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Franco-Prussian War – Bismarck’s German Empire - Rachel Chrastil
301 Plays1 year ago
Ep 036 – Nonfiction. Deliberately engineered by Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the Franco-Prussian War toppled the French Empire, unified Germany, and set Europe on the path to World War I. Historian Rachel Chrastil joins me to discuss her fascinating new book, "Bismarck's War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Modern Europe."
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Transcript
The Impact of War on Civilians
00:00:00
Speaker
One thing that I hope readers take away, in addition to everything that we've talked about here, is the way that civilians get enmeshed in conflict. This was a war that took place at a time when people thought war was only about soldiers and they fight out in the field somewhere and it doesn't come home to us.
00:00:18
Speaker
That was people's belief. But as it turned out, armies were coming through, whether they're the enemy army or their own armies are marching through looking for supplies. And there's no playbook for that. Right. There's no I mean, we think about what's happening, you know, over the last year and a half in Ukraine, there's not a rule book that says this is what you do when enemy soldiers come into town. And and so I just would want readers to sort of think about that experience with empathy.
00:00:46
Speaker
as they contemplate what war was like 150 years ago.
Rachel Crastle on 'Bismarck's War'
00:01:10
Speaker
Today, I am very excited to have on the show Rachel Crastle for her new book, Bismarck's War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Making of Modern Europe. Rachel is a professor of history and provost and chief academic officer at Xavier University in Cincinnati and a former Fulbright scholar. She's the author of Organizing for War, The Siege of Strasbourg, and How to be Childless. Rachel, how are you today? Great. AJ, it's a pleasure to be here.
00:01:40
Speaker
Who could have thought that the Franco-Prussian War could be so interesting or have such big consequences for Europe?
00:01:49
Speaker
Well, exactly. It's one of those wars that before you know about it, you think, oh, it's kind of like all these other conflicts. When was it? What century? What was going on then? But once you start to dig in, you realize how foundational it was to Europe in the 20th century, to all the things that we think about happening, World War I, World War II, and so on. And do you find that most people in the US
00:02:16
Speaker
know much about the Franco-Prussian War or that there even was a Franco-Prussian War? It is lesser known, for sure. It is not my leading... When people ask me, what do I study? I'll say modern France or modern Europe, that time period between the French Revolution and World War I, and then I'll get into what do I study, the Franco-Prussian War. Well, why that? That's always the question.
00:02:43
Speaker
But it was the biggest conflict between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. It was the biggest conflict in Europe and really set the stage for what was to come. Yeah. And that's one that was was very surprising for me to to learn about was were the consequences from from this war. But with it's so interesting when when talking about the 19th century in wars in Europe and wars in America.
00:03:11
Speaker
So for example, the War of 1812 is, you know, we know what that is here in America, but most people in Europe, 1812 is, you know, that's Napoleon. It's like, what is the War of 1812? There was a war in America in 1812. So this might definitely fall along those lines of, you know, it's a Europe, North America divide.
Political Shifts in Post-War Europe
00:03:34
Speaker
But nonetheless, like huge consequences.
00:03:36
Speaker
Absolutely, I mean, so you have on the one hand, you've got France, which at that time had Napoleon III as his emperor, who is lesser known, his uncle was the great Napoleon, right? But he had been the emperor of France for 20 years and really an authoritarian leader. At the end of this war, France is becoming a republic and a stable republic for the first time ever, after many, many revolutionary upheavals. Okay, so that's one big change.
00:04:04
Speaker
And it becomes the France of like the Eiffel Tower and the Impressionists and you know that turn of the century Ballet Park that emerges out of this war. On the other hand, you've got Germany, right, which at the beginning of this war is is still in many different states.
00:04:22
Speaker
Up until recently, there had been a question of whether Germany would ever unify. If it did, would it be under the leadership of Austria or under the leadership of Prussia? And as it turned out, with this conflict, Prussia was emerging as that leader. And by the end of this war, there is a unified Germany for the first time that had been a long time in process, but becomes the German Empire.
00:04:46
Speaker
That, of course, then later leads into World War I. So it's a really consequential conflict. Yeah, well, let's set the stage then to dive into this war.
Bismarck and German Unification
00:04:59
Speaker
So it takes place from 1870 to 1871. The book is called Bismarck's War. So maybe first, let's talk about Bismarck, who is a huge figure.
00:05:16
Speaker
What kind of person was he? What's his role before this war? And what is he trying to do that leads to the Franco-Prussian War? Right. So Otto von Bismarck becomes a German chancellor and really the political mastermind behind the unification of Germany. So over the previous decade, he had been able to shunt money into the armed forces and had helped to support
00:05:46
Speaker
the most powerful army in the world. They didn't know it quite yet because they proved themselves in this war and others during the course of the 1860s.
00:05:55
Speaker
but that is what he was building. And what Bismarck did, he changed nationalism from something that was associated with the left and with revolutionary forces like during the French Revolution to something that was a force on the right and the more like conservative authoritarian, monarchical kind of nationalism. There's a lot to unpack there, but basically what I'll note is that
00:06:21
Speaker
that for a long time, the forces of the kings, the nobility, the church that we think of as associated with conservatism at that time in Europe, they tended to view this idea of a unified nation as something that was counter to their interests. They viewed a unified nation as being actually way too embedded in the people to be something that they wanted to see happen. And they tried very hard
00:06:49
Speaker
to tamp down any attempts at, say, German unity. Germany, of course, was many different states, large, small, little principalities, cities that were independent, all these different units. Well, what happens by the middle of the 19th century is that conservatives, and again, by conservative, I mean the church, the
00:07:10
Speaker
or aristocracy, the monarchy, they start to realize that they can harness the power of nationalism for their own support and to create a unified nation that is both very much under the power of a monarchy and very much rooted into the sort of feeling of national unity that nationalism is so good at creating. And that's what Bismarck managed to harness throughout the 1860s and into 1870.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, what kind of person was he? Was he a military guy? What was, you know, what's kind of his background and how did he get into power?
