The Battle of Amiens, also known as the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, was fought on 27 November 1870 between French and Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). It ended in a Prussian victory, forcing the French to retreat and allowing the Prussians to capture Amiens, France. Background After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War on 19 July 1870, the Prussian Army and the armies of its allies — the other states of the North German Confederation and the independent states in southern Germany — scored a series of victories over the French Army in eastern France. These culminated in the Battle of Sedan and the Siege of Metz. At Sedan, German forces encircled and destroyed the French Army of Châlons on 1–2 September 1870 and captured Emperor Napoleon III, prompting a Government of National Defense to form in Paris on 4 September 1870 and declare an end to the Second French Empire and the foundation of the French Third Republic. The capitulation of Metz on 27 October 1870 after a 70-day siege resulted in the annihilation of the French Army of the Rhine and completed the defeat of the Second Empire's army. The Government of National Defense vowed to raise a new army for the Third Republic and fight on. Colonel Jean-Joseph Farre, was present at Metz but escaped when Metz surrendered and made his services available to the Government of National Defense, which appointed him military governor of Lille in the north of France. At Lille, he set to work raising units for a new French army in northern France. By the time Général de division Charles-Denis Bourbaki, the general-in-chief of the northern region, arrived to take command of the new army, named the Army of the North, Farre had raised 14 battalions of troops and six artillery batteries. Bourbaki and Farre continued to expand and train the army; promoted to général de brigade on 31 October 1870, Farre became its provisional commander — pending the arrival of a more senior officer to take command — when Bourbaki transferred to the Armée de l'Est at Rouen on 10 November 1870. The French hoped that the new Army of the North could advance successfully on Beauvais. Among the German forces freed up by the capitulation of Metz was the Prussian First Army, a force of 43,000 men and 180 guns under the command of Generalleutnant Edwin Freiherr von Manteuffel. In