Men at War: Chronicles of '70 – Unpublished Testimonies on the Franco-German War and the Commune

From the regimental postman to the priest, from the Pontifical Zouave to the sailor, discover eight testimonies from the Franco-Prussian War. These texts, published here for the first time, will bring this first modern war to life at ground level: the sieges, the social and political upheavals that led to the episode of the Commune and the collapse of the Imperial Army. In 1870 and 1871, in the course of a year that amounted to a descent into hell, the French Empire declared war — with a certain carelessness — on a Prussia that immediately invaded, besieged its towns and capital, triumphantly proclaimed German unity at Versailles, and helped itself to a few territories along the way.

Owing to the very trauma these events represented, France entered an accelerated new cycle of historical change, the most striking feature of which was the establishment of a lasting republican regime. The political and geopolitical consequences of these campaigns go a long way towards explaining the powerful hold this crucial episode in French history still exerts on us today.

Wishing to contribute to the historiographical renewal prompted by the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Franco-German War, the Service historique de la Défense draws on its private archive holdings and revisits, through previously unpublished testimonies, some of the most significant episodes of a year whose repercussions fed the spirit of revenge that led to the world wars of the twentieth century.

Enriched with the appropriate critical apparatus, the eight texts that make up this volume depict, in addition to the captivity of two Imperial Army officers, the campaigns of the Army of the Rhine and the Army of the Loire, the defence of Fort de Montrouge, the occupation of Boissy-Saint-Léger, the attack on the Hôtel de Ville on 22 January 1871 and, verging on the burlesque, the explosion of the Luxembourg cartridge factory in the midst of the Bloody Week.

The reader will thus apprehend the war on a human scale and glimpse the contrasting feelings that overwhelmed both combatants and victims of the war.