Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: When was France taken back from Germany?
Area of eastern France taken over by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. During 1870–1871, there was a single issue for the whole territory. Stamps of Germany replaced this and were used 1872–1918. The area was returned to France after World War I. French stamps have been used since 1918 except for the German occupation in World War II (1940–1944) when separate issues were made for Alsace and Lorraine.
In 1806, French Emperor Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire and established the Electorate of Saxony as a kingdom in exchange for military support. The Elector Frederick Augustus III accordingly became King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony. Frederick Augustus remained loyal to Napoleon during the wars that swept Europe in the following years; he was taken prisoner and his territories declared forfeit by the allies in 1813, after the defeat of Napoleon. Prussia intended the annexation of Saxony but the opposition of Austria, France, and the United Kingdom to this plan resulted in the restoration of Frederick Augustus to his throne at the Congress of Vienna although he was forced to cede the northern part of the kingdom to Prussia. These lands became the Prussian province of Saxony, now incorporated in the modern state of Saxony-Anhalt except westernmost part around Bad Langensalza now in the one of Thuringia. Also Lower Lusatia became part of Province of Brandenburg and northeastern part of Upper Lusatia became part of Silesia Province. The remnant of the Kingdom of Saxony was roughly identical with the present federal state, albeit slightly smaller.
Following his retreat from Russia, Napoleon continued to retreat, this time from Germany. After the loss of Spain, reconquered by an allied army led by Wellington, the rising in the Netherlands preliminary to the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfort (1 December 1813) which proclaimed it, he had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795; and then later was driven yet farther back upon those of 1792—despite the brilliant campaign of 1814 against the invaders. Paris capitulated on 30 March 1814, and the "Delenda Carthago", pronounced against Britain, was spoken of Napoleon. The Empire briefly fell with Napoleon's abdication at Fontainebleau on 11 April 1814.
In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte declared the First French Empire. In response to this, Emperor Francis II of the Habsburg dynasty declared his personal domain to be the Austrian Empire and became Francis I of Austria. Taking the colours of the banner of the Holy Roman Emperor, the flag of the Austrian Empire was black and gold. Francis II was the last Holy Roman Emperor, with Napoleon forcing the empire's dissolution in 1806. After this point, these colours continued to be used as the flag of Austria until 1918.
Louis XIV had emerged from the Franco-Dutch War in 1678 as the most powerful monarch in Europe, an absolute ruler who had won numerous military victories. Using a combination of aggression, annexation, and quasi-legal means, Louis XIV set about extending his gains to stabilize and strengthen France's frontiers, culminating in the brief War of the Reunions (1683–84). The resulting Truce of Ratisbon guaranteed France's new borders for twenty years, but Louis XIV's subsequent actions – notably his revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 – led to the deterioration of his military and political dominance. Louis XIV's decision to cross the Rhine in September 1688 was designed to extend his influence and pressure the Holy Roman Empire into accepting his territorial and dynastic claims. But when Leopold I and the German princes resolved to resist, and when the States General and William III brought the Dutch and the English into the war against France, the French King at last faced a powerful coalition aimed at curtailing his ambitions.
The battle of the Marne was a major turning point of World War I. By the end of August 1914, the whole Allied army on the Western Front had been forced into a general retreat back towards Paris. Meanwhile, the two main German armies continued through France. It seemed that Paris would be taken as both the French and the British fell back towards the Marne River. The war became a stalemate when the Allied Powers won the Battle of the Marne. It was the first major clash on the Western Front and one of the most important events in the war. The German retreat left the Schlieffen Plan in ruins and Germany had no hope of a quick victory in France. Its army was left to fight a long war on two fronts.
New France () was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris (1763).
The song's lyric reflects the invasion of France by foreign armies (from Prussia and Austria) that were under way when it was written. Strasbourg itself was attacked just a few days later. The invading forces were repulsed from France following their defeat in the Battle of Valmy. As the vast majority of Alsatians did not speak French, a German version ("Auf, Brüder, auf dem Tag entgegen") was published in October 1792 in Colmar.
