1870 - Political Events

Political Events

France's Napoleon III appoints a new minister of justice January 2 (see 1869). Marseilles-born Emile Olivier, 44, heads a new government whose members are selected from the parlement's majority leaders. He draws up a new constitution that gains approval from nearly 70 percent of voters in a plebiscite, and he devises a compromise between imperial autocracy and parliamentary democracy, but Olivier's plans to reform education, labor, and law will come to nought.

Spain's Isabella II, now 39, is persuaded to abdicate June 25 at Paris after a 27-year reign (see 1868). As head of the house of Hohenzollern, Prussia's Wilhelm I has persuaded the Hohenzollern prince Leopold, 35, to withdraw his acceptance of the Spanish crown following French protests. France's Napoleon III has wired Wilhelm (who is taking a cure at Ems) demanding a letter of apology and demanding that Wilhelm prohibit Leopold from accepting any future offer of the Spanish crown. Count von Bismarck makes the Ems telegram public with Wilhelm's permission, leaving out some details unsuitable for publication but making it clear that Napoleon has tried to humiliate the kaiser and that Wilhelm has refused Napoleon's demands. Isabella's 12-year-old son Alfonso succeeds in name only; the duke of Aosta, 25-year-old son of Italy's Victor Emmanuel II, is induced to accept the crown, but before he can reach Spain the prime minister Juan Prim y Prats is assassinated by his political opponents at Madrid December 30 at age 56 (see 1871).

British foreign secretary George Villiers, 4th earl of Clarendon, tries to induce Prussia to accept a reduction in armaments but dies at his native London June 27 at age 70.

France declares war on Prussia July 19 as Napoleon III tries to make a preemptive strike on the premise that the best defense is a good offense, but his generals are unable to concentrate their forces, which must travel by rail to regional depots, and the result is chaos; three Prussian armies use railroads and telegraph communications to invade France, they move halfway across the country in 1 month, and while French forces invade the Saar Basin and gain a victory at Saarbrücken they are no match for the Prussians, who have won support from Bavaria. Their generals force Emile Olivier to resign as minister of justice August 9 after only 7 months in office, and the empress regent Eugénie designates Charles Cousin-Montauban, now 74, prime minister; socialist Paule (Paulina) Mink (née Mekarska), 31, organizes the defenses of Auxerre, and Marshal Achille Bazaine, now 59, is given command of the 130,000-man Army of the Rhine August 12 as it falls back from Metz toward Verdun; he is intercepted near Vionville by the 30,000-man army of General Constantine von Alvensleben, and the Prussians triumph over the French in the Battles of Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte August 16 to 18 as the Army of the Rhine mounts a cavalry charge (at Mars-la-Tour) but fails to break through the two armies of General Helmuth von Moltke, who suffers about 16,000 casualties at Mars-la-Tour and inflicts the same number on the French. The French lose 13,000 at Gravelotte, the Prussians more than 20,000, but Count von Moltke succeeds in trapping the French in their fortress at Metz.

German revolutionary Gustav von Struve dies at Vienna August 21 at age 64, having returned to Europe in 1863 after serving in the Union Army during the Civil War.

The Battle of Metz rages from August 19 to October 27: the North German Confederation has mobilized an army of 197,000 men and 658 field and siege guns under the command of Prince Friedrich Karl; Marshal Bazain's Army of the Rhine has grown to have 173,000 men, 622 field guns, and 876 pieces of fortress artillery, but von Moltke is able to detach much of his besieging army for action at Sedan.

The Battle of Sedan September 1 ends in disaster for the French First Army Corps commanded by Marshal MacMahon, now 62 (who has been defeated at Wörth and is captured). Commanded by Field Marshal von Moltke, the North German Confederation's Third and Meuse Armies (222 infantry battalions, 186 cavalry squadrons, 774 guns) bring 200,000 men to bear on the French Army of Chalons as it marches to the relief of Metz. The French have 120,000 men (202 infantry battalions, 80 cavalry squadrons, 564 guns) but sustain 17,000 killed and wounded, 21,000 missing. MacMahon was wounded on the eve of the battle, others have succeeded to command, and Napoleon himself surrenders September 2 with 80,000 men. German casualties total 2,320 killed, 5,980 wounded, 700 missing; von Moltke marches on Paris.

