In April 1887, international tensions between France and the German Empire reached a boiling point over the Schnaebele Affair. Guillaume Schnaebelé, a French mid-level border commissioner in Alsace-Lorraine, was invited by his German counterpart to a routine business meeting near the frontier town of Pagny-sur-Moselle. Upon stepping near the border, Schnaebelé was ambushed and arrested by German secret police agents, who accused him of espionage against Germany.
The arrest sparked immediate outrage across France, as Schnaebelé had been granted official immunity for the meeting, leading many to believe German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had orchestrated a deliberate provocation to justify military action. French War Minister Georges Boulanger aggressively advocated for immediate military mobilization. Tensions escalated rapidly as both nations teetered on the brink of war.
However, Bismarck ultimately calculated that France would not back down and that the arrest on ambiguous territorial ground violated diplomatic protocol. Germany released Schnaebelé days later, defusing a crisis that nearly reignited full-scale European war decades before 1914.