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The term French-German (hereditary) enmity () describes the often hostile relations between France and its eastern neighbors, the German states, that eventually became the German Empire. Many of the events born of this enmity, often one or more per generation, were significant in the history of Europe and the world, ultimately leading to two world wars.
Historical Context
France and Germany can both trace their history as kingdoms to the division of the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne in the Treaty of Verdun. Ambitions to the senior imperial status and the implicit role of leadership over Western Europe that it held were a continual source of friction between France and the states of Germany throughout the mediaeval and early renaissance periods.
France-Habsburg rivalry
The sequence of events started in 1516 with the France-Habsburg rivalry between the kingdom of France and the House of Habsburg, the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and, by marriage, of Spain. The Thirty Years' War left large parts of southern Germany devastated, a situation France took advantage of to expand its territories, for example by annexing the Alsace and Strasbourg. As a result of this French aggression, the League of Augsburg and finally the international Grand Alliance was formed to defend the Palatinate from France.
French-Prussian enmity
The rise of a new German power, Prussia, made Austria ally with France in the Seven Years' War.
In the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, the leaders of both Prussia and Austria now fought not only against a fellow monarch, but against a people, which carried the conflict to new levels.
Napoleon put an end to the Holy Roman Empire in the early 19th century and reshaped the political map of the German states which were still divided. The wars, often fought in Germany, and with Germans on both sides such as in the Battle of Leipzig, also marked the beginning of the French-German hereditary enmity.
French-German enmity
During the first half of the 19th century, many Germans looked forward to a unification of the German states, though some German leaders and most foreign powers were opposed to any such unification.
In 1840, to detract from other problems, French leaders like Victor Hugo and Adolphe Thiers claimed that France should own the left bank of the Rhine, even though both banks always had been inhabited by German speaking populations. This Rhine crisis (de:Rheinkrise) gave birth to Rhine songs like Das Lied der Deutschen und Die Wacht am Rhein which express the defensive German sentiments of the time.
Ironically, the eventual unification of Germany was triggered by France itself, with its declaration of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and subsequent quick defeat of Napoleon III. Yet, the french people carried on with warfare for several months, including guerilla warfare by Francs-tireurs fighting outside the laws of war.
After 1945, the French and Germans finally discontinued the 400-year sequence of committing cruelties against one another, transforming their old enmity into the French-German amity that led to the formation of European Union.
List of events
- 1618 Thirty Years' War
- 1688 War of the Grand Alliance
- 1718 War of the Quadruple Alliance
- 1701 War of the Spanish Succession
- 1740 War of the Austrian Succession
- 1756 Seven Years' War
- 1792 French Revolutionary Wars
- 1799 Napoleonic Wars
- 1840 Rhine crisis
- 1870 Franco-Prussian War
- 1914 World War I
- 1939 World War II
References
History of Germany | History of France | History of Austria | Wars of France
"French-German enmity"