The Franco-Prussian War (19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871)

• published: 23 Oct 2014
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The Franco-Prussian War (19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871) was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the German states of the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. The conflict emerged from tensions caused by German unification. Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck planned to provoke a French attack in order to draw the southern German states of Baden, Wurttemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt—into an alliance with the Prussian dominated North German Confederation. Bismarck created a diplomatic crisis over the candidacy of Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a Prussian prince to the throne of Spain. France feared encirclement by an alliance between Prussia and Spain, and then rewrote a dispatch about a meeting between king William of Prussia and the French foreign minister, to make it appear that the French had been insulted. The French press and parliament demanded a war, which the generals of Napoleon III assured him that France would win. Napoleon and his Prime Minister, Emile Ollivier, for their parts sought war to solve political disunity in France. On 16 July 1870, the French parliament voted to declare war and hostilities began three days later. The German coalition mobilized its troops much more quickly than the French and rapidly invaded northeastern France. The German forces were superior in numbers, had better training and leadership and made more effective use of modern technology, particularly railways and artillery. A series of swift Prussian and German victories in eastern France, culminating at the Battle of Sedan and the Siege of Metz saw the French army decisively defeated; Napoleon III was captured at Sedan on 2 September. The war continued, after the Third Republic was declared in Paris 4 September, under the Government of National Defence and Adolphe Thiers. For the next five months the German forces fought and defeated new French armies in northern France. Following the Siege of Paris, the capital fell on 28 January 1871. The German states proclaimed their union as the German Empire under the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, uniting Germany as a nation state. The Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871, gave Germany most of Alsace and some parts of Lorraine, which became the Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine Following defeat, a revolutionary uprising called the Paris Commune seized power in the capital and held it for two months, until it was bloodily suppressed by the regular French army at the end of May 1871. The unification of Germany upset the European balance of power, which had existed since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and Bismarck maintained great authority in international affairs for two decades. French determination to regain Alsace-Lorraine and fear of another Franco-German war, along with British concern over the balance of power, became factors in the causes of World War I. The French peacetime army consisted of approximately 400,000 soldiers, some of them regulars, others conscripts who served for seven years with the colours. French infantry were equipped with the breech-loading Chassepot rifle, one of the most modern mass-produced firearms in the world at the time. With a rubber ring seal and an 11mm (.45in) calibre, the Chassepot had a maximum effective range of some 1,500 m (4,900 ft) with a short reloading time. French tactics emphasised the defensive use of the Chassepot rifle in trench-warfare style fighting - the so-called feu de bataillon. The artillery was equipped with rifled, muzzle-loaded Lahitte guns. The army also possessed a precursor to the machine-gun: the Mitrailleuse, which could unleash significant, concentrated firepower, but lacked range and was comparatively immobile. The Prussian Army was composed not of regulars but conscripts. Service was compulsory for all of men of military age, and thus Prussia and its North and South German allies could mobilise and field some 1,000,000 soldiers in time of war. The army was still equipped with the 15.4mm (0.61in) Dreyse needle rife, which was now a 25 year old design and showing its age, it had a range of only 600 m (2,000 ft). The deficiencies of the needle gun were more than compensated for by the Krupp C/64 8cm (4pounder) and C/67 (6pounder) steel breech-loading cannons being issued to Prussian artillery batteries. Firing a contact-detonated shell, the Krupp gun had a longer range and a higher rate of fire than the French bronze muzzle loading cannon, which relied on faulty time fuses.