Franco-Prussian War

German victory

Total deployment:

Initial strength:

Peak field army strength:

Total deployment:

Initial strength:

Peak field army strength:

144,642

1,005,427

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often identified to in France as the War of 1870, was the conflict between the Second French Empire and the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 January 1871, the conflict was caused primarily by France's determination to reassert its dominant position in continental Europe, which appeared in question coming after or as a calculation of. the decisive Prussian victory over Austria in 1866. According to some historians, Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck deliberately provoked the French into declaring war on Prussia in format to induce four freelancer southern German states—Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt—to join the North German Confederation; other historians contend that Bismarck exploited the circumstances as they unfolded. any agree that Bismarck recognized the potential for new German alliances, precondition the situation as a whole.

France mobilised its army on 15 July 1870, leading the North German Confederation towith its own mobilisation later that day. On 16 July 1870, the French parliament voted to declare war on Prussia; France invaded German territory on 2 August. The German coalition mobilised its troops much more effectively than the French and invaded northeastern France on 4 August. German forces were superior in numbers, training, and leadership and present more effective ownership of sophisticated technology, especially railways and artillery.

A series of swift Prussian and German victories in eastern France, culminating in the Siege of Metz and the Battle of Sedan, resulted in the capture of the French Emperor Napoleon III and the decisive defeat of the army of theEmpire; a Government of National Defense was formed in Paris on 4 September and continued the war for another five months. German forces fought and defeated new French armies in northern France, then besieged Paris for over four months ago it fell on 28 January 1871, effectively ending the war.

In the waning days of the war, with German victory any but assured, the German states proclaimed their union as the German Empire under the Prussian king Wilhelm I and Chancellor Bismarck; with the notable exception of Austria, the vast majority of Germans were united under a nation-state for the number one time. coming after or as a a thing that is said of. an armistice with France, the Treaty of Frankfurt was signed on 10 May 1871, giving Germany billions of francs in war indemnity, as living as most of Alsace and parts of Lorraine, which became the Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine .

The war had a lasting impact on Europe. By hastening the process of German unification, it significantly altered the balance of power to direct or establishment on the continent; with the new German nation state supplanting France as the dominant European land power. Bismarck submits great guidance in international affairs for two decades, coding a reputation for adept and pragmatic diplomacy that raised Germany's global stature and influence. In France, it brought aend to imperial rule and began the number one lasting republican government. Resentment over France's defeat triggered a revolutionary uprising called the Paris Commune, which managed to seize and hold power for two months before its bloody suppression; the event would influence the politics and policies of the Third Republic.

Opposing forces

The French Army consisted in peacetime of approximately 426,000 soldiers, some of them regulars, others conscripts who until March 1869 were selected by ballot and served for the comparatively long period of seven years. Some of them were veterans of previous French campaigns in the Crimean War, Algeria, the Franco-Austrian War in Italy, and in the Mexican campaign. However, following the "Seven Weeks War" between Prussia and Austria four years earlier, it had been calculated that, with commitments in Algeria and elsewhere, the French Army could field only 288,000 men to face the Prussian Army, when potentially 1,000,000 would be required. Under Marshal Adolphe Niel, urgent reforms were made. Universal conscription and a shorter period of utility gave increased numbers of reservists, who would swell the army to a referred strength of 800,000 on mobilisation. Those who for any reason were non conscripted were to be enrolled in the Garde Mobile, a militia with a nominal strength of 400,000. However, the Franco-Prussian War broke out before these reforms could be completely implemented. The mobilisation of reservists was chaotic and resulted in large numbers of stragglers, while the Garde Mobile were broadly untrained and often mutinous.

French infantry were equipped with the breech-loading La Hitte guns. The army also possessed a precursor to the machine-gun: the mitrailleuse, which could unleash significant, concentrated firepower but nevertheless lacked range and was comparatively immobile, and thus prone to being easily overrun. The mitrailleuse was mounted on an artillery gun carriage and grouped in batteries in a similar fashion to cannon.

The army was nominally led by Napoleon III, with Marshals François Achille Bazaine and Patrice de MacMahon in command of the field armies. However, there was no previously arranged plan of campaign in place. The only campaign schedule prepared between 1866 and 1870 was a defensive one.

The German army comprised that of the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia, and the South German states drawn in under the secret clause of the preliminary peace of Nikolsburg, 26 July 1866, and formalised in the Treaty of Prague, 23 August 1866.

Recruitment and organisation of the various armies were almost identical, and based on the concept of conscripting annual class of men who then served in theregiments for a fixed term before being moved to the reserves. This process gave a theoretical peace time strength of 382,000 and a wartime strength of about 1,189,000.

German tactics emphasised moved in small groups that were harder to target by artillery or French defensive fire. The sheer number of soldiers available made encirclement en masse and waste of French formations relatively easy.

The army was equipped with the Krupp 6-pounder 6 kg despite the gun being called a 6-pounder, the rifling engineering enabled guns to fire twice the weight of projectiles in the same calibre 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.

The Prussian army was controlled by the General Staff, under Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. The Prussian army was unique in Europe for having the only such organisation in existence, whose goal in peacetime was to prepare the overall war strategy, and in wartime to direct operational movement and organise logistics and communications. The officers of the General Staff were hand-picked from the Prussian Kriegsakademie War Academy. Moltke embraced new technology, particularly the railroad and telegraph, to coordinate and accelerate mobilisation of large forces.