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==Before and After the French Revolution==

Prior to the French Revolution, France had begun developing elaborate spy networks that spanned Russia to the East and England to the North. Famous spies included Chevalier d'Éon, who had androgynous characteristics, making him also suitable as a female spy. In fact, he was known as a woman for over 33 years and penetrated the Russian court as a female spy. However, in other aspects, the Chevalier performed as a male spy and soldier.

==Recent Periods==

After the turbulent years of the Napoleonic wars, French spying became more professionalized. The need for foreign intelligence became apparent after the French defeat in the Fanco-Prussian war in 1870-1871. The development of military intelligence was a result of this. This became known as the Deuxième Bureau, the agency in charge of French military spying and intelligence. The spy agency continued until 1940, when France fell to Germany. Notable success included early cryptanalytical work that helped in breaking foreign codes and communications. However, the agency suffered in the Dreyfus Affair, where notable military officers were accused or convicted of spying for Germany in the 1890s and injustice for a junior officer, Alfred Dreyfus, in being accused of being a spy proved to make the French military and its spying networks suffer in their reputation.

==Summary==

The creation of a central French state in the 16th and 17th centuries and internal unrest that came during the Protestant Reformation led to the development of spy networks within France that attempted to facilitate the French state's power. In the French Revolution, spies often switched sides and the great upheaval and fear caused by the state led to great fear of spies, both by the government and the population. The disaster of the Franco-Prussian war helped shape the French Republic's first professional spying agency that did have some notable success, but the state's downfall in World War II and the rise of the Cold War subsequently shaped new internal and external spy agencies. Since the 2000s, terrorism and technology espionage have been seen as the greatest threats that France's spy agencies have attempted to counter.

==References==