Superb on the human consequences of war ravishing in its evocations of wartime life The TimesCompassionate and thoughtprovoking history Daily TelegraphLess than a month after it marched into France in summer 1870 the Prussian army had devastated its opponents captured Napoleon III and wrecked all assumptions about Europes pecking order. Other countries looked on in helpless amazement. Pushing aside further French resistance a new German Empire was proclaimed as a deliberate humiliation in the Palace of Versailles leaving the French to face civil war in Paris reparations and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine.Bismarcks War tells the story of one of the most shocking reversals of fortune in modern European history.