Franco-Prussian War

The war between Prussia and France for hegemony on the European continent from 1870 to 1871.

In the 1860s, after Prussia defeated Denmark and Austria, her national power had grown. France declared war on Prussia on July 19, 1870 to prevent her from unifying Germany and seizing the left bank of the Rhine. After the outbreak of the war, the French army suffered repeated defeats. On September 2, 1870, more than 100,000 officers and soldiers led by Napoleon III surrendered at Sedan. The Second French Empire collapsed. After the Prussian army occupied a large part of French territory, the Paris proletariat staged an uprising on September 4, seized power and established the Paris Commune. The bourgeoisie set up the Third Republic and formed the “Government of National Defense”. On September 19, the Prussian army besieged Paris, and the people of Paris began to organize the National Guard to put up resistance, while the main force of the French army was defeated and surrendered in Strasbourg, Metz and Orléans one after another.

On January 18, 1871, King William I of Prussia was crowned Emperor at the Palace of Versailles on the outskirts of Paris and the German Empire was officially proclaimed. On January 28, the two parties signed an armistice, and on February 26, a preliminary peace treaty was signed. The “Government of National Defense” fled to Versailles. On May 10, Germany and France formally signed the Treaty of Frankfurt. At the end of the war, France ceded Alsace and the eastern part of Lorraine together with the fortress of Metz to Germany and paid an indemnity of 5 billion francs. On March 18, the Paris Commune uprising broke out. On 28 May, the Versailles government, assisted by the Prussian Army, suppressed the Paris Commune.

The Franco-Prussian War changed the political and military pattern of Europe and led to a prolonged confrontation between France and Germany. France lost its former status as the hegemon of continental Europe (it was not until after the World War I that France recovered the territories it ceded under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919), whereas Prussia achieved German unification and became a European great power by this war.