Each year, the "class" of men turning twenty-one in the upcoming year would be inducted into the French Army and spend three years in active service. In common with most other continental European powers, the French Army was organized on the basis of universal conscription. The Pre-War Army and mobilization Ĭolorized photograph of an infantryman drafted in August 1914, Note the red trousers still in use. France was brought into the war by a German declaration of war on August 3, 1914. Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia due to the Black Hand's assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which acted as the immediate cause of the war. As a result of the arms race, all European powers were ready for war and had time tables that would send millions of reserves into combat in a matter of days.įrance was bound by treaty to defend Russia. For France, the rivalry was mostly with the rapidly industrializing Germany, which had seized the coal-rich region of Alsace-Lorraine in 1870, and later struggled with France over mineral-rich Morocco.Īnother cause of World War I was growing militarism which led to an arms race between the powers. Economic rivalry was not only a source for some of the colonial conflicts but also a minor cause for the start of World War I. However, colonial disputes were only a minor cause of World War I, as most had been settled by 1914. Following German Unification, Bismarck attempted to isolate France diplomatically by befriending Austria-Hungary, Russia, Britain, and Italy.Īfter 1870, the European powers began gaining settlements in Africa, with colonialism on that continent hitting its peak between 18.
France's subsequent defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, including the loss of its army and the capture of its emperor at Sedan, the loss of territory, including Alsace-Lorraine, and the payment of heavy indemnities, left the French seething and placed the reacquisition of lost territory as a primary goal at the end of the 19th century the defeat also ended French preeminence in Europe. Bismarck's diplomatic maneuvering, and France's maladroit response to such crises as the Ems Dispatch and the Hohenzollern Candidature led to the French declaration of war in 1870. By the early 1850s, Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck started a system of alliances designed to assert Prussian dominance over Central Europe. The Treaty of Vienna in 1815 confirmed France as a European power broker. French army during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71įrance had been the major power in Europe for most of the Early Modern Era: Louis XIV, in the seventeenth century, and Napoleon I in the nineteenth, had extended French power over most of Europe through skillful diplomacy and military prowess.