Triple Alliance (1882)

The man chiefly responsible for the Triple Alliance is Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany.

Austria-Hungary, to counter Russian and French interests in Europe, had concluded an alliance with Germany in October 1879 and concluded a similar alaiance with Italy in May 1882.

By the late 1870s, Austrian territorial ambitions in both the Italian peninsula and Central Europe had been thwarted by the rise of Italy and Germany as new national powers.

With the decline and failed reforms of the Ottoman Empire, Slavic discontent in the occupied Balkans had grows, and both Russia and Austria-Hungary saw an opportunity to expand in this region.

In 1876, Russia had offered to partition the Balkans, but Hungarian statesman Gyula Andrássy had declined because Austria-Hungary was already a "saturated" state and it could not cope with additional territories.

On the heels of the Great Balkan Crisis, Austro-Hungarian forces had occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 1878 and the empire will eventually annex Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1908 as a common holding under the control of the finance ministry, rather than attaching it to either Austria or Hungary.

The occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina was a step taken in response to Russian advances into Bessarabia.

Unable to mediate between Turkey and Russia over the control of Serbia, Austria–Hungary had declared neutrality when the conflict between the two powers escalated into the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878).

The Kingdom of Italy, like some of the other European powers, wants to set up colonies and build up an overseas empire.

With this aim in mind, Italy joins the German–Austrian Alliance to form the Triple Alliance, partly in anger at the French seizure of Tunisia in 1881 (the so-called Schiaffo di Tunisi by Italian press), which many Italians had seen as a potential colony, and partly to guarantee herself support in case of foreign aggression: the main alliance compelled any signatory country to support the other parties if two other countries attacked.

At the time, most European countries try to ensure similar guarantees, and because of the Tunisian crisis, Italy finds no other big potential ally than its historical enemy, Austria-Hungary, against which Italy had fought three wars in the thirty-four years before the first treaty signing.

However, Italian public opinion remains unenthusiastic about their country's alignment with Austria-Hungary, a past enemy of Italian unification, and whose Italian-populated districts in the Trentino and Istria are seen as occupied territories by Italian irredentists.

In the years before the First World War, many distinguished military analysts will predict that Italy will attack its supposed ally in the event of a large scale conflict.

Italy's adherence to the Triple Alliance will be doubted and from 1903 plans for a possible war against Rome will again be maintained by the Austrian general staff.

Mutual suspicions will lead to reinforcement of the frontier and speculation in the press about a war between the two countries into the first decade of the twentieth century.

As late as 1911 Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, will be advocating a military preemptive strike against Austria's supposed Italian ally.

This prediction will be strengthened by Italy's invasion and annexation of Libya, bringing it into conflict with the German-backed Ottoman Empire.

King Carol's main objective in Romania’s foreign policy (shared by the majority of Liberal and Conservative leaders) is to make his country a regional power and an indispensable ally of the Great Powers in maintaining international stability, thereby guaranteeing his kingdom's security and vital interests.

To this end Carol and a small number of ministers, harboring an almost obsessive distrust of Russia, sign a secret treaty of alliance with Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy in 1883.

The primary attraction is Germany, whose military and economic power they admire and hope to use as protection against Russia, but because the majority of Romanians are sympathetic to France, the treaty is kept a closely guarded state secret.

Moreover, Romania's adherence to the Triple Alliance is under constant strain because of friction with Germany's partner, Austria-Hungary.

King Carol is  of German ancestry.

That, coupled with his wish to turn Romania into a center of stability in Southeastern Europe (as well as his fear of Russian expansion and their competing claims on Bessarabia), leads Romania secretly joining the Triple Alliance on October 18, 1883.

Only the King and a handful of senior Romanian politicians know about it.

Romania and Austria-Hungary pledge  to help each other in the event of a Russian, Serbian, or Bulgarian attack.

There are, however, several disputes between the two countries, the most notable being the policy of Magyarization of Transylvania's Romanian population.

