November, 1840, there anchored at Cherbourg, amid the
salutes of forts and ships, a French war-vessel called the Belle Poule,
on which were the mortal remains of the great conqueror, long since
conquered by death, and now brought back to the land over which he had
so long reigned. On December 8 the coffin was transferred to the steamer
Normandie, amid a salute of two thousand guns, and taken by it to the
Seine. On December 15 the coffin, placed on a splendid car drawn by
sixteen horses, moved in solemn procession through the streets of Paris,
attended by the noblest escort the city could provide, and passing
through avenues thronged with adoring multitudes, who forgot the
injuries the great soldier had done to France and remembered only his
fame. The funeral train was received by King Louis Philippe, the royal
family, and all the high dignitaries of the government at the Church of
the Invalides, in which a noble and worthy final resting-place had been
prepared for the corpse of the once mighty emperor. "Napoleon," says
Bourrienne, "had again and finally conquered. While every throne in
Europe was shaking, the Great Conqueror came to claim and receive from
posterity the crown for which he had sacrificed so much. In the
Invalides the Emperor had at last found a resting-place, 'by the banks
of the Seine, among the French people whom he had loved so well.'"

_THE PRUSSIAN WAR AND THE PARIS COMMUNE._

There have been two critical periods in the story of France in which
history was made at a rate of rapidity rarely equalled in the history of
the world. The first of these was the era of the Revolution and the
Napoleonic regime, which has no parallel among human events in the
rapidity and momentous gravity of its changes. The second was the period
from August, 1870, to the summer of 1871, less than a year in length,
yet crowded with important events to an unprecedented degree.

Within that year was fought a great war between France and Germany, in
which the military power of France, in an incredibly brief period, was
utterly overthrown, and that nation left at the mercy of its opponent.
Within the same period the second empire of France came to a sudden and
disastrous end, and a republic, the third in French history, was built
upon its ruins. Simultaneously a new and powerful empire was founded,
that of Germany, the palace at Versailles being the scene of this highly
important change in the political conditions of Euro