Today, Germany is a single, unified nation, and its western neighbour, France, is a republic,
but there was a time when the Germans lived under several different rival states and when
the French were ruled by an Emperor.
So then, what was it that caused the conflict which brought about those two dramatic changes;
the Franco-Prussian War.
How did it actually go, and what did its immediate aftermath look like?
Well, the Franco-Prussian War began in 1870, but the circumstances that resulted in it
breaking out had been coming together since the Europe-wide revolutions of 1848.
That year saw the Kingdom of Prussia, one of the two most powerful German states, become
a constitutional monarchy, and a lot of government power was moved to Prussia’s Minister President
and away from its King.
By the time of the Franco-Prussian War, that office would be held by one Otto von Bismarck;
a man who was determined to unite Germany under Prussian, and therefore largely his, rule.
In 1848 France, on the other hand, the nephew of the late Napoleon I, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte,
came to power at the head of a new regime; he took on his uncle’s title and crowned
himself Emperor of the French, as Napoleon III, four years later.
So, Napoleon III’s France was the country that declared war in 1870, but it was Bismarck’s
Prussia that really wanted to see the Franco-Prussian War begin.
Under him Prussia had already fought and beaten Denmark, and then the Austrian Empire, which
made it the undisputed leader of the other German states, and saw the creation of the
Prussian-led North German Confederation.
Bismarck’s trouble was securing the allegiances of the German states to the south of Prussia,
which were a) too powerful, and b) too culturally distinct, to take by force.
In order to get that loyalty, he needed an enemy for the Germans to unite against.
And, to be fair to Bismarck, Napoleon III didn’t exactly make it difficult for the
Chancellor to frame France as a threat.
The North German Confederation and the French had very nearly gone to war over Luxembourg
in 1867, and it was something of an open secret that Napoleon III had an interest in expanding
his empire all the way to the river Rhine.
The French also felt threatened though; they had considered themselves to be the pre-eminent
military power in mainland Europe for centuries, and a quickly uniting Germany was something
that they, as it would turn out, had reason to fear.
So, when the Queen of Spain was overthrown, and a relative of Prussia’s King, Wilhelm
I, was chosen to succeed her, France afraid of being surrounded was, understandably, not
going to have it.
The King actually went over the head of Bismarck though, and, in the interest of not causing
a crisis, refused to allow any member of his family to take the Spanish throne.
But Bismarck was intent on war and when the French followed up on Wilhelm’s attempt
at de-escalation by demanding that the issue never be raised again, he had a telegram describing
talks between the King and the French ambassador, edited to make it seem as if both sides had
insulted each other.
They hadn’t, but when it went to the press the telegram set Paris ablaze, so, in line
with public opinion, Napoleon III declared war on Prussia and the North German Confederation.
As he was now fighting, technically, a defensive war, the southern states put their armies
at Bismarck’s disposal.
Prussia had always been able to punch above her weight militarily, but by 1870, the Prussian
armed forces already one of the most well-organized in the world, had been significantly reformed
and expanded, under the leadership of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the Prussian Chief of
General Staff.
Not to mention it had recent experience against the Danes and Austrians.
Both France and the German allies wielded professional armies with industrial economies
to support them and each nation, initially, was confident that they could achieve victory.
Napoleon III, echoing his uncle’s actions sixty years earlier, led the French army personally.
The German armies on the other hand were led by an experienced corp of officers, most notably
von Moltke.
The Prussians had also built an advanced system of railroads, a new innovation at the time,
which allowed them to bring troops to the frontlines much more quickly than the French.
As a result they outnumbered them by nearly two to one.
Napoleon III also found himself ally-less.
Prussia’s old enemy Austria was just as anti-French as it was anti-Prussian, the new
Kingdom of Italy, which had once been aligned with France, wanted Papal Rome which was under
French protection, Russia had bonded with Prussia over their shared dislike of Poles,
and the United Kingdom was uninterested in getting involved in a continental war.
In August, the Germans caught a French border garrison off guard and routed them at the
battle of Wissembourg. Soon afterwards, their armies began to push farther and farther into
France, and a month later, the Germans met Napoleon III’s army at the Battle of Sedan.
Over a hundred thousand Frenchmen, including the Emperor himself, were taken prisoner.
The war was effectively decided.
With Napoleon III captured, French Republicans at home carried out a revolution and established
the Third French Republic; it would survive until World War Two.
They then set about defending Paris which would eventually fall to the advancing Germans
in January, 1871.
The same month that the various princes of Germany met in the Palace of Versailles and
proclaimed a united German Empire with Prussia’s Wilhelm I as Kaiser.
Bismarck remained Chancellor for another 19 years.
The Treaty of Frankfurt officially ended the war and saw the border region Alsace-Lorraine
become German territory.
It also stipulated that the French would allow German troops to occupy most of the north
of the country for two years, and pay them 5 billion Francs in war reparations.
The French were humiliated, but they remained a world power.
The rivalry between France and a now strong Germany was only just getting started.
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And, as always, I’ve been James and thank you for watching Look Back History.