Hello, and welcome to Western Siev. I have a real treat for you
today. I'm sitting down with historian Rachel krast Along. We're talking about her
new book, Bismarck's War. Now, as I'll say again, when we
get into the interview, like I thought back onto, hey, what have
I been talking about Franco Prussian War? And then I come back with a
big almost nothing. It's just a stepping stone to World War One. It's
just part of German unification. But it's so much more than that. This
book does an excellent job of laying out the foundations for the war, the
causes, the immediate sparks, what it was like to fight as a regular
person, and in many ways how it was a precursor to World War One.
It also goes through be ineptitude us of the French command, notably Napoleon
the Third, who you will remember from our other book. We talked about
the last emper of Mexico. He couldn't conquer Mexico and he can't stop Bismarck.
Napoleon the Third. So it's a great book overall, an excellent read,
and a terrific read for somebody who's interested in early modern European history.
I looked, I couldn't find anything comparable when it came to the Franco Prussian
War that doesn't get ridiculously into the weeds in terms of troop movements and specific
commanders names and so on and so forth. There's a military history that stays
broad enough that it is accessible to any fan of history, and I highly
recommend picking it up, as I always say in every single author interview that
we do. The link is in the show notes if you'd like to check
check it out. It's out today, so feel free to click that link
and purchase the book. I'm sure Rachel would love it, and I'm sure
that you will be a happier history buff having read it. With that being
said, here's the interview. Okay, welcome back. As I mentioned,
I am sitting down here with historian Rachel Crastell, and we were talking about
her most recent book out today entitled Bismarck's War. It's the Franco Prussian War
and the making of modern Europe. You know, it was kind of interesting.
As I sat down and read the book, I started to try to
think back to all the European history courses that I had taken throughout college and
even going back to ap European history in high school and tried to think of,
Okay, what was I taught about the Franco Prussian War, And the
same answer kept coming up in that it wasn't really taught the war independently.
And what I mean by that is the war was I think part of a
chapter called German Unification, and it was taught as sort of an aspect of
German unification, but it was never discussed of its own merit. And you
kind of start in the book in the introduction talking about the realities in that
the Franco Prussian War is almost sort of consistently forgotten when we teach European history
and even when we teach modern European history. I was wondering if you could
touch on that for a second and talk about, you know, why is
that and also like why is it such a problem, because I do agree
with you, I think it is. Yeah, thanks that, I'm happy
to be here, glad to be able to talk about the book. I
think the book. I think that the war has forgotten for a couple of
different reasons. First of all, as you mentioned, it gets lumped in
with the wars of German Unification, So those wars that happened between eighteen sixty
four in eighteen seventy one that led to the unification of Germany in January of
eighteen seventy one. The Franco Prussian War is the last of those three conflicts.
But I think there's a bigger picture for why the Franco Prussian War gets
forgotten, and that's because it gets lost with the two World Wars. It
gets overshadowed by World War One and World War Two, of course, and
so people just kind of see this as just one more run up to that
conflict between France and Germany that happens in the twentieth century. But I think
that's a shame because the Franco Prussian War, the Franco Prussian War, is
its own, its own conflict. It's forty four years prior to World War
One. It stands right in the middle between the Napoleonic Wars and the World
Wars of the twentieth century, and so in terms of technology, in terms
of strategy, in terms of the ways that European armies were constructed and put
together, it is right in the middle of those two kinds of conflicts,
and we can dig into that a little bit down the road, but it's
it's furthermore an interesting conflict because, unlike say World War Two, there's not
a clear cut answer to sort of who's the hero and who's the villain in
this war. There's not somebody that you're really rooting for to say this is
the good guy that we want to see, when it's much more a conflict
between two nations that we're trying to do get out for supremacy on the continent.
And they're very interesting. The leadership is very interesting, very very different.
Bismarck and King Wilhelm on the one hand, Napolling the third, and
then later the Government of National Defense in France on the other hand. They're
more complicated, they're more they're they're they're less easy to pin down. But
it's a it's a fascinating conflict precisely because it's right in the middle of those
two kinds of wars, and because of the ways that civilians get caught in
the conflict that becomes the harbinger for the great wars that come in the twentieth
century. Yeah, I couldn't agree more and I do want to come back,
and we are going to come back to sort of how this war functions
as a stepping stone to World War One, because I think that there's really
interesting, some interesting stuff to talk about there. But actually sometimes when I'm
teaching, I tell my students I think that I think World War two.
World War two is kind of the exception in that we have, you know,
the clear good guys and the clear pad guys. Like if you go
back through most wars in history, depending upon what side you're on, that
oftentime dictates who you think the good guy and the bad guys are. There's
not as often a clear cut hero and villain, like we get with the
rise of the Nazi Party, and you know what, all of the things
that sort of come with that, Like we have this desire now, I
think as a result of World War Two to sometimes retrospectively go back and sort
of label who's the hero and who's the villain and some of these conflicts when
this is real politique, as we'll get into in a second, and it's
not necessarily about good versus evil. You know, this is a conflict between
two nation states. But before we move, before we just sort of kick
the German unification can off the screen. Let's just touch on it for a
second, because this war does play a really really important part in German unification,
and I was hoping you could kind of explain to the audience sort of
where we are in German I unification in that process when the war starts,
and what Bismarck's theory is in terms of how this war is going to help
to solidify the final unification of Germany, which of course, in fact it
does absolutely so. At this point, following the Austro Prussian War of eighteen
sixty six, the North German Confederation has come into being, and Bismarck is
the chancellor of that confederation. So Prussia is of course at the heart the
leadership of that confederation, but many, many, many German states and principalities
have at this point joined that North German Confederation and remaining independent. The three
primary areas are Bavaria, Baden and Wurtemburg and part of the Duchy at Hessa.
