EPISODE 68: THE UNIFICATION OF GERMANY

Hello, and welcome to Relevant History! I’m Dan Toler. This is the fifth and final episode in a five-episode arc covering the unifications of Italy and Germany. If you want to start at the beginning of the story, I’d recommend going back to Episode 64 – The Reich and the Risorgimento, and starting from there. For everyone else, just a quick reminder that Patreon memberships are only $1 a month for the time being. This gets you access to all 27 episodes of my video series, Dan’s War College, where I discuss various historical units, battles, and all things military. Link in the description. That said, the best way to help the show is free! Liking Relevant History, leaving a review, and especially sharing it on social media, really helps to grow the audience. Finally, I have an announcement. This will be the last narrative episode of Season One of Relevant History. There will be one final episode after this to wrap up the season and sum everything up, but don’t worry! This is not the end of the show, just the end of Season One. You can expect an announcement soon about the topic for Season Two. Show notes done. Let’s begin!

CHAPTER ONE: THE TWILIGHT OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE

We left off in the year 1867. The Austro-Prussian War is over, and the old German Confederation has been abolished. Replacing it is the new North German Confederation, which is dominated by Prussia, and which Austria no longer gets to be a part of. Prussian Minister-President Otto von Bismarck, who is now doing double-duty as Chancellor of the North German Confederation, couldn’t be more pleased. Neither could King Wilhelm I, who serves as the Confederation’s President. Italian King Victor Emmanuel has less reason to be pleased, despite Italy having finally annexed the city of Venice during the same war. In the aftermath of that war, an insurgent army led by veteran revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi had attempted to steal Rome away from the Pope. This had provoked a French military response, and Napoleon III’s troops are once again garrisoned in the Eternal City, a humiliating situation for the young Italian nation.

        -The Austro-Prussian War has shifted the entire balance of power in Europe. Almost overnight, Prussia has gone from being arguably Europe’s weakest great power to dominating most of Central Europe. Austria-Hungary has stabilized, but is no longer the mighty empire it was at the beginning of the 19th century. Italy is a united country, rather than a patchwork of small puppet states that are beholden to greater powers.

        -This kind of geopolitical earthquake is bound to affect the other European powers, and it does. But some powers are more affected than others. Take the British Empire, for example. They’re nervous about the rise of a semi-united Germany and the threat it poses to European stability. If things go south, a general war could break out, British trade interests would be at stake, and British troops would eventually have to get involved. That said, Prussia doesn’t pose a threat to Britain itself. Should a major war break out, the Royal Navy would easily protect the British Isles, put Germany under blockade, and still have enough ships left over to protect its global trade interests. The Ottoman Empire is in a similar position. They could care less about Prussia or Italy. More than anything, their government is concerned about Austria-Hungary’s shift in focus from Central Germany to the Balkans. So is Russian Tsar Alexander II, who is busy reforming his obsolete army and could not care less what happens in Central Europe as long as the Prussians don’t get any ideas about expanding into Eastern Europe.

        -The country that’s most worried about Prussian expansionism is France or, more specifically, French Emperor Napoleon III. This may come as a surprise, since Napoleon has spent the last several years using the Italian and German nationalist movements as a way to undermine France’s old rival, Austria. Without French soldiers in the 1859 war of independence, the Piedmontese Army would never have been able to defeat the Austrians and unite the nation of Italy. Without French promises of neutrality in the Austro-Prussian War, Prussia would never have been able to drive the Austrian Empire out of Germany. That was in 1866. By 1867, France and Prussia will enter a tense diplomatic struggle that looks less like a pair of friendly countries and more like the 20th Century’s Cold War. So, what changes?

        -What seems to change is that Napoleon finally sees Bismarck’s Prussia not as a useful tool, but as a geopolitical adversary, and this begins with the negotiations over the end of the Austro-Prussian War. Like I said, France had promised Prussia that it would stay neutral in the war, but this hadn’t just been a national promise. It had been a personal promise from Napoleon III to Bismarck. In October of 1865, the two men had met at one of Napoleon’s vacation homes to hammer out an agreement, and although no-one ever wrote down what the two men had said to each-other, it seems like Napoleon had asked nothing in return for French neutrality. No minor territorial concessions along the Rhine. No promises of a military alliance after the war. He just seems to have given Bismarck a blank check.

        -For Bismarck, this is a one-off transaction in which France does nothing and Prussia gets to do whatever it wants in Germany. For Napoleon III, though, there seems to be a distinction between French neutrality in the war and French neutrality during the peace process. After the war, while Austria and Prussia are negotiating terms, Napoleon dispatches an ambassador named Vincent Benedetti to Berlin. Benedetti meets with Bismarck and offers to go along with everything Prussia wants in its peace treaty – the annexation of some smaller Northern German countries and the formation of the North German Confederation. In exchange, Benedetti asks that Bismarck approve a French invasion of two of its own neighbors, Belgium and Luxembourg.

        -To begin with, this is stupid. If you’re going to demand something in a negotiation, you have to demand it when you have leverage. Before the war, Napoleon had leverage. He could threaten to get involved on Austria’s side if the Prussians didn’t give him what he wanted. After the war, Prussia has already dominated Germany and annexed most of its smaller neighbors. It’s a fait accompli. France has no leverage here, and Bismarck knows it. Bismarck asks Ambassador Benedetti to put his request in writing, and Benedetti does. A few days later, Bismarck refuses the French request, and Napoleon gets nothing.

        -Incidentally, asking for Prussia’s acceptance of a French invasion of Belgium is doubly stupid, because France, along with Prussia, Britain, Austria, and Russia, has agreed to respect Belgian neutrality. In the 1839 Treaty of London, all five powers had pledged not only to leave Belgium alone, but to come to her defense if she’s ever invaded. Well, Bismarck now has a letter from Napoleon III’s ambassador saying that France had intended to break that treaty. And when war between France and Prussia eventually breaks out – spoilers – Bismarck will release that letter to the British press. The British public will get angry at Napoleon for threatening Belgium, and this will ensure British neutrality while Prussia and France go at it.

-That war may still be in the future, but in 1866, Bismarck is already getting too greedy for Napoleon’s liking. Tensions are further enflamed the next year, in 1867, when Napoleon III tries to buy the duchy of Luxembourg from the King of the Netherlands, who owes France a lot of money and wants to trade away this territory to settle the debt. This should be a matter between France and the Netherlands, but Bismarck, at the urging of his Army Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke, threatens war if France annexes its tiny neighbor, and Napoleon III is blindsided when Britain takes Prussia’s side and signs a treaty guaranteeing Luxembourg’s permanent independence.

-It’s one thing if Prussia becomes stronger. But if Prussia becomes stronger while France remains stagnant, that starts to look like a national security threat. Moreover, this is happening at the same time that Napoleon III is shifting his focus from his overseas empire and back to Europe. His attempt to set up a puppet empire in Mexico has failed. He’s been more successful against Algerian rebels, but French North Africa remains an expensive boondoggle. French Indochina is more profitable, but has grown as large as it can get without France getting involved in a major war in Asia – something Napoleon has no appetite for. If France wants to grow, it’s going to be at home. The same is true for Prussia, which has no colonial empire and can only grow in Europe.

-At this time, the border between Germany and France is more complicated than it is today. Rather than following the Rhine like a sensible border, it zigs and zags across the river in various locations, following the borders of all the old Holy Roman Empire states, some of which are now part of Prussia, and others which are still nominally independent, but are part of the North German Confederation. Napoleon would really like to get his hands on the German-owned land on his side of the river, and maybe even extend his own territories on the other side. Bismarck is thinking the same thing, but from another direction. Prussia can only truly be safe from a potential French attack if the Prussian Army can dig in and make a stand at the Rhine. Geography itself is now pushing the two countries towards war.

But let’s not kid ourselves. This is a historical pattern we’ve all seen before, and it’s called the Thucydides Trap, a term coined by Harvard University political scientist and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison. In the Thucydides Trap, an established world power feels threatened by a rising world power, and feels the need to defend its position. The rising power, in turn, feels like it has something to prove, that it will never truly be secure if it defeats the existing power. Graham Allison calls this the Thucydides Trap because of a quote from Thucydides, who writes in the 5th century BC: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Thucydides was writing about the Peloponnesian War. Graham Allison is writing about the United States and China.

        -While Allison is a political scientist and is therefore writing about current events that I’d rather not get into, he brings a lot of historical data to the conversation. Along with other people at Harvard, he performed a case study and, like most studies in the social sciences, it’s controversial, but he looked at 16 historical examples of a rising power and a falling power and in 12 of those cases, the issue was settled by a war. And, lo and behold, one of the cases Allison looks at is France and Germany in the mid-19th century.

        -In that study, he cites a number of advantages the Prussians have gained over the French, mostly as a result of their victory in the Austro-Prussian War. He writes in his summary:

        “While Prussia in 1820 had only one-third the population of France, the annexations of the 1860s saw that proportion balloon to almost four-fifths by 1870. Bismarck also amassed, ‘thanks to the Prussian use of universal conscription — an army one-third larger than France’s.’ A French historian would later claim that a force resembling the 1.2 million soldiers Bismarck fielded had not been seen ‘since the legendary armies of Xerxes.’ Prussia’s industrial rise was just as formidable, growing from half of France’s iron and steel production in 1860 to overtake it ten years later. Bismarck also developed a rail transportation system to match. …these rapid developments ‘were alarming indicators that threatened a total eclipse of French power.’ It is therefore no mystery why Prussia ‘dominated [French] foreign and domestic politics after 1866.’”

        -These are all major problems for the French, and none of them are going to get better if the French Empire sits idly by and lets Bismarck’s Prussia accrue more power. At the same time, the Emperor’s personal health is beginning to mirror the state of his empire. Born in 1808, Napoleon III is only 59 years old in the year 1867. But he’s in rough shape for his age. A lifelong smoker, he suffers from shortness of breath and likely the early stages of emphysema. He’s overweight, arthritic, suffers from gout, and is constantly suffering from a series of kidney ailments including kidney stones, which cause incredible pain. In fact, one reason a lot of historians think Napoleon III doesn’t initially ask Bismarck for anything in exchange for French neutrality is that at the time of their meeting, he’s trying to pass some kidney stones, and he’s totally checked out during the negotiations. Early 20th century British author and politician Philip Guedalla would write of this era in French history:

        “After 1866, the brilliance of the Empire [for it still had brilliance] was a glow of evening, a vivid light upon quiet hills that face a sinking sun. The sky was still bright; but there was a strange chill upon the Empire. The clear dawn of 1852 seemed half a century away, and quite suddenly the Emperor had become an old man.”

        -On the other side, Bismarck is feeling his oats. He’s secured Prussian domination over Northern Germany, as well as the Kingdom of Saxony in the south. But if Prussia is going to complete its transformation into a heavy-hitting world power, it will have to dominate all of Germany. This means getting the few remaining holdouts to join the North German Confederation. The most important of these still-independent German states have their own reasons for wanting to stay away from Prussia. Wurtemberg has strong republican traditions, and is leery of Prussian authoritarianism. Bavaria is traditionally a Catholic kingdom, and most Bavarians don’t want to be ruled by a Protestant king.

-Regardless of these countries’ reasons for maintaining their independence, Bismarck knows one way to unite them: a common enemy. In his memoirs, he even writes that he had always believed that: “a Franco-German war must take place before the construction of a united Germany could be realized.” A lot of people take this to mean that Bismarck is planning a war with France from the moment he’s made peace with the Austrians, but I think that’s putting the cart before the horse. Given the situation between France and Prussia, it would be foolish of Bismarck not to at least have a contingency plan for war. If he can use that war to help unite Germany, so much the better.

-In his book Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman, British historian A.J.P. Taylor quotes Bismarck as saying:

“Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful… A statesman cannot create anything himself. He must wait and listen until he hears the steps of God sounding through events; then leap up and grasp the hem of his garment.”

In the late 1860s, both sides – France and Prussia – begin to see each-other as inevitable enemies, and both try to make allies that could help them in the coming conflict.

        -For Bismarck, the most obvious potential ally is Russia. Unlike most of Europe at this time, Russia is a true autocracy, and Tsar Alexander might enjoy beating up on those revolutionary French, even if they do have an Emperor at the moment. As it turns out, Alexander isn’t willing to go that far. But he does promise Bismarck he’ll remain neutral in any war between Prussia and France. Better yet, he promises to attack Austria if the Austrians attack Prussia. This is good enough for Bismarck. Like all good German leaders, he’s conscious that Germany’s position in Central Europe makes it vulnerable to a two-front war, and Russian neutrality – along with the Tsar’s promise to help out if Austria gets frisky – ensures that any war with France will be fought on a single front.

        -At the same time, Napoleon III is trying to get the Austrians on his side. In theory, this seems like a solid plan. The Austrians just lost an embarrassing war to the Prussians, and with France on their side, they could regain all the influence they had lost in Germany. There’s even a significant faction in the Austrian court that supports a French alliance. But Austria isn’t just Austria now, it’s Austria-Hungary, remember? And the Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Gyula Andrássy, is strongly opposed to a war with Prussia. For him, Austria-Hungary’s main foreign policy threats are Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and he wants the Empire to stay on good terms with the Prussians. The debate results in a compromise, with Austria-Hungary agreeing to make an alliance with France if and only if the Italians are also on board. Remember, Austria just fought a war against Prussia and Italy and lost, so they want to make sure they don’t have to do that again.

        -Italian King Victor Emmanuel II and his government favor an alliance with Austria and France, mostly for national security reasons. Without Napoleon III, Victor Emmanuel never would have come to power to begin with, and remember, France still has the most powerful army in Europe until proven otherwise. It makes sense to stay friends with them. The same goes for Austria-Hungary, which is strong enough to be a threat to Italy if the Austrians decide they want to take back Venice. Again, an alliance here makes sense, but hardcore Italian nationalists don’t see it that way.

        -For the nationalists, the most important issue in Italian politics, the one that overrides all others, is the Roman question. As long as Napoleon III maintains a garrison in Rome to protect Pope Pius IX, there can be no alliance with France. The hardcore Italian nationalists might not be the majority, but they still have enough clout to enforce their will on this issue, so the ball goes back to Napoleon. Will he remove the Roman garrison?

        -The answer is “no.” It’s not that Napoleon III is particularly religious; one of the most famous things about him is his long list of extramarital affairs. However, he’s a French monarch living in the age of republican revolutions. He’s a modern, liberal sort of monarch, yes, but he’s still a monarch, and there’s a large minority of the French population who are never going to accept him no matter what. To maintain power, he’s got to hold on to his conservative base, and that includes the Catholic Church, which obviously wants the French Empire to continue protecting the sovereignty of the Papal States. So as much as Napoleon III would like his alliance with Italy, he’s not going to get it. Not if he wants to stay in power at home. That means no alliance with Austria either, which means that when France and Prussia fight, it’s not going to be a general European war with all kinds of alliances and diplomatic nuance. It’s going to be an all-out slugfest between Europe’s reigning military champion and an undefeated contender.

CHAPTER TWO: THE EMS DISPATCH

In the year 1870, Bismarck and Napoleon III might not be itching for war. There are several points at which both parties seem to want to avoid war. But it’s fair to say that both leaders appreciate that war is a near-certainty, so, as is often the case, the question isn’t whether to fight, but when and how to fight. Neither side wants to look like the aggressor. Both are waiting for an opportunity, and this opportunity comes not from within France or Prussia, nor from the actions of any of the other great powers. It comes from a declining power, the collapsing Spanish Empire.

        -Spain has not been having a good go of it in the 19th Century. Less industrialized than its European rivals, the Empire has also been wracked by war, with a series of nationalist revolutions erupting throughout its New World colonies. What’s left is a weakened state that’s less prosperous, less populous, and less powerful than its neighbor, France, and its former rival, the British Empire. That said, Spain still operates a relevant navy, controls a number of colonies such as Cuba and the Philippines, and has the potential to field a large army should it ever get its act together.

        -Other than the never-ending parade of colonial wars, the main thing holding Spain back in the 1800s is constant domestic political upheaval. Most recently, after a series of failed revolts in the 1850s and 1860s, Spanish rebels had overthrown Queen Isabella II in 1868, and I use the word “rebels” instead of “revolutionaries” because some of these rebels aren’t revolutionaries at all; they’re monarchists, although there are also liberals and radicals and people of all political stripes, because Queen Isabella had spent most of her 35-year reign shifting from one political faction to another, and in the process, she’d managed to alienate pretty much everyone in the military, the Spanish legislature, and influential private citizens.

        -The rebellion begins as a naval mutiny in the port of Cadiz, and when the army is called in to restore order, Spain’s two top generals side with the mutineers. Isabella has no allies to turn to, and after her loyalist troops are defeated in a single battle, she goes into voluntary exile in Paris. That’s it. The rebellion kicks off on September 19th and ends on September 27th with a revolutionary government in charge.

        -Once the rebels are in charge, though, they find that the only thing they had in common was that they didn’t like Isabella, and after a bunch of bickering, they decide to set up a constitutional monarchy. But who will be the new monarch? To satisfy all the factions, any candidate will have to be competent, Catholic, and willing to work under a constitutional system. The candidate also can’t be French, because a French king would inevitably be more susceptible to French influence, and France already has a lot of influence in Spain at this time because it’s a larger, more powerful neighbor.

        -Anyway, in September of 1869, the Spanish provisional government chooses a German Catholic prince, Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern, to be their new King, should he accept their offer. The Prince, a cousin of Prussian King Wilhelm and a former candidate for the Romanian throne, initially refuses the Spanish offer. But the Spanish ambassador comes back again in February of 1870 and asks Bismarck to help convince Prince Leopold to accept. God is walking past, and Otto von Bismarck grabs at the hem of His robe.

Until this point, it seems like Bismarck didn’t have much interest in the Spanish controversy. This makes sense. Spain is a second-tier power at best, it’s far removed from Prussia, and while the two have little in common, they also have little to fight over. Bismarck couldn’t care less who becomes the next King of Spain. But at some point between September of 1869 and February of 1870, that seems to change. There are a number of possible reasons. One seems to be that the Spanish government is considering another candidate, a Bavarian prince, and a Bavarian prince on the Spanish throne could form the basis for an anti-Prussian Catholic military alliance at some point down the road.

-Regardless, when the Spanish ambassador asks for his help, Bismarck intervenes. He writes letters to King Wilhelm, and also to Prince Leopold, urging him to accept the Spanish throne. In a March 9th memorandum to King Wilhelm, he appeals to the King’s sense of family pride:

“The repute of the Hohenzollern dynasty, the justifiable pride with which not only Prussia regards its Royal House but Germany too, tends more and more to glory in that name as a common national possession, a symbol of German fame and German prestige abroad; all this forms an important element in political self-confidence, the fostering and strengthening of which would be of benefit to national feeling in general and to monarchist sentiment in particular. It is therefore to Germany’s political interest that the House of Hohenzollern should gain an esteem and an exalted position in the world such as does not find its analogy in the past record of the Habsburgs since Charles V.”

-King Wilhelm is not convinced, and says that while he will not forbid Prince Leopold from accepting the Spanish throne, he won’t command it either. Leopold, in turn, refuses to accept the throne unless Wilhelm commands him to. It seems like they’re at an impasse, and for a few months, it seems like all this might blow over.

-In April, Napoleon III upsets the playing field by calling for a popular vote confirming a number of liberal reforms. The vote, presented to the public as a shift to the left, is actually a thinly-veiled vote to enhance Napoleon III’s power, and a number of left-leaning government ministers, amongst them Foreign Minister Napoleon Daru, resign in protest. When the vote passes by 7.3 million to 1.5 million in Napoleon’s favor, he appoints a new foreign minister, an avowed anti-Prussian war hawk named Agénor de Gramont. Bismarck reads this appointment as an acceleration towards war on Napoleon’s part, and sets up a series of back-room meetings where he convinces Prince Leopold to accept the Spanish throne as a matter of patriotic duty, to ensure safety from France.

-Students of European history will probably remember what happened the last time a foreign power threatened to surround France with a dynastic alliance. Back in the early 1700s, Archduke Charles of Austria had claimed the Spanish throne, which would have put a Habsburg on the throne of every major country on France’s borders. In response, French King Louis XIV had gone to war, fighting and ultimately winning the War of the Spanish Succession. Well, just like Louis XIV, Napoleon III is not about to allow a German dynasty to surround his country. Neither is Agénor de Gramont.

-Bismarck knows this. Prince Leopold knows this. The Spanish diplomats know this. If the French are to be kept from intervening, Leopold needs to be made king before anyone in Paris knows what’s going on, so they make their arrangements in total secrecy. What needs to happen under the new Spanish Constitution is for the legislature, called the Cortes, to receive Leopold’s consent to become king and then to hold a vote confirming his appointment.

-All of this goes wrong due to a miscommunication. On June 19th, a Spanish diplomat sends a telegraph from Berlin to Spanish dictator Juan Prim, informing him that Prince Leopold has accepted the offer and that his signed acceptance will arrive in Madrid within a week. But when the diplomat arrives in person a week later on June 26th, the entire government has been dismissed until September. It seems that a Prussian telegraph clerk had messed up and said that he’d be back in Madrid at the end of July, not the end of June. Nervous about keeping the government in session with no obvious business at hand, Juan Prim had sent everybody home. The dictator now calls the Cortes back into session so they can hold their vote, but in order to get all these legislators to come back, he has to tell them what’s going on, and word soon gets out that Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern, is about to be elected King of Spain.

-Napoleon III cannot allow this to stand, but oddly enough, he doesn’t see it as a dynastic issue. In an interview with a German newspaper just a few months later, he will point out that while Prince Leopold is a cousin of King Wilhelm and they share the same family name, Leopold is also related to the Bonapartes, and Napoleon himself is actually lifelong friends with Leopold’s father. Napoleon is far more concerned that Leopold would not be able to hold onto the Spanish throne. In the interview, he says:

        “The proud blood of Spain would have accepted no foreign masters, and the difficulties of the situation confronting Prince Leopold in a few years would have induced Germany itself to assume the supreme power in order to support him.”

        -In other words, if Leopold has to face any rebellions, Prussian troops will get sucked into Spain, and active Prussian armies on both sides of France would be a major national security issue. Whether for security reasons or merely for national pride, the French legislature agrees. In his book Napoleon III: A Life, British author and barrister Fenton Bresler writes:

        “On 6 July, Duc Antoine de Gramont, the new French Foreign Secretary, an arrogant career diplomat in his first Cabinet post, having only been appointed two months before, told the Legislative Body that, if Prince Leopold’s candidature was not withdrawn, ‘We shall know how to fulfil our duty without hesitation and without weakness.’

        “The message was not lost on the Deputies. They rose to their feet, waved their hats in the air, and shouted like excited children: ‘Vive la France! Vive ’Empereur!’ and, even more ominous, ‘A Berlin!’ Most of the French press took up the cry. National glory was at stake and the country was not going to be found wanting.”

Gramont isn’t just blowing hot air. The day after his speech, July 7th, he tells the French ambassador to Berlin, Vincent Benedetti not to waste his time with Bismarck, but to meet directly with King Wilhelm. Gramont says bluntly: “If you get the King to recall the Prince’s acceptance, it will be an immense success, and a great service. The King will, of his own accord, have assured the peace of Europe. If not, it is war.”

        -Napoleon, meanwhile, is trying to escape the Thucydides trap, and works behind the scenes. Remembering their old friendship, he writes to Prince Antony of Hohenzollern, Prince Leopold’s father, asking him to get Leopold to withdraw his candidacy. Amazingly, this works. And on July 12th, Leopold formally withdraws his acceptance of the Spanish throne, averting war at the last second.

        -At least, that’s what probably would have happened. Instead, Agénor de Gramont gets greedy, and tells Ambassador Benedetti to go to King Wilhelm once more and insist that he promise never again to try to put a member of the House of Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne, and King Wilhelm tells him he will do no such thing. Wilhelm finds this demand offensive, and sends a telegram to Bismark, telling him to release it to the press if he deems it appropriate.

        -Bismarck, in turn, does some creative editing on the King’s message to make his exchange with the French Ambassador sound more confrontational. Known as the Ems Dispatch, because it’s sent from the town of Bad Ems where King Wilhelm is vacationing, the edited version of this telegram will lead directly to war between France and Prussia. Bismarck’s goal here is to make the French angry not just that King Wilhelm had refused their demand, but because he had insulted their ambassador. Wilhelm had done no such thing. However, in one of his communications with Ambassador Benedetti, he had let the ambassador know that he had received word from Prince Leopold that he had refused the Spanish throne, and had nothing further to say about it to the French government. Over dinner and cigars, Otto von Bismarck, Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke, and Minister of War Albrecht von Roon trim a few words out of the King’s telegram, so it now reads:

        “His Majesty the King had thereupon refused to receive the French Ambassador once more and let him know through an adjutant that His Majesty had nothing further to communicate to the ambassador.”

        -Basically, by leaving out a few words, Bismarck and friends turn a nothingburger into a perceived diplomatic insult. Once they’re done editing, they release the Ems Dispatch to the press, including the French press, where it’s published the next morning, July 14th – the French national holiday. The French public is enraged. Mobs waving French flags riot in the streets of Paris, smashing anything that looks vaguely German. Early the next morning, July 15th, the army begins to mobilize. By the time Ambassador Benedetti arrives in Paris to explain that he was never insulted and that this is all a misunderstanding, the French public is already enraged, and the wheels of war are already in motion.

        -Once the French begin mobilization, Bismarck calls on the armies of the North German Confederation to mobilize in response. On July 19th, the French declare war. By both mobilizing and declaring war first, Napoleon III has blundered into a Bismarckian trap, because from the outside, France now looks like the aggressor and will have no allies. And while Prussia might not have any major allies, she will get the help of some minor allies: the Southern German states of Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Baden. These countries are not part of the North German Confederation, but they do have a defensive alliance with Prussia, and that defensive alliance has now been triggered. Bismarck is about to go to war with France, backed by the full might of a united Germany.

CHAPTER THREE: A BLUEPRINT FOR THE GREAT WAR

The rest of this episode, we’ll be focusing on the Franco-Prussian War. When that ends, so does the story of Season One of this show. Not coincidentally, the Franco-Prussian War will also mark the end of the European Age of Revolutions, which began in 1789 with the overthrow of the French monarchy and the subsequent invasion of Revolutionary France by most of Europe. From then until 1870, Europe has been rocked by waves of revolutionary activity and various regional wars. With the exception of the Napoleonic Wars, though, none of these has been a general European war like the Thirty Years’ War or the Seven Years’ War, where all the major powers are fighting and there’s death and destruction everywhere. Conflicts have been local, like the siege of Venice, or regional, like the Austro-Prussian War. From the end of the Franco-Prussian War until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, there will be no wars in Europe whatsoever, except for a couple of tiny dust-ups in the Balkans.  For all the warfare we’ve talked about on this show, 19th Century Europe, by and large, is a historically peaceful time and place. For military leaders, this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, peacetime is an opportunity for training, for testing out new equipment and tactics, and on a longer timescale, higher peacetime birthrates ensure a supply of future recruits. On the other hand, the real test of both equipment and tactics is on the battlefield. No amount of wargaming will expose your weaknesses as effectively as an actual enemy force. In other words, if you want to get good at war, fight a lot of wars. Barring that, watch what other people are doing and absorb their lessons as much as possible. Well, the Franco-Prussian War will be the last major European conflict before World War I, and everyone is watching.

        -Dan Carlin called his history of World War I “Blueprint for Armageddon.” If that’s the case, then in many ways, the Franco-Prussian War is the blueprint for World War I. It kicks off 44 years before World War I, so a lot of those senior French and German World War I officers with their huge grey mustaches begin their careers as fresh-faced lieutenants in the Franco-Prussian War. And all the senior officers in the other World War I armies – the Russians, the British, you name it – well, they begin their careers watching the French and the Prussians duke it out and absorbing all the lessons from this war. So if you want to understand why World War I armies go to war the way they do and fight the way they do, you need to understand the Franco-Prussian War.

