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The Great Wars

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France in the Twentieth Century

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Abstract

Deep-seated tension between the Slav minority and the Austro-Hungarian ruling-class of the Habsburg Empire breached the long European peace in the late summer of 1914, when Serbian patriots assassinated the heir to the imperial throne at Sarajevo, in the troubled Balkans, setting off a chain reaction of mobilisation and counter-mobilisation which brought the Serbs’ and Austrians’ protectors, Russia and Germany respectively, face to face, ready for war. France, Russia’s ally against the German Reich since 1895, refused to stay neutral, and Germany declared war on her on 3 August and immediately launched the main part of its powerful Army westwards through neutral Belgium to knock out the French quickly, before turning on the cumbersome Russian‘steamroller’ in the east. The violation of Belgian neutrality provoked the British to declare war on Germany, and to send an efficient but very small Expeditionary Force of professional soldiers across the Channel to aid the French.

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Notes

  1. Including the bitter fighting before and after the main battle, over the same blood-soaked ground, the figure has been put as high as 450,000 dead and 800,000 gassed and wounded. The French suffered marginally more casualties than the Germans. One of the direct results of the battle was that from July 1916‘the main burden of the Western Front devolved upon Britain’ (A. Horne, The Price of Glory (London, 1962) pp. 327–31).

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Authors
  1. Philip Ouston
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© 1972 Philip Ouston

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Ouston, P. (1972). The Great Wars. In: France in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00262-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00262-7_9

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-00264-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-00262-7

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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