No, I wasn't sure, that's all.
To try and answer the question, the unification of modern Germany (under Prussian leadership with Otto von Bismarck as Chancellor) is pretty recent, since it only dates back to 1871.
In fact the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 ushered in Germany's unification and the proclamation of the German Empire ("Second Reich"), and that's when Berlin annexed Alsace-Lorraine, which French kings had previously taken from the Holy Roman Empire between the 16th and the 18th centuries AD. The Holy Roman Empire being the political entity which preceded the German Empire, and was in fact composed of a multitude of states, ranging from city-states to larger kingdoms.
The two sides' territorial claims over Alsace and Lorraine were of course a major factor of their antagonism during World Wars I and II.
Between the kingdom of France's expansion up to the river Rhine (16th-18th centuries) and the Franco-Prussian war (1870), Prussia and several other German states fought wars against the First French Empire led by Napoleon I. In 1806 Napoleon's armies defeated Prussia and established the Rhine Confederation, a client state over much of present-day German territory (east of the Rhine), but in 1813 Prussia and its Austrian, Russian, Swedish and local German allies came out victorious at the Battle of Leipzig and advanced all the way to Paris while dissolving the Confederation of the Rhine.
Although Alsace-Lorraine was not restored to the Holy German Empire, French occupation of Germany under Napoleon and the Battle of Leipzig largely fueled the genesis of modern German nationalism, whose aim was to integrate all German-speakers including those of Alsace and Lorraine into a unitary state.
eurovassals