        -The Franco-Prussian War is the culmination of 19th century warfare, and we can already see significant changes from earlier in the century. For example, most armies throughout history have not had battlefield medics. They’ve had medical tents behind the lines, and some, like Napoleon’s armies, have had an ambulance corps to help collect wounded. But starting with the Austro-Prussian War and especially in the Franco-Prussian War, you see the first real use of combat medics – individual men or small teams of men who charge into the hottest parts of the fight to rescue their wounded fellow-soldiers. As is often the case, Prussia leads the way. In his book The Wars of German Unification, American military historian Denis Showalter writes:

        “The Prussian army’s modern approach to medical treatment in combat began when a man was first hit. Each soldier had a first aid kit, with bandaging material and sterile lint as an absorbent. While other armies depended on regimental medical services whose stretcher bearers were often improvised or provided from regimental bands, the train battalion of a Prussian corps by 1870 also included three medical detachments, totaling 21 doctors and about 450 stretcher bearers with rudimentary training in things like applying tourniquets. Each corps also had a dozen small field hospitals, whose thirty-man staff included five doctors. Their 200-patient capacity diminished the impersonal butchershop ambience associated with the large facilities that were the norm in other armies, and where casualties piled up in anonymous misery hundreds of yards around the tent or building housing the surgeons. The relatively limited casualty loads also facilitated a ‘conservative’ approach that resorted to amputation only in extreme cases rather than as a matter of routine. To adherents of germ theory, the high risk of postoperative infection in amputation cases legitimated taking lesser, though still high, chances to save the limb. One result was a long list of grateful patients who vastly preferred a stiff leg or deformed arm to a missing one.”

-The Prussians invest in these battlefield medicine advancements as a response to the Battle of Solferino, that Italian battle we talked about a couple episodes back where modern artillery first demonstrated to the world how deadly it could be. By the year 1870, artillery is starting to look more like modern weaponry than something out of a museum. Both sides are fielding breech-loaded field guns, like the French Reffye 85mm and the Prussian Krupp C64, which are loaded with modern features, although both armies also have a lot of older muzzle-loaded artillery still in service. The new artillery fires modern shells, including canister and shrapnel shells, and has an effective range of more than two miles. As a result, it’s harder for armies to maneuver outside of artillery range. Gone are the days of massed, linear troop formations like the ones you see in the American Revolutionary War. The long range of regular artillery fire, along with the devastating effects of canister shells at short ranges, has forced armies to shift tactics.

-To be fair, troops have been using other types of formations all along. Napoleon, for example, was famous for his use of square and column formations. But traditionally, throughout all of history, men have fought side by side. This dates back to the world’s most ancient armies, like the Greek phalanx. The Roman legions fought side-by-side, and the Vikings were famous for their unbreakable shield walls. And when the first French explorers forged their way into the Great Lakes region of North America, they found Iroquois warriors fighting with spears and shields in a phalanx-type formation. It’s ubiquitous, and it makes intuitive sense. If you’re going into a fight, you want to go into a fight with your buddies. If you stick close together, one guy can cover the next guy with his shield, and so on. The whole formation becomes stronger. Extend that into the gunpowder era and people stop carrying shields, but a musket with a bayonet is basically a fancy pike, so there’s still a lot of benefit to fighting side-by-side, since you can form a pike wall when cavalry comes in. Modern artillery changes this. All of a sudden, a massed group of guys isn’t a strength. It’s a target for the enemy’s artillery.

-The French and the Prussians deal with this in different ways. The Prussians will fight using the tactics developed by Helmuth von Moltke in the Austro-Prussian War a few years back. Instead of attacking with large formations, they will trickle small formations into the fight a few men at a time. The first men in will attack the center of the enemy line, while new arrivals will slowly fill out the sides of the Prussian line and keep probing outwards until they get around the enemy flanks. The artillery will then come in, hammer the enemy flanks, and reserve infantry, deployed in massed columns, will charge in quickly to attack one or both of those flanks, roll up the enemy line, and force him to retreat. This works because the men who come under fire first are moving quickly and in small groups, and even when they’re deployed directly across from the enemy line, they’re in a loose, staggered formation, with each man taking cover if at all possible. When the big columns come into action, they move very quickly and charge straight at the enemy. The idea here is that the Prussians might take heavy casualties for a short period – while their men are deploying under enemy artillery fire – but because they’re moving quickly and closing the distance as fast as possible, they shouldn’t be under artillery fire for very long.

-French tactics are an inversion of this, and a lot of it comes down to how the two sides are armed. If you’ll remember from last episode, the Prussian army is now using the Dreyse needle gun, while the French army is using the brand-new Chassepot. Both are breech-loaded rifles capable of firing several rounds a minute, but the French Chassepot has twice the effective range, at around 1,200 yards compared to the Prussian needle gun’s 600 yards. The Chassepot is also more accurate, thanks to a more effective seal around the chamber that keeps it from releasing smoke and sparks in the user’s face.

-How does this affect tactics? Well, the Prussians are trying to get into the fight quickly and close the distance between themselves and the enemy, so the French are going to do the opposite. Their goal is to do two things – blunt the Prussian attack, and take advantage of their longer-range weaponry. To do this, the French army actually throws out its old manual in 1869, and institutes a new tactical doctrine specifically to counter the Prussians, based on lessons they learned from the Prussian army in the Austro-Prussian War. In his book The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871, American military historian Geoffrey Wawro writes:

“Though impressed by the agility of the Prussians in 1866, the French perceived weakness in the Prussian system. In particular, they criticized the ‘tendency toward fragmentation’ in Prussian tactics, the heretical willingness ‘to break connections between lines and columns on the battlefield to deliver partial attacks.’ In other words, the French criticized the very quality that had done so much to bewilder, panic, and entrap the Austrians in 1866: the sliding, successive onslaught of twenty-man Prussian platoons, arriving at the run – seemingly haphazardly – from all directions. In a study of Prussian tactics published in 1868, a French staff officer concluded that Prussia’s small-unit tactics enhanced firepower for a moment, but left the Prussian army sprawled awkwardly across the battlefield. A better adversary than the Austrians would have employed massed reserves to counter-attack the small, scattered Prussian units and crush them in detail.”

-From the perspective of this unnamed staff officer, the worst thing that could happen would be for French troops to fall into the same perceived chaos as the Prussian army. But what the French view as chaos on the part of the Prussians is actually just a more modern form of organization. Geoffrey Wawro continues:

        “What the French failed to notice was that Prussian Auftragstaktik – ‘mission tactics’ – permitted orderly decentralization, for Prussian troop commanders, fully briefed on the aims of the battle before them, were only apparently isolated from one another. In fact, they were operating together, struggling toward a common objective, and were widely spaced only to maximize the fire from their artillery and rifles. The French, with their Cartesian predilection for structure, did not grasp this fact; they saw only chaos in the Prussian tactics and devised an opposite system, one that would permit the stately, controlled development of a battle by senior officers.”

When the French army puts out its new manual in 1869, the results are a mixed bag of old and new. The army’s offensive tactics are to remain the same as they’ve been for decades. French troops are to form up in a series of alternating columns and lines, and advance towards the enemy. The lines are spread out to provide maximum firepower, while the columns are tight to provide a powerful charge. Once the men are in range, the columns are to charge the enemy, while the lines are to fire from range and keep the enemy from arranging a proper counter-charge. The idea here is similar to the Prussian concept – the massed formations will take heavy casualties, but if they attack quickly, the fight will be over quickly. Meanwhile, senior officers will still be able to keep tight control over their armies.

-The main difference between the French and the Prussian armies is that the French aren’t planning to fight on the offensive unless they have an overwhelming numerical advantage. For the most part, they are to remain on the defensive, hold the enemy at bay, and take advantage of their longer-range rifles. Borrowing some notes from the Algerian rebels they’ve been fighting in North Africa, the new doctrine calls for each French soldier to carry a spade. When they arrive on the battlefield, each French battalion is to dig itself a knee-deep trench, which the men have been trained to do in 15 minutes. The men will then shelter in their trenches and wait for the enemy to approach. At this point, they will return disciplined fire, and I do mean disciplined. Despite their Chassepots having a faster rate of fire than the Prussian needle guns, each French trooper is allowed to fire only five shots at a time. The men are then to hold fire and wait for their commanding officer to gauge its effectiveness and order another burst of fire. This bureaucratic nonsense weakens French defenses, particularly when the men have a good view of the enemy and their fire is accurate.

-That said, the French aren’t just holding their men’s fire to maintain discipline. They’re also conserving ammunition for a tactic called Feu de Bataillon, meaning simply “battalion fire”. Starting on the left end of the formation, an orchestrated symphony of rifle fire detonates from one end of the line to the other, sweeping the ground in front of them and killing anything that moves.

-The problem with Feu de Bataillon isn’t its effectiveness. It’s devastatingly effective. The problem is that the entire new French doctrine is organized around this single tactic. Does it look like a good time to attack the enemy? Don’t do it! Dig in first, draw him into an attack, and only counterattack after you’ve hit him with some battalion fire. Want to send out a few dozen scouts to keep an eye on the enemy’s movements? Better not send them too far out. You might need them back in the line to enhance your battalion fire. There will be cases in this war where French commanders have dozens or even hundreds of light infantry available for scouting duty, and will keep them back with the main battle line and end up getting blindsided by a Prussian flank attack that they should have seen coming.

-Let’s give the French some credit. What they’re trying to do here is trench warfare, which will be the correct method for fighting World War I, but they’re a few decades early. The artillery firepower isn’t quite lethal enough or industrialized at scale enough to completely negate a rapid attack by a determined infantry force. The French are also missing a crucial tool that all World War I armies will utilize, and that’s the machinegun. They do have a kind of proto-machinegun, though. In his book The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870-1871, British military historian Michael Howard writes about this weapon, called the Mitrailleuse:

“…production had begun under conditions of great secrecy in 1866. In appearance it resembled the fasces of the Roman Lictors: a bundle of twenty-five barrels, each detonated in turn by turning a handle. It had a range of nearly 2,000 yards and a rate of fire of 150 rounds a minute. Like the chassepot it was an excellent and ingenious weapon; but such secrecy surrounded its manufacture that training in its use was almost out of the question, and no useful discussion was possible about how it should be employed.”

-Because the Mitrailleuse is so secret, French military planners aren’t able to use it in war games, and in fact, most of the French Army brass aren’t even aware of the existence of this secret weapon until the outbreak of the war. As a result, they’ve had no way to implement tactics around the Mitrailleuse, so they deploy it behind their main infantry lines with the artillery, rather than up in the trenches like a World War I machinegun. The reasoning for this is sound on its surface. Because it has multiple barrels, the Mitrailleuse is fairly bulky and has to be rolled around on a set of wheels like a piece of field artillery. Its crews are also vulnerable to enemy fire, so keeping them behind the line makes sense. But by putting this secret weapon way behind the line, the French limit its effectiveness. Its crews can’t see what they’re doing, and furthermore, because it’s a heavy, carriage-mounted, crew-served weapon, there’s no easy way to sweep the Mitrailleuse from side to side. It’s extremely dangerous if you’re directly in front of it, but the crew has to stop firing and move a bulky carriage whenever they want to aim it.

-The end result will be a war where young officers learn to launch aggressive attacks against entrenched forces. Artillery and machineguns be damned! Whoever charges the enemy faster with more men will be the victor. And when those young officers grow old and are commanding the armies of the First World War, these lessons of the Franco-Prussian war will have horrific consequences for hundreds of thousands of young European men.

-The last thing I want to talk about are the uniforms, because this is the last major war that will begin and end with troops wearing colorful, distinctive uniforms instead of camouflage. Most armies will start World War I out with flashy outfits, but by 1918, every army in the world is wearing subdued colors. This is another “end of an era” type moment, because for as long as people have been going to war, uniforms have been a major part of military culture.

-In 1870, Prussian troopers still wear pale blue uniforms – the so-called Prussian Blue they’ve been wearing for generations. And like at the beginning of World War I, they still wear the Pickelhaube, the iconic spiked helmet we all know and love. French soldiers don’t even wear helmets, just red and blue caps to match their blue overcoats and bright red pants. There are still cavalrymen with sabers, although more and more they’re being restricted to scouting duty. There are no tanks. There are no airplanes. The people in our story don’t know it, but they’re about to become part of the last glamorous war in history.

-That’s a shame, because the Franco-Prussian War is also one of the first wars to be photographed, and the grainy, black-and-white photos don’t do any justice to how flashy these soldiers look. On the other hand, we do have lots of photographs, including the first photographs of troops in actual combat. Earlier wars like the Crimean War, the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, and the Austro-Prussian War have already been photographs. However, since early cameras required long exposure times, it’s been impossible to take pictures of anything that’s moving. All you’d see is a blur, so earlier wartime photography focused on still subjects like the aftermath of a battle or men in uniform striking a pose outside of combat. We’ve also seen a couple of very blurry Civil War naval battles, but the Franco-Prussian War gives us our first glimpse of how people actually fought in an earlier era thanks to modern combat photography, another new innovation that will become common practice by the time the Great War breaks out in 1914.

CHAPTER FOUR: UNSTOPPABLE FORCE MEETS IMMOVABLE OBJECT

At the outbreak of the war, the French army is in chaos. The Minister of War, Edmond LeBeouf, has been doing double duty as the Army Chief of Staff. He’s doing two jobs, which on the Prussian side are being done by two titanic historical figures – Helmuth von Moltke and Albrecht von Roon. And he’s doing it while trying to totally rework the army’s tactical playbook. To make things worse, as we’ll see, the French officer corps does not have the best leadership. Napoleon III doesn’t have a military cabinet like King Wilhelm does over in Prussia, so there’s no career cadre of senior officers who monitor up-and-coming youngsters and identify talent. Senior leadership posts are instead earned via a reputation for bravery and a proximity to the Emperor, with the result that out of every French Army general at the corps level or higher is a former aide-de-camp to Napoleon III. To be fair, the original Napoleon had recruited top leaders in a similar way, but unlike Napoleon III, the original Napoleon actually had an eye for talent. Worse yet, Napoleon III has decided to take personal command of his army. Empress Eugénie has insisted on it, arguing that the French people expect a Bonaparte to lead from the front. Unfortunately, not only is Napoleon III not all that great a general, he’s also in terrible condition. He’s suffering from a gallstone, which causes constant attacks of pain and nausea. The stone could be removed with surgery, but at such a politically sensitive time, the Emperor has opted to delay surgery and treat his symptoms with opium, which makes him sluggish and dulls his senses.

        -Not everything Napoleon does at the outbreak of this war is bad, though. The French may have screwed up diplomatically by mobilizing their armies first, but there’s a reason for it. While the French and the combined German nations have about the same manpower capacity, the French rely on reservists, who take longer to call up, while the German armies, especially the Prussians, rely more on professional troops who are already in their barracks when the order comes to mobilize. At the outbreak of war on July 19th, the Prussian Army is expected to be able to field 462,000 men within three weeks, with a full wartime strength of 850,000 men when they’re fully mobilized. The French Army is spread out all over the globe, with troops needed to hold down colonies in Algeria and Southeast Asia and to garrison Rome. At the outbreak of the war, Minister of War/Chief of Staff Edmond LeBeouf can only field around 300,000 men. It’s going to take time to bring back excess colonial troops and also to call up reservists to meet the army’s goal of 800,000 troops. Knowing that he’s going to start out at a numerical disadvantage, LeBeouf instead aims to get his army to the frontier in under three weeks. His goal is to beat the Prussians to the border, dig in, and fight a defensive war until the Austrians and Italians join in. Which, as we know, doesn’t happen. But a defensive war still makes sense for the less numerous army, right? It does, but you still need to get your army mobilized. On this subject, Michael Howard writes:

        “The result was deplorable. The plans of the Ministry of War involved the movement of large bodies of men in every direction by railways imperfectly subjected to military control. Regiments had to go from their garrisons to their concentration areas, reservists from their homes to their regimental depots and on to their regiments, and supplies had to be sent from central magazines to depots and to regiments. One typical regiment whose depot was at Lyons was stationed at Dunkirk; another, stationed at Lyons, had its depot at St Malo. Reservists joining a regiment of Zouaves had to report to their depot in Oran before they could join their regiment in Alsace. It is not surprising that a group of reservists who left Lille on 18th July for the 53rd Regiment’s depot at Gap never reached their regiment at all… and they had to be embodied ultimately in the army of the Loire. Once the reservists reached their depots, they were due to be sent up to their battalions in batches of a hundred; but there was some doubt as to whether they should be sent up with full equipment or not; and since faulty organization at central stores and confusion on the railways often meant that delivery of equipment to the regimental depot was delayed, the commanders of these depots were torn between the clamors of their service battalions for more men and their natural desire to send them only when equipment was available and the railways were clear. The result was that by 6th August, the twenty-third day of mobilization, only about half the reservists had reached their regiments, and many of these lacked the most essential items of uniform and equipment. The rest, if they had left their depots at all, were marooned en route by railway delays and spent their days sleeping, drinking, begging, and plundering army stores”

        -The problem isn’t the transport of the men per se. Despite all the back-and-forth, most of the deployment had been planned out in advance. The problem is the huge amount of freight trains heading for the front, which are clogging up all the rail lines and making it impossible for passenger trains full of troops to get to their destinations. Nobody has planned for this, and it jams up the entire French deployment. The Prussians have to deal with the same obstacles, but they’ve done this once before against the Austrians. The Prussian Army has a special railroad division just for logistical planning, and those guys have implemented lessons they learned in their war against the Austrians, so their trains are significantly more efficient.

        -You might think that things are about to go very badly for the French Army, and you’d be right, but despite their logistical issues, they actually begin the war with a victory. On August 2nd 1870, Napoleon III leads a force of 30,000 French troops across the Rhine to attack the city of Saarbrucken. The French overwhelmingly outnumber the 1,400 Prussian defenders, and easily overpower them, with most of the damage being done from a distance by the Chassepot rifles. Given the odds, the French victory was a foregone conclusion, but Napoleon has launched this attack for propaganda reasons, to make the Germans fear him and rally the French public. The French press even gets to fawn over their 14-old prince, Napoleon III’s heir, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who fires his first cannon during the battle.

-Unfortunately for the French, the victory only serves as a propaganda victory. I mean, is anyone really surprised that they defeated an enemy who they outnumbered 20-to-1? The Germans don’t even call the Battle of Saarbrucken a “battle.” They call it the Gefecht bei Saarbrucken – the “Skirmish at Saarbrucken.” So much for prestige. As for grand strategy, the city of Saarbrucken itself isn’t a strategic target. It’s on the German side of the border, yes, but it’s connected to the rest of Prussia only by a single rail line that the Prussians can easily defend. There are some coal mines and iron foundries in the vicinity, which are connected back to France via a canal network, and which could be nice to have if France could hold onto them in a peace deal. But that same canal network doesn’t extend deeper into Germany so, once again, Saarbrucken really isn’t a launching pad to anywhere, which makes it a terrible place to start an offensive. That said, Saarbrucken does have the distinction of being the only piece of German territory occupied by French troops during this war.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. Two days after the French victory, on August 4th, a Prussian army attacks the French further east at Wissembourg, defeats them, and drives the defenders back. This leaves Napoleon’s army at risk of being cut off on the wrong side of the Rhine, so he withdraws from Saarbrucken to the town of Spicheren. The Prussians pursue and attack, and unlike Napoleon’s victory at Saarbrucken, this is a full-sized battle. 37,000 Prussians attack 29,000 Frenchmen, killing or wounding nearly 2,000 and capturing more than 2,000 more. To be fair, the Prussians actually suffer more casualties, with 843 men killed, 370 captured, and more than 3,600 wounded, which is almost one out of every ten Prussians in the battle. Most of these wounds are inflicted by the Chassepot rifle, which is proving its worth as a long-range weapon, but Prussian aggression carries the day, and this French army is once again forced to withdraw.

        -Napoleon may be in charge of the overall war, but he can’t be everywhere at once. The Prussians are launching a three-pronged attack, and the force that attacks at Spicheren is just the westernmost prong of that attack. On August 6th 1870, the same day the Prussians are forcing the French out of Spicheren, another French army is facing off against the easternmost prong of that attack, which is penetrating into French territory and threatening the nearby city of Strasbourg.

-The commander of this army is 62-year-old Patrice de MacMahon, and if that name doesn’t sound very French to you, that’s because MacMahon is the descendant of Irish nobility who had emigrated to France way back in the 1600s, and he’s had a distinguished career both as a politician, where he’s now a senator, and as a general, where he had served as Governor-General of Algeria before being recalled to France to help fight off the Prussians. MacMahon has had a long career to demonstrate his loyalty and work ethic, and now he’s about to illustrate that he’s in no way competent for the job.

-Opposing MacMahon is none other than the heir to the Prussian throne, Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm himself, who commands an invasion force of 125,000 men. MacMahon had expected to command a similarly-sized force, but his army consists of three army corps, which he’d spread out along the border because he didn’t know exactly where the Prussians were going to attack. When it becomes obvious that they’re attacking his First Corps at the town of Froeschwiller, MacMahon orders his other two corps to reinforce them. But his subcommanders are slow in arriving, so when the Prussians attack on the morning of August 6th, MacMahon has only 46,000 men with him, about a third of their number, although it’s worth noting that not all 125,000 of those Prussians are part of the main attack. The invasion force is all spread out, both for logistical purposes, and for the purposes of securing and occupying the territory. It’s also worth noting that the attacking army isn’t just made up of Prussians. It’s a true German army, with troops from Prussia fighting alongside men from the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurttemberg for the first time, with a few men from Baden thrown in for good measure.

-Ideally, General MacMahon would retreat and regroup in the face of such odds, but that’s not an option. He’d occupied the town of Froeschwiller specifically because it must be held. This little town – more of a village, really – sits on a long hill that overlooks three strategic objectives. First, a little less than a mile to the east, is the Sauer River, which the Germans will have to cross. It’s only about five feet deep here, so most people can wade across it, but it’s still going to slow down an attacking force, so it’s a good defensive barrier for the French to hang on to. The second objective, about halfway between the river and the town, is another village called Woerth, which occupies a major highway junction. Finally, about two miles west – so, behind the French position – is the Bitche-Strasbourg railway, a critical logistical line that connects to the city of Strasbourg further south. Basically, MacMahon has to hold on to Froeschwiller, which means he has to fight a main Prussian army of more than 80,000 men with his own 46,000-man force.

-The good news for MacMahon is that the terrain favors him. His artillery and headquarters are on a hill, and the enemy will have to first cross a river and then attack up that hill in order to get at him. Crossing the Sauer River won’t be easy. MacMahon has stationed his infantry along its banks, so the Prussians will have to fight their way across. If they can do that, the French infantry can still fall back to the hill and fight at an advantage.

        -On the Prussian side, Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm has no intention of attacking on August 6th. His men have been marching and fighting for a few days, it’s raining and the roads are all muddy, and he plans to have everybody rest. He knows very well where MacMahon’s army is, and he’s planning to deal with it the next day. Prussian cavalry scouts have been patrolling the eastern bank of the Sauer since the previous day, and some Prussian artillery had even shelled the village of Woerth early in the morning, before the Crown Prince ordered them to withdraw to avoid a battle.

        -General Friedrich von Bothmer, one of Friedrich Wilhelm’s subordinates, never got the memo. Bothmer is a Bavarian officer commanding the Bavarian II Corps, and had fought against the Prussians only four years earlier during the Austro-Prussian war. Probably for this reason, he’s eager to get into the fight and prove his loyalty to the new North German Confederation. Bothmer’s men are marching in from the north, skirting the east bank of the river, and when he hears the artillery fire in the distance, he orders his men to move forward. They mount a hill near a French position, and the French infantry start firing their Chassepot rifles from their side of the river and inflicting a bunch of casualties. So Bothmer follows German military doctrine and attacks, pushing his men closer to the French so their own needle guns will be effective. Two more nearby army corps, the Prussian V Corps and the combined Baden-Wurttemberg Corps, hear the gunfire, and their generals too launch them into the fight. So right here at the beginning of the battle, around 10-10:30 in the morning, we already have troops from all the major North German Confederation states fighting in a battle together.

        -As inspiring as this may be, it’s not what Crown Prince Wilhelm had wanted – remember, he wants his men to rest. But he’s several miles behind the front line, so he has to send out messengers on horseback to order his men to withdraw, and remember, it’s raining, and the roads are muddy, and the roads are also clogged with troops and supply wagons and ambulances and all kinds of other traffic that slows the messengers down, and by the time the Crown Prince’s orders get to the men who are fighting, they’re already stuck in. The commander of the Prussian V Corps, an aggressive 61-year-old veteran named Hugo von Kirchbach, exemplifies how the Germans are going to fight this war when, for lack of a better term, his first response to contact with the enemy is to yeet his entire corps directly at them. Geoffrey Wawro writes:

        “The Poles and Germans of the Prussian 9th Division were first into the breach. Passing through Oberdorf and Spachbach, they tramped toward the Sauer, floundered across, and walked into a cross fire. Lieutenant Leopold von Winning of the Prussian 47th Regiment was one of the only platoon leaders to survive the assault. Intersecting streams of fire tore the Prussian attack columns to shreds. Winning watched another lieutenant disintegrate before his eyes, seized by a burst of mitrailleuse fire that tore away his feet, legs, chest, and face. Mounted officers, targeted by the sharp-shooting French infantry, were struck down at once. Those that survived frantically dismounted, splashing down beside their men in the water meadows. Gradually the Prussian columns thinned into skirmish lines that lapped against the French position. Further progress was impossible. Dug in on the high ground, the French were all but invisible from below, and the Prussians, armed with primitive rifles and paper cartridges, found it impossible to lie flat. They would have soaked their cartridges on the wet ground; thus, all along the line, the Prussians crouched or kneeled awkwardly, offering easy targets to the French.”

With no choice but to support his men, the Crown Prince sends more troops into the fight. The Germans move forward using something called swarm tactics, which are based on the principle of fire and movement, which incidentally is the basic principle small military units still use today. One team kneels down and fires rapidly at the enemy, keeping him under cover as much as possible while the other team runs forward to take their next position. Once they’re in place, they’ll provide covering fire for the first team, which will leapfrog them, then cover them again, and so on, until they get to whatever objective they’re trying to get to. To the French, this looks like absolute chaos. Soldiers have always marched into war side by side. These men are running forward in small groups, never massing in one location unless absolutely necessary.

        -The attack stalls out on the hill around Froeschwiller. A Bavarian corps, which had been ordered to follow up the Prussian attack, has to be ordered in three additional times before they finally cross the river, and they also stall out. The Germans hold the west bank of the Sauer River, but MacMahon’s French still hold the hill, their Chassepots and mitrailleuses making it far too dangerous for the Germans to advance closer than about 150 yards.

        -MacMahon tries a counterattack, launching a cavalry charge against the Germans. The French cuirassiers are some of the best cavalry in the world, and they look like it, with polished steel breastplates and plumed helmets that look like they belong in another century. They form a solid wall of horses that rolls menacingly down the grassy hill. Then they reach the flat no-man’s land between the hill and the German line, and the horses have to split up to dodge shell-holes and random trees and they no longer look like this impenetrable wall. Then they get into range of the Prussian needle guns and most of the horses go down. The rest flee.

        -Around noon, Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm himself finally arrives with fresh troops. These men join their friends on the west bank, and together, they’re able to advance up the hill. They’re aided by Prussian artillery, with the shells from the powerful Krupp guns obliterating every French effort to counterattack. I wouldn’t be scratching that military history itch if I didn’t mention that most of these guns are still made out of bronze on the German side, because the Prussians had been slow to adopt steel artillery, and occasionally one of these bronze guns explodes, which I’m sure makes firing them a terrifying experience for the crews.

        -At this point, the Germans exploit a weakness of the French defensive tactics, and that’s the inflexibility of systems that rely on trenches. A trench is a primitive powerful defensive system, even on the modern battlefield, but it takes time to dig one. Troops that get outflanked have to get out of their trenches, move in the open to a new position, and unless this is a more advanced trench system with all kinds of fallback trenches, those troops are going to be exposed. And when your weapons systems – the Chassepots in particular – rely on trench warfare to perform to their best advantage, your guys who are fighting in the open will be at a disadvantage against troops who were prepared from the start to fight in the open. When a Bavarian regiment gets around behind some of their enemy, 9,000 French troops immediately surrender. MacMahon orders a retreat.

        -Geoffrey Wawro gives this assessment of the Battle of Froeschwiller, also known as the battle of Woerth. He writes:

        “French generals at Froeschwiller had waited the entire day for the German skirmishers to give way to massed columns of infantry. They never had; instead, the entire German army had skirmished, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but always well enough to permit huge masses of reserves to come up and curl around the French flanks, usually concealed by woods and hills. Pounded throughout by the heavy-caliber Prussian artillery, the French had prematurely expended their reserves in counter-attacks, trying to push the Germans back out of range. This rendered them still more vulnerable to the final Prussian attacks, which would come in crushingly on both flanks, often disbanding entire French brigades and divisions.”

The French defeat at Froeschwiller causes a near-panic in French leadership. Just looking at a map, the Germans now have a clear path to Strasbourg, a major strategic target. But more broadly, it’s a continuation of the French geopolitical nightmare. Denis Showalter writes:

        “These were the kind of first battles the French army was supposed to win—and win convincingly enough to influence and intimidate neutrals as well as enemies. As late as July 20, [Austrian Prime Minister Friedrich von] Beust discussed the possibility of a French army 300,000 strong standing on Austria’s border within a week, and said such a force could bring the dual monarchy into the war whether or not it was pledged to do so. Instead, Spicheren and Froeschweiller/ Woerth ended any French hopes of support from an Austria seeking revenge for Koeniggraetz, or from an Italy hoping to profit by mounting a French bandwagon.”