So these areas are still independent, but they are now part that they
now have treaties with the North German Confederation that require them to go to war
should Prussia be attacked or be engaged in a conflict now. Even so,
once France and Prussia end up declaring war on each other in July, it's
not entirely clear whether the South German states are going to fall into line.
But very in particular is very reluctant to join Prussia in this fight, even
though their military has been dominated by Prussia for the last three years, even
though they're required by treaty, they're still considering, well, should we declare
war or not. But ultimately they came down to the realization that if they
did not join on the side of Prussia and Prussia won, they would not
be dealt with very kindly. Otherwise, by joining the conflict, Bavaria understood
that they could negotiate for potentially better terms. As they are, they could
see the writing on the wall that they were going to be incorporated into a
United German Empire. But I think it's it's really important to note that this
war for Bismarck was not a war of conquest. It wasn't They weren't trying
to create the German Empire by conquering these South German states. They're trying to
incorporate them through treaty, through demonstration, of power through demonstration of a common
conflict, so that inhabitants of all of these different areas Bavaria, boden Burrtemburg
and so on, would see themselves on the side of victory. And you
see this happening. In print I followed the story of a Bavarian soldier who
three years, four years ago was on the opposite side, and now he's
marching up to war alongside Prussian underneath the crown Prince of Prussia. And from
the very beginning he starts to say, hey, I'm fighting alongside with these
Prussians, and where's the While there still is considerable culture difference and sort of
sense of you know, difference between Bavarians and Prussians, for sure happening in
this conflict, they are also going into battle together, and the press tried
valiantly to show that Germans were fighting together. And that sense of unity is
what helped to lead to not only the actual political unification that happened in January
as a result of Prussian victories and pressed negotiations with these other countries, but
it also meant that individual Germans more were inclined to see themselves as German and
to accept the fact of the empire once it was declared. Yeah, and
I want to come back a little bit later on to Bismarck and Bismarck sort
of war aims here to ask you a little bit later, and they do
those sort of change at some point here in the process. But I think
it is it is important to recognize that, yes, there are these parts
of Germany who still remain outside of the United Northern German portion, and they
are very distinct and are hesitant, as you do a great job of pointing
out, even as the conflict is starting, you know, there's this question
mark, you know, barbarious does sort of recognize it has to get involved,
but it's still kind of it wants to sit, it wants to wait,
if at all possible. And so there's there's a lot going on here.
But let's talk about the conflict for a second in terms of there's you
know, there's obviously a spark to every usually every conflict, and you know
this the war it also, as I was taught at years and years ago,
was also sort of a conflict where this is you know, this is
Bismarck just you know, running circles around Napoleon the third he's you know,
he has him totally duped. He's you know, just you know, we're
talking about you know, a professional football team playing a high school football team
here, sort of quality he is, you know, he's just on another
level. And Napoleon the Third's just an idiot and he's just falling forward.
He takes the bait, as it were, So is hit true? And
like what starts this conflict going? Well, it is? It is.
I mean it's true to a certain extent, but like everything, there's always
more complication. So absolutely once So the spark of this particular conflict was the
candidacy for who would be on the throne in Spain, which it sounds like
such an early modern kind of a spark, right. The France is worried
about being encircled by Hovan's Olerns, and so when Prussia proposes one of their
family members to take the throne in Spain, France protests against that candidacy and
Prussia withdraws it. But when they do so, France kind of comes back
with a stronger ask, saying, not only will you withdraw this candidacy,
but will you want you to promise you'll never propose this again? And of
course that's something that no sovereign state is going to do. They're not going
to make promises about the future. And so when that happens, then there's
a rebuff from the King of Prussia, which was sent in a telegram that
Bismarck then doctor to sound even more harsh than it actually was, so it
sounded like this conflict, this conversation that happened between between the Prussian king and
France's representatives, came off as much much harsher than it actually was. And
by this time France could not back down. They had put themselves in such
a position around this candidacy that it was very tough for them to then back
down and say, okay, we won't go to war. Let me back
up a little bit and just mentioned that ever since Prussia defeated Austria in eighteen
sixty six, it was very clear that at some point France and Prussia were
probably going to go to war because Prussia was demonstrating that it wanted to be
the top dog on the continent, and France under Napoleon the Third, who
had always had a little a lot of baggage because of his famous uncle,
of course, the Great Napoleon. He had never himself been such a very
successful military commander. He had struggled in Mexico. He'd been embarrassed there.
He'd been embarrassed when Poland tried to rise up against Russia. He had not
been able to influence any of the outcome of the war between Prussia and Austria.
So for years and years he had been suffering black eyes. And so
it was pretty clear that Prussia was going to want to show their dominic against
France, and this was a good opportunity for it. So it's not like
business was exactly looking for this conflict at exactly this time, but he had
his options open and he was ready to move when he could. And then,
as I said, he's doctors this telegram, so that France was backed
into a corner. So there's there's the spark of it, and we can
talk a little bit more about their leadership as the war unfolded as well.
