The Franco-German War of 1870 transferred the military
and political hegemony of Europe from France to Germany.
Hard-fought and bloody, it was, more than any that had pre-
ceded it, a national war. The passions it aroused made a politi-
cal reconciliation of the belligerents impossible, and from
1870 to 1914, the hostility between France and Germany was
a fixed point in the European system. Fear of a war of revenge
by France on Germany was the most important cause of the
alliances which divided Europe into two armed camps --
"entangling alliances," which in 1914 made it impossible to
isolate the Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia and which
turned it into a European and then a world war.

The war of 1870 was precipitated by an incident: the can-
didacy of a prince of the House of Hohenzollern for the throne
of Spain. The basic causes reach back at least to 1866. ¹ It has
been said:

France could never forgive or forget the battle of Sadowa and
the Treaty of Prague. She had expected to reap a golden harvest
out of the collision between the Prussian and Austrian monarchies,
arguing that the struggle would be long and exhausting, and that

-1-