        -Napoleon III seems to agree with this assessment. He orders a full retreat, and redeploys the French army. Denis Showalter writes that he now has two choices. With the Germans having penetrated the Rhineland – basically northeastern France, the French can regroup either to the south or the west. Regrouping to the west would protect Paris, but would allow the Germans free rein in France’s industrial heartland until the army could muster a counterattack. Regrouping to the south would protect French industrial strength and ability to produce war goods, but would leave Paris vulnerable to a German advance. Instead, Napoleon III chooses to do neither. He refuses to risk any French territory, spreading his army out to block any possible German route of advance, and sending a significant number to the eastern fortress city of Metz to force a confrontation.

        -This all-or-nothing strategy requires the French army to protect its entire frontier with an army that still hasn’t been fully mustered, against an enemy whose entire strategy is to strike anywhere and everywhere, seemingly at random, until it finds a weak spot where it can break through. This is what the Germans have been doing, and I know it’s been hard to explain, but if you look at a map of this initial campaign, the Germans have just been throwing punches willy-nilly, and every time they land a blow it forces the French to withdraw in that area, but it also causes chaos for French troops in other parts of the strategic battlefield, because those guys have to constantly move around to account for all these local German breakthroughs. The apparent chaos on the German side is the German military philosophy in action – allowing local commanders to exploit weaknesses as they present themselves. The cumbersome, top-down French leadership is slow to respond, causing real chaos in the French ranks.

        -This is evident in the following campaign, where German armies continue their streak of victories at Strasbourg, Vionville, and Gravelotte. I won’t go into the weeds on every battle, but I do want to highlight one event, because it illustrates the declining role of cavalry on the battlefield.

        -On August 16th 1870, the French Army of the Rhine, under the command of Field Marshal Francois Bazaine, is withdrawing to form a new line of defense. Bazaine has no idea there are German troops in the area, and his men are making breakfast in camp with no scouts on patrol. The German Second Army, under the command of Prussian Prince Friedrich Karl, is following behind them. Both armies are around 80,000 men in strength, and neither commander is expecting a fight that morning. They both think they’re part of a general maneuver, with the French trying to form a firm defensive line somewhere in the northeast, and the Germans trying to disrupt their plans.

        -When Prussian scouts catch sight of the French camp, they send word to Prince Friedrich Karl, who orders an immediate attack. Unfortunately, the attack is uncoordinated, and fast-moving horse artillery get to the area first and immediately open fire. The guys they’re shooting at are light cavalrymen who simply mount up and ride back to the main French camp at the nearby town of Vionville, where they warn Field Marshal Bazaine that they’re under attack.

        -This gives the French time to take up proper defensive positions along a line of nearby hills, and when the Prussian infantry arrives there’s a long fight over the high ground, with the fighting mostly favoring the Germans, but with both sides taking heavy casualties both from exploding artillery shells and from rifle fire.

        -By two in the afternoon, the German infantry is getting overstretched. The men are exhausted from constantly attacking and probably traumatized from all the death and destruction. After losing Vionville to the Prussians, the French have rallied and are now counterattacking with fresh troops. The Prussians have to act first, break up this attack, and take the initiative, but there’s no fresh infantry available. In desperation, Prussian general Constantin von Alvensleben orders a cavalry charge.

        -At his disposal are 800 men, a mix of cuirassiers and lancers. Reminder: it’s 1870, and some of these guys are charging into battle with steel breastplates, and some even have lances. Cavalry have already been on the decline for generations, and modern armies only use them for scouting – unless they’re desperate, which the Prussians are. With a look at his men, cavalry commander Friedrich Wilhelm von Bredow famously says “Kost es, was es wolle,” meaning “It will cost what it will.”

        -At 2:00 exactly, 800 Prussian cavalrymen ride out from the relative safety of their lines to attack French infantry who are armed with modern rifles and supported by modern artillery. But von Bredow is not some glory hound chasing a glorious death in battle. He’s an experienced cavalry commander, and he leads his men down a low, depressed road that’s partially concealed by a lingering cloud of cannon smoke. For most of their charge, the 800 Prussian cavalry are hidden from view, and they only come into view of the French at a distance of about a thousand yards. Some French cavalrymen counterattack, but many are shot down by their own infantry, who are shooting indiscriminately at anything on horseback. In his book The Franco-Prussian War: 1870-71, British author Quintin Barry writes of the event now known to history as “Von Bredow’s Death Ride”:

        “It was an attack that belonged to an earlier era when the stopping power of rifle fire was not so great, but nonetheless, against all the odds, Bredow was able to ride over the first line of the French batteries near the Roman road. The French artillerymen were cut down, and the survivors of the brigade rode on into the valley leading down to Rezonville. The commander of the 7th Cuirassiers described the breakneck charge:

“‘We penetrated into the first battery, of which but two guns succeeded in firing. The battery commander and all the men were cut down. Conscious of the prime necessity of overthrowing as many of the enemy as possible between the wood and chaussée, the regiment, under a flanking infantry fire from the wood threw itself upon a second battery and an infantry column. Whatever of this battery did not reach the shelter of its infantry was cut down. According to the instructions given by Major General von Bredow, we were not to stop at the first line to take prisoners, but to charge the second line at once.’”

-The cuirassiers and lancers annihilate much of the French artillery and force back the infantry before Field Marshal Bazaine sends in even more men to push the Prussians out. Of the 800 men who had begun the charge, 420 don’t come back. The 380 men who do return had faced the entire French left wing – around 40,000 men – and lived to tell the tale. As for the dead, their sacrifice had bought time for the Prussians to reinforce their positions on the heights around Vionville, and they ultimately win the battle. Mounted cavalry may be almost obsolete in 1870, but as this charge illustrates, they still have their place on the battlefield.

-The cost is horrific, though. The 420 lost cavalrymen represent only a fraction of the more than 4,400 dead, 10,400 wounded, and nearly 1,000 missing German soldiers. The French have similar losses, although fewer of them are killed and a higher percentage are listed as “missing.” That’s almost 20% of each army lost in a single battle, which is not something anybody is prepared to sustain.

-These two armies will tangle again two days later at the Battle of Gravelotte, just outside the fortress city of Metz. That day, Field Marshal Bazaine will lose more than 12,000 men and the Prussians will lose more than 20,000, but the Prussians will win, and Bazaine’s survivors will be forced to fall back to Metz. In this series of battles, Bazaine ignores multiple opportunities to launch attacks of his own, instead deliberately fighting on the defensive. He says as much after the campaign, arguing that his tactics had inflicted great damage on the Germans, and that modern warfare favors an army on the defensive. Now he will put that to the test, with his men taking their posts in one of Europe’s most modern fortified cities. There, at Metz, more than 150,000 French soldiers and 70,000 civilians now find themselves under assault by the German army.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE GREAT RIGHT TURN

So far, the French have lost several battles and a lot of prestige, as well as the city of Strasbourg. With Metz under assault, they risk losing the entire region known as Alsace-Lorraine, an important industrial region with large iron reserves. They also risk losing an entire army. So far, both sides have taken tremendous losses, but the Germans have lost more men, and they won’t be able to keep up this kind of offensive forever. After the most recent German victory at Gravelotte, a Prussian infantry commander had famously lamented “Our beautiful, brave army! Four such victories and she is no more.” If Marshal Bazaine’s men are totally surrounded and have to run up the white flag, those 150,000 men will become prisoners of war, and all of a sudden the manpower situation will favor the Germans again. The French have to save Metz, and Napoleon III and our friend Patrice de MacMahon both recognize this.

        -As for Field Marshal Bazaine, he now faces a no-win situation. Either he can hold out in Metz and wait for relief – risking the loss of his entire army. Or he can attempt a breakout while the Germans are still overstretched from their long offensive and have not yet rallied their full strength – possibly saving his army, at the cost of handing the Germans control of a major industrial area. For now, Bazaine opts to attempt a breakout, but first he’s going to take a breather. His men are exhausted from days of constant fighting. Morale is low, and while Metz may be surrounded by the enemy, it’s a relatively modern fortress city, and his men are safe behind its walls.

        -On the Prussian side, Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke is eager to exploit his army’s successes, mostly because of his overall strategy for a quick war. If Bazaine’s army breaks out of the Metz pocket, it can reunite with the rest of the French army and once again pose a serious threat to the Germans. He wants to keep his men on the move and advance further into the French interior, with Bazaine’s army, called the Army of the Rhine, trapped to his East in the city of Metz, while Moltke deals with General MacMahon’s army further to the West. But as aggressive as Moltke is, even he knows that his men need to take a breather. Discipline is starting to break down, with cranky, tired men snapping at each-other and sometimes at their officers. This lack of discipline is even creeping into the higher ranks. In more than one of the previous days’ battles, a Prussian officer has ignored orders to wait for reinforcements and attacked recklessly, losing many men. Reluctantly, Moltke puts the brakes on his offensive. In a letter written the day after the Battle of Gravelotte, he says:

        “After the events of the last few days it is needful and possible to give the troops sufficient rest and to bring up reserves to fill up the gaps caused by our losses. It is also requisite that the armies should keep abreast during the further advance towards Paris, in order to be able to confront in sufficient strength the new formations which are assembling probably at Châlons.”

        -Moltke orders several thousand men to form up outside Metz and keep the French from breaking out, but not to engage them. A few thousand more are assigned to mop up any French soldiers left outside the fortress city, while the rest are redeployed for a march West. So it’s not like the men get the day off, but only a few of them have to fight and most of them don’t have to march very far.

        -As for Moltke’s guess that the French are assembling a new army at Chalons, he’s correct. Chalons is located to the West of the German army, about halfway across France going East to West, but still well North of Paris, close to the Belgian border. Napoleon III and General MacMahon have assembled the rest of the French Army there, and have dubbed this army the Army of Chalons, to complement Bazaine’s besieged Army of the Rhine. It’s a good location. They’re close enough to the German frontier to attack the invaders head on if Moltke decides to stay put in the vicinity of Metz. If he decides to advance further into France, then no matter which way he advances, this Army of Chalons will be able to attack into his supply lines, relieve the Army of the Rhine, and trap the entire German Army deep in French territory. By threatening Moltke from this direction, Napoleon III and General MacMahon are forcing the Germans to deal with them, and while both the Emperor and his military leaders have made some terrible decisions in this war, rallying their forces at Chalons is a solid choice.

        -Well, sort of. Napoleon and MacMahon have actually been at Chalons for a couple of days at this point, since before Bazaine’s defeats at the Battles of Vionville and Gravelotte. They had originally been rallying for a retreat towards Paris, intending to block the German advance on their capital while Bazaine tried to outflank the Germans. Now that Bazaine has been beaten and trapped, MacMahon vacillates several times between marching to relieve the Army of the Rhine and retreating towards Paris as planned, but he doesn’t have any clear direction.

-See, the French military leadership is a mess. Napoleon III is depressed and has fallen into a mental funk, convinced that a French defeat is inevitable. It’s hard to say how much of this is due to the opium, but he’s not in a good state. Worse, his men don’t respect him. Not a soldier by trade, Napoleon travels with a large coach and a wagonload of luggage, and the troops have started referring to him as “Emperor Baggage” – in at least one recorded case, right in front of him. Napoleon has even suggested returning to Paris to run the civilian government, a position in which he believes he could be more useful. But Empress Eugenie has convinced him to stay in the field, arguing that if he returns to Paris, the people will see it as cowardice and revolt. After the recent military failures, the Empress, who is running the civilian government in Napoleon’s absence, has appointed a new Prime Minister, and that guy has made Field Marshal Bazaine Commander-in-Chief of the French Army. So while Patrice de MacMahon is commander of the Army of Chalons, he’s still subordinate to Bazaine, and after the Battle of Gravelotte, communications from Bazaine are cut off. Nobody at Chalons hears anything from him for four days, until finally, on August 22nd, a messenger arrives on horseback with a letter from Bazaine saying that he’s going to attempt a breakout towards the city of Sedan, located along the Belgian border near the border with Germany. The implications are clear. MacMahon must march the Army of Chalons east and try to link up with the Army of the Rhine at Sedan. Then, together, they can force the Germans out of France.

MacMahon’s march east proves harder than anticipated. Ideally, he would spread his army out into smaller groups and screen that force with cavalry for scouting purposes, but he can’t do that. The French are entirely reliant on a single railway line for supplies in this part of the country, so the entire army has to march along the railway line on a single road. Instead of striking hard at the German army, forcing Moltke to respond before he’s ready, and driving quickly towards Bazaine’s army, MacMahon’s Army of Chalons winds lazily eastwards over the course of a week, giving Moltke plenty of time to rally a response.

        -On August 23rd, as the French are just beginning to leave Chalons, Moltke is sending out his own cavalry patrols. Prussian dragoons ride out to observe the French movements, their leather coats providing meagre protection against a day-long downpour. The speed with which the German army is moving is remarkable. Even while they’re quote-unquote “resting,” the Germans are busy bringing crucial supplies to the front. The closest direct rail link to the German interior is in the far northeast of France, to the east of Metz. To bring supplies any further, quartermasters have to use horse drawn wagons. Engineers even build a railway spur several miles further into France to help meet the army’s massive freight demands, but it’s built in a hurry, without a proper railbed, and the rainy weather has made the ground soft, so trains have to creep forward at a walking pace to avoid damaging the rails and potentially derailing themselves. But compared to the almost lazy pace at which MacMahon is moving his army in from the west, the Germans are on a whole nother level.

        -Moltke expects the Army of Chalons to retreat towards Paris as the French had originally planned. His reasoning is that while the army is numerous and well-equipped, it’s made up of a mix of new recruits and men who have just been beaten in a series of battles. Morale in MacMahon’s army is terrible, and it would be wise to get them to the rear, protect the French capital, and march forward from a strong position to beat the Germans, while counting on Field Marshal Bazaine’s Army of the Rhine to literally hold down the fort in Metz. It’s what Moltke would do. But he doesn’t appreciate the French government’s desperate need for a win, and its need – for political reasons – to protect the dignity and safety of Field Marshal Bazaine who, for all his flaws as a general, is fiercely loyal to Napoleon III and the Bonaparte family, and is a key political ally.

        -Because of this assumption, when Prussian cavalry scouts first report back from Chalons and tell Moltke that the French have abandoned the city, he thinks MacMahon’s army has marched south. So as he’s deploying his army, he’s preparing to move almost directly west towards Chalons, force a battle on the road to Paris, and set up an easy takeover of the French capital. He can smell the end of the war. Moltke is bringing as many men to the front as he can, and he decides that instead of trying to blitz the defenses at the city of Metz, he’s going to lay siege to the place, so he starts bringing in heavy siege artillery – heavy, high-caliber, long-range cannons – that are designed to beat down even the toughest defenses. With these guns and an ever-growing network of complex trench systems around the city, Moltke plans to tie down Bazaine and his Army of the Rhine with nearly 200,000 men of his own, then take what’s left – about another 200,000 men – west to face MacMahon. So all the German troops shuffle around the local road network, preparing for a march west, often standing around for hours on muddy roads with little protection from the constant downpour. So much for getting a little rest.

        -The next day, August 24th, Moltke gets his first inkling that something is wrong. News arrives from London, speaking of unconfirmed reports in the Paris press that General MacMahon is marching towards Metz. Without any confirmation, Moltke hedges his bets, ordering his men, who are now already marching west, to turn towards the northwest, marching not towards Chalons, but towards Rheims, even closer to the Belgian border. He doesn’t turn his army all the way north, but he makes this little concession in case MacMahon is trying to make an end run behind him. Moltke’s army continues in this direction, spread out along a broad front, moving slowly with cavalry out ahead, probing for the enemy, still not sure where MacMahon has gone. Later that day, the 25th, another dispatch arrives – this time an actual bundle of Paris newspapers in which reporters talk all about General MacMahon’s heroic march towards Metz. One newspaper even says specifically that General MacMahon has already left Rheims and is moving further northwest, hugging the frontiers of Belgium and Luxembourg to sneak around the Germans. If this is true, it means the Germans need to turn their army even further north, and they need to do it immediately, otherwise they’re going to be outflanked. If it’s false and the Germans turn north, it means MacMahon could be slipping past them on the way to Paris. So, is this report in the Paris newspapers disinformation? Moltke does not know. He has to take his best guess.

-On the evening of the 25th, Moltke sends orders to the man at the tip of the spear – the Crown Prince of Saxony, who commands the men in the vanguard, including the scout cavalry. He tells the Crown Prince that he is to turn north immediately, unless he sees evidence that MacMahon is marching towards Paris, in which case he is to ignore this order. Michael Howard writes:

        “The Prince did not hesitate. He decided to start the movement without waiting for his cavalry reports, and at once the orders went out for his four infantry corps to wheel round to the north. Next day Moltke confirmed them. The Army of the Meuse was to advance north into the Argonne, carrying three days’ provisions and leaving behind all baggage not absolutely necessary.”

        -Quintin Barry writes:

        “For Moltke, the decision had still not been easy. In any circumstances, to plunge into the hilly and heavily wooded Argonne and thus disrupt the careful supply arrangements made on the basis of a march on Paris, was a risky move. To take the decision on the basis, not of reports of the enemy’s whereabouts coming directly from his cavalry reconnaissances but of newspapers, speeches and overseas telegrams, which was all he had to go on, was a considerable gamble. The great wheel to the north had begun.”

This maneuver, known as the “great wheel to the north,” the “great right turn,” and other variations on those terms, is one of the most impressive logistical feats in military history. Moltke takes an army of 200,000 men and basically turns them on a dime, along with their entire supply train, to outflank an enemy that’s already beating him to the punch in an effort to outflank him. The Germans pull it off, and on the evening of the 26th, Saxon cavalry clash with French cavalry, and Moltke has found his enemy. This incident also causes the local French commander to panic, deploy all his men in defensive positions, and waste valuable time, which holds up the entire French army’s march.

        -Once the Germans are on his tail, MacMahon turns his army north, making for the town of Sedan and hoping to fight a defensive battle. But once again, politics intervene, and faced with the real prospect of revolution in the ranks if he abandons the Army of the Rhine, he turns back east. This little zig-zag wastes more valuable time, and ruins any chance the Army of Chalons might have had of making an end-run around the Germans. Instead, on August 30th, Prussian, Saxon, and Bavarian troops clash with elements of the Army of Chalons near the town of Beaumont. The French are beaten back, with losses of more than 7,500 men to the Germans’ 3,400. This forces MacMahon’s hand again, and he falls back northwest towards Sedan, hoping to put some distance between himself and the Germans, resupply his exhausted men, and whip them into fighting condition.

        -60 miles to the southeast, Field Marshal Bazaine is finally, finally, trying to break out of the Metz pocket and march towards MacMahon. Geoffrey Wawro goes into great detail on what Bazaine has been up to, but the short version is “nothing.” Wawro writes of the Field Marshal:

        “His army, blundering from one defeat to the next, was crumbling from within, a fact confirmed by Bazaine’s own visits to the troops, and letters received from officers. On 24 August, one French officer wrote: ‘Our troops need severe discipline; far too many are looters… or stragglers…, they sneak out of camp and have begun to defy their NCOs, complaining that they lack things: orders, food, wine, or ammunition.’ Even normally steady NCOs had begun to defy their superiors. On 23 August, a drunken sergeant of the French 63rd Regiment, scolded by his sergeant major, shakily raised his Chassepot and shot him dead… Local mayors complained of rampant crime committed by French troops; one demanded ‘protection against marauding soldiers, who commit[ed] thefts, rapes, plunder gardens, and use ladders to climb into locked houses.’ Besides the moral deficit, there were the obvious material ones: the Prussians had cut Bazaine’s principal aqueducts after the battle of Gravelotte, stopping the flow of potable water to the fortified camp. The Army of Metz and its 12,000 wounded would now have to drink from the semi-polluted Moselle, and suffer the consequences. Only strict rationing would extend the fortress’s food more than a month, yet rationing – imposed even as the troops were ordered to increase their labors on the forts, battery positions and terraces of Metz – would erode the morale and fighting quality of the troops, and accelerate the spread of illness.”

        -The “semi-polluted Moselle” Wawro refers to is the Moselle River, which converges with the Seille River near the edge of Metz. He goes through all kinds of interesting ways Bazaine could maneuver his army along one of those rivers and get away from the Prussians, link up with MacMahon, or even break north and wreak havoc in the German rear. Instead, he does nothing. According to future accounts from his subordinates, he doesn’t even tell them that General MacMahon is trying to relieve the city, despite having gotten word that the Army of Chalons is on its way. He argues – and most of his generals agree with him – that the Army of the Rhine only has enough ammunition for one major battle, so there’s no point in trying to break out. Better to maintain themselves as a force in being – a constant threat in the German rear that Helmuth von Moltke can’t ignore. The problem is that Metz is only provisioned for a garrison of 20,000 men. Bazaine’s 150,000 men are about to eat through that entire supply in only a month.

        -On August 30th, he finally tries to break out. The Germans haven’t totally surrounded Metz yet, so he orders his men to march north, following the Moselle River back towards German territory. They even manage to capture some hills that provide cover along the road. This march north would have allowed Bazaine to attack the German supply lines, forcing Moltke to retreat and face him instead of MacMahon. He also could have cut west and made a beeline for the Belgian border to link up with MacMahon directly. We’ll never know, because the next day, the 31st, German troops start firing on his men while they’re on the march. Rather than fight, Bazaine immediately orders a retreat back into Metz. There will be no breakout. The Army of the Rhine and Metz’s civilians are well and truly under siege, pounded relentlessly by German artillery, soon to be surrounded completely by 200,000 troops, and with less than a month of food to spare.

        -As for the Army of Chalons, Patrice de MacMahon and Napoleon III now find themselves trapped near the town of Sedan, pinned between the Belgian border and two of Moltke’s German army groups. They have no choice but to stand and fight. The fate of the French Empire is now in their hands.

CHAPTER SIX: THE LAST BONAPARTE

When General Patrice de MacMahon withdraws his army to Sedan, he’s not planning a desperate last stand. He’s just trying to get some space so his men can take a breather. Instead, he finds himself surrounded, which give him two options. The first is to fight a defensive battle, force the Germans to assault him on favorable ground, and hope to beat them off. The second is to attempt a breakout – attack the encircling Germans at a single point, punch a hole in their lines, and lead his army through to link up with Field Marshal Bazaine. Rather than deploy his men with one of those strategies in mind, MacMahon decides to keep his options open and use a more flexible deployment and, by trying to do two things at once, MacMahon only manages to do two things badly. Let me explain.

        -Unlike Metz, Sedan is not a modern fortress. It’s a medieval castle that’s been upgraded several times over the years, surrounded by some outer defenses that are a relic of the 17th century wars of religion. Even so, it’s a strong, defensible position. The castle, with its formidable stone curtain wall, sits on the banks of the River Meuse. The river forms a strong defensive barrier to the west and northwest. To the southwest, where it curves away from the city, there’s some low-lying cropland that French Army engineers flood on August 31st, creating a near-impassible marsh to protect that side of Sedan.

        -The river flows up from the southeast, and it’s from this direction that the Germans are coming – one army group on each side of the river. The Germans on the northeastern bank are marching in a broad arc, with their outermost scout cavalry as far as 85 miles away, brushing the Belgian frontier, making sure the French aren’t trying to sneak past them. When they get into the area of Sedan on August 31st, these Germans run into a series of ridgelines that protect the eastern side of Sedan. General MacMahon has deployed the bulk of his men along these ridges, allowing the French artillery to pound the incoming Germans and stymieing any potential assault. If the Moltke was hoping to attack Sedan directly, he’ll have to think twice. An attack here, now, would only result in a humiliating defeat and tremendous German casualties. MacMahon knows this, which is why he’d stopped here to regroup. He believes this is a strong defensive position where Moltke won’t dare to attack him directly.

-But Moltke doesn’t attack Sedan from the southeast, across those ridges. The second German army group, the one on the southwestern bank, marches past Sedan. They don’t attack across the river and the marsh and assault the stone fortifications. They march right past the city and cross the River Meuse on the other side, and this is where MacMahon really screws up, because for as long as Helmuth von Moltke has been leading the Prussian army, the Prussians and now the entire North German Confederation have been using these tactics of rapid deployment and envelopment and MacMahon looks at his situation, realizes that the Germans could just – you know – go around him, and he treats it almost as an afterthought. Some French engineers are sent out on August 31st to blow up some bridges to the west of Sedan, but their dynamite isn’t where it’s supposed to be, so they have to march back to get more dynamite, and by the time they get close to the bridges a second time, Prussian scouts are already in the area. They have to fall back, so they can’t blow the bridges, so while one German army seals up any route of retreat to the east, another German army now wraps around Sedan from the north.

-Geoffrey Wawro describes the scene at Donchery, the village where the Prussians have just taken the bridges:

“From high ground on the left bank of the Meuse, Moltke could see the entire French camp on the other side. ‘Now we have them in a mousetrap,’ Moltke assured the king late on 31 August. As he spoke, troops of the XI Corps were crossing the Meuse and pulling up MacMahon’s only westbound railway. In Donchery, hungry Prussians swarmed joyously into abandoned French supply trains to feast on their contents: sausages, hams, bread, butter, jams, sugar, sardines in oil, red and white wines, and cases of champagne. For many, this would be their last supper. On the grassy slope above Frenois, Prussian enlisted men were staking out a luxurious enclosure, where the King of Prussia, Bismarck, and Moltke would invite the princes of Germany, the foreign attaches and the international press corps to watch the trap snap shut on 1 September.”

-This doesn’t have to spell disaster for the French army. Patrice de MacMahon still has an opportunity to salvage the situation. He could try to break out, now, and make a drive for Metz, but he doesn’t want to do that because his men are exhausted. Alternatively, as some of his subordinates advise, MacMahon could deploy some men on a ridge a few miles north of Sedan. This tall, wide ridge commands a view of the entire area, and would be a formidable obstacle to the enveloping Germans. Some French troops on that ridge, armed with Chassepots and a handful of Mitrailleuses, might even ruin Moltke’s day. MacMahon overrules his subordinates, instead ordering them to deploy the entire army within a 15-mile triangle to the east and northeast of the city. To be fair, this keeps all the French troops in one area, including the guys who are defending that eastern set of ridges. But all of the ridges the French are now deployed on are surrounded by taller ridges that nobody is occupying. That empty ground is like a magnet for any halfway-competent Prussian artillery commander, leading one of MacMahon’s junior generals, August Ducrot, to argue: “Nous sommes dans un pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés,” meaning “We are in a chamber pot, about to be shitted upon.”

In the wee hours of September 1st, Napoleon III finally overrides General MacMahon and orders the Army of Chalons to break out of the encirclement. Their rallying point is the village of Bazeilles to the southeast of Sedan, on the banks of the River Meuse. The idea is to break through the German lines there, using the river as a shield for the army’s right flank. Once they break out, they can either retreat towards Paris or march out to save Field Marshal Bazaine, but they’ll have options. Unfortunately, the Germans have chosen that same spot, the village of Bazeilles, to launch their initial attack. The fighting commences at four in the morning on September 1st, when a Bavarian infantry regiment storms across a railway bridge to attack the town on foot.

        -The attack is launched earlier than planned, probably as a matter of honor. The unit’s commander had been accused of cowardice at an earlier battle, a common accusation thrown at non-Prussian officers. One way to beat that accusation is to do something uncontroversially brave, so the Bavarians attack at four in the morning, without proper support from other nearby troops.

        -Michael Howard describes the scene in almost poetic terms:

        “It was not yet light, and a cold mist lay heavily over the Meuse valley. The French pickets on the river-bank had withdrawn, and the Bavarians, swarming across the railway and the pontoon bridges, were able to penetrate deep into the village before any alarm was given. Then in the darkness fighting began. Bazeilles was skillfully barricaded, and its defenders, the Marines of Lebrun’s corps, were the finest troops in the Army of Châlons. Ensconced in the solid stone houses, enthusiastically if unwisely abetted by the inhabitants, they fought with bitter determination. The village was blazing: to the fires started by shellfire were added those deliberately lit by both sides to smoke out their enemies; and the attempts of the villagers to help the defense brought down on them the fury of the enraged Bavarians. All civilians found with arms in their hands were shot at once, and it is unlikely that the troops were nice in their distinctions. It was thus a significant as well as a ferocious engagement. Had Moltke realized it, there was emerging, out of the funeral pyre of the Imperial French Army, a far more formidable enemy which was to try his talents even more highly: the French People in Arms.”

