It is GO TIME in Bismarck Land!
Bismarck had a list, and he was checking it twice.
Action item #1 on that list;
Steamroll some Danes.
16 years prior, in 1848,
Prussia had invaded Denmark with the hopes of annexing the largely German duchies of Schleswig and Holstein,
but the threat of international intervention had sent them packing.
Now, it was time for revenge.
Or, at least, a very pragmatic seizure of territory.
You see, the Danish king had just kicked it,
and, as basically happens when a European monarch checks out,
his death left EVERYBODY scrambling over the succession.
And, in this case, that scramble was played out between one staunchly Danish branch of the family,
and, one branch sympathetic to the Germans.
When the Danish group won out, they decided it was high time to rule Schleswig and Holstein directly,
to finally incorporate them into the Kingdom of Denmark,
not to leave them as semi-independent duchies with their own weird rules and privileges.
This violated a treaty the Danes had signed with the Prussians, though,
and gave Bismarck his chance.
But, it also made things tricky.
After all, if Bismarck used ideas of liberating the oppressed,
and defending smaller nations' rights,
to justify invading Schleswig-Holstein,
he'd have to find a REALLY good reason for sticking around to occupy those places himself,
instead of just leaving again.
He had been setting up these dominoes for a while, though.
There would be no repeat of the last time,
when they had to flee, due to other powers coming in on the side of the Danes.
He had already secured the friendship of the Russians,
and made vague promises to the French that they might see some territory out of the whole deal,
if Prussia was allowed to absorb Schleswig and Holstein.
And without Russia or France,
Britain would protest, but they would never actually go to war on the Danish side.
He had also suckered in Austria, convincing them that they were all on the same side.
"Germans defending Germans", and all that.
He even convinced them to be allies, and contribute a horde of troops to the effort.
And this, is KEY.
Not only did he need Austrian troops to secure a quick victory,
but, he it would also make them complicit.
If, after they won, he said that Prussia was going to take territory,
the Austrians wouldn't walk away without their share.
Which, not only meant that European public opinion wouldn't turn against Prussia,
but also meant that he wouldn't lose the moral high ground in the German Confederacy.
And his plan worked perfectly.
The combined Prussian/Austrian rapidly overran Denmark.
The Danes had to grant the independence of Schleswig-Holstein,
Bismarck made some ludicrous demands, and the Austrians, not wanting to be left out,
eventually caved to a compromise that left Bismarck exactly where he wanted to be.
Prussia would keep Schleswig.
The Austrians would get Holstein,
and he would get a small pile of other concessions to boot.
But Bismarck was always a man of large appetites.
He didn't come all this way to ONLY get Schleswig.
And so, Part 2 of the plan commenced.
Operation "Make Fun of Austrian Incompetence".
He played up everything that went wrong in Holstein,
and talked openly about it being a breeding ground for revolutionaries.
His sound and fury brought the 2 nations to the brink of war,
but both of their monarchs wanted to avoid such a conflict between brothers.
Wilhelm accepted the possibility of war,
but forbade Bismarck from explicitly goading the Austrians any more.
But Bismarck's work on that front was already done.
He had a backup plan in case war didn't come.
Bismarck ALWAYS had a (backup) plan.
But, he spent most of his time trying to shore up alliances,
to make sure that Prussia was ready for the fight his king (sort of) didn't want.
1st, the Italians.
Victor Emanuel, the man trying to unite Italy,
desperately wanted to take over Venice, which was in Austrian hands.
I mean, how can you have an Italy, with no Venice?
But he was NEVER going to have the strength to fight Austria alone,
and so Bismarck seized on this,
getting him to agree that,
if Prussia and Austria went to war,
the newly formed Italian Kingdom would join in, for only the small, small price of 1 Venice.
Which, Bismarck didn't really want, anyway.
Next, France.
While not publicly successful in securing the French as allies,
Bismarck was dealing with Napoleon III here.
A man too clever for his own good here, by half.
