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Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or the Franco-German War is sometimes referred to in France at the 1870 War. It was a conflict between the second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation. The war lasted from July 19, 1870 to May 10, 1871.

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What caused the franco - prussian war?

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Long story short, because France declared war on Prussia and not the other way around, the defensive alliances that Prussia had with Baden, Wuettemberg and Bavaria were activated and since none of them were willing to break them, they joined the war on the Prussian side.

At this point most of the southern states had drifted from their historically good relations with France, and looked more and more towards Prussia for leadership, so the choice wasn't a hard one.

How did the Franco-Prussian war end?

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In the Battle of Sedan and the Siege of Metz, the French army was decisively defeated In particular, French Emperor Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan leading to the collapse of the Second Empire and the creation of the Third Republic of France. The war continued, after the Third Republic was declared for five more months. The Germans continued to defeat the new French armies in northern France. Following the Siege of Paris, the capital fell on 28 January 1871. Upon this victory, the Third Republic's leadership signed the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871, which gave Germany most of Alsace and some parts of Lorraine.

When did France declare war on Austria Prussia and Britain?

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In World War 1 France declared war on the central powers which included Austria-Hungary two countries combined under one monarch.

What political changes did the end of the franco-prussian war bring to France?

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The Germany victory brought more power to the new empire, while France's power decreased

The peace treaty declared the unification of Germany; The first kaiser of Germany was Wilhelm I and Bismarck was his first chancellor; Since Napoleon III was gone France became powerless

What war was fought for German unification?

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Asked by Wiki User

The Austro-Prussian War in 1866.

What war was first the cold war or the Korean war?

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The korean 'war', if officially considered a war, as opposed to a 'police action', would predate the vietnam war, which has also been referred to as a 'conflict'. Semantics aside, u.s. 'involvement' in korea predated u.s. 'involvement' in vietnam.

What provinces did Germany acquire form France as a result of the franco prussian war?

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The regions of Alsace and Lorraine were taken by France from Germany in 1871.

How long did the austro-prussian war last?

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It Lasted seven weeks it is for this reason that it was also called the Seven Weeks War.

Why did Italy help Franco in the Spanish Civil War?

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Yes, Italy was probably Hitlers strongest Allie (Italy was not as powerful as Japan but they had a closer relationship) Their Alliance failed though when Benito Mussolini (Italian Dictator) was assassinated

How is the Franco Prussian war connected to World War I?

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Primarily, the connection is through the loss by France of the Alsace-Lorraine region of northeastern France to the Germans, and the consolidation by Otto von Bismarck, "Iron Chancellor" of Prussia, of all the various smaller German states surrounding Prussia into what became the powerful nation of Germany of World Wars 1 and 2.

The French and the Germans and the Spanish and the Dutch and practically everybody else in Europe had been waging war for control of the strategically vital Alsace-Lorraine region for centuries. By 1870 the area was in French hands, during the reign of Napoleon III, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon III had started out as president of the French Second Republic (1848-1852), but engineered a coup in 1851 which abolished the Second Republic and established Napoleon III as Emperor of the French in what is called the Second Empire (the First Empire had been his uncle's).

In 1866, Prussia, under Bismarck as Chancellor and William I of the house of Hohenzollern as King of Prussia, fought and won a war with Austria that gave Prussia control over most of northern Germany. This was a massive expansion of Prussian power and influence and, from the French point of view, upset the balance of power in Europe. The French felt severely threatened by the abrupt emergence of Prussia as a major player in European power politics. There followed a period of intense political maneuvering and secret agreements, with the intent by Napoleon III of restoring the upset balance of power and (of course) French Honor. Bismarck, on the other hand, was intent upon further consolidating Prussian power (and Prussian Honor) by bringing the South German states into the Prussian sphere and creating a Prussian [German] Empire, with William I (Hohenzollern) as its first emperor. This ultimately put France and Prussia on a collision course.

By the spring of 1870, there had been enough relatively minor crises to bring both sides, Prussia and France, to the point where Napoleon and Bismarck were both actively seeking a war to settle this "balance of power" and "national honor" thing. As is usual in such cases, both sides believed they could easily win a small, glorious war, since most European wars had tended to be small and glorious unless you happened to be one of the poor pawns on the battlefields, in which case, for you personally, it was bloody, dirty and, for the most part, stupid, but you went anyway, for The Honor of France [Prussia]. Notice especially what a major part National Honor plays into all this. It was no joke. People took it all very seriously.

