War, though still postponed, was now certain; and with this certainty the desire of the Italians for the Prussian alliance, now recommended by Napoleon, revived. By the 16th of March 1866 the Austrian war preparations were so far advanced that Count Mensdorff thought it safe to send an ultimatum to Prussia and, at the same time, a circular note to the princes declaring that, in the event of an evasive reply, Austria would move in the diet for the mobilization of the federal forces. On the 24th Bismarck in his turn issued a circular note stating that, in view of the Austrian war preparations, Prussia must take measures for her defence; at the same time he laid before the princes the outline of the Prussian scheme for the reform of the Confederation, a scheme which included a national parliament to be elected by universal suffrage, “as offering surer guarantees for conservative action than limitations that seek to determine the majority beforehand.” Clearly Prussia meant war, and the Italian government thought it safe to sign, on the 8th of April 1866, a treaty of alliance. By this instrument it was agreed that in Prusso-Italian alliance. the event of her proposals for the reform of the federal constitution being rejected by the German princes, Prussia should declare war “in order to give effect to her proposals,” and that, in that case, Italy would also declare war against Austria. As a result of the war Venetia was to be added to Italy and an equivalent amount of territory in North Germany to Prussia. The agreement, however, was only to hold good if war broke out within three months.

On the day after the signature of the treaty the Prussian project of reform was presented to the federal diet. It was, however, no more than a bid for the support of public opinion on the part of Bismarck; for even while it was Prussian scheme for the reform of the “Bund.” under discussion an angry correspondence was being carried on between Berlin and Vienna on the question of armaments, and by the beginning of May both powers were making undisguised preparations for war. On the 21st of April, the very day when the discussion of the Prussian proposals began in the diet, Austria, alarmed at a threatened attack by Garibaldi on Venetia, began to mobilize in defiance of an agreement just arrived at with Prussia. Five days later, in spite of this, she sent an ultimatum to Berlin, demanding the continuance of the Prussian disarmament and an immediate settlement of the Schleswig-Holstein question. The supreme issue was, however, delayed for a few weeks by the intervention of Napoleon, who, urged on by the loud alarm of the French people at the prospective aggrandizement of Prussia, attempted to detach Italy from the Prussian alliance by persuading Austria to a cession of Venetia. The negotiations broke down on the refusal of Italy to throw over her ally, and Napoleon’s proposal of a European congress, to reconsider the whole settlement under the treaties of 1815, proved equally abortive. Meanwhile the preparations for war had been continued, and on the 1st of June Austria flung down the gage by declaring her intention of submitting the whole question of the duchies to the federal diet and of summoning a meeting of the Holstein estates. This was denounced by Bismarck in a circular note to the powers as a breach of the convention of Gastein and of the treaty of January 16, 1864, by which Austria and Prussia had agreed to govern the duchies in common. At the same time he handed in the formal protest of Prussia to the federal diet. Prussia, he said, would only recognize the right of a reformed federal power to settle the Schleswig-Holstein question, and this power must be based on a German parliament, which alone could guarantee Prussia that any sacrifices she might make would be for the good of Germany and not of the dynasties. The Prussian plan of reform laid before the diet included the exclusion of Austria from the Confederation; the creation of a federal navy; the division of the supreme command of the army between Prussia and Bavaria; a parliament elected by manhood suffrage; the regulation of the relations between the Confederation and Austria by a special treaty. In the event of the actual constitution of the Bund being shattered by war, the German states were asked whether they would be prepared to join this new organization. On the 9th of June Prussian troops had already marched into Holstein, the Austrians, with Duke Frederick, falling back on Altona. On the 14th the Prussian scheme of reform was laid before the diet, together with Austria’s counter-proposal for a decree of federal execution against Prussia. In the event of the rejection of Prussia’s motion, Bismarck had made it clear that Prussia withdraws from the “Bund.” Prussia would withdraw from the Confederation, and that in the event of her being victorious in the ensuing war those states of northern Germany that voted against her would cease to exist. In spite of this, the Austrian motion was carried by nine votes to six. The Prussian delegate at once withdrew from the diet, and on the following day (June 15) the Prussian troops advanced over the Saxon frontier.

