Formation of Germany: Part 5 | All Things Kevin on the Web

THE FORMATION OF GERMANY AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE
Part 5: The Spark in Paris: The Final Barrier

1. The Divide at the Main River
2. The French Dilemma: Napoleon III’s Alarm
3. The Hohenzollern Candidacy: A Throne in Madrid
4. The Ems Dispatch: Editing History into War
- The Master Stroke of Editing
5. The Franco-Prussian War: A Continental Firestorm
- The Thunderbolt Campaign
- The Catastrophe at Sedan
6. The Siege of Paris and the Fall of the Empire
7. Looking Ahead: The Final Proclamation
8. Videos

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ABOVE: Prussian Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke

1. The Divide at the Main River

In the autumn of 1867, the map of Central Europe presented a tantalizingly incomplete picture.

To the north of the Main River stood the newly minted North German Confederation: twenty-two states welded into a centralized, military powerhouse dominated by Prussia. To the south, however, lay a belt of independent monarchies—the Catholic kingdoms of Bavaria and Württemberg, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and part of Hesse-Darmstadt.

These southern states were fiercely protective of their independence. Culturally and religiously, they had far more in common with Catholic Vienna than Protestant Berlin. Their politicians viewed Prussia’s authoritarian military structure with profound distrust, while local populations harbored an ancient aversion to Prussian swagger. The King of Bavaria, Ludwig II—famous for his lavish spending on fairytale castles—had no desire to exchange his sovereign crown for a subordinate role beneath the King of Prussia.

For Otto von Bismarck, this "Main River Line" was a formidable obstacle. He knew that forcing the southern states into the Confederation by Prussian military action would provoke a bloody civil war and invite immediate invasion by foreign European powers.

Unification could not be imposed on the south at gunpoint; it had to be requested voluntarily.

Bismarck needed an extraordinary event—a crisis so overwhelming that it would ignite a wave of pan-German national patriotism, forcing the southern princes to set aside their local pride and rally around Prussia for protection. That external force could only come from one place: Paris.

2. The French Dilemma: Napoleon III’s Alarm

Across the Rhine, the explosive rise of Prussia had created a political crisis for the Second French Empire and its monarch, Emperor Napoleon III.

For over two centuries, the cornerstone of French foreign policy had been to keep the German lands fragmented into weak, competing mini-states. A divided Central Europe ensured French security and military dominance on the continent. The lightning victory of Prussia over Austria in 1866 shattered that traditional balance of power overnight.

Napoleon III faced intense domestic pressure. French nationalists, military leaders, and parliamentarians openly mocked his neutrality during the 1866 war, claiming that France had suffered a major strategic defeat without firing a shot. To save political face, Napoleon III repeatedly pressed Bismarck for "territorial compensations"—vague demands for French annexations of Luxembourg, parts of Belgium, or German lands along the left bank of the Rhine.

Bismarck played a double game:

Leaking Demands: He quietly recorded France's territorial demands and leaked them to the press in southern Germany. The revelation that France was eyeing German territory shocked public opinion in Bavaria and Württemberg, driving their governments to sign secret mutual defense pacts with Prussia.
Diplomatic Neutralization: Bismarck ensured that France remained isolated, while French diplomatic blunders alienated Great Britain, Russia, and the newly unified Kingdom of Italy.

By 1870, France felt boxed in and humiliated. Napoleon III's regime was desperate for a political victory to restore its international prestige, while Bismarck was waiting for France to make a fatal mistake.

3. The Hohenzollern Candidacy: A Throne in Madrid

The spark that ignited the explosion came not from the banks of the Rhine, but from Spain.

In 1868, a military revolution in Madrid overthrew Queen Isabella II, leaving the Spanish throne vacant. Seeking a dynamic, respected monarch, the provisional Spanish government offered the crown to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen—a Roman Catholic relative of King Wilhelm I of Prussia.

When Bismarck learned of the offer, he recognized its explosive potential. He secretly pressured Prince Leopold and King Wilhelm I to accept the candidacy, knowing full well how Paris would react.

To French diplomats, a Prussian prince sitting on the Spanish throne was an intolerable existential threat. It raised the nightmare vision of strategic encirclement—the ghost of Charles V’s sixteenth-century empire, where France was pinned between German power to the east and Spanish power to the south.

When news of Leopold’s acceptance was leaked in July 1870, France exploded in fury. The French Foreign Minister, the Duke of Gramont, delivered an ultimatum to Berlin, threatening war if the candidacy was not immediately withdrawn.

King Wilhelm I, who was a cautious man and genuinely wished to avoid a devastating European war, backed down. From the spa town of Bad Ems, where he was taking a summer retreat, the Prussian monarch persuaded Prince Leopold to withdraw his acceptance.

It appeared to be a resounding diplomatic victory for France and a humiliating defeat for Bismarck. But Paris overplayed its hand.

4. The Ems Dispatch: Editing History into War

Unwilling to accept a quiet diplomatic victory, the French government sought to permanently humiliate the Prussian crown.

On the morning of July 13, 1870, the French ambassador to Prussia, Count Vincent Benedetti, approached King Wilhelm I on the seaside promenade at Bad Ems. Benedetti demanded a personal guarantee from the King: a binding promise that no Hohenzollern prince would ever be permitted to be candidated for the Spanish throne in the future.

