Franco-Prussian War: Stricter Terms for France's Capitulation?

From my understanding of the Franco-Prussian War, Germany was worried about causing a bitter France along its borders after Paris fell. However, that did not turn out so well as France became so revenge minded.

In WW1, Germany famously attacked France in an attempt to secure its western front. The Septemberprogramm that was debated for a German victory would have crushed France and essentially have turned it into a vassal. I would think that after the swift victory of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, they could have placed in stricter terms beyond some land and reparations.

If so, what would Germany have demanded? Could they have the ability to install a puppet government in France, especially after the chaos caused by the Paris Commune? Could they have placed terms harsh enough to prevent France from rebuilding its army or destroying fortresses near the German border? Obtained ports?

(People want safety for their children above all else -- the trade-off of security under a welcomed occupation and a supply of food trumps national autonomy.)
 
From my understanding of the Franco-Prussian War, Germany was worried about causing a bitter France along its borders after Paris fell. However, that did not turn out so well as France became so revenge minded.

In WW1, Germany famously attacked France in an attempt to secure its western front. The Septemberprogramm that was debated for a German victory would have crushed France and essentially have turned it into a vassal. I would think that after the swift victory of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, they could have placed in stricter terms beyond some land and reparations.

If so, what would Germany have demanded? Could they have the ability to install a puppet government in France, especially after the chaos caused by the Paris Commune? Could they have placed terms harsh enough to prevent France from rebuilding its army or destroying fortresses near the German border? Obtained ports?

(People want safety for their children above all else -- the trade-off of security under a welcomed occupation and a supply of food trumps national autonomy.)
I don't think so. At best, they could have asked for a higher indemnity or some border adjustments, such as Briey-Longwy, but the purpose of the 1870 war was to create the German Empire.
Not only was Germany loath on taking in too many Frenchmen inside its frontiers - Moselle
was already almost too much - but it had already had gained several major fortresses such as Metz.
Also, German occupation was not accepted. There were a lot of Franc-Tireurs even after the war's end.
The only reason the World War could have been a real crushing experience is because of the lack of neutral Great Powers. This was not the case in 1870 and Britain would not have taken kindly to Germany trying to impose too harsh a peace on France.
 
If so, what would Germany have demanded? Could they have the ability to install a puppet government in France, especially after the chaos caused by the Paris Commune? Could they have placed terms harsh enough to prevent France from rebuilding its army or destroying fortresses near the German border? Obtained ports?

(People want safety for their children above all else -- the trade-off of security under a welcomed occupation and a supply of food trumps national autonomy.)

Most likely the Prussians can get little else out of France. After the initial stages of the war, the French problem was that support for the war effort fractured, and while the Republicans were generally enthusiastic about the war to the knife, the moderates and the conservatives wanted a quick peace, and to take the losses that came to return to normalacy - in this, they thought that the continued resistance of the Republicans was just making the terms worse for France. They were right in such regards as things ultimately turned out, as France lost having sustained additional destruction and harsher peace terms. However, a significant reason for this divide was clever political maneuverings by Bismarck, who was able to portray the French government as being the one which was refusing the peace terms offered and paint them as hypocritically and unreasonably fighting for the peace without annexations, in that instead they were just fighting for maintaining their own power. For elections, to discredit the French Republicans, he offered to have polling stations in the Prussian occupied zones re-opened and thus enable general elections go ahead, in response to the French Republican claims that they couldn't hold elections with part of the country occupied; their continued claim that Alsace-Lorraine which was already de-facto annexed looked rather petty. Similarly he balanced the threat of a Napoleonic restoration over them. The Napoleonic regime can be restored with a light peace; it can't simultaneously be restored with a harsh peace, or else there will be nobody to support it but Prussian bayonets.

