Why did France lose the Franco-Prussian War?
On 4 September 1870, the French Third Republic officially came into existence. Two days earlier, after 18 years as Emperor, Napoleon II had surrendered to the Prussian army at Sedan.
The Paris Commune, which is what the Parisian revolution of 1870 came to be known as, and the founding of the Third Republic, were all consequences of the brief Franco-Prussian War. Why did this formerly great Empire succumb to the force of the Prussians, albeit at the head of a coalition of German states? Was it military inferiority? Were the Prussian tactics superior to those of the French? Did the wider socio-political situation at home in France play a role?
Otto von Bismarck was the de facto leader of the Prussian state. It was a long held, and carefully designed, strategic plan of his to unify the German states into a single nation. By 1870, he had led his state into wars with Denmark in 1864, and with Austria, Prussia’s rival for supremacy within the German federation, in 1866. Both had been victorious. Both had yielded new territories for Prussia. Both, it seems, added to the self confidence and ability of the Prussians, and most significantly, of Bismarck himself, to forge ahead with the final stage in the process of unification. In order to draw the southern German states into unification with Prussia, Bismarck needed a final war. This was the war of 1870 against France.
When considering the reasons why France lost the Franco-Prussian War, one must first consider the background to the conflict. It reveals what, at first sight, appears to be French belligerence in an ill-prepared situation, but what, upon closer examination, is revealed as Prussian (and more specifically Bismarckian) manoeuvring designed to force Napoleon III’s hand. The immediate cause was the candidature of Leopold Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen for the Spanish throne. Leopold was the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm, and therefore Napoleon feared an alliance between Prussia and Spain which would, geographically, encircle France. The traditional military fear of a potential war on two fronts afflicted (perhaps rightly) Napoleon in this instance, and he felt the need to prevent such an eventuality. This was done by objecting to the Hohenzollern candidature which was duly removed. Had Napoleon stopped here, it seems possible that war with the Prussians could have been avoided. It was not enough, however.
Napoleon sent a messenger to see Wilhelm at the spa resort of Ems, to demand a promise that no member of the Hohenzollern family would ever accept the Spanish throne. It is here, perhaps, that one of the main reasons for France’s entry into a war which she was ill-prepared to fight, and therefore an important factor in her defeat, is visible. Napoleon’s actions at Ems, it seems, were based, if not on a belief that the French army could win a war, but as an attempt to restore his sagging domestic prestige. The domestic situation at home in France, then, had a role to play in the French defeat, before her soldiers had even reached the battle field. The events which followed were caused by, but out of the control of Louis Napoleon, as Bismarck edited a telegram from the King of Prussia explaining what France had demanded, making it look as though Wilhelm had broken off diplomatic relations with France. Published in the Parisian press the following day, the edited telegram outraged France, leading Napoleon III to declare war on Prussia. His weak dictatorial position was seen as he was pushed, largely by public opinion, into a war with Prussia when he knew France was not up to it.
Napoleon and many others had been shocked by the immense power displayed by Prussia in the Austria-Prussian war. Louis Napoleon also knew that the French army was in need of modernisation. His attempts at reforms in 1868 had been rejected. McMillan describes this failure of army reform as “fatal to the survival of the regime”. The existing system was based on conscription under which, theoretically, under the Soult Law of 1832, 150,000 twenty year old men were called up each year. The actual figure was more like 80,000. In total, then, the army in peacetime consisted of between 320,000 and 420,000 men, most of whom could not afford to buy out of their call up. Compared to the Prussian army, which could call on 750,000 men, the French army was woefully lacking. The irony here was that Napoleon III was, after Sadowa, aware of this shortcoming, and tried to remedy it. The proposals which Napoleon and his new appointee to the War Office, Marshal Neil, put together, provided for universal conscription, putting up to one million men in the field. The opposition to the proposals came largely from Republicans who were suspicious of a standing army in peacetime.
While the French took 21 days to mobilise 300,000 soldiers, it took the Prussian army only eight days to mobilise 470,000. The French and Prussian armies advanced nine kilometres and 22 kilometres each day respectively; evidence that the Prussian army had mastered the use of the new railway system, which the French army, comprised largely of peasants (those who could afford to could pay to avoid the draft and have someone else put in their place), had not. A significant causal factor in this Prussian military superiority was the economic strength of the German state. This has been attributed largely to the Zollverein (the Prussian customs union). The Zollverein, it has been said, fostered industrial growth, “and it is this growth that fostered its successes on the battlefield”.
