Vormärz The period of Austrian and Prussian police-states and vast censorship between the Congress of Vienna and the
Revolutions of 1848 in Germany later became widely known as the
Vormärz ("before March"), referring to March 1848. During this period, European liberalism gained momentum; the agenda included economic, social, and political issues. Most European liberals in the
Vormärz sought unification under nationalist principles, promoted the transition to capitalism, and sought the expansion of male suffrage, among other issues. Their "radicalization" depended upon where they stood on the spectrum of
male suffrage: the wider the definition of suffrage, the more radical they had the potential to be. The surge of German
nationalism, stimulated by the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period and initially allied with
liberalism, shifted political, social, and cultural relationships within the German states. In this context, one can detect nationalism's roots in the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period. Furthermore, implicit and sometimes explicit promises made during the
German Campaign of 1813 engendered an expectation of
popular sovereignty and widespread participation in the political process, promises that largely went unfulfilled once peace had been achieved.
Emergence of liberal nationalism and conservative response , where
Martin Luther had sought refuge over three centuries earlier, to demonstrate in favor of national unification. Wartburg was chosen for its symbolic connection to German national character. Contemporary colored wood engraving , which suppressed freedom of expression Despite considerable conservative reaction, ideas of unity joined with notions of popular sovereignty in German-speaking lands. The
Burschenschaft student organizations and popular demonstrations, such as those held at
Wartburg Castle in October 1817, contributed to a growing sense of unity among German speakers of Central Europe. At the
Wartburg Festival in 1817 the first real movements among students were formed – fraternities and student organizations emerged. The colors black, red and gold were symbolic of this. Agitation by student organizations led conservative leaders such as
Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich, to fear the rise of nationalist sentiment. The assassination of German dramatist
August von Kotzebue in March 1819 by a radical student seeking unification was followed on 20 September 1819 by the proclamation of the
Carlsbad Decrees, which hindered intellectual leadership of the nationalist movement. Metternich was able to harness conservative outrage at the assassination to consolidate legislation that would further limit the press and constrain the rising liberal and nationalist movements. Accordingly, these decrees drove the
Burschenschaften underground, restricted the publication of nationalist materials, expanded censorship of the press and private correspondence, and limited academic speech by prohibiting university professors from encouraging nationalist discussion. The decrees were the subject of
Johann Joseph von Görres's pamphlet
Teutschland [archaic: Deutschland] und die Revolution (
Germany and the Revolution) (1820), in which he concluded that it was both impossible and undesirable to repress the free utterance of public opinion by reactionary measures. The
Hambach Festival (
Hambacher Fest) in May 1832 was attended by a crowd of more than 30,000. Promoted as a
county fair, its participants celebrating fraternity, liberty, and national unity. Celebrants gathered in the town below and marched to the ruins of
Hambach Castle on the heights above the small town of Hambach, in the Palatinate province of Bavaria. Carrying flags, beating drums, and singing, the participants took the better part of the morning and mid-day to arrive at the castle grounds, where they listened to speeches by nationalist orators from across the political spectrum. The overall content of the speeches suggested a fundamental difference between the German nationalism of the 1830s and the French nationalism of the
July Revolution: the focus of German nationalism lay in the education of the people; once the populace was educated as to what was needed, it would reach those goals. The Hambach rhetoric emphasized the overall peaceable nature of German nationalism: the point was not to build barricades, a very "French" form of nationalism, but to build emotional bridges between groups. As he had done in 1819, after the
Kotzebue assassination, Metternich used the popular demonstration at Hambach to push conservative social policy. The "Six Articles" of 28 June 1832 above all else reaffirmed the principle of monarchical authority. On 5 July, the Frankfurt Diet voted for an additional 10 articles, which reiterated existing rules on censorship, restricted political organizations, and limited other public activity. Furthermore, the member states agreed to send military assistance to any government threatened by unrest.
Prince Wrede led half of the Bavarian army to the Palatinate to "subdue" the province. Several hapless Hambach speakers were arrested, tried and imprisoned; one, Karl Heinrich Brüggemann (1810–1887), a law student and representative of the secretive
Burschenschaft, was sent to Prussia, where he was first condemned to death, but later pardoned. Crucially, both the Wartburg rally in 1817 and the Hambach Festival in 1832 had lacked any clear-cut vision for unification. At Hambach, the positions of the many speakers illustrated their disparate agendas. Held together only by the idea of unification, their notions of how to achieve this did not include specific plans but instead rested on the nebulous idea that the
Volk (the people), if properly educated, would bring about unification on their own. Grand speeches, flags, exuberant students, and picnic lunches did not translate into a new political, bureaucratic, or administrative apparatus. While many spoke about the need for a constitution, no such document emerged from the key nationalist rallies. In 1848, nationalists sought to remedy that problem.
