On August 6 the armies of France and Germany met at Saarbruck. ...

On August 6 the armies of France and Germany met at Saarbruck. Napoleon III surrendered at Sedan on September 2. On September 20 the Italian army entered Rome by the gate of Michelangelo.

On December 18, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the King of Prussia was acknowledged German Emperor.

Europe had lost a mistress and found a master.' 'Let us go to Montmartre,' an English visitor was overheard to say: 'It is the best place to watch Paris burning.' The Prussian campaign against Austria in 1866 had imposed on the world a new standard, almost a new conception, of efficiency.

But no one had ever taken Austria very seriously as a military power, and the swoop of the German armies on Paris came, to England at least, as a revelation. At the opening of the war, sympathies were on the whole with Germany: Englishmen had no great cause to trust Napoleon, they knew something of the corruption of government in France, and had seen more of the corruption of society in Paris.