German Wars of Unification

At issue: Unification of separate German states into German national state

Date: December 12, 1863-May 10, 1871

Location: Denmark, Austro-Hungary, France

Combatants: Danes vs. Germans; Prussians vs. Austrians; Germans vs. French

Principal commanders:Prussian, Count Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), Helmuth von Moltke (1800–1891); Austrian, Franz Josef I (1830–1916), Ludwig A. von Benedek (1804–1881); French, General Marie E. P. M. de MacMahon (1808–1893)

Principal battles: Könnigrätz, Sedan

Result: German Empire proclaimed in Versailles on January 18, 1871

Background

Although many parts of Europe had evolved into national kingdoms or states by the beginning of the nineteenth century, Germany remained a collection of small, dynastic states. Although Napoleon I had redrawn the map of Europe, including Germany, the allies who had defeated him in 1815 desired to restore Europe to its boundaries of 1789. In Germany, however, it was recognized that restoring the more than three hundred petty principalities of 1789 was unrealistic; instead, at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the map of Germany was redrawn into thirty-nine states, of which the largest were Austria and Prussia. The spirit of nationalism grew in the years after 1815, but the goal of a single German state remained elusive until the 1860’s. Prussia, dominated by its formidable minister Count Otto von Bismarck, took the lead. In three separate wars, with Denmark, Austria, and France, he eliminated all obstacles to a German national state. The unified state was proclaimed as the German Empire on January 18, 1871.

Action

The war with Denmark arose because the king of Denmark happened also to be the ruler of two duchies in northwestern Germany, Schleswig and Holstein. The Danes, who had adopted a constitution, attempted to incorporate Schleswig (inhabited largely by Danish speakers) into the Danish political system. The Germans (organized loosely into a Germanic Confederation) objected. On December 23, 1863, German troops, from the armies of Prussia, Austria, and two smaller German states, marched into Schleswig-Holstein. The Danish army resisted but was steadily pushed back into Denmark until by late spring, 1864, the Germans occupied most of the main part of Denmark, the peninsula of Jutland. The Danes capitulated on May 12. The Danish king was deposed as the ruler of Schleswig-Holstein and a German prince replaced him. However, the two duchies, Schleswig and Holstein, were turned over to Prussia and Austria, respectively, to administer.

Otto von Bismarck, minister of Prussia since 1862, used disagreements over the administration of Schleswig-Holstein to provoke a war with Austria, known as the Austro-Prussian War, or Seven Weeks' War. Although part of Austria was German, Emperor Franz Josef I ruled over a multinational empire in which the Germans were just one among a collection of ethnic groups. The emperor, a German, wanted to preserve a situation in which he dominated Germany and represented Germany internationally. Bismarck had concluded that Austria was a barrier to German national unification.

The duchies of Schleswig-Holstein provided a pretext for war between the two leading German states. In the quarrel over administering the duchies, most of the smaller German states sided with Austria and backed its condemnation of Prussia. In mid-June, 1866, Prussia and Austria both began to mobilize.

Prussia imposed universal military service on its people, whereas in Austria, while theoretically all males were obliged to serve, wealthier citizens could buy their way out. Thus, Austria’s soldiers came overwhelmingly from the poorest classes. Prussia imposed serious military training on its conscripts, whereas Austria’s training depended heavily on the quality of lower-level commanders.

Prussia, under the influence of military reformers, had developed a general staff system that was intensely professional and engaged in detailed prior planning for its military operations. Austria, by contrast, had little in the way of a staff system, allowing each commander to develop whatever system he preferred. Austria adhered to old-style infantry tactics, which stressed the infantry charge with bayonet as the decisive battle tactic. Prussia used the firepower of its infantry units to decimate attackers in order to eliminate most risks before advancing.

Weapons constituted a major difference between the two combatants. Prussia had equipped most of its infantry units with a breech-loading rifle called the needle gun, whereas Austria’s infantry still used a muzzle loader, albeit one with substantial range and accuracy. The problem was that the muzzle loader required the soldier to stand up while loading, whereas the breech loader could be reloaded while the soldier lay prone. Thus the Austrian infantryman exposed himself to enemy fire every time he had to reload, whereas the Prussian could remain concealed.

In artillery, Austria had an advantage over Prussia. Just after the end of the Danish war, the conversion of the Austrian artillery to cast-steel, rifled cannons had been completed, whereas the Prussian artillery was still in the middle of a similar conversion. Indeed, the Austrian artillery came close to winning the battle for the Austrians; only the inability of the Austrian infantry to protect the artillery units prevented this outcome.

One technical advantage enjoyed by Prussia was the use of the railroad and the telegraph. Prussia had supported the construction of railroads on its territory during the decades preceding the war, and the use of railroads enabled the Prussian army to mobilize in a couple of weeks, whereas it took six to seven weeks for the Austrian army to mobilize. Prussia used the railroads to concentrate its troops in the critical area of conflict, while the Austrians were forced to wait for the troops to arrive.