Economy and the customs union Several other factors complicated the rise of
nationalism in the German states. The man-made factors included political rivalries between members of the German confederation, particularly between the Austrians and the Prussians, and socio-economic competition among the commercial and merchant interests, and the old land-owning and aristocratic interests. Natural factors included widespread drought in the early 1830s, and again in the 1840s, and a food crisis in the 1840s. Further complications emerged as a result of a shift in industrialization and manufacturing; as people sought jobs, they left their villages and small towns to work during the week in cities, returning for a day and a half on weekends. The economic, social and cultural dislocation of ordinary people, the economic hardship of an economy in transition, and the pressures of meteorological disasters all contributed to growing problems in Central Europe. The failure of most of the governments to deal with the food crisis of the mid-1840s, caused by the
potato blight (related to the
Great Irish Famine) and several seasons of bad weather, encouraged many to think that the rich and powerful had no interest in their problems. Those in authority were concerned about the growing unrest, political and social agitation among the working classes, and the disaffection of the
intelligentsia. No amount of censorship, fines, imprisonment, or banishment, it seemed, could stem the criticism. Furthermore, it was becoming increasingly clear that both Austria and Prussia wanted to be the leaders in any resulting unification; each would inhibit the drive of the other to take the lead in unification. Formation of the
Zollverein, an institution key to unifying the German states economically, helped to create a larger sense of economic unification. Initially conceived by the Prussian Finance Minister
Hans, Count von Bülow, as a Prussian
customs union in 1818, the
Zollverein linked the many Prussian and
Hohenzollern territories. Over the ensuing thirty years (and more) other German states joined. The Union helped to reduce protectionist barriers between the German states, especially improving the transport of raw materials and finished goods, making it both easier to move goods across territorial borders and less costly to buy, transport, and sell raw materials. This was particularly important for the emerging industrial centers, most of which were located in the Prussian regions of the
Rhineland, the
Saar, and the
Ruhr valleys. States more distant from the coast joined the Customs Union earlier. Not being a member mattered more for the states of south Germany, since the external tariff of the Customs Union prevented customs-free access to the coast (which gave access to international markets). Thus, by 1836, all states to the south of Prussia had joined the Customs Union, except Austria. In contrast, the coastal states already had barrier free access to international trade and did not want consumers and producers burdened with the import duties they would pay if they were within the Zollverein customs border. Hanover on the north coast formed its own customs union – the "Tax Union" or
Steuerverein – in 1834 with Brunswick and with Oldenburg in 1836. The external tariffs on finished goods and overseas raw materials were below the rates of the Zollverein. Brunswick joined the Zollverein Customs Union in 1842, while Hanover and Oldenburg finally joined in 1854 After the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg were annexed by Prussia and thus annexed also to the Customs Union, while the two Mecklenburg states and the city states of Hamburg and Bremen joined later because they were reliant on international trade. The Mecklenburgs joined in 1867, while Bremen and
Hamburg joined in 1888. The words of
August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben expressed not only the linguistic unity of the German people but also their geographic unity. In
Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, officially called
Das Lied der Deutschen ("
The Song of the Germans"), Fallersleben called upon sovereigns throughout the German states to recognize the unifying characteristics of the German people. Such other patriotic songs as "
Die Wacht am Rhein" ("The Watch on the Rhine") by
Max Schneckenburger began to focus attention on geographic space, not limiting "Germanness" to a common language. Schneckenburger wrote "The Watch on the Rhine" in a specific patriotic response to French assertions that the Rhine was France's "natural" eastern boundary. In the refrain, "Dear fatherland, dear fatherland, put your mind to rest / The watch stands true on the Rhine", and in other such patriotic poetry as Nicholaus Becker's "Das Rheinlied" ("The Rhine"), Germans were called upon to defend their territorial homeland. In 1807,
Alexander von Humboldt argued that national character reflected geographic influence, linking landscape to people. Concurrent with this idea, movements to preserve old fortresses and historic sites emerged, and these particularly focused on the Rhineland, the site of so many confrontations with France and Spain.
