The Taboos of Defeat: Unmentionable Memories of the Franco-Prussian War in France, 1870–1914

Abstract

The French defeat of 1870–1 was widely considered one of the most painful episodes in the nation’s history. Having ruled much of Europe scarcely six decades earlier, France was reduced to having to accept territorial mutilation, heavy indemnities, and a humiliating march through the streets of Paris by victorious German forces. If Napoleon m had begun the war seeking to tame a rising Prussia and to boost support for his own ailing regime, it had rapidly degenerated into a rout, culminating in his surrender at Sedan on 2 September 1870. The republican government which took over sought to reinvigorate the defence effort by reviving the spirit of the Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s. Instead of a patriotic rising in defence of the nation, however, there followed only further defeat and capitulation in late January 1871. Protesting betrayal by bourgeois republicans, monarchist factions and the war-weary countryside, national guardsmen and extreme left elements proclaimed a new Paris Commune. A bloody civil war followed, in which around a further 20,000 soldiers and civilians were killed. After such a catalogue of disasters, it would perhaps have been natural for France to have sought to forget Vannee terrible. Instead, however, the nation appeared to invest more energy in upholding memories of the Franco-Prussian War than it ever had done in fighting it.