The war that followed, conveniently called the Seven Weeks’ War (q.v.), culminated before a month had passed, on the 3rd Austro-Prussian War of 1866. of July, in the crushing Prussian victory of Königgrätz. The rapidity and overwhelming character of the Prussian success ensured the triumph of Bismarck’s policy. The intervention which Napoleon had planned resolved itself into diplomatic pourparlers of which the result was wholly insignificant; and even before the war was ended Bismarck was preparing for an understanding with Austria and with the South German states that should minimize the risk of a French attack. By the preliminary treaty of peace signed at Nikolsburg on the 26th of July the great objects for which Treaty of Prague, August 23. Prussia had fought were fully secured. By Article I. the integrity of the Austrian monarchy was preserved, with the exception of Lombardo-Venetia; by Article II. Austria consented to “a new organization of Germany without the participation of the empire of Austria,” consented to “the closer union” to be founded by the king of Prussia to the north of the Main, and to the German states south of the Main entering into a union, the national relations of which with the North German Confederation were to be “the subject of an ulterior agreement between the two parties”; by Article III. Austria transferred all her rights in Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia, reserving the right of the people of north Schleswig to be again united to Denmark should they “express a desire to be so by a vote freely given”; by Article V. the territory of Saxony was to remain intact. These Articles, embodying the more important terms, were included with slight verbal alterations in the treaty of peace signed at Prague on the 23rd of August. Separate treaties of peace had been signed with Württemberg on the 13th, with Baden on the 17th and with Bavaria on the 22nd of August; treaties with Hesse-Darmstadt Aggrandizement of Prussia. followed on the 3rd of September, with Saxe-Meiningen on the 8th of October and with Saxony on the 21st. The other unfortunate North German states which had sided with Austria were left to their fate, and on the 20th of September King William issued a decree annexing Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau and the free city of Frankfort to the Prussian monarchy, and bringing them under the Prussian constitution.

The return of King William to his capital had been a triumphal progress; and Bismarck had shared to the full the new-born popularity of his master. He seized the occasion to make his peace with Liberal sentiment, and the bill Federal constitution. of indemnity for past ministerial breaches of the constitution was carried in the new Prussian diet with enthusiasm. On the 24th of February 1867 the constituent diet of the confederation, elected by universal suffrage and the ballot, met in Berlin, and soon accepted in its essential features the constitution submitted to it. It was arranged that the headship of the confederation should be hereditary, that it should belong to the king of Prussia, and that legislative functions should be exercised by a federal council (Bundesrat), representative of the various governments, and by a diet (Bundestag) elected by the whole people.

