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• Bismarck was Appointed Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Prussia by Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1862
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• His first step was to drive out Austria as the prime influence among these German states. He achieved this by engineering war with Austria in 1866 over disputed territory in the duchy of Holstein
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in 1870, Bismarck attempted to place a Hohenzollern prince on the throne in Spain. Napoleon III, fearful of the prospect of theoretical war on two fronts - for the Hohenzollern prince was a relative of Kaiser Wilhelm I - objected.
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the Prussian forces laid siege to Paris between September 1870 and January 1871, starving the city into surrender.
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• Almost immediately following her defeat by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, together with the humiliating annexation by the newly unified Germany of the coal-rich territories of Alsace and Lorraine, the French government and military alike were united in thirsting for revenge.
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• Bismarck turned up the diplomatic heat by releasing, on 14 July 1870, a doctored version of a telegram ostensibly from the Kaiser to Bismarck himself, called the Ems Telegram.
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• Napoleon III, facing civil revolt at home over quite unrelated matters, and receiving encouraging noises from his military commanders, responded by declaring war against Prussia five days later, on 19 July 1870.
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• Thus the tangled web of alliances which sprung up in the wake of the rise of the newly united German Empire in 1871.
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• a French desire for revenge against Germany following disastrous defeat in 1871
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• He began by negotiating, in 1873, the Three Emperors League, which tied Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia to each other's aid in time of war.
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• Two years after Germany and Austria-Hungary concluded their agreement, Italy was brought into the fold with the signing of the Triple Alliance in 1881.
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• Austria-Hungary signed an alliance with Romania in 1883
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• Potentially of greater importance - although it was allowed to lapse three years after its signature - Bismarck, in 1887, agreed to a so-called Reinsurance Treaty with Russia.
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• A decidedly tangled mesh of alliances; but the Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, allowed the Reinsurance Treaty to lapse in 1890
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• Britain signed the Entente Cordiale with France. This 1904 agreement finally resolved numerous leftover colonial squabbles.
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• the Japanese astonished the western powers by destroying the entire Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima (27-28 May 1905) for the loss of two torpedo boats - a humiliating Russian defeat.
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, in 1907, Russia formed what became known as the Triple Entente
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• In 1912 Britain and France did however conclude a military agreement, the Anglo-French Naval Convention, which promised British protection of France's coastline from German naval attack, and French defense of the Suez Canal.
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• In 1912 it continued with war between Italy and Turkey, over the latter's African possessions. Turkey lost and was forced to hand over Libya, Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands to the Italians.
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• The intervention of the larger European powers brought about an end to this the First Balkan War of 1912-13. Again Turkey lost out, shedding Crete and all of its European possessions.
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• In 1912 Britain and France did however conclude a military agreement, the Anglo-French Naval Convention, which promised British protection of France's coastline from German naval attack, and French defense of the Suez Canal.
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• As for Germany, she was unsettled socially and militarily. The 1912 Reichstag elections had resulted in the election of no fewer than 110 socialist deputies, making Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg's task in liaising between the Reichstag and the autocratic Wilhelm, not to mention the rigidly right-wing military high command, next to impossible.
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• Later in the 1913, conflict erupted again in the Balkans, as Bulgaria, unsatisfied with its earlier spoils, fought with its recent allies in an attempt to control a greater part of Macedonia; and when the so-named "Young Turks" - Turkish army officers - denounced the earlier peace as unfair.
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• Between May and July 1913 Bulgaria's former allies beat back the new aggressor, Bulgaria, and Romania captured the Bulgarian capital Sofia in August. Beaten and having surrendered on 10 August 1913, Bulgaria also lost Adrianople back to Turkey.
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• It is often speculated - and argued - that the plan would have succeeded but for the decision of the then-German Chief of Staff in 1914, Helmuth von Moltke, to authorize a critical deviation from the plan that, it is believed, stemmed from a lack of nerve, and crucially slowed the path towards Paris - with fatal consequences
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• The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.
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• Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914.
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• Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August.
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• France, bound by treaty to Russia, found itself at war against Germany and, by extension, on Austria-Hungary following a German declaration on 3 August.
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• Britain, allied to France by a more loosely worded treaty which placed a "moral obligation" upon her to defend France, declared war against Germany on 4 August.
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• Japan honoring a military agreement with Britain, declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914. Two days later Austria-Hungary responded by declaring war on Japan.
