User:OnBeyondZebrax/sandbox/History of France take 3

During the Iron Age, what is now France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The Gauls were conquered by the Roman Empire in 51 BC, which held Gaul until 486. The Gauls faced raids and migration from the Germanic Franks, who dominated the region for hundreds of years, eventually creating the medieval Kingdom of France. France's victory in the Hundred Years' War (1337 to 1453) strengthened French nationalism and made France a centralized absolute monarchy. A worldwide colonial empire was established in the 16th century. In the late 18th century, the monarchy was overthrown in the French Revolution. The country was governed as a Republic, until the French Empire was declared by Napoleon Bonaparte. Following Napoleon's defeat, France was ruled as a monarchy, then briefly as a Second Republic, and then as a Second Empire, until a more lasting French Third Republic was established in 1870. In World War I, France was one of the Triple Entente powers fighting against Germany and the Central Powers. France was one of the Allied Powers in World War II, but it was conquered by Nazi Germany in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established, but it lasted less than a decade and a half. After WW II, France was defeated in the First Indochina War. In the wake of the Algerian Crisis of 1958, the Fourth Republic collapsed and was succeeded by the Charles de Gaulle-led French Fifth Republic. Into the 1960s decolonization saw most of the French colonial empire become independent.