German revolutions and Polish uprising of 1848–1849 The widespread—mainly German—
revolutions of 1848–49 sought unification of Germany under a single constitution. The revolutionaries pressured various state governments, particularly those in the
Rhineland, for a parliamentary assembly that would have the responsibility to draft a constitution. Ultimately, many of the left-wing revolutionaries hoped this constitution would establish
universal male suffrage, a permanent national parliament, and a unified Germany, possibly under the leadership of the Prussian king. This seemed to be the most logical course since Prussia was the strongest of the German states, as well as the largest in geographic size. Meanwhile, center-right revolutionaries sought some kind of expanded suffrage within their states and potentially, a form of loose unification. Finally, the Polish majority living in the share of Polish territory annexed by Prussia
pursued their own liberation agenda.
Frankfurt Parliament in Frankfurt, where they laid the groundwork for electing a National Parliament Their pressure resulted in a variety of elections, based on different voting qualifications, such as the
Prussian three-class franchise, which weighted votes based on the amount of taxes paid and therefore gave some electoral groups—chiefly the wealthier, landed ones—greater representative power. On 27 March 1849, the
Frankfurt Parliament passed the
Paulskirchenverfassung (Constitution of St. Paul's Church) and offered the title of
Kaiser (Emperor) to the Prussian king
Frederick William IV the next month. He refused for a variety of reasons. Publicly, he replied that he could not accept a crown without the consent of the actual states, by which he meant the princes. Privately, he feared opposition from the other German princes and military intervention from Austria or Russia. He also held a fundamental distaste for the idea of accepting a crown from a popularly elected parliament: he would not accept a crown of "clay". Despite franchise requirements that often perpetuated many of the problems of sovereignty and political participation liberals sought to overcome, the Frankfurt Parliament did manage to draft a constitution and reach an agreement on the
kleindeutsch solution. While the liberals failed to achieve the unification they sought, they did manage to gain a partial victory by working with the German princes on many constitutional issues and collaborating with them on reforms.
The aborted 1848–1849 German Empire in retrospective analysis Scholars of German history have engaged in decades of debate over how the successes and failures of the Frankfurt Parliament contribute to the historiographical explanations of German nation building. One school of thought, which emerged after
The Great War and gained momentum in the aftermath of
World War II, maintains that the failure of German liberals in the Frankfurt Parliament led to
bourgeoisie compromise with conservatives (especially the conservative
Junker landholders), which subsequently led to the so-called
Sonderweg (distinctive path) of 20th-century German history. Failure to achieve unification in 1848, this argument holds, resulted in the late formation of the nation-state in 1871, which in turn delayed the development of positive national values.
Hitler often called on the German public to sacrifice all for the cause of their great nation, but his regime did not create German nationalism: it merely capitalized on an intrinsic cultural value of German society that still remains prevalent even to this day. Furthermore, this argument maintains, the "failure" of 1848 reaffirmed latent aristocratic longings among the German middle class; consequently, this group never developed a self-conscious program of modernization. More recent scholarship has rejected this idea, claiming that Germany did not have an actual "distinctive path" any more than any other nation, a historiographic idea known as
exceptionalism. Instead, modern historians claim 1848 saw specific achievements by the liberal politicians. Many of their ideas and programs were later incorporated into Bismarck's social programs (e.g., social insurance, education programs, and wider definitions of suffrage). In addition, the notion of a distinctive path relies upon the underlying assumption that some other nation's path (in this case, the United Kingdom's) is the accepted norm. This new argument further challenges the norms of the British-centric model of development: studies of national development in Britain and other "normal" states (e.g., France or the United States) have suggested that even in these cases, the modern nation-state did not develop evenly. Nor did it develop particularly early, being rather a largely mid-to-late-19th-century phenomenon. Since the end of the 1990s, this view has become widely accepted, although some historians still find the
Sonderweg analysis helpful in understanding the
period of National Socialism.
