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Franco Prussian
The Story Of The Invasion Of Lorraine In 1914 by
The French and Germans have argued about the territories of Alsace and Lorraine for centuries. In 1871, after losing the Franco-Prussian War, France was forced to cede the territories back to Prussia. When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, France seized upon the opportunity to restore its honor and reclaim the coal rich regions of Alsace and Lorraine. On August 14, 1914, the French army under the command of Generals Foch and Dubail marched into Lorraine. The German forces (Sixth Army) were led by Crown Prince Rupprecht and equipped with machine guns and heavy artillery.
The German strategy was simple. On August 14th, they began a controlled retreat intending to draw the French armies into attacking heavily defended areas. The French First and Second Armies easily marched forward. On August 17th, Foch's XXth Corps was able to seize Château Salins. On August 18th Dubail's 1st Army advanced into Sarrebourg and on the same day the 2nd Army took control of Dieuze. As the French armies continued to advance, they were met with increasingly heavier resistance from the German troops.
Rupprecht grew impatient with the retreating strategy and requested orders to attack. There are contradictory reports whether the order to counter attack came from Army Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke or if Rupprecht used his own authority. On August 20th, the German Sixth Army attacked the French 2nd Army. Since the French army had been advancing extremely fast, they had no trenches or other defensive positions to thwart the German offensive.
The XXth Corps led by Foch was able to maintain its position, but the 1st and 2nd armies were pushed backed. Gaps began to form in the French lines. On August 22nd, only 8 days after the French offensive began, the Commander-in Chief of the French Army Joffre was forced to order a retreat to Belfort, Epinal and Toul where trenches were in place and a stalemate between opposing forces followed.
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Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com/Article/The-Story-Of-The-Invasion-Of-Lorraine-In-1914/193737
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Frequently Asked Questions...
How is the Franco-Prussian war an example of the change in the balance of power in Europe?
Answer:
Germans are by far the largest population group in Western Europe. But it was not until the late 19th century that Germany became the leading nation-state in Europe: because, until then, Germany had never been united into a single, homogenous political unit. As a result, smaller nations that achieved unity long before Germany - for example Spain and France – exercised greater power for many centuries.
Napoleon had sought to make France the dominant power in Europe, and succeeded in that aim for a period at the beginning of the 19th century. When Napoleon was finally defeated, statesmen from all of the leading nations of Europe (Austria, France, Prussia, Russia and Britain) gathered at the Congress of Vienna, and hammered out agreements that aimed at preventing any one country from dominating Europe again. In other words, they aimed at creating and preserving a balance of power. They felt that this would provide the best guarantee of peace for the future of Europe.
The balance of power created by the Congress of Vienna did indeed bring peace to most of Europe for much of the 19th century. But for the agreements reached in Vienna to continue working, the impulses toward Nationalism and Liberalism that had been ignited by the French Revolution had to be repressed by authoritarian rule. Eventually, those impulses became irresistible by the 1860’s. Italy emerged as a united nation. And, much more dangerously for the maintenance of any balance of power, Prussia was able to seize clear leadership of the still-not-united states of Germany from Austria.
Nevertheless, until 1870, France remained generally viewed as being militarily the most powerful nation in Western Europe. That was an illusion.
Prussia’s swift and decisive victory in the Franco-Prussian war led directly to the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership. At a stroke, Germany emerged as by far the most powerful nation in Western Europe. And any semblance of a residual balance of power was further reduced by the weakening of France – the German annexation of Alsace and Lorraine.
After 1871, no one other nation in Europe could stand up militarily against this new German power. To restore any balance of power in Europe, combinations of other nations would have to ally against Germany. And that process led, ultimately, to WW1.