00:07:48
Speaker
So he comes from an aristocratic background. He was known as a Jünger in Prussia. And so he wore a uniform often, but he was not really a military person. A lot of the true military leadership in Prussia kind of turned their nose up at him when he would sort of walk around. There's some portraits of him wearing the helmet and so on, but he was not a military strategist at all.
00:08:17
Speaker
What's so interesting about Bismarck is sometimes people ascribe to him like a grand plan, a grand scheme of unifying Germany. And yes, he had that. He always had that as the strategic outcome that he was seeking, but he didn't necessarily know exactly what the steps would be to get from here to there. But he was so smart at both taking advantage of whatever came and
00:08:37
Speaker
came to him to strengthen his position and then astutely understanding how he could manipulate what had happened in the past. He knew four years earlier that Napoleon III had said something that would come back to haunt him, that he could twist for his own benefit. That was the thing that Bismarck was good at. Yeah. When he comes into power and in the 1860s,
00:09:07
Speaker
He starts several, I don't know if you want to call them wars, and maybe they are wars, but he starts fighting Austria. He invades, I think, or he fights Denmark. We'll talk about what he's doing in the 1860s. Yeah, so the first war is against Denmark and where he and, where Bitprescia and Austria are actually on the same side. And they're fighting Denmark and they claim some territory, some of Danish territory.
00:09:35
Speaker
Then, so that's 1863. And then in 1866, he ends up going to war against Austria, Austria, the Habsburg Empire. And to many people's surprise, Prussia ends up severely
Prussian Military Strategies
00:09:49
Speaker
defeating Austria quickly in the field within just a few weeks. That conflict in 1866 leads
00:09:58
Speaker
on the one hand to a political realignment within Austria. So it now becomes Austria-Hungary, the Magyars who really assert their political power there because the crown there has weakened. And it also means that as a result, some of the key independent countries, Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden,
00:10:19
Speaker
who were still independent from Prussia, nevertheless found themselves under Prussian sway. They had to enter into treaties as a result of that. They had sided with Austria against Prussia. And now- And those are really the two big powers in the German lands, which haven't yet been unified. Right. And as you're saying, Prussia is... Is this a new thing that Prussia is defeating Austria? Because they've come into conflict before.
00:10:46
Speaker
Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah, for a long time. But Austria was always so much bigger. They were more established. They had this multi-ethnic empire under their sway, the Hapsburg Empire, that extended all the way up bordering against Russia, down into the Balkans, and so on. But Prussia's ability to then defeat them in the field so suddenly was startling and signal the ship.
00:11:12
Speaker
What is new that Prussia is doing? How are they achieving these victories now? Well, one big thing is that they have universal conscription, which became the norm later in the century. But it was actually Prussia that pioneered that way of conscripting armies. So previously, most armies would conscript the men into their armies for long terms of service, some seven years, eight years, 25 years, depending on the country.
00:11:41
Speaker
And it would be a small subset of men who would be doing the armed services. What Prussia instituted was universal conscription, which meant that every single young man would undertake military service for a shorter period of time.
00:11:55
Speaker
And then they would enter into a reserve system so they could be called back up to fight if needed. So that meant that Prussia over the years had built up a much, much broader number of soldiers. So they're not as well trained. They're not as experienced as the smaller conscript armies. And so that's the trade-off.
00:12:15
Speaker
But as it turned out, at this particular moment in time, that was the more powerful army. They were also very astute about war games, about mobilization. They were really paying attention to mobilization as a distinct part of entering into a conflict. Like, how do you get men from here to there? How do you concentrate them in one location? How do you make sure they all have the arms that they need and the supplies that they need?
00:12:41
Speaker
How do you use the railroads effectively? Not so much because the railroads are speedier, but because the railroads are more consistent and allow your troops to arrive fresher and more ready to fight. I think that the military leadership right now is under Helmut von Moltke, is that correct? Exactly. What is he bringing? Just thinking about the military situation, what is he bringing that is more innovative than some of the people he's fighting against?
00:13:11
Speaker
Well, for one thing, he conceptualizes the ability to mobilize large armies in a way that others had not yet even begun to think about. So he imagines the ability for armies to move into space, to wrap around their enemies and to outflank them, and that that flanking maneuver, because the armies have now gotten so big, you have to actually
00:13:36
Speaker
structure your mobilization around it so you're moving them into the right spots. You can't just like have them all go in the same direction and then kind of split out. You have to actually mobilize them in the right way so they can eventually surround and crush the other army. So he's very thoughtful about that. And yeah, so Prussia had much stronger leadership than Austria at the time and that proves to be the case in
00:13:59
Speaker
in the conflict against France later. So that war happens. And again, at this point, so now, by now, the South German states are kind of strong armed into being into alliances with Prussia and then the northern German states. So everything except Austria, basically, are now part of what's called the North German Confederation. And so that's a confederation of German states under the leadership of Prussia with King Wilhelm, the first of Prussia as the monarch, and then
00:14:28
Speaker
Bismarck as the minister president who is leading this confederation. So in 1870, what happens is that it's pretty clear that Prussia still wants to bring in the southern German state. So again, that's Bavaria, that's Baden, that's Birgenberg. They want to bring those states into line with them even closer and have some kind of unification.