The federal parliament began at once the task of consolidating the new institutions. In the sessions of 1869 and 1870 it established a supreme tribunal of commerce, sitting in Leipzig, and passed a new penal code. Great as were National Liberals. these results, they did not satisfy the aspirations of patriotic Germans, who, having so suddenly and so unexpectedly approached unity, longed that the work should be completed. A party called the National Liberals was formed, whose main object was to secure the union of South with North Germany, and it at once entered into peculiar relations with Bismarck, who, in spite of his native contempt for parliaments and parliamentary government, was quite prepared to make use of any instruments he found ready to his hand. There was, indeed, plentiful need for some show of concession to Liberal sentiment, if a union of hearts was to be established between the South and North Germans. The states south of the Main had issued from the war as sovereign and independent powers, and they seemed in no great haste to exchange this somewhat precarious dignity either for a closer alliance among each other or with the North German Confederation. The peoples, too, fully shared the dislike of their rulers to the idea of a closer union with North Germany. The democrats hated Prussia as “the land of the corporal’s stick,” and Bismarck as the very incarnation of her spirit. The Roman Catholics hated her as the land par excellence of Protestantism and free thought. Nothing but the most powerful common interests could have drawn the dissevered halves of Germany together. This sense of common interests it was Bismarck’s study to create. An important Customs parliament.
South German hostility to union. step was taken in 1867 by the conclusion of a treaty with the southern states, by which it was agreed that all questions of customs should be decided by the federal council and the federal diet, and that, for the consideration of such questions, the southern states should send representatives to Berlin. In reality, however, the customs parliament (Zollparlament) was of little service beyond the limits of its special activity. In the election to the customs parliament in 1868, Württemberg did not return a single deputy who was favourable to the national cause; in Bavaria the anti-nationalists had a large majority; and even in Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, where the opposition to Prussia was less severe, a powerful minority of the deputies had no liking for Bismarck and his ways. Thus the customs parliament was kept rigidly to the objects for which it was founded, greatly to the disappointment of patriots who had not doubted that it would become an effective instrument for the attainment of far larger purposes. Had the completion of unity depended wholly on internal causes, it certainly would Irritation of France. not have been soon achieved; but other forces, not altogether unexpectedly, came to Bismarck’s aid. France had been irritated by the enormous increase of Prussian power, and even before the treaty of Prague was signed the emperor Napoleon III. indicated a wish to be “compensated” with the left bank of the Rhine. This was a claim exactly calculated to play into Bismarck’s hands. The communication of the French emperor’s original proposals to the South German governments, whose traditional policy had been to depend on France to save them from the ambitions of the German great powers, was enough to throw them into the arms of Prussia. The treaties of peace between Prussia and the South German states were accompanied by secret treaties of offensive and defensive alliance, under which the supreme command in war was to be given to the Prussian king. A common war against a common enemy now appeared the surest means of welding the dissevered halves of Germany together, and for this war Bismarck steadily prepared. There were soon plentiful signs of where this enemy was to be sought. On the 14th of March 1867 Thiers in the French Chamber gave voice to the indignation of France at the bungling policy that had suffered the aggrandizement of Prussia. The reply of Bismarck was to publish (March 19) the secret treaties with the South German states. War was now only a question of time, and the study of Bismarck was to bring it on at the moment most favourable to Germany, and by a method that should throw upon France the appearance of being the aggressor. The European situation was highly favourable. France was hampered by the Roman question, which divided her own counsels while it embroiled her with Italy; the Luxemburg question, arising out of her continued demand for “compensation,” had only served to isolate her still further in Europe. French patriotic feeling, suspicious, angry and alarmed, needed only a slight provocation to cause it to blaze up into an uncontrollable fever for war.

The provocation was supplied at the right moment by the candidature of the prince of Hohenzollern for the vacant crown of Spain. To bring the Peninsula under French influence had been for centuries the ambition of French statesmen; The Hohenzollern candidature. it was intolerable that it should fall to a “Prussian” prince and that France should be threatened by this new power not only from the east but from the south. High language was used at Paris; and the French ambassador, Count Benedetti, was instructed to demand from the king of Prussia the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature. The demand was politely but firmly refused, and Bismarck, judging that the moment had come for applying the match to the powder magazine, published an “edited” version of the telegram from the king describing the episode, a version which “without the addition of a single word” turned the refusal Franco-German War.
Proclamation of the German empire. into an insult. The “Ems telegram” made the continuance of peace impossible; on the 14th of July Napoleon III. signed the declaration of war; and on the 2nd of August the affair of Saarbrücken opened the struggle which was to cause the downfall of the French and the creation of the German empire (see [Franco-German War]). On the 18th of January 1871, ten days before the capitulation of Paris, William I., king of Prussia, was proclaimed German emperor in the great hall of the palace of Versailles, on the initiative of the king of Bavaria, the most powerful of the South German sovereigns, the traditional ally of France. The cession of Alsace and the greater part of Lorraine, wrested two centuries before by Louis XIV. from the Holy Empire, was the heaviest part of the price that France had to pay for peace (treaty of Frankfort, May 10, 1871).

