> As I remember it now, this was taught as a bittersweet moment in our history. We united, we were brave and fought a stronger army but still we were defeated and our chief was captured and killed by the enemy.
Isn't modern France mostly a descendant of the Frankish kingdoms, where the Franks are quite different than the Gauls and in any case arrived in the area far later than the Battle of Alesia?
Yes, but while in political terms the Gauls, Romans and Franks were distinct entities, in cultural terms the region was more of a melting pot. The Roman conquest of Gaul ended up blending their two cultures into a new, distinctive "Gallo-Roman" culture (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallo-Roman_culture), for instance, and then when the Franks came along their culture got blended in as well. So modern French identity has strains in it running back to all three sources.
Isn't modern France mostly a descendant of the Frankish kingdoms, where the Franks are quite different than the Gauls and in any case arrived in the area far later than the Battle of Alesia?