为什么戴高乐将法国作为世界大国的衰落归咎于拿破仑时代？
在戴高乐看来，法国在一个漫长的历史过程中积累了其崇高地位的要素，这个过程始于中世纪的欧洲，当时各封建公国通过调整权力平衡来解决他们之间的分歧。
通过这种方式，法国的核心部分早在六世纪法兰克国王克洛维时期就发展成为一个中央管理的政体。
As de Gaulle saw it, France had accumulated the elements of its lofty stature over a long historical process beginning in medieval Europe, when feudal principalities settled their disagreements through adjustments to the balance of power. By this means, the core of France developed as a centrally governed polity as early as the sixth century under the Frankish King Clovis.
到了17世纪初，随着奥地利的哈布斯堡君主制在中欧和最西边的西班牙扩张，法国需要一个强化的中央权威和一个复杂的战略来保护自己免受包围。
这项任务落在了红衣主教黎塞留（Armand-Jean du Plessis）的身上，他在1624年至1642年期间担任路易十三的首席部长，是法国后来在路易十四的领导下成为欧洲杰出强国的主要设计师。
黎塞留摒弃了基于王朝忠诚或教派归属的普遍战略，而是根据 "国家理由"（raisons d'état）来指导法国的内部和外部政策：也就是说，完全根据对情况的现实判断来灵活地追求国家利益。
By the early seventeenth century, with the Habsburg monarchy in Austria expanding over Central Europe and as far west as Spain, France needed an enhanced central authority and a complex strategy to defend itself from encirclement. The task fell to Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, who served as chief minister to Louis XIII from 1624 to 1642 and was the principal architect of France’s later becoming the preeminent European power under Louis XIV. Rejecting the prevailing strategies based on dynastic loyalty or confessional affiliation, Richelieu instead oriented France’s internal and external policies in accord with ‘reasons of state’ (raisons d’état): that is, the flexible pursuit of the national interest based entirely on a realistic judgment of circumstances.
对戴高乐来说，这标志着自罗马陷落以来，第一次对欧洲事务采取真正的大战略方针。
法国现在将寻求利用中欧国家的多样性，鼓励它们之间的竞争，利用它们的分裂，以确保自己的地位永远比它们的任何可能的组合更强大。
黎塞留和他的继任者儒勒-马扎然无视法国和他们个人的天主教，在摧毁中欧的三十年战争中支持新教国家，使法国成为其敌对关系的仲裁者。
This, for de Gaulle, marked the first truly grand strategic approach to European affairs since the fall of Rome. France would now seek to exploit the multiplicity of states in Central Europe by encouraging their rivalries and exploiting their divisions in a manner that would ensure its own status as always stronger than any possible combination of them. Ignoring France’s and their personal Catholicism, Richelieu and his successor Jules Mazarin supported the Protestant states in the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated Central Europe, leaving France the arbiter of its rivalries.
通过这种方式，法国成为欧洲大陆最有影响力的国家，而英国则对其起到了平衡作用。
到了18世纪初，所谓的旧制度下的欧洲秩序由两个部分重叠的联盟组成，它们时而相互交战，时而达成和解，但从未将冲突推向威胁到制度生存的极端。
这种秩序的主要因素是法国操纵的中欧平衡和英国管理的整体力量平衡，英国将其海军和财政资源投向当时最强大的欧洲大国，通常是针对法国。
In this manner, France emerged as the most influential country of the Continent, with Britain playing a balancing role against it. By the early eighteenth century, the so-called European Order of the ancien régime consisted of two partially overlapping coalitions, at times at war with each other, at times making settlements, but never driving conflicts to the extreme of threatening the survival of the system. The primary elements of this order were the equilibrium in Central Europe manipulated by France and the overall balance of power managed by Britain throwing its navy and financial resources against the strongest European power of the day, usually against France.
戴高乐在1939年的一次演讲中赞扬了黎塞留及其继任者的基本战略。
De Gaulle lauded the basic strategy of Richelieu and his successors in a speech in 1939:
法国总是在她希望的时候找到自然盟友。
为了对抗查理五世，然后对抗奥地利家族，最后对抗日益壮大的普鲁士，黎塞留、马扎然、路易十四和路易十五依次利用了这些盟友中的每一个[17] 。
France has always found natural allies when she wished it. To fight against Charles V, then against the House of Austria, and finally against the growing Prussia, Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIV, and Louis XV used each of those allies in turn.[17]
十九世纪初，在拿破仑的领导下，法国不是通过结盟和有限的战争来推进其利益，而是通过征服而不是简单地击败对手来着手推翻当时的秩序，同时援引法国大革命的新的民众合法性原则。
但是，最终，即使拿破仑和他的 "武装民族 "的力量也被他致命的误判所克服：入侵俄国。
戴高乐认为拿破仑是千年一遇的天才，但也指责他浪费了法国的权力和威望："他离开法国时比他发现的时候还小。”[18]
戴高乐认为，拿破仑的才华和他犯下灾难性判断错误的能力是不能轻易分开的；法国在拿破仑时代的全面胜利为其最终的灾难奠定了基础。
这就是为什么戴高乐将法国作为世界大国的衰落归咎于拿破仑时代，尽管在拿破仑退出舞台后，法国仍然处于事件的中心。
Under Napoleon at the beginning of the nineteenth century, instead of advancing its interests by alliances and limited warfare, France proceeded to overthrow the prevailing order by conquering rather than simply defeating its rivals, all the while invoking the French Revolution’s new principle of popular legitimacy. But, in the end, even the might of Napoleon and his ‘nation in arms’ was overcome by his fatal miscalculation: invading Russia. De Gaulle considered Napoleon a once-in-a-millennium genius but also blamed him for squandering French power and prestige: ‘He left France smaller than he found her.’[18]
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