The Franco-Prussian War and the Fall of the Second Empire

From Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times: From the Enlightenment to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), pp.152-154.

What doomed the empire was not its internal evolution but rather the cumulative results of a series of errors in foreign policy. By  1870 France found itself isolated and confronted by a powerful new rival across the Rhine. Napoleon III had failed to intervene in central Europe in 1861 when it might have been easy to check the growth of Prussian  power. He had failed in his subsequent  efforts to secure face-saving compensations in the form of  territorial gains along the Rhine. He had failed once more when he sought to bolster French military power by introducing  a new army bill into parliament in 1867. His proposal, which would have brought a larger annual contingent of draftees into the army and  would have increased the cost of preparedness, aroused a political storm; in the end the bill had to be so watered down that it became innocuous. Meanwhile the failure of Napoleon's "great idea" -- the building of a Catholic empire in Mexico allied with France -- had  divided the nation and provided his critics with effective ammunition.  Efforts after 1866 to negotiate alliances with Italy and Austria-Hungary produced no result except to arouse false hopes in Paris. War with Prussia was not the only possible  outcome of  the crisis that erupted suddenly in July, 1870. Either Bismarck or Napoleon III  could  have averted a test of arms.  Bismarck had no desire to avert  it;  Napoleon lacked the foresight to  do  so. Chronic  illness during the last  years of his reign probably lessened his capacity to devote sustained attention to the developing  crisis or to make difficult decisions;  he was unwise enough to let authority slip into the hands  of his second-rate foreign   minister, the  Duc de Gramont. The French government, aroused at the news that Spain had secretly arranged   to  place  a Hohenzollern [the ruling state in the German nation of Prussia] prince on the Spanish  throne, put such heavy pressure on the king of  Prussia that the latter persuaded the Hohenzollern nominee to withdraw his candidacy. Gramont had thus won a notable diplomatic  victory, but he was not intelligent enough to be satisfied  with  it.  Instead, he demanded still further Prussian assurances for the future, and  thus  gave Bismarck an opportunity to play the picador to "the Gallic bull." On  July 19 the French government, angered at  Prussia's apparent  flouting of French demands, slipped into  war -- unnecessarily, unwisely, and with inadequate preparation for so severe a test.

Few  Frenchmen   except  Adolphe   Thiers  (who   had  been  issuing gloomy warnings ever since 1866) fully understood the threat that France faced. Prime Minister Ollivier encouraged  the nation's  illusions by  announcing that he accepted war "with  a light  heart," and his war minister  even more recklessly assured parliament that the army was ready "to  the last gaiter button."  What the army lacked in 1870 was  not gaiter buttons  but something far more serious: efficient,  vigorous, and imaginative leadership.  The officer corps, though honorable and  loyal, had  slipped into a rut of  routine-mindedness  and smug complacency that contrasted  sharply with the tough and keen mentality of the Prussian staff. France's clumsy and antiquated process of mobilization had not even b en completed  when the first German troops crossed the frontier.  Within a month the great border fortress of Metz was cut off by the invaders, and the army of Marshal Bazaine besieged therein. Napoleon, who had gone to the front to share the perils of  war with his soldiers, refused to adopt the one strategic plan that might still have averted defeat -- a slow retreat to Paris and a stand outside the walls of  the capital. Fearing the  political  repercussions of such a strategic withdrawal, he accompanied his remaining army under MacMahon in an attempt relieve Metz. The Prussians cornered  MacMahon's force at Sedan on  August 31 and broke its resistance in a brief battle fought the next day. Napoleon, aware that the fight was hopeless, sought a hero's death in the front lines on the theory that his martyrdom might save the throne for his adolescent son. Even that consolation was denied him; and he fell ignominiously into the hands of the Prussians.

The emperor, but not the empire, survived Sedan. When the news reached Paris on September 3, the regime's political leaders tried desperately to prop up the imperial system by arranging an interim government under a military leader. Even the republican politicians were willing;  most of them were not eager to take power at so gloomy a moment. But it was far too late to save the empire;  its prestige had vanished in defeat. On September 4 demonstrating crowds converged on the Corps législatif and demanded the proclamation of a republic. Napoleon's system disintegrated  without bloodshed, and almost without regret.