00:14:53
Speaker
And it's not going to happen by conquering them, right? Bismarck is not interested in marching into Bavaria, marching into Munich, you know, and taking this area. He's interested in creating the circumstances whereby they will have a shared victory. And it's through shared victory that he will win over
00:15:14
Speaker
the Bavarians and on the set of hearts and minds level. But then it also will then force the negotiation, the Bavarian monarch and the Bavarian politicians who clearly are, you know, are feeling the pinch between, you know, with this strong northern border. Yeah. Yeah. And that that seemed like such a, I mean, now, I mean, of course, having
00:15:42
Speaker
had several nationalist conflicts since this time. It seems a little bit obvious, but that did seem like kind of maybe an ingenious strategy on Bismarck's part. Why invade them when we can actually have them fight with us and get this sense of unity on the ground level?
00:16:05
Speaker
And the treaties had already gotten, he had placed high level military leaders in the Bavarian military. So the pieces were there for sure. Now, would you say this is, and this is my last question about Germany for now, because then I want to ask about France and leading up, but would you say this is maybe the birth of nationalism?
The 1848 Revolutions and Their Aftermath
00:16:29
Speaker
at this point, were there popular nationalist movements among German-speaking peoples before this?
00:16:35
Speaker
There had been, there had been, and most notably the revolution of 1848. So about 20 years earlier, like a generation earlier had been a big moment of folks, but coming from, not from the sort of Bismarck monarch side of things, but more from the like popular democracy side of things. So there had been movements to try and unify Germany, but to unify it under a democracy, small democrats, people saying, okay, let's vote, let's have a parliament, let's have elected officials.
00:17:05
Speaker
And they gathered in 1848 after this revolutionary movement sweeps across Europe. And it sweeps across everywhere from France all the way across Europe. It touches basically everywhere except for Britain and Russia. So it's a cross-continental revolutionary moment.
00:17:22
Speaker
But eventually it's crushed by the monarchs who are like, no way, we are not going to be the monarchs of this popular movement. And so that's before Bismarck makes that shift to saying, OK, there should be a conservative nationalism. And so what's interesting is when you look at the letters of some, let's say, lawyers or politicians, lower level politicians,
00:17:45
Speaker
They might say, look, we know Bismarck is just manipulating this, but boy, this is exciting. So you kind of see a shift in their attitudes toward to a unified Germany over time because of this shared victory. Well, let's pivot a little bit to France and specifically Napoleon III, who is an interesting character. And I think for somebody who doesn't know this conflict or really what was going on,
00:18:15
Speaker
at all in France in the latter part of the 19th century. You hear the name Napoleon. So of course there's some association there with the first Napoleon, but now we're at the third Napoleon, which I think a lot of people might not even know there was a third Napoleon. Talk first about how Napoleon III came to be in power and then talk about maybe the military situation in France.
Napoleon III's Rise and Rule
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah, so Napoleon III, again, he's the nephew of the great Napoleon. There was never a Napoleon II on the throne that was Napoleon's son who died without ever actually exerting power. But if you're a true believer, you see him as Napoleon II. So Napoleon III had spent much of his youth outside of France. He was in exile. He was exiled as a member of the Bonaparte family after the fall of Napoleon. He spent a lot of time in Britain.
00:19:07
Speaker
And he had had some attempts at trying to grab power. In fact, he had been in prison in France for trying to sort of come back and grab power. But when he really comes onto the political scene is following that revolution of 1848. So it happened in France, too. At that time, France had a branch of the monarchy called the Orléans were on the throne.
00:19:30
Speaker
Sometimes people don't realize that after Napoleon fell, what was reinstituted were monarchies. So there was the return of the Bourbons after 1815, and then after they were overthrown in 1830, the orally honest monarchs came to the throne in 1830. So by 1848, France had been a monarchy again for over 30 years.
00:19:56
Speaker
So 1848, this revolutionary moment sweeps across Europe. In France, the monarch is deposed. There's never again a sitting monarch in France.
00:20:07
Speaker
and a second republic is declared. There had been a first republic during the great revolution, and now there's a second republic. That republic decides to hold elections, as republics do, right? They're all about elected officials that are elected by the people in some way or shape or form. So who do they elect as president in December of 1848 but Louis Napoleon Bonaparte? That is to say, the future Napoleon III. He has name recognition,
00:20:35
Speaker
He's seen as a strong leader outside of Paris where people are less radical, although there certainly are a lot of people who believe in small de-democracy outside of Paris, but that name resonated. And some of the more popular leftists from Paris did not resonate. And so he's elected president.
00:20:56
Speaker
Well, three years later, he decides his time is right and he crushes the Republic. He arrests all the Republican leaders against small R Republic. He arrests them, they go into exile. And so he then declares himself as emperor a year later in 1852. So that's, to me, always a very interesting- Yeah, and I think just thinking about, I mean, democracy,
00:21:24
Speaker
You know, time and again, in the 19th and 20th centuries, somehow people are elected into democracy who aren't fans of democracy. And this is one of those situations. Were Napoleon III's authoritarian tendencies? Were those well-known before he was elected?
00:21:48
Speaker
He actually tried to claim speaking for the people, again, this populism that undergirds authoritarianism often. So you see that in him. He claimed to be sort of like this supporter of the working person, which resonated again with the revolutionary moment of 1848.