(W. A. P.)

The foundation of the empire in 1871 begins a new era in the history of Germany. The rivalry of the dynasties to which for so long the interests of the nation had been sacrificed now ceased. By the treaties of Versailles The new empire, 1871. the kingdoms of Bavaria and Württemberg, and the grand-duchy of Baden, as well as the southern provinces of the grand-duchy of Hesse, were added to the North German Confederation. Henceforward all the German states that had survived the struggle of 1866, with the exception of the empire of Austria, the grand-duchy of Luxemburg, and the principality of Liechtenstein, were incorporated in a permanent federal state under the leadership of Prussia. The revision in 1871 made no important alterations in the constitution of 1867. The states retained their autonomy except in those matters which were expressly transferred to the imperial authorities; the princes retained their sovereignty; the king of Prussia, though he now took the title of German emperor, was only primus inter pares; he was president of the confederation, but had no suzerainty over the other princes. None the less, from this time the acts of the state governments and parliaments have ceased to have more than a local importance; the history of the nation is centred in Berlin, in the Bundesrat or federal council, in which the interests of the individual states are represented; in the Reichstag, in which the feelings and wishes of the nation are expressed; and above all, in the Prussian government and imperial executive.

The new constitution has stood the test. The number of states of which the empire consists has remained unaltered;[3] occasional disputes have been settled harmoniously in a legal manner. The special rights reserved to Bavaria and The empire and the states. Württemberg have not proved, as was feared, a danger to the stability of the empire. Much apprehension had been caused by the establishment of a permanent committee for foreign affairs in the Bundesrat, over which the Bavarian representative was to preside; but the clause remained a dead letter. There is no record that the committee ever met until July 1900, when it was summoned to consider the situation in China; and on that occasion it probably formed a useful support to the government, and helped to still apprehension lest a too adventurous policy should be pursued. Another clause determined that in a division in the Reichstag on any law which did not concern the whole empire, the representatives of those states which were not concerned should not vote. This, had it been retained, would have destroyed the coherence of the Reichstag as representative of the whole nation. It was repealed in 1873. The permission to maintain diplomatic missions has been equally harmless: most of the states have recalled all their diplomatic representatives; Saxony, Bavaria and Württemberg have maintained only those at Vienna, the Vatican and at St Petersburg. Bavaria has even voluntarily adopted many imperial laws from which it was legally exempted; for instance, the laws of settlement.

If the states have been loyal to the empire, the imperial government has also respected the constitutional privileges of the states. The harmonious working of the constitution depends on the union of policy between the empire and Prussia, Prussia and the empire. for it is the power of Prussia which gives strength to the empire. This was practically secured by the fact that the emperor, who is king of Prussia, appoints the chancellor, and the chancellor is generally president of the Prussian ministry as well as minister of foreign affairs—in his person the government of the two is identified. For twenty years the double office was held by Bismarck, who, supported as he was by the absolute confidence of the emperor, and also of the allied princes, held a position greater than that ever attained by any subject in modern Europe since the time of Richelieu. For ten months in 1873 he, indeed, resigned the office of minister-president to Roon; and in the same way Caprivi, during the years 1893-1894, held the chancellorship alone; but in neither case was the experiment successful, and Hohenlohe and Bülow adhered to the older plan. So important is the practical co-operation of the imperial administration and the Prussian government, that it has become customary to appoint to seats in the Prussian ministry the more important of the secretaries of state who administer imperial affairs under the chancellor. Delbrück, head of the imperial chancery, had held this position since 1868; in 1877 Bülow, secretary of state for foreign affairs, was appointed Prussian minister, and this has become the ordinary practice. One result of this is to diminish the control which the Prussian parliament is able to maintain over the Prussian ministry.