Problem of spheres of influence: The Erfurt Union and the Punctation of Olmütz , was created to hide the organ of the
Paul's Church in Frankfurt, during the meeting of the Parliament there, March 1848–49. The sword was intended to symbolize the
Word of God and to mark the renewal of the people and their triumphant spirit. After the Frankfurt Parliament disbanded, Frederick William IV, under the influence of General
Joseph Maria von Radowitz, supported the establishment of the
Erfurt Union—a federation of German states, excluding Austria—by the free agreement of the German princes. This limited union under Prussia would have almost eliminated Austrian influence on the other German states. Combined diplomatic pressure from Austria and Russia (a guarantor of the 1815 agreements that established European spheres of influence) forced Prussia to relinquish the idea of the Erfurt Union at a meeting in the small town of
Olmütz in Moravia. In November 1850, the Prussians—specifically Radowitz and Frederick William—agreed to the restoration of the German Confederation under Austrian leadership. This became known as the
Punctation of Olmütz, but among Prussians it was known as the "Humiliation of Olmütz." Although seemingly minor events, the Erfurt Union proposal and the Punctation of Olmütz brought the problems of influence in the German states into sharp focus. The question became not a matter of
if but rather
when unification would occur, and
when was contingent upon strength. One of the former Frankfurt Parliament members,
Johann Gustav Droysen, summed up the problem: Unification under these conditions raised a basic diplomatic problem. The possibility of German (or
Italian) unification would overturn the overlapping
spheres of influence system created in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. The principal architects of this convention,
Metternich,
Castlereagh, and
Tsar Alexander (with his foreign secretary Count
Karl Nesselrode), had conceived of and organized a Europe balanced and guaranteed by four "
great powers": Great Britain, France, Russia, and Austria, with each power having a geographic sphere of influence. France's sphere included the Iberian Peninsula and a share of influence in the Italian states. Russia's included the eastern regions of Central Europe and a balancing influence in the Balkans. Austria's sphere expanded throughout much of the Central European territories formerly held by the
Holy Roman Empire. Britain's sphere was the rest of the world, especially the seas. This sphere of influence system depended upon the fragmentation of the German and Italian states, not their consolidation. Consequently, a German nation united under one banner presented significant questions. There was no readily applicable definition for who the German people would be or how far the borders of a German nation would stretch. There was also uncertainty as to who would best lead and defend "Germany", however it was defined. Different groups offered different solutions to this problem. In the
Kleindeutschland ("Lesser Germany") solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the
Prussian Hohenzollerns; in the
Grossdeutschland ("Greater Germany") solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the
Austrian Habsburgs. This controversy, the latest phase of the
German dualism debate that had dominated the politics of the German states and Austro-Prussian diplomacy since the 1701 creation of the
Kingdom of Prussia, would come to a head during the following twenty years.
External expectations of a unified Germany Other nationalists had high hopes for the German unification movement, and the frustration with lasting German unification after 1850 seemed to set the national movement back. Revolutionaries associated national unification with progress. As
Giuseppe Garibaldi wrote to German revolutionary
Karl Blind on 10 April 1865, "The progress of humanity seems to have come to a halt, and you with your superior intelligence will know why. The reason is that the world lacks a nation [that] possesses true leadership. Such leadership, of course, is required not to dominate other peoples but to lead them along the path of duty, to lead them toward the brotherhood of nations where all the barriers erected by egoism will be destroyed." Garibaldi looked to Germany for the "kind of leadership [that], in the true tradition of medieval chivalry, would devote itself to redressing wrongs, supporting the weak, sacrificing momentary gains and material advantage for the much finer and more satisfying achievement of relieving the suffering of our fellow men. We need a nation courageous enough to give us a lead in this direction. It would rally to its cause all those who are suffering wrong or who aspire to a better life and all those who are now enduring foreign oppression." German unification had also been viewed as a prerequisite for the creation of a European federation, which
Giuseppe Mazzini and other European patriots had been promoting for more than three decades:
Prussia's growing strength: Realpolitik (center), and the redesign of operational and strategic principles by
Helmuth von Moltke (right) placed Prussia among the most powerful states in European affairs after the 1860s. King
Frederick William IV suffered a stroke in 1857 and could no longer rule. This led to his brother
Wilhelm becoming
prince regent of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1858. Meanwhile,
Helmuth von Moltke had become chief of the
Prussian General Staff in 1857, and
Albrecht von Roon would become
Prussian Minister of War in 1859. This shuffling of authority within the Prussian military establishment would have important consequences. Von Roon and William (who took an active interest in military structures) began reorganizing the Prussian army, while Moltke redesigned the strategic defense of Prussia by streamlining operational command. Prussian army reforms (especially how to pay for them) caused a
constitutional crisis beginning in 1860 because both parliament and William—via his minister of war—wanted control over the military budget. William, crowned King Wilhelm I in 1861, appointed
