Episode 1- Mother Gaul

This is the story of Francois Bonnefoy. But to start things off we must go back to before France was born, all the way to his Mother Gaul.

Over 2500 years ago, long before France was born, there lived a beautiful young lady, blond and blue-eyed, of average height, but slender. Her name was Mother Gaul.

Now, Mother Gaul was a powerful woman, with a love of good food, good drink, and of course, a good fight. Yes, those were the good old days of Gaul's youth.

This is a day in the life of Mother Gaul:

Now, before the days of the Romans, Gaul would get up at sunrise. Very concerned for her personal hygiene, she would take a bath in the morning. Then she would go into the family room to eat breakfast.

Mother Gaul also had two older siblings, her brother Germania and her sister Britannia, Germania being the eldest. They all lived together in a cozy little hut. There, in the kitchen, they had some breakfast.

"I say, Gaul," said Britannia. "What took you so long?"

Gaul then said to her older sister, "Why, you should know why. I needed to be well-groomed for the day, non?"

"Never mind that, Britannia," said Legolas. "Let us now have some breakfast."

And they all loved each other dearly.

Now, Mother Gaul was a nice girl, nice but superstitious. She worshipped the powers of nature, making up a god or goddess for such things as the sun, the sea, the thunder, the wind, the stars, and so on, and so forth. Her priests were called Druids, chosen for their intelligence. The Druids were divided into three classes: bards who sang of heroes and beautiful damsels, prophets who predicted the future, and high priests, the most powerful of the three classes, who made sacrifices to such gods as Toutatis, god of commerce.

Mother Gaul was also an agricultural woman who loved to grow crops. She invented the iron plough and even the reaper. But she would also pray to the gods that her crops would grow strong and that the sky would not fall on their heads.

At the end of the day, just before sunset, she would have a dinner feast with her brother and sister.

Now, it may come to light that Gaul and Britannia were not only sisters, but also best friends. At dinnertime, they would have some food or drink with each other and discuss the future.

"Dame Bretagne, do you know what will happen in the future?" Gaul would say.

"I say, I have no idea, eh, what?" Britannia would reply. "But when we marry strong warriors and have their children, I want those children to be friends with each other, just like us."

"You are a good woman, Soeur Bretagne."

However, it was Mother Gaul's warlike nature that made her a real terror to her more peaceful neighbors. She was especially fond of attacking the Roman Empire, aka Romulus Imperiosus. At one invasion, which occurred in 390 BC, she and her armies absolutely crushed the Roman armies.

Romulus woke up to the sound of screaming Romans.

"Sole mio! What's going on!?" he asked one of the soldats. The soldat responded nervously, "It's Gaul! Gaul has invaded your vital regions and crushed your army!"

"How do you know, young man?"

The soldat gulped, "Look behind you."

Oh, you should have seen the look on Romulus's face when Gaul pointed her sword at him, shouting, "Vae victis! Woe to the defeated!" Indeed Romulus was defeated, defeated by love for this beautiful yet strong woman. Even if he had to fight for hundreds of years, he would triumph over Mother Gaul.

In the second century BC, Romulus took over the Greek port of Massila and set up a province in what is now Provence. It was called Aquae Sextiae and it brought him closer to the ever-rebellious Mother Gaul.

Then beginning in 58 BC, Julius Caesar, Romulus' leader at the time, decided that Gaul needed to be conquered. So, Romulus and Mother Gaul fought for another eight years.

Towards the end of what came to be known as the Gallic Wars, Gaul got herself a new leader, Vercingetorix, who united the Gauls against a mutual enemy, Romulus and Caesar. Sure, Vercingetorix suffered a defeat at Avaricum due to a downpour (like I said before, Mother Gaul did not want the sky to fall onto her head), but he did lead Gaul to a victory in Gergovia. Neither Romulus nor Caesar would accept that defeat, so they chased Vercingetorix into a small Gallic village called Alesia.

There, at Alesia, the Romans surrounded the Gauls in a sort of giant donut shape around the city and thus blocked out any aid coming to the Gauls. After several weeks, the Gallic warriors began losing their morale and Vercingetorix was forced to throw his arms at the feet of Caesar. And throw them onto Caesar's feet he did! You should have seen Caesar's face as he screamed in pain and jumped from his seat, hopping off in search of "fresh conquests".

Yes, all Gaul was officially conquered after this "melancholy" ceremony. But Caesar abandoned his violent measures towards Gaul and the conquered tribes were obliged to pay 40 million setertii. The wisdom of this policy soon became apparent. Gaul had become one of Romulus' many sexual partners. And Mother Gaul would bear Romulus three children, Belgium, baby Monaco, and, of course, France.

Coming up next, France's dad, Rome.

BTW, I would be lying if I said that this was not at least partially inspired by the French comic book series Asterix the Gaul.