00:22:08
Speaker
But over the course of after he's elected, he's dismantling the Republic in his various actions. So he becomes an authoritarian leader. He stifles dissent. He stifles free press. He stifles civic involvement. But nevertheless, I mean, that generation of 1848, although many were dispersed in prison, exiled, and so on, Victor Hugo is one of the most famous people in exile for who
00:22:37
Speaker
stayed abroad for over 20 years. But they nevertheless, maybe they come back to their cities, maybe they're not able to typically serve in government. They might try, but then to be like say a mayor or a municipal councilman, but they typically get disbanded or like pushed out of power as soon as they try to do anything. But they are lawyers, they are doctors, they are civic leaders in different ways. And so they're still present.
00:23:07
Speaker
He was not an unpopular leader either. He did have a lot of support from the French public. Absolutely. He was also very economically, he made a lot of investment in the economy. He was a proponent of free trade, which was a big shift at the time. He concluded a treaty with Britain so that they had a free trade agreement, which was a big deal.
00:23:33
Speaker
And he was also a big builder of things like canals and railroads. And so that infrastructure expansion was important to France at that time. And by the 1860s, he's savvy enough to think that he might need to loosen some things in order to keep that Republican moderate base on his side, or at least quiet the opposition.
00:24:01
Speaker
He does loosen a little bit in terms of press and ability for people to meet. But that's something. Sure. Something interesting that most Americans probably don't know about pulling the third if they know about him. But he seemed to side a lot. This is the 1860s, so the US Civil War is going on in this time. He seemed to side a lot with the Confederacy, which didn't actually make him very popular.
00:24:31
Speaker
in the 1870s in America. Why was Napoleon III, why was he at least personally an ally of the Confederacy? Well, he's looking to Mexico. As he's trying to do his different, he's very keenly aware that he has not had the great military victories that his uncle has had. That's a big part of the decisions that he makes for his entire life.
00:24:57
Speaker
And so he's seeking places where he can exert power and influence. And one of those is Mexico. So he's seeking to prop up the Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. And so to do that, he needs, he wants to, he'd rather see the Confederate, the Confederacy be successful and to antagonize the North. So he has no particular love for the North. So certainly, in 1870, when the Franco-Prussian War
00:25:26
Speaker
breaks out, the Americans are like, why would we support this guy? The Northerners are like, he's obviously our enemy. And the German American presence was so great. If you think about all the immigrants from Europe to the United States, from the German states. So Germany seemed much more closely attuned. And they didn't know a whole lot about Prussia and about Prussian politics that are about Bismarck. And so they're like, yeah, they seem more
00:25:55
Speaker
akin to who we are. Well, real quick before we dive into the actual immediate causes of the war, let's talk about the military situation in France. What's the army like in France? What's going on militarily in the 1860s in France under Napoleon III?
00:26:17
Speaker
Well, so in France, they don't have the universal conscription and that comes later. But instead they have an army that features longer serving servicemen who some of them are serving overseas. They participated in the Crimean War. Some of them are participating in conquering colonies in Africa, for example. So that's where they tend to be located. They are not as well
00:26:45
Speaker
They tend to rely on sort of like their experience and their sort of roughness, their kind of sense of like being tough guys who kind of groan and moan, but get the job done. The Army does have really good technology in terms of their rifles, the SHESPO, which is something that they had adopted in the 1860s. It's the best rifle out there. Breach loading can shoot a mile away, very accurate.
00:27:14
Speaker
The Prussians, on the other hand, had the better cannon, similarly rifled cannon, so there's some different military strengths there.
00:27:24
Speaker
But what was, the leadership in the French army was not particularly strong and they were not as, Napoleon III did not have great allies. He had not managed to secure allies and keep allies. There's, again, these are instances where Bismarck would take a letter out from four years ago and be like, remember this? And then the allies would be like, oh yeah, we're not gonna touch France anymore. So it was very hard for France
France's Military Challenges
00:27:51
Speaker
to get allies. They did not have strong war plans.
00:27:54
Speaker
they relied on the idea that maybe they could get Austria. If they were to go to war against Prussia, because everyone was predicting this, right? After 1866, 1867, the war between Prussia and Austria, everyone kind of knew the next war was probably going to be between France and Prussia. But France thought, well, we'll try to get Austria on our side. We'll try to get Italy on our side. That never materialized. So they didn't have allies. They didn't have plans. They didn't have a great leadership structure. And just as in
00:28:25
Speaker
in 1870, as this war crisis starts to heat up, Napoleon III changes his entire military structure, which, as you can imagine, means not just refocusing armies from here to there, but the leadership structure. Who do you report to? Where are you going to maneuver? I think you said there are three armies that he basically just throws into one enormous army, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so that causes enormous confusion. And so, yeah.
00:28:54
Speaker
Yeah, after the war is declared, they're a much messier operation than the Prussians. Well, let's talk about the immediate causes, what really just gets this work going. And it's a really interesting tale of diplomatic shrewdness that involves Spain. Could you tell that story for the audience? Sure. So the war is precipitated by, of all things, succession to the throne in Spain.
00:29:24
Speaker
And when there's a vacancy in the throne, the Prussian family proposes one of their own, a Hohenzollern, to be the king of Spain.
00:29:36
Speaker
And when France hears this, they think, absolutely not. We will not be encircled by this family to the south as well as to the north and east. Absolutely not. This is a tradition established under the Habsburgs. How does this kind of rule, how is that a thing?