Otto von Bismarck to the position of
Minister-President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck resolved the crisis in favor of the war minister. The
Crimean War of 1854–55 and the
Italian War of 1859 disrupted relations among Great Britain, France, Austria, and Russia. In the aftermath of this disarray, the convergence of von Moltke's operational redesign, von Roon and Wilhelm's army restructure, and Bismarck's diplomacy influenced the realignment of the European balance of power. Their combined agendas established Prussia as the leading German power through a combination of foreign diplomatic triumphs—backed up by the possible use of Prussian military might—and an internal conservatism tempered by pragmatism, which came to be known as
Realpolitik. Bismarck expressed the essence of
Realpolitik in his subsequently famous
"Blood and Iron" speech to the Budget Committee of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies on 30 September 1862, shortly after he became Minister President: "The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood." Bismarck's words, "iron and blood" (or "blood and iron", as often attributed), have often been misappropriated as evidence of a German lust for blood and power. First, the phrase from his speech "the great questions of time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions" is often interpreted as a repudiation of the political process—a repudiation Bismarck did not himself advocate. Second, his emphasis on blood and iron did not imply simply the unrivaled military might of the Prussian army but rather two important aspects: the ability of the assorted German states to produce iron and other related war materials and the willingness to use those war materials if necessary. By 1862, when Bismarck made his speech, the idea of a German nation-state in the peaceful spirit of
Pan-Germanism had shifted from the liberal and democratic character of 1848 to accommodate Bismarck's more conservative
Realpolitik. Bismarck sought to link a unified state to the Hohenzollern dynasty, which for some historians remains one of Bismarck's primary contributions to the creation of the
German Empire in 1871. While the conditions of the treaties binding the various German states to one another prohibited Bismarck from taking unilateral action, the politician and diplomat in him realized the impracticality of this. To get the German states to unify, Bismarck needed a single, outside enemy that would declare war on one of the German states first, thus providing a
casus belli to rally all Germans behind. This opportunity arose with the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Historians have long debated Bismarck's role in the events leading up to the war. The traditional view, promulgated in large part by late 19th- and early 20th-century pro-Prussian historians, maintains that Bismarck's intent was always German unification. Post-1945 historians, however, see more short-term opportunism and cynicism in Bismarck's manipulation of the circumstances to create a war, rather than a grand scheme to unify a nation-state. Regardless of motivation, by manipulating events of 1866 and 1870, Bismarck demonstrated the political and diplomatic skill that had caused Wilhelm to turn to him in 1862. in purple and terracotta,
Schleswig in red and brown, and
Holstein in lime yellow. The
Schleswig-Holstein Question was about the status of those territories. Three episodes proved fundamental to the unification of Germany. First, the death
without male heirs of
Frederick VII of Denmark led to the
Second War of Schleswig in 1864. Second, the
unification of Italy provided Prussia an ally against Austria in the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Finally, France—fearing Hohenzollern encirclement—declared war on Prussia in 1870, resulting in the
Franco-Prussian War. Through a combination of Bismarck's diplomacy and political leadership,
von Roon's military reorganization, and
von Moltke's military strategy, Prussia demonstrated that none of the European signatories of the
1815 peace treaty could guarantee Austria's sphere of influence in Central Europe, thus achieving Prussian hegemony in Germany and ending the dualism debate.
The Schleswig-Holstein Question The first episode in the saga of German unification under Bismarck came with the Schleswig-Holstein Question. On 15 November 1863,
Christian IX became king of Denmark and duke of
Schleswig,
Holstein, and
Lauenburg, which the Danish king held in
personal union. On 18 November 1863, he signed the
Danish November Constitution which replaced The Law of Sjælland and The Law of Jutland, which meant the new constitution applied to the Duchy of Schleswig. The
German Confederation saw this act as a violation of the
London Protocol of 1852, which emphasized the status of the Kingdom of Denmark as distinct from the three independent duchies. The German Confederation could use the ethnicities of the area as a rallying cry: Holstein and Lauenburg were largely of German origin and spoke German in everyday life, while Schleswig had a significant Danish population and history. Diplomatic attempts to have the November Constitution repealed collapsed, and fighting began when Prussian and Austrian troops crossed the
Eider river on 1 February 1864. Initially, the Danes attempted to defend their country using an ancient earthen wall known as the
Danevirke, but this proved futile. The Danes were no match for the combined Prussian and Austrian forces and their modern armaments. The
needle gun, one of the first
bolt action rifles to be used in conflict, aided the Prussians in both this war and the
Austro-Prussian War two years later. In the same amount of time its muzzle-loading counterpart could only fire one shot and had to be reloaded while standing, the needle rifle could be loaded and shot five times, all the while remaining prone. The
Second Schleswig War resulted in victory for the combined armies of Prussia and Austria, and the two countries won control of Schleswig and Holstein in the concluding
peace of Vienna, signed on 30 October 1864.
