Franco-Prussian War: Difference between revisions
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* [[Badass Army]]: The Prussian (aka the North German) Army.
** The South German armies were in on it, too. One of the first heroes to make headlines through a daring reconnaissance raid was the Württemberg cavalry officer Count Zeppelin (yes, ''that'' [[Cool Airship|Count Zeppelin]]).
* [[Book Ends]]: The German Empire was
* [[Cool Train]] : The chief German weapon was their trains. It enabled them to get tons of troops to the front in time. As a bonus it enabled them to use reserves as front-line units without worrying about them falling over with weariness after all the marching.
* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]
* [[Crippling Overspecialisation]]: The expensive French Navy was built to face a peer/near-peer navy in an extended conflict that conscripts could be mobilized for. This made it useless for a quick war against an enemy with a virtually (but not totally) non-existent navy since it wasn't equipped for landing, shore bombardment or port blockading.
* [[Eat the Dog]]: By the end of the war, Paris was largely free of pets, strays, and even ''rats'' since they had all been eaten during the starvation of the siege.
** [[Exotic Entree]]: Even the zoo animals were butchered for consumption by the rich. Accounts claim elephant meat is actually rather nasty, but that hardly helped class warfare sentiment that the exotic "feast" provoked in the starving masses.
* [[The Empire]]: The Second French Empire is defeated, allowing for the rise of [[Imperial Germany|The Second German Reich]].
* [[Fielding Old Men and Boys]]: The French armies at later stages of the war.
* [[Gauls With Grenades]]: The French had more efficient weapons, including one of the first bolt-action rifles and machine guns, though the Prussians had already used both bolt-action rifles (needle-rifles) and rifled cannons with great success against Denmark during the war that they used to get Schleswig-Holstein under their control, as well as against Austria-Hungary. It was just that the some of the other German states had not yet had equipped all their troops with such new technology.
** The rifled needle-gun was the standard Prussian infantry weapon since the 1840s (recall that in 1861 most Confederate and Union infantry units used muzzle-loaders, and a surprising number even still were equipped with smoothbores). The new French Chassepot rifle was somewhat superior (and already a second-generation weapon), but that advantage was more than offset by the breech-loading rifled artillery of the German armies, the French not issuing enough, and later French armies having to work with Civil War surplus rather than domestic French arms.
* [[Intrepid Reporter]]: Otherwise famous examples include ''Vanity Fair'' founder Thomas Gibson Bowles, future famous German author [[Theodor Fontane]], as well as past and future British MP and ''Truth'' founder Henry Labouchère.
* [[It Got Worse]]: Relations between France and Germany could not be said to have improved anytime soon after this war.
** For bonus irony points: Bismarck believed that even if he were to offer France a moderate peace conditions they would eventually seek revenge for the lost war anyway. Thus, he concluded that if the second war with France is inevitable, he might as well strengthen Germany and weaken France by annexing Alsace-Lorraine. However, it was the annexation of these territories that became the main cause of the enmity between France and Germany in the subsequent decades and possibly it was the reason why [[World War I|the next war between Germany and France]] became inevitable.
* [[Last Stand]]: The Siege of Paris, which lasted for roughly half the war.
** A less doomed example was Belfort, which held out till the end of the war. Being one of the few events in the war that could ''remotely'' be called a French victory (let alone one of significance), it and its leader Pierre Philippe Denfert-Rochereau were heavily lionized post war.
* [[Magnificent Bastard]]: [[Otto von Bismarck]], during the four years between the Seven Weeks War and this war he managed to isolate France while gaining an alliance with the Independent Southern German states to finish the unification process. Of course, this is the real life David Xanatos you're talking about.
** Von Moltke could qualify. Though perhaps he is more a [[Four-Star Badass]].
* [[Mistaken for Spies]]: Then journalist (later famed German author) [[Theodor Fontane]] accidentally crossed over to territory still held by the French and suffered from this. His writings on this experience remain quite valuable for historians.
* [[Four-Star Badass]]: Marshal of France Achille Bazaine, although his military rank was ''above'' four stars.
** Bazaine wasn't a badass at all: he was spectacularly incompetent, and his poor performance was a major factor in France's defeat.
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[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]
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[[Category:Useful Notes/History]]
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