The Convention accepted it as the French national anthem in a decree passed on 14 July 1795, making it France's first anthem. It later lost this status under Napoleon I, and the song was banned outright by Louis XVIII and Charles X, only being re-instated briefly after the July Revolution of 1830. During Napoleon I's reign, "Veillons au salut de l'Empire" was the unofficial anthem of the regime, and in Napoleon III's reign, it was "Partant pour la Syrie". During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, "La Marseillaise" was recognised as the anthem of the international revolutionary movement; as such, it was adopted by the Paris Commune in 1871, albeit with new lyrics under the title "La marseillaise de la Commune". Eight years later, in 1879, it was restored as France's national anthem, and has remained so ever since.
Following the defeat of Saxony's ally Prussia at the Battle of Jena in 1806, Saxony joined the Confederation of the Rhine, and remained within the Confederation until its dissolution in 1813 with Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig. Following the battle, in which Saxony — virtually alone of all the German states — had fought alongside the French. King Frederick Augustus I was deserted by his troops, taken prisoner by the Prussians and considered to have forfeited his throne by the allies, who put Saxony under Prussian occupation and administration. This was probably more due to the Prussian desire to annex Saxony than to any crime on Frederick Augustus's part, and the fate of Saxony would prove to be one of the main issues at the Congress of Vienna. In the end, 40% of the Kingdom, including the historically significant Wittenberg, home of the Protestant Reformation, was annexed by Prussia, but Frederick Augustus was restored to the throne in the remainder of his kingdom, which still included the major cities of Dresden and Leipzig. The Kingdom also joined the German Confederation, the new organization of the German states to replace the fallen Holy Roman Empire.
The last centuries of the Middle Ages saw the waging of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. The war began in 1337 when the king of France laid claim to English-ruled Gascony in southern France, and the king of England claimed to be the rightful king of France. At first, the English conquered half of France and seemed likely to win the war, until the French were rallied by a peasant girl, who would later become a saint, Joan of Arc. Although she was captured and executed by the English, the French fought on and won the war in 1453. After the war, France gained all of Normandy excluding the city of Calais, which it gained in 1558.
Historically, Austrians were regarded as ethnic Germans and viewed themselves as such. Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation until the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 which resulted in Prussia expelling Austria from the Confederation. Thus, when Germany was founded as a nation-state in 1871, Austria was not a part of it. In 1867, Austria was reformed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria was reduced to a rump state and adopted and briefly used the name the Republic of German-Austria ("Republik Deutschösterreich") in an attempt for union with the Republic of Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was founded in 1919. The Third Reich annexed Austria with the "Anschluss" in 1938.
The borders of France were enlarged for the last time before the Revolution by two additions; The Duchy of Lorraine, ruled by The King's father-in-law, Stanislas, reverted to France after his death, and officially was joined to the kingdom 27–28 March 1766. The acquisition of Corsica was more complicated. The island formally belonged to the Republic of Genoa, but an independent Republic of Corsica had been proclaimed in 1755 by Pasquale Paoli, and the rebels controlled most of the island. The Republic of Genoa did not have the military forces to conquer the island, and permitted Louis to send French troops to occupy the ports and major cities, to keep the island from falling into British hands. When the war ended, the island was formally granted to France by Treaty of Versailles on 19 May 1768. Louis sent the army to subdue the Corsican rebels; the army on the island eventually numbered twenty-seven thousand soldiers. In May 1769 the Corsican rebels were defeated at the Battle of Ponte Novu, and Paoli took refuge in England. In 1770 the island formally became a Province of France.
