Of all the images to adorn the covers of histories of the nineteenth century, the most ubiquitous must surely be Anton von Werner's depiction of the proclamation of the German Empire on January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. Surrounded by the German princes, the new Emperor William I looks down impassively from the dais at the cheering throng of gorgeously uniformed officers, headed by the two main architects of victory, Prince Otto von Bismarck and Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. Conspicuous by his absence was the sensitive young King Ludwig II of Bavaria, for whom the thought of his detested Hohenzollern uncle desecrating the palace of the Sun King he venerated was too much to bear. His refusal to attend the celebrations is a salutary reminder that not all Germans were triumphalist in 1871. Ludwig's own prime minister, Baron von der Pfordten, wrote in his diary, “seventy-eight years ago the French killed their king; today the Bavarian deputies have placed their king and country under the military domination of Prussia. Finis Bavariae!” Well might they lament the apotheosis of the King of Prussia, for Bavaria had always flourished when French power was at its zenith. It had been Napoleon I who had turned the Wittelsbach electorate into a kingdom and had given it no fewer than eighty-three extra territories when he destroyed the Holy Roman Empire.