        -Despite the heroic efforts of its inhabitants, the Bavarians eventually take the village of Bazeilles, as more and more German troops come into the line along the eastern side of the battlefield. Saxon infantry move in on the Bavarians’ right flank, although they’re slowed down for about three hours by French Zouaves, expert skirmishers who hold them at bay, making it hard for them to get into range with their needle guns. Further up the line to the north, Prussian infantry are also getting into the fight.

        -This is all happening earlier than Moltke would have liked. His mousetrap is still swinging shut. Those troops who just crossed the river on the other side of Sedan are not fully deployed. This might have given the French an opportunity to break out in that direction, but disaster has struck the French army.

        -Early in the morning, General MacMahon had ridden out from Sedan to personally oversee the fighting in Bazeilles. Almost immediately, a shell had exploded nearby, severely wounding his leg, and forcing him to fall back. He’s so badly wounded, in fact, that he hands over command of his army to General Auguste Ducrot, the guy who had made the comment about the chamber pot. Ducrot was only the general in charge of the troops around Bazeilles, and he knows nothing about the deployment of the rest of the French troops. So he’s just been put in charge of the French army at the Battle of Sedan, and he doesn’t even know where most of his guys are.

        -General Ducrot takes some time getting up to speed, all while also trying to fight back the Bavarians around Bazeilles. When he’s been fully briefed on his army’s situation, he does exactly what I said a smart general would do in this situation, which is to order a breakout to the northwest, where the Germans have not yet fully deployed. There’s a very good chance this might have worked, and the French could have made an end run around the Germans and escaped towards Paris right in front of Moltke’s hilltop of dignitaries. But at this moment, another officer arrives, waving a piece of paper. This man is General Emmanuel Wimpffen, and the piece of paper says that he’s just been dispatched from Paris to take command of the army from General MacMahon. WImpffen comes in, countermands MacMahon’s orders, and instead orders the army to stand and fight. So right when a crucial decision needs to be made, there are two generals bickering over command of the army.

-And where is Napoleon III? He’s actually being heroic, riding around near the front lines despite the intense pain from his kidney stones and gallstone. Unlike the original Napoleon, Napoleon III has never been known as a military leader, preferring to wield political power and let his generals lead the army. But at the Battle of Sedan, he seems to channel the ghost of his legendary uncle, encouraging his men and intentionally putting himself in harm’s way in order to inspire them. Unfortunately, Napoleon III doesn’t channel his uncle’s knack for leadership. He’s not back at headquarters to settle the dispute between Generals Ducrot and Wimpffen.

-Some time around nine in the morning, the two men come to an agreement. Too many Germans have gotten around behind the French army for a withdrawal to the northwest to be practical. At the same time, holding their ground would lead to encirclement. So they decide to break out to the southeast again, through the badly-wounded Bavarians at Bazeilles, which basically means they’re going back to the original plan.

-By now, it’s too late. Prussian artillerymen have started occupying those tall ridgelines to the north, and under their covering fire, Prussian infantry are now pushing the French off their own, lower ridgelines. The French army is starting to collapse from the north before enough men can be gathered in the southeast to break out of the circle. Moltke’s trap has snapped shut.

-German artillery shells scream in from every direction, turning the small, close-knit French defensive triangle into a death trap. The artillerymen aren’t always too picky about their targets, either. In one incident, a Bavarian regiment starts taking friendly fire, and they send a messenger to the artillerymen to tell them to stop and the artillery officer says to the messenger: “We’ve dragged these damn cannon all over France without taking a shot at anything; now we’re going to fire, and no one’s going to stop us.”

-A little friendly fire doesn’t stop them. The Germans move in methodically, first pounding the French with their long-range Krupp artillery, then rushing in with their skirmish lines, and finally an aggressive charge. The French try to hold their ground. In some areas, local commanders have ordered their men to dig in, and the Mitrailleuses are now being deployed in the trenches like prototype World War I machineguns. This makes them far more effective than they were earlier in the war when they were positioned far back with the artillery, but they’re still bulky and awkward to aim.

-Despite the French efforts, the Germans keep advancing and closing the circle. With units retreating and redeploying in every direction, the battlefield – at least on the French side – turns into chaos, a bunch of small local engagements by terrified regiments against a single, unified adversary. In one scene, almost 800 French cavalrymen are killed when they charge three times uselessly against German artillery and are mowed down by waves of gunfire. Geoffrey Wawro describes another such scene, which turns out to be decisive:

“At noon, 200 Prussian and Saxon guns raked the Bois de la Garenne from end to end, killing hundreds of French fugitives and driving the rest into the green downs south of the wood. As the French emerged in the open, the German batteries followed them. German battery commanders had maneuvered their guns into positions of textbook effectiveness, gaining a tactical advantage far more likely to be illustrated on a blackboard than ever actually achieved in the chaos of battle. On this sector alone, the Germans had brought 200 guns into action – as many as Confederate gunners had massed at Fredericksburg eight years earlier – and they ranged them across the front and the flanks of the French bunched densely in the woods. Once the Germans began firing, the French could find no cover anywhere. They were hit with a storm of shells whistling in from an arc of ninety degrees. A hill might shield French soldiers from shells fired from one direction, but they lay naked to projectiles smashing in from other angles. Worse, shellfire burst among the trees, adding jagged splinters to the shrapnel and shell fragments tearing into French units. The one-sided bombardment exhilarated the German gunners, who drove in for the kill against no resistance. For their helpless French targets, who watched the German gun flashes draw closer and closer, the sights, sounds, and shocks of this artillery massacre became a horror beyond description.”

-The survivors of the forest massacre run back to the town of Sedan, where the castle’s garrison has locked the doors and won’t let anyone in. With nowhere to go, with morale already at a breaking point, the survivors start rioting in the surrounding town. Some of the garrison are also rioting inside the castle, looting anything that isn’t nailed down. Discipline has now totally collapsed.

General Wimpffen wants to continue fighting, but Napoleon decides that it’s useless. No army in this condition could expect to win, and any continued fighting would only endanger the civilian population. Rather than oversee the massacre of thousands of his own people, Napoleon III runs up the white flag. General Wimpffen tries to overrule him, and even orders some reserve infantry to 7launch another attack on the Germans. But the Germans send a couple of officers to the castle to see what’s going on, and when they arrive, they’re met by a messenger from the Emperor himself, carrying a letter addressed to King Wilhlelm. It reads:

        “Monsieur mon Frere,

“Having been unable to die in the midst of my troops, it only remains for me to place my sword in Your Majesty’s hands. I am Your Majesty’s good brother, Napoléon.”

-A few hours later, a German messenger returns with a response, signed by Wilhelm but actually dictated by Bismarck:

“Monsieur mon Frére,

“Regretting the circumstances in which we find ourselves, I accept Your Majesty’s sword, and I beg you to name one of your officers furnished with full powers from you to negotiate the capitulation of the army, which has fought so bravely under your orders. For my part, I have designated General Moltke for this purpose. I am Your Majesty’s good brother, Wilhelm.”

-Surrender negotiations stretch into the following morning, but eventually the French Army agrees to total surrender. For the men, this means going from life as a French soldier to life in a German POW camp. For Napoleon III, it means temporary imprisonment by the Prussians. He did, after all, start this war. That’s what Bismarck and the diplomats keep saying, right?

-For Napoleon personally, the Battle of Sedan is a humiliation. He doesn’t get to meet with King Wilhelm, an equal. Instead, he meets with Bismarck, who points out that General Wimpffen is commander of the Army of Chalons, Field Marshal Bazaine is Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, and Empress Eugenie is the current head of state. Napoleon has no negotiating power, so after a brief chat with Bismarck, Emperor Baggage and his baggage wagon are shuffled off to Germany to be held prisoner in King Wilhelm’s summer palace.

-For the French Army, the defeat at Sedan is a total disaster. The Germans had lost fewer than 1,400 killed, with another 8,500 wounded or missing. The French had lost more than 3,200 dead, along with nearly 15,000 wounded and a whopping 104,000 captured, along with 6,000 horses and 419 artillery pieces captured. The Army of Chalons has been wiped off the map. The Army of the Rhine remains trapped in Metz, and there’s nothing but open highway between Paris and the German Army.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENSE

The war had begun on July 19th. By September 2nd, just 45 days later – 6 ½ weeks – France has lost several major battles, most of its standing army, and its Emperor. Back in Paris, Empress Eugenie’s regency government lasts all of two days. Really, it lasts one day, because news of the army’s defeat and Napoleon III’s capture reaches Paris on September 3rd 1870, and on September 4th 1870, the Empress is running away from a mob, sneaking out of the Tuileries Palace through a back entrance and escaping in a cab. Napoleon had surrendered to spare his troops from certain slaughter, but rightly or wrongly, the French public views the surrender at Sedan as cowardice. The Bonaparte Dynasty itself has lost legitimacy, and no longer has any support. After a brief stay in hiding at the house of her dentist, Empress Eugenie escapes to Britain. Prince Louis-Napoleon also flees to England where, in a bit of historical irony, he and his mother are reunited at Hastings. So, who is in charge? Does France descend into revolutionary anarchy? Does some general impose martial law and attempt to establish a military government?

        -Neither. France is saved by one of its few remaining republican trappings, the Legislative Assembly. On September 3rd, when word first arrives of the debacle at Sedan, republican mobs take to the streets, storm the legislative chambers, and haul several liberal legislators to the Paris City Hall, the Hotel de Ville, to proclaim a new republican government.

        -Under other circumstances, these liberal politicians might have jumped at the opportunity to build a new French republic, but now is not the time for a revolution. The Germans have just swept General MacMahon’s army from the field and are marching on Paris. If France is to be saved, all of its citizens will have to put aside their political differences and work together. So rather than establish some revolutionary government, the legislature instead establishes a new unity government on September 4th.

        -This unity government, dubbed the Government of National Defense, welcomes politicians of all political stripes, so long as they’re not Bonapartists. Liberal republicans and proto-Communists will serve alongside old-school monarchist supporters of the old royal houses of Bourbon and Orleans. Officially, this new French state is a republic, but there’s no time to call for elections, so the legislature instead appoints a President and cabinet, most of whom are actually monarchists. The new President, for example, is a General named Louis Trochu, who had been the military governor of Paris until the collapse of Napoleon’s government just one day prior.

        -So powerful are the forces of French nationalism that they overcome all political divisions. In the old days, you might have seen elements of various political factions try to cut a deal with the Germans. An Orleanist candidate for the throne might go to King Wilhelm and offer him some land concessions in exchange for his support as the new King of France. This kind of thing used to happen all the time, but no family alliance, no ancient claims of ducal authority or land ownership, will put an end to the French resistance. Not now; not in 1870; not when the French people, channeling their inner Frankish spirit, are united in defending the French homeland against foreign invaders.

        -The closest anyone comes to breaking ranks is the far left, and even that isn’t very close. On the evening of September 5th, the day after the establishment of the Government of National Defense, the famous part-time politician and full-time novelist Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, returns from a 20-year political exile and is greeted at the train station by cheering crowds. He tries to travel to the Legislative Assembly, but the streets are packed with crowds of admirers, and he has to stop four times to give speeches. It looks like he may be trying to launch some kind of coup, and some of his supporters even try to grab his carriage’s horses and force him to go to the Hotel de Ville and declare his own government, but he refuses. Victor Hugo is, before anything else, a Frenchman, and he tells his supporters:

        “No, citizens! I have not come to overthrow the Provisional Government of the Republic, but to support it.”

        -In the weeks and months ahead, Victor Hugo will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Government of National Defense, although he will do so as a private citizen, in his capacity as a what we today would call an influencer. He writes a few articles in support of the war, but most of his support comes in the forms of speeches and public appearances, where he advocates fiercely for the war effort.

Meanwhile, the Government of National Defense prepares for a siege. The city’s defenders include the regular Paris military garrison, along with troops who had escaped from the Battle of Sedan, a few thousand sailors and marines, and two fresh army corps that have just been put together. These men are well-armed, but they’re also raw recruits who will be of limited use until they’ve gotten some experience. This brings the regular army forces to 100,000. Additional forces include the National Guard, made up of all male citizens aged 25 to 35, thousands of untrained and undisciplined rural conscripts called Gardes Mobiles, and a number of volunteer groups including British and Polish expatriate organizations. Recreational sports leagues are forming their own volunteer regiments. Even a number of Paris journalists have temporarily put down their fountain pens and picked up rifles to defend their country. All these irregular forces come to more than 400,000 men, which when combined with the regular army, brings the number of Paris’ defenders to over 500,000.

        -On September 13th, with the Germans closing in on the city, President/General Trochu orders these men assembled for a military review, which doubles as a show of force to reassure Paris’ more jittery residents. It works. In his book The Siege of Paris, 20th century British writer Robert Baldick quotes 19th century French writer Edmond de Goncourt, who was present at the review. He writes:

        “All of a sudden, in the noise of the drums, a great silence fell and men’s eyes met as in a promise to die; then from this concentrated enthusiasm there came a great cry, a cry from the breast of ‘Vive la France! Vive la République! Vive Trochu!’ greeting the quick gallop of the General and his escort.

“The march-past began of the National Guards, with their rifles decorated with dahlias, roses and bows of red ribbon—an endless march-past in which the Marseillaise, murmured rather than sung, left in the distance, behind the slow march of the men, something like the pious, sonorous strains of a male prayer.

“And at the sight of those grey beards mingled with beardless chins, those frock-coats side by side with smocks, at the sight of those fathers, some of whom were holding by the hand their little girls who had slipped into the ranks, at the sight of this amalgam of working-men and tradesmen turned soldiers who were ready to die together, one wondered whether one of those miracles might not occur which come to the help of nations which have faith.”

-Trochu himself isn’t quite so confident, and plans to fight a defensive battle. A few lines after the last quote from Edmond de Goncourt, Robert Baldick quotes the President/General’s orders for the Gardes Mobiles on September 14th, which reads in part:

        “If the enemy, by a sudden onslaught or a surprise attack or through an open breach, penetrated the enceinte, he would come up against the barricades which are being planned and his leading forces would be thrown back by the successive attacks of ten reserve detachments.”

-So basically, most of Trochu’s army is less of an army than a semi-organized, heavily-armed mob, and they’re throwing up old-school revolutionary barricades and preparing for a street fight. The people are ready for it, amped up by yellow journalism like the following, published in a Paris newspaper on September 12th:

“In the church of Bazeilles, eighty people, mostly women and children, were burned alive, deliberately. These people were all unarmed and had believed that the sanctity of the place would protect them from the ferocity of the barbarians: not only was their hope deceived, but this horrible massacre took place in full daylight, and officers assisted in it; soldiers placed at the exits used their bayonets to prevent escape.”

-Nothing of the kind had never happened, nor had most of the other lurid stories of German atrocities, but the people of Paris are reading articles about things like Prussian troops intentionally shelling religious hospitals and sending troops into the smoldering ruins to rape any surviving nuns. Again, nothing like that is ever recorded outside of the Paris press, but the message is clear. The Germans are barbarians, raping and pillaging their way across the land, and the people of France must unite. Accurate or not, this message is effective in motivating the people of Paris and the irregular troops.

-Meanwhile, the 100,000-or-so French regular army troops are deployed in a ring of 16 modern forts that had been constructed in the 1840s. These forts, along with a thick, earth-fortified wall known as the Thiers Wall, named after former Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers, who had ordered the construction of both the wall and the forts. Together, the Thiers Wall and outlying forts form one of the most intimidating defensive systems ever constructed. And while there are gaps in the wall for the River Seine, a handful of canals, and several railway gates, these openings are themselves protected by the ring forts, and are now plugged up with barricades manned by motivated, if badly-trained, volunteers.

-As the Government of National Defense prepares its military, it also engages in a moral crusade. This hearkens back to the French Revolution, where revolutionaries like Maximilien Robespierre had tried to create what they called a Republic of Virtue. Once again, the political left and the right are united, because while liberals are calling for a re-establishment of virtue, conservative French Catholics are also calling for Paris to be purged of corruption so as not to bring down the wrath of God.

        -In his book The Siege of Paris, 1870-1871: A Political and Social History, Melvin Kranzberg writes:

        “The downfall of the Empire had as an immediate consequence a short period of disorder and lawlessness, but the growth in the organization of the Government of National Defense soon brought order out of the confusion. One of the first measures undertaken by the new regime was a gigantic ‘dragnet’ to purge Paris of the refugees from justice, gamblers, cheats, pimps, prostitutes, and other undesirable persons who abounded in the cosmopolitan capital. The city became relatively free from crime in the sense of murder, robbery, theft, and street brawls. But whether this was due to a moral regeneration brought about by the birth of the new Republic or simply to the constant presence of armed patrols of soldiers on the streets every night is a question which the republican chroniclers of the siege have never bothered to face.”

        -In the empty space left by all the vagrants, thieves, and prostitutes, Paris is now filled with sheep, more than a quarter of a million of them brought in from the surrounding countryside. Cows, chickens, and other livestock graze in the Luxembourg Gardens, while trains bring in load after load of grain, ammunition, and other essentials. Civilians are pressed into service as laborers, building temporary barriers across the River Seine, and even delving deep into the Paris Catacombs to block up passages that might lead to entrances outside the city.

        -Other than the gathering of food, most of this preparation proves unnecessary. While Otto von Bismarck wants to bombard Paris with artillery and force a quick French surrender, most of the military leadership disagrees with him and, for once, King Wilhelm overrules him, opting instead to surround Paris and prepare for a siege. As far as I know, no Prussian general seriously suggests storming the city.

        -The encirclement begins on September 15th, with German armies marching around Paris from both directions, taking the outer suburbs and cutting the railroad and telegraph lines. On September 18th, a German military command post is established at the Palace of Versailles – one that will soon become King Wilhelm’s personal headquarters. The next day, the last railroads are cut and the last suburbs are occupied. Paris is under siege by almost a quarter of a million German troops, and the Government of National Defense now finds itself trying to run a country without having any direct communications with anyone outside the capital.

        -They will eventually rectify this on October 7th when, after more than two weeks of siege, Minister of the Interior Leon Gambetta leaves the city by hot air balloon and manages to touch down in friendly territory. So while President/General Trochu and the rest of the government command Paris, Minister of the Interior Gambetta will now be responsible for running the rest of France and putting together a broader war of national defense. And by the way, Gambetta is a committed leftist, so the fact that not only is he working with the monarchists but he’s trusted to run half of the war effort, really goes to show you how unified this new unity government is.

I said a minute ago that nobody in France seriously tries to make any old-school dynastic deals with the Prussians, but there’s one exception, and that’s Field Marshal Bazaine, who is still technically Commander-in-Chief of the French military. Bazaine might be an incompetent coward who belongs nowhere near the army, but he is at least a loyal man. So when news arrives in Metz that the French Empire has fallen and Napoleon III is in exile, Bazaine, unlike other French generals, does not automatically commit himself to the new government. Instead, he tries to cut a deal with the Germans that will put someone from the house of Bonaparte back on the French throne – hopefully Napoleon III’s son, Louis-Napoleon.

        -I just called Bazaine an “incompetent coward,” and I stand by that. However, much of his behavior throughout the Franco-Prussian war can be explained by the fact that he doesn’t understand what kind of war this is. Field Marshal Bazaine’s entire plan has been to tie down a big chunk of the German army around Metz, which he has succeeded in doing. In a different kind of war – in a cabinet war – this would put him in a strong position to negotiate. After all, the war is costing the Prussians and the North German Confederation a lot of money. Even in the last two major wars – the Second Italian War of Independence and the Austro-Prussian War – neither side had been willing to accept a long, drawn-out conflict. Both sides had been willing to make some concessions rather than continue the war.

        -The Franco-Prussian War is not that kind of conflict – at least not the way the Germans see it. Bismarck has forged a working relationship with the Austrians and secured Prussia’s southern frontier. He has worked out a deal with the Russians to keep them out of Germany, and at any rate, despite its size, the Russian Army is so dysfunctional that it won’t pose a threat to the Prussians for a generation. But France… France is different. Since the French Revolution, France has been the undisputed champion of European land warfare. Even the fall of the original Napoleon hasn’t changed that, since it took the rest of Europe combined to take him down. In a one-on-one fight, France can take anybody, or at least that’s historically been the case.

        -Now, combine this with Napoleon III’s intentional strategy of shifting his foreign policy focus from the colonies to the continent, and you can begin to see the problem. France’s border with Spain lies at the Pyrenees mountains, a formidable geographic barrier. Even if Napoleon had wanted to expand in that direction, it would have been difficult. And given how much trouble the Spanish had given the original Napoleon, Napoleon III would probably not want to get involved there anyway. France also shares a mountainous border with Italy, and to the north of Italy, Switzerland is nothing but mountains. At the channel coast, France borders Belgium, but Belgium is protected by international treaty, so attacking them would mean war with all of Europe – again, not a great plan. But the border with Germany has some flat, low-lying areas that mark the western edge of the North European Plain – an enormous stretch of flat land ranging from the Franco-German border all the way across modern-day Germany, modern-day Poland, and all the way into modern-day Russia and Ukraine. If France is going to be an expansionist power, that’s the way they’re going to expand. Therefore France, in its current form, is an existential threat to the North German Confederation.

        -Field Marshal Bazaine doesn’t see this, or maybe he chooses not to see it. The Prussians do. During this time, there are serious debates in the Prussian leadership about what to do if the Government of National Defense offers them a peace deal. The consensus is that the Germans should only accept a settlement that severely weakens France, and that the French government is unlikely to offer major concessions. Prussian Minister of War Albrecht von Roon writes at the time:

        “We can, for the sake of our people and our security, conclude no peace that does not dismember France, and the French Government, whatever it may be, can for its peoples’ sake make no peace that does not preserve France’s inheritance intact. Therefrom necessarily follows the continuation of the war till the exhaustion of our forces.”

        -Field Marshal Bazaine’s feeble negotiations are nothing like what the Prussians are asking for. Taking a playbook from the monarchists in the French Revolution, he offers to team up with the Prussians, march on Paris, overthrow the Government of National Defense, and put Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte on the throne. With the monarchy restored, surely the French and the Prussians could come to a gentleman’s agreement over the border. This is a nonstarter for the Prussians, so negotiations go nowhere.

        -With General MacMahon’s army destroyed and the government under siege in Paris, Field Marshal Bazaine has little hope for relief, and the Siege of Metz takes its natural course. A second feeble attempt to break out of the city fails on October 7th and by October 20th 1870, food supplies run out, and the army will have to begin slaughtering its own horses to feed both the troops and the citizens. A week later, on October 27th, Field Marshal Bazaine surrenders the Army of the Rhine to the armies of the North German Confederation, and his men are sent to POW camps. As for the people of Metz, the Prussians immediately send a trainload of grain and cattle into the city, and only ever occupy it with a light garrison. Just like that, another large German army is free to act, and begins its march deeper into France. The Germans have won their initial invasion, but now the second phase of the war has begun – the war for national survival.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE LAST STAND OF THE PAPAL STATES

Before we talk about the rest of the war, I want to take a little detour, because France isn’t the only European country fighting for its survival at this time. Another, even older country also stands on the brink of destruction – the Papal States. If you’ll remember from the last few episodes, the political status of Rome has been a hot button issue for Italian nationalists for some time. For many in the Italian government, the existence of an independent Papal state is an insult to the very idea of Italian nationhood. Think of all the cities of Italy with their culture and history, and none of them can come close to the legacy of Rome. Without that legacy, Italy can never claim to be a nation in the same sense as, for example, France, whose people are willing to die where they stand rather than let a single German soldier enter Paris.

        -Until now, the Kingdom of Italy has had good reason not to attack Rome or try to annex it: the French garrison, which is pledged to protect the sovereignty of the Papal States against any invasion. Even if the Italian Army were to overrun the small garrison and fly the Italian flag over the Castel Sant’Angelo, it would still be an act of war against France, which is not an option for the Italians at this time. So King Victor Emmanuel II and his government have bided their time and waited for an opportunity.

        -With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, their opportunity arises. As we discussed earlier in the episode, Italian neutrality wasn’t always a given. Both France and Prussia had hoped to have Italy on their side in the run-up to the war. King Victor Emmanuel had wanted to side with France, but pro-Prussian and pro-neutrality factions in the government had kept him from taking any action whatsoever. Then, following his declaration of war against Prussia in July of 1870, Napoleon III had withdrawn the French garrison from Rome, as part of a broader decision to bring most overseas troops home to fight the Germans. The last of the 4,000-man garrison had departed on August 2nd. Everyone knows this leaves the Papal States defenseless should the Italians attack. Upon hearing that the French are pulling out, General Hermann Kanzler, commander of the Papal Army, says grimly: “We shall be crushed, but we shall do our duty.”

        -The Italians don’t attack right away, though. They want to see if the French are going to beat the Germans, first. As you may remember, the French have withdrawn their Roman garrison before, in 1866 when, under a treaty known as the September Convention, Napoleon III had handed over responsibility for Rome’s protection to King Victor Emmanuel. A year later, Giuseppe Garibaldi had led a revolutionary army into the Papal States in an attempt to annex Rome in the name of the Kingdom of Italy. The French had immediately returned their garrison to the city, Garibaldi had been beaten, and the whole incident had made the Italian government look weak and dishonorable. Point being, if they’re going to annex Rome, the Italians want to be extra sure that the French won’t come back and embarrass them again. They get that assurance on September 2nd, with the capture of Emperor Napoleon, and they get even more assurance when the Government of National Defense is formed the following day. With the French now in a state of total war against the Germans, they’re not in a position to protect the Pope any longer.

        -On September 5th 1870, the Italian cabinet votes unanimously to occupy the Papal States. As a last-ditch effort to ensure a peaceful occupation, as well as to provide some face-saving excuse for it, they dispatch Count Gustavo Ponza to Rome to negotiate. Even as the Italian Army mobilizes fifteen divisions – enough to obliterate the Papal Army in an afternoon – Ponza goes to Pope Pius IX not with a demand, but with an offer. He says that now that the French have left, the Papal States are in danger from anarchists and revolutionaries, and that King Victor Emmanuel has no choice but to send troops into Rome to prevent a revolution and ensure the Pope’s personal safety.

        -This is a thinly-veiled excuse. The two most dangerous Italian revolutionaries – Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini – are both already being detained by the Italian government, Mazzini in the city of Gaeta, and Garibaldi on his personal island of Caprera in the Mediterranean. Neither of them poses a serious threat to a Papal Army that still fields 13,000 men. Despite the Italian government’s clear military advantage and generous terms, Pius IX says no.

        -On the superficial level, it’s tough to understand why. If the Italians decide to invade, there’s not much the Papal Army can do to stop them. And if Pope Pius wants to retain complete freedom as head of the Catholic Church, there’s nothing in the Italian terms that would be incompatible with that. The government offers full diplomatic immunity for the Pope and all Papal diplomats, as well as full jurisdiction over the Leonine City – modern-day Vatican City. The government even offers to pay the Pope and senior Vatican officials’ salaries out of its own funds, to compensate them for the income lost by losing all of their land. So why does Pius IX turn down this offer and decide to make a hopeless last stand?

        -In his book Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes, the Kings, and Garibaldi’s Rebels in the Struggle to Rule Modern Italy, Brown University historian David Kertzer writes about a meeting between Count Ponza, the Italian diplomat, and Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, Pope Pius’ Secretary of State and the secular ruler of the Papal States in all but name. In this account, reconstructed from Antonelli’s diary, the Cardinal isn’t opposed to the Italian government’s offer on principle, but because there’s no way for the current government to guarantee that future governments will honor their agreement. What if some future Italian government decides to kick the Pope out of Rome altogether? Kertzer continues the scene, reconstructed from Cardinal Antonelli’s diary:

        “There followed a tense exchange in which Ponza tried to convince the cardinal that should a treaty with the Holy See be signed, future parliaments would view the papacy even more positively and the threat from revolutionaries would be greatly reduced. Antonelli rejected his arguments, turning the king’s attempt to join the fate of the monarchy and the pope on its head:        

“‘Let’s be frank, Signor Count. You cannot ignore the reason why it is the anarchists more than anyone else who are pushing for taking Rome. It is because they hope one day to be able to bury both the Papacy and the Monarchy here. Meanwhile, thank Heavens, in this little territory that has up to now been left to the Holy See, we find ourselves living in perfect tranquility, and in this way, I might add, the Pope’s continued independence offers, at the same time, a shield for the Monarchy.’

        “Antonelli contrasted Rome’s current peace with the upheavals that buffeted the Italian government, a result of its reliance on parliamentary democracy.

“‘Do you really think, Signor Count, that under such circumstances the time seems right for coming here with these proposals?’

