The translation is given in the answer to the question: "Elizabeth the second comes to France."

This makes perfect sense if you live in France and are describing a state visit currently taking place. I think you are looking at it from the point of view of a British person who would say "went". The following lesson explains that "en" can be used to mean "to".

https://progress.lawlessfrench.com/revision/grammar/use-en-with-feminine-countries-and-aux-with-masculine-countries-to-say-in-or-to-prepositions

Salut, Claudia!

The verb used here is protéger (to protect). That's the infinitive form, still ending in -er.  In that sentence, protéger is used in the passé simple (another past tense besides passé composé which is used more for literature, scientific text, history; this is not a conversational tense but something used for writing). The meaning, because it's in the past, is François the 1st protected Leonardo da Vinci.

Hope that helps! Passé simple isn't something you'd encounter in conversation, so I hope that all makes sense!

Merci 

Passé Simple Tense.

Je protége [ ai ]

Tu protége [ as ]

Il / elle / on  protége [ a ]

Vous protége [ iez ]

Nous protége [ ions ]

Ils / Elles protége [ aient ]

This is, of course, to the best of my rather sporadic and limited knowledge. Anyone, please feel free to correct me. I acknowledge also that most of the people here are right. The Passé simple is almost a purely literary tense, and should never be used in conversation, formal or otherwise.

Again, good question, and thank you for posing it.

If you're saying that most of the time tiers does not agree in gender, I think that should be added to the main lesson. The way it is currently worded - "You use tiers (masculine) or tierce (feminine)" - with no additional follow-up information, suggests that it does agree in gender. If I hadn't read this comment I would have basically just learnt it completely wrong.

Hi David,

I'm sure you're right that the "third" in "Third World" refers to an order rather than a fraction.

I think the reason that "tiers" is used is probably historical. Although "Third World" is a relatively recent term it was coined from the much older expression "Third Estate" - "le tiers-état".

I imagine at the time when that term was created the language was rather different and "tiers" could be used to mean 3rd in sequence.

Hi,

I understand Third World and Third Party use the fraction term, however wrong that might be, and it's great to know. But I would still argue that the lesson is unclear if not wrong in this regard. The examples are introduced with:

You use tiers (masculine) or tierce (feminine) instead of troisième when expressing a fraction, a portion of something (= one third of), as opposed to a rank or an order (= third out of).

And that leaves more doubts than certainties. Only the "1/3 of a bottle" example and the troisième examples below actually have to do with this. What should be said about Third World and Third Party is that, for whatever reason, they use the fraction term instead even though they should, by any criteria, be ordinals:

- there is a First World (the richer countries), an implied though not usually called so Second World, and a Third World (poor countries).

- a Third Party is a party that's not the usual two in an agreement, conflict, war, legal action or whatever it is that usually has two main sides (parties).

I think the best argument to support that the lesson should be updated is all these unnecessary Q&A's, mine included, just trying to figure out why the lesson says what it says.