Great events call for great men, and usually find them. The adventures of his college life had never found the Prussian boy wanting in nerve or courage; he had always seized his chance and made the most of it. He did the same thing as he grew into manhood, and tried for a time life in the army, then on his father's farmland, and then in Parliament.
Great changes were coming over Europe as Otto grew to manhood; old countries were falling apart, and new ones being formed, and there was need of strong men to advise and to check the people. Especially was this true of Germany, which was then a collection of small kingdoms loosely joined together. When these kingdoms needed a man to steer them through the troubled waters that were gathering around them Otto von Bismarck saw his opportunity and took it.
He became the great statesman of Germany, the "Iron Chancellor" as he was often called, the man who built the present German Empire, and gave its crown to his own sovereign, William I, of Prussia. He was a man of tremendous power, aggressive, fearless, masterful, showing the same sturdy traits that had made him in his youth the most feared and admired schläger-fighter in all Göttingen.