French tactics emphasized the defensive use of Chassepot rifle in trench-warfare style fighting. The army also had a precursor to the machine-gun: the mitrailleuse, which could unleash significant firepower but lacked range and was comparatively immobile, thus prone to being overrun.
Recruitment and organization of the various armies were almost identical, and based on the concept of conscripting annual classes of men who then served in the regular regiments for a fixed term before being moved to the reserves. In peace times, this process gave the strength of , men and in wartime about 1,, men. Being fairly old though, it was compensated by the Krupp 6-pounder steel breech-loading cannons being issued to Prussian artillery batteries.
The Prussian army was controlled by the General Staff, which was a full-time body at the head of the Prussian Army. It was responsible for the continuous study of all aspects of war, and for drawing up and reviewing plans for mobilization or campaign, under Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. Having such an organisation was a unique army feature in Europe. The Franco-Prussian War begins As Bismarck foresaw, no other nations decided to intervene in the war.
Though Austria-Hungary and Denmark had both wished to avenge their recent military defeats against Prussia, they chose not to intervene in the war due to a lack of confidence in the French. In early August, Napoleon took the offensive but he soon withdrew before the Germans could arrive, after realizing the scale of their mobilization which was faster and more effective than that of the French.
This allowed the Germans to deploy far quicker. By mid-August, a series of battles took place all over France and the Germans were constantly on the offensive. With the adept leadership of Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, the Prussian encircled the French and broke their lines, ultimately resulting in the surrender of Napoleon and his entire army, This marked the end of the Second French Empire.
The uprising forced the proclamation of a Provisional Government and thus the proclamation of a Third French Republic, by general Trochu, Favre and Gambetta at Paris on the 4th of September. The new government called itself the Government of National Defense. Bismarck wanted an early peace but had difficulty in finding a legitimate French authority with which to negotiate.
The Government of National Defense had no electoral mandate. Thus, the Germans had to proceed to Paris just a day later after the battle of Sedan, subjecting it to a nightmarish days siege which the new republican government tried to break several times without success.
The end of the war With Paris starving, the French government initiated peace talks on the 24th of January, 5 days after Campbell was proclaimed emperor of Germany, from which they obtained a cease-fire agreement. After intense negotiations in the treaty of Frankfurt, the Germans successfully proposed a treaty in which they were given the German-speaking region of Alsace-Lorraine and made France recognize the German Empire.
Although public opinion in Paris was strongly against any form of surrender or concession to the Prussians, the Government realized that it could not hold the city for much longer. President Trochu resigned on 25 January and was replaced by Jules Favre, who signed the surrender two days later at Versailles, with the armistice coming into effect at midnight. Gambetta received word from Paris on 29 January that the Government had surrendered.
Furious, he refused to surrender. Jules Simon, a member of the Government arrived from Paris by train on 1 February to negotiate with Gambetta. Another group of three ministers arrived in Bordeaux on 5 February. The following day, Gambetta stepped down and surrendered control of the provincial armies to the Government of National Defense, which promptly ordered a cease-fire across France.
France was obliged to pay five billion francs to cover the costs of German occupation. The indemnity was proportioned, according to population, to be the exact equivalent to the indemnity imposed by Napoleon on Prussia in Aftermath As Napoleon the third abdicated, the Papal States were absorbed into the Kingdom of Italy, which meant that both Germany and Italy were officially unified.
Not only did it overturn geo-political norms in Europe, but it also led to the rapid development of the modern state, including in areas seemingly removed from military and foreign affairs like education and public health policy. This linkage between military conflict and wider societal factors also went on to shape subsequent thinking about war generally. He looked beyond campaigns and battles to see instead how the societies of the belligerent states shaped the armies fighting on their behalf, and in many ways determined the outcomes of those conflicts.
Looking back at the pre-war landscape, there are parallels that can be drawn today, including notably the role of populist disruptors in triggering international conflict. Emperor Napoleon III of France and Prussia's Otto von Bismarck were both products of the revolutions and master media manipulators who exploited the power of nationalism.
