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Example research essay topic: Franco Prussian War War With France - 1,817 words

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The Franco-Prussian War, was a war in 1870 - 1871, which the French lost to the German states while they were under the leadership of Prussia. The underlying causes of the conflict were the Prussian statesman Prince Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck's desire to unify Germany under Prussian control and, to eliminate French influence over Germany. On the other hand, Napoleon III, emperor of France from 1852 to 1870, wanted to regain the prestige he had lost, both at home and abroad, as a result of numerous failures, particularly recently as a result of Frances failure in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. In addition, Prussia's military strength, as shown in the war with Austria, was shown to be a threat to the French on the continent of Europe.

French and the German relations have had a history full of tensions between the two countries. A comparison between the two countries shows a difference in how they view their national identity and their military. Their influence upon one another during the approximate century and a half of conflict shows how their national identities have helped to make their nations. This conflict between the two nations may even be said to have an impact not only on the European continent but also possibly on much of the world.

In fact, the result of their conflicts may have set the stage for further conflicts, such as the two world wars. After the Prussians won the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Frances Napoleon III viewed Prussia as a threat to France. Otto van Bismarck, the chancellor of Prussia, wanted to see Prussian and France in conflict because he wanted to unify all of Germany. He had a plan to create a nationalistic German empire. The relations between Prussia and France became worse. Napoleon III wanted to get more territory, which he felt entitled to have as a result of his neutrality during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.

Both Prussia and France were armed and had military budgets, which provided for strong armies. France wanted to go to war because there was a possibility of having a unified enemy and thus making some of the internal political tensions better. Bismarck wanted to go to war because of his idea of completing the German unification. The British, who saw this military build up from a different continent, thought the military situation was dangerous. Lord Clarendon, the British foreign secretary, saw this build up of arms and thought that it was disgraceful for these countries to be competing for arms at this pace.

For countries besides Prussia and France, after they saw this build-up of military weapons, they thought that there was a good chance that there would be a war between France and the North German Federation. In particular, Bismarck wanted to start a war with France because he wanted give the southern German states a reason to want to be dominated by him rather than France. Southern German states were mostly Catholic and were sympathetic to the French people, rather than to Prussia, which was mostly Protestant. Bismarck thought that if he gave the southern German states a reason to want to unify with Germany, he would be more successful in consolidating his empire.

Bismarck figured, in addition, that Britain would remain neutral if he started a conflict between France and Prussia. In addition, he predicted that Russian and Italy would remain neutral. (As it turned out, Bismarck's predictions about their neutrality were correct. ) Bismarck began his preparations for war with France, while France remained unprepared. The immediate cause of the Franco-Prussian war was that in 1868, the Spanish throne was offered to a prince of the south German state of Hohenzollern, a distant cousin of Prussia's William I. The French were concerned that they would be surrounded by Hohenzollern rulers if both Spain had a Hohenzollern ruler as well as Prussia. In May of 1970, a new foreign minister, Gramont, was appointed in France. He opposed the Germans.

Gramont threatened to go to war with Prussia if the attempt to offer the throne to a member of the house of Hohenzollern was not stopped instantly. On July 12, the prince withdrew his offer. However, the French made an enormous mistake after that. The French should have known that they had already won by getting Prussia to withdraw their offer and that the prince had withdrawn his offer. The French foreign minister, the duc de Gramont, decided to go one step further and to humiliate Prussia. The French wanted Prussia to agree that there never would be any Hohenzollern prince who would take the Spanish throne.

After Benedetti, the French ambassador, traveled to Bad Ems on July 13, and told the Prussian officials that Napoleon III and his ministers agreed that France wanted a promise that there would be no Hohenzollern candidate. The Prussian king, William I, felt humiliated by this request. It appeared as though it was nothing but an attempt to humiliate him. After the officials met on this crisis, Bismarck received a telegram of this meeting. According to some of the history books, Bismarck gave a misleading account of the meeting to the newspapers, known as the Ems dispatch, to provoke a war. Bismarck told the newspapers that they the two countries had exchanged insults, when they had not.

