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The Franco-Prussian War was one of the most significant wars of the later 19th century, both for its military aspects and for its political consequences. Politically it saw the creation of a united Germany, the end of the French Second Empire and a long term change in the balance of power in Europe. On the military side modern technology was starting to dominate, with railways allowing mass mobilization and new long range artillery and rifles changing the nature of battles, despite a superficial resemblance to earlier wars with their one or two day long battles. The same had been seen on a larger scale in the American Civil War in the previous decade, but it was the rapid German victories of the first phase of this war that dominated military planning in its aftermath.
The war fell into two very different phases. In the first the French performed dreadfully under the leadership of Napoleon II. After a series of clashes close to the border the two main French armies were neutralised – one was besieged at Metz, the other forced to surrender at Sedan (along with Napoleon himself). This is the part of the conflict that gained the most attention in later years. The second half saw the Germans settle down to besiege Paris, while fighting off a series of freshly raised French armies that made several attempts to lift the siege (or at least interfere with it). We get good accounts of the major battles, looking at the leadership on both sides, and the clash of technology, where the French had the superior rifles, but the Germans the better artillery. It is fair to say that French leadership in the first phase of the war was terrible – the army that ended up trapped in Metz could easily have escaped west with a bit more determination on the part of its leaders, while Napoleon’s movements before he was trapped at Sedan were very hard to justify. In the second phase we see a more determined fight by the French, which caused a problem for Bismarck, whose plans were disrupted when Napoleon insisted on surrendering as an individual rather than as the leader of France.
The author makes a good point in his conclusion. In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War many armies focused on the rapid battlefield victories of 1870, and came up with theories of war that saw crushing battlefield victories as their ultimate aim and largely ignored the political side of warfare. This can be seen in the German army plans for 1914, and again during the Second World War, both on the German and American sides – Eisenhower was prone to focus purely on the military aspect of the campaign of 1944-45 without looking forward to its impact on the post-war world. This ignores the crucial part played in the Prussian and German successes of the 1860 and 1870-1 by Otto von Bismarck, who saw that a military victory was of little value if it wasn’t combined with a political result that the defeated side could live with. His relatively generous terms at the end of the short Austro-Prussian War helped ensure that Austria stayed neutral in 1870, and he preferred more generous terms in 1871. Even with the loss of Alsace and Lorraine this was was still followed by a period of over forty years of peace.
This is a good account of this short but complex and very significant conflict, which created the political setup of Europe for the next five decades and influenced almost every major army for much of the same period.
Chapters
Background to war – The Germans and the French
Warring Sides – The nation in arms
Outbreak – the Ems telegram
The Fighting – The invasion of France
The World around War – The people’s war
How the War Ended – The Paris Commune
Conclusions and Consequences – The war in history
Author: Stephen Badsey
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 144
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2022