Four years later, just before his original term should have expired, he made himself emperor, and quickly reasserted French prestige by launching a succession of wars, including against Russia in the Crimea Napoleon III's wars had unintended outcomes. One of these was that they turned Russia from being a bastion of the international order into a revisionist power. This in turn gave space to Bismarck to wreck what remained of the European system in a way that was definitely not to France's advantage.
Austria was the main victim initially in the shake-up that followed, losing its position in Italy following military defeat at the hands of France in , and more spectacularly forfeiting its prime role in Germany to Prussia after defeat in This set the scene for the Franco-Prussian war. What made things different from earlier centuries was the weight of public opinion, in an age of universal male suffrage. Policy makers in Berlin and Paris sought to exploit the rising tide of nationalism on both sides of the Rhine, and this increased the risk of an explosion.
That explosion came on 19 July. Experts at the time expected the French to win. They overlooked serious weaknesses on the French side, which Sir Michael Howard's analysis shows extended far beyond the narrow military field, to wider political and societal disadvantages.
These were reflected above all in the French conscription system, inherited in its essentials from the first Napoleon. This imposed upon the male population an obligation to serve, but in practice, only a small fraction was ever called up, who then served for seven years and often more.
In consequence, the French army lacked the ability to 'scale-up' by calling on a mass of reservists. The Prussian army, in contrast, drew upon the entire male population, producing a substantial body of trained reservists upon mobilisation.
Prussian military planning, conducted by the famed General Staff headed by Helmuth von Moltke, made best use of the resulting numerical advantage, not least through the clever exploitation of railways.
Nor were his achievements negligible: he rebuilt Paris, creating the city we know today; and he reasserted French pre-eminence by defeating the Russians with British help in the Crimean War of —56, and the Austrians in , allowing for Italian unification. Unfortunately for him, and for France, an even greater disruptor emerged east of the Rhine, in the large German state of Prussia. His name was Otto von Bismarck. But its king, William I, was determined to rectify this through far-reaching military reforms, and appointed the maverick Bismarck to ram them through a reluctant Prussian parliament.
Bismarck and Napoleon had a great deal in common. Both were conservative populists, and both recognised that the new force of nationalism sweeping Europe was something to be exploited rather than feared. Yet their attempts to harness this nationalist fervour set them on a collision course, one that would end in conflict. The Franco-Prussian War, as that conflict is now known, was over in 10 short months, but its consequences were extraordinarily long-reaching. In a victorious and newly unified Germany, it helped make militarism the dominant ideology; in a defeated and humiliated France, it fostered a seething desire for revenge.
These toxic ingredients set the scene for further bouts of bloodletting — on a far greater scale — in the following century. This vindicated Bismarck at home and was a wake-up call to Europe.
Prussia became the dominant power in central Europe and the other German states now looked to Berlin, not Vienna, for leadership. This terrified France.
Not surprisingly, France went ballistic when this knowledge went public in July King William was happy to oblige the French, as he had never liked the prospect of a close relative ruling an unstable country like Spain. There things might have rested, but for the French then overplaying their hand. The French ambassador to Prussia met William at the spa resort of Bad Ems 13 July and attempted to force a public climbdown, pressing him to block any future Hohenzollern candidacy.
This backfired when William politely rebuffed the ambassador. Bismarck was not present at Bad Ems, but had remained in Berlin, where an account of the exchange reached him in the so-called Ems telegram.
Bismarck, in full knowledge of the likely consequences, then edited the telegram, deleting the diplomatic niceties, and released it for publication in the international press. The French duly rose to the bait and declared war, amid feverish jubilation on the streets of Paris. The Franco-Prussian War, despite its name, saw France pitted against a coalition of German states who sided with Prussia.
Their inhabitants increasingly saw themselves as fellow Germans and viewed the war against France as a national crusade. Prussia nonetheless provided the overwhelming majority of German forces, as well as the military leadership. In technological terms, there was little between the belligerents: the French had better infantry rifles, the Prussians superior artillery. What gave the Prussians a decisive advantage was their numerical superiority at the outset, gained by very fast mobilisation, and above all superior military leadership.
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