According to this historical account, Bismarck figured that the newspaper would cause the Germans to have more feelings of nationalism, and he hoped that Britain and Russia would not become involved in a dispute between the two countries. In this account, Bismarck used the Ems dispatch as a piece of propaganda to start a war: No man who dispassionately examines this melancholy history will doubt that the war was the war of Count von Bismarck. Germany so he head determined had to be founded on blood and iron, and war with France was only the concluding act of the bloody drama, which had been inaugurated in Schleswig and repealed at Shadow. The Hohenzollern candidature might not have been a thing of his own devising; but it was employed by him to irritate France into hostility; and when the withdrawal of the Prince removed the pretext, which his acceptance of the throne had afforded, his Kings message was published in a shape which he anticipated would goad his opponent into madness. Walpole, History of Twenty-Five Years, vol. ii, p. 492) In another account of the events at the time, The Times, in an article written on July 8, 1870, wrote about how the Princes succession would affect France: If a Hohenzollern should once become firmly seated on the throne of Spain, by the support of Prussia and in defiance of all French policy, every year would add to his power to play a deadly part in every struggle that might arise on the Rhine.

Immediate humiliation, future peril, that is what the succession of the Prussian prince would really mean for France. However, other accounts of the news was that Bismarck did not change the events at the meeting. One version of the historical accounts are that France had already decided they should go to war against Prussia. Whether Bismarck changed the course of history by giving a different version of events to the newspapers or not will never be known. In any event, however, the French armies were prepared on July 14, 1870 and the French decided to declare war on the North German Confederation on July 19, 1870.

After the war started, however, the French, found they were not nearly as prepared for war as they needed to be and found themselves overwhelmed by the greater number of people in the Prussian army. When the French troops started to prepare for this war, they found that there were horses needing harnesses, cannons that needed some ammunition, machine guns that needed someone to operate them. The French faced a difficult enemy in Prussia, since they had a well-organized army. The plan to invade France had been made long ago. France also had no allies.

The French thought that Bavaria, Baden and Wurtenberg, the southern German states, would remain neutral. But the French were mistaken in their calculations. The French found instead that the South German states were willing to join Prussia The southern German states believed that France had started the war and they more than willingly joined the North German Confederation. Thus, the numbers of people willing to support Germany, including these three southern German states, were able to overwhelm France. Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke was the person who conducted the war militarily for the Germans. Napoleon III was the person who was in charge of the military, but later Marshal Bazaine was in charge.

On August 4, 1870, the Germans went into Alsace and defeated the French at Wissembourg. They were able to defeat the French there by splitting the forces under Marshal MacMahon and under Bazaine. MacMahon was defeated at Beaumont, so he decided to withdraw to the town of Sedan. Once the French forces were split, it made it so the French could not act independently again. In September 1870, Napoleon III and his 100, 000 men in the Prussian army surrounded the French force at Sedan. This defeat was viewed as the defeat of a regime and its army rather than the entire French nation.

Napoleon III and MacMahon tried to rescue Bazaine, and it led to a disaster. Napoleon III and his 100, 000 men were captured. After that, many French Reservists were still asked to join the army to defeat the Prussians. In addition, there were some who could be asked to join from the Imperial army, cavalry squadrons, and some infantry who were being called up from Algeria and Italy. These numbers of people were added to the forces that continued to fight against Prussia. The war continued for many months.

On September 1, the Germans marched on Paris. News of the defeat at Sedan reached Paris. Napoleon was deposed in a bloodless revolution, which meant that no blood was spilled during this revolution. General Trochu, Leon Gambetta, and Jules Favre formed a provisional government of national defense. On September 19, the Germans surrounded the city of Paris.

In Paris, since there was nothing to eat, the citizens had nothing else to eat except cats, dogs, and even rats. They had to find crude and simple weapons to fight the enemy. Paris was the only city that could withstand the German attack, but it only lasted for four months. The German siege left the Parisians without any food. Gambetta escaped from Paris in a balloon. The French government had established balloon factories.

They made a balloon every few days and they were launched quickly. The success of the balloonists were well-known throughout France. The sailors practiced the first flights and sailors had bottles of champagne with them. When the enemy Prus...


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Research essay sample on Franco Prussian War War With France

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