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France’s efforts to build a military alliance against the Prussians started with the efforts of Napoleon III’s wife during the 1870 war. None of Prussia’s neighbors wanted to see Prussia beat France, but after the Prussian victories over Denmark and Austria, none of them wanted to enter the field of battle. After 1870, its was very clear that no European power, on its own, could defeat Germany.

Bimarck had made the maintenance of the Russo-German alliance the cornerstone of his foreign policy. When he was dismissed by the young Wilheim II in 1890, the new chancellor, Caprivi, was either incapable or unwilling to preserve this alliance. Wilhelm II, for all of his mental instability, clearly understood the catastrophic effect of this shift on Germany’s national security. When Czar Nicholas II assumed the throne of Russia in 1894, Wilhelm personally intervened in an attempt to maintain the alliance. But France was able to slip into the middle and signed a treaty with Russia.

Overnight, this new treaty changed France’s defense policy. If Germany attack France, Russia would come to France’s aid. France and Russia together, were considerably more powerful militarily than Germany. It did not take a military genius to see that while the Germans tried to fight their way through France’s new fortifications, Russian field armies would be busy, invading East Prussia.

The other side this treaty was, of course, that if Germany attacked Russia, France was bound to come to her aid. This meant the development of an army that would be able to mobilize promptly and take to the filed. France’s next logical priority would be the development of such an army.

But French foreign policy efforts were far from over. In 1902, France concluded a secret agreement with Italy that ruled out an Italian military action against France. As Germany was investing a good deal of effort in developing an alliance with Italy and Austria-Hungary, this treaty was another major setback for the Germans. This secret treaty was so highly classified, that the French Central Staff did not find out about it until 1909.

But as secret arrangements went, the best was yet to come. In January 1906, a series of talks between the French and British high commands discussed the possibility of landing a British force in France or possibly Belgium. Although these talks were supposed to be secret, unofficial, and non-binding, by June of 1906, the British had committed to providing an expeditionary force into the continent, in support of Franco-Belgian aims.

By the summer of 1906, France had a formal alliance with Russia, a secret neutrality agreement with Italy, and an even more secret understanding with Great Britain that committed the British to fight Germany on the Continent. France’s advantage was quite clear; Germany could hardly expect to emerge victorious against all three of the other major European powers. It would face a war on two fronts with no real allies to speak of.

France no had a formidable defensive network, which was now matched by a formidable network of alliances. What it needed now was an army capable of enforcing its will on the battlefield.

Source “The Myth of the Great War”