Conversely, if Prussian peace-terms become much harsher, then it will be impossible to portray the French Republicans as unreasonable and out of touch hypocrites fighting a futile war. Instead the Government of National Defense will be able to portray it as just that - fighting a valiant effort where all it wants is for France to survive as a nation against the Prussian monsters who want to reduce the French to slaves and vassals. French conservatives and moderates are only willing to accept so much as well before the costs of collaborating with the radicals and fighting becomes worth it vs. whatever the Prussians are demanding. For the rest of Europe, the situation is the same as well; instead of increasing exasperation that the French were dragging out a futile and already lost war, the Prussians aiming to permanently destroy and cripple another great power is going to raise serious eye brows. In Southern Germany, instead of being a relatively brief and decisive victory which looks relatively glorious and brings them in on the empire, it'll be an increasingly long and slogging war without the French coming to terms, and for every resentful soldier in the snow the person to blame won't be the French, but instead Bismarck. The Germans have nothing to offer the French except bullets, so promises of food and security are rather empty...

The Franco-Prussian War The German Conquest of France 1870-1871 makes for fun and depressing reading about the defeatism, incompetence, and lack of popular support that had gripped the French war effort after the regular army was destroyed due to its own incompetence, but sufficient Prussian aggression would do a lot to change this around. Bazaine is also fully discredited by winter with the destruction of his army so his potential "salvation" of France and his double-games are no longer as possible.

It is also important to note that by the standards of 1871, the peace treaty was pretty crippling and crushing. Reparations levels were by contemporary standards extremely high, combined with the cession of some of the most valuable French provinces, and occupation of significant parts of France. It looks less punitive in the past because the French paid the reparations relatively quickly and didn't self-destruct like Weimar Germany, which paid in actual terms a similar figure of reparations (French 1871 reparations were equivalent to 25% of French GDP, while German 1919 reparations were equivalent to 83% of their GDP, of which Germany actually paid an amount equivalent to 33% of their GDP).

I don't think so. At best, they could have asked for a higher indemnity or some border adjustments, such as Briey-Longwy, but the purpose of the 1870 war was to create the German Empire.
I would have to check if it was for technological reasons (the iron ores of Lorraine required a specific technological method to take advantage of them due to their poor quality ore with large amounts of phosphorus, that was not developed until later in the 19th century), or for simple reasons of not having been discovered, but the potential of the Briey-Longwy iron fields had not been realized in 1871. The Prussians have little reason to ask for additional terrain there, when it is seemingly of little additional use.
 
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The Reparations demanded by Bismarck were not arbitrary figures .... they were exactly the same (per capita) as that imposed on Prussia by Napoleon after its loss at Jena-Auerstadt in October 1806. It was a case of "payback is a bitch".

Following the Austrian loss in 1866 at Koenigratz King William wanted to annex Bohemia and Moravia. Bismarck and the Crown Prince Fredrick softened his ire, couple with Franz-Joesph being astute enough to make a quick peace and avoid a drawn out post-loss drama. So much unlike the French Third Republic's intransigence .... Favre's early public pronouncement (19 September 1870) that "We will not surrender an inch of our territory, nor a stone of our fortresses!" was the beginning middle and end of his negotiations. It was left to a long drawn out process with American and British intermediators until January 30 th for an Armistice and February 26 1871 to reach a negotiated peace.
 

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After the initial stages of the war, the French problem was that support for the war effort fractured, and while the Republicans were generally enthusiastic about the war to the knife, the moderates and the conservatives wanted a quick peace, and to take the losses that came to return to normalacy

Why did the French political spectrum group into left/bellicose - right/pro-settlement in 1870.
 
Bismarck had as a primary desired goal of a war with France the unification of Germany under Prussia. Trying to bite off more of France would have diverted forces and energies from that. Britain would not have been happy with Prussia taking more French territory, on the other hand they would not have gotten involved in the war on the side of France without a great deal more reason.
 
Why did the French political spectrum group into left/bellicose - right/pro-settlement in 1870.
There are both institutional factors and tactical factors.

