and fought in battlefields between professional armies. A major war of the nineteenth century in Europe was the Franco‐Prussian war of 1870–1871, which lasted for 9 months and killed around 150,000 people, roughly an average week's tally in World War II, financed by the easy government money of the twentieth century. With the gold standard restricting them to finance war from taxation, European governments had to have their expenses prepared before battle, spend them on preparing their military as effectively as possible, and attempt a decisive victory.