The spark that set off this particular powder keg occurred in Spain. Up until 1868 Isabella, a relative of the Bourbons, the former monarchs of France until the French Revolution of 1789, was the queen on the Spanish throne. She was very unpopular in Spain as she cared little for the people of Spain and spent most of her time intriguing, but the French liked her because she was French by blood. In 1868 there was a military coup that overthrew her and sent her into exile in France, after which there were a couple of years of relative anarchy in Spain. This had, of course, a destabilizing influence on the rest of Europe. Finally it was decided that Spain should have a monarch again (anybody but Isabella) and all the Crowned Heads of Europe began casting about for candidates, not unlike a presidential race in America only with princes. The French wanted somebody French. The Prussians wanted somebody Prussian, which would be offensive to the French because it would put Prussian Kings on both their eastern and western borders, which the French would perceive as an unacceptable threat to peace.

As the battle raged over who would be the next King of Spain, Bismarck was back stairs intriguing to get a Hohenzollern onto that throne. His candidate was a relatively minor prince, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The French discovered Bismarck trying to sneak Leopold in by the rear entrance, and they erupted in towering fury since having Hohenzollerns on both sides of them would be simply inadmissible. To make matters worse, Leopold was a Catholic. The French raised so much Cain that Leopold's father personally renounced the candidacy on Leopold's behalf (Leopold was ignorant of the whole brouhaha, since he was off hunting someplace in the Alps).

One would think that that would have been the end of it, but the French wanted more; now they wanted to humiliate the Prussians. Napoleon III demanded that William I of Prussia personally apologize to the French for having tried to sneak a Hohenzollern into Spain behind their backs. William I was perfectly willing to renounce the candidacy of Leopold, but an apology was out of the question. The King of Prussia did not apologize to anybody. Bismarck, intriguing as always, altered the language of the dispatch that relayed what William had said to the French ambassador in such a way as to make it sound more heated than it was, thus insulting the French. Now the French had insulted the Prussians, and the Prussians had insulted the French. This was like two countries slapping each other across the face. What more was there to be said? National Honor was at stake! It had to be War!

At this time the French Army had a reputation as being the best in the world. Napoleon III declared war, mobilized the supposedly invincible French Army and tried to invade Prussia along the eastern French border, but the Prussians, who had been secretly planning for this scrap for a long time, beat the French to the punch and invaded France along a broad front. Bismarck had been intriguing for years with the south Germans and, to the vast surprise of the French, the south Germans came into the war on the Prussian side, all of them mobilizing much more quickly than French planners had expected. The upshot was that the Prussians invested the French Army at Metz, in the Lorraine region, bottling it up and besieging it in the famed Vauban fortresses. The Prussians couldn't actually capture this French Army, but neither could the French Army come out and fight. Meanwhile, Napoleon III himself, who had for some inexplicable reason chosen to lead his army personally, tried to extricate himself from this shambles by leading a new French army to relieve Metz. He took them north in a wide flanking maneuver and got this Army caught in a Prussian pincers movement at Sedan in northeastern France, where he and his entire army were forced to surrender to the Prussians. While Napoleon was a prisoner of the Prussians, the French liberals held a revolution and deposed him, declaring the Third Republic. But the new Republic, once again citing National Honor, chose to continue the war, so the aggressive Prussians surrounded and besieged Paris itself.

The French fought very hard, but on January 28, 1871, Paris surrendered and the "glorious little war" was over. Ten days earlier Bismarck had had William I of Hohenzollern crowned as Emperor of the brand-new German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the old French Royal Palace of Versailles (the location chosen was no accident). Prussia had now consolidated all the smaller German states into the Germany that fought two World Wars in the 20th Century. Germany had crushed and humiliated France, and Germany had seized a good deal of what had been French territory, including and especially the Alsace-Lorraine region, to become part of western Germany as a kind of buffer zone against another encroachment by the French.

But the loss of the Alsace-Lorraine to Germany was a bitter, bitter pill for the French to swallow, and it started what became known as the revanchist (revenge) movement to get back the Alsace-Lorraine and, of course, the Honor of France which had been so debased at Metz and Sedan. For the next 43 years there was uneasy peace in Europe as each major power (not just Germany and France but also Austria and Russia and Turkey and on and on) furiously rearmed and entangled themselves in alliances, each power looking to "defend" itself against the other, until all of Europe was a powder keg by 1914, just waiting for a spark.

The spark came on June 28, 1914: Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student, assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Austria demanded that Serbia punish the guilty parties, and when Serbia didn't act fast enough to satisfy the Austrians, Austria declared war on tiny Serbia. As usual, everybody expected a short war and a happy one, but by this time the tangle of alliances was immense. Basically Russia had to mobilize on behalf of Serbia, and Germany had to mobilize on behalf of Austria, which gave the French their long-awaited chance to regain the Alsace-Lorraine and the French National Honor lost in the Franco-Prussian debacle of 1870-71 by coming in on the side of Serbia, and the British had also to get in on the side of Serbia, and in the single month of August, 1914, the whole of Europe toppled down like dominos into what became the almighty tragedy of the First World War. And when it ended four long, bloody years later, the seeds were sown for World War, The Sequel, but that's another story.

