Logically speaking, the claims of the French are reasonable, and 1,759 lives of 1,759 military ships, large and small, are not something that can be written off with a single stroke.

The French Mediterranean Fleet stationed in Alexandria at that time suffered no casualties other than the martyrdom of the Fleet Commander and Chief of Staff, but the British air raids on the ports of Mearsbier, Oran, Saint-Nazaire, and Toulon, as well as the fires in the ports of Portsmouth and Plymouth, caused heavy losses to the French Navy.

The two old French battleships docked in the harbor of Portsmouth, as usual, half of the crew were on vacation on the shore at that time, because they were not sure whether the information was true or false for a while, so the two captains did not issue a summoning order, and although the French naval officers and men who remained on the shore were under house arrest by the British army afterwards, they finally saved a precious life.

However, the fate of the half of the crew who remained on duty on the ship was completely different. On that bloody night when iron and fire were intertwined, the "Lonely" and "Paris" attracted more than ninety percent of the firepower of the British coastal artillery and surface ships.

The indomitable will to fight with which these French officers and men had been shown that night was incomprehensible to the Royal Navy. According to a captain of an American oil tanker who witnessed the entire fire on the balcony of the naval quarters in the port area, he recalled to the media after the war that the two main guns in the rear of the French battleship [Lone Pull] were still persistently firing back that night until one side of the deck was submerged into the water, and the bravery of this French battleship was completely worthy of the tricolor flag hanging high on the mast.

Both ships were part of the Fifth Detachment of the French Navy, and the Solitary and Parisian were both classified as gunnery training ships, and their crews included many newly recruited sailors, interns from the Naval Academy, and newly graduated reserve officers.

The French naval command claimed that the two battleships were sent to Britain to carry out training missions in the Atlantic, but in fact, in addition, it was to prevent these two old and slow battleships from losing in the hands of the Germans, because under the rapid offensive of the Luftwaffe, these two old battleships with poor anti-aircraft fire might not last more than 15 minutes.

At that time, the French Navy even thought about allowing the two warships to be repaired and upgraded in the British military port, but before they had been stopped for two weeks, Churchill brazenly launched Operation Trebuchet.

Originally, the full strength of the [Guba] class battleship was 1,108 people, but at this moment, as a training ship, an additional group of trainee sailors and reserve officers have been added, and the total number of crew members has finally reached 1,550.

In addition to the officers and men who had spent the night on shore, there were 617 officers and men left on board at the beginning of the battle, and when the battle was over, the British Royal Navy only rescued 65 men from the water, and the remaining 552 officers and men sank to the bottom of the sea with the "Lone Pull".

Until two weeks after the incident, the British Royal Navy was still able to find the bodies of French officers and soldiers floating on the surface from time to time, and it is estimated that there are still many corpses that have fallen into the mud at the bottom of the harbor and cannot surface, while many more are still in the hull of the ship that has sunk in the harbor.

The collection of these French remains did not really begin until after the end of the war, because the port had been carpet-bombed by the Luftwaffe, the port equipment was severely damaged, the loss of naval personnel was also serious, Portsmouth was beaten to a pulp, almost a abandoned port, and the British Royal Navy was already overwhelmed by any ideas.

By the time the British, under the supervision of the German occupation forces, began to clear the ports and shipping lanes, it seemed too late. Most of the corpses were already highly decomposed in the seawater, and some had even been devoured by sea creatures and ossified, and returning them to the French Navy was simply another handful of salt on the wounds of the French.

Although the British tried their best to conceal this, the French eventually learned the truth from the Germans, but Petain was furious and had no other choice, he had to complete the reconciliation with the British, which was related to the European strategy of the German Führer, and could not refute von on this issue in any way. Stadler's face.

Pétain was able to become a marshal, and certainly not a Madonna, so he simply pretended to be deaf and dumb, as if he had never heard of it.

In the months following the war, the families of the French officers and sailors who died in battle went to the naval headquarters twice in three days to petition, and the French High Seas Fleet stationed in the port of Toulon also had a general dissatisfaction with the delay in handling the incident.

The problem is that the British are completely unprepared to show face in this matter, and the Chamberlain cabinet first shifted the responsibility for the incident to Churchill and the wartime cabinet, but at the same time they were willing to apologize to the French government in the name of the British Empire Cabinet, but refused the French side's request to punish those directly responsible, and finally came up with a compensation plan worth 400,000 pounds.

The Royal Navy also pledged to recover the sunken French ships in the harbor and collect the remains of fallen soldiers, as well as to search for the remains of missing officers and soldiers as much as possible.

Of course, France will not accept this plan, in fact, apologies and the like are official articles, and everyone understands the tricks inside, as long as the media can pull it through, it doesn't matter in whose name. However, dealing with those directly responsible is purely to appease the hearts of the people on the naval side, after all, now that France is huge, only the high seas fleet can be put on the table.

The French side felt that Britain should at least throw a slightly more substantial scapegoat, let the French side pretend to make a difference, and then let the military court sentence him to more than ten years in prison, so that Marshal Petain could brush up his prestige in the navy, and at the same time the French people could have a good time.

It's a big deal to wait for a year and a half after the limelight has passed, and then find another opportunity to issue a presidential pardon, and both sides will compensate this unlucky guy for some benefits, wouldn't it be a happy ending.

In addition, the compensation of 400,000 pounds is a lot at first glance, but note that the British mentioned a total value of 400,000 pounds in the agreement, which means that part of this payment is repaid in kind, and it may not even be in kind.

The British claimed that the war had dealt a heavy blow to the British economy, and that the domestic financial situation was so bad that it was unable to mobilize much money for the time being. However, in order to prepare for the war, the British government had reserved a lot of strategic resources, which could be handed over to France as compensation.

In addition to the famous woollen textiles, there was also a number of second-hand agricultural machinery and processing machines, which the British had a poisonous eye for, which France urgently needed at the moment, and in order to show a friendly gesture, the British claimed that they would only calculate the cost price.

Petain did not know how much money the Germans had robbed of England before, but he knew how much France had lost, and England should have been only a lot more than France, but with the foundation of the empire on which the sun never sets, it would definitely not fall to the point where it could not even take out hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Eventually, after a month of further pulling the skin, both sides made some concessions, with the British agreeing to throw a scapegoat, and Petain agreeing to the rest of the British settlement.

It was because the British finally made a big move that made President Petain have to give in.

Previously, Renault ordered a batch of treasury gold to be sent to Canada as a reserve for the purchase of weapons and equipment in the Americas, but when France surrendered, the Canadian government took advantage of the situation to freeze this batch of gold, and after the end of the war, the Canadians found a bunch of various reasons, anyway, they did not want to return the gold to the French.

This time, the British cabinet said that if France agrees to this "compensation plan", then the British government will urge Canada to unfreeze the gold and return it to the French people as soon as possible.

Pétain never imagined that there could be such an operation between countries, and the shamelessness of the British opened the eyes of the old marshal.

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