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The war background of the Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War, known in France as the Franco-German War of 1870 (French: Guerre franco-allemande de 1870), and in Germany as the Franco-German War (German: Deutsch-Französischer Krieg), was the unification of the Kingdom of Prussia. The war broke out between Germany and the Second French Empire for hegemony on the European continent. The war was started by France and ended with Prussia’s total victory and the establishment of the German Empire.

On July 14, 1870, Prussian Prime Minister Bismarck issued a provocative “Eames Secret Telegram” on the issue of the Spanish throne, angering the French government. On July 19, France declared war on Prussia, but after the war began, the French army suffered successive defeats.

On September 2, the French Emperor Napoleon III personally led nearly 100,000 French troops to surrender at Sedan. On September 4, a revolution broke out in Paris, the French big bourgeoisie established the French Third Republic, and the French Second Empire fell. But the Prussian army continued to advance.

On January 18, 1871, King William I of Prussia was crowned emperor at the Palace of Versailles, France, and the German Empire was established. The French bourgeois government requested an armistice. On February 26, the two sides signed a preliminary peace treaty in Versailles, France. A formal peace treaty was signed in Frankfurt on May 10.

The war brought the Kingdom of Prussia to the unification of Germany and replaced France’s hegemony on the European continent.

War Background

In the Seven Weeks War of 1866, Prussia upset the balance of power in Europe with a quick and astonishing victory. Earlier, Napoleon III of France had the tendency to dominate the European continent: although the interior of the French Second Empire was not consolidated, but with the French army’s continuous military victories in the Crimean War and the Austrian-Italian-French War, many internal forces were calmed down.

Contradictions have also attracted a certain amount of people’s hearts. Napoleon III tried his best to restore the continental hegemony of the First French Empire. However, at this time, Prussia, under the planning of Chancellor Bismarck, was actively making itself play an important role in the German Confederation.

The German Empire was not stable before. Bismarck, the prime minister of iron and blood, believed that years of meetings and negotiations were not enough to unite the whole of Germany.

As the chancellor of Prussia, one of the two major powers in Germany, he proposed to use war to unite the whole of Germany, and successfully obtained Germany’s Unification, so Bismarck is called the Jagged Chancellor (after the Prussian-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, after another powerful Austria was kicked out of the German Empire, it united with Hungary, known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire in history)

The victory of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 confirmed its leadership in the German Confederation and seriously threatened French hegemony on the Continent.

The French authorities realized that the rise of Prussia threatened their position, so the statists in the Congress proposed an active foreign policy, which they even saw as compensation for a policy of generous domestic concessions.

Napoleon III asked Bismarck to agree to annex parts of Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt on the west bank of the Rhine to France in return for France’s conservative neutrality in the Austro-Prussian War. Regarding the relationship between France and Germany, in fact, it has not yet reached the stage of the war.

King William I of the Kingdom of Prussia once replied to France that Germany and France should still hold a meeting to discuss the ownership of Alsace and other places, but Bismarck tampered with the king’s palindrome and categorically refused. The meeting made Napoleon III very angry, thus provoking the Franco-Prussian War.

The cause of the war in 1870 was the succession of the Spanish throne. In 1868, Queen Isabella II of Spain was overthrown because of a debauched private life and political chaos, leaving the throne in vain.

A cabinet meeting in Spain decided to find a suitable successor. Among them, Prince Leopold of the Hohenzollern family, who was distantly related to King William I of Prussia, seemed to be a hopeful candidate. The news unfortunately leaked at the end of June 1870, and the results were greatly reduced. Infuriating the French Foreign Minister, the Duke of Grammont, after the client himself refused, he also threatened William I, asking for a guarantee that he would never touch the Spanish throne. William politely refused the other party’s request.

However, Bismarck, who deliberately provoked war, deliberately added fuel to the telegram (the so-called Emmett telegram), which angered the French public opinion. The French Emperor Napoleon III of Sri Lanka immediately declared war.