“The count did what he could to hold his ground: ‘But, indeed, the Government hopes that the steps proposed here will offer a way out of the difficult situation in which it finds itself.’

“‘I, on the contrary,’ concluded the secretary of state, ‘tell you that with measures like the ones that they are proposing, your Government is going to create an ever more difficult situation. And so it is useless for us to waste any more time on this topic. Let the Florence Government do what it wants. For its part, the Holy See will not and cannot agree to actions that have been planned to its detriment.’”

-When Pope Pius himself meets with Count Ponza the following morning, he’s even more blunt, calling the Italian government “hypocrites” and “vipers.” If the Italian government is going to occupy Rome, they’ll have to do it by force.

This is fine with them. On September 11th 1870, five Italian Army divisions totaling 75,000 men cross the Papal frontier from multiple directions. For his part, Papal General Hermann Kanzler has ordered his men in the countryside not to resist that army. If, for some reason, they’re attacked by Garibaldian revolutionaries, the Pope’s men are to stand their ground, but if they’re attacked by royal troops, they’re to fall back to Rome in good order. This is all in keeping with Pope Pius’ plans. With no hope of holding onto Rome in the face of such odds, he has decided it would be wrong to throw away his men’s lives in a hopeless last stand. Instead, he has chosen to let the Italians take Rome, but only under protest. The idea is to make them attack the city and fight just enough of a battle to show the other countries of the world that the Pope had resisted, and that the Italian government had taken Rome by naked conquest.

        -Papal soldiers are also ordered to defend a few outlying points. In some cases, like the port city of Civitavecchia, the goal is the same as it is at Rome: to fire a few shots and make it clear they’re surrendering out of protest. In others, troops are ordered to hold key road or rail crossings as long as possible, to allow others to retreat. A few skirmishes are fought, including one in which the Italian Army bombards a group of Papal Zouaves at a medieval castle. The Zouaves – a multi-national force of volunteer light infantry – make the best they can of their meager defenses. Armed with ultra-modern Remington Rolling Block rifles, they only surrender when the castle begins to collapse, threatening the lives of some prisoners who are locked inside. The Zouaves are taken as prisoners of war and sent to Florence by train. The same is done with 500 more Zouaves at Civitavecchia. There, the Italian Navy had threatened to bombard the city, and the local Papal garrison commander had surrendered without a fight, going so far as to switch sides and join the Italian Army. Only the Zouaves had followed General Kanzler’s orders to fight, so they become prisoners.

        -On September 19th, the last Papal defenders slip through Rome’s gates to make their stand. It can’t last long. For the last several centuries, general consensus throughout the Christian world – including all of Europe – has held that the Pope should remain politically independent. As a result, the Papal States have not invested much in Rome’s defenses. In most places, the walls are too high and narrow to support modern artillery, so the defenders have to resort to piling up sandbags to mount guns at key locations. That’s about all they can manage on such short notice, but given the Pope’s plans, that’s all they should really need.

        -The next day, September 20th, the Italian commander, General Raffaele Cadorna, begins his assault, attacking all parts of the city at once, except for the Vatican, which he intentionally leaves untouched. In his book The Pope’s Legion: The Multinational Fighting Force that Defended the Vatican, American historian Charles A. Coulombe writes:

        “…the main event was Cadorna’s assault on the antique section of the wall between the Porta Portese and the Praetorian Camp—pierced in two places as it is by the Porta Pia and the Porta Salaria. Colonel Allet commanded over 1,000 Zouaves, carabinieri, line infantry and 16 guns. Facing him were Cadorna’s 30,000 men and 54 cannon. The latter opened fire all along the line; but as with Daudier’s guns, the skill of the papal artillerymen, seconded by the fire of Remington rifles all along the ramparts, forced the Italians to alter their positions several times. Even at 1,200 yards, the Remingtons were a threat to the enemy gunners. The bersaglieri charged with attacking the wall fell in great numbers under the withering fire of the Zouaves and their comrades.

“Nevertheless, numbers told. After four hours of fighting, the earthwork in front of the Porta Pia was an utter wreck, and both of its cannon were silenced. To the left of the Porta Pia, the ancient wall was finally breaking, huge chunks falling off with each barrage. On the Pincio, two officers and several Zouaves and gunners had been killed. The Italian artillery was busy widening the breach with their fire. Cadorna readied his men for the assault, dividing them into three columns—two for the breach, the third for the Porta Pia itself. Slowly, they advanced toward their chosen targets.”

-With the wall breached and columns of Italian troops advancing for the kill, a Papal dragoon rides out, waving a white flag. Other messengers are sent out at other parts of the wall, and for a few minutes, nobody is sure what’s going on, with some parts of the battlefield going silent while fighting continues in others, even stopping, re-starting, and stopping again in places. But eventually, the Papal defenders lay down their arms.

-At the end of the day, fewer than 50 Italian soldiers are killed, with less than 150 wounded. The Pope’s army has bled even less, with 19 killed and fewer than 70 wounded. Not all of these are even lost in combat. Charles A. Coulombe continues in his account of the battle:

“…the Italians rushed in firing, killing a few Zouaves who stood before them, weaponless. They tore their decorations and swords from them, and one Zouave officer was pulled off his horse. Don Alfonso de Bourbon, who had been at the Porta Pia, was able to hold on to his sword only by threatening to use it. It was much the same across the city.”

A vote is held on October 2nd to make the seizure of Rome legal. Pope Pius, now living in the old Leonine City, soon to be called Vatican City, forbids Catholics from voting in the referendum. This is a potential problem for the Italian government, which has to resort to bringing voters in on trains from other cities. Authorities distribute official voting cards that are pre-marked with a “yes” for annexation, foreigners are allowed to vote, and since you don’t have to turn over your voting card after your vote is cast, many people vote multiple times. In the end, there are 133,681 votes in favor of annexation to 1,507 votes against. One captured Papal Zouave, the Comte de Beauffort, witnesses the entire process, and says: “Surely the world had never before seen such incredible unanimity. The sheer absurdity almost makes one forget the gross imposture.”

        -Whatever its legitimacy, the vote is technically legal, and just like that, Rome becomes the new capital of Italy. The dreams of every Italian nationalist have been achieved, and Mazzini and Garibaldi have won. As for Pope Pius, we’ll get back to him in a little bit. For now, I want to follow the thread of this diversion back to our main narrative.

        -See, like I said, the Papal Zouaves are a multi-national fighting force, and this makes things complicated when the Italian government takes them prisoner. Regular Papal troops are native Italians under the law, so the government can do with them as it likes. Many are integrated into the Italian army, while some of the Pope’s more ardent supporters are locked in the imposing fortress of Alessandria, which is basically the 19th-century equivalent of locking them in a maximum-security prison. It’s also located in in King Victor Emmanuel’s native Piedmont, in northwestern Italy. So dangerous are these men that the King doesn’t dare lock them up in local prisons, where sympathizers might try to break them out. He has to keep them in the most secure prison, in the most secure region of Italy.

        -But you can’t just do that to foreigners, at least not if you want those foreigners’ governments to recognize the result of your conquest and rigged referendum. So, for the most part, the Zouaves are sent back to their home countries, although many of them are, ironically, kept in Rome until the referendum and forced to cast ballots for annexation before they finally go home.

        -Colonel Athanase de Charette, descended from the famous pro-monarchist Charette family in western France, is not one of those people. On September 22nd, two days after the fall of the Papal States, he and some other French Zouaves are loaded onto a French frigate and sent home at once. For these men, and for hundreds of other French Zouaves, the battle at Rome was just the first part of their fight. They’re men with military experience, after all, and they’re returning to a country at war. Charles A. Coulombe writes:

        “When all were safely on the ship, a captain of the Zouaves revealed that he had brought the regimental flag, wrapped around his waist in his uniform sash. It was unfurled and saluted with drawn swords. Charette himself then cut it up into hundreds of pieces that were distributed to all present; these fragments even today remain treasured heirlooms among some of the descendants of the Zouaves. What they did not realize was that the captain of the vessel was mightily impressed by their bearing and behavior. He sent word to his naval superiors in Toulon that—in view of the reverses being suffered by France in the war—the Zouaves might well be a unit worth preserving for the French army.”

        -As we’ll soon see, the French Army is about to need all the help it can get.

CHAPTER NINE: THE DEFENSE OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

The Government of National Defense is fighting the Germans with everything it has. So far, the war for French land has gone about as badly as a war can go, but on the high seas, the French are seeing some success. France’s prewar naval plans had been ambitious, and for good reason. Under Napoleon III, the French Navy boasted 470 ships, making it the second-largest in the world after the British Royal Navy, and almost 10 times the size of the Prussian navy. This large fleet is state of the art, with 45 ironclad ships of various classes, compared to Prussia’s five ironclads. With such an advantage, the French admiralty had planned an amphibious invasion of Prussia’s Baltic coast. Such an invasion could have been devastating for the Prussians. Many of their most important roads and railroads run near the coast, and if the French amphibious force were to cut off those supply lines, it would cripple the German invasion and force their armies to turn back.

        -This plan never materializes. Before the French can launch any sort of invasion, they first need to use their navy to ferry thousands of men back from their overseas colonies. By the time that’s done, the French Army is already in bad shape, and has no troops to spare for an amphibious invasion. In fact, the army actually has to call on the navy for help, which is how you get French marines and naval artillerymen at the Battle of Sedan and in the defense of Paris. Moreover, the French plans had depended on getting help from the Danish, who if you’ll remember have just lost a bunch of land to the Prussians and might want to get it back. But any hopes of Danish assistance are dashed when the French Army is smashed in the war’s opening weeks, and Denmark wisely remains neutral throughout the conflict.

        -Despite an amphibious landing being off the table, the French Navy can still do two things: protect French trade and raid German trade. French ships patrol every major trade route, ensuring the safety of their own merchant cargo and keeping money flowing throughout the war. Meanwhile, the navy blockades the German coast, sinking approximately 200 German merchant ships and even forcing the Hamburg-American line to suspend trade altogether. Despite these sinkings, the blockade has a limited effect. See, Britain is a major German trading partner, and continues its trade with Prussia and other coastal German states despite the French blockade. Since the French don’t dare start a war with the British Empire, British ships are allowed to freely come and go from German ports, which takes some of the bite out of the embargo.

        -In addition to their navy, the French have another ace up their sleeve: the French people themselves. Going back to the French Revolution, France has a long history of both mass mobilization and guerilla warfare, and in a war of national survival, hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen are willing to risk their lives for their homeland. Generally speaking, these men fall into two camps.

        -To begin with, there are the Gardes Mobiles, conscripts and volunteers from throughout the country who are officially under army command. Unfortunately, the French Army hasn’t actually been able to supply most of them, so many Gardes Mobiles rely on whatever weapons they were able to bring from home. Along the same lines, they don’t always get deployment orders, and the army can’t always spare any officers to command them. Some of these guys are in Paris, while most are milling around the countryside near their supply depots without any clear direction. For the Germans, the Gardes Mobiles are more of a nuisance than a serious threat. On August 21st, before the Battle of Sedan even occurs, Moltke orders his troops to treat them not as partisans, but as soldiers, which means that when they surrender, they’re to be taken to POW camps. Guerillas, on the other hand, are to be summarily executed.

        -French guerilla fighters, known as francs-tireurs, or “free shooters,” are members of private paramilitary groups that had been formed in the past few years, as French citizens had begun to view war with Prussia as a real possibility. Think of them as a cross between a local militia and a competitive target shooting club, because most of these guys took their training very seriously. Armed with long, accurate rifles, and commanded by their own elected officers, the francs-tireurs ambush German supply columns, blow up railway bridges, attack isolated units in their camps, and generally make life miserable for the invaders behind their front lines. A few shots fired at a locomotive might cause a German civilian railway crew to run for cover and refuse to resume work until after a thorough patrol by local troops, delaying necessary supplies.

        -It’s tough to say exactly how much damage the francs-tireurs are able to do, but we can assume they’re far more than an annoyance, at least given the following orders to one Germany Army corps on December 15th, which read in part:

        “Most surprise attacks are the fault of the unit, and reflected more concern for securing comfortable billets than with security. Troops should never occupy quarters in places they cannot hold. Even for overnight stays, strong points (alarm houses) must be designated, on which the men can fall back in emergencies and whose locations are known to all. If secure quarters cannot be prepared, the troops must bivouac in the open.

“On the march, never forget you are in enemy country. Never move without guides that are also to be regarded as hostages. Never return to a place by the same route you left. In establishing march lengths, allow time for searching villages you pass through. Should weapons be found, take them along or destroy them on the spot.

“Detachments remaining in one place for a longer period of time must make their strong points into fortified points, with food and water for several days.

“Detachments on the march are to keep in touch by strong patrols. No patrol sent more than a short distance from the main body must be smaller than six men. Orders and dispatches must also be strongly escorted—one or two men accompanying an officer are insufficient.

“Hostages are to be taken in places that seem suspicious. It is to be made known everywhere than any location from which civilians fire on soldiers will be burned down. Civilians caught in the act [original italicized] of taking ‘treacherous measures’ against our troops may be dealt with on the spot ‘according to the uses of war.’”

        -German retaliations for guerilla action vary from place to place, but in general, they involve no more than the shooting or hanging of actual guerilla fighters. In some places, however, there are reprisals against entire villages, although again, actual killing of innocent French civilians seems to be rare. German reprisals are generally limited to the looting of private property belonging to people who are suspected of collaborating with guerilla groups. However, even these limited reprisals provide fodder for the French press, which only inspires the military and civilian population to fight even harder.

I don’t want to get too deep into the nuts and bolts of the rest of the Franco-Prussian War, because I’m telling the story of German and Italian unification, not the story of France. But I do want to sum things up, and to highlight a couple of the ways in which the story of this war continues to be intertwined with the story of Italy. So, remember Leon Gambetta, the French Minister of the Interior who had escaped Paris in a hot air balloon? Well, he’s now established a new army headquarters at the city of Tours, to the southwest of Paris. The call has gone out throughout all of France for every able-bodied man to come there, to the Loire Valley, to organize a new defense. Within a few weeks, more than 500,000 men have gathered. They’re not quite an army yet. While some are military veterans, most will need to be trained, and there’s not a lot of time. Despite challenging logistics and increasing French guerilla attacks, German troops keep advancing. Moltke isn’t being too aggressive anymore. He has Paris surrounded, and now the rest of his army just needs to keep the French from freeing their capital.  Instead of smashing one French army after another, Moltke is trying to screen them, striking here or there at convenient targets to inflict maximum damage while minimizing his own losses.

        -Colonel Athanase de Charette, commander of the remaining French Papal Zouaves, is one of the men who answers Leon Gambetta’s call to arms. The number of Zouaves is a bit fuzzy, but Charles Coulombe puts the number at around 300. 240 of these remain near Tours to train new volunteers, and their number grows to 1,200 men. The other 60 men travel to the front, where a column of German troops is threatening to break out of the Paris area. Somehow – Coulombe isn’t clear – these 60 men are joined by 100 others, bringing their number to 160.

        -In a war where armies are made up of hundreds of thousands of men and battles are fought by tens of thousands, it would be an exaggeration to say that the Papal Zouaves – now renamed the “Volunteers of the West” – play a decisive role. Nevertheless, the 160 volunteers do help cover a French retreat, preventing the capture of a bunch of new recruits who otherwise would have been cut off. In the dense woods, the Zouaves’ light infantry skills serve them well. Under the command of Captain Le Gonidec de Traissan, they await the attack of Bavarian infantry. Charles Coulombe writes:

        “By a signal, the sentries informed Le Gonidec that the Bavarians were advancing from Cercottes. Soon he could see them. The sentinels were withdrawn, and the captain joined his men in concealment. But the enemy was wary; a voice called out, in perfect French, ‘Do not shoot! We are French Chasseurs à Pied!’ But the Zouaves made no reply, nor did they move. After five minutes in which the troops were drawn up, a voice, in German this time, told the enemy to ‘fight valiantly for the kaiser!’…

        “Then the Bavarians began their attack. But the withering fire of the Zouaves soon filled the ditch on the side of the road with enemy corpses. Their comrades shot at the edges of the woods, but by that time the Zouaves had slowly begun their withdrawal deeper into the forest, always silent, always swift. Whenever they came to a clearing, they would race across it, take up positions on the other side, and discharge another fusillade. By the time the foe would recover sufficiently to return fire, the Zouaves would be on the move again. At the same time, other Zouaves pulled back slowly along the sides of the road to Orleans, along which the invaders were trying to advance quickly. But the rifles of Le Gonidec’s men insured that the Bavarians could not pass between their fields of fire. After an hour and twenty minutes of this slow withdrawal, Le Gonidec saw off to his left the Bavarian cavalry, which had missed the chance to outflank them. Seeing that they had lost their quarry, the horsemen halted. At that point, the infantry also ceased their pursuit. Either the German commander had reached his goal or he feared a trap; later, it was discovered in the German newspapers that he informed his superiors he had been fighting three regiments of African troops in the forest, instead of three undermanned companies.”

        -For his actions in this battle, Le Gonidec is promoted to major. As for his men, they live to fight another day, having added one more victory to the ledger of the Papal Zouaves. At the same time, the Germans’ words must be haunting them. Who is this “Kaiser” they’re fighting for? “Kaiser” means “Emperor,” and the North German Confederation doesn’t have an Emperor.

        -Back near Tours, the real fighting is about to begin. On November 9th 1870, the French Army wins its first major victory in a battle near Orleans, which the French are able to recapture on November 11th. Leon Gambetta believes that if his army can break through to Fontainebleau, a Paris exurb, the army in Paris will be able to link up with them, and they will have broken the siege. The French and the Germans maneuver for advantage, fighting a handful of small battles over the coming days.

        -On December 2nd, the main body of Zouaves goes into action, led by Athanase de Charette himself, under the overall command of French General Gaston de Sonis. Charles Coulombe writes:

        “German infantry and artillery were positioned in the adjacent woods through which they had to pass to reach Loigny. After cheering their general, the Zouave skirmishers began shooting at the enemy positions, but the return fire was too great. Charette ordered them to fix bayonets and storm the woods. With Sonis, Charette, and their senior officers in the lead on horseback, the Zouaves charged. Through the storm of bullets they ran and closed with the foe. General Sonis was wounded in the thigh, and Charette fell, having been shot twice. Captain Montcuit, who had lost an arm at Castelfidardo, was wounded in his stump. One participant, Sergeant Wibaux, wrote of the battle a few days later: ‘it is impossible to give you an idea of the butchery; the Zouaves literally hacked and hewed as if they were beating butter.’ The woods were secured and hundreds of Germans taken prisoner. They were about to attack the village when the Prussians realized the very small size of the force with which they were contending and brought up three regiments from their reserve. Sonis’s infantry refused to come to the aid of the Zouaves and his artillery was out of ammunition. The Zouaves were forced to retreat as the Germans mauled them with artillery fire and automatic weaponry. The earth was covered with the dead; only 3 out of 14 officers made it back to camp by nightfall. Le Gonidec assumed command; three flag- carriers were killed in succession, and a wounded fourth returned with the bloodied banner of the Sacred Heart. In one company, only two corporals were left, all the officers having been killed. Of 300 Zouaves of this battalion, 218 had been killed. Had the rest of Sonis’s command not broken, they would have won the day.”

        -On December 4th, the Germans retake Orleans. The advance towards Fontainebleau stalls, and on January 13th, after three days of bombardment, the last major French field army is forced to retreat from Le Mans, despite the heroic efforts of Papal Zouaves in that battle as well. As it turns out, Athanase de Charette had survived his wounds, and the Zouaves retreat in good order and remain a functioning fighting force, with Charette now promoted to general. But after the defeats at Orleans and Le Mans, Leon Gambetta’s western army is a shell of its former self, and poses no serious threat to the Germans. What’s left of his army lies to the east of Paris, while the government’s army inside of Paris hangs on by a thread.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say. While Charette is training his men at Tours, he runs into none other than his bitter enemy, Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi had been strictly forbidden from participating in the Italian government’s conquest of Rome. If you’ll remember, they’d actually kept him under house arrest on the island of Caprera. Well, now that Rome has become part of Italy, Garibaldi is once again free to come and go as he pleases, and, always a supporter of nationalist and republican causes, he finds himself drawn to the struggle of the French republic against the monarchical, acquisitive Germans. So he sails to France, and arrives in the port of Marseilles on October 7th 1870.

        -Leon Gambetta hopes to use Garibaldi’s high profile to help recruit troops, and orders him to recruit as many volunteers as he can. Within days, he has recruited more than 300 Italian expatriates, who will form the core of his new army. This army will eventually grow to include approximately 2,000 expats from various countries, including Greeks, Spaniards, British, Irish, Poles, and even Americans. These men will be joined by approximately 14,000 Frenchmen who want to fight for their country, but who for various reasons are unwilling to serve in the regular army. Most of them are members of the francs-tireurs, so they’re already good fighters. Altogether, this force will come to be known as the Army of the Vosges, named after the forested Vosges mountain range in Eastern France.

        -By the time the Army of the Vosges has been raised, disaster has already struck on the Eastern Front. On October 30th, the city of Dijon had surrendered to the Germans, allowing them to shore up their defenses near the border and beef up their supply lines to their siege army at Paris. The French had been trying to do the opposite – push them back towards the German border and squeeze their supply lines, but that effort has failed.

        -Garibaldi’s son Ricciotti scores a victory on November 19th, capturing a well-stocked German supply depot. A few days later, a wider French assault fails to recapture Dijon from the Germans, and Garibaldi is forced to fall back. In his diary, he spins this defeat as a victory, saying that his men’s morale is improved by their successful retreat.

        -At the end of the December, an entire French Army Corps is transferred west to support the collapsing western army, and the Germans send some of their own men to counter that move, sort of like when a football team puts a receiver in motion and the other team’s defender switches sides along with them. Anyway, this leaves the city of Dijon lightly defended, and after taking several weeks to build up his army and his supply of artillery ammunition, Garibaldi once again moves in for the attack. A group of francs-tireurs takes the city without firing a shot, but when the local German commander, Prince Wilhelm of Baden himself, hears the news, he orders a counterattack.

        -63 years old and the veteran of numerous wars, Garibaldi is no amateur. By the time the Germans arrive, he’s already deployed cannons not just on the city’s recently-reinforced walls, but also on a number of key elevated positions outside the city, to keep the German artillery at bay and force their infantry to advance under fire. For three days, the Germans attack, and Garibaldi describes their discipline and almost suicidal determination in his autobiography:

        “The column marching on our central position showed admirable valor and coolness. They came up, compact as a rain-cloud, not quickly, but with a uniformity, an order, and a calmness, which were perfectly terrible.

        “This column, raked by all our enfilading artillery, and by all the lines of infantry in advance of Talant and Fontaine parallel to the road, left the field covered with corpses, and, re-forming several times in depressions of the ground, resumed their forward march in the same calm and orderly way as before. They were famous soldiers.

“Our men also showed great valor that day, and were quite worthy of their assailants. For one moment only they were disconcerted by a terrible flank attack on our right in the direction of Daix, which cost us a good many gallant fellows. The enemy being driven back into the cemetery of the village, our men were seen climbing over the wall, and clinging to the Prussian bayonets, to drag them out of the men’s hands. On our left, on the other hand, the enemy was hemmed in by strong lines of sharpshooters posted at right angles to our main line, so that their right was nearly cut off from Plombieres.”

-By the end of January 23rd 1871, Prince Wilhelm of Baden has been shot through the cheek, and the Germans are in retreat. They never do capture Dijon, which Garibaldi’s Army of the Vosges is able to hold until the end of the war. Much like in the Third Italian War for Independence, Giuseppe Garibaldi stands victorious, his little army having earned a fearsome reputation.

-Also like in the Third Italian War for Independence, it doesn’t make much difference to the overall outcome. The rest of the French Army of the East, which had been trying to attack towards Paris, completely collapses, and retreats east towards the Swiss border. The French generals try to rally their men, but they’ve lost all control. On February 1st, a few brave soldiers try to make a last stand in a narrow Alpine valley, but in truth the pursuing Germans are mostly being held back by the condition of the roads, which are clogged with wagons, artillery, and other random equipment left behind by the retreating French. In one of the most humiliating scenes in French military history, more than 80,000 men and 12,000 horses cross the border into Switzerland, the men dropping their rifles on the roadside as they pass. There, in a prearranged arrangement with the Swiss Army, they’re interned as prisoners, to be held in neutral Switzerland until the end of the war. While in Swiss territory, they receive aid not just from the Swiss government, but also from the newly-organized Swiss Red Cross, in the organization’s first large-scale humanitarian relief operation.

-Just like the Army of the West, the Army of the East has now been obliterated. Leon Gambetta has failed, and Paris now stands alone against the combined military might of all of Germany.

CHAPTER TEN: THE SIEGE OF PARIS

While Leon Gambetta has been trying and failing to relieve Paris, President Louis Trochu and the Government of National Defense have been trying to engineer a breakout. In theory, they’re well-positioned for this to succeed. The Germans aren’t bombarding Paris or launching any serious assaults on the city. The government’s only limitation is their supply of food, of which they have about three months’ worth. In this time, they can at least get some new recruits halfway trained and try to punch a hole in the German lines. And if they can find some ways to extend their food supply, the Parisians can hold out even longer under this kind of siege. But just as Leon Gambetta fails to defeat the Germans in the countryside, the Government of National Defense will ultimately fail to make any kind of breakout. This is due to three factors: manpower, communications, and the food supply. Let’s look at each of these factors.

        -To begin with, the government totally mismanages their available manpower. Around 100,000 of Paris’ defenders are regular army soldiers. About another 100,000 are members of one of the better-organized National Guard units and/or have previous military experience. So altogether, you’re looking at around 200,000 soldiers in Paris that we could call “combat-ready” when the city is fully surrounded on September 19th 1870. The other 300,000-or-so men are either untrained civilians, or if they do have military training, it’s been minimal – so, most of the National Guard falls into this category. These guys are not “combat-ready,” but given the large number of experienced troops at the government’s disposal, you’d think one of their top priorities would be to take some of those experienced men and use them to train the armed civilians. Maybe they won’t be as effective as the veteran troops, but even inexperienced troops with basic training will function a lot better than a bunch of random civilians.
        -The government doesn’t do this. What they do instead, on November 10th 1870, is try to get as many of the best National Guard troops into the field as possible. That day, the government orders every National Guard company to designate some of its men as so-called “marching battalions,” meant to be forward-deployed around Paris alongside the regular army. The rest of the men are to be organized into so-called "sedentary battalions," meaning they’ll be inside the city with the civilians manning the barricades. In practice, the National Guard troops with military experience get put in the marching battalions, while the inexperienced men go into the sedentary battalions.

        -This is a good first step, but the government doesn’t follow up on that by training the sedentary battalions or civilian volunteers. Melvin Kranzberg writes:

        “The Parisians spent a large part of their time in listening to orators, watching military reviews, sending deputations to the City Hall, searching for spies, and discussing the news. ‘Each National Guardsman thought himself to be a transcendent military genius; and in this capacity he considered he possessed a perfect right to criticize in detail every arrangement that was made.’ The men of the Guard were thought so ignorant about arms that there were frequent items in the daily newspapers giving them advice on how to aim their guns, a sad commentary on the amount of training which the military officials had seen fit to give these citizen soldiers. It was left to the newspapers also, rather than to any formal training, to inform the National Guard how to recognize the uniforms of the different corps of the German army, since they had acquired the distressing habit of firing on French soldiers, mistaking them for Prussians.”

        -There’s a lot that could be said about the training standards for the National Guard, or the lack thereof. But the picture here is already pretty clear. You have literally hundreds of thousands of untrained civilians manning the Paris barricades, preparing to face hardened German troops, and nobody from the government has even bothered to tell them who to shoot at. This is inexcusable, and the fact that the Government of National Defense doesn’t even attempt to train these people has got to contribute to the army’s failure to break out.

And it’s not as if the army doesn’t try to break out. They do, and with around 200,000 men in fighting condition, they have almost as many combat-ready troops as the surrounding Germans. But you can’t just form all of those guys into one big mass and break through the German lines. If you did, the Germans might even let you go, because you’d be leaving Paris undefended except for the armed civilians. The French need to keep their defenses manned and also get enough guys together in one place to punch through the German siege lines and form a safe corridor for soldiers, supplies, and civilians to pass through. If you don’t want the Germans to seal that corridor back up again, you need help from the outside – so you need one of the French armies in the countryside to be attacking the Germans from the same direction at the same time so you can link up.

        -This is difficult when your armies in the field are losing, but there are a couple of times when they do get close enough to Paris that a coordinated breakout attempt might have worked. This never happens, which brings us to the second reason for French failure, and that’s communications. On September 21st, 28 mailmen try to sneak through the German lines. Only one returns. After four more successful trips, he’s captured and summarily shot by the enemy. On the 17th, the last telegraph line is cut. The only remaining means of communication is by hot air balloon, which is a relatively new technology at this time.

