How Prussia Trapped 120K Men in One Day | Battle of Sedan 1870

On 1 September 1870, 120,000 French soldiers and their Emperor, Napoleon III, were trapped in a river valley around the small fortress town of Sedan. By the next day, it was over. This is the story of how Prussia captured an emperor in a single day, the battle that brought down the Second French Empire and opened the road to a united Germany. Chapters 0:00 Sedan, the morning of 1 September 1870 1:14 A Light Heart 4:00 The Silent Man and the Sick Man 6:35 The August Battles 9:09 The Road North 11:54 Into the Bowl 14:53 Two Roads 17:59 The Ring Shuts 20:43 The White Flag 23:19 The Camp of Misery Sources Helmuth von Moltke (General Staff), *The Franco-German War of 1870–71*, tr. Archibald Forbes (1891) Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), "Franco-German War" Fondation Napoléon, "La bataille de Sedan" Larousse, "Bataille de Sedan" German History in Documents and Images (GHI Washington) Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: "Die Schlacht bei Sedan Ministère des Armées, Chemins de mémoire: Bazeilles Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War (1961), pp. 145–177 on Sedan; Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War (Cambridge UP, 2003), "Sedan" Napoleon III's illness: "The illness and death of Napoleon III", Hektoen International (2024)