00:29:59
Speaker
Sure. I mean, back during the time of Louis XIV in France, his big concern was that he had Habsburgs to the south in Spain. There's Habsburgs to the east in what is Austria, and then Habsburgs even to the north in the low countries. And so this concern about being encircled is something that France was very familiar with. And so they don't want it coming from the Prussians either. And so- What year is this, by the way, that the Spanish monarch dies? 1868. 1868.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah, so so this is unfolding for a little while. Right. And then and so there's the proposal for a well, it's precipitated by a number of changes within Spain. And and so they're they're trying to put on the so. So after this, Hohenzollern is proposed, Leopold to be the king of Spain.
00:30:48
Speaker
France is like, absolutely not. And they get very angry and they're very publicly angry about it. So the foreign minister and the ambassador to Prussia and so on, like they're all very publicly upset about this and talking about it in the legislative core. And it gets out in the press because again, Napoleon III had loosened the press to a certain degree. And so, and so, you know, this is always the issue that authoritarians face. If they do anything to loosen,
00:31:13
Speaker
Of course, people are very critical of them or things go in a way that they can't control anymore, then their hold on power becomes lessened. In France, there's a lot of anger and of sadness about this proposal from Prussia. Prussia says, okay, we won't do that. We withdraw this proposal.
00:31:38
Speaker
But then the French are so sort of in this moment that they say, well, actually, we would like for you to promise that you will not only withdraw it, but that you will never propose this person again.
00:31:49
Speaker
And that is a bridge too far. No sovereign nation is going to agree to never make a proposal. They are never going to say, oh, sure, we'll handcuff ourselves for the future. So that's not a realistic request. The French ambassador to Prussia meets the king in
00:32:11
Speaker
He's out on holiday in Bad Ems, and he is approached by the French ambassador, Benedetti, and he politely rebuffs him, you know, no, we're not gonna make this, we're not gonna agree to this. Well, you know, that's fine. And the original telegram coming from the Prussian royalty front, you know, to make this statement of, you know, refusal, we won't agree to never
00:32:39
Speaker
propose the candidacy again is, you know, polite has all the nice words, all the niceties that you would want to expect. Bismarck gets a hold of this telegram and he cuts out all the niceties so that by the time it hits the French and then gets very quickly out into the French public, it is rude and it is just like, absolutely not, right? It's the kind of statement that just rankles. And so instead of letting the conflict die away,
00:33:09
Speaker
Bismarck manipulates the situation so that the French now really have very little recourse, especially in this sort of high honor kind of society. They are not going to back down. And so the French declare war on Prussia in mid-July of 1870 and they go to war two weeks later. They're actually in the field fighting two weeks later. Which again seems like on Bismarck's part such a
00:33:34
Speaker
such a clever move because had Bismarck invaded France there wouldn't have that sense of unity might not have existed but now the German people are being attacked is how it's being portrayed. Exactly. And so war is announced and how do Germans feel once France declares war?
00:33:58
Speaker
You know, okay, so that's always a hard question, right? How do Germans feel, right? So there's some who are like, absolutely, this is great. You know, like we feel so, so mad. We're, we're, you know, we've been offended and we're going to go. Others are like, we know Bismarck is manipulating this, but as I said before, but okay, this, this still feels pretty good. It's really hard to say. There are no like scientific polling in the 1870s.
00:34:21
Speaker
All you had can go on is the press, and the press was very controlled by the monarchy. Bismarck had his finger on most of the press. So there are some newspapers that at first would say, we're not so sure about this war, but they were very quickly shunted to the side. In France,
00:34:36
Speaker
similar, although there's more space for opposition at this point in France. And you can sometimes see that in the press, but not, you know, for the most part, the press is reflecting the state's interests. So it's hard to, you could never say like this percentage of the population supported and this percentage didn't. You have to go by, you know, your best understanding of the different sources out there. People are in both Germany and France, though. There seems to be a
00:35:06
Speaker
and outpouring of like, yeah, we're gonna go show them. And there's fervor. And I got the impression that war was something that people favored. I don't know if we can say that for sure, but was that at least the impression that you
The Course and Consequences of War
00:35:25
Speaker
had?
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think in the first couple weeks, as mobilization is happening, most people are like, yep, we're going to go do this. We are either anywhere from we are resigned to doing this to actual enthusiasm. And so you see a lot of that enthusiasm. When soldiers are mobilizing, they have to show up at their railroad so crowds come out to cheer them and to give them gifts or give them food or give them wine as they get on the trains. So that all works really well.
00:35:52
Speaker
those first weeks of mobilization are very exciting. Where things start to shift for France is that their mobilization was so disorganized. They were going crisscrossing the country, sometimes not knowing exactly where to go, not necessarily knowing where their superiors were, not necessarily going to the same location as the supplies that they needed. And so because of this, the
00:36:16
Speaker
the French morale starts to wane pretty quickly. It kind of depends where you are, right? And if you're in a border town, you're thinking, oh, wait a minute, what's about to come? So it depends on exactly where you live. Well, let's talk about the first, the opening of this war, the first battle. Talk about how that unfolds.
00:36:40
Speaker
Sure. So the very first battle is a skirmish where the French actually invade into the German states. August 2nd of 1870, they go in. It's a very, very short battle. They claim a village for a brief amount of time. It's the only incursion onto German territory, but they had really no plan for what they were going to do from there. And so very quickly, they retreat back over the border.
00:37:03
Speaker
It's a couple of days later that you start to have a few battles, first in Alsace and then also in Lorraine. There's two key battles that happen to happen on the very same day, August 6th. One in Lorraine, which is toward the east, and then Alsace is just right on the eastern border of France.
