Formation of Germany: Part 4 | All Things Kevin on the Web

THE FORMATION OF GERMANY AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE
Part 4: Brothers at War: Settling the German Question

1. The Fuse is Lit in Holstein
2. Isolating the Empire: Bismarck’s Foreign Policy
3. The Seven Weeks' War: Speed, Technology, and Staff Work
- The Three Pillar Machine
- The Decisive Battle: Königgrätz (Sadowa)
4. The Peace of Prague: Mercy as Strategy
5. The North German Confederation (1867): The Prototype Empire
- The Federal Architecture
6. The Reconciliation with Liberalism
7. Looking Ahead: The Southern Frontier
8. Videos

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ABOVE: King Wilhelm I

1. The Fuse is Lit in Holstein

By the spring of 1866, the shared victory over Denmark had served its purpose. The joint administration agreed upon at the Convention of Gastein—where Prussia took Schleswig and Austria governed Holstein—had produced exactly the friction Otto von Bismarck intended.

Geographically, Austria’s position in Holstein was unsustainable. Surrounded entirely by Prussian-controlled land and the North Sea, the enclave was separated from Vienna by hundreds of miles of rival territory. When the Austrian governor in Holstein permitted local assemblies to voice support for an independent German duke, Bismarck seized on the act, accusing Vienna of violating their treaty agreements and stirring up subversion on Prussia’s doorstep.

In April 1866, Bismarck took a bold diplomatic step: he submitted a proposal to the Federal Diet in Frankfurt calling for the total reform of the German Confederation. His plan demanded the complete exclusion of Austria from German affairs, an imperial parliament elected by universal male suffrage, and the unification of all armed forces under Prussian command.

To traditional conservatives, Bismarck’s willingness to invoke democratic voting was shocking; to Austria, it was an explicit declaration of political war.

Vienna responded by bringing the Schleswig-Holstein dispute before the Federal Diet, asking the member states to mobilize the Confederation's forces against Prussia for violating the peace. On June 14, 1866, led by Austria, the Diet voted in favor of mobilization.

Prussia’s ambassador stood up, declared that the Confederation was officially dissolved by this unlawful act against a member state, and walked out. The long-simmering rivalry between the two powers—German Dualism—had finally burst into open military conflict.

2. Isolating the Empire: Bismarck’s Foreign Policy

Entering a war against Austria was a monumental risk. Austria was an ancient Great Power with a massive military and widespread support among the middle-sized German monarchies—including Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and Württemberg—who feared Prussian militarism far more than Austrian diplomacy.

If Austria could form a coalition with foreign empires, Prussia would face multi-front invasion and swift destruction. Before a single regiment marched, Bismarck used Realpolitik to ensure Austria stood alone on the European stage.

Russia: Tsar Alexander II remained grateful for Prussia’s diplomatic support during the Polish Uprising of 1863. Russia viewed Austria as an ungrateful rival in the Balkans and agreed to keep its armies stationed peacefully along its western frontier.
France: Bismarck met personally with Emperor Napoleon III at the French resort town of Biarritz in late 1865. Playing on Napoleon’s vanity, Bismarck held out vague possibilities of territorial compensations for France along the Rhine if France remained neutral. Napoleon III calculated that a war between Prussia and Austria would be a long, exhausting conflict that would leave both powers weakened, allowing France to step in as the ultimate arbiter of Europe. He miscalculated catastrophically.
Italy: In April 1866, Bismarck concluded a secret offensive alliance with the newly formed Kingdom of Italy. Italy agreed to declare war on Austria the moment Prussia initiated hostilities. In return, Italy was promised the Austrian-controlled territory of Venetia.

For the first time in its history, the Austrian Empire was forced to split its military forces, preparing to defend its northern border in Bohemia against Prussia while simultaneously fighting off an Italian invasion in the south.

3. The Seven Weeks' War: Speed, Technology, and Staff Work

When war began in June 1866, most European military observers predicted an Austrian victory. Austria possessed a larger overall population, a long cavalry tradition, and the combined support of major German allies like Hanover and Bavaria.

Instead, the Austro-Prussian War (also known as the Seven Weeks' War) was over almost as soon as it began, astonishing the world with its speed and modern military precision.

The Three Pillar Machine

The Dreyse Needle Gun: While Austrian infantry carried modern, accurate muzzle-loading rifles that required soldiers to stand up to reload, Prussian infantry were equipped with the Dreyse breech-loading needle gun. A Prussian soldier could lie flat behind cover, load a paper cartridge from the back of the barrel, and fire five rounds in the time it took an Austrian soldier to ram down a single shot.

Railways and Telegraphs: Under the direction of the Chief of the General Staff, General Helmuth von Moltke, Prussia utilized state-owned railways as strategic weapons. Moltke used five separate rail lines to move over two hundred thousand men directly to the frontier in days, coordinating their precise convergence via field telegraphs.
The Prussian General Staff: Unlike traditional armies commanded by royal heirs or aristocratic favorites, Prussia’s operations were directed by highly trained professional staff officers who analyzed logistics, map coordinates, and tactical scenarios with mathematical rigor.

Prussia moved with aggressive coordination. In the first two weeks of the war, Prussian armies invaded and disarmed Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse-Kassel before their forces could link up with the main Austrian army.

The Decisive Battle: Königgrätz (Sadowa)

On July 3, 1866, the conflict reached its climax on the rolling hills of Bohemia, near the fortress town of Königgrätz (known to the French as Sadowa). Nearly half a million men clashed in the largest land battle fought on European soil prior to the First World War.