Yeah, and listeners will remember that we did the book The Last Emperor of
Mexico a couple of years ago that talked about that debacle of an attempted French
invasion of Mexico, which takes place during the American Civil War, which Napoleon
saw was sort of like the opening to maybe maybe get in there while the
United States was distracted. As you'll recall, doesn't work and it costs a
lot of money, and so some of napoleon The Thirds decisions, as we'll
see later on, are a little regrettable. As we move forward, there's
an interesting part. So as the war starts to unfold, and as it
becomes clear that France and I'm going to use Germany, even though it's a
little anachronistic to do so, that they're going to there is going to be
a state of war between them. Now the question begins to take shape of
Okay, is this going to be France versus Germany or are other European states
going to become involved? And that struck me as I was reading the book,
to be a very important question because, as you mentioned, Prussia and
Austria had recently fought a conflict, and so perhaps it's in Austria's best interest
to intervene, but only if there's a chance that France is going to prevail
in this. If they're not going to prevail, then maybe there isn't a
good opportunity. And then Britain's a little bit different too, So I wonder
if you could talk a little bit about the alliances and lack thereof, and
how important that is as this conflict gets started. Sure, one of the
challenges for France was that it did not have allies going into this war,
and it was desperately seeking to find common cause with Austria, perhaps with Italy
looking a little bit to Britain, but you know, with less hope there.
They certainly hoped that they could do an offensive that would head due east
into Baden as a first Foray, and that success there might bring Austria in
or perhaps Italy as well. That didn't happen. It didn't happen before the
war started, and it certainly didn't happen as the war began. France had
some immediate reversals, and so and so as it and then Britain was.
Britain actually, in a foreshadowing of nineteen fourteen, was watching very keenly to
what happened in Belgium. They wanted to make sure Belgium remained neutral, as
it did in this particular case, so they weren't particularly eager to join in
the in the conflict either. Russia was looking for a moment to take an
advantage of everyone else's distraction to try and renegotiate the terms around the Crimean War
that had concluded about thirteen years earlier. So there was so nobody was particularly
eager to join France. They didn't see them as particularly strong, although although
they were much much stronger against Prussian than we might think, and I think
we should unpack that a little bit, but but nobody was willing to join
in the fight. And by the time, even within the first week of
fighting, as France starts to retreat back into its elf, there was no
way that the other countries were going to join on board. They were eager,
however, as the war unfolded to bring the conflict to an end.
They did not want to see Prussia become too strong, so they were looking
for ways to help bring the two parties to the table and negotiate, and
they were very happy to see that happen finally in January eighteen seventy one.
Yeah, and then I wanted to talk a little bit about the sort of
relative strength of France versus Prussia, because as I was reading the book and
paper strength it can be misleading but on paper they looked pretty close to me.
And this is a this is a big conflict, by the way,
Like the number of troops that are involved here are huge. You know,
this isn't a small scale war by any stretch of the imagination. So I
was hoping you could talk about that there's strengths on paper, but then also
thinking about French weaknesses, there are some sort of hidden in weaknesses that you
get into a little bit in the book, particularly when you start to think
about support personnel and some of the things that maybe we don't think about oftentimes
when we think about fighting a conflict that well, I mean, you need
porters, you know, people who carry things you need, You need horses
which didn't have You need like lots of auxiliaries who are non combatants often to
make sure that the army can get to where it needs to and can fight
most effectively. And that to me struck me as one of France's biggest weaknesses
going into this. I'm sorry it's a two part question, but I'm confident
we can get through it. That's all right, That's all right. I
think there's so you mentioned the paper strength, and certainly this is a huge
this is a huge conflict. This is a conflict where there were armies measuring
in the hundreds of thousands. The total mobilized on each side was in the
three to four hundred thousand. It evolved. Of course, over time.
France kept getting bigger and bigger, they kept fielding more more men, but
they were fielded in very different ways. So first of all, let's talk
about the service model. In Prussia, they had universal conscription, which they
were one of the first places to do that, and they had massive reserves
of men who had been trained who could be called up, and they had
a system of calling up men so that they basically had a postcard that just
needed to be dated and sent out to men to say, come show up
on this day at this place that was ready to go. Prussia, also,
by the way, pioneered, they used of a dog tag during this
conflict so they could keep track of their soldiers. On the French side,
they were very much in the older model of having professional soldiers who served for
a very long time, so they did have a lot of men that they
could call up. Many of them were posted throughout the country. Some of
them were posted in their colonies, so they were in Africa and you know,
needed to be shipped back onto the continent. They did not have the
long they didn't have the conscript model that came later, like most countries adopted
the conscription model after the Franco Prussian War. Instead, they did have the
tradition though of the Levon mass that had dated back to the front the French
Revolution, you know, to the seventeen ninety two, and so they did
have this notion that if you did need to call people up, they would
be called up and they'd be ready to go. There would be something about
like the French alon that would lead them to be able to go up and
fight in battle. So their work actually quite a few volunteers over the course
of the war, and as the after the fall of Napoleon, which we'll
get to, you know later, but as the war kind of dragged on,
they were able to continually call up men. They just couldn't get trained
in time to do anything significant in face of a well trained reserve army that
Prussia was able to field. So that's just talking about sheer battle strength.
Let's talk about you mentioned all the auxiliary of personnel, so stretcher bearers,
medics, horses, pharmacists, all the kind of stuff apply. They just
simply didn't have that organized In France. They were far far more doctors ready
to go, who were attached to the Prussian Army, ready to actually to
come into the field. So there's the personnel issue. French horses had been
farmed out to farmers, and farmers weren't really eager to let the horses return
to the army as the harvest was about to come in in the summer of
eighteen seventy, so that was a struggle. But more importantly was that France
did not have a concept of the separation between mobilization on the one hand and
concentration on the other hand, And that was an insight that Prussia had been
able to actually mobilize and put into effect in eighteen seventy. What do I
mean by that? It means that you're not only you're not just sending soldiers
and supplies and all the auxiliaries to the same location at the same time.
