Mediaeval and modern history . world had never seen a more perfect instrumentof war than Prussia had forged and now launched against the matter of the mobilization and transportation of the troopseverything had been thought out and prearranged to the minutestdetail. Nothing had been left to chance. Every emergency had 6 Bismarck had made public Napoleons request for Hesse and Rhenish Bavaria atthe time of the Austro-Prussian War. These revelations had created a tremendoussentiment against France not only in the South German states but throughout allGermany. PROCLAMATION OF THE NEW EM
Mediaeval and modern history . world had never seen a more perfect instrumentof war than Prussia had forged and now launched against the matter of the mobilization and transportation of the troopseverything had been thought out and prearranged to the minutestdetail. Nothing had been left to chance. Every emergency had 6 Bismarck had made public Napoleons request for Hesse and Rhenish Bavaria atthe time of the Austro-Prussian War. These revelations had created a tremendoussentiment against France not only in the South German states but throughout allGermany. PROCLAMATION OF THE NEW EMPIRE 645 been foreseen. It is said that of a hundred and fifty trains, loadedwith a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, dispatched to theFrench frontier not one was a minute late. This was in strikingcontrast to the state of unreadiness and confusion on the Frenchside, where regiments were sent forward without their arms, andbewildered generals were telegraphing hither and thither in afrenzied search for their lost commands.^. Fig. 106.— Proclamation of King William as Emperor ofGermany at Versailles, January, 1871. (After a paintingby Anton von IVernej, Prussian Court Painter) 713. The Proclamation of the New German Empire (1871).—The astonishing successes of the German armies on French soil(sec. 654) created among Germans everywhere such patriotic 7 There was a deep underlying cause of the superiority of the German army overthe French which is worth noting. We have seen how, in the dark days which fol-lowed Jena in the time of the first Napoleon, the statesmen intrusted with devisingmeans for Prussias regeneration turned to education as the surest agency for thequickening and strengthening of the Prussian nation (sec. 640). It was her system ofeducation, quite as much as her system of universal military service, which had givenPrussia her strength and which was now leading her to these high places. It is toldhow the Prussian soldiers on the way to Sadowa relieved the ted
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Keywords: ., 1871, 18januar, 18januar1871, bookc, kaiserproklamation, versailles
