In 1806, Napoleon and his army marched through Berlin.

The insult rankled to the proud Prussians for 65 years.

In 1871, following France's catastrophic defeat in the Franco-Prussian war,

one of the treaty terms was that the Prussian army got a chance

to march through Paris, thus avenging the insult. The French had no choice but to agree,

but on the day of the parade, the streets were empty, the buildings draped in black, the city

eerily silent. Basically, the French took all the fun out of it.

The Treaty of Frankfurt also ceded portions of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany, but the

French were determined to take all the fun out of that, too. They never accepted the loss, and

French foreign and military policy for the next 47 years will be focused on the restoration of the lost provinces.

Two generations of French schoolchildren will be taught that Alsace and Lorraine are rightfully French.

So intense will the French obsession with these two provinces become that the very French word for

revenge, revenge, will become in the English language, revengeism, today a generic term for a policy

aimed at the recovery of lost territory. And the rivalry between France and Germany will

establish the two opposing poles to which the other

European powers will be drawn, like bits of iron to one end or the other of a magnet.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music Episode 7, La Belle-A-Pop.

La Belle-Pop is a French expression, meaning the beautiful era,

and it is often used to describe the turn of the 20th century in general,

and the turn of the 20th century in France in particular.

We're going to be talking about the latter today. You may have already

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