TheFrancoGerman War, (original) (raw)

The French-German war opposed the Second French Empire and the German kingdoms, united behind the kingdom of Prussia. The conflict marked the culminating point of tension between the two powers, resulting from the Prussian will to dominate all of Germany, that was originally a federation of quasi - independent states. The defeat entailed the fall of the French empire.
Badly prepared, low in number and badly commanded, the French were beaten in several battles. On the 2nd September, at the battle of Sedan, the French emperor Napoléon III surrendered with 100 003 soldiers, 419 cannons and 6000 horses. It entailed two days later the revolution without violence in Paris and the creation of a national defence government. The armistice was signed on January 28, 1871.
The workers of Paris refused to accept the defeat, criticizing the conservative government of not knowing how to organize an efficient national defence, and took control it of the capital on March 18, putting in place an insurrectionary government, the Paris Commune.
A peace treaty considered to be humiliating by France was signed at Versailles on February 26.
The consequences of the war were the birth of the 2nd German Reich and the third French Republic. The war united all the German empire under the Prussian crown and France became a republic.
The immediate consequence of the war was the advent of the Bismarck Germany that was going to dominate the continental Europe during close to thirty years. France became isolated diplomatically, enlivening more than ever a nationalism, the feeling of revenge that that intensified until 1914, and reached its ultimate and dramatic consequences of the First world War.