        -The problem with hot air balloons is that you can’t really control where they go. You can drop weight to fly higher or release hot air to reduce altitude, but while you’re airborne, you’re going whichever way the wind wants to take you. For the Parisians, this means launching balloons when the wind is blowing in a favorable direction. I talk about this in great detail in my episode on military balloons, which you can find on Patreon. But the long and short of it is that while a handful of Paris’ citizens do escape the siege Wizard-of-Oz-style, balloons are mostly used for communications, and they’re one-way only. By launching when the wind is favorable, you stand a good chance of coming down safely behind French lines and delivering your message. Coming back is a whole different ball game, because you can’t just land in the general area of Paris. Unless you miraculously pass directly over the city and manage to touch down inside French defenses, you’ll only get captured and probably shot by the Germans as a spy. So you can get messages out of Paris by balloon, but if someone outside the city wants to send a message back, they’re going to have to find another way to do it.

        -In this case, the citizens of Paris themselves provide a solution. Along with messengers, balloons flying out of the capital soon carry other passengers: homing pigeons. Now, whoever is receiving your message will be able to send a response. To be clear, this is mostly a government effort, and for good reason. Pigeons have been used for communication since time immemorial, and the Germans are liable to shoot down any that they can. So instead of sending one pigeon, you have to send several. This is horribly inefficient, but with the aid of modern technology, it can be done. Along with the pigeons, the Government of National Defense also dispatches a famous photographer named Rene Dagron, who has developed an early version of what we would now call microfilm. Using this new technology, hundreds of messages can be recorded on a single piece of paper, allowing not only for each pigeon to carry hundreds of messages, but also for each message to be copied to several pigeons, ensuring that even if a couple of those pigeons are shot, the message will still get through. Tens of thousands of people are suddenly able to send messages to their loved ones, and morale improves. The French score an “A” for ingenuity here, but it’s simply not enough to allow them to coordinate a military breakthrough.

        -A letter from President Trochu to Leon Gambetta perfectly encapsulates the issues at play. On November 24th, he sends a balloon message reading in part:

        “What you call my persistent inactivity is the inevitable result of the enormous and complicated efforts I have had to make. I have had to organize 100,000 men, provide them with artillery, remove them from the fifteen leagues of positions which they occupied, and replace them with untrained troops and soldiers from the National Guard. And these wellnigh incredible efforts have had to be made in contradiction of a plan already being executed, which consisted of breaking out towards the west, in the direction of Rouen.”

        -As I said, President Trochu sends this message telling Leon Gambetta about his attempted breakout on November 24th – four days before the operation is scheduled to begin. But the hot air balloon drifts off course and lands all the way up in Norway, and Gambetta doesn’t get the President’s message until November 30th – two days after the attempted breakout. In this case, the miscommunication doesn’t affect the course of the war, but it does demonstrate how difficult it is to run a war when the two halves of your country can’t coordinate.

The third and final factor I want to look at is the food supply, because once again, while it doesn’t make much of a difference, the Government of National Defense manages the situation pretty well. At the beginning of the siege, a lot of livestock has been herded into the city from the countryside – a total of 150,000 sheep, 24,000 cattle, and 6,000 pigs. These animals can graze in Paris’ green areas, and should provide enough meat for about two months of normal consumption. The city’s granaries are also well-stocked, with enough to produce up to three months’ worth of bread, again, at normal consumption. At first, other than a few radicals, nobody expects that consumption to be reduced.

        -On September 28th 1870, the government announces the first round of rations, this time targeted only at the producers. The government will make 500 cattle and 4,000 sheep available for slaughter per day, and prices will be fixed at a rate that allows for a modest profit. The limit is small enough that most butchers will sell out four days’ worth of meat in a single day, and as a result they start opening every fourth day. There’s technically enough meat for all the people, but with only a few shops open on any given day, lines begin to form.

        -Further restrictions are imposed on October 15th, with a limit of 150 grams – about five ounces – of meat per day, per person. These numbers will be reduced over the course of the siege, eventually falling to 33 grams – or just over one ounce – per day before meat runs out entirely. Fish is even more scarce, quickly becoming so hard to find that the Archbishop of Paris lifts the restriction on Catholics from eating meat on Friday. At the same time, some people begin eating horse meat, since horses are not a part of the rationing system. By mid-November, demand for horseflesh has risen so high that the government imposes a ration on that, too. Part of this is a desire to protect horses that are needed by the military. Out of 70,000 horses in the city, 30,000 are designated for military service, but most are eventually sold on the black market, and even horses killed in skirmishes around the city are hauled inside the walls for butchering. A popular joke at the time has a wealthy woman tell her servant to go check on a pot that’s boiling over. She says to the cook: “Your soup is running away,” and the cook says: “I’m not surprised, madam. The butcher told me the meat was racehorse.”

        -The city’s rats are the next to go. A contemporary article in the Paris-Journal reads:

        “…as the rats are shut up in a big cage, one has to choose the animal one wants out of the crowd. With a little stick the dealer makes it go into a smaller cage, where it is alone, and then a bulldog is brought along. The little cage is shaken and the rat escapes; but it is promptly seized by the formidable teeth of the dog which breaks its back and drops it delicately at the purchaser’s feet.”

        -The city’s feral cats go next, followed by the fish from the ponds in the city parks, the geese and swans from those same ponds, and even the animals at the Paris zoo. The geese go for 20 francs each. The zoo’s two elephants sell for 27,000 francs, or 13,500 francs apiece. When those animals run out, the domestic animals are the last to go. Interestingly enough, chickens often seem to be ranked somewhere alongside cats and dogs in this hierarchy, probably because a dead chicken only feeds you once, while a live chicken gives you an egg every day. Edmond de Goncourt, who lives in Paris during the siege, writes about using a katana to give his chicken a samurai execution. Two weeks after that, he’s trying to figure out ways to snare sparrows in his back garden.

        -The city’s initial stock of vegetables runs out almost immediately, but these can be replenished – slowly – by people growing vegetables in their back gardens. Unlike with meat, where distribution is centralized, the vegetable market comes from tens of thousands of these small gardens. So while the Government of National Defense tries to institute vegetable rations, they aren’t very effective. Whatever food people grow that they don’t eat themselves, they sell on the black market for well over market value.

        -A contemporary article in the Illustrated London News reads:

        “One hears of a turkey—set off on a couch of velvet, it is true — realizing a couple of hundred francs; and of bonbonniéres, containing fine flour in lieu of sweetmeats, being sold for half this amount; of potatoes priced as high as the choicest truffles; of celery fetching almost its weight in silver; and radishes realizing ten francs, instead of ten centimes, per bunch.”

        -By the middle of January, even bread is starting to dwindle. For most of the population, there’s hardly anything else. Another Paris resident writes:

        “Half a pound of horsemeat, including the bones, which is two people’s ration for three days, is lunch for an ordinary appetite. The prices of edible chickens or pies put them out of reach. Failing meat, you cannot fall back on vegetables; a little turnip costs eight sous and you have to pay seven francs for a pound of onions. Nobody talks about butter any more, and every other sort of fat except candle-fat and axle-grease has disappeared too. As for the two staple items of the diet of the poorer classes — potatoes and cheese — cheese is just a memory, and you have to have friends in high places to obtain potatoes at twenty francs a bushel. The greater part of Paris is living on coffee, wine and bread.”

        -The Government of National Defense has pulled out all the stops to manage the food crisis, but by the middle of January 1871, the situation is clear: if nothing changes, people in Paris are about to start starving. On January 22nd, after yet another failed breakout attempt, President Trochu resigns command of the army. Although Trochu continues as President of the civilian government, the French Army is now in the hands of an unlucky elderly general named Joseph Vinoy, who by now only has 146,000 men in fighting condition.

Lest we should forget, though, sieges are tough on the attacker as well as the defender. The German armies around Paris might not be starving, but trench life is inherently unhealthy, and tuberculosis is starting to break out among the troops. Winter gear is also in short supply, causing a number of men to freeze to death on duty. All told, 16,000 German troops have already died in the Siege of Paris, and the worst of winter is just setting in. Moreover, the war is taking a severe toll on the Prussian economy, which only grows worse with every trainload of supplies that rolls out of Germany towards the front. Something must be done to bring this war to an end.

        -Throughout the siege, the Germans have been preparing for a bombardment. Nobody wants one, and for the first couple of months, nobody had believed it would come to this. Helmuth von Moltke has long believed that Paris will surrender as soon as food becomes scarce, and maintains this belief into late December. But as early as October, he had ordered large siege guns brought into the vicinity, but he doesn’t want to use them. Moltke is against bombarding Paris because he thinks it’s inhumane, unnecessary, and will turn the neutral powers against Prussia. Otto von Bismarck, on the other hand, thinks it’s necessary to end the war as quickly as possible. Geoffrey Wawro sums up the two men’s disagreement, which seems to boil over at a meeting in mid-December, when Bismarck says:

“The men freeze and fall ill, the war is dragging on, the neutrals waste time discussing it with us… All this so that certain people may be praised for saving ‘civilization.’”

-This is a reference to Moltke not wanting to shell civilians. Wawro continues his account of the meeting:

“Bismarck, seeking a more integrated war effort, criticized Moltke’s ‘departmental jealously’ and his ‘optimistic conjectures’ about operations on the Loire, where, Bismarck worried, Germany’s numerically ‘inferior forces might be destroyed at any moment’ by enemy action, ‘frost, snow, or a dearth of victuals and war material.’ From Bismarck’s perspective, any amount of brutality was justified to end the war before Prussia’s hand was further weakened by ‘unforeseen accidents in battle, sickness, or the intervention of neutrals.’ He called this ‘Politik im Krieg’ – the ‘wartime political effort’ – in which military means had to be bent unquestioningly to the policy aim. Here traditional roles were reversed – the soldier stressing moderation, the statesman annihilation – but once Roon broke ranks and backed Bismarck, the king came round to his chancellor.”

-Wawro later sums up Bismarck’s goal succinctly:

        “The main thing was to force the French government to terms, and the way to do this was to ring Paris with heavy artillery and bombard its streets, murdering civilians until the republican regime came to its senses and agreed to terms.”

        -With War Minister Albrecht von Roon on board, along with King Wilhelm, Moltke has no choice but to order a bombardment of Paris, which begins on January 5th 1871, at 8:30 in the morning. Even so, Moltke orders his men to avoid shelling civilian areas for as long as possible. This is as much from a proper sense of military priorities as it is from humanitarian concerns. Before they can properly bombard the city, the Germans will first need to take out those ring forts that surround it. In his book The Franco-German War of 1870-71, Helmuth von Moltke himself describes the first five days of the bombardment:

        “Only a couple of 15-cm. shells were thrown into the city itself as a serious warning; the first thing to be done was to batter down the outworks, and for some few days the firing was exclusively directed on these. A stubborn return fire came from Montrouge and from a mortar-battery in a very advantageous position behind the high railway embankment to the east of Issy; and especially from the south front of the enceinte, nearly four and a half miles long in a straight line. Foggy weather on some days necessitated the suspension or entire cessation of firing. But meanwhile the foreposts had advanced to within 815 and 490 yards of Forts Issy and Vanves respectively. New batteries were constructed further forward, and armed with thirty-six guns from those evacuated in rear.”

        -Slowly but surely, the German guns creep closer to Paris, and as they do, more and more shells find their way into the city proper. When President Trochu resigns, even the French government wants to seek peace. But by now, angry mobs have taken to the streets, most of them drawn from the ranks of left-wing political clubs. These armed men target not the Germans, but any French citizen who dares speak of surrendering. Some early Marxist groups have even occupied small pockets of the city. Known as Communards and calling their enclaves the “Commune,” these armed groups have to be surrounded by National Guard troops, not all of whom are 100% loyal to the government themselves. It’s a messy situation. With visions of the French Revolution dancing in their heads, the Government of National Defense is paralyzed, and the bombardment continues.

        -Prior to his resignation, President Trochu had protested the Germans’ targeting, saying that they were hitting a lot of hospitals. Moltke had responded that he would do better when he got close enough to see the red cross flags flying from the rooftops. By the time Trochu resigns on January 22nd, Moltke has made good on his word. German guns are now shelling half of Paris, with the southern portion of the city now under constant bombardment as far as the River Seine. Tens of thousands of civilians have evacuated to the north bank, unbalancing the city’s already-collapsing food market and causing most stores on that side of the city to run out of supplies. Paris is at its breaking point.

        -On January 23rd 1871 the Government of National Defense dispatches Jules Favre, who is its Foreign Minister as well as its Vice-President, to discuss terms. The Prussian Army allows him to pass through the lines, and by that afternoon, he’s meeting with Otto von Bismarck at the German headquarters in Versailles. On the 26th, both sides agree to cease firing. On January 28th, a formal armistice is signed.

        -Under the terms of the armistice, both sides are to agree to a three-week truce, during which both sides are to withdraw their troops outside of a pre-determined demilitarized zone that stretches across France. German troops in the vicinity of Paris are to remain in place, and the French are to dismantle Paris’ ring forts. However, German troops are not to enter the city, and the Government of National Defense is to remain responsible for law and order inside the walls. Also, the National Guard is to retain their weapons, which is something Bismarck had been opposed to, but Favre has managed to convince him – correctly – that any attempt to disarm the French National Guard could trigger a civil war, which nobody wants except maybe those crazy Communards. Negotiations will drag on for a couple of months, but the last French armies will formally surrender on February 6th, when the government is finally able to notify Leon Gambetta of the armistice and he resigns as commander of what’s left of the Army in the East. For all intents and purposes, the Franco-Prussian War is over.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE DAWN OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE

Constructed in the 17th century by French King Louis XIV, the palace at Versailles is a symbol of French royalty, and since the French Revolution, has also symbolized the French nation writ large. When Foreign Minister Jules Favre arrives there to negotiate terms with Bismarck, the choice of location is an intentional humiliation. But although it’s only the beginning of February, this isn’t even the most humiliating thing that’s happened to the French at Versailles this year. Let’s back up a bit, because while we’ve been following the war and the events in Paris and Rome, big changes have been happening behind the German lines.

        -Everything that has happened so far has been part of Otto von Bismarck’s plan. Or, to be more accurate, Otto von Bismarck is intelligent and adaptable enough that he’s been able to turn everything that’s happened so far to his advantage. Since becoming Minister President of Prussia in 1862, he’s had one goal: the expansion and preservation of the Prussian state – and he views the unification of Germany as key to Prussia’s safety. In the Austro-Prussian War, his armies pushed Austria out of Northern Germany and allowed him to establish the North German Confederation, uniting the Northern German states in a proto-federal body. Now, by goading France into war – and winning that war – Bismarck has convinced the Southern German states to fight alongside Prussia under a common military command. And throughout the war, he’s been using diplomatic pressure to convince Prussia’s Southern allies to join the states of the North German Confederation in forming a larger, pan-German state. A German Empire, if you will.

        -Some of the Southern German states need no convincing. The Grand Duchy of Baden, for instance, has been trying to join the North German Confederation since the end of the Austro-Prussian War. Bismarck has been actively preventing their entry all this time, to avoid taking any steps towards unification that might provoke the French. Like I said, this is no longer an issue.

-Now, you might wonder why Baden, an independent country ruled by a Grand Duke, would want to join a greater German nation dominated by the King of Prussia, and the answer is “France.” Remember how Napoleon III got into this mess. He tried to expand French influence further into Europe, and Baden is right on the French border. So what did the Grand Duke of Baden do? He signed a military agreement with Prussia to deter Napoleon. And what is Otto von Bismarck now offering in terms of unification? Everything the leader of a small power could reasonably expect.

-The new, expanded North German Confederation will be renamed just “The German Confederation,” but will be governed along the same lines, at least in principle. In practice, the rules are applied differently to different states. King Ludwig II of Bavaria, for instance, gets the right to approve or disapprove the marriage of any Bavarian citizen, whether the marriage takes place in Bavaria or elsewhere in Germany. In Wurttemberg, King Karl I continues to operate his own post office. Large financial annuities are also paid to Ludwig II and Karl I in exchange for their agreement.

-If you think it sounds weird that the German Confederation’s government would approve large subsidies for certain German royal houses, you’re not wrong. In fact, the rest of the government has no say over these subsidies, or bribes, because they’re not paid out of ordinary government funds. They’re paid out of a secret black fund that only Bismarck has control over. See, back in 1866, when Prussia had annexed the Kingdom of Hanover, the seizure had included all of the personal assets of Hanover’s King, George V. Prussia was supposed to administer those assets in his name, and pay him an annual annuity. Basically, the Prussians were keeping King George’s money hostage as a promise of good behavior. When he had used some of his funds to fund an anti-Prussian army-in-waiting and publish newspaper articles encouraging the French to attack Prussia, the Prussians had cut off his funds. This money, called the Guelph Fund, named after King George’s royal house of Welf, is administered by a special commission. Bismarck can’t touch the principal, but each year he gets to do whatever he wants with the interest. So he’s essentially taking the salary he confiscated from the King of Hanover, and giving it to the Kings of Bavaria and Wurttemberg instead. Additional Guelph Fund money is used as off-book funding for pro-unification journalists in popular newspapers.

-Not only do some of the German rulers get rich out of this new German Confederation deal, but they also get to keep most of their royal powers. The Confederation is a federative body, with authority over things like war and trade, and it has little authority over people’s everyday lives. Moreover, the same German military that protects the member states from outside aggression will protect the rulers of those states from revolutionaries, who are always a threat in these times.

-All that remains for Bismarck is to consolidate this federative entity into something a little more permanent. In December of 1870, two days after the creation of the German Confederation, he sends a draft of a letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who copies it word for word in his own handwriting and sends it back to Bismarck as if he himself had written it. In this letter, Ludwig II calls on Prussian King Wilhelm I to declare himself Emperor of Germany. The other southern princes concur, and Bismarck quickly plans an elaborate ceremony to be held at Versailles Palace.

-For Bismarck and the other German princes, the creation of the German Empire is a way for everyone to secure their own power in a more permanent system. We’ll get into the specifics later, when we talk about the German constitution, but Scottish-American historian Gordon A. Craig sums the bargain up well in his book Germany 1866-1945:

        “The price that the Chancellor had to pay for union was not in the end exorbitant. The two southern monarchs retained their command over their military establishments and their privilege of appointing and promoting officers, while agreeing that their forces would pass under Prussian command in time of war. Together with the King of Saxony, they also received representational and ceremonial rights in the realm of foreign affairs and the management of the business of the Federal Council. Finally, they were permitted to reserve certain rights in the areas of transportation, taxation, and other local affairs. Bismarck was entirely agreeable to these concessions. Whether particularism was to be a problem in the future would not be determined in his opinion by these trifling reservations but by the advantages or disadvantages that the federal states would derive from membership in the Empire…”

-Oddly enough, the only person who isn’t happy is the prospective Emperor, King Wilhelm I. He refuses to participate in the planning for the coronation ceremony, and basically acts as if nothing is happening. His objection comes not from the idea of Empire, but from his new imperial title. See, the other states in the German Confederation have held a vote, and have agreed to grant the King of Prussia permanent place as the new Emperor, with the title of Deutscher Kaiser, or “German Emperor.” But Wilhelm I doesn’t want to be German Emperor, he wants to be Kaiser von Deutschland, or “Emperor of Germany.” This might sound like a tiny nitpick, but it’s a historical issue going back to the days of Prussian King Frederick the Great, who had fought hard to earn the title of “King of Prussia” rather than “King in Prussia.”

-More importantly, it’s a question of the origin of the monarch’s legitimacy. “Emperor of Germany” implies sovereignty over a set of territory. This is the old feudal way of doing things, from before the age of nationalism. “German Emperor” implies rulership over a nation of people, which is the new way of doing things. Wilhelm I wants sovereignty over land, not over people. Conversely, the smaller rulers want to retain their old feudal titles while granting the German Emperor sovereignty over the greater German nation.

-The issue comes to a head the night before the coronation. That evening, January 17th 1871, Bismarck, Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, King Wilhelm, and the King’s Minister of the Household spend three hours arguing not just over the Emperor’s title, but also the title of the imperial heirs, various titles in the imperial court, and other things that sound like silly details but are deeply important to the people who are going to hold those titles. Eventually, Bismarck gets his way, simply by pointing out that the other German princes have agreed to the title “German Emperor,” and trying to change it to “Emperor of Germany” at the last minute could cause some of them to back out.

On January 18th 1871, a gathering of German princes and military leaders meets in the cavernous Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Surrounded by paintings and sculptures depicting the victories of French King Louis XIV, they gather to proclaim the new German Emperor. And in fact, I’ve been using the word “coronation,” but it’s more of a “proclamation,” because Bismarck goes out of his way to organize this as a civic event, not as an old feudal ceremony. There is to be no throne, for example.

        -Instead, the participants gather around a small religious altar, and a minister reads some prayers and gives a sermon. Bismarck then reads the official proclamation from the German princes making Wilhelm the Emperor. On its surface, this is an impressive affair, with flags from all the various German states, and with just about every major military and political leader in attendance. But just beneath the surface, there’s some tension. Notably absent are Queen Augusta and the King’s daughter Louise, both of whom are back in Prussia. Wilhelm is so upset about the whole “Emperor” thing that he hasn’t even bothered to tell them what’s going on, and Queen Augusta only finds out when people start calling her “Empress.”

        -Along the same lines, not every speech gets a rousing reception. German diplomat Friedrich von Holstein, who is present at the proclamation, writes in his memoirs:

        “I can still hear Prince Bismarck’s angry outburst on the evening of 18 July, when he spoke of the tactless sermon preached by pastor Rogge (Countess Roon’s brother). He had chosen a text which ran: ‘Come hither, ye Princes, and be chastised.’ Certainly not a happy choice. Bismarck said: ‘I’ve said to myself more than once, why can’t I get at this parson? Every speech from the throne has first to be considered word by word, yet this parson can say just what comes into his head.’ In lighter vein, by contrast, was Bismarck’s tale of how vain young Schwarzburg (nicknamed ‘Prince of Arcadia’) addressed the assembled royal personages with the words: ‘Greetings to you, fellow vassals’.”

        -When the newly-proclaimed Kaiser Wilhelm leaves the ceremony, he expects to pull one over on Bismarck. On the way in, he had told the Grand Duke of Baden to lead a round of cheers for the Emperor of Germany, rather than for the German Emperor. Bismarck overhears this, and convinces the Grand Duke to lead cheers for Emperor Wilhelm as a compromise. The new Kaiser is so angry that he doesn’t shake Bismarck’s hand in the receiving line on his way out the door. But as usual, the chancellor has gotten his way.

        -Germany has been united, creating a new entity – the German Empire – along with a new leader – the Kaiser. This has been done not by conquering an old empire, but by national consensus, embodied in the person of Otto von Bismarck.

        -The pomp and circumstance of the proclamation ceremony is short-lived. Once Bismarck and French Foreign Minister Jules Favre agree on peace terms, the German Army holds a military parade in Paris, and needless to say, hardly anyone attends. This parade is held on March 1st 1871, and when the peace treaty, called the Treaty of Frankfurt, is signed on May 10th, German troops have long since withdrawn from the area. Paris has been humbled, but it’s once again under French rule.

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE PARIS COMMUNE

The Treaty of Frankfurt is, by design, a humiliation for the French Republic. If humiliating France seems a bit harsh, keep in mind that Otto von Bismarck is actually calling for less punishing terms, while Helmuth von Moltke doesn’t want to make peace yet at all. He wants German troops to occupy Paris, take the entire French National Guard prisoner, and use Paris’ huge ammunition supply to help prosecute a total occupation of France. Bismarck doesn’t want this, because he’s worried about the British or other neutral powers getting involved in the war, so he and Moltke and French Foreign Minister Jules Favre all compromise and agree on peace terms that are humiliating, but not crippling, for France. And just as a reminder, these terms are negotiated under the terms of an armistice, or armed truce, with German troops occupying the forts outside Paris, squaring off across no-man’s land against French troops inside Paris.

        -To begin with, Germany is going to annex a large stretch of territory called Alsace-Lorraine. This is the most controversial part of the treaty, and Bismarck is opposed to it for two reasons. To begin with, we’re not talking about a small patch of land. Alsace-Lorraine is almost exactly the size of Connecticut, and like Connecticut, it’s one of the more urbanized areas of its country, encompassing the cities of Metz, Strasbourg, and Mulhouse, among others. By taking such a large territory, Germany will be inflicting a serious wound not only on the French economy and national security, but also on French pride. And remember, the entire point of this war was to keep Germany safe from French expansionism. What good does it do Germany if instead of an expansionist France, they’re faced with a revanchist France obsessed with regaining lost territory? And indeed, if you want to understand why the French terms against the Germans are so harsh at the end of World War I, one of the major reasons is their loss of Alsace-Lorraine in the Treaty of Frankfurt back in 1871.

        -Another reason Bismarck doesn’t want to annex Alsace-Lorraine is that it’s not German land. Yes, most of its people speak German as their primary language, and yes, many German nationalists view Alsace-Lorraine as fundamentally German, but for reasons that are too complicated to get into in this episode, most of the people of Alsace-Lorraine view themselves as French, regardless of the language they speak at home. In order for Alsace-Lorraine to be integrated into the German Empire, this land is going to have to be kept under occupation and some of its people treated harshly, which will cause disunity in the Empire and make foreign powers upset. Bismarck would rather avoid this and simply not annex the land. In the end, Moltke gets his way on this issue, and Germany annexes Alsace-Lorraine. However, citizens will have the option to retain French citizenship if they act by October 1st, 1872. If they choose to remain French, these people will have to leave, but they’re free to keep all of their own property and will not face any negative repercussions. In all, somewhere between 3% and 5% of the population will move, while the rest will remain where they are and accept German citizenship.

        -So, why does Bismarck not get his way when it comes to Alsace-Lorraine? There are a few reasons. To begin with, Moltke and the rest of the military are very concerned about establishing a more defensible frontier. Moltke argues, decisively, that Alsace-Lorraine, with its rivers and low mountains, is far easier to defend than the flatter land near the old frontier. If you move the border, you make it much, much harder for the French to attack you in the future.

        -Some of the Southern German princes are also strongly in favor of annexation, most importantly Baden and Bavaria, which are geographically close to France and would face the brunt of any French military invasion. Annexing Alsace-Lorraine buys them a little bit of breather room. It also ensures that any Prussian troops stationed near the frontier are stationed in Alsace-Lorraine, not in the smaller German kingdoms themselves.

        -One thing that’s not a factor in the annexation is the region’s coal and steel industries. Some on the German side see these as valuable strategic resources for the Empire’s defense and economy. However, most existing German industrial interests are opposed to annexation, since they fear competition from businesses in the newly-annexed territories. From a strategic perspective, Alsace-Lorraine’s industries will indeed prove to be valuable. But from a political perspective, these industries don’t seem to affect German decision-making one way or the other.

        -The next issue is the one of war indemnities – basically, who’s going to pay for the war, which is traditionally the losing country. In the end, France is forced to pay the German Empire a whopping five billion Francs. Converting historical currency is a bit tricky, but that’s somewhere in the ballpark of $66 billion in 2025 dollars. Of this five billion Francs, 500 million is to be paid within 30 days of the establishment of order in Paris. Another billion is to be paid by the end of 1871, with an additional 500 million due by May 1st 1872, and the remaining three billion due by March 2nd 1874. Bismarck hopes that this indemnity will force the French state into debt and keep them from becoming a threat for a long time. However, some German negotiators are worried that the French won’t be able to make the initial payment, which would force Germany to either let them slide – a dangerous precedent – or resume the war – something nobody wants.

        -As it turns out, France has no problem paying the indemnity. Including a credit of 325 million Francs for the value of the Alsace-Lorraine Railroad, the government is able to make the initial payment through a combination of bank reserves, precious metals, and foreign currency. The bulk of the rest of the payments are funded by government bonds, but thanks to France’s extraordinary wealth and good credit, the interest rates are low. Even at low rates, the bonds are considered a good value, and the government has no problem selling them, including on the foreign market. Ironically, about a third of these French bonds are purchased by German citizens.

        -The French government is able to make the first 500 million-Franc payment so quickly that it spoils the German plans for France’s further humiliation. Remember how the German Army parades through Paris during the armistice? Well, that parade is supposed to be the beginning of a military occupation that’s supposed to last until the French make their first payment. But the French government hands over the first 500 million the very next morning, so, under the terms of the peace agreement, the German Army immediately evacuates. This spoils the plans of Kaiser Wilhelm, who had not taken part in the military parade and had wanted to hold yet another parade with himself at the head of his troops. Moltke, Roon, and Bismarck wisely convince him that violating the peace agreement would be a bad idea, and the Germans leave Paris without any incidents. It’s worth noting that while the Germans will no longer occupy the area around Paris, German troops will continue to occupy other key strategic locations until France makes its final indemnity payment in 1873.

The new French government probably wishes the Germans had stuck around a bit longer. Because as soon as they leave, an uprising breaks out in Paris, threatening to launch a revolution, overthrow the government, and rekindle the war that everyone thought had just ended. Once again, visions of the French Revolution are dancing in the heads of all the leaders of Europe, and we come full circle to the same place we started our story. Remember how all this started? How French King Louis-Philippe was overthrown in the 1848 Revolution, Napoleon was elected President, and this created conditions on the ground where the Italian and German nationalist movements could really begin to flourish? Well, we’re back in Paris.

        -In 1848, the most radical Paris revolutionaries had been old school republicans advocating for elections and freedom of speech. Karl Marx had just published The Communist Manifesto, and its theories were only discussed by a handful of intellectuals. In 1871, the Overton window has shifted. The International Workingmen’s Association, also known as the First International, had been founded in 1864, and had garnered thousands of members in Paris alone. The First International is, as its name implies, an international organization. It’s dedicated to the establishment of socialism in every country, by democratic means if possible, by revolutionary means if necessary. Members of the First International in Paris come to be known as Communards, but I should point out that not all of them are Communists in the traditional sense. Left-wing political theory is really just getting started in this time period, so the First International is made up of a mishmash of people ranging from what we today would call democratic socialists, along with Mikhail Bakunin’s anarchist faction and Marx’s more authoritarian Communist faction. Anyway, I already introduced them briefly. They had occupied a few neighborhoods during the Siege of Paris, but had been only one of several threats the government was dealing with.

        -As it turns out, a lot of the Paris National Guard members are Communards, mostly the folks from working-class neighborhoods. And when the war ends and the Germans leave, the newly-elected French National Assembly votes to cut off the National Guards’ pay, which only makes sense since they’re supposed to be standing down and returning to civilian life. But there are some problems.

        -For one thing, the economy is a mess and a lot of these people have no jobs anymore, so cutting off their pay makes them upset. For another thing, they’re already upset, because they already feel like the new government is trying to rob them. See, during the war, the people of Paris had contributed to a public fundraiser that had gone to purchase hundreds of cannons for the National Guard. In the final days of the siege, fearing both the Prussians and a coup by the French Army, the National Guard had transferred these cannons from their positions around Paris, and stationed them around the working-class neighborhoods – basically a way of saying that if the army tries to overthrow the democratic government, the National Guard stands with the people. Now that the Germans are gone, the Army has asked for the National Guard to hand over these cannons, but the National Guard is refusing, arguing that the guns were a gift from the people of Paris, and are not the property of the national government.

        -To make things worse, that new elected government includes a lot of conservatives and monarchists, and it meets in Versailles, not Paris. The government fears disorder in the streets, and wants to remain somewhere stable. But for many in Paris, particularly the Communards, a conservative-leaning government ruling from Versailles smacks of the old monarchy. So they hold their ground, keeping armed men around the cannons at all time so the government can’t seize them.

        -The standoff comes to a head on the night of March 17th 1871, when the government orders troops to seize the artillery by surprise. The operation is mostly successful. But on the hill of Montmartre in one of Paris’ northern neighborhoods, the horses needed to move the artillery never arrive. Dawn comes, people see regular army troops surrounding the cannons, and they walk down and start talking to them. The neighborhood’s women offer the soldiers food and wine, and some of the men start mingling with the crowd. Their commander, General Claude Lecomte, orders his men to fire, but they ignore him, and local National Guards arrest him, his officers, and his remaining loyal soldiers. Lecomte is executed by multiple gunshots later on the 18th, along with another army general named Jacques Clement-Thomas. By afternoon, rebellious National Guard units have occupied the Hotel de Ville, and most of the city is in rebel hands. The Army, meanwhile, is slow to respond. The 18th was the day they’d been supposed to completely evacuate Paris and return it to civilian control, which is why they’d wanted to seize the artillery that morning. Most of the troops have already left, and it takes time to get them turned around, and even when you can get them turned around, most of them have more in common with the rebels than with the national government. So, by the end of March 18th 1871, Paris is entirely in the hands of the rebels.

This is not a history of France, so I won’t go into a lot of detail on the 1871 Paris rebellion, which has come to be known in history as the Paris Commune. But there are a few things that I want to highlight, beginning with the fact that the National Guard’s Central Committee almost immediately throws out the Commune’s civilian leadership. See, at the beginning, the Commune tries to operate under the color of law, with future French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, currently a member of the National Assembly, as its leader. Clemenceau is what’s called a “Radical Republican,” basically a classical liberal who believes in universal suffrage. This puts him about as far to the right as anyone gets in the Commune, so most of the Communards don’t trust him, while at the same time, his association with the Communards makes most members of the National Assembly suspicious of him. Without the trust of either side, he can’t negotiate, and the National Guard ousts him on March 22nd.

-I mention Georges Clemenceau mostly because as an old man, he will serve as Prime Minister of France at the end of World War I. In 1871, he’s only 28 years old, and this is his first hard lesson in politics. However, Clemenceau is just part of the civilian government, which is totally abolished, with new elections held on March 26th. Most of the candidates for the government – confusingly also called the “Commune” – are members of the First International or other self-declared revolutionary groups, including all 60 of those who finally take their seats. It’s worth noting that 20 more moderate candidates are also elected, but they boycott the whole government. The Commune elects as its president 65-year-old radical revolutionary Louis Auguste Blanqui, although this is a symbolic measure, since Blanqui is in prison in Brittany and never actually leads anything.

-Women also play a major role in the Paris Commune. In her book The Paris Commune: A Brief History, American Marxist historian Carolyn J. Eichner writes:

“Many women used clubs to assert their dissatisfaction with male authority. At a club on the Boulevard d’Italie, a female speaker asserted men’s weakness and underscored their political failures. Suggesting women’s readiness to expand their roles, she argued ‘Men . . . are like monarchs softened by possessing too much authority… It is time for woman to replace man in directing public affairs.’ Marie Catherine Rogissart, a dressmaker and the vice president of Club Saint-Éloi, also alleged male inaction. At a May club meeting, Rogissart demanded, ‘You must fight against the Versaillaises assassins, or we will tear out your livers!’ Using dramatic language to express frustration with the existing military situation, Rogissart subsequently became involved in a women’s battalion in the twelfth arrondissement and worked actively to search for National Guard deserters. The club provided her a public forum to discuss, and possibly to organize to remedy, her political concerns.”

-The rebels in the Paris Commune have plenty to be concerned about. Only 10 miles away, at the Palace of Versailles, France’s new President, Adolphe Thiers, is preparing an army of 130,000 men to retake his own capital city. Speaking of coming full circle, there’s a name we haven’t heard in a while. Adolphe Thiers is a guy we met way back in Episode 64. 23 years ago, in 1848, when French King Louis-Philippe’s government was collapsing and he’d fired his Prime Minister, Francois Guizot, he’d appointed Adolphe Thiers as Prime Minister and tasked him with putting down the Paris riots. Thiers had recommended withdrawing the government to Versailles to organize a response, Louis-Philippe had refused, and Thiers had resigned after only 24 hours in office. I haven’t mentioned him since then because he hasn’t done everything of earth-shattering importance, but Adolphe Thiers has been kicking around in French politics this entire time. He had originally gotten his start as a historian and a journalist in the early 1800s, but had printed some things that did not sit well with King Charles X, who had ordered his newspaper closed. Adolphe Thiers had defied the government, re-opened his newspaper, and after the July Revolution of 1830, had won a spot in the new national legislature. He had served in several roles in the government, including as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and all that before his one-day stint as Louis-Philippe’s Prime Minister. He’d continued to serve in Napoleon’s government, then had  joined the Government of National Defense, and now, at the age of 73, the National Assembly has made him President of France. Now, Adolphe Thiers is in a position to do what Louis-Philippe wouldn’t let him do: bide his time in Versailles, build up his strength, and put down a Parisian rebellion with overwhelming force. And, to add one more callback to the mix, Thiers appoints none other than General Patrice de MacMahon to command his army.

-The Paris Commune does not stand alone. Other Communes rise up in multiple French cities, including Lyon, Toulouse, and Marseilles, although most are quickly put down by government troops. Similarly, on April 3rd, an attack by the Paris National Guard on the army at Versailles is quickly defeated when the army opens fire with artillery, killing many guardsmen and causing the rest to retreat. Still, the leaders of the Commune believe that the Army will balk at the prospect of attacking Paris and getting into urban warfare. They expect Adolphe Thiers to negotiate. But just to be sure, they pass a law on April 5th, two days after the failed attack on Versailles. This law, known as the Decree on Hostages, allows the Commune to execute prisoners of war and political prisoners in retaliation for any revolutionaries killed by the government. Meanwhile, they replace the French flag with the red flag of international socialism, and tear down the Vendome Column, an enormous monument dedicated to Napoleon.

-The Communards’ dreams of world revolution come crashing down harder than the column when government troops begin their assault on Paris. Their first target is one of the city’s ring forts, Fort d’Issy, which blocks their main road into the city. After 13 days of artillery bombardment, the National Guard troops in the fort surrender, and the army advances. With the artillery now in range of Paris itself, General MacMahon orders a bombardment of the walls. The National Guardsmen soon begin to withdraw on their own. In the Commune’s chaotic environment, no-one has the authority to force them to do anything, so over the coming days, the defenses get weaker and weaker as more and more guardsmen decide not to spend their days under constant artillery fire. On May 21st, regular army engineers, tipped off by a Paris resident, find an undefended portion of the wall, and the army captures three of the city’s gates without firing a shot.

-The Commune orders the people to build barricades. Where necessary, people use gasoline to ignite entire city blocks, slowing the advance of government troops or forcing them into narrower side streets where they can be attacked from all sides. To the Commune’s disappointment, only around 20,000 of Paris’ citizens participate in the actual fighting, meaning they’re outnumbered by five or six to one. The rest of the people and the National Guard seem to have lost their stomach for fighting.

-For those who continue to resist, the army’s justice is unyielding. Carolyn J. Eichner writes:

“As they moved into neighborhoods and over barricades, Versailles soldiers rarely took prisoners. They shot them instead. Manifold accounts and recollections tell of the slaughter. Thiers’s men captured the Saint-Forentin barricade, killed the thirty surviving National Guardsmen, and threw their bodies in a ditch. Nearly three hundred Guardsmen sought sanctuary in the Madeleine Church; Versailles fighters entered the church and shot them. Having blackened hands could lead to arrest or execution for suspicion of using gunpowder, as could carrying a bottle or tin, which could be used to carry pétrole.”

-Street fighting continues for days. Military tribunals are set up throughout Paris. Arrested National Guardsmen and other revolutionaries are tried without legal representation or juries. The conservative Paris newspaper Liberté reports on four thousand National Guard prisoners, who are brought before:

“…a martial court installed at La Roquette. A police commissioner and some police security agents were charged with the first screening. Those designated to be shot were directed inside. They shot them from behind as they walked in, then threw their cadavers on a pile.”

-As for the Commune, they execute a number of prisoners on May 24th in an attempt at retaliation. In keeping with the Decree on Hostages, this includes some people who are not government troops. In a swipe at the Catholic Church, the eternal enemy of the French Revolution, the first batch of six prisoners to be executed includes the Archbishop of Paris and three parish priests – targets chosen to send a message rather than for any real value. On May 25th, with the Commune reduced to control of only a few neighborhoods, their last military leader, Louis Charles Delescluze, commits suicide by putting on a red revolutionary sash, walking unarmed to the top of a barricade, and daring the government troops to shoot him, which they do. The last revolutionaries are defeated in a cemetery on May 28th, putting an end to a week of urban combat, as well as to the Paris Commune’s brief, three-month existence. Adolphe Thiers and the National Assembly finally control the French capital. The war, at long last, is over.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE BELLE ÉPOQUE

The French Third Republic had officially been founded on September 4th 1870, two days after Napoleon’s capture at the Battle of Sedan. But it really begins to flower on May 28th 1871, the day the Paris Commune is defeated. This event marks the beginning of a period of general peace throughout Europe. A couple of minor dust-ups in the Balkans notwithstanding, there will be no war in Europe from 1871 all the way up to the outbreak of World War I in July of 1914. This 43-year period has come to be known as the Belle Époque, which is French for “Beautiful Era.”

        -The Belle Époque is a period that marks the apex of Western civilization. This is certainly true in France, which you can probably deduce from the fact that we use a French name for this time period. But it’s true throughout Western and Central Europe. German, Italian, British, and French culture all reach their zenith during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During the Belle Époque, the nations of Europe grow their colonial empires – some old, like Britain’s, and some new, like Italy’s little venture on the Horn of Africa. Even Belgium, a country smaller than the US State of Maryland, operates an African empire with millions of inhabitants.

        -The Belle Époque is a period of high fashion, mostly emanating from Paris. Women wear lush, flowing dresses in multiple colors, while men’s fashion continues the more monochromatic trends of the early 1800s, with black suits being the standard for the upper- and middle-classes. So influential are these Parisian fashions that they are adopted not just by all of Europe, but by most of the world. In some colonial empires, like the British, modern, western attire is required of all officials regardless of the local climate. In some former colonies, like the young South American nations, this same standard of dress is considered a hallmark of civilization, and becomes a cultural norm. Over the course of a few decades, Western fashion dominates most of the world.

        -The late 19th and early 20th centuries also see an explosion of art. Artists as diverse as Renoir, Monet, van Gogh, Paul Gogin, and a young Pablo Picasso are active during this period. All of them, at one time or another, work in Paris. Music also changes, with a shift from complex orchestral pieces towards shorter, simpler songs that are meant to be played at home with friends. Thanks to mass production, even lower middle-class households can afford a piano, and most of them do. The image of Victorian people standing around a piano and singing together is a very real thing.

        -This is a time of rapid technological change. The electric lightbulb becomes widespread during the Belle Époque, although mostly in upper-class households that can afford electric wiring. Electric lighting also takes over in the theater. Gone are the days of smoke-filled theaters lit by fixed lanterns. Electric lights can be brought up and down, dimmed, and otherwise manipulated, providing theater directors with a new and powerful tool to change the mood of a scene. Late in the Belle Époque, these new electric theaters will be joined by even newer movie theaters, and people with enough money will travel to those theaters in another newfangled invention: the automobile.

        -The late 1800s also see the first large-scale steel construction. The best example can be found in Paris. Where else? There, on the Champ de Mars, French engineer Gustave Eiffel erects an enormous steel tower to serve as the centerpiece for the 1889 World’s Fair. Eiffel’s tower isn’t merely a work of art. It’s a proof-of-concept, demonstrating that steel construction can be not only impressive, but beautiful. The first point is not controversial. Prior to 1889, the tallest buildings in the world had always been made of stone, with the previous record-holder, the Washington Monument, topping out at 555 feet. The Eiffel Tower shatters that record, soaring to a height of 1,025 feet. As to whether or not it’s beautiful, that is controversial. When the design for the tower is first unveiled, many artists and architects criticize it as nothing more than a giant scaffold. Needless to say, opinions have changed.

        -None of this – the art, the culture, the fashion, the colonial empires – would be possible without European economic dominance, and this is maintained in part through the gold standard. During the Belle Époque, every major country in the world outside of China uses gold for its currency. Exchange rates are handled based on gold content, and as a result, international finance is more liquid than ever before. In his book The Transformation of the World, A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, German historian Jürgen Osterhammel writes of the gold standard:

        “This institution required from participating governments an explicit or implicit willingness to do anything necessary to defend currency convertibility—hence a consonance at the level of economic policy. This meant, for example, that no one was supposed even to think of devaluation or revaluation, and that in a highly competitive international system, governments were ready to solve financial crises by mutual agreement and mutual assistance. This happened in the Baring crisis of 1890, for example, when a large British private bank declared itself insolvent and only prompt support from the French and Russian state banks maintained liquidity on the London market. The following years witnessed a number of similar cases in other countries. Such international coordination and fine-tuning, at a time when there was still no telephone and top officials did not hold regular meetings, was much more difficult to achieve than it is today. Yet the system proved its effectiveness thanks to the professional solidarity— ‘trust’ would perhaps be too strong a word—among governments and central banks. In the world as it existed before 1914, there was a greater convergence of interests and spirit of cooperation in the field of monetary policy than in diplomacy and military affairs. This discrepancy between the different levels of international relations, involving an autonomy of prestige-centered power politics, was one of the main distinguishing features of globality during the quarter century before the outbreak of the First World War.”

        -In other words, the entire gold standard depends on mutual interest. When the World Wars arrive, that mutual interest collapses. The economies of Europe will fundamentally transform, and Europe along with them. But that’s a story for another time – maybe another season of the show.

For now, I want to talk about the people in our story. Since the story has spanned more than three decades and five episodes, that’s a fair number of people. Perhaps the biggest loser in all of this is Napoleon III, the first French President, as well as its last Emperor and last Bonaparte ruler. Napoleon is not a well man at the time he’s taken prisoner in Germany, and he continues to delay treatment for his medical issues.

        -After the Treaty of Frankfurt ends the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III goes into exile, but unlike his uncle, he won’t be going to some miserable island. He’ll be going to London, where he mingles with the British elite and tries to put together an army to restore the French Empire. But by Christmas, 1872, the pain from his kidney stones is so intense that he can’t work, and Napoleon finally agrees to surgery.

        -The surgery itself is pretty Victorian. On January 4th 1873, Napoleon is given chloroform, and a British kidney specialist named Sir Henry Thompson inserts a small crushing device up his urethra. This device is basically a set of jaws with a long handle, so you close the jaws, stick them up the person’s urethra, probe around for the kidney stone, open the jaws, crush the stone into little pieces, then pull the closed jaws out the urethra.

        -And guys, I’m sorry you had to hear that, but it’s important, because the procedure is only partially successful. Napoleon has neglected his kidney stone for so long that Doctor Thompson was only able to crush part of it. So two days later, on January 6th, the Emperor will be put under anesthesia again for a second operation – which is also only partially successful. A third operation is scheduled for the afternoon of the 9th, but it never takes place. That morning, Napoleon III whispers to his personal doctor, Henri Conneau, who was by his side at the Battle of Sedan: “N’est-ce pas, Conneau, que nous n’avons pas été des laches a Sedan?” meaning: “We weren’t cowards at Sedan, Conneau, were we?” These are his final words, and he dies at 10:45 that morning. The official cause of death is kidney failure, exacerbated by a massive, untreated kidney stone. At autopsy, the portion still left inside Napoleon’s body measures more than 1 ¼ inches in diameter. The autopsy does not address stress from the repeated surgeries, and absolves the surgeon, Doctor Thompson, from any responsibility.

        -Napoleon III’s funeral is held less than a week later at the neighborhood Catholic Church of Saint Mary’s. It’s meant to be a small ceremony, although the invited guests include a number of high-ranking nobility, as well as a personal representative of Queen Victoria. The small church is only barely large enough for the 200 invited guests, so when more than 17,000 people show up to pay their respects, they’re forced to stand outside and wait for the casket to be brought out. When Napoleon’s now-16-year-old son, Louis-Napoleon, leaves the church, some people start cheering “Long live the Emperor!” but he tells them that the Emperor is dead, and that they should be cheering “Long live France!”

        -Louis-Napoleon himself is seen as a possible future monarch, should monarchists once again take control of the French government. In fact, French Bonapartists start calling him “Napoleon IV” about five minutes after Napoleon III is dead. Given his father’s career path, it’s also not out of the question that he could run for a seat in the National Assembly or become President. Given this level of influence, the British government bends over backward to accommodate the young Louis-Napoleon, who is already attending the Royal Military Academy. In 1879, at the age of 22, he will be deployed to serve in South Africa as part of the Zulu War. A few months later, Louis-Napoleon will be sent out on a patrol in what local British commanders believe is safe territory, and his patrol will be ambushed by a group of Zulu warriors, wielding spears called “assegai”. Fenton Bresler writes:

        “Faced with death, he had shown a courage of which his father would have been proud. Left alone by his fleeing comrades when his saddle strap broke and he could not remount his horse, he saw seven warriors advancing upon him with assegais raised. One threw his weapon which struck him in the thigh. He pulled it out and threw it back, then ran towards the Zulus firing his revolver. His shots missed. A second assegai felled him and the Zulus clustered around him, stabbing him even after he was dead. The next morning, when British soldiers came to gather up his body, they found his clothes rent by seventeen vicious wounds — all in the front. At the Musée du Second Empire at the Chateau de Compiégne today, visitors can still see his tunic with those seventeen gashes in the fabric.”

        -These multiple stab wounds to Louis-Napoleon’s corpse are not a desecration. To the Zulu, they’re a sign of respect to a fallen enemy. Each man in the group takes a turn stabbing the body, to signify that he fought so bravely that it took all of them together to defeat him. Such is Louis-Napoleon’s fighting spirit that even people in a country that has never heard of his family still recognize and respect that spirit.

        -If everyone in France had shared that spirit, they might not have lost the Franco-Prussian War. Such is the case for Field Marshal Francois Bazaine, who had first bungled the initial campaign, then, as Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, had lost his entire army at the Siege of Metz. As soon as the Germans release him back to France, he writes a book The Army of the Rhine, describing the campaign from his point of view. Haunted by public accusations of treason and cowardice, Bazaine then demands a court-martial to clear his name, which he is granted. He loses, and is sentenced to death in what most historians and contemporary observers agree is a show trial to make him the scapegoat for the failures of the entire French Imperial government.

        -Fortunately for Bazaine, his old friend Patrice de MacMahon has just become President of France, and commutes his sentence to twenty years in prison. In late 1873, he’s sent to the infamous prison of Fort Royal, where the Man in the Iron Mask was once locked up, and from which no-one has ever escaped. But less than a year later, in August 1874, 63-year-old Francois Bazaine ties together a rope and a bunch of luggage straps he’s had smuggled into the prison, ties one end of the line to a stone gargoyle, and rappels down a 300-foot cliff to a waiting boat. He and his family escape to Spain, where he lives for another 14 years, even surviving an assassination attempt by a French nationalist in 1887.

        -As for Adolphe Thiers, the first President of the French Third Republic, he serves less than two years in office. Though almost-universally respected for paying off France’s war indemnity and getting German troops off French soil, he’s unable to convince the National Assembly to agree on a constitution.

        -At first, Thiers tries to formalize the current republican government, but the assembly is dominated by royalists who want to establish a new constitutional monarchy under a Bourbon king. Eventually, the assembly ousts him and replaces him as President with Patrice de MacMahon, who tries to establish a monarchy. The effort only fails due to the royalist candidate himself, who is an extremely old-school conservative that will only agree to lead an absolute monarchy, not a constitutional one. He even insists on returning to the old white Bourbon flag and ditching the red, white, and blue flag of post-revolutionary France. Without a viable candidate, the monarchist faction soon falls apart, and the Third Republic is formally established. Adolphe Thiers himself will continue to serve in the National Assembly until his death from a stroke in 1877, at the age of 80. His funeral procession is led by none other than Leon Gambetta and Victor Hugo.

-The Army of the French Third Republic will learn from its mistakes. It will streamline command and control, with fewer decisions being made from the top down and with local unit commanders given more autonomy. At the same time, the French will create a General Staff along the lines of the Germans and other world powers. This staff will be tasked with war planning, and will ultimately develop a series of plans for future wars against the Germans, culminating in their final plan, Plan XVII, which they unleash at the beginning of World War I to… mixed results.

So much for what happens in France. Before we wrap up the stories of Italy and Germany, I want to touch on the last major player in our story: Austria-Hungary. There, 40-year-old Emperor Franz Josef is still in the early part of his reign. He will continue as head of Austria-Hungary until November of 1916, overseeing not just the entire Belle Époque but also the better part of World War I. During that time, he sees many personal tragedies, not least of which is the death of his son and heir Rudolf, who takes his own life at the age of 30 in a murder-suicide pact with a 17-year-old baroness named Mary Vetsera. Rudolf had been a severe alcoholic most of his adult life, and had probably also suffered from gonorrhea and syphilis. The gonorrhea had infected his wife, rendering her sterile and unable to give him an heir so, upon Rudolf’s death, the new heir instead becomes Emperor Franz Josef’s younger brother, Karl Ludwig, but he dies of typhus in 1896, probably from drinking tainted water on a religious pilgrimage in Palestine. This makes the new heir Karl Ludwig’s son, Emperor Franz Josef’s nephew, a guy named Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

        -Despite his personal tragedies, Emperor Franz Josef also oversees a period of great Austrian economic growth. There’s a notable black spot in this period of growth: the Vienna stock exchange crash of 1873, triggered by the bursting of speculative bubbles in the Austrian economy. This crash sends ripples throughout the global economy, and along with other factors, it will trigger other crashes in most major countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the US, the depression of the 1870s will come to be known as the “Great Depression,” before being dethroned by the far-worse depression of the 1930s. For Austria, as for the US, this depression is really just a bump in the road.

-The bubble of 1873 had been driven by optimism and opportunity, created by the re-integration of the Austrian and Hungarian economies after years of civil unrest. This integration allows companies to grow larger, to centralize their operations, and to buy out smaller firms. In his book The Habsburg Monarchy: From Enlightenment to Eclipse, British historian Robin Okey writes:

“From 1880 the Austrian economy began to recover more strongly. Again railway expansion led the way, this time under state control and with extensive renationalization of private lines. Between 1873 and the turn of the century, 13,637 kilometers of track were added. Bank capital also rose… nine Viennese ‘big banks’ held somewhat under half all bank share capital in 1900 and two-thirds in 1913. It was a pattern of concentration which pointed to the restructuring Austrian industry as a whole had undergone from the 1880s, as a long-term response to the depression and also to the growing tendencies towards protection and concentration elsewhere in Europe, above all Germany. Austria-Hungary adopted a more protectionist tariff in 1882. The iron industry was the most striking example of concentration; by 1911 just three firms produced 92% of Austria’s pig iron. The number of Austrian coal mining firms fell by 58% in the four decades to 1913, by which time eight of the 186 sugar firms accounted for 35% of production. According to the industrial census of 1902 three-quarters of workers in machine plants in the Czech lands were employed in enterprises of more than a hundred employees. Concentration was far from universal, however. Many industries retained small or medium-sized units of production, like clothing, leather and wood products, or chemicals, glass and construction respectively; others, above all textiles, were polarized between large enterprises and a host of handicraft concerns. In the 1902 census more than half of the Czech lands’ cotton weavers and a fifth of its cotton spinners were revealed to be domestic workers. Yet overall Austrian concentration was surprisingly advanced, bearing in mind the more backward provinces of Galicia, Bukovina and Dalmatia. Indeed, the 1902 census showed that the proportion of workers employed in enterprises with over a thousand employees was already higher than in the comparable German census of 1895.”

-Austria-Hungary is industrializing. It’s modernizing. It’s catching up to Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. And unification is only a part of this package. The other part is a peaceful, stable foreign policy, guided by former Hungarian Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Gyula Andrássy. In 1873, Andrássy helps Bismarck establish the League of the Three Emperors, an alliance between the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the newly-established German Empire. While this alliance will fall apart in the 1890s, it does ensure a long period of peace. And when conflict does arise, the new Austrian foreign policy keeps that conflict focused on the Balkans, where Austria and Russia begin nibbling away at the collapsing Ottoman Empire. So from 1890 onwards, Austria gets involved in a few small conflicts in a region most Austria-Hungarian subjects view as a backwater, but that’s about it. Certainly nothing that could explode into another major war, ruin the economy, and shatter the Empire. If anything, the dawn of the 20th Century is a time of optimism in most of the Empire, as it will be in most of Europe.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE FUTURE OF ITALY

At the end of 1870, the Kingdom of Italy is officially unified, but this official unification obscures some major underlying divisions that will continue to dog the new nation. The first is the division between Italian nationalists and Italian Catholics, who make up a large percentage of the population. There have long been tensions between Italian nationalists and the Catholic Church, with controversy over whether practicing Catholics could in good conscience support a state that, among other things, is forcibly seizing Church property. But after the capture of Rome, the controversy is over. During the 1874 national elections, Pope Pius IX says that it’s “inexpedient” for Catholics to vote, basically saying that there are no acceptable candidates. Soon after, this will be changed into a formal ban on political participation by Roman Catholics, under the slogan “neither electors nor elected.”

        -Most Italians are Catholics at this time, so it mostly comes down to how observant or conservative you are. More observant or conservative Catholics tend to obey the Pope’s order, while more liberal, less observant Catholics tend to ignore it. This isn’t always the case, though. Many conservative Catholics also violate the Pope’s order, arguing that a refusal to participate in civic life will only cede cultural ground to the Church’s enemies. It’s a complicated time.