The Paris mob invades the Palais Bourbon September 4, Prime Minister Cousin-Montauban's government falls after less than a month and he flees to Belgium. The empress regent Eugénie arrives in England September 8 and finds a house at Chislehurst 2 weeks later while her husband is held prisoner at Wilhelmshöhe, the Second Empire collapses, the Third Republic is proclaimed, and two German armies begin a 135-day siege of Paris September 19 (see 1871).

The French garrison at Metz sustains 38,000 casualties (including deaths from sickness) and Marshal Bazaine shocks his countrymen by surrendering October 27 with 140,000 men plus all his artillery, 72 mitrailleuses (machine guns), 300 rifles, and 56 eagles (see 1873); German casualties (including losses to disease) total 47,000.

Italian troops enter Rome following withdrawal of French troops for the Battle of Sedan; they preserve order by extending their occupation around the Vatican at the request of Giacomo Cardinal Antonelli and complete the unification of the Kingdom of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II (see 1866).

Russia's Imperial Chancellor Aleksandr M. Gorchakov takes advantage of western Europe's preoccupation with the Franco-Prussian War to renounce the prohibitions against maintaining a naval presence on the Black Sea and fortifying her coastline, prohibitions placed on his country after the Crimean War.

Irish lawyer Isaac Butt, 57, forms the Home Rule Association, a coalition of Protestants and nationalists that works for repeal of the 1801 Act of Union (see 1879; Parnell, 1881).

Paraguay's president Francisco Solano López is killed March 1 at age 43 after a 7½-year dictatorship that has brought ruin to his country; former Argentine president Justo José de Urquiza is assassinated by political rivals along with his sons at his villa in Entre Rios April 11 at age 68, and the 6-year war between Paraguay and her neighbors ends in a treaty signed June 20. Paraguay has lost 100,000 dead (90 percent of her adult males) and 65,000 wounded, reducing her population to 28,000 men and just over 200,000 women. Brazil has lost 165,000, Argentina 20,000, Uruguay 3,000; the allies take 55,000 square miles of Paraguayan territory, but rights to the vast Gran Chaco region remain a matter of dispute between Argentina and Paraguay (see 1878).

Caracas-born journalist's son Antonio Guzmán Blanco, 41, seizes control of the Venezuelan government as head of the Regeneration (Regeneración) movement. Having married into the upper-class Blanco family, he has served as a special finance commissioner to negotiate loans with London bankers, will have himself elected president in 1873, and will rule as military dictator (caudillo) until 1889, ending the country's civil war, reviving its economy, modernizing Caracas, ending the Roman Catholic Church's control of birth, education, and marriage, confiscating Church property, but using brutal means to achieve his ends.

The province of Manitoba created by the Canadian government July 15 is a 251,000-square mile section of Rupert's Land, purchased last year from the Hudson's Bay Company (see 1905; British Columbia, 1871).

A xenophobic Chinese mob at Tianjin (Tientsin) attacks a Roman Catholic orphanage June 21 and kills 24 foreigners, including the French consul, Henri Fontanier, and some French and Belgian nuns (the French Sisters of Charity) who have been accused of kidnapping children and mutilating them. Fontanier has fired into a crowd of locally prominent representatives and killed the servant of the district magistrate. Paris and Rome demand harsh punishment, European warships arrive, Chinese troops are placed on alert, and only the execution of 16 Chinese and the dispatch of an official mission to extend apologies to France avert hostilities.

Congress creates the position of solicitor-general in January and President Grant appoints Kentucky-born lawyer Benjamin H. (Helm) Bristow, 37, as the first U.S. solicitor-general. Badly wounded at Shiloh, Colonel Bristow distinguished himself in later Civil War encounters and suppressed Ku Klux Klan violence beginning in May 1866 as U.S. attorney for the Kentucky district (see 1874).

U.S. diplomat Anson Burlingame dies at St. Petersburg, Russia, February 23 at age 49; General George H. Thomas, U.S. Army, at San Francisco March 28 at age 53; Admiral David G. Farragut, U.S. Navy, August 14 at age 69 while visiting the naval yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; former Confederate Army general Robert E. Lee at Lexington, Virginia, October 12 at age 63. He has been president since 1865 of Washington College, which will change its name to Washington and Lee University; former Republic of Texas president David G. Burnet dies at Galveston December 5 at age 82, having lost a son in the Civil War.