War between Austria and Prussia, 1866 The second episode in Bismarck's unification efforts occurred in 1866. In concert with
the newly formed Italy, Bismarck created a diplomatic environment in which Austria declared war on Prussia. The dramatic prelude to the war occurred largely in Frankfurt, where the two powers claimed to speak for all the German states in the parliament. In April 1866, the Prussian representative in
Florence signed a secret agreement with the Italian government, committing each state to assist the other in a war against Austria. The next day, the Prussian delegate to the Frankfurt assembly presented a plan calling for a national constitution, a directly elected national Diet, and universal suffrage. German liberals were justifiably skeptical of this plan, having witnessed Bismarck's difficult and ambiguous relationship with the Prussian
Landtag (State Parliament), a relationship characterized by Bismarck's cajoling and riding roughshod over the representatives. These skeptics saw the proposal as a ploy to enhance Prussian power rather than a progressive agenda of reform.
Choosing sides The debate over the proposed national constitution became moot when news of Italian troop movements in
Tyrol and near the Venetian border reached Vienna in April 1866. The Austrian government ordered partial
mobilization in the southern regions; the Italians responded by ordering full mobilization. Despite calls for rational thought and action, Italy, Prussia, and Austria continued to rush toward armed conflict. On 1 May, Wilhelm gave
von Moltke command over the Prussian armed forces, and the next day he began full-scale mobilization. In the Diet, the group of middle-sized states, known as
Mittelstaaten (
Bavaria,
Württemberg, the grand duchies of
Baden and
Hesse, and the duchies of
Saxony–Weimar,
Saxony–Meiningen,
Saxony–Coburg, and
Nassau), supported complete demobilization within the Confederation. These individual governments rejected the potent combination of enticing promises and subtle (or outright) threats Bismarck used to try to gain their support against the Habsburgs. The Prussian
war cabinet understood that its only supporters among the German states against the Habsburgs were two small principalities bordering on
Brandenburg that had little military strength or political clout: the Grand Duchies of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin and
Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They also understood that Prussia's only ally abroad was Italy. Opposition to Prussia's strong-armed tactics surfaced in other social and political groups. Throughout the German states, city councils, liberal parliamentary members who favored a unified state, and chambers of commerce—which would see great benefits from unification—opposed any war between Prussia and Austria. They believed any such conflict would only serve the interests of royal dynasties. Their own interests, which they understood as "civil" or "bourgeois", seemed irrelevant. Public opinion also opposed Prussian domination. Catholic populations along the
Rhine—especially in such cosmopolitan regions as
Cologne and in the heavily populated
Ruhr Valley—continued to support Austria. By late spring, most important states opposed Berlin's effort to reorganize the German states by force. The Prussian cabinet saw German unity as an issue of power and a question of who had the strength and will to wield that power. Meanwhile, the liberals in the Frankfurt assembly saw German unity as a process of negotiation that would lead to the distribution of power among the many parties.
Austria isolated ordering his enthusiastic troops to attack at the
Battle of Königgrätz Although several German states initially sided with Austria, they stayed on the defensive and failed to take effective initiatives against Prussian troops. The Austrian army therefore faced the
technologically superior Prussian army with support only from
Saxony. France promised aid, but it came late and was insufficient. Complicating the situation for Austria, the Italian mobilization on Austria's southern border required a diversion of forces away from battle with Prussia to fight the
Third Italian War of Independence on a second front in
Venetia and on the Adriatic sea. A quick peace was essential to keep Russia from entering the conflict on Austria's side. In the day-long
Battle of Königgrätz, near the village of
Sadová,
Friedrich Carl and his troops arrived late, and in the wrong place. Once he arrived, however, he ordered his troops immediately into the fray. The battle was a decisive victory for Prussia and forced the Habsburgs to end the war with the unfavorable
Peace of Prague, laying the groundwork for the
Kleindeutschland (little Germany) solution, or "Germany without Austria." == Founding a unