way over the mountains; fifteen thousand were made prisoners. A
few escaped to their homes. A correspondent who saw them after
they reached safety, said,--

"In all of them, pinched features and a slouching gait told of
gnawing hunger, while their hollow voices told of nights spent
on snow and frozen ground. Some had tied bits of wood under their
bare feet to keep them from the stones. For weeks none had washed,
or changed their clothes. Their hands were black as Africans'. For
three days neither food nor fodder had been served out to them,
and before that they had only got one four-pound loaf among eight
men."

While men were thus suffering in the mountains, an event of the
greatest political importance was taking place at Versailles. On
January 19, a week before the capitulation of Paris, the king of
Prussia received a deputation from the German Reichstag, offering
him the imperial crown of Germany.

The Federal States of the German Empire up to the close of the
last century were three hundred and sixty; many of these were only
free cities or extremely small duchies or principalities. There
was a German emperor and a German Diet. The latter met always at
Frankfort. The emperor might be of any family or of any religion.
His successor was elected during his lifetime, to be ready in case
of accident, and was called King of the Romans. The emperor was
at first chosen by the princes at large, but in process of time
the choice was made over to nine princes, called electors. After
1438, all emperors of Germany were of the house of Hapsburg, the
royal family of Austria. This was not law, but custom. In the days
of Napoleon I. the old German Empire was broken up. The title of
Emperor of Germany was discontinued, though he who would have borne
it still held an imperial title as Emperor of Austria. The small
German princes were mediatized; that is, pensioned, and reduced
from sovereign princes to the condition of mere nobles. In place
of three hundred and sixty States there remained thirty-six States,
composing the German Confederation. A new German Federal Constitution
was formed; the States agreed to defend one another, to do nothing
to injure one another, and to abstain from making war upon one
another. There were practically seventeen votes in the Diet, some
of the larger States having several, and many of the smaller States
uniting in the possession of one.

This Constitution also was swept away in 1866, after the br