Gauls in the context of "Gallic Wars"

The Celts (/kɛlts/ KELTS, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples (/ˈkɛltɪk/ KEL-tik) were a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia, identified by their use of Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. Major Celtic groups included the Gauls; the Celtiberians and Gallaeci of Iberia; the Britons, Picts, and Gaels of Britain and Ireland; the Boii; and the Galatians. The interrelationships of ethnicity, language and culture in the Celtic world are unclear and debated; for example over the ways in which the Iron Age people of Britain and Ireland should be called Celts. In current scholarship, 'Celt' primarily refers to 'speakers of Celtic languages' rather than to a single ethnic group.

The history of pre-Celtic Europe and Celtic origins is debated. The traditional "Celtic from the East" theory, says the proto-Celtic language arose in the late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of central Europe, named after grave sites in southern Germany, which flourished from around 1200 BC. This theory links the Celts with the Iron Age Hallstatt culture which followed it (c. 1200–500 BC), named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria, and with the following La Tène culture (c. 450 BC onward), named after the La Tène site in Switzerland. It proposes that Celtic culture spread westward and southward from these areas by diffusion or migration. A newer theory, "Celtic from the West", suggests proto-Celtic arose earlier, was a lingua franca in the Atlantic Bronze Age coastal zone, and spread eastward. Another newer theory, "Celtic from the Centre", suggests proto-Celtic arose between these two zones, in Bronze Age Gaul, then spread in various directions. After the Celtic settlement of Southeast Europe in the 3rd century BC, Celtic culture reached as far east as central Anatolia, Turkey.

Classical Anatolia is Anatolia during classical antiquity. Early in that period, Anatolia was divided into several Iron Age kingdoms, most notably Lydia in the west, Phrygia in the center and Urartu in the east. Anatolia fell under Achaemenid Persian rule c. 550 BC. In the aftermath of the Greco-Persian Wars, all of Anatolia remained under Persian control except for the Aegean coast, which was incorporated in the Delian League in the 470s BC. Alexander the Great finally wrested control of the whole region from Persia in the 330s BC. After Alexander's death, his conquests were split amongst several of his trusted generals, but were under constant threat of invasion from both the Gauls and other powerful rulers in Pergamon, Pontus, and Egypt.

The Seleucid Empire, the largest of Alexander's territories, and which included Anatolia, became involved in a disastrous war with Rome culminating in the battles of Thermopylae and Magnesia. The resulting Treaty of Apamea in (188 BC) saw the Seleucids retreat from Anatolia. The Kingdom of Pergamum and the Republic of Rhodes, Rome's allies in the war, were granted the former Seleucid lands in Anatolia. Anatolia subsequently became contested between the neighboring rivalling Romans and the Parthian Empire, which frequently culminated in the Roman–Parthian Wars.

The Aetolian (or Aitolian) League (Ancient Greek: Κοινὸν τῶν Αἰτωλῶν) was a confederation of tribal communities and cities in ancient Greece centered in Aetolia in Central Greece. It was probably established during the late Classical or the early Hellenistic era. Two annual meetings were held at Thermon and Panaetolika. The league occupied Delphi and steadily gained territory after its victory there against the Gauls in 279 BC. By the end of the 3rd century BC, it controlled the whole of central Greece with the exception of Attica, Euboea, Boeotia and northwestern Acarnania. At its peak, the league's territory included Locris, Phocis, Doris, Malis, Dolopia, Achaia Phthiotis, Ainis, Oetaea, Ambracia and parts of Acarnania. In the latter part of its power, certain Greek city-states out of central Greece joined the Aetolian League such as the Arcadian cities of Mantineia, Tegea, Phigalia and Kydonia on Crete.

During the classical period the Aetolians were not highly regarded by other Greeks, who considered them to be semi-barbaric and reckless. However, during the Hellenistic period, they emerged as a dominant state in central Greece and expanded by annexing several Greek city-states to the League after their victory against the Gauls in 279 BC. Their League had a complex political and administrative structure. The Aetolian League fought against Macedon and the Achaean League in the Social War (220-217 BC), allied with Rome in the First Macedonian War and Second Macedonian War, but then fought against the Romans in an alliance with the Seleucid empire in the Aetolian War before losing its independence to Rome.

France, officially the French Republic, is a country primarily located in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zone in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north; Germany to the northeast; Switzerland to the east; Italy and Monaco to the southeast; Andorra and Spain to the south; and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its 18 integral regions—five of which are overseas—span a combined area of 632,702 km (244,288 sq mi) and have an estimated total population of over 68.6 million as of January 2025. France is a semi-presidential republic. Its capital, largest city and main cultural and economic centre is Paris.

Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. In the Early Middle Ages, the Franks formed the kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralised feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. In the 16th century French culture flourished during the French Renaissance, and a French colonial empire emerged. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

The Roman expansion in Italy covers a series of conflicts in which Rome grew from being a small Italian city-state to be the ruler of the Italian region. Roman tradition attributes to the Roman kings the first war against the Sabines and the first conquests around the Alban Hills and down to the coast of Latium. The birth of the Roman Republic after the overthrow of the Etruscan monarch of Rome in 509 BC began a series of major wars between the Romans and the Etruscans. In 390 BC, Gauls from the north of Italy sacked Rome. In the second half of the 4th century BC Rome clashed repeatedly with the Samnites, a powerful tribal coalition of the Apennine region.

By the end of these wars, Rome had become the most powerful state in central Italy and began to expand to the north and to the south. The last threat to Roman hegemony came during the Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC) when Tarentum enlisted the aid of the Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus to campaign in the North of Italy. Resistance in Etruria was finally crushed in 265–264 BC, the same year the First Punic War began and brought Roman forces outside of the peninsula for the first time. Starting from the First Punic War (264–241 BC) the territories subject to Roman rule also included Sicily (241 BC), Sardinia and Corsica (238 BC), islands transformed into provinces.

