In the course of a few weeks consistently disastrous for France, two of her principal armies laid down their arms, and at Sedan the Emperor himself was taken prisoner. Paris was besieged, and yielded under stress of famine early in 1871. Peace was made on the terms that France should pay a money indemnity and should give up to Germany Alsace and Lorraine. There was the usual anarchical interlude of the Commune, when the mob obtained temporary possession of Paris; and finally a republican form of government was adopted which still endures. Those provinces which Germany thus took from France remained under German rule until given back to her at the end of the Great War.
One result of the war of 1870 to 1871 was that the domination of Prussia over the rest of the German States was yet more firmly established. The Southern, as well as the Northern, were brought into one group, and the King of Prussia assumed the supremacy over all with the title of German Emperor.
Norway and Sweden
That severance of Alsace and Lorraine from France was the last change of really large importance made in the map of Europe during the nineteenth century. It was almost the latest made before the Great War. In Scandinavia there was a later rearrangement, where Norway, who had for a long while chafed under her union with Sweden and desired freedom and recognition as a separate nation, attained her aim in 1905.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA
When the United States of America had once acquired the extensive territory known at the beginning of the century as Louisiana there was no effective bar to their extension westward until they came to the shore of the Pacific. There were hostile Indians, and deserts difficult to traverse in the slow-going wagons, but the westward progress of the pioneers went on with no serious sets-back and at a pace which was very wonderful considering the conditions. When the railway era came—we may date its beginning approximately at 1830—the progress was much accelerated.
The population of the States grew very fast, both by the increase of the old settlers and by immigration, especially from Ireland. Ireland never had been happy in her Union with England, and her people were discontented and very ready to try their fortunes under the American flag. Just before the middle of the century the potato, on which the Irish people chiefly live, had failed almost entirely, and there had been cruel famine and distress, which further encouraged them to emigrate.
Thus America grew great. We have seen that as early as 1823 she had put forth that announcement known as the Monroe Doctrine, which proclaimed that she deemed the whole of the vast South American Continent, as well as the whole of the North which lay south of the Canadian border, to be her concern, and hers alone. She would allow no European nation to interfere there.