"The French Defense was named for the Parisian players who adopted the move 1...e6 in an 1834 correspondence game vs London, though it dates back to the 15th-century. Black is ready to accept a game slightly cramped in space where manuevering and pawn breaks are the important themes. The style is quite different from the wide open attacking positions one sees in the Sicilian and other defenses. WIth the FD one must first defend, then counterattack. This takes patience and many players do not have the temperament to play the FD. Its great exponents have been Botvinnik (pictured here), Korchnoi, and more recently Bareev and Mikhail Gurevich"  MCO-15 p 197