Franco-Prussian War
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The Franco-Prussian War was fought from July 1870 to May 1871 between France under Napoleon III and the German states led by Prussia under Otto von Bismarck. It began after the release of the Ems telegram, which Bismarck edited so that the refusal of the Prussian prince to the Spanish throne looked like an insult to France; public opinion in Paris demanded war. The French army invaded first, but at Sedan on 1 September 1870 the emperor himself was captured with 100,000 men. Paris held out under siege for four months and capitulated in January 1871 after a bitter winter and bombardment. While the war still ran, German princes proclaimed the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on 18 January 1871, with William I as emperor, the exact settlement Bismarck wanted. The peace imposed an indemnity of five billion francs and gave Germany Alsace and the fortified city of Metz, a wound that shaped European politics until 1918. In France the defeat destroyed the Second Empire, opened the way for the Third Republic and provoked the Paris Commune, crushed in May 1871 at a cost of tens of thousands of lives. Prussian staff work and mobilisation became the model studied by every general staff in Europe.