Page:Van Loon--The Story of Mankind.djvu/465

Rh of guns told the hungry Parisians that a new German Empire had taken the place of the old harmless Confederation of Teutonic states and statelets.

In this rough way, the German question was finally settled. By the end of the year 1871, fifty six years after the memorable gathering at Vienna, the work of the Congress had been entirely undone. Metternich and Alexander and Talleyrand had tried to give the people of Europe a lasting peace. The methods they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth century was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has not yet come to an end.