The Prussian army reigned victorious.
A quarter of a million men had surrendered to them
And the French emperor was their prisoner.
It was time to make peace.
There was only one problem.
You see, capturing an emperor sounds great;
It sounds like the thing that happens when you win.
But when the emperor is the state, and he's also your prisoner,
Who do you negotiate with? This was the problem Bismarck was facing;
Too much winning.
He wanted to make peace,
But they had won so much that he couldn't figure out who to make peace with.
So when the news reached Paris on September 2nd, 1870,
One of the remaining generals and a few French statesman declared themselves the government,
Which they cleverly named the Government of National Defense.
Of course, the Emperor was technically still alive, and hadn't ever abdicated, which was a complication.
Also, they hadn't been elected,
So where did their legitimacy come from? Well everybody basically agreed: Nowhere
This slap-dash government maintained some semblance of control
by delivering strong speeches about how France wouldn't give up an inch of territory.
To which Bismarck responded "Aha, Alsace and Lorraine, please."
Negotiations with this pseudo government quickly fell apart.
Moltke was pretty stoked; this meant he would get to march on Paris after all. As the Prussians approached the French capital,
The Government of National Defense recalled all of France's armed forces from their colonies, their holdings in Italy
and summoned them to the defense of the homeland. Soon, they had a formidable force at Paris at least on paper, and they began to dig in.
But Moltke simply surrounded the capital and laid siege to it.
One of the main members of the Government of National Defense peaced out via air balloon, to see if he could raise an army in Loire.
Everybody else stayed put, defenses raised, just waiting for Moltke to try to storm the city.
Moltke had no intention of doing something so blindingly wasteful though; instead
He plans to simply let Paris starve and wait them out,
While the rest of Germany's forces patrolled France, crushing whatever other armies the French put in the field.
Bismarck argued that they should shell the city;
Something that Moltke and the general staff felt was inhumane, against the rules of war, and probably ineffective anyway.
But as time wore on,
Wilhelm got impatient with the rising costs of this siege and ordered Moltke to listen to Bismarck.
There is much debate about how much effect the guns had, and whether it was the shelling or just the starvation that led to surrender,
But at last the government of National Defense signed an armistice.
During these peace negotiations the representative of the Government of National Defense pleaded with Bismarck,
Saying that if Paris acceded to all demands it would cause a socialist revolution.
Bismarck coolly replied "Then I recommend provoking an uprising now, while you still have an army to crush it."
Outplayed at every turn, the Government of National Defense gave Bismarck basically everything he wanted.
He got Alsace and Lorraine, with nearly 1700 villages and towns, adding a million and a half new souls to the German Empire.
He got 5 billion francs in gold to be paid as indemnity,
and Prussian troops would be staying in France until that was paid,
just in case some real French government came along and tried to go back on their deal.
Oh, and also Bismarck got a German Empire. More specifically, he forced the French to officially acknowledge
Vilhelm as Kaiser, or Emperor, of Germany, the last real step in the unification process.
Back when the war first started the southern German states, the last holdouts, had sort of been
Absorbed into this growing entity which Bismarck had been putting together.
During the war, citizens of Baden, or Bavaria, or Wurttemberg, had fought side by side with Prussians.
It had given them a sense of unity and brotherhood that eclipsed their regional differences; made them an army of Germans fighting together
So now as the war wound to a close;
After experiencing such a great victory through cooperation, these states all voted to become part of something greater.
Something called the German Empire
Finally, in a scene full of spectacle and drama, on January 18th, 1871,
The leading military commanders declared Vilhelm Kaiser, in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.
And so the glory of war, and the Pomp and Circumstance of imperial dignity played out.
Now all that was left was creating a constitution,
which Bismarck expedited by convincing the newly formed German Empire to simply adopt most of northern Germany's previous constitution.
But with one interesting proviso:
All ministries were under the office of Chancellor, and the Chancellor could propose legislation
Or bring things to debate in any of the parliamentary houses.
But the chancellorship itself was granted at the direct pleasure of the king.
No other body could remove a Chancellor or appoint one.
Coincidentally, Bismarck just so happens to be the Chancellor of Germany
But even with this broad power over his newly formed Empire, even now that he was finally ascendant in Germany and Europe at large,
Bismarck now faced a challenge that he had never truly had to deal with before:
The challenge of governing. Most of Bismarck's life had been focused on unification, on expansion, and on foreign policy.
He'd never before really had to focus on questions of domestic policy for Germany, a new Germany;
One sewn together out of disparate people of different backgrounds in different faiths.
And here perhaps would be his greatest challenge.
Because now he had to ensure the continued meteoric rise of this new German Empire, while at the same time,
fending off the jealousies of Europe's existing great powers, so that they didn't band together and crush this fledgling nation.
This Herculean effort would take him the rest of his life.
And for all of its difficulties, would be the triumph of his foreign policy, and his political philosophy of revolutionary conservatism.
But if Bismarck had one great failing; one true tragedy to his life,
It would be that he could not envision a world without Bismarck.
At least not until it was far too late.
And so all of this effort; all of this work he did to ensure a strong,
but peaceful future for Germany would wash away in other leaders hands.
Feeding directly into the looming catastrophes of 1914.
But that's a story for another time. Thanks for watching!