Romania will eventually manage to achieve the status of Regional Power in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest, but less than a year later, the First World War will start and Romania, after a period of neutrality, in which both the Central Powers and the Allies try persuading Romania to join their respective sides, will eventually join the Allies in 1916, after being promised Romanian-inhabited Austro-Hungarian lands.

Romania's official reason for not siding with the Triple Alliance when the war starts will be the same as Italy's: the Triple Alliance is a defensive alliance, but Germany and Austria-Hungary have taken the offensive.

Francesco Crispi, a cabinet minister of Agostino Depretis and former Garibaldi republican, becomes Prime Minister when Depretis is finally pushed out of office in 1887 after years of political decline.

Crispi's major concerns before and during his reign is the protection of Italy from their dangerous neighbor Austria-Hungary.

To challenge the threat, Crispi works to build Italy as a great world power through increased military expenditures, as and advocate of expansionism, and trying to win Germany's favor by joining the Triple Alliance, which includes both Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1882 and which will remain officially intact until 1915.

While helping Italy develop strategically, he continues trasformismo and authoritarian rule, once even suggesting the use of martial law to ban opposition parties.

The overwhelming attention paid to foreign policy alienates the agricultural community in Italy, which has been in decline since 1873.

Both radical and conservative forces in the Italian parliament had demanded that the government investigate how to improve agriculture in Italy.

The investigation, which had started in 1877 and was released eight years later, showed that agriculture was not improving, that landowners were swallowing up revenue from their lands and contributing almost nothing to the development of the land.

There was aggravation by lower class Italians to the breakup of communal lands, which benefits only landlords.

Most of the workers on the agricultural lands are not peasants but short-term laborers who at best are employed for one year.

Peasants without stable income are forced to live off meager food supplies, disease is spreading rapidly, and plagues are reported, including a major cholera epidemic which kills at least 55,000 people.

The Italian government cannot deal with the situation effectively due to the mass overspending of the Depretis government, which has left Italy in huge debt.

Italy has also suffered economically because of overproduction of grapes for their vineyards in the 1870s and 1880s at a time when France's vineyard industry is suffering from phylloxera, a vine disease caused by insects.

Russia and France form a defensive alliance in July 1891.

The history of the Russo-French Rapprochement dates to the beginning of the 1870s, to the contradictions engendered by the Franco-Prussian War and the Treaty of Frankfurt of 1871.

The Russian government had supported France during the war scare of 1875 when Russian and British protests forced Germany to stop threatening an attack on France.

In 1876, the German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, had attempted unsuccessfully to obtain from Russia a guarantee to preserve the territory of Alsace-Lorraine as part of Germany in exchange for unconditional support by Germany for Russian policy in the East.

In 1877, during the new Franco-German war scare, Russia had maintained friendly relations with France.

However, after the Berlin Congress of 1878, French diplomacy, in aiming at a rapprochement with Great Britain and Germany, had assumed a hostile position vis-à-vis Russia.

France's alienation from Russia and her policy of colonial seizures had lasted until 1885, when the Franco-German contradictions became heightened after the French defeat in Annam.

Early in 1887, new complications had arisen in Franco-German relations, and France appealed to the Russian government for aid.

In concluding the so-called Reinsurance Treaty with Germany in 1887, Russia had insisted on maintaining for France the same conditions that Germany had stipulated for its ally, Austria.

Russo-German economic discrepancies had grown stronger at the end of the 1880s.

The Russo-French political rapprochement contributes to the influx of French capital into Russia.

At the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s, Russia receives a number of large loans from France.

The deterioration of Russo-German relations, the resurrection of the Triple Alliance in 1891, and the rumors that Great Britain will join the alliance lays the grounds for the conclusion of a political agreement between Russia and France.

During a visit by a French squadron to Kronstadt in July 1891, the agreement of 1891 is concluded in the form of an exchange of letters between the ministers of foreign affairs

France is interested significantly more than Russia in a military alliance and endeavors to supplement the 1891 agreement with military obligations.