Instead, you are making them mobile. You're getting them up and moving and
going to the general area. But then you're concentrating them separately once they're actually
there. France did not have this concept and instead they were trying to get
all the men to go to supply depots, pick up their weapons, and
go straight to the location where they would be deployed. And it created just
mass confusion as soldiers were cris classing in the country, getting to their supply
depot and then trying to get to another location. It was slower than Prussia,
and more importantly, it was demoralizing. So whereas Prussia, Prussian soldiers
and Bavarian soldiers are taking the train up to the frontier and then maybe they're
marching for dozens of miles to get to the right place of concentration, they
were able to do that with relative ease and relative organization, and they got
there relatively well rested and ready to fight. For the French, it was
not quite the same. It was much more confused. And then once the
war actually starts to get underway, you know, I think it's it's fair
to say, you know, France would have come into the conflict confident.
Of course. You know, they have this strong military tradition stretching back to
Napoleon and beyond. And again I think this is sometimes, especially in the
United States, we get the post World War Two bias of a weak French
military, but that simply isn't the case at all, and really isn't much
of the case in that World War either. But the fact of the matter
is is they felt I would say, they felt good coming into it,
and man, does it unravel fast for them once the battles begin. As
you mentioned, they're they're getting ready for this what they think will be an
aggressive invasion into German territory, and by the sixth of August, that mirage
has all but evaporated. So I wonder if you could just kind of talk
about those few early battles and about how quickly France's position goes from feeling confident
to on your heels. Absolutely, absolutely, Adam, I really appreciate you
framing that around the stereotype that we have of the French army, because of
course they dominated during the Napoleonic Wars and needed five other countries to band together
to defeat them. So there's there's a lot more complexity in all those conflicts.
And they were right to be confident. They had not only this large
army that had been in the field for a long time, they had the
superior rifle. They knew that the chaspoul, which could fight, which could
shoot from a mile away with you know, remarkable accuracy, and really disturbed
the German soldiers. They now the Germans had the superior cannon. They had
the crupp cannon. That's that was, you know, bigger, heavier,
more accurate. Their shells, the Prussian shells could explode upon impact, So
that was better than the time refuses that the French had. But but there
was good reason to think the French would be strong. And indeed in those
first battles, you know, the first battles on the most the meaningful ones
on August fourth, and then two on August six, they're all in on
the Lorn and Alsace areas, right, France could have won those battles.
They were close, especially the two on August six one and Laurent one in
Alsace. It was it was these were close battles. They were just a
little bit out numbered in one and in both cases there were crucial moments where
if France had counterattacked, they might have prevailed, but instead the Germans just
sort of kept coming. It wasn't that the Germans fought perfectly. They certainly
had their moments of disorganization when one of their general Steinmetz kind of crosses in
front of the army there, you know, one of their own armies,
and they throws them off. But in the end, these these these two
crucial battles just coincidentally happened to happen on August six. They neither of which
were planned, by the way of which kind of they stumbled into each other
and got you went from a small skirmish into a large scale battle. France
ended up having to fall back, and after August six, this is where
we started to see Napoleon the Third's leadership really coming into play too. Napoleon
the Third ordered the wing that was in Alsassa, France, the wing under
mac my Own, to fall back, and then he kind of changed his
mind and said, well, maybe we should actually stay in Metz. So
what ended up happening is the French army split into two and part of the
army circled all the way back from Alsas all the way in the east,
kind of swung to the south and around and then back halfway back to Paris.
That's under mac my Own, and then the other half under Bezin ends
up staying in the area around Metz. They no longer have contact with each
other, and Napoleon the Third had gone back and forth about exactly what to
do at that particular moment that led them to be split. Mac my own
and Bezain. We're not welcome communicating with each other, and so and so.
Now you've got these two armies, both of which had had had felt
like they should have won, but in fact retreated after August six, and
they're not in communication, and Napoleon the Third is not sure what to do.