Institutionally, the right (who's interest groups include the bourgeois, landowners, the prosperous and the commercial classes) has something to lose, while the left (representing workers and the proletariat) didn't. In a sense, the old Marxist quote that the workers have nothing to lose but their chains. If the French Army was destroyed, then there is nobody around to protect the bourgeois from an internal rebellion. Preserving the army, and preserving the army as a force capable of dealing with internal dissent instead of radicalized garde nationale elements in Paris, is absolutely vital to the established interests. The same logic happened in 1940; something had to be preserved of the state and of the army, in order for the reds to be kept at bay. It is important to note that the moderate Republicans, like Thiers, who were bourgeois themselves, were quite interested themselves in preserving their army to deal with the Paris Commune.

This plays out before the war to some extent too; from my recollections Clemenceau for example, when he heard of the declaration of war, thought that a defeat would undermine the Napoleonic regime and then enable the Republic to be formed; his mistake was that he also thought that popular mobilization would result in a subsequent victory against the Germans, when the situation compared to 1792 when this happened were different politically and militarily.

Tactically, the Republicans had their legitimacy from fighting against the Prussians. The Republicans were a coup against the Bonapartist regime after it lost all legitimacy following the disaster at Sedan. However, Bonapartist sentiment was certainly not gone overnight, and the threat of a restoration - from the Prussians supporting it, and here they kept Napoleon III technically as a "guest" after being captured, so that he could be used as a weapon against the French Republicans, from Bazaine who was quite possibly conspiring with the Prussians and certainly was quite interested in the political situation in France and keeping his army intact to bring about a peace agreement and then march back to have "saved" France and restore the Emperor, or from the provinces and countryside where the Napoleonic regime still enjoyed popularity unlike in the cities - would haunt the Republicans. There were also always the Orleanists or the Bourbons, and a monarchist restoration was certainly not an impossibility, and indeed came impressively close to happening post-war. By staying in the war, the French Republicans could continue without the need for elections that might return a majority against them and remove them from power.

Even more locally, there was also the power of the Parisian mob. The initial plan following the arrival of information at Sedan was for a compromise, moderate regime to be worked out. In the middle of negotiations over this, the mob broke into the meeting, and proclaimed the Republic, setting it on an initially very distinctly left wing course. Thus, the Republic, which was inherently left from the start, had even less right wing support.

Some moral elements come into play too. For the Parisian workers, it was a struggle between the Republic and foreign monarchist despotism coming to invade them, while their elites cowered and abandoned la patrie en danger and the wealthy and powerful preferred to treat with the enemy rather than with them, à la 1792. For the right, the narrative is much less convincing, and they had much more in common with the Prussians than the Parisian workers. Again, if we want to call to 1940, "better Hitler than Blum" had its share of chanters.

The Reparations demanded by Bismarck were not arbitrary figures .... they were exactly the same (per capita) as that imposed on Prussia by Napoleon after its loss at Jena-Auerstadt in October 1806. It was a case of "payback is a bitch".

Following the Austrian loss in 1866 at Koenigratz King William wanted to annex Bohemia and Moravia. Bismarck and the Crown Prince Fredrick softened his ire, couple with Franz-Joesph being astute enough to make a quick peace and avoid a drawn out post-loss drama. So much unlike the French Third Republic's intransigence .... Favre's early public pronouncement (19 September 1870) that "We will not surrender an inch of our territory, nor a stone of our fortresses!" was the beginning middle and end of his negotiations. It was left to a long drawn out process with American and British intermediators until January 30 th for an Armistice and February 26 1871 to reach a negotiated peace.

There does happen to be what the "quick peace" they're getting out of that is. The Austrians by accepting a quick peace get off with having lost their influence in the South German states and having to pay some small reparations - well, technically they lost Venetia to the Italians, but that wasn't to the Prussians per se. The French accepting a quick peace loses them directly two provinces that had been part of France for centuries, plus billions of Francs in reparations.... There is a slight difference between what the initial diplomatic opening offers were between France and Austria, and even if it turned out to be a mistake to prolong the war as it did, given that the French still had quite a lot of diplomatic and military strength left to them, it was neither illogical nor stupid that the French hoped that they might be able to moderate the peace terms.
 
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