For further reading on this fascinating subject, may I recommend the following books:

A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon III, and the origins of the Franco-Prussian War / by Wetzel, David. University of Wisconsin Press, c2001.

The Franco-Prussian War; the German invasion of France, 1870-1871. by Howard, Michael Eliot, Macmillan,1961.

The Guns of August. by Tuchman, Barbara W. Macmillan, 1962.

The Provinces of Alsace & Lorraine were ceded to Germany as a result. France was devastated by the loss. Prussia had been humiliated by Napoleons invasion of 1806.

How did Bismarck move France and Prussia towards war?

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Bismarck moved France and Prussia towards war by editing and releasing the 'Ems Dispatch'. The dispatch made it appear that William I had insulted France. Napoleon responded by declaring war on Germany.

Who won the Franco-Prussia war?

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The GERMAN EMPIRE (led by the Prussians). They swiftly and easily inflicted a most humiliating defeat on France. They paraded their triumphant army down the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and as the price of the war took the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from France. France burned with embarrassment and thirsted for revenge and for the restoration of her lost provinces for the next forty years, helping to set the stage for WWI.

How did the franco-prussian war cause hostility between France and Germany?

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Relations between the two countries sorely declined. France and Germany would not get on good terms until the post-World War II period in European History.

What type of weapons were used in the Franco-Prussian war?

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gamma ray guns and dog hair covered sticks.

What did the franco prussian war achieve?

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The biggest achievement of the Franco-Prussian war was German unification and the proclamation of the German Empire in the Mirror Hall at Versailles.

Prior to the war, Germany had existed as a number of kingdoms and city states after Napolenic France had brought about the end of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which had existed for over 800 years, in 1806.

The kingdoms of Bavaria and Prussia had since fought to gain influence and power over the other German states, with neither really gaining the upper hand. As a result of the Franco- Prussian war and Prussias decisive victory over France, a new wave of national pride developed among Germans and the Prusssians seized upon this, proclaiming the German Empire, with the Prussian king as its Emperor

Why was World War 1 not the war to end all wars?

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Answer 1'The War to End All Wars' was known that way by people who could not believe that civilized nations would ever subject themselves to such horror again. But since Britain and France had been vindictive in settling World War I, and 20 years later did not act when Hitler started breaking the Versailles treaty, they had another war on their hands. My opinion: Looking through history, no matter how horrible a prior war was given time a nation is always prepared to go to war again for whatever reason they feel is important at the time. Answer 2The treaty of Versailles, signed ending WWI, left Germany's economy in utter ruins. It put the sole blame of WWI on Germany and made Germany pay for damages it caused. Since Germany didn't have enough it mass produced money and the money wasn't worth anything anymore due to inflation. This left a bitter feeling, among the German people, towards Britain, France, etc because they thought the treaty was unfair, and this anger was used by Hitler to come to power, and you know the rest. Answer 3Because there will always be fighting, which will eventually evolve into wars. Answer 4Because, when we said it was the war to end all wars we thought we would make the "league of nations", which was instead made after world war II and name changed to United Nations, if we had made the League of nations back then this war could have most likely been prevented from happening, and there would have been a longer lasting peace and many of lives spared. Plus not only was it because of that, but two races disliked another and thought themselves racially inferior. The Germans killed millions of Jews because of there religion and inferior ways, but Japan disliked the Chinese that they killed over 8 million of there civilions, about 12 times the number of military deaths. So it was about two races becoming dominate in the world and eventually those two would go after each other. Answer 5Hitler and Germany wanted to control all of Europe, destroy most of the people who weren't of Austrian or German ancestry and establish Germans as Lords over whomever remained. After Hitler completed that particular task he planned to build his power then expand to the rest of the world.

Japan too was expansionist, wanting to control all of the islands of the Pacific. Japan timed their aggression to coincide with the German efforts in Europe in the hopes of weakening the Allied military forces. They wanted to face a minimal resistance in their Imperialistic efforts.

In both cases it was all about building power, taking land and killing or enslaving the locals.

Answer 6

The United nation did not develop a good government and they broke all of there treaty's oaths

The countries that belonged to the UN did not follow the UN ether. So ether way the UN faild to keep peace between the world.

What did Germany want after the franco-prussian war?

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As the war ended, the empire was abolished and a republic was set up, although Paris was briefly ruled by a sort of Socialist-style government called the Paris Commune.