00:37:22
Speaker
And neither of those battles were well planned. They were kind of stumbled into. Keep in mind it's 1870, so you don't have, you have telegrams, you can communicate that way, but you don't have amplification, you don't have radar, you don't have, you know, you don't have
00:37:39
Speaker
reconnaissance beyond what you can do on horseback for the most part. So it's really hard to actually know where the enemy is and you have to, you know, sometimes you run into each other and then you kind of find yourself actually having a battle. And if nobody backs down, then suddenly you're engaged in a fight and more people start to kind of run to the guns and then a battle actually ensues. So in both of those cases on August 6th, it could have gone either way. There were close battles, but at the end of the day, it was the Prussians who were victorious.
00:38:09
Speaker
So when that happens, suddenly the door is blown open. So now Prussia is able to come into France and start to move into the interior. And that really sets up then the major battles that happen in mid August and at the very start of September. Well, let's talk about some of the more significant moments then from the actual fighting. Can you walk us through some of those moments?
00:38:34
Speaker
Sure. There's a series of battles that happen around the city of Metz in the middle of August, and those are battles that
00:38:42
Speaker
that again, for the first two were not really planned, August 14th, August 16th, then August 18th was finally a planned pitch battle that extended across for miles. And at this point, again, because they were fighting in multiple sectors throughout the course of the day, they were not sure whether they would be, who was really winning. There were sectors in which Prussia was clearly being trapped in a ravine and we just were not able to advance, but there were other areas. What are the size of both of these armies too, by the way,
00:39:12
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. So we're talking about hundreds of thousands in, you know, in these armies. So in the army, you know, 2 million soldiers were engaged in the entirety of the war in six months. So a vast size, much bigger than had happened in Austria, in the Austro-Prussian War, four years ago, four years earlier. But the armies in the field tended to be, you know, maybe 100,000 men at the largest might meet in a battle.
00:39:39
Speaker
So they are large. They are not things that you can see the entirety of the battle in one place. You have commanders kind of trying to go behind the scenes on horseback to try and understand what's happening. And you also, because of the weaponry,
00:40:01
Speaker
you could have fighting where the rifles are so far back that you don't even see them. You don't even see the soldiers you're fighting against. So this is not like muskets where you have to see the whites of their eyes before you shoot. You can be very, very far back and have a rifle shooting and it can be a mile away and be effective.
00:40:18
Speaker
So it's starting to feel a little more random and a little more like it actually there's a heightened sense of snipers could be anywhere. And so whether you're in the battle or you're marching, you don't know where.
00:40:35
Speaker
the next threat is going to come from. What also is characteristic of battles in the Franco-Prussia war is the use of cannon. And again, that's where Prussia really excelled. So what would often happen is it wouldn't be the start of the day where the cannon would be effective because they would have to be brought into place. But by midday or by the end of the day, the cannon would be set up in these long lines and then be able to shoot into the field. And that would often be what turned the tide for Prussia.
00:41:03
Speaker
So a lot of these days, I think the cannon, the artillery has really made a huge difference in this war.
00:41:10
Speaker
It did. It did. And what's interesting is you start to see the power of the defense, actually, like the the ability to sort of trench in into a spot and and prevent people from moving forward is what you start to see in this conflict. There is actually later in the war, there's there's one particular battle like small, you know, small in the course of the war, but significant in history where where the where
00:41:38
Speaker
where people start to learn how to maneuver around these strong defenses, but it's completely forgotten. It has to be relearned in World War I, but that's a crucial moment. In any case, the strength of the rifles for the French, the strength of the cannon for the Prussians,
00:41:55
Speaker
Um, sometimes some just luck of who showed up when, um, and, and, and sort of held on, um, some, there were moments in these mid August battles where if the French had just continued to fight, they would have pressed their advantage and they might've been victorious on the day. Um, there were instances where the French seemed to have won, but because they didn't have supplies sort of at the next stage because of, again, the disorganization of their, their, um, their mobilization, they had to pull back anyway.
00:42:24
Speaker
So the French end up being back on their heels in the middle of August, and they're split. So at this point, basically one part of their army has bottled up in the city of Metz, and the other army is
00:42:40
Speaker
kind of marching somewhere between Paris and the Belgian border. And they're trying to figure out like, where is that army in Metz? They can't communicate with them, right? Where are they? Can we meet up? Can we join up and push the questions out? They're not sure what to do. They're seeking supplies. And they end up through this kind of zigzag progress. They end up right at the border with Belgium near the city of Sedan, which is an old fortress city, really not a strong fortress at this point, but it's an old,
00:43:09
Speaker
Florida City, now in the sort of ironworking area of the country. And it's there that the Prussians and the French have their big battle. Napoleon III is there. He's present with his army. And on September 1, those two armies join around Sedan. The Germans are
00:43:32
Speaker
encircling the city coming up from on the on the east side, they're heading north on the west side, they're heading north, they meet in the middle, they didn't even realize that they that's what they were doing. But when they meet and they realize, wait a minute, that's some of our guys on the other side. And they realize, oh, my gosh, we have completely encircled the French who are within the fortress city. And their cannon now are in place to rain down on the French. And so by that afternoon,
00:43:56
Speaker
the French are, they're trapped, they're actually getting hit by multiple sides. And Napoleon III is right in the middle of that. So by the end of that day, Napoleon III has to surrender. And he decides to surrender. So again, that's basically his army. The other part of the army is now bottled up, and Matt's completely surrounded.
00:44:19
Speaker
But he doesn't surrender the country. He just says, I am surrendering myself. And this army that's present right here, I am not surrendering for France. So he surrenders. He ends up escaping out. But he's basically, he's politically ruined. His army is 80,000 men are captured. They're sent as prisoners of war back to Germany, to various camps. But France has not given up. So the war is only six weeks old.
