A year after their surprise loss in Italy cost France Women a potential Grand Slam, Les Bleues gained their revenge with a convincing 39-0 victory in Bourg en Bresse.
France scored six tries in all, with some dominant play up front including two scores from second row Audrey Forlani.
And skipper Gaëlle Mignot, who was another of the try-scorers, admitted that last year’s result, a 17-12 reverse, was at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
“We’re happy, we’ve made a good start to the tournament,” she said.
“It’s always difficult to start the Six Nations especially against an Italian team who beat us last year.
“It wasn’t all perfect, that’s for sure, but we have to be happy with the win and then we can look at what didn’t work and look to the future.
“We need to set high standards if we want to play well and we can’t be satisfied with that. We’re challenging ourselves not focusing on the Italians.
“We’re a team in construction, growing and our objective is the World Cup.”
Next up for France will be defending champions Ireland, who proved too strong for Wales in a 21-3 win on the artificial surface at Donnybrook.
Sene Naoupu’s first-half try got the Irish on a roll, and they added a second through Sophie Spence before half-time.
Full-back Niamh Briggs added 11 points with the boot, and explained that the surface played a big role in helping Ireland establish their expansive game plan.
“It was unbelievable, on a pitch like this, the surface was fantastic and it allows us to play the rugby that we want,” said Briggs.
“The crowd were unbelievable and we asked everyone to get behind us to make this a fortress like we did Ashbourne.
“It’s a great day. Obviously things weren’t perfect and we’ll have a lot to work on before next week but we’ll look forward to the challenge.”
The final winners of the round were England, who kicked off the entire tournament with a 32-0 victory away to Scotland at Broadwood Stadium on Friday night.
Harriet Millar-Mills stole the show with two tries as the world champions made a promising start to their campaign, a year after their worst-ever finish in the tournament.
Lauren Cattell, Lucy Demaine and Sarah Hunter also scored tries for England, and head coach Scott Bemand was pleased to see Millar-Mills break out at international level.
“Harriet has been bubbling away beneath the surface for a while now,” he said. “She’s really grasped the bull by the horns this time and has got herself in peak physical condition.
“She is playing like this every week for her club, so it is not a surprise that she’s got that level of performance in her. It’s great for her to be able to show her running game on this stage, particularly in conditions like this, and hopefully there’s more to come.
“This was our first game in this year’s competition and I think that had the feel of a first game about it.”
