Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War began on July 19, 1870, when France declared war on Prussia after Bismarck published an edited telegram from Ems, in which the Prussian king rebuffed a French demand over a Hohenzollern candidacy for the Spanish throne. Bismarck wanted a war that would draw the southern German states into a union with the North German Confederation, and Napoleon III, under pressure at home, wanted a victory that would restore his prestige. The southern states joined Prussia, and the German armies moved against France in August.¹

Prussia had spent a decade preparing. Its general staff under Helmuth von Moltke planned mobilization by railway timetable, its soldiers were trained in a modern reserve system, and its Krupp steel breech-loading guns outranged French cannon. The French army had better rifles, but its mobilization was slow and its leadership poor. After defeats at Metz and Gravelotte in August, a French army with Napoleon III was surrounded at Sedan, where on September 2 the emperor and about 100,000 men surrendered. In Paris the Second Empire fell, and a Government of National Defense continued the fight for months.¹

The siege of Paris lasted from September 1870 to January 1871, and Parisians ate animals from the zoo. On January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor. France accepted an armistice and then, in the Treaty of Frankfurt in May 1871, gave up Alsace and part of Lorraine and agreed to pay an indemnity of five billion francs. A new Germany, the strongest power on the continent, stood next to a humiliated France that wanted revenge, and European alliances were rearranged around that fact for 40 years.¹²