So this is a crucial part for for how you know, France goes
into a retreat mode that they never recover from. Yeah, and I think
it's it's interesting. So there's a couple of things worth remembering here if you're
if you're listening to this. First of all, remember that we're in an
age right now. You know, this is this is similar to the American
Civil War. You know, we're only a few years removed from it,
so that the technology in terms of communication is roughly similar. You know,
it's in terms of knowing where units are. You're still very much dependent on
messengers on horseback and people trying to get correspondence back and forth. And by
the time you receive a message. Unless that unit has stayed put, it
might not be necessarily the same place anymore. So you eat these When we
talk about armies sort of stumbling into each other, you know, that happened
all the time. That happened all the time in pre modern warfare. You
kind of knew where the other side was. You were totally sure about it,
And you know, you start what turns into a skirmishp The Gettysburg started
as kind of a skirmish, you know, and it ends up being the
most important battle of the American Civil War, And which is just the easiest
one for me to compare these battles too, which is why I tend to
go back and forth. But the reality is, and this is the other
crucial thing that really I took away from the book, and I really hope
that listeners and people who read the book takes away from it too, is
that this is going the war itself is going to get remembered as this humiliating
French defeat. But early on it was a coin flip. In a lot
of these initial battles the French very easily could have won. It is not
as though they marched up and the Germans just blasted them off the line and
they took off running. That's not what happened. It was these were closed
conflicts. They could have won some of some of those initial battles. And
really, I mean, the question then comes to play, like Napoleon the
Third is kind of operating as the overall commander here to the best of my
knowledge, you know, Kaiservillehelm does not do sort of engage in the sort
of the same playing with toys scenario to those toys soldiers on the map,
and he's not doing that. So, I mean, how much blame should
we put on Napoleon the Third for sort of the ultimate outcome in the way
that everything's going to go here? Because I'm not the sort of person I
don't ascribe to the great man theory of history very much, and I don't
like to do that. But in reading the pages, it seems inescapable that
he does deserve a significant amount of blame for this agreed, And it was
not only because of what happened in the battle. You know, it's not
just you know what happened right after August six, As I was mentioning,
it's years of not setting up his army for success, of not necessarily promoting
the most qualified individuals into leadership roles, but rather having a little bit of
cronyism in terms of promotion. He also bears blame in terms of just as
mobilization was happening, for changing how his armies were going to be organized,
so that suddenly there was different chains of command that had to come together very
very quickly, and so it wasn't always clear who was going to listen to
whom. Even as this retreat is happening, as I was describing, he
was trying to give more authority to Bezen, But even there he was clearly
meddling, and Bezen didn't know whether he could actually make decisions or not.
So, you know, leadership matters, and in this case it proved to
be quite decisive. But on the other hand, there were also moments where
just francen't didn't have the luck on their side. You know, if if
there had been if there had just been sort of different responses in terms of
who was available to those battles that weren't really planned in early August, maybe
things would have the tide would have changed in a different direction. But but
I do think that in this particular case, in terms of the the fact
of French defeat Napoleon the third was decisive. Yeah, and I do think
we have to remember, and you pointed it out earlier, that he has
you have to imagine him with just this huge yoke around his neck all the
time walking, because you know, he is related to the great Napoleon,
you know, who marched armies across all of Europe. And it sometimes seems
to me that you know, Napoleon, whether it's the Franco Prussian War or
it's you know, the boondoggle into Mexico, is just trying to find ways
to recapture some of that old spear. But he's not really it's not part
of a big concerted strategy. It's just kind of like, well, here's
this opportunity, we'll do this, and here's this going on, Well we'll
do that, you know. And but he also, you know, when
we get back to the doctor telegram and all that from the beginning from bes
Mark, he has this real thin pride because of who he is, and
he cannot suffer any sort of humiliation to those to that sort of respect,
and so he gets really indecisive at times. And I you know, you
could read biographies about this guy. It's he's an interesting he's an interesting guy,
but you know, he definitely has some major weaknesses. So now I
want to go forward and talk you talk about two key battles that take place
on August sixteenth and eighteenth. And I never took French growing up, and
so I'm gonna pronounce him as ro his own view and maybe Graviolette I might
not be close on those, but I'm sure you'll correct me. And you
know, you write that they rank or should rank among some of the most
decisive and important battles in European history. And they're also extremely close. Again,
this is not this is not a twenty seven to nothing German blowout.
You know, this is a very close situation. So I was hoping you
could talk about those battles, how close were they and why are they so
important? So these are both battles that took place on the outskirts of Metz
in August of eighteen seventy and these were on the French side. It was
the Bezen's army who was engaged in this. Macma Own is already further west
and not involved in them at all. So the battle that's known as Cressmview
or martial Tour. It's named variously by the villages that were on the road
heading out to Verdun. Happens on August sixteenth, and then the Battle of
Kravalot on August eighteenth, eighteen seventy. These were large scale battles. Again,
the first one was not particularly planned. It was it was one kind
of a run to the guns, kind of a moment, and on the
on the and and and again it was. It was. It was more
on the strength of a lower level German commander who had run into some French
and decided to actually engage in battle, and then the others kind of reluctantly
got involved. The battle in August eighteenth was more planned. It was the
first major engagement that was intended to happen on that day, and and and
and it happened in a variety of different locations. There were three major eras,
north, central and south at the Battle of Gravelot, and there were
moments where it seemed because of different ravines and the ways that the Prussians were
trying to attack and were being repelled by those French rifles the Chaspo, it
seemed like the Prussians might lose that battle. It was only because of some
late arrivals towards the end of the day that the Prussians were able to prevail,
and the fact that the French under Besen were not ready to counterattack when
they when they might have done so. Certainly, it's easy to be an
arm chair general and say, oh, he should have countered attacked at four
pm, and then maybe they would have made it. But that that's stuff
to say. It's it's clear though Bezin as a commander. And by the
way, the Napoleon the third was nowhere near these battles. He was he
had already retreated further west to join macmi own. But during these battles,
Bezen, who had just been promoted into this position of overseeing several, you
know, uh, several armies together, he was a really great company commander.
He was had physical courage, but he was not able to see the
big picture and to try and and you know, shape where the army was
going, and and and he'd many of his soldiers thought they won that battle.
But then at the end of the day, the next morning he says,
nope, we've got to retreat back to Metz. And so that was
again a moment of demoralization, because it depends depending on what sector you in.
You might have thought that you won that battle, but instead they're treating
back into the city where they ended up being stuck for for over two months
under siege. So it was that was a crucial turning point where now half
the French army is stuck, the other half is further west and they're about
to be caught in the Battle of Saudan. Yeah, and so now we
have the French army is effectively split, and so which is not in a
situation that you ever want to be in in terms of a military situation.