00:44:49
Speaker
The leader is captured, their armies are captured, but the country does not give up. And so what happens in Paris, all those folks who had been waiting for decades for Napoleon III to depart, who had been hoping for this moment, declare now we are a republic, now we are overthrowing this regime finally, but we have to keep fighting.
00:45:17
Speaker
Well, one of the things that you write about is that this war, these events as they unfolded, completely reshaped Europe. Talk about why that is.
00:45:30
Speaker
Yeah, so as a result, so France fights on, you know, they're eventually defeated, that new republic, but Napoleon does not come back, right? That new republic nevertheless manages to, there's all kinds of ins and outs to this story, right? But eventually, those leaders and these, you might say, moderate republicans.
00:45:52
Speaker
they're not radicals, they're not the ones out in the streets. Believe me, there's plenty of radicals who are trying to claim power too in France. And there's a lot of revolutionary activity on that side. But the moderate Republicans end up being the ones who hold on to power. And after kind of crushing their enemies on all sides, they establish a republic. And so from the early 1870s onward, all the way up, all the way through World War I, the French Republic
00:46:20
Speaker
stays all through the challenges of World War I, through that victory, won at a terrible cost. All the way up until 1940 is that same republic, the Third Republic. Finally, after they're invaded by the Nazis, they vote themselves out of existence.
00:46:37
Speaker
and become the Vichy regime, but that's a totally different story. So you forgot the Republic on the one hand. German side, as the German victories are unfolding, meanwhile Bismarck is running all kinds of negotiations with the monarchies, with the, you know, trying to play Bavaria off of Württemberg and, you know, off of Baden to negotiate their agreement to become part of the German empire. And so...
00:47:04
Speaker
We should clarify, too, that although we were talking about Prussia invading France, along with the Prussian army were soldiers from Bavaria and from these other states. So they were all fighting for the same cause. Exactly. And so that's where that sort of emotional sense of connectedness is occurring. And I find in the book, I explore particularly some Bavarian soldiers and what their experiences were like and how they, you know, the Bavaria is traditionally seen as sort of like these country-fied, you know, backwards state.
00:47:33
Speaker
the Prussians are looking down at them, but at the same time they're like, but we are all Germans, so we're all on the same side. So it's in January of 1871, while the war is still happening, by this time Prussian leadership and all its entourage, all the princes, all the ambassadors and so on, they have landed in the palace of Versailles. So that French key locus of power, we think of the Hall of Mirrors, we think of Louis XIV,
00:48:02
Speaker
They have taken over the Palace of Versailles and it's in that palace in January of 1871 that the German Empire is officially declared. So that is a powerful moment. It's cold, it's drafty, you know, it's many commenters said it was the most it was a cold ceremony, you know, kind of joyless. And yet this was the moment where they declared the German Empire.
00:48:26
Speaker
And 10 days later, they are concluding the peace with France, or they're negotiating the armistice with France to bring the war finally to an end. But you will notice that between September and January, that's a lot of months of continual fighting, both sides feeling ground down by the continuation of the war. But the French did not want to give up. They did not want to see it in any territory.
Legacy of the Franco-Prussian War
00:48:49
Speaker
But in the end,
00:48:50
Speaker
In the end, they were forced to give up Alsace and part of Lorraine. Those places were the first early battles took place and those territories became part of the German empire. Yeah, and what was the casualty count like during this war? Well, so on the French side, for instance, there were 140,000 deaths. Many of them were due to disease rather than in battle, but 140,000.
00:49:18
Speaker
40 years later during World War I, there were 1.4 million French soldiers who died in the course of the war. So the actual rates were pretty similar in terms of the length of time. So Franco-Prussian war is less than six months and 140,000 died. So quite- Not a small number of people.
00:49:39
Speaker
Not at all. But because it didn't last as long, it doesn't have that same sort of like hold on memory. But it was very bloody. There was a lot of disease. And it was a time when people were more interested in noting the personal sacrifice of soldiers. So like during the Napoleonic War, you know, millions and millions of soldiers died, you know, during the 20 years of that extending conflict that started with the French Revolution and went all the way to Waterloo.
00:50:06
Speaker
Most of those soldiers were marked in a nameless grave. During the Franco-Prussian War, most of those soldiers, when they fell, were reburied in personal graves or their names were captured, their names were taken. Prussia instituted the dog tag for the first time. They invented the dog tag, I didn't realize that. Yeah, so the name of the soldier was important, right? Knowing where that person had fallen, being able to report back to the families, that started to be an important part of
00:50:34
Speaker
what it meant to go to war. And so that sort of culture of memory originates into a, in a more mass sense during the Franco-Prussian war. And so you've got, now you've got a unified Germany, meaning that, or after the war, that leads to a unified Germany, meaning the now Bavaria and Württemberg and Baden, like that is more, now more closely resembles the Germany that we know today
00:51:03
Speaker
And of course, that sets the stage then for World War I. One of the things that you write in your book that I think is very interesting is for the Franco-Prussian War. The question was not just why the Great War, meaning World War I, drew in all the great powers, but why the Franco-Prussian War did not. Explain that.
00:51:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, we all are maybe familiar with that summer of 1914 where a conflict in Sarajevo, you know, an assassination, their son, you know, over time brings in millions and millions of people. But what happens in the Franco-Prussian War is that the great powers decided they didn't want any part of it. They didn't want to be drawn in on France's side because they didn't think they were going to be successful. They didn't want to see Prussia become too powerful.
