Franco-Prussian War
Provoked by Bismarck's pointed editing of the Ems Dispatch, France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870, and the southern German states joined Prussia under their treaty obligations. Helmuth von Moltke's general staff used the railways to pour hundreds of thousands of troops to the frontier far faster than the disorganised French could mobilise. The French were outmanoeuvred at every turn: one army was bottled up in Metz, and the other, with Napoleon III himself, was encircled and forced to surrender at Sedan on 1 September, toppling the Second Empire overnight. The new French Republic fought on through the winter, but Paris was besieged and starved into capitulation by late January 1871. The war completed German unification — the Empire was proclaimed at Versailles during the siege — and shattered French primacy on the continent. The annexation of Alsace and most of Lorraine in the ensuing peace turned France into a permanent revanchist enemy, planting a grievance that would feed the road to 1914.
- Year: 1870 CE
- Category: Military