King Wilhelm politely but firmly refused to bind himself to indefinite guarantees, stating that the matter was closed, and declined a further audience with the ambassador that afternoon.

The King’s secret secretary drafted a detailed, diplomatic telegram describing the encounter and sent it directly to Bismarck in Berlin, giving him full permission to release the contents to the press.

The Master Stroke of Editing

That evening, Bismarck was dining with Minister of War Albrecht von Roon and Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke. Both military leaders were thoroughly depressed, believing Prussia had surrendered without a fight.

Bismarck picked up the telegram from Bad Ems and read it carefully. He then took a pencil and condensed the long, polite diplomatic text, removing the courteous nuances while preserving the factual sequence of events.

The Original Text: Noted that the King had explained his decision politely and would inform the ambassador of further written updates through normal diplomatic channels.
Bismarck's Edit: Made it appear that the French ambassador had made insolent demands on the promenade, and that the Prussian King had abruptly refused to see him again, effectively cutting off diplomatic relations.

Bismarck read his shortened version aloud to Roon and Moltke. Moltke’s face lit up; he declared, "Earlier it sounded like a parley; now it sounds like a flourish of trumpets in answer to a challenge!"

On July 14, 1870—Bastille Day—Bismarck published the edited Ems Dispatch in newspapers across Europe.

The effect was instantaneous and incendiary. In Paris, the public believed their ambassador had been publicly insulted by the Prussian King. In Berlin, the public believed the French ambassador had dared to threaten their monarch on home soil. Driven by public outrage and military vanity, the French government declared war on Prussia on July 19, 1870.

Bismarck had caught France in his ultimate trap: Napoleon III had declared an unprovoked war of aggression against Prussia, transforming a diplomatic quarrel into a defense of German national honor.

5. The Franco-Prussian War: A Continental Firestorm

Bismarck’s grand strategy paid off instantly. The moment France declared war, the secret military treaties were activated.

The Catholic states of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and Hesse-Darmstadt declared that a foreign attack on Prussia was an attack on all Germans. They mobilized their armies and placed them directly under the supreme command of King Wilhelm I and General von Moltke.

The Thunderbolt Campaign

Napoleon III believed his professional army, armed with the advanced Chassepot rifle and the early Mitrailleuse machine gun, would quickly cross the Rhine and divide the northern and southern German states.

Instead, General von Moltke’s operational system functioned with terrifying efficiency. Using three main rail networks, Prussia mobilized over 380,000 troops to the French frontier within fourteen days.

Mass Movement: The German forces crossed into France in mid-August 1870, driving the French armies back in a series of brutal, bloody encounters at Spicheren, Mars-la-Tour, and Gravelotte.
Field Artillery Superiority: While French infantry weapons were superior, the German armies possessed heavy, steel breech-loading artillery manufactured by Krupp. These cannons outranged French artillery, raining explosive shells on enemy positions from distances French guns could not match.

The Catastrophe at Sedan

The climax of the imperial phase of the war occurred on September 1, 1870, at the fortress city of Sedan, near the Belgian border.

Surrounded on all sides by German troops and pinned against the Meuse River, the main French field army was shattered by a ring of over four hundred German cannons. On September 2, 1870, Emperor Napoleon III surrendered his sword to King Wilhelm I, entering captivity alongside eighty-three thousand French soldiers.

The Second French Empire had collapsed in a single afternoon.

6. The Siege of Paris and the Fall of the Empire

The surrender at Sedan did not end the war; it transformed it.

When news of Napoleon III’s capture reached Paris, the citizens revolted, declared the fall of the monarchy, and proclaimed the Third French Republic. The new republican government declared that it would not surrender "an inch of our soil, nor a stone of our fortresses," vowing to fight on to the bitter end.

By late September 1870, German armies had marched deep into France and placed Paris under a brutal winter siege. For over four months, the French capital was completely cut off from the outside world, subjected to continuous artillery bombardment, starvation, and extreme winter cold.

In the countryside, French resistance fighters (franc-tireurs) launched guerrilla attacks against German supply lines, prompting harsh retaliatory measures from the German army.

As the siege wore on through the freezing winter of 1870–1871, Bismarck turned his attention from the battlefield to the diplomatic drawing room inside German military headquarters at Versailles. The military victory was complete; it was now time to forge the nation.

7. Looking Ahead: The Final Proclamation

By December 1870, the political landscape of Europe was unrecognizable. France was shattered, its Emperor deposed, and its capital besieged.

More importantly, the psychological barrier between northern and southern Germany had vanished in the shared blood and victory of the battlefield. Bavarian and Prussian soldiers had fought side-by-side from the trenches of Sedan to the lines around Paris.

All that remained was to negotiate the legal terms, secure the agreement of the southern princes, and crown a new Emperor.

In our final article, "Coronation in the Hall of Mirrors," we will explore how Bismarck drafted the imperial constitution, bribed a reluctant Bavarian king, and staged the ultimate spectacle of triumph inside the royal palace of France's sun kings—announcing the birth of the Second Reich to a stunned world.