On an August night in 1855, “the grand court of the chateau shone with a brilliance resembling day.  The profile of the great edifice was outlined in small lights.  In the gardens, arches and columns were raised and the fountains showered rainbow torrents.  The Hall of Mirrors presented a spectacle whose splendor recalled nights when Louis XIV strolled here in brocade and ruffles.  Garlands hung from the ceiling, thousands of lights reproduced themselves in the lofty mirrors and shed scintillating floods upon the handsome costumes of the invited ones.”  Thus the Moniteur Universel described to its readers the reception offered by the Emperor of France to Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort and the future King of England.  A few years later Emperor Napoleon III commanded another fete amid the grandeurs of Versailles, this time in honor of the King of Spain.

But the days and nights of royal spectacles at last came to an end—­and for all time.  In the month of September, 1870, the chateau offered refuge to German soldiers wounded in the short but bitter war with France.  In the Oeil-de-Boeuf, the Council Hall, the little apartments of Louis XV and those of Marie Antoinete were placed four hundred invalid cots.  By October, Bismarck arrived in the town of Versailles.  During the next five months he resided on the Rue de Provence, in the villa of Madame Jesse, widow of a prosperous cloth manufacturer.  His quarters were the center of diplomatic action during the period that preceded the signing of the shameful peace terms.  January 18, 1871, the anniversary of the day on which the first king of Prussia had crowned himself at Konigsberg (1701), was fixed for the proclamation of William II as German Emperor, in the Hall of Mirrors.  In the phrase of a chronicler of that time, “It was impossible for the boldest imagination to picture a more thorough revenge on the traditional foes of Germany than the proclamation of the German Empire in the storied palace of the Kings of France.  With the shades of Richelieu and the Grand Monarch looking down upon them did the Teutonic chieftains raise as it were, their leader on their shields, and with clash of arms and martial music acclaim him kaiser of a re-united Germany.”  King William passed from the altar in the middle of the Gallery to a platform at the end of the hall and there took his place before the colors, surrounded “by a brilliant multitude of princes, generals, officers and troops.”  When he had announced the re-establishment of the Empire, and when Bismarck, “looking pale, but calm and self-possessed,” had read to the assemblage the Proclamation to the German people, “the bands burst forth with the national anthem, colors and helmets were wildly waved, and the Hall of Mirrors shook with a tremendous shout that was taken up and swelled till the rippling thunder-roll of cheers struck the ears of the startled watchers on the walls of Paris,” where roar of cannon night and day summoned the French to surrender.  Thus the German Empire was born at the very seat of French Monarchy.