Industrialization of War, 1840–84 253brief but bloody civil war between a newly elected French government
and the Commune of Paris. A more inauspicious beginning for the
Third Republic could scarcely have been imagined.^43
By 1871, therefore, the Prussians had twice demonstrated how to
win a war against a great power in jig time. It had taken them just
three weeks to defeat the Austrians and only six weeks to capture
Napoleon III. It was impossible not to prefer such a model to the
bumbling agony of the American Civil War or the year-long standstill
at Sevastopol. Prussian military prestige rocketed accordingly. From
being the least regarded of the European great powers, the new mas
ters of Germany became pacesetters for all the world in matters
military.
Obviously mass mobilization was the basis of Moltke’s success. His
victories had been won by getting Prussian armies into motion before
their opponents were ready. Speed, mass, and momentum, in turn,
depended on skillful use of railroads to assemble and deploy troops
and their equipment. Numbers required an army of conscripts re
inforced in time of war by reservists. Since conscripts were paid the
merest pittance, a conscript army was also the only way European
governments could afford to field a force big enough for the first
critical encounters of this new style of war. Simultaneously, machinery
for the mass production of small arms had made the cost of equipping
vast citizen armies affordable. Every continental European army
therefore sought to imitate the Prussians in the decades that followed.
The British alone held back.
The art of war that thus defined itself in Europe from the 1870s
onward fitted well with both Napoleonic and older chivalric notions.
Reservists called back to duty for a few weeks or months found
something enormously exhilarating about leaving ordinary routines of
life behind, running risks, experiencing hardship, and testing personal
prowess, while also winning victories and writing another glorious
page in the national history that every child learned in school from
patriotic and enthusiastic teachers. In retrospect, at least, the wars of
1866 and 1870–71 were indeed “Frisch und Fröhlich” for nearly all
the Prussians who took part. Consequently, warfare shed most of its
sinister meanings among the immediately ensuing generations, espe
cially in Germany.
- Howard, The Franco-Prussian War is by far the best military narrative and analy
sis of the subject. Alistair Horne, The Fall of Paris (New York, 1961) provides a vivid
account of the Paris Commune. Cf. also Melvin Kranzberg, The Siege of Paris (Ithaca,
N.Y., 1950).