[5] Napoleon I had a young son who might have been Napoleon II if he had lived. The story is, that when Napoleon III was made emperor his name was printed simply with three exclamation marks after it--“Napoleon!!!” and this was by mistake read Napoleon III. Napoleon III was jealous of the neighboring country of Prussia. She was getting to be too strong, he thought. Prussia had a king at this time named William who was very able himself, and he had an able assistant or prime minister named Bismarck, who was looking for an excuse to fight France. So presently a war was started between the two countries in 1870. Napoleon soon found he had made a bad mistake in picking the war with Prussia. Prussia was not _getting_ too strong; she was already too strong. Napoleon III was completely beaten by Prussia, and he with a large army had to surrender. Then in disgrace he went to live in England. The Prussians marched into Paris and made the French agree to pay them a billion dollars. When some of the French towns said they couldn’t pay, Bismarck lined up the leading citizens of the place and told them they would be shot if they didn’t raise the money that was demanded. So France paid, and to the wonder and amazement of everybody she paid this immense sum in two years’ time. But the French and the French children have never forgotten the way they were made to pay and the way they were treated by the Prussians, and so ever since then there has been deadly enmity between these two countries. This war was called the Franco-Prussian War, as it was between France and Prussia. There were a number of little countries near Prussia. They were called German states. But though their people were related, the countries or states were separate. As a result of this war, Prussia was able to join all these German states together and to make for the first time one big, strong, powerful nation called Germany, feared by other countries on account of her great army of fighting men. William was made emperor of all Germany and called kaiser. He was crowned in the French palace at Versailles that Louis XIV had built. The French thought the Germans had been able to win this war because they had public schools in which all their children were trained, and because of the way their soldiers were drilled. So France set to work and started public schools everywhere in France and imitated the German way of drilling their army so that they would be ready for them in the next war. Ever since then France has been a republic with a president and an Assembly chosen by the people.