        -For example, the state seizure of Church property doesn’t work the way it had in Revolutionary France. Italy is more religiously observant and has a less well-established state bureaucracy, which makes it nearly impossible for the state to replace, for example, Catholic schools and hospitals, which in turn are often operated by monasteries. So, complex legal fictions are generally used to legalize the status quo. For example, the state might seize a monastery and the adjacent school, then grant it to a corporate entity owned in perpetuity by whoever is the Abbot of that monastery. In Italy, the Catholic Church isn’t under constant attack by armed revolutionaries, but it does have to do more paperwork. This kind of thing can be negotiable. The Church has worked with many types of government in its history, all with their own legal frameworks and associated legal fictions.

-What is not negotiable is the seizure of Rome by the Italian government and, initially, Pius IX doesn’t expect the government to actually be able to hold on to Rome. Remember, as recently as 1849, this same Pope had lost control of Rome to the Roman Republic, then taken the city back a year later with French help. He expects to do the same thing again this time, and even during the Italian assault on the city, Pius IX is trying to lay the ground for later foreign aid. At 5:30 in the morning on the day of the assault, he summons all foreign ambassadors to a meeting. Representatives from France, Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and the United States, among other countries, arrive and are first invited into the Pope’s private chapel, where he says Mass while the walls are being bombarded. Pius then formally welcomes the dignitaries and begins his formal diplomatic protest, but is interrupted when Rome’s walls are breached and he has to go orchestrate the surrender. His mission is accomplished, though: representatives from every major Christian country – as well as many minor ones – have just witnessed for themselves that the Italian government had taken Rome by armed force.

-Given the ongoing war, there’s no realistic chance for Pius IX to get foreign help right away. His plan is to wait things out, but this gives the Italian government breathing room to make its position look more reasonable. So in November of 1870, King Victor Emmanuel’s government passes something called the Law of Guarantees. In his book Pio Nono: A Masterful Study of Pius IX and His Role in Nineteenth-Century European Politics and Religion, 20th Century English Catholic historian E.E.Y. Hales sums up the Law of Guarantees as follows:

“The law was not a treaty because the Pope would have no hand in it; it was a parliamentary law, like any other law… In its first part it invested the Pope, though deprived of territory, with the full attributes of a sovereign. His person was declared sacred and inviolable, immune from arrest and protected by the treason laws protecting the King. His diplomatic relations with other governments were to be protected in the same way as those of the King. He was allowed to keep his personal Guard. He was to have his own postal and telegraph services and the exclusive use—though not the ownership—of the Vatican, Lateran, and Castel Gandolfo. In compensation for his lost territories he was to receive an annual sum of 3,225,000 lire. So much for the Papacy. As regards the Church, the principle adopted, though not fully implemented, was the Cavourian separation of Church and State. The State abandoned the claim to nominate Bishops.”

-The Italian state will also provide payments to Catholic clergy, including the Pope, and, in the face of political reality, the Law of Guarantees is enough to prevent foreign powers from intervening. The new French Republican government wants to keep the support of conservative Catholics, who would favor intervention. But they also have to deal with the fallout from having just lost a major war, so the French government only demands that Italy do what it has already done: maintain the Pope’s spiritual independence. This policy is supported by Otto von Bismarck, who views it as a reasonable middle ground that will go down well with both Catholics and Protestants in Germany, where there’s a good mixture of both. As for Austria-Hungary, they have no appetite for yet another war with Italy – certainly not without German support. Besides which, as I’ve already discussed, they’ve already shifted their foreign policy focus to the Balkans.

-With no help forthcoming, Pius IX declares himself “a prisoner in the Vatican,” and remains inside the Vatican for the rest of his life. His successor, Pope Leo XIII, will continue this policy, and will go even further by refusing his salary from the Italian state, on the grounds that it makes him look like a puppet. In fact, three more Popes will continue this policy of self-imposed house arrest inside the Vatican, and relations between the Papacy and the Italian government won’t be normalized until 1929, when Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini sign the Lateran Treaty, which establishes Vatican City as a sovereign country and the Pope as its head of state, as well as providing special extraterritorial privileges and tax exemptions on several historic Church buildings located in the old Papal States. The Lateran Treaty remains in force until 1984, when it’s replaced by an updated agreement.

-I also can’t end any discussion of Pope Pius IX’ tenure without mentioning the First Vatican Council, which is a meeting of bishops from around the world that’s supposed to organize a response from the Catholic Church to the changes in the modern world. The council is in session during the Franco-Prussian War, and is interrupted by the Italian attack on Rome. With the Pope’s dubious legal status in following years, and then the chaos of the World War Era, the Catholic Church doesn’t get around to having another council – Vatican II – until the 1960s – a delay of nearly 100 years.

Besides the divide between conservative Catholics and more dedicated Italian nationalists, Italian society in the late 19th Century is divided by something that comes to be called the Southern Question. This is the economic divide between Northern Italy and Southern Italy, where the old Kingdom of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia are significantly poorer than everything north of Naples. This divide has many historical causes, which some people date back as far as the Islamic invasions of Italy or even the devastation of Southern Italy by Hannibal way back in the Third Century BC. Even today, in the 21st century, you can look at a map of Italian regions by GDP and the difference between north and south is like night and day. It’s controversial, and it’s not something I’m going to resolve – or even fully capture – in this episode.

-However, the Southern Question is something the new Italian government has to grapple with. This does not always go well, in part because the north is more populous, which means the north dominates the elected government, and the monarchy is historically from Piedmont, which is in the north. In his book Modern Italy: A Political History, English historian Denis Mack Smith introduces the Southern Question with the following paragraph:

“For some time after 1860 most northerners were completely ignorant-of the South, for few ever went there if they could help it. …Cavour, who refused an invitation to go and see for himself, believed that Naples would become the richest province in Italy. Probably this illusion provided one of the reasons why some initially skeptical northerners accepted the national movement, and their subsequent disillusion was a source of weakness for national feeling. After closer acquaintance the inhabitants of the South were soon being referred to by one cabinet minister as ‘an army of barbarians encamped among us.’ D’Azeglio seriously suggested that the South should once again be separated from Italy, since other provinces were incapable of supporting such a burden and ‘even the best cook will never make a good dish out of stinking meat.’”

-Industrialization is expected to help right the ship, but Italian industrialization in the late 19th century is centered in the north, which is closer to the rest of Europe and by now already has a dense rail network to transport goods. This only increases the divide between Northern and Southern Italy, with Southern Italy also hit hard by lobsided tariffs that favor northern industrial outputs while allowing southern agricultural interests to flounder. Worse yet, Italy also maintains a fairly large conscript army, which disproportionately impacts southern family farms who rely on young men for their labor.

-All of this leads to a rising wave of emigration that crests in the years leading up to World War I, then slowly recedes before ending in the fascist era. It’s worth noting that emigration doesn’t only affect the south. In fact, the majority of emigrants are from the north, where growing industries are squeezing old-school craftsmen out of the market. But compared to their share of the population, a much higher proportion of emigrants are coming from the south. The exact number is tough to pin down, because some people go back and forth. But between the unification of Italy and the outbreak of World War I, something like nine million Italians leave the country permanently. That’s about 20% of the population, with most of them emigrating to the New World. Some of my great-grandparents actually lived near Rome and immigrated to the US during this time period.

So much for Italian Unification. What about the men who made it possible? Let’s start with Giuseppe Mazzini, the intellectual godfather of Italian nationalism. When the Kingdom of Italy seizes Rome, Mazzini is 65 years old, and he’s not done being a revolutionary. He’d been elected to a seat in the Italian legislature in 1867, but had refused to take a seat in a monarchist government. In fact, when the government seizes Rome, Mazzini is sitting in prison in Gaeta, after trying to launch an anti-monarchist rebellion in Sicily. The government releases him the next month, as part of a general amnesty.

        -Mazzini will only live another two years, but until the very end, he remains a unique individual, defying any conventional political stereotypes. If you’ll forgive me a long quote from Denis Mack Smith, here’s a passage from his biography of Mazzini, where he talks about the revolutionary leader’s final days publishing a newspaper in Rome:

        “Its first target was the Socialist International and the increasingly frequent invocation of class war. Ever since the 1840s, Mazzini had called socialism 'a symptom of a tremendous crisis that hovers over all the nations of Europe' and for which a remedy was imperatively required if society were not to be devastated by fratricidal strife. The most urgent remedy was to eliminate extreme poverty, for which his proposed remedies had always included liberalization of trade, an increase in production and consumption through a greater diffusion of purchasing power, which in turn would involve putting the relations between capital and labor on a less unequal footing. As many as seven hundred and fifty workers' associations and cooperatives had already come into existence under his influence, and his newspaper campaigned for legal recognition so that their voice could be effectively heard. To arbitrate in industrial controversies he proposed setting up councils with equal representation of employers and workers presided over by a neutral judge. The middle and upper classes had to be persuaded that a better deal for labor was the most important problem of the day and every class had far more to gain than lose from its solution.

“What shattered this dream was the victory of French insurgents who in March rebelled against the republican government of Thiers and briefly turned Paris into an independent socialist Commune. Mazzini had no love for Thiers who, though a critic of Napoleon III, was a declared enemy of Italian unification. But nor did he share the very different views of Garibaldi, who positively welcomed the Commune. After a few weeks he was appalled by its excesses and cruelties, finding himself allied with the conservatives in condemning a blatant example of class war that as well as being immoral in itself would antagonize the middle classes and damage any chances of peaceful social reform. Unlike some of his democratic supporters, and completely contradicting the ritual abuse from his conservative enemies, he confirmed an aspect of his nature that only close friends had known. He was opposed to violent revolt except as a very last resort. [And here, paraphrasing Mazzini, Mack Smith writes:] As a general rule 'I declare myself a man of authority and government' opposed to the 'large portion of the democratic camp' which failed to realize that an antagonism between government and governed would be 'productive of constant strife and hostile to all progress'.”

-As for Giuseppe Garibaldi, his service in the Franco-Prussian War will be his final military command. At 63 years old, he retires from violent revolution, but remains active as a sort of elder statesman in far-left circles. Unlike Mazzini, he had been a fan of the Paris Commune, and soon aligns with the First International, the broader far-left movement that the Communards had been a part of. He will serve as a member of the Italian national legislature, representing Rome, until his death at the age of 74 in 1882. During that time, he will constantly advocate for the First International’s goals of international socialism, even arranging an illegal meeting of international socialist leaders in Rome the 1870s, although even during his time in government, he spends most of his days relaxing on his farm on the island of Caprera. Following his death, Garibaldi remains an icon in many anarchist circles.

-King Victor Emmanuel II has been less central to our story than most of the other monarchs, mostly because he’s less influential in his own government. While the Italian constitution, the Albertine Statute, stipulates that the king can appoint and fire government ministers at will, in practice, the national legislature comes to dominate the government, which is led by a series of prime ministers. King Victor Emmanuel does, however, have a lot of power over foreign policy, and will manage to keep any of Italy’s political factions from starting any wars. From the capture of Rome until his death in 1878, Italy will be at peace.

-Victor Emmanuel II’s son, Umberto, will serve as king from 1878 until 1900. This will also be a time of external peace, thanks mostly to Umberto’s alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, which he makes in 1882. A militarist at heart, Umberto will try to expand Italy the same way other European countries are expanding in this period: by taking over part of Africa. His reign sees the Italian conquest of Eritrea and Somalia, as well as Italy’s disastrous invasion of Ethiopia in 1895. In July of 1900, King Umberto will be gunned down by Italian-American terrorist Gaetano Bresci, shot four times as his carriage leaves a gymnastics competition. Umberto will be succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel III, who will be the last king of Italy, serving for nearly half a century before he abdicates in 1946, bringing an end to the Italian monarchy.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE AGE OF BISMARCK

In 1871, Germany stands united for the first time in history. This isn’t the Holy Roman Empire, the Confederation of the Rhine, or the German Confederation. This is the German Empire, a huge Central European state that controls not just modern-day Germany, but also about half of modern-day Poland, along with chunks of France, Denmark, Lithuania, as well as the modern-day Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. A more aggressive leader – someone like Napoleon – might have tried to use this empire as a launching-pad to dominate all Europe. But Kaiser Wilhelm hadn’t even wanted an empire, and for Germany’s other senior leaders, the word “Empire” is just a stand-in for the word nation, because that’s what they have united: the German nation, along with a strategic buffer zone on the French border. As of 1871, almost all majority-German parts of Europe are part of either the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the German Empire.

-Truth be told, German nationalization itself was also a stand-in for something else. For Bismarck, the real aim had been to preserve the security of the Prussian state. Given Prussia’s central strategic position and relatively small size compared to the other major powers, this had meant expanding right up to those other powers’ borders to grab as much land and as many people as possible. The fact that most of those people are German allows Bismarck and his allies to use German nationalism as a political tool. If you’re trying to convince Saxony, for example, to become a junior partner in a greater German Reich, it helps if a lot of Saxon people and politicians are German nationalists. So, what does the future hold for Germany’s leaders?

-I haven’t talked much about Minister of War Albrecht von Roon, but he’s been in the background all this time, working closely with Bismarck, Moltke, and the Kaiser to co-ordinate the military. It was his reforms that rebuilt the Prussian Army into a force capable of defeating both the Austrians and the French, and for this service, he’s given the title of Graf, or Count, before the Franco-Prussian War is even over. Roon will continue to serve as Minister of War for nearly three more years, and will also serve as Minister-President of Prussia starting in January of 1873, taking over from Bismarck in that role so Bismarck can devote his full attention to his job as Chancellor of the German Empire. Roon resigns both as Minister-President and as Minister of War on November 9th 1873, due to poor health. He dies five years later in Berlin, at the age of 75.

-Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke is also given the title of Graf, although he receives it three months before Roon in October of 1870, in recognition of his victory at the Battle of Sedan. The next summer, he’s promoted to Field Marshal, the highest rank in the new German Army. Already over 70 years old, Moltke will continue to serve as Chief of the German General Staff until 1888, when he finally retires from that position. Even then, Moltke will continue to serve as a member of the Reichstag – the new German Parliament, where he serves from its establishment in 1871 until his death in 1891 at the age of 90. During this time, he serves as not just the face of the German military, but also as its brain. Not only that, but there’s a reason we call him “Helmuth von Moltke the Elder.” His nephew, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, will also become Chief of the German General Staff, and will command the German military during the opening days of World War I.

-As for the man at the head of the entire German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm I is more important for what he represents than what he does. Although the Kaiser has more powers than other constitutional monarchs like Britain’s Queen Victoria, those powers are mostly military. And in this new era of peace, there’s little chance for Wilhelm to exercise those powers. His greatest contribution, in terms of policy, is his staunch anti-socialism, which only becomes more pronounced after not one, but two attempted assassinations by Socialist terrorists in 1878. In the second attempt, the Kaiser is severely wounded by a shotgun blast, and the civilian government responds with a package of anti-Socialist laws that effectively ban most forms of left-wing political activity, including workers’ organizations. These laws will eventually be repealed under public pressure, two years after Wilhelm I’s death in 1888, at the age of 90.

-Kaiser Wilhelm I will be succeeded by his son, Frederick III. Frederick has long been an opponent of Otto von Bismarck, and wants to establish a more liberal government, influenced by Great Britain’s. He’s strongly influenced by his wife Victoria, who is the daughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria. Unfortunately for Frederick III, his chronic smoking habit has caught up with him, and when he takes the throne on March 9th 1888, he’s already been diagnosed with terminal laryngeal cancer. He dies a few months later on June 15th, leaving the German throne to his son, Wilhelm II who – spoiler alert – will be the last German Emperor.

The Germany ruled by Wilhelm and his heirs is truly an Empire. On the one hand, yes, you have the trappings of power. The word “Empire” and “Imperial” are derived from the Latin word “Imperium,” meaning “power.” The word “Kaiser” is just German for “Caesar,” a callback to ancient Rome. Like the Habsburgs, like Napoleon, like the Tsars in Russia, like just about every Western leader since the fall of Rome, Wilhelm I takes Roman imagery and language to establish his legitimacy. On the other hand, these trappings of old-school domination are in many ways just table dressing for a federated state that still has a lot in common with the old Holy Roman Empire.

        -Remember, Kaiser Wilhelm is, at heart, an old-school monarchist who really believes that God Himself endows kings with their legitimacy. Because of this belief, most of the other German kings keep their titles and much of their power – except for poor King George of Hanover, who’s already lost his kingdom and had his money stolen to pay off some of the other monarchs. But the Kingdoms of Saxony, Bavaria, and other smaller kingdoms remain in place. Some even have their own armies, although from now on, all German armies, including the Prussian Army, will serve under the German high command. This helps to explain why the German Army in World War I is going to have so many royal and noble commanders. If it seems like every German division in that war is commanded by the Prince of Something-or-Other, it’s because the army of the German Empire is made up of a handful of armies, each with its own royal family and noble houses.

        -At the same time, there is to be a legislative system. And in fact, the legislative system looks a lot like the system in the United States. The old North German Confederation’s legislature, called the Reichstag, remains in place, and is what we would call the Lower House. Its seats are divvied out by district, with each representative being directly elected by the people of their district. The Bundesrat, or “Federal Council,” is what we would call the Upper House, and consists of 61 representatives appointed by the Empire’s member states. Many of these representatives are from the nobility, although they aren’t required to be, and in practice, several German states just appoint senior civil servants as their representatives instead. So you have one legislative body representing the people of Germany, and another representing the German states. It’s worth pointing out that modern Germany has a similar federated structure, which is uncommon in Europe, but common elsewhere in the world – for example, in the US, Canada, Australia, and Brazil. Within this federated system, 236 of 397 Reichstag seats will be filled by representatives from the Kingdom of Prussia, giving them a clear majority. Prussia will also control 17 out of 58 votes in the Bundesrat, which, while not giving them a majority, will make it difficult for anyone to form a coalition without them.

        -Like most other federated states, the German Empire’s federal government has what we call “enumerated powers,” meaning that it’s only allowed to exercise power in certain areas of law, while other areas of law are left to the states, although as we’re about to see, some German states also get special privileges. The German Empire’s government has 16 powers in total, which are spelled out in the constitution:

        “The following affairs are subject to the superintendence and legislation of the Empire:

“1. The regulations as to freedom of translocation, domicile and settlement affairs, right of citizenship, passport and police regulations for strangers, and as to transacting business including insurance affairs in so far as these objects are not already provided for by Article III of this Constitution. In Bavaria, however, the domicile and settlement affairs, and likewise the affairs of colonization and emigration to foreign countries are herefrom excluded.

“2. The customs and commercial legislation and the taxes which are to be applied to the requirements of the Empire.

“3. The regulation of the system of the coinage, weights and measures, likewise the establishment of the principles for the issue of funded and unfunded paper money;

“4. The general regulations as to banking;

“5. The granting of patents for inventions;

“6. The protection of intellectual property;

“7. The organization of the common protection of German commerce in foreign countries, of German vessels and their flags at sea, and the arrangement of a common Consular representation, which is to be salaried by the Empire;

“8. Railway affairs — excepting in Bavaria the arrangements in Article XLVI — and the construction of land and water communications for the defense of the country and for the general intercourse;

“9. The rafting and navigation affairs on water ways belonging in common to several of the States, and the condition of the waterways, and likewise the river or other water dues;

“10. Postal and telegraph affairs; in Bavaria and Wurtemburg, however, only with reference to the provisions of Article LII;

“11. Regulations as to the reciprocal execution of judgments in civil affairs and the settlement of requisitions in general;

“12. Likewise as to the verification of public documents;

“13. The general legislation as to obligatory rights, penal law, commercial and bill-of-exchange laws, and judicial procedure;

“14. The military and naval affairs of the Empire;

“15. The measures of medicinal and veterinary police;

“16. The regulations for the press and for union societies.”

-That leaves a lot of room for the states to exercise their own laws and customs, which they do. And for many in the German Empire, not much changes. If you like your village in Bavaria, the Prussians aren’t going to march in and force you to wear urban clothing and convert to Protestantism. But make no mistake: the German Empire, while federated, is very much a nation-state, in the same vein as France or Italy. Just before it enumerates the powers of the federal government, the new constitution reads:

“For entire Germany one common nationality exists with the effect, that every person… belonging to any one of the Confederated States is to be treated in every other of the Confederated States as a born native, and accordingly must be permitted to have a fixed dwelling, to trade, to be appointed to public offices, to acquire real estate property, to obtain the rights of a State-citizen, and to enjoy all other civil rights under the same presuppositions as the natives, and likewise is to be treated equally with regard to legal prosecution or legal protection.

“No German may be restricted from the exercise of this right by the authorities of his own State or by the authorities of any of the other Confederated States….

“Every German has the same claim to the protection of the Empire with regard to foreign nations.”

At the head of the new German Empire stands the titanic figure of Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor. From his origins as a local politician, he has risen to the top of Europe’s newest great power, and he’s done it without a whiff of personal scandal. Historian Tom Holland once wrote that Rome conquered the world in self-defense. Well, Bismarck has conquered the German Empire in self-defense. What started out as a desire to make Prussia strong enough to stand up to Austrian domination, became a desire to become large enough to stand up to any great power, and eventually became a desire to establish defensible frontiers.

        -So far, Bismarck may seem like your typical expansionist leader – maybe even a new Napoleon, or an early version of a certain Austrian painter. But what makes Bismarck special is that he stops. He recognizes that Germany has reached its natural boundaries, and for the rest of his long career, he avoids conflict with European neighbors. I’m not going to get into the age of Bismarckian Diplomacy here – it’s complicated enough to merit an entire episode – but the long and short of it is that Bismarck works to maintain a series of alliances that share one common goal: keeping France diplomatically isolated. He’s mostly successful, and it’s largely thanks to this policy that the French don’t try to attack Germany and take back their lost territory, and Europe gets a long period of peace. In many ways, the second half of the 19th Century mirrors the first. The European Great Powers maintain a balance of power such that no single country can dominate all the others like Napoleonic France had done. They do this deliberately, resuming the old consensus known as the Concert of Europe, which will continue until World War I.

        -For all the peacefulness of Bismarck’s tenure, it’s not as if Germany doesn’t have trouble. In one of his few failures, he takes up a cause known as the Kulturkampf, or “Culture Struggle,” a reactionary response to the recently-declared Catholic doctrine of Papal infallibility. According to some interpretations by wary Protestants, this doctrine seems like a declaration of Papal supremacy over civil authorities, and Roman Catholics become suspect. The early years of the German Empire are marked by a series of church closures, expelled bishops, and banned monastic orders. These policies reach their height in 1875, when Bismarck’s government stops recognizing the validity religious weddings. But unlike in much of post-Revolutionary Europe, these measures don’t take. For one thing, long-time listeners may remember that Germany had spent much of the 1600s being ravaged by the 30 Years’ War, a conflict between Catholics and Protestants that only ended when both sides agreed to allow religious freedom. The trauma of that conflict, and the embedded cultural norm of religious tolerance run deep in Germany, so much so that Bismarck’s Kulturkampf policies soon become deeply unpopular even in majority-Protestant Prussia, not to mention Germany’s majority-Catholic states like Bavaria. Bismarck soon begins to roll back his policies, formally abandoning them in 1878. It probably helps that Pope Pius IX dies in September of that year, so when Bismarck has to make concessions to the Pope like allowing the Pope to appoint bishops again, he’ll be making those concessions to a new Pope, Leo XIII, which he does under the veil of new negotiations. Bismarck is then able to repair much of the political damage by framing the Kulturkampf as a spat with the former Pope, not with German Catholics. Nonetheless, this period does lead to the foundation of an opposition political party: the Catholic Center Party, which is a Christian Democratic party that remains influential through the end of the Weimar Republic, and is a predecessor to today’s Christian Democratic Union, one of modern Germany’s major political parties.

        -With so much political housekeeping to do at home, Otto von Bismarck is leery of the idea of creating a German colonial empire. Germany lacks a powerful navy that can take on potential rivals like Britain and France, so it would be difficult to hold on to such an empire in the event of war. At one point, Bismarck even rejects an offer from the President of Costa Rico to establish a German naval base in the Caribbean. His reasoning? This would violate the Monroe Doctrine and antagonize the United States. Even the US, which at the time has a third-rate navy, would be able to give the Germans trouble if they tried to project power that far from Europe.

        -This calculus changes in 1884. With Britain, France, and other European countries engaged in the Scramble for Africa – a rush to see who can colonize the most land the fastest – some people are worried that a colonial war could break out and spread back to Europe. One of these people is King Leopold II of Belgium, who convinces Otto von Bismarck to call a meeting of all Europe’s colonial powers, including small-time colonizers like Sweden, as well as other interested parties like Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States. In all, 14 countries are represented at the meeting, which is held in Berlin from November 1884 to 1885, and is appropriately known as the Berlin Conference. The Berlin Conference established a series of rules to determine who claims what land in Africa, so colonial powers don’t end up fighting each-other. This conference is so successful at establishing peaceful conditions for colonization that it convinces Bismarck to finally get into the game. By the outbreak of World War I, Germany will control huge swaths of both East and West Africa, as well as several smaller island colonies throughout the globe, making the German Empire the world’s third-largest colonial empire after Britain and France. Incidentally, the Berlin Conference also mandates freedom of trade and navigation on the economically-vital Congo River. To guarantee this, the major powers grant control of the territory to neutral Belgium, and it becomes known as the Belgian Congo.

        -Bismarck will serve as German Chancellor until March 18th 1890, when he resigns at the age of 75. He only does so at the order of the new Kaiser, Wilhelm II, who unlike his predecessor is sympathetic with the labor movement and wants to legalize trade unions. While Bismarck has supported a number of social welfare programs, he’s been a staunch opponent of workers’ organizations, which he sees as a front for Socialist revolutionaries. Since the Chancellor and the Kaiser don’t see eye-to-eye on domestic policy, one of them has to go, and it’s not going to be the Kaiser. So Bismarck goes into retirement in his estate in Schleswig-Holstein, writes his memoirs, and enjoys time hiking in the local woods. When his wife Johanna, who he’s been married to for 47 years, dies in 1894, he falls into a depression, and when he’s diagnosed with gangrene of the leg in 1896, he refuses treatment. While he never has to have his leg amputated, the infection leaves him in chronic pain and mostly confined to a wheelchair. This doesn’t temper his rivalry with Wilhelm II, though. When the Kaiser comes to visit Bismarck in spring of 1895, his old Chancellor greets him on horseback, in full military regalia including a helmet and breastplate, with a uniformed military retinue he’s scraped up from the local area. Despite a few late glimpses of the old Bismarck, his overall health continues to decline, and he dies in 1898 at the age of 83. He leaves behind him a Germany not just united, but stronger, more secure, and freer than it’s even been.

This is the end of our story. And while it’s not the end of the story of nationalism, it’s a turning point in the story. By the end of the 19th century, nationalism has become the norm not just throughout Europe but throughout the Western world. Nationalist revolutions have toppled the old Spanish Empire. Parts of the old British Empire are demanding more local autonomy. An idea that had been insurgent is now a part of the establishment, and like any establishment it won’t take long for it to face opposition. This opposition comes in the form of global Communism and the global Socialist movement more generally, and it’s this conflict – the conflict between nationalism and globalism – that has shaped today’s world.

        -I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Revolutions of 1848 and their successor wars were largely confined to Europe. Many other revolutions around the globe, like those in the Spanish Latin American Empire, had also been supercharged by the idea of nationalism. But those other revolutions had already been in motion, and were not caused by anything we talked about in the last few episodes. That said, the wars of unification in Italy and Germany represent the zenith of nationalism as an organizing principle, and, not coincidentally, this zenith of nationalism coincides with the zenith of Western civilization, epitomized in the art, architecture, and rapid technological advancement of the Belle Époque.

-To those who are living at the end of the 19th Century, it must seem that this rapid ascent will last forever, that Western Civilization would lift mankind to the stars themselves, and no, that’s not an exaggeration. It’s not a coincidence that the Belle Époque gives birth to the first science fiction stories. French author Jules Verne’s 1869 novel A Voyage in a Balloon depicts brave adventurers exploring the then-unknown African interior in an advanced hot air balloon. French filmmaker Georges Méliès’ 1902 short film A Trip to the Moon depicts mankind exploring not just our planet, but the universe itself. Little do these optimists know that the age of nationalism is about to end in a raging multi-decade conflict that spans the entire globe and leads to the deaths of millions – along with the collapse of an old world order that Western man had spent centuries in building. And that’s why it’s relevant.

THIS EPISODE IS LINKED FROM: https://www.DanTolerPodcast.com/