The French cruised to a comfortable win with two tries by Yannick Jauzion, one touchdown from Olivier Magne and 16 points from the boot of Dimitri Yachvili.

But Matt Williams Scottish side are now on the verge of an RBS 6 Nations whitewash with a daunting trip to Dublin on the horizon after four successive defeats.

However, Lee, who was sin-binned in the first-half for an illegal challenge on Yachvili, concedes Scotland had only themselves to blame for the latest defeat.

He said: We just made far too many mistakes and it didnt help with me getting sin-binned.

Everybody was very disappointed as you can imagine. We have to pick ourselves up for Ireland - there is nothing to lose now.

We wanted to play better at home but there were far too many errors.

France are a good side and we were up for the game but I dont know why we made so many mistakes.

I dont know why we did but it meant we couldnt really put our game-plan into practice. We contributed to our own downfall.

But Lee was particularly deflated after the defeat which marked his first start since 2001.

However, the Edinburgh Gunners man admitted his 16th-minute tackle on Yachvili was as ill-judged as it was executed.

Lee said: I knew I wasnt going to get the ball so I was basically looking at the guy hoping he would catch it.

I slowed down because I saw it hadnt landed yet but I couldnt stop so it was either run past him or just grab his legs. I didnt try to hurt him though.

While Lee will now be fretting on his starting jersey at Lansdowne Road next weekend, many other Scotland players were far from at their best at Murrayfield.

Lee added: There arent many players who wont have made a mistake. I got sin-binned and threw a bad pass as well.

It was just one mistake after another every time we got the ball.

Each time we got the ball, we turned it over and did something stupid. We only had ourselves to blame.