For hours, the outcome hung in the balance as Austrian artillery pounded the Prussian center. But at mid-afternoon, precisely according to Moltke’s timed plan, the Prussian Crown Prince’s Second Army arrived unexpectedly on the field, striking the exposed Austrian right flank. Driven back by relentless breech-loading fire, the Austrian lines collapsed into retreat.

Austria had lost nearly forty-five thousand men killed, wounded, or captured in a single afternoon. The war for Central Europe was won.

4. The Peace of Prague: Mercy as Strategy

In the wake of Königgrätz, the Prussian army stood just three days' march from Vienna. King Wilhelm I, surrounded by his victorious generals, demanded a triumphant parade through the Austrian capital, heavy war indemnities, and the annexation of Austrian border territories.

It was here that Bismarck’s genius for Realpolitik faced its greatest internal test.

Bismarck engaged in furious, screaming arguments with his King to prevent him from humiliating Austria. In a famous, tense confrontation at field headquarters, Bismarck broke down in tears, threatened to jump out of a second-story window, and argued that ruining Austria would destroy Prussia’s long-term security.

Bismarck’s logic was ruthless and forward-looking:

Prevent Foreign Intervention: If Prussia prolonged the war to dismantle Austria, France and Russia would inevitably intervene to protect the European balance of power.
Future Alliances: Prussia did not need an eternal enemy on its southern border. Bismarck foresaw that a day might come when Prussia would need Austria’s neutrality or friendship in a future conflict with France.

The resulting Peace of Prague (August 1866) was extraordinarily lenient toward Austria. Vienna lost no historic territory to Prussia (surrendering only Venetia to Italy) and paid a modest financial indemnity.

However, the political price was absolute: the ancient German Confederation was dissolved forever. Austria agreed to withdraw entirely from German affairs and recognized Prussia’s absolute right to organize a new political order north of the Main River.

5. The North German Confederation (1867): The Prototype Empire

With Austria pushed out of Central Europe, Bismarck moved instantly to consolidate Prussian power.

He directly annexed the independent states that had backed Austria—including the Kingdom of Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse-Kassel, the Duchy of Nassau, and the Free City of Frankfurt. In one stroke, Prussia absorbed over three million subjects, eliminating the geographic gap that had divided its eastern and western provinces since 1815.

In 1867, Bismarck authored the constitution for a new federal state: the North German Confederation (Norddeutscher Bund).

The Federal Architecture

The new Confederation brought 22 sovereign states north of the Main River under a single central government dominated by Berlin:

Executive Power: The King of Prussia served as hereditary Bundespräsidium (President), holding supreme military command and the power to declare war and sign treaties. The Federal Chancellor (Bundeskanzler)—a post created specifically for Bismarck—answered directly to the King, not to parliament.
The Reichstag: A federal parliament elected by universal, direct male suffrage. By granting all working-class men the right to vote, Bismarck outmaneuvered the liberal middle classes, believing that conservative rural peasants would vote for national stability and traditional authority.
The Bundesrat: A federal council representing the governments of the individual member states, where Prussia held enough votes to veto any constitutional amendment single-handedly.

The North German Confederation was not a temporary alliance; it was a modern state equipped with a unified postal service, common commercial codes, a standardized navy, and a single military command structure led by Berlin. It was, in every meaningful respect, the structural engine of the future German Empire—lacking only the four independent Catholic monarchies of the south.

6. The Reconciliation with Liberalism

Bismarck’s lightning victory in 1866 triggered a massive political earthquake inside Prussia, destroying the liberal opposition that had fought him over military budgets since 1862.

Confronted with the astonishing reality of a semi-unified German national state created by Prussian arms, the liberal Progressive Party fractured. A large faction of liberals realized that Bismarck had achieved their lifelong dream of national unity—not through parliamentary speeches, but through power.

In September 1866, Bismarck presented the Indemnity Bill to the Prussian Parliament. He asked the deputies to grant retroactively legal approval for the military expenditures his government had made without a budget over the past four years.

It was a masterstroke of political conciliation. By asking for indemnity, Bismarck formally recognized the constitutional right of Parliament to control the budget going forward. In return, the liberals granted him complete immunity for his past violations.

The moderate majority broke away to form a new political party: the National Liberal Party. From 1867 onward, these former opponents became Bismarck’s primary legislative partners, helping him draft the legal, financial, and industrial foundations of the modern state.

By unifying power with law, Bismarck had reconciled the Prussian monarchy with the modern national movement. The broad foundation of the nation was laid; only the final spark was missing.

7. Looking Ahead: The Southern Frontier

By 1867, the map of Central Europe had been rewritten. Austria was excluded, Prussia was dominant, and the northern states were bound together inside a powerful new federal state.

Yet, the project remained unfinished. Four major southern German states—Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and Hesse-Darmstadt—remained outside the North German Confederation. Proudly Catholic, protective of their independence, and deeply suspicious of Prussian dominance, these southern monarchies refused to join Bismarck's creation voluntarily.

Furthermore, across the border in Paris, Emperor Napoleon III looked upon the sudden appearance of this military powerhouse with growing alarm, determined to prevent Prussia from ever absorbing the south.

In the next article, "The Spark in Paris: The Final Barrier," we will explore how Bismarck maneuvered France into declaring open war, igniting a wave of national enthusiasm that drew the southern states into a final, unified German crusade.