The world: historical and actual . e in parliament. KaiserWilliam was not slow in recognizing his intenseloyalty to imperialism, and his consummate abilityas a statesman. He had fromthe first two ideas—the for-mation of a German empirewith Austria left out, and thehumiliation of France. Thefirst was never concealed. Bismarck attracted generalattention for the first time inconnection with the Schleswig-Holstein war. That was begunDecember 7, 1864. At firstAustria helped Prussia, ex-pecting to have one of theduchies, Schleswig or Hol-stein, for its share of thespoils. Against these two greatGerm
The world: historical and actual . e in parliament. KaiserWilliam was not slow in recognizing his intenseloyalty to imperialism, and his consummate abilityas a statesman. He had fromthe first two ideas—the for-mation of a German empirewith Austria left out, and thehumiliation of France. Thefirst was never concealed. Bismarck attracted generalattention for the first time inconnection with the Schleswig-Holstein war. That was begunDecember 7, 1864. At firstAustria helped Prussia, ex-pecting to have one of theduchies, Schleswig or Hol-stein, for its share of thespoils. Against these two greatGerman powers was arrayed,besides those little duchies,the feeble kingdom of Den-mark. Of course the end couldnot be doubtful. A diplomatic war followed theclose of actual hos-tilities. In that cor-respondence andthose negotiationsCount Bismarck(for he was notthen a prince) wonthe admiration ofthe world by whatmay properly becalled deceptivetruthfulness. Hesaid what hemeant, and meantwhat he said. So unusual a thing was that in dip-. EISMARCK. NEW GERMANY. 239 lomacy that his utterances were misinterpreted. Theresult was a misunderstanding which served as a pre-text for Prussia to declare war against Austria,which it did in June, 1866. On one side of the Seven-Weeks War, as it wascalled, was Prussia with nineteen millions of peo-ple ; on the other, Austria with, including the alliedGerman states, fifty millions. It seemed a rash pro-ceeding on the part of Prussia to seek a quarrelagainst such odds. But hardly had the war begunbefore it was over, resulting in the utter overthrowof Austria. The Prussian army was supplied withthe needle-gun and Krupp guns. The former werea great improvement upon the musketry of the Aus-trians, while the latter were no less superior to thecannons of the enemy. The respective commanders-in-chief were very unevenly pitted against eachother. Prussia had that Wellington of the period, Von Moltke, whileAustria had onlyMarshal Benedek. Itwas on the second
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookde, booksubjectworldhistory, ottovonbismarck