On 10 July 1945 the occupation authority on the soil of the present-day Rhineland-Palatinate transferred from the Americans to the French. To begin with, the French divided the region provisionally into two "upper presidiums" ("Oberpräsidien"), Rhineland-Hesse-Nassau (for the hitherto Prussian government districts and regions of Koblenz, Trier, and Montabaur) and Hesse-Palatinate (for the hitherto Bavarian Palatinate and old Hessian-Darmstadt province of Rhenish Hesse). The formation of the state was ordained on 30 August 1946, the last state in the Western Zone of Occupation to be established, by Regulation No. 57 of the French military government under General Marie-Pierre Kœnig. It was initially called Rhenish-Palatinate ("Rheinpfälzisches Land" or "Land Rheinpfalz"); the name Rhineland-Palatinate ("Rheinland-Pfalz") was first confirmed in the constitution of 18 May 1947.
France entered World War I because Russia and Germany were going to war, and France honored its treaty obligations to Russia. Decisions were all made by senior officials, especially president Raymond Poincaré, Premier and Foreign Minister René Viviani, and the ambassador to Russia Maurice Paléologue. Not involved in the decision-making were military leaders, arms manufacturers, the newspapers, pressure groups, party leaders, or spokesmen for French nationalism.
The empire was dissolved on 6 August 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (from 1804, Emperor Francis I of Austria) abdicated, following a military defeat by the French under Napoleon at Austerlitz (see Treaty of Pressburg). Napoleon reorganized much of the Empire into the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite. Francis' House of Habsburg-Lorraine survived the demise of the empire, continuing to reign as Emperors of Austria and Kings of Hungary until the Habsburg empire's final dissolution in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I.
Napoleon himself proposed on November 27 in a memorandum to Bismarck: After a peace and the surrender of Paris the Prussian king might call the French people to accept Napoleon again as Emperor. But this moment Metz had already fallen, leaving Napoleon without a power basis. Bismarck did not see much chance for a restored empire as Napoleon had looked like a marionette of the enemy. A last initiative of Eugénie failed in January also because of a late arrival of her envoy from London. Bismarck refused to acknowledge the former empress also as this had caused irritations with Britain and Russia. Shortly later, the Germans signed a truce with the French government.
Rhineland-Palatinate was established in 1946 after World War II from territory of the historically separate regions of the Free State of Prussia, People's State of Hesse, and Bavaria, by the French military administration in Allied-occupied Germany. Rhineland-Palatinate became part of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, and shared the country's only border with the Saar Protectorate until it was returned to German control in 1957. Rhineland-Palatinate has since developed its own identity built on its natural and cultural heritage, including the extensive Palatinate winegrowing region, its picturesque landscapes, and many castles and palaces.
Under the Versailles Settlement, the Rhineland was demilitarized. Germany accepted this arrangement under the Locarno Treaties of 1925. Hitler claimed that it threatened Germany and on 7 March 1936 he sent German forces into the Rhineland. He gambled on Britain not getting involved but was unsure how France would react. The action was opposed by many of his advisers. His officers had orders to withdraw if they met French resistance. France consulted Britain and lodged protests with the League, but took no action. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said that Britain lacked the forces to back its guarantees to France and that in any case, public opinion would not allow it. In Britain, it was thought that the Germans were merely walking into "their own backyard". Hugh Dalton, a Labour Party MP who usually advocated stiff resistance to Germany, said that neither the British people nor Labour would support military or economic sanctions. In the Council of the League, only the Soviet Union proposed sanctions against Germany. Hitler was invited to negotiate. He proposed a non-aggression pact with the Western powers. When asked for details he did not reply. Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland had persuaded him that the international community would not resist him and put Germany in a powerful strategic position.
After the establishment of the Fifth French Republic on 4 October 1958, the territories of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa were given the right to hold a referendum on their membership in the French Community, a modified form of the French Union which allowed some limited self-government and was viewed as a path to eventual independence.
Despite the Haitian victory, France refused to recognize the newly independent country's sovereignty until 1825, in exchange for 150 million gold francs. This fee, demanded as retribution for the "lost property,"—slaves, land, equipment etc.—of the former colonialists, was later reduced to 90 million. Haiti agreed to pay the price to lift a crippling embargo imposed by France, Britain, and the United States— but to do so, the Haitian government had to take out high interest loans. The debt was not repaid in full until 1947.
