It wasn’t, the term lingua franca originates from the Mediterranean Lingua Franca, also known as Sabir, a pidgin language made up of bits from primarily romance languages (notably those of northern Italy) around the Mediterranean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
It was (the first world wide language used for diplomacy). If you want to quote Wikipedia, then:
“French is sometimes regarded as the first global lingua franca, having supplanted Latin as the prestige language of politics, trade, education, diplomacy, and military in early modern Europe and later spreading around the world with the establishment of the French colonial empire. With France emerging as the leading political, economic, and cultural power of Europe in the 16th century, the language was adopted by royal courts throughout the continent, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Russia, and as the language of communication between European academics, merchants, and diplomats.”
It wasn’t, the term lingua franca originates from the Mediterranean Lingua Franca, also known as Sabir, a pidgin language made up of bits from primarily romance languages (notably those of northern Italy) around the Mediterranean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
It was (the first world wide language used for diplomacy). If you want to quote Wikipedia, then:
“French is sometimes regarded as the first global lingua franca, having supplanted Latin as the prestige language of politics, trade, education, diplomacy, and military in early modern Europe and later spreading around the world with the establishment of the French colonial empire. With France emerging as the leading political, economic, and cultural power of Europe in the 16th century, the language was adopted by royal courts throughout the continent, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Russia, and as the language of communication between European academics, merchants, and diplomats.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca#French
Maybe sailors communicated with locals through a broken pidgin, but diplomats and aristocrats used French.