Napoleon III, who saw himself who saw himself as the equal of his famous uncle,
Napoleon III, who saw himself who saw himself as the equal of his famous uncle, (But, really, REALLY wasn't)
took the only course of action that would get him nothing:
he wouldn't support Prussia, but he wouldn't support Austria, either.
This was just fine by Bismarck.
Finally, Bismarck kept pressure on Austria,
having Prussian officials meet with Romanians, Magyars, Czechs and Serbs,
any ethnic minority within the Austrian Empire.
All in order to make it look like he was building allies,
and raising legions of revolutionaries,
ready to revolt the moment the Austrians went to war.
But Bismarck's plans were interrupted by one thing he did not factor in.
As he walked down Boulevard, Unter den Linden,
2 shots broke the quiet.
He whirls.
A young man stands before him, revolver in hand.
The 51 year old Bismarck grabs him.
3 more shots ring out as they grapple.
Finally, soldiers run up and subdue the man.
As the assassin is hauled off,
they check Bismarck for wounds.
1 finds a hole in his coat,
and follows it to find a hole in his waistcoat.
Which, with some trepidation, he follows to find a hole in Bismarck's shirt.
All 5 shots had hit.
But, every shot had either only grazed him, or bounced off of his ribs.
(In a moment that history doesn't record, but, I think we all know happened,
Bismarck simply nodded to the soldier, said,
"IRON."
"IRON." "CHANCELLOR."
put on shades, and walked away.
Refusing to let 1 measely assassination attempt, get in the way of a good conquest,
Bismarck went right back to work, getting the German speaking world to tear itself apart.
And as rumors swirled, the Austrians felt they had to make a move.
So, they called the Pan-German Diet in Frankfurt, to decide the issue of Schleswig and Holstein.
The diet moved against Prussia, but, this played right into Bismarck's hand.
The moment the diet came to their decision, the Prussian representative read a statement,
that Bismarck had prepared for just such a moment.
Declaring the diet invalid,
and the Deutscher Bund (1815-1866) dissolved.
Now, it would be war.
It would be the Northern German states, and Prussia,
and the Southern German states, and the Austrian Empire.
Hundreds of thousands of men were mustered.
It could have been a long war,
but now, the Prussian king had, in his service,
a general as capable on the battlefield, as Bismarck was in the conference room...
General Moltke.
The uncle of the Moltke, who will so disastrously lead the German forces into the First World War [1914-1918],
this Moltke could have not been more different from his nephew.
He was one of the first to see that the modern rifle had made the idea of the frontal charge obsolete.
He grasped the importance of railroads, for mobilization.
And, he realized that modern armies were too big to be commanded by one man.
That, plans should be flexible, and subordinates should be allowed to take initiative within them.
It was this Moltke who famously said,
"No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."
Moltke led a lightning war, crushing the once great Austrian Empire within weeks.
And now, where Bismarck once had to work so hard to get the king to go to war,
their success had been so great,
that he had to work equally hard to get the king to stop.
Bismarck realized that they could only push so far,
before the other Great Powers stepped in, and all of the work that he had done would be undone.
More still, he believed that once he had eclipsed them,
he might need the Austrians to serve as a balance against one of the other Great Powers.
So, he must not impose on them, a peace that would leave them hating Prussia.
So Bismarck called in his erstwhile enemy, the Crown Prince,
the same Frederich Wilhelm who he had so unsuccessfully tried to put on the throne as a toddler,
and put him to work, reining in his father.
Fritz, a lover of peace, despite being an excellent military commander,
convinced the king to accept the deal that Bismarck had on the table.
I. Prussia would take over most of Northern Germany,
II. The German Confederation, as a body, would be disbanded,
III. Their Italian allies would get Venice, and
IV. Austria would be forever exempt from any Pan-German parliament,
or from meddling in German affairs.
(Oh, and weirdly, Lichtenstein became an independent country,
so, that also.)
All in all, things were looking up for Bismarck's grand project of uniting Germany under Prussian rule.
There just loomed one more obstacle,
one great nation, that,
although neutral so far,
would oppose any further increase in German unity and strength.
There was the problem,
There was the problem, of France...