The main fighting took place around France's borders: in the Spanish Netherlands; the Rhineland; Duchy of Savoy; and Catalonia. The fighting generally favoured Louis XIV's armies, but by 1696 his country was in the grip of an economic crisis. The Maritime Powers (England and the Dutch Republic) were also financially exhausted, and when Savoy defected from the Alliance all parties were keen for a negotiated settlement. By the terms of the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) Louis XIV retained the whole of Alsace, but he was forced to return Lorraine to its ruler and give up any gains on the right bank of the Rhine. Louis XIV also accepted William III as the rightful King of England, while the Dutch acquired their Barrier fortress system in the Spanish Netherlands to help secure their own borders. However, with the ailing and childless Charles II of Spain approaching his end, a new conflict over the inheritance of the Spanish Empire would soon embroil Louis XIV and the Grand Alliance in a final war – the War of the Spanish Succession.
France was not invited to the Potsdam Conference. As a result, it chose to adopt some decisions of the Potsdam Agreements and to dismiss others. France maintained the position that it did not approve post-war expulsions and that therefore it was not responsible to accommodate and nourish the destitute expellees in its zone. While the few war-related refugees who had reached the area to become the French zone before July 1945 were taken care of, the French military government for Germany refused to absorb post-war expellees deported from the East into its zone. In December 1946, the French military government for Germany absorbed into its zone German refugees from Denmark, where 250,000 Germans had found a refuge from the Soviets by sea vessels between February and May 1945. These clearly were war-related refugees from the eastern parts of Germany however, and not post-war expellees.
In 1871, the newly created German Empire's demand for Alsace from France after its victory in the Franco-Prussian War was not simply a punitive measure. The transfer was controversial even among the Germans: The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was initially opposed to it, as he thought it would engender permanent French enmity toward Germany. Some German industrialists did not want the competition from Alsatian industries, such as the cloth makers who would be exposed to competition from the sizeable industry in Mulhouse. Karl Marx also warned his fellow Germans: "If Alsace and Lorraine are taken, then France will later make war on Germany in conjunction with Russia. It is unnecessary to go into the unholy consequences."
France entered World War I on August 3, 1914, when Germany declared war. France played only a small part in the diplomatic crisis of July 1914–its top leaders were out of the country from July 15 to July 29, when most of the critical decisions were taken. Austria and Germany deliberately acted to prevent the French and Russian leadership from communicating during the last week in July. But this made little difference as French policy in strong support of Russia had been locked in. Germany realized that a war with Russia meant a war with France, and so its war plans called for an immediate attack on France – through Belgium – hoping for a quick victory before the slow-moving Russians could become a factor. France was a major military and diplomatic player before and after the July crisis, and every power paid close attention to its role. Historian Joachim Remak says:
After guaranteeing the independence of Poland, both declared war on Germany on the same day, 3 September 1939, after the Germans ignored an ultimatum to withdraw from the country. When Germany began its attack on France in 1940, British troops and French troops again fought side by side. Eventually, after the Germans came through the Ardennes, it became more possible that France would not be able to fend off the German attack. The final bond between the two nations was so strong that members of the British cabinet had proposed a temporary union of the two countries for the sake of morale: the plan was drawn up by Jean Monnet, who later created the Common Market. The idea was not popular with a majority on either side, and the French government felt that, in the circumstances, the plan for union would reduce France to the level of a British Dominion. When London ordered to withdraw the English expeditionary corps from France without telling the French and Belgium forces and then refused to provide France a real air support the proposal was definitely turned down. Later The Free French resistance, led by Charles de Gaulle, were formed in London, after de Gaulle gave his famous 'Appeal of the 18th of June', broadcast by the BBC. De Gaulle declared himself to be the head of the one and only true government of France, and gathered the Free French Forces around him.