00:51:56
Speaker
One of the dynamics at work during this entire conflict is that Bismarck is trying to bring this to a close, but he wants to do it on his terms. The other great powers are trying to bring it to a close on their terms that would be less for Prussia.
00:52:13
Speaker
they don't want to see Prussia become this huge dominant power. Russia is trying to use this as a way to gain back territory they had lost in Crimea. Familiar story, right? So they're taking advantage of it. Britain doesn't want to have any part of it, but they are watching Belgium. Interesting, which again is a very 1914 kind of a story. They're like, if they go into Belgium, we might have to intervene. That doesn't happen, but it could have happened, right? It could have been a different story.
00:52:42
Speaker
So things could have happened. There's some of the same dynamics are at work in 1870. They just happen to break in a different way. So that leads it to be just between these two great powers. How instrumental do you think Bismarck was in preventing something bigger like World War I from happening in 1870?
00:53:04
Speaker
Right. He had no interest in making that happen. And after the Franco-Prussian War, he certainly didn't want to seek another conflict. He was like, OK, we've achieved our goal. We've got this unified Germany. And it's bigger than Germany is today, extending further both west and east. And so he's all about reining in conflict at this point. He understands very clearly the danger of Germany being encircled.
00:53:29
Speaker
by Russia and France. He does not want a two-front war. Of course, that's exactly what Germany ends up being in, in 1914, but under Bismarck's watch, he was crucial in making sure that that did not happen. And he was, you know, during 1870, he's like, of course I don't want Austria to come in, you know, so he's making it clear to Austria how, you know, how, you know, they will not benefit from siding with France. I think just thinking about World War I and what led up to that,
00:53:59
Speaker
Do you think if there was a Bismarck in power in 1914, do you think it would have been such a global conflict? There are certainly so many times when different decisions could have been made. There was nothing inevitable about World War I becoming a global conflict. Absolutely not. We can maybe sort of say, oh, they had these allies or alliances that were entangling. They didn't require
00:54:29
Speaker
every country to go to war. Different decisions could have been made. And so somebody like Bismarck very well might have made decisions that would have prevented World War I. So what do you think some of the other major consequences are from the Franco-Prussian War? Well, one certainly is that all major powers in Europe
00:54:51
Speaker
adopted universal conscription with the exception of Britain, who did not do so until 1916. So they adopt that universal conscription model, which changes the lives of millions and millions of European men. It changes what their expectations are for what their life will be, how they will spend their 20s, what the barracks that are built, the militarized culture that evolves during that time.
00:55:15
Speaker
That's huge and I think should not be understated when we think about our own lives and expectations. Of course, the unified Germany is big. The man who would become Wilhelm II, who is of course the Kaiser during World War I, he's an adolescent during this war. He's the grandson of the king. His father is a military leader who ends up being emperor just for a year and then he dies and William II becomes emperor.
00:55:46
Speaker
And so during the whole war, there's all these ironic quotes of his father saying, oh, I think of my son. I hope that his world is a better world and that kind of thing. So that sets that up. But the one thing that I haven't mentioned is the sort of leftist revolution that happens in France right after this war, which is known as the Paris Commune. Now, the Paris Commune was a short-lived
00:56:11
Speaker
time period where the people of Paris rose up to try and claim their own independence. I've mentioned the sort of moderate Republicans that end up coming into power. Well, there's a left group, a further to the left group that is radical, worker-based, neighborhood-based radicalism saying, we the people should own, should run the country. We should have a say. We should directly
00:56:41
Speaker
have democracy and decide what our fate is going to be. And they feel disrespected by this new government. So there's multiple parties going on. In other words, it's very complicated. But soon after the war ends, people of Paris who have suffered through this war for months and months, they've starved, they've been through cold weather, very, very cold weather.
00:57:06
Speaker
And they'd had a decade of building up because of the loosening that Napoleon III do. They have clubs, they have neighborhood groups, all of these different factors. They declare themselves independent. And for two months, they hold on to that independence, but they are crushed by their own army, some of whom had just been crushed by Prussia. So it's a French civil war that happens in the spring of 1871.
00:57:30
Speaker
And so the outcome of that is both on the one hand, the left is crushed for a good while. And on the other hand, that memory of the city rising up for itself is not one that is going to go away. And so that sets the stage for some of the conflicts in France in the 1890s. Well, Rachel, this has been a fascinating interview. Thank you for your
00:57:58
Speaker
insightful answers to my questions. Lastly here, what are you hoping that readers take away when they read your book? One thing that I hope readers take away, in addition to everything that we've talked about here, is the way that civilians get enmeshed in conflict. This was a war that took place at a time when people thought war was only about soldiers and they fight out in the field somewhere and it doesn't come home to us.
00:58:28
Speaker
That was people's belief. But as it turned out, armies were coming through, whether they're the enemy army or their own armies are marching through looking for supplies. And there's no playbook for that. Right. There's no I mean, we think about what's happening, you know, over the last year and a half in Ukraine, there's not a rule book that says this is what you do when enemy soldiers come into town. And and so I just would want readers to sort of think about that experience with empathy.
00:58:56
Speaker
as they contemplate what war was like 150 years ago. Wonderful. Well, Rachel, if folks want to stay in touch with your work, if they want to keep up with what you've got going on, where can they, are you on social media? How can they stay in touch with you? They can find out what I'm up to on rachelcrestle.com. And of course, wherever books are sold. Wonderful. Well, Rachel Crastle, Bismarck's War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Making of Modern Europe
00:59:26
Speaker
Go buy a copy, go check it out from your library. What an interesting tale. Rachel, thanks so much for your time today. My pleasure, Ajay. Great talking with you.