France declares support for Russia

In August 1891, France and Russia signed a consultative pact agreeing to confer if either faced a threat to peace, formalized after Czar Alexander III hosted a French naval squadron at Kronstadt. An 1892 military convention committed both nations to mutual defense against German attack. Ratified in January 1894, the Franco-Russian Alliance countered the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, fundamentally realigning European power blocs in the decades preceding World War I.