So do France and the U.S. really have such a special relationship?

THERE are historical allies and there are strong allies, and John Kerry may have confused the two yesterday when he hailed France as America’s oldest friend.

It was supposed to be a calculated snub to Britain, of course.

With a few exceptions, in the past 100 years it’s become a rule of thumb that America no longer goes to war without Britain at its side.

So the UK’s failure to follow the US into action over Syria inevitably stung in Washington, prompting Mr Kerry to cosy up to France.

But in reality Americans tend to mistrust the French even more than the British do. Famously, Americans refer to them as ‘cheese-eating surren- der monkeys’. And Frenchspeaking Mr Kerry was mocked for his Francophilia during the 2004 presidential race.

The relationship had started well. French troops and ships under the Marquis de Lafayette provided crucial help during America’s war of independence from Britain.

Links were strengthened by Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, who lived in Paris as US ambassador.

But the friendship crumpled when Napoleon took power and resented America’s treatymaking with Britain. By 1798 a state of undeclared war existed between the two former allies.

In the 1840s, France sup- ported Texas’s moves for independence from the US and blocked American moves to gain control of California.

The situation became even worse during the American Civil War. While France was technically neutral, Napoleon III favoured the Confederates.

It managed to antagonise the US further by installing the

‘Surrender monkeys’

Austrian archduke Maximilian of Hapsburg on the throne of Mexico. America, which wanted French troops out of Mexico, refused to recognise the government.

In the 20th century France and the United States got on a little better, but relations were strained between Franklin D Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle during the Second World War.

De Gaulle and his Free French refused to take part in the Normandy landings but the Allies still generously allowed French troops to be the first to liberate Paris.

After De Gaulle became president, he clashed with the US over France’s decision to build its own nuclear weapons.

In 1966, France pulled its forces out of Nato and kicked the US-led organisation out of its HQ at Fontainebleau.

France earned its ‘surrender monkey’ moniker during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The French opposed a UN resolution authorising the invasion and, in retaliation, anti-French feeling swept across the US with public campaigns to boycott French goods.