I'm a native English speaker who's very exposed to French, but doesn't speak it, I find the use of accents in French very welcome to getting the pronunciation right when exposed to a new word. English is just a mess in comparison and I wish it had made use of accents as well to avoid a lot of the ambiguities in pronunciation. Perhaps some of the old English letters that are no longer in use helped a bit, but I'm not familiar enough with those to know if it used to be better.
You mean kinda like how (as I recently was informed) "ye olde" is actually pronounced "the old" but written "ye" because of printing issues, and consequently mispronounced by almost everyone?
Them be fighting words!
But as a native French speaker, I wholeheartedly agree that it is a tricky language. But there is so much pleasure in speaking it that I miss in English sometimes.
Fabrice Lucchini (an actor) is speaking about the language of Louis-Ferdinand Céline (an author from last century): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHrkC3vaqB8
Even if you do not speak French, I hope the passion comes through.