1943 was the year when Charles Trenet, a narbonnais chanteur, composed this classic. France was occupied by the Nazi at that time, so Trenet wrote this song to moral support to the "expatriés de force", that is all the French war prisoners who were taken by force from their homeland to Nazi Germany. And we can only imagine how warming could have been for those French people to hear verses like "(France) Bercée de tendre insouciance, je t'ai gardée dans mon cœur".
The title of the song is a reference to a truism first appeared in the XI century medieval epic "La Chanson de Roland" and his "dulce Francia". In a part of the epic poem, in fact, count Roland was lying under a pine tree and, when he turned his head towards Spain, a strong sense of nostalgia made him think about the many lands the baron had conquered, the men of his lineage and about his lord Charlemagne, who had raised him. Beside these painful memories, Roland couldn't help but sobbing and crying for his "douce France".