the emperor himself, were compelled to surrender as
prisoners of war. Thus fell Napoleon's empire.

After the battle of Sedan, one of the decisive battles of history, the
Germans advanced rapidly to Paris, and King William took up his quarters
at Versailles, with his staff and his councillor Bismarck, who had
attended him day by day through the whole campaign, and conducted the
negotiations of the surrender. Paris, defended by strong fortifications,
resolved to sustain a siege rather than yield, hoping that something
might yet turn up by which the besieged garrison should be relieved,--a
forlorn hope, as Paris was surrounded, especially on the fall of Metz,
by nearly half a million of the best soldiers in the world. Yet that
memorable siege lasted five months, and Paris did not yield until
reduced by extreme, famine; and perhaps it might have held out much
longer if it could have been provisioned. But this was not to be. The
Germans took the city as Alaric had taken Rome, without much waste
of blood.

The conquerors were now inexorable, and demanded a war indemnity of five
milliards of francs, and the cession of Metz and the two province of
Alsace-Lorraine (which Louis XIV had formerly wrested away), including
Strasburg. Eloquently but vainly did old Thiers plead for better terms;
but he pleaded with men as hard as iron, who exacted, however, no more
than Napoleon III would have done had the fortune of war enabled him to
reach Berlin as the conqueror. War is hard under any circumstances, but
never was national humiliation more complete than when the Prussian flag
floated over the Arc de Triomphe, and Prussian soldiers defiled
beneath it.

Nothing was now left for the aged Prussian king but to put upon his head
the imperial crown of Germany, for all the German States were finally
united under him. The scene took place at Versailles in the Hall of
Mirrors, in probably the proudest palace ever erected since the days of
Nebuchadnezzar. Surrounded by princes and generals, Chancellor Bismarck
read aloud the Proclamation of the Empire, and the new German emperor
gave thanks to God. It was a fitting sequence to the greatest military
success since Napoleon crushed the German armies at Jena and Austerlitz.
The tables at last were turned, and the heavy, phlegmatic, intelligent
Teutons triumphed over the warlike and passionate Celts. So much for the
genius of the greatest general and the greatest diplomatist that Europe
had kno