The Franco-Prussian War (1870-71)

[Note:  updated on 3/20/20 and 4/2/21.]

Ready for another installment of “obscure wars no one cares about”?  Let’s go backwards!  There are plenty of WWII veterans still around, and WWII was largely caused by…WWI!  I’ve reviewed WWI at length.  I would imagine that, had someone paid attention to Bismarck and not taken Alsace-Lorraine from the French, odds are that WWI is much less likely to have happened, which makes WWII that much less likely too.  And since taking Alsace-Lorraine was part of this wrap-up of this war, it means that to some extent it actually does have some very remote relevance in the present day, insofar as anyone still cares about WWII.  Anyhow.

 Years ago I was in the train station of St. Lazare, in Paris, and noticed a curious memorial, which referred to World War I as the “Second Franco-Prussian War”, and World War II as the “Third Franco-Prussian War”.  WTF?  And lo and behold, it referred to this as the FIRST “Franco-Prussian War”.  Remarkably, the last French veteran, Seraphin Pruvost, died in 1955, and the last German veteran, Karl Glockner, died in 1953 – both living to see both WWI and WWII.  

 Background.  France at this time was led by Napoleon III, aka Louis Napoleon, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte's older brother (i.e. his nephew), with most of his ambition but little of his talent.  Germany had not quite unified, but was rather a loose confederation of states dominated by Prussia.  Its effective leader was Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, an extremely shrewd statesman.  Ironically, Bismarck had little use for German nationalism, this idea that Germany should be unified.  What he preferred, and what he actually brought into being, was simply Prussia taking over the rest of Germany. 

            Aside from Prussia, the other German states were Baden, Bavaria, Brunswick, Hesse-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, Saxony, and Wurttemberg.  Each of the others had its own army and uniforms, some appearing distinctly different than the Prussian uniform; and the leaders of these states likewise varied from eager to reluctant allies (some had even tried to weasel deals through back channels with the French).

            Bismarck orchestrated a series of nonaggression treaties with various different countries.  They basically said that these other countries would remain neutral if Prussia ended up in a war with a third country, provided Prussia was not the aggressor.  Then he tricked Denmark (1864), then Austria (1866), then France (1870) into attacking Prussia.  Deprived of allies, each of these countries was decisively defeated in turn by the upstart Prussians.  The war against Austria was definitely a David vs. Goliath contest.

 War.  At the eastern frontier of France, a series of battles took place: Wissembourg (August 4, 1870), Spicheren (August 5), Wörth (August 6), Marnes-la-Tour (August 16), Gravelotte (August 18), and Sedan (September 1) in which the French armies were repeatedly outmaneuvered.  The excellent French chassepot rifle, though superior to the Prussian Dreyse (“needle gun”) design, could not compensate for the Prussians’ massive Krupp artillery.  Metz was encircled and besieged; at the defeat at Sedan, 104,000 French soldiers were captured, along with Napoleon III himself.

 Siege of Paris.  Having defeated the French Army at Sedan in September, the Prussians proceeded to besiege Paris, avoiding a street war, beginning September 19.  Various attempts to relieve Paris by substantial leftover forces marshaled by the French Republic – one army totaled 500,000 soldiers - were ultimately unsuccessful.  On January 28, 1871, the French finally surrendered, and the Prussians occupied Paris for all of…48 hours.  Then they withdrew to the outskirts of the city.

 Hall of Mirrors.  January 18, 1871, Germany was unified under Kaiser (Emperor) Wilhelm I of Prussia, in the Hall of Mirrors at the French royal palace at Versailles.  Of course, the country ended up being truncated after WWI (1919), the treaty also being signed at the same Hall of Mirrors, losing substantial territory to Poland; and then after WWII when Poland was shifted west.  One of the conditions on the re-unification of Germany – West + East – was that any claims on territory now owned by Poland, were waived.  Also, Austria was not part of this unification, though Austria was finally annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.

 Paris Commune.  I’ve already covered this in my much earlier blog, “Paris Is Burning”.  It lasted from March to May 1871, at which point French government forces coming back from a brief rehabilitative exile in Versailles re-entered the city from the southwest and gradually subdued the National Guard and Communist forces.  The city, having been spared violence and war due to the Prussians’ siege and brief occupation, now suffered street fighting and fires as a result of this brief, urban civil war – the French themselves inflicted far more pain and damage on Paris than the Prussians did.

 Alsace-Lorraine.  These are the two provinces of France which border on Germany to the far east.  Due to the crossover effect, people from this area have an identity crisis.  Are we French?  Are we German?  In Forgotten Soldier, a Franco-German soldier, Guy Sajer, describes fellow German soldiers in WWII dismissing him as “an Alsatian who thinks he’s German” – he speaks better French than German, and speaks German with a French accent.  These provinces are also heavy in coal and iron, and were a prize the Germans could not resist taking from the French, despite Bismarck’s advice to leave it alone – for that exact reason.  Sure enough, just as Bismarck warned, the French burned with passion for revenge over the next 44 years, not only to avenge their shame of 1871, but also to retake these two provinces.  And so we got… World War I.

Uniforms.  Fairly similar to early WWI.  The French wore kepis, dark blue double breasted coats, and red pants.  The "Prussian" side varied, as each nominally independent entity had its own army wearing its own uniforms.  The Prussian uniform resembled the 1914 German uniform except that the jacket was dark blue instead of field grey.  The pickelhaube (leather spiked helmet) was here, albeit with an early tall version and a later short version, the latter we're familiar with from WWI.  

 Books.  I’m not aware of any movies made about this war, but there are two excellent books.  The Fall of France, by Alistair Horne, covers not only the leadup to the war (starting the “story” in 1867), but also the Paris Commune.  And a historical fiction novel by Robert Chambers, Romance in the Red Republic, written in 1895, tells the story of fictional characters who were on the government (anti-communist) side, although during the Paris Commune and not the war.   

April & the Extraordinary World.  This is a recent French steampunk animated movie (2015, well after this blog was originally written in 2009).  In this story, immediately before the war would have begun, Napoleon III dies suddenly, his son resolves matters with the Prussians amicably, and there is no Franco-Prussian War.  This means there is also no WWI and no WWII, and no Nazi Germany.  I'd recommend the movie in and of itself, but this is about the extent of the relevance thereof to the current topic.

Pigeon Post.  Carrier pigeons are remarkably reliable and effective as messengers, in this context allowing Paris to communicate with the rest of France during the four month siege of the city by the Prussians (late September 1870 through late January 1871), who had cut all the telegraph lines in and out of the city.  The lessons learned resulted in pigeons used later (e.g. WWI) but the Franco-Prussian War was the major conflict in which they were employed.