The rest can be briefly told. Napoleon III., in brand new splendor,
was watching these events from Paris. He had an uncomfortable sense
that everything was too new and fine. There is nothing like the smoke
of the battlefield to simulate the delightfully mellow tone which, in
its finest perfection, comes only from age.
To humiliate this newly reconstructed Germany would give just the
needed touch to his prestige, and as no slightest pretext for war could
be found, one was made to order, in the shape of a pretended affront to
the French ambassador by the kindly old King William, while peacefully
sunning himself at Ems.
The question at issue was of the candidature of a Hohenzollern to the
vacant throne of Spain. Finding this was unpopular, the name was
promptly withdrawn by Prussia, and there the incident would naturally
have ended. But Bernadetti, French ambassador to Germany, had
instructions to press the matter offensively upon the king, who,
recognizing an intended impertinence, turned on his heel and left him.
The telegraph swiftly bore the news that the ambassador had been
publicly insulted by the King of Prussia. The French heart was
industriously fired, and the leaven worked well. The insolent Germans
must be taught that the great French Empire was not to be insulted with
impunity. Did not the beautiful empress herself buckle the sword upon
the emperor, and even upon the boy Prince Imperial, who should go and
witness for himself his father's triumphs, and receive an object
lesson, as it were, in avenging insult to the imperial dignity, which
would one day be in his keeping?
The miserable end came quickly!
In less than one month the emperor was a prisoner, and in seven months
his empire was swept out of existence; the Germans were in Paris--and
King William, Unser Fritz, Bismarck, and Von Moltke were quartered at
Versailles.
Here it was that the dramatic climax was reached when King Ludwig II.
of Bavaria, in the name of the rest of the German States, laid their
united allegiance at the feet of King William of Prussia, as the head
of the German Empire, begging him to assume the crown of Charlemagne,
which should be hereditary in his family! Poor, mad suicide though he
was, for this act Ludwig's memory should be forever enshrined in the
German heart, for he certainly first suggested, and then carried to
completion, this splendid consummation, apparently indifferent to the
fact that his own kingly dignity would be abridged. Adoring the
picturesque and dramatic as he did, perhaps it seemed to this royal
spendthrift not too much to pay a kingdom for the privilege of acting
in one scene so imposing and dramatic!
So, in January, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of
Versailles, King William assumed the title of "Emperor of Germany"--a
Germany richer by two French provinces and an enormous indemnity from
the conquered state; great in prestige and under the best of emperors
and greatest of prime ministers, augmenting hourly in all that
constitutes power in a state. In less than one decade--not yet ten
years from Bismarck's return to Berlin--a new Germany had arisen from
the fragments of the old, a Germany so great and powerful she was
likely to forget the degradation and humiliation of only a quarter of a
century ago.