page_title: Napoleon III
section_title: Defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
hierarchical_section_title: Napoleon III / Later years / Defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
caption_attribution_description: la place de la Bastille "on criait" "à Berlin"
context_page_description: Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon I and cousin of Napoleon II, was the first president of France, from 1848 to 1852, and the last French monarch, from 1852 to 1870. First elected president of the French Second Republic in 1848, he seized power in 1851, when he could not constitutionally be re-elected, and became the emperor of the French. He founded the Second French Empire and was its only emperor until the defeat of the French army and his capture by Prussia and its allies in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He worked to modernize the French economy, rebuilt the center of Paris, expanded the French overseas empire, and engaged in the Crimean War and the Second Italian War of Independence.
  Napoleon III commissioned a grand reconstruction of Paris carried out by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, and launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon and other French cities. Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, expanded and consolidated the French railway system, and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world.
context_section_description: When France entered the war, there were patriotic demonstrations in the streets of Paris, with crowds singing La Marseillaise and chanting "To Berlin! To Berlin!" But Napoleon was melancholic. He told General Lepic that he expected the war to be "long and difficult", and wondered, "Who knows if we'll come back?" He told Marshal Randon that he felt too old for a military campaign. Despite his ill health, Napoleon decided to go with the army to the front as commander in chief, as he had done during the successful Italian campaign. On 28 July, he departed Saint-Cloud by train for the front. He was accompanied by the 14-year-old Prince Imperial in the uniform of the army, by his military staff, and by a large contingent of chefs and servants in livery. He was pale and visibly in pain. The Empress remained in Paris as the Regent, as she had done on other occasions when the Emperor was out of the country.
  The mobilization of the French army was chaotic. Two hundred thousand soldiers converged on the German frontier, along a front of 250 kilometers, choking all the roads and railways for miles. Officers were unable to find their units, and units were unable to find their officers. General Moltke and the German army, with experience mobilizing in the war against Austria, were able to efficiently move three armies of 518,000 men to a more concentrated front of just 120 kilometers. In addition, the German soldiers were backed by a substantial reserve of the Landwehr (Territorial defence), with 340,000 men, and an additional reserve of 400,000 territorial guards. The French army arrived at the frontier equipped with maps of Germany, but without maps of France—where the actual fighting took place—and without a specific plan of what it was going to do.
  On 2 August, Napoleon and the Prince Imperial accompanied the army as it made a tentative crossing of the German border toward the city of Saarbrücken. The French won a minor skirmish and advanced no further. Napoleon III, very ill, was unable to ride his horse and had to support himself by leaning against a tree. In the meantime, the Germans had assembled a much larger army opposite Alsace and Lorraine than the French had expected or were aware of. On 4 August 1870, the Germans attacked with overwhelming force against a French division in Alsace at the Battle of Wissembourg (German: Weissenburg), forcing it to retreat. On 5 August, the Germans defeated another French Army at the Battle of Spicheren in Lorraine.
  On 6 August, 140,000 Germans attacked 35,000 French soldiers at the Battle of Wörth; the French lost 19,200 soldiers killed, wounded and captured, and were forced to retreat. The French soldiers fought bravely, and French cavalry and infantry attacked the German lines repeatedly, but the Germans had superior logistics, communications, and leadership. The decisive weapon was the new German Krupp six pound field gun, which had a steel barrel, was loaded by the breech, had a longer range, had a higher rate of fire, and was more accurate than the bronze muzzle-loading French cannons. The Krupp guns caused terrible casualties in the French ranks.
  When the news of the French defeats reached Paris on 7 August, it was greeted with disbelief and dismay. Prime Minister Ollivier and the chief of staff of the army, Marshal Edmond Le Boeuf, both resigned. The Empress Eugénie took it upon herself as the Regent to name a new government. She chose General Cousin-Montauban, better known as the Count of Palikao, seventy-four years old, the former commander of the French expeditionary force to China, as her new prime minister. The Count of Palikao named Marshal François Achille Bazaine, the commander of the French forces in Lorraine, as the new military commander. Napoleon III proposed returning to Paris, realizing that he was doing no good for the army. The Empress, in charge of the government responded by telegraph, "Don't think of coming back, unless you want to unleash a terrible revolution. They will say you quit the army to flee the danger." The Emperor agreed to remain with the army. With 
caption: At the outbreak of the war, crowds gathered on the Place de la Bastille, chanting "To Berlin!"
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