French was once the pre-eminent international language of Europe; the language of diplomacy and intellectual culture, spoken from Paris to St Petersburg, the successor to Latin, the tongue of every civilised man and woman.
In 1871, the German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, crushed France and annexed the territory of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian war. More than a decade later, Bismarck hosted the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, which carved up Africa into European colonies, and spoke to the other European delegates in French.