The Franco-Prussian war lasted just seven weeks before the Prussian forces emerged victorious. While the French army were struggling to live up to the elusive ‘Napoleonic legend’, the Prussian army were centring around an idea of ‘Prussianism’; an idea of history and tradition. During the war, non-Prussian troops had been employed under the Prussian flag, and as the army increased in size, a unifying factor was this ‘Prussian’ heritage. It seems that this idea of unity and tradition, as well as “maintaining the Frederician approach of seeking decisive battles to resolve limited wars”, also encourage a high level of morale and spirit amongst the Prussian soldiers, and those other Germans that fought for the Prussian army.
A decisive factor in the French decision to go to war, and in subsequent military decisions in that conflict, was the persistence of a curiously strong phenomenon; the Napoleonic legend. This was, of course, the principal reason why public opinion was so in favour of Napoleon III going to war with the Prussians. It was this powerful legend, of the army that had kept all of Europe at bay, that contributed to the belligerent attitude of the French people. It was this powerful legend which persuaded the Emperor to take personal command of the French army against the most powerful foe in Europe, when he had never commanded an army, and was suffering painfully from kidney stones. Victor Hugo, it is said, dubbed the Emperor ‘Napoleon the Little’. The decision to march forward when Strasbourg was threatened was made for fear (albeit on the part of the prime Minister and the Empress) that a retreat would be seen, in Paris, as un-Napoleonic. This decision enabled the Prussian army to drive a wedge between the French, trapping an army of 140,000 at Metz.
Even after defeat was inevitable, during the siege of Paris, it was Parisian public opinion that compelled the government to fight on. On 31 October 1870, the Paris Town Hall was captured by a crowd of Parisians who were determined to continue the fight. Although the government quickly regained control, they had to fight on. A Prussian officer commented that the French seemed to be fighting “against their own wishes”. Although at this stage the war was already lost, this incident provides clear evidence of the background bellicose and arrogant French public opinion that played such an important role in Napoleon III’s decision to go to war.
Similar motivational factors are evident from the period leading up to the war against Prussia. During the earlier Austro-Prussian war of 1866, it quickly became apparent that the Prussian army was far superior to the Austrian one. Napoleon had already proposed himself arbiter in the dispute. It has been said that “one word from Napoleon III would have preserved peace”. This seems unlikely, but the significant fact is that military intervention was considered by France at this stage. It was during a council of ministers held on 5 July 1866 that Napoleon III came under characteristic pressure to opt for military intervention. One Marshall Randon assured Napoleon that a total of 330,000 men could be mobilised to the Rhine frontier within three weeks, 80,000 of them immediately. Other high ranking members of the council echoed this belief. Later that month, a former minister of Napoleon’s, Magne, warned him in a letter that “national sentiment would be deeply wounded … if in the end France should obtain by her intervention nothing but two nations attached to her flanks who had become dangerous by their exorbitantly increased power.”
Napoleon III could find little support from other European countries, either. He had lost Italy’s support by keeping the French Garrison in Rome, to ‘protect the Pope’. England had lost faith in France when it was revealed that France had shown an interest in the neutral Belgium, at one stage even appearing to threaten war against Belgium. In the run up to the war itself, Napoleon III had conducted secret conversations with Austrian military leaders in the hope of concluding an alliance. Nothing was agreed, however, and this made Napoleon’s actions in entering a war with Prussia even more foolish. France’s lack of allies, then, provides another key reason for the French defeat at Sedan. As McMillan states, “well before the disaster of 1870, the image of the Emperor as a master diplomat had been badly tarnished, and his failures in the field of foreign policy had begun to put him under increasing pressure from the opposition in France.”
On 18 January 1870, in the Palace of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, the new German Empire was formally proclaimed. This was also the place where the armistice was signed between Prussia and France, marking the end of a short but disastrous war for France. The humiliation of having to sign the peace in a place so symbolic of French national identity and history provides a fitting symbol of the national French climate at the time. Spurred on by self-aggrandizement and arrogance, the French had entered a war against a superior military power, Napoleon III’s hand effectively being forced by the nineteenth century master of political opportunism, Otto von Bismarck.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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