And that takes us to sort of the crucial the Battle of Saddan and the
capture and surrender of Napoleon the third. So I want you to I'd love
to hear a little bit about that battle and how Napoleon winds up being forced
I suppose to surrender at the end. And then I want to ask a
sort of a follow up question to that, which is, you know,
is the war? Why doesn't the war just end? Why doesn't the why
doesn't the war just end there? Like we shouldn't. It seems like the
wars should be over, Like with the surrender of that army and with the
surrender of someone who is ostensibly the head of the government who is now captured
by the other side, it seems like that should be the end of the
track. But for whatever reason, it's not. So I was hoping you
talk a little bit about the battle and like why it does, why this
isn't just the penultimate moment. And so let's go back to mid August.
It's August sixteenth back, you know, over in the east, Bezan is
fighting at the Battle of Ranson Field, but they're not aware of this.
Napoleon and macma own they have fallen back now to Shuttle and they are deciding
what to do. So Shallon is right in between Paris and Metz, so
it's you know, it's it's in the northern part of France. It's toward
the east, but not all that far east, and so this is they're
kind of restaging, debating what to do. They think, well, if
we go back to Paris, that might be, you know, that might
be a good move, but maybe that would then draw us too far away
and we'd basically be retreating if we don't defend Paris. Then we're leaving Paris
to be potentially captured. So the position of Paris is very is a crucial
part of the debate. If Napoleon goes back to Paris, then he's basically
seen as abandoning the army. But if he doesn't, then is he you
know, he's opening himself up to being captured. So there was a there
was a lot of debate about what they should do. Eventually, they do
strike out, they're looking for they leave Shalon and they they they kind of
go back. They zigzag across the countryside looking for supplies, trying to figure
out where the German armies are. At this point. Basically, as you
mentioned, it's hard to know where the armies are. Meanwhile, the German
armies are thinking where are they going? We don't really we don't understand what's
going on here. So for days there's there's a lot of confused back and
forth. It's they're just trying to figure out what to do eventually, and
I think this is if you if you know anything about French geography, right,
the early battles are in Alsace and Laurent. This crucial battle at Sedan
is way up against the Belgian border. It's nowhere near those early battles.
How did they get there? Well, basically they're looking for supplies and they
and then as German armies are heading west and north, they basically force France.
They force mack my own with Napoleon the thirding train up against up into
a corner. As they get closer to Belgium, they start to realize,
we can't cross into Belgium. If we do that, then suddenly, you
know, we risk total catastrophe. We're bringing the war into a neutral country.
Britain might decide to intervene at that stage, like that would be a
disaster. So they end up they end up after some other skirmishes and you
know, trying to break out toward the east, you know, maybe thinking
they might connect with Bazan, but they don't really know what's going on with
him. They end up around Sadon. Now Sadan is a fortress city,
but it's a basically a demoated fortress city. It's in a floodplain. There's
the river, there's the there's very marshy, marshy areas to the south,
and much of the French army ends up being kind of within this fortress and
in the immediate environ well, the German armies have by now kind of split
into two branches and they are encircling the entirety of this fortress area. Not
that the Germans really know that that's happening. The rank and file soldiers,
you know, they start marching. Some of them were going up north around
the east side. I'm going up north around the west side. As as
they marched, they suddenly realized, wait, we're hearing some noises. Oh,
it's the other side of our army. We're starting to connect. We're
encircling them. Okay, so so so the with the Prussian But over the
course of late August, all the armies are kind of encircling around Sedan.
The Prussians have brought their cannon. They have set up literally hundreds of cannon
to the south and then eventually up around to the east and the west that
then connect and on the day, on the morning of September first, the
you know, the Bavarians over in the north, the south east triangle start
the conflict in a suburb called Base, which ends up getting that very brunt
of a very vicious battle. And the Prussian armies had been circled the rest
of Sadan, and as the day went on, the French increasingly were backed
up against each other. They were backed into corners, they were getting shot
at from multiple sides. The Prussian cannon were able to continually target for for
hours and hours on end, just making you know, being in say like
a cops in the woods, you're just a sitting duck for the French art
or for the Prussian art chillery. By the end of the day, Napoleon
Thory realizes he needs to surrender. He is indeed inside the fortress of Sa'adan,
which the Germans were not aware of. They were surprised to learn that
he had put himself in that position, but but there he was. The
French have to They decided to surrender, and the next day, as negotiations
happened, Napoleon the Third ends up meeting first with Bismarck, where he's kind
of reprimanded for being such an idiot basically, and then he meets with with
with a king, with with Wilhelm and Bismarck ass are you surrendering yourself?
Are you surrendering the army, or are you surrendering all together? And he
says he's just learning himself in his army, and he's not surrending for France
altogether. I think he just he thinks Bezen might break out again. He
doesn't, he's not fully aware of what's happened to Bezen at this point that
he's trapped in Mets, and he thinks, he thinks it Francis might have
some kind of a chance to rescue itself from this, from this terrible outing.
He's still in political power, and he's allowed to he's allowed to escape
on his own reconnaissance, and he ends up later going into to England.
But just a couple of days later in Paris, once the news of this
disaster has reached them, on the night of September the third, the very
next morning, September fourth, there's an uprising in Paris, a very peaceful
uprising in which they declare themselves now a republic, a new republic, and
the leadership of that republic, which are basically moderate Democrats, small d Democrats
in France, Parisian based, they decide, we have got to fight on.
