"150 years ago, the Franco-German war of 1870 and the amazement of the defeated French"

During the summer of 1870, a military debacle such as France rarely experienced swept away the Second Empire and with it the power and prestige that this regime had restored to the country. The war of 1870 - the first of the three Franco-German wars and the matrix of the two following ones - arose from Bismarck's desire to unify Germany, then divided into some forty States, around Prussia. Become Minister-President of Prussia in 1862, he promised to achieve it "by iron and blood"if necessary. Following two victorious wars, against Denmark (1864), then Austria (1866), he created a Confederation of North Germany, which he led with the King of Prussia, William. Bismarck still needed to unite the states of southern Germany, like Catholic Bavaria, hostile to unification, attached to its singularity. To achieve this, he had the idea of ​​provoking France to declare war on Prussia and thus to train all the Germans against

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