Germany, after 1870, knew that France would for many years be too weak to retake Alsace-Lorraine.  All that German leaders had to fear was that France might succeed in securing powerful friends among the other nations and that a strong combination of countries might some day challenge Germany’s supremacy on the Continent.  To prevent or at any rate to counterbalance any such combination, Germany looked about for allies upon whose help she might rely in case of necessity.  At first she planned a general league of friendship with the great countries lying to the east and southeast, Russia and Austria-Hungary.  This combination, known as the League of the Three Emperors, was soon broken up by the growing jealousies of Russia and Austria in the Balkans.  Germany, having to choose which of these two nations she would support, decided in favor of Austria.  There followed a growing coldness in the relations between Germany and Russia.

Germany having allied herself with Austria, looked about for another nation to give greater strength to the combination.  Her thoughts turned toward Italy, which, in case of another war against France, could attack the French southeastern border and so prove a valuable ally.  For a number of years there had been ill feeling between Italy and France, and Germany counted on this feeling to bring Italy under her influence.  The chief difficulty in the way of Germany’s plan was that Italy would have to abandon her ideas in regard to Italia Irredenta and enter into friendly relations with Austria, her old enemy.  Italy was finally driven into this unnatural alliance by the action of France, which in 1881 occupied Tunis, a land which Italy herself had been planning to annex as a colony.  Italy, too weak to prevent this action of France, entered the alliance with Germany and Austria into which she had been invited.  So it was that the Triple Alliance was established (1882), as a league of defense against any nations which should begin an attack upon any one of the three.

THE TRIPLE ENTENTE.—­Entente (ahn-tahnt’) is the French word for understanding or agreement.  In the recent history of Europe it refers to that friendly grouping of nations which was formed in self-defense against the Triple Alliance.  The war of 1870 had left France not only humiliated but weakened and isolated.  The formation of the Triple Alliance put out of question the idea of a successful war against Germany to right the wrong which France had suffered.  In fact it seemed to make more probable a new attack upon France.  Russia also found herself in a position of isolation.  Their isolation and consequent danger gradually drew these two nations together, distant as they were from one another and different as they were in government and ideas.  So there was established a dual alliance between the French Republic and the Russian Empire.