There's no way that we're going to allow France to be dismembered, you
know, with this army right in the middle of US and even though basically
the entirety of the French army that had started in late July was either captured
at Sudan eighty thousand prisoners of war taken that in that single day, or
they were bottled up in Mets with Bezen, the French leadership nevertheless said we've
got to fight on, and they did fight on. They fought for another
four and a half months before finally accepting defeat. Yeah, it's interesting.
There's a couple of things here that you know. First of also, you
sort of have this double envelopment problem. You've got have the army and Mets
which is now surrounded, which you know Napoleon doesn't know. Sure. Then
you've got the other half in Sadan also surrendered, so you'll you lose all
of your effective fighting force. Now, France is a very populous country.
They have this long standing tradition going back to the revolution of the Leaveyamas,
that they can we'll just call up more people, We'll just call up more
people. This this never ending sort of a theory. So there's this idea
that they're going to be able to fight on. That's one takeaway. The
other takeaway I have from this is I was trying to I was trying to
go back and look at the history books to see, Okay, Napoleon the
third is captured, and he's the he's the head of state at the time
that he's captured. I'm pretty sure this is the I think this is the
last time in history that we have a head of state who's maybe dumb enough
to be with the army. I mean, sure, as our Nicholas goes
to the front and you know quotation marks during World War One, but he's
never dumb enough to be like up at the front with the army, you
know, and you know that also just never really works out that well.
I mean, Bismarck might be thinking, well, this is gonna be great.
I'm gonna get all this stuff, and like capturing the head of state,
it turns out if you go back, it doesn't it doesn't actually get
you that much. I mean, even Charles the fifth captures France is the
first in the sixteenth century. It doesn't get anything from it. He gets
a lot of empty promises, but he doesn't just like own France as a
result, you know, because people like, no, we don't don't care.
So I think that's interesting. But I am curious from Bismarck's point of
view, and I love the part of the book, by the way,
where he is just he does he just kind of like Belittle's Napoleon the Third
for being, you know, an idiot, like what were you doing?
Like this is your fault, like that we're all here and like why why
should it be nice to you? Sort of a thing like you lost the
game, like get over it. Are his war aim still the same at
this point or does he now shift into Okay, half the French army is
surrendered, the other half is effectively about to be surrounded in Metz. Paris
is seemingly wide open, like I might be able to get a lot more
out of this than I originally thought. He does want he does start working
much more explicitly to capture part of France at this point, right, I
mean, it's always been it's always been in the back of his mind,
and certainly some people had been talking about capturing Alsace and part of lorent parts
that had been part of German states up until the sixteen eighties. During the
reign of Louis the fourteenth, they were captured and integrated into France, so
almost two hundred years of being owned by France and previously had gone back and
forth in all kinds of different ways. So it becomes much more explicit that
that Bismarck is seeking to gain these territories and incorporate them into the German Empire,
and of course that is what happens. But at this stage the French
are are absolutely opposed to this. They see these territories as very much French
and have been for a very long time. You know that many of the
population is very mixed in terms of speaking French, speaking German, having Protestant
allegiances, Catholic allegiancies. And in no way, by the way, does
the language or the religion necessarily lead to where your heart lies in terms of
where where you where you see yourself as more French or more German. A
lot of people saw themselves as Alsatian Alsatian, and so it's a very complicated
area in that in that regard, but nevertheless, Bismarck does start being more
explicit about that he's not interested in taking overall of France. That's, you
know, that's a very different World War two kind of an aim. He's
not interested in dismembering France. He doesn't want to, you know, he
wants to become the dominant power in Europe. But he also recognizes that he
cannot upset the balance of power too much, or else the arrest of the
European countries will will getting up against him. So he's savvy about that.
But certainly at this moment in September, he starts to think, Okay,
we can probably take some more territory. Yeah, And I think he's realistic
and he's sort of objective in the way that he does things, and you
know, he does recognize that there needs to be a balance of power in
Europe because if you do upset it too far, I mean, yes,
maybe you've defeated France, but there's still Russia, There's still there's still Great
Britain, there's still Italy, There's still plenty of other states that could getting
up on. New Austria is still over there, that could potentially throw their
hat in the ring. Now, the siege of Paris is months long.
It's horrific in many ways, shapes are formed, but I want to make
sure we get time to get to the end of the wars. I think
there's some interesting things to talk about there before we run out of time.
But one thing that I was curious about was just and you do a great
job in the book talking about the impact on civilians both in Paris and in
the countryside and so on and so forth. So it's a huge part of
the book, and I don't want to mislead people that it isn't, so
just acknowledge for a moment if you're listening that I'm just kind of punting.
I'm going forward a little bit, Okay, I am always I was curious
when I was reading the book, like, Paris is big. Paris is
a really big city, and for the German Army, no matter how large
it is, until Mets surrenders, they still have to keep Mets under lock
and key as well. So how is it that the Parisians the French aren't
able to break out at any point? I mean, it seems like they
have the numbers, but they're just not able to do it. Well.