The Austrian army gathered in Moravia, the Austrian province to the east of Bohemia, and the Prussians, led by Helmuth von Moltke, gathered in Silesia (the Austrian province Frederick the Great had seized from Austria more than a century earlier) and along the border with Saxony, a small German kingdom squeezed between Prussia and Bohemia. Although the Austrians might have used the mountains along the Bohemian-Saxon border for effective defense, they elected to wait and then in late June slowly moved their troops into Bohemia, seeking a good defensive position, which they believed they had found in the valley of the River Elbe.

Prussia’s army advanced in two columns, one of them striking through Saxony into Bohemia, the other coming in from the north from Silesia. The first army headed straight for central Bohemia, where it met the Austrians near the village of Könnigrätz on July 3, 1866. The two armies battled it out in a head-to-head confrontation until the afternoon of July 3, when the second Prussian army, coming from Silesia, attacked the flank of the Austrians. A portion of the first Prussian army was used to attack the opposite flank, so that the Austrian army was in danger of being cut off. It was forced to retreat back toward the Elbe River. A successful cavalry charge by its superior cavalry prevented the Prussian army from completing an encirclement.

The battle, one of the largest of the nineteenth century, lasted all day. In a sense, it was a watershed event, for it incorporated new strategies, tactics, and weapons that would become common in later battles. Well more than 400,000 men were involved; casualties exceeded 50,000.

The Austrian general, Ludwig von Benedek, concluded from the Battle of Könnigrätz that Austria had no chance to win the war, as there was now no possibility of offensive action against Prussia. The skilled Prussian minister Bismarck persuaded his king to offer magnanimous terms to the Austrians, and peace was concluded on July 26, 1866. Germany was reconstructed, with Prussia receiving territorial compensation in the form of several smaller German states that had sided with Austria in the war.

The Franco-Prussian War offers some interesting contrasts to the Austro-Prussian conflict of four years earlier, though important similarities also exist. The French army was in effect a professional army because in France, as in Austria, middle- and upper-class youths could buy their way out of conscription. The French army was smaller than Prussia’s but had much military experience as it had helped the Italians win their independence in 1859. It had high morale, based on its belief that the same spirit that had made Napoleon I victorious was still operating in France. However, Prussia, coming off its victory over Austria, also had high morale on its side.

There were important contrasts in weaponry. The Prussians had the needle gun that they had used so effectively against the Austrians, but the French were armed with the chassepot rifle, a superior weapon with a much greater range. Although they failed to make effective use of them, the French also had the mitrailleuse, a rudimentary machine gun. Prussian artillery, however, was by 1870 fully armed with breech-loading cast-steel cannons with rifled barrels—Könnigrätz had persuaded the Prussian generals such artillery weapons were superior. The French artillery was still supplied with muzzle-loading cannons.

France declared war on Prussia on July 19, 1870. Though the action in the Franco-Prussian War was somewhat more prolonged than in the Austro-Prussian conflict, the result was mainly determined by the outcome of one battle, that fought at Sedan on September l. The French had envisaged marching from the Rhine in Alsace into the heart of Prussia, but they were defeated in two lesser battles in Alsace in August. After some inconclusive maneuvering, in which one of the French armies took refuge in the fortress of Metz, the other, under the command of Marshal Marie E. P. M. de MacMahon, was cornered on the French-Belgian border at Sedan, and decisively defeated. The emperor, Napoleon III, surrendered on September 2, along with the rest of MacMahon’s army.

The French, under a new republican government, attempted to continue the war, but the Prussian army encircled Paris. The French military forces proved ineffective (the French army bottled up in Metz surrendered on October 27), and the Germans proclaimed the German Empire in Versailles, the palace of the French king Louis XIV. The French populace, exhausted, elected a new republican government ready to make peace. A definitive peace treaty was signed at Frankfurt, Germany, on May 10, 1871. France lost Alsace and part of Lorraine to Germany and agreed to pay a very large indemnity to the German Empire.

Aftermath

One important consequence of the Wars of German Unification was that they led the Europeans to believe that future wars would be over in a few weeks, as these wars were. This belief persisted into the twentieth century and played a part in the readiness with which war was declared in August, 1914, when most Europeans believed that World War I would be over by Christmas. The transfer of Alsace and part of Lorraine to Germany left France with a deep grievance (even the allied powers that had defeated Napoleon did not strip Alsace-Lorraine from France). It further emboldened the Germans to believe that they had formulas for quick victory in any future contest.

Bibliography

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Fuller, J. F. C. Armament and History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Decisive Battles of the Western World. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1956.

Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Moltke and Schlieffen: The Prussian-German School.” In Makers of Modern Strategy, edited by Edward Meade Earle. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1943.

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