Quotes from Bismarck
War and Civilization, Crimea, War, technology, and Industry, Blood & Iron
Franco-Prussian War (1870)
The causes of the Franco-Prussian War are rooted in the shifting balance of power in Europe after the Napoleonic wars. France and Prussia had fought against each other, with France beating Prussia in 1806, then losing in 1813-1815. In the following decades, Prussia was generally considered by the French as a modern, enlightened country. Republicans particularly favoured the prospect of seeing the German nation unite under Prussian leadership, displacing the old, catholic Austrian empire. Prussia hold similar views, but cultivated an image of France as the hereditary enemy: Prussia was to replace Austria as the head of Germany, and to replace France as the leader in continental Europe.
Napoleon III became emperor in France thanks to a coup in 1851. He initially supported the German unification policy of Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Prussia under king Wilhelm I. It was only after the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 that France began to worry about the fast-rising Prussian power. To be able to face the Prussian conscription-based army, military reform was debated in the French parliament, but refused by the Left which considered there was no danger of war.
In July 1870, a diplomatic crisis broke, Bismarck managed to provoke the French into declaring war to Prussia — and French dipomacy fell in the trap. France had a good professional army, which was indeed able to face the Prussians. But a decisive strategic surprise came when all German states took side with Prussia: The French were overwhelmed, outmaneuvered and, in spite of ferocious combats, finally beaten. After Sept. 4th, the new Republic refused to sign an armistice, managed to hastily improvise "armies" out of civilian volunteers, but these were no match for the well-trained Prussians. The war ended when Parisians, besieged, bombarded and starved, surrendered.
The Prussian Army held a brief victory parade in Paris on 17 February, 1871, and Bismarck honoured the armistice by sending trainloads of food into Paris and moving Prussian forces to the east of the city. Prussian armies would occupy parts of France until the French completed the payment of a five-billion francs war indemnity.[53] Then, they would withdraw to Alsace and Lorraine. An exodus occurred from Paris as some 200,000 people, predominantly middle-class, left the city for the countryside. Paris was quickly re-supplied with free food and fuel by the United Kingdom and several accounts recall life in the city settling back to normal.
The war ended up with a complete triumph for Prussia, whose king was proclaimed emperor of Germany in the palace of Versailles — a supreme humiliation of the French and a Prussian revenge on Napoleon's victorious march in Berlin.
The Treaty of Frankfurt gave Germany Alsace and the northern portion of Lorraine (Moselle), where Germanic dialects were spoken by parts of the population. Most importantly, Germany now possessed Metz, a key fortified stronghold between the two countries. Part of the Alsacians refused to live under German rule and emigrated to "inner France".
The loss of this territory was a source of resentment in France for years to come, and revanchism even inspired an attempted coup in Paris in the 1880s. Yet, by 1900, new generations tended to consider it old history, while Alsacians adapted more or less reluctantly to German rule [see Barrès "Au service de l'Allemagne"]. No French political party put forward a reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine in its program. Compensations were found in colonization abroad. When World War I broke out, the French mobilized with the idea to defend their territory as it was, not to take back Alsace-Lorraine, as soldiers' diaries and letters indicate.
Had Germany not taken the option of war in 1914, its successful path paved by the 1870 triumph would have led it to become peacefully the uncontested leader in Europe.
