FRANCO-GERMAN WAR (1870-1871). The victories of Prussia in 1866 over the Austrians and their German allies (see SEVEN WEEKS' WAR) rendered it evident to the statesmen and soldiers of France that a struggle between the two nations could only be a question of time. Army reforms were at once undertaken, and measures were initiated in France to place the armament and equipment of the troops on a level with the requirements of the times. The chassepot, a new breech-loading rifle, immensely superior to the Prussian needle-gun, was issued; the artillery trains were thoroughly overhauled, and a new machine-gun, the _mitrailleuse_, from which much was expected, introduced. Wide schemes of reorganization (due mainly to Marshal Niel) were set in motion, and, since these required time to mature, recourse was had to foreign alliances in the hope of delaying the impending rupture. In the first week of June 1870, General Lebrun, as a confidential agent of the emperor Napoleon III., was sent to Vienna to concert a plan of joint operations with Austria against Prussia. Italy was also to be included in the alliance, and it was agreed that in case of hostilities the French armies should concentrate in northern Bavaria, where the Austrians and Italians were to join them, and the whole immense army thus formed should march via Jena on Berlin. To what extent Austria and Italy committed themselves to this scheme remains uncertain, but that the emperor Napoleon believed in their _bona fides_ is beyond doubt. Whether the plan was betrayed to Prussia is also uncertain, and almost immaterial, for Moltke's plans were based on an accurate estimate of the time it would take Austria to mobilize and on the effect of a series of victories on French soil. At any rate Moltke was not taken into Bismarck's confidence in the affair of Ems in July 1870, and it is to be presumed that the chancellor had already satisfied himself that the schemes of operations prepared by the chief of the General Staff fully provided against all eventualities. These schemes were founded on Clausewitz's view of the objects to be pursued in a war against France--in the first place the defeat of the French field armies and in the second the occupation of Paris. On these lines plans for the strategic deployment of the Prussian army were prepared by the General Staff and kept up to date year by year as fresh circumstances (e.g. the co-operation of the minor German armies) arose and new means of communication came into existence. The campaign was actually opened on a revise of 1868-1869, to which was added, on the 6th of May 1870, a secret memorandum for the General Staff. Strategic deployment of the German armies.