in 6 weeks.
That’s why those old French Army surrender jokes are utter nonsense. They must come from Brits who of course ever surrendered. Except at Yorktown. Except at Dieppe. Except at Singapore where they surrendered to a Japanese force a third of their size.
But for some reason we never hear about tea drinking surrender monkeys.
France did lose many of their best men.