They have the numbers, but again they're not a very trained army. So
it is indeed, it's a it's a military achievement in itself that the Prussian
and the German armies are able to entirely encircle Paris, which you know,
is a massive undertaking. They finally kind of meet on September nineteenth, and
Paris is then under siege until the end of the war in January, so
it's a long cold winter of siege. Paris has more wise a national Guard,
national guard units which had been created back during the Revolution of eighteen forty
eight, sort of a sense of citizen guards, but they weren't very well
trained. In fact, they would go home at night, as many of
them would go back to their their actual you know, civilian places of residence,
and so they were they were minimally trained. They were certainly not particularly
well able to undertake a fight out to break through a professional army. And
not only that, but Paris itself was was starting to become politically very much,
very divided, and divided very much on the left. So of course,
you know, once Napoleon the Third is overthrown, most Parisians were not
a big fan of Napoleon the third, you know, and hadn't been for
for decades. I mean, keep in mind, this is a man who
had been elected president in eighteen forty eight but then had dismantled the Republic within
a few years, so he basically became an authoritarian leader and was not popular
among those who still harbored, you know, desires for revolution future. But
then there's there's there's there's those who want a moderate republic and those who want
some kind of something more radical. In the nineteenth century, there's all different
radical ideas. So Parisian neighborhoods were starting to have serious tension against each other,
and that didn't help the cause of the Government of National Defense, which
was a far more moderate kind of a government. Now, I want to
sort of turn to the end of the war, but one of the things
that I was struck by when I got to this portion of the book was
that for a conflict that's Austin forgotten, the losses are by no means insignificant
at all. I mean, you list in the book one hundred and thirty
six thousand French soldiers killed in action, declared missing, or died of wounds.
You know, at Mets alone, we're talking about thirty five thousand people
dying of dysentery or typhus. You know, these are you know, German
losses one hundred and seventeen thousand casualties. These are big numbers. You know,
we're not talking about a few hundred people on either side here. But
clearly Germany wins the war. So in a short term perspective, what does
that mean? What do they get sure? At that point? So they
during the course of the fall in the winter, as I mentioned before,
Bismarck has been negotiating with the South German states. They played off of each
other, played against them against each other to get terms, to agree to
declare a German Empire, which they do in the Hall of Mirrors at Versai
in January of eighteen seventy one, very cold day, not a warm ceremony,
but but it's now, it's a it's a it's a unified Germany.
They get the territories of Alsace and La Run. They get a five billion
franc indemnity from France, which was actually quite in keeping with what had happened
before and actually also what happened at the Treaty of Versailles in nineteen after World
War One. It was a similar scale actually, but but France managed to
pay that off within a few years. They took out a lot of loans.
They bounced back from from the war, financially, But as you mentioned,
there was large numbers of casuals. If you compare they, you know,
the almost one hundred forty thousand French soldiers who died in that conflict compared
to the one point four French soldiers who died during World War One in a
much longer conflict. It the Franco Prussian War was only six months long.
It was it was an absolutely devastating conflict. And this was one where where
on both sides memorialization of those who died, particularly soldiers, but a little
bit civilians as well. In certain cases, you start to see monuments,
you start to see names being chanted, You start to see more anniversary events
happening after this war in a way that like during the Napoleonic Wars, soldiers
died where they you know, they were buried where they fell, and they
were not brought back home. You start to see that happening after the Franco
p War. So then and thinking more like long term then, and this
is going to be our last question because we're running out of time, But
I'm just curious about sort of two things like what did what did these countries
or these generals sort of learn from this conflict in a way that it would
you know, sort of change their thinking going into World War One, and
then you know, ultimately, and this is a tough question to answer,
but is there any way in which sort of the Franco Prussian War is sort
of a prelude to World War One in that it sort of makes World War
one a more sort of likely historical event, It makes it more possible and
imaginable. I don't want to draw two direct aligne between the Franco Prussian War
and World War One. Sometimes people want to say, oh, Francis wanted
to revenge against Germany and that's what led to World War One. That's far
too simplistic. It was forty four years later, a lot of things had
changed. Most people were not looking for war for that reason. But what
I where I really see the connections. One is, as I mentioned,
the change in scription models. So you have these massive national based armies,
and in the Frenco Prussian War you start to see both on the French side
and the German side, people talking about this war as a conflict between nations.
Even though it had started as this really kind of old fashioned dynastic conflict,
it becomes a war between nations, and that's a harbinger for the twentieth
century. But I would also suggest that the way that civilians were incorporated in
this war, you start to start to see some connections between the Frenco Prussian
War and the World Wars. First of all, that the French tried to
expel, or at least move out of Paris Germans because they saw them as
national enemies. That's a new treatment of civilians. You also see that civilians
are finding themselves having to deal with without any real preparation. They're dealing with
the invading armies and really don't know what to do. The Prussians have no
quarter for anybody who's a sniper or any civilian who tries to raise arms against
them, And whereas the French have this tradition of guerrilla warfare, of fighting
fighting against an invaded army, and they find themselves very much the targets oppression,
vengeance when that happens. So while we don't see anything near what happens
to civilians in World War One, and certainly not World War two, you
do start to see the sort of like the horrors of what happens to civilians
that get drawn into war, start to be more serious, less you know,
even less recompense when when those things happen. Yeah, and you can
start to see how if you do, because it's only a six month war,
and so you can start to see like, well, if the time
period was expanded out, you know, the sort of trauma that individuals would
have to suffer through is exponential at that point. And I do think that
that's one of the key sort of decisive changes that we've got going forward.
Well, we're out of time here, but I mean, was it first
of all? Was there anything else that was there anything that I desperately missed
that we needed to that we need to touch on? Now, this has
been a great interview, Adam. It's been a real plied to talk with
somebody who really knows and understands all all these great issues. I really appreciate
the conversation. Oh yeah, it's been great. It's been great, And
I hope people pick up a copy of the book. It's very well done.
And also I just hope that people start to collectively recognize the importance of
this conflict going forward.