The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of Punic Warsthree wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Italy and Iberia, but also on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and, towards the end of the war, in North Africa. After immense materiel and human losses on both sides, the Carthaginians were once again defeated. Macedonia, Syracuse and several Numidian kingdoms were drawn into the fighting, and Iberian and Gallic forces fought on both sides. There were three main military theatres during the war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly, with occasional subsidiary campaigns in Sicily, Sardinia and Greece; Iberia, where Hasdrubal, a younger brother of Hannibal, defended the Carthaginian colonial cities with mixed success before moving into Italy; and Africa, where Rome won the war.

The First Punic War had ended in a Roman victory in 241 BCE after 23 years and enormous losses on both sides. After the war Carthage expanded its holdings in Iberia where in 219 BCE a Carthaginian army under Hannibal besieged, captured and sacked the pro-Roman city of Saguntum. In spring 218 BC Rome declared war on Carthage, beginning the Second Punic War. Later that year, Hannibal surprised the Romans by marching his army overland from Iberia, through Gaul and over the Alps to Cisalpine Gaul (modern northern Italy). Reinforced by Gallic allies he obtained crushing victories over the Romans at the battles of Trebia (218) and Lake Trasimene (217). Moving to southern Italy in 216 Hannibal defeated the Romans again at the battle of Cannae, where he annihilated the largest army the Romans had ever assembled. After the death or capture of more than 120,000 Roman troops in less than three years, many of Rome's Italian allies, notably Capua, defected to Carthage, giving Hannibal control over much of southern Italy. As Syracuse and Macedonia joined the Carthaginian side after Cannae, the conflict spread. Between 215 and 210 BC the Carthaginians attempted to capture Roman-held Sicily and Sardinia, but were unsuccessful. The Romans took drastic steps to raise new legions: enrolling slaves, criminals and those who did not meet the usual property qualification; this vastly increased the number of men they had under arms. For the next decade the war in southern Italy continued, with Roman armies slowly recapturing most of the Italian cities that had joined Carthage.

French people (French: Les Français, lit. 'The French') are a nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common French culture, history, and language, identified with the country of France.

The French people, especially the native speakers of langues d'oïl from northern and central France, are primarily descended from Romans (or Gallo-Romans, western European Celtic and Italic peoples), Gauls (including the Belgae), as well as Germanic peoples such as the Franks, the Visigoths, the Suebi and the Burgundians who settled in Gaul from east of the Rhine after the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as various later waves of lower-level irregular migration that have continued to the present day. The Norsemen also settled in Normandy in the 10th century and contributed significantly to the ancestry of the Normans. Furthermore, regional ethnic minorities also exist within France that have distinct lineages, languages and cultures such as Bretons in Brittany, Occitans in Occitania, Basques in the French Basque Country, Catalans in northern Catalonia, Germans in Alsace, Corsicans in Corsica and Flemings in French Flanders.

Cisalpine Gaul (Latin: Gallia Cisalpina, also called Gallia Citerior or Gallia Togata) was the name given, especially during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, to a region of land inhabited by Celts (Gauls), corresponding to what is now most of northern Italy.

After its conquest by the Roman Republic in the 200s BC, it was considered geographically part of Roman Italy but remained administratively separated until 42 BC. It was a Roman province from c. 81 BC until 42 BC, when it was de jure merged into Roman Italy as already planned by Julius Caesar.

Gaul (Latin: Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of 494,000 km (191,000 sq mi). According to Julius Caesar, who took control of the region on behalf of the Roman Republic, Gaul was divided into three parts: Gallia Celtica, Belgica, and Aquitania. Archaeologically, the Gauls were bearers of the La Tène culture during the 5th to 1st centuries BC. This material culture was found throughout Gaul and as far east as modern-day southern Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Warbands led by the Gaul Brennos sacked Rome in 387 BC, becoming the only time Rome was conquered by a foreign enemy in 800 years. However, Gallia Cisalpina was conquered by the Romans in 204 BC and Gallia Narbonensis in 123 BC. Gaul was invaded after 120 BC by the Cimbri and the Teutons, who were in turn defeated by the Romans by 103 BC. Julius Caesar finally subdued the largest part of Gaul in his campaigns from 58 to 51 BC. Roman control of Gaul lasted for five centuries, until the last Roman rump state, the Domain of Soissons, fell to the Franks in AD 486.

The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Greek writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, Aquitani and Belgae. Over the first millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul in the late 2nd century BC, and legions under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. A Gallo-Roman culture emerged, and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman Empire. In the later stages of the empire, Gaul was subject to barbarian raids and migration. The Frankish king Clovis I united most of Gaul in the late 5th century. Frankish power reached its fullest extent under Charlemagne. The medieval Kingdom of France emerged from the western part of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, known as West Francia, and achieved increasing prominence under the rule of the House of Capet, founded in 987.

A succession crisis in 1328 led to the Hundred Years' War between the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet. The war began in 1337 following Philip VI's attempt to seize the Duchy of Aquitaine from its hereditary holder Edward III of England, the Plantagenet claimant to the French throne. A notable figure of the war was Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who led forces against the English, establishing herself as a national heroine. The war ended with a Valois victory in 1453, strengthening French nationalism and increasing the power and reach of the French monarchy. During the Ancien Régime over the next centuries, France transformed into a centralized absolute monarchy through the Renaissance and Reformation. At the height of the French Wars of Religion, France became embroiled in another succession crisis, as the last Valois king, Henry III, fought against factions of the House of Bourbon and House of Guise. Henry, the Bourbon King of Navarre, won and established the Bourbon dynasty. A burgeoning worldwide colonial empire was established in the 16th century.