AHC/WI: France wins the Franco-Prussian War

Anaxagoras

Banned
When is the POD? Years earlier or from the moment the war breaks out. If the former, it is entirely possible. If the latter, it is much more difficult (though not impossible).
 
If it's the moment that war breaks out then have a piece of plaster fall on the head of Napoleon III, rendering him unconscious and unable to give commands or issue orders. That's the easy bit. The hard part is replacing him. Bazaine distrusted his own generals and MacMahon seems to have been something of a twit.
Hmmm. Canrobert anyone?
 
The Franco-German War (I don't like the term 'Franco-Prussian War') is one of the most one-sided wars in history. To reverse its outcome with such a late PoD is really hard, for several reasons.

The Royal Prussian Army was at the time the best in the world. Prussia had universal conscription, a thoroughly well-organised system of army reserves and excellent infrastructure, which allowed it to raise huge armies at short notice and deliver them exactly where they needed to be. Prussia also had a general staff headed by Moltke the Elder, widely considered one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, who gave the Prussians (and thus the Germans) planning ability that France was utterly unable to match; lots and lots of what is now considered crucial for a modern general staff is owed to Moltke.

As for foreign intervention, I don't think it's likely. Austria was tied up in the business of the Compromise and the Austrians knew full well (they'd just had it proven to them!) that they were absolutely no match for Prussia. Denmark might intervene, but that's not particularly relevant. Russia and Britain considered it no concern of theirs until the Germans absolutely trounced France, which ruined the post-Crimean War consensus of Anglo-French alliance against Russian expansion.

For a PoD after the beginning of the war that permits France to win, you would need some extraordinary bad luck for the Germans—perhaps several important people (let's say, Bismarck, Moltke and King Wilhelm I of Prussia) are all killed, by freak chance, by French artillery near the beginning of an important battle.

I do think there are PoDs earlier than the beginning of the war that could quite plausibly give you a French victory, and I'm planning a TL on a similar basis. But I can't think of any reasonably likely possibilities for this challenge as it stands, and I'm curious to see what Anaxagoras had in mind when he said it wasn't impossible.
 

Delvestius

Banned
and lots of what is now considered crucial for a modern general staff is owed to Moltke..

Engineering genius too, he came up with a new type of rifle that furthered firearm evolution. The needle gun, it was an early breechloader I think..

I do think there are PoDs earlier than the beginning of the war that could quite plausibly give you a French victory, and I'm planning a TL on a similar basis. But I can't think of any reasonably likely possibilities for this challenge as it stands, and I'm curious to see what Anaxagoras had in mind when he said it wasn't impossible.

But yeh, the Frenchies got trounced. How cramped that boxcar must have been..
 
Engineering genius too, he came up with a new type of rifle that furthered firearm evolution. The needle gun, it was an early breechloader I think..

No, that was pretty much all Dreyse.

One alternative tactic which I believe was discussed at the time was to use the larger French standing army to attack the German armies as they started to concentrate on the frontier. It'd require an earlier POD, given the administrative chaos that ultimately ensued on the French side, but I'm curious to see whether other people believe it would have worked: I've never been able to make up my mind about it.

Despite the scepticism, there were opportunities for the French to perform better than they did. A general with the ability to conduct a fighting withdrawal could have made the advance into France very, very costly for the Prussians and allies. Even as things stood, France might have scraped a white peace if so many of the regular army hadn't been captured and were available to form a nucleus around which the Republic could have built up its armed forces.
 
The Franco-German War (I don't like the term 'Franco-Prussian War') is one of the most one-sided wars in history. To reverse its outcome with such a late PoD is really hard, for several reasons.
It was hardly so one-sided as the Austro-Prussian war had been. Although the French army tended to have inferior organizational skills and was hampered by a overly-cautious military doctrine, one of the decisive blows that was struck was by the incompetence of her own generals. Even Patrice Macmahon looked competent when compared to the borderline traitorous Bazaine and the dithering Napoleon the III. There were a number of battles in the war which could have easily turned into decisive French victories such as Mars-la-Tour or Gravelotte. The average French soldier turned out to be better than his Prussian counterpart, due to the large gap between the Dreyse needle gun and the Chassepot.

It still wouldn't be easy to produce a French victory, and it would be no means as total as Prussia's victory was OTL, but it would be by no means impossible with a change in leadership. How to effect that change would be another matter altogether...
 
Maybe if other countries, like Britain and Russia, get alarmed when Prussia starts besieging Paris, and issue an ultimatum telling them to withdraw? If the Prussians then refuse, we could see other countries joining in and tipping the balance in France's favour, although a more likely outcome would be Prussia offering peace before that happened (since Bismarck was pretty concerned to stop a coalition forming against his country).
 
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