Guillaume Schnaebelé
French police officer (1831–1900) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Guillaume Schnaebelé or Wilhelm Schnäbele[1] (1831 – 5 December 1900) was a French official from Alsace, best known for being arrested by Germans in the April 1887 Schnaebele incident (or Affair) which nearly led to war between France and Germany.[2][3]
Who caused the incident and why remains speculative, but it has been suggested that German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was its instigator, for a number of possible reasons: inciting France into starting a war, gauging the extent of French support for Boulangism, or creating tensions with France to force the renewal of a Russian-German alliance of neutrality that was under debate at the Russian court.
Others see it as simply a series of unintended consequences, notable for the role played by France's General Georges Ernest Boulanger. This and a number of other incidents involving General Boulanger are elements of what is known as the Boulanger Affair, a series of embarrassments for the newly formed government of the French Third Republic that some consider to have nearly led to a coup d'état.[4]