Michael Solka

The crushing victory by Prussia and her German allies in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71, destroyed one empire and created another. It finally unified the German states into an empire under Prussian leadership - an empire proclaimed in the very halls of captured Versailles. In 1870 Prussia's reformed mobilization system put enormous armies into the field with unprecedented efficiency. The confide...

Although the war of 1870-71 has gone down in history as the 'Franco-Prussian War', nearly half of the German troops sent to the frontier were from other German states - both the willing members of the North German Confederation and the southern states who were in some cases more hesitant about accepting Prussian domination. Some contingents had only one or two regiments - though these might be of ...