The telegram was publicized on Bastille Day, a French national holiday, only to infuriate the French people even more. The telegram was successful in its endeavor to provoke France to declare war on Prussia on July 19, 1870. The French were very confident in their ability to defeat the Prussians and therefore were very eager to engage in battle as well. There were many factors which made it appear that France had the upper hand. Its population was larger. It believed it had allies in Austria-Hungary and Italy. France was far more experienced in modern industrialized warfare than Prussia. The French also secretly possessed machine guns and arms with unprecedented power and range. Despite all aforementioned advantages, Prussian organization and strategy proved more powerful. While the overall population of France was greater than that of Prussia's, required military service of all men who were of age made hundreds of thousands of troops more readily available in times of war. Contrary to previous beliefs, Austria-Hungary and Italy refused to support France against Prussia. Finally, Prussia's newer war strategy and sheer strength in numbers overwhelmed French forces and made technological superiority less advantageous than expected.
The French also failed to notice that while it so eagerly declared war, it drove the southern German states right into the North German Confederation which was under Prussian rule. Prussian propaganda influenced the southern states to believe that the French were the aggressors. "Shaken and horror-stricken by the flood of events, the South Germans were seized with the fear that they might be occupied by the French, as they had so many times in the past; that a French invasion was imminent; that resistance might come too late; and that they had no alternative but to bind themselves inextricably to the control of Berlin" (Wetzel 6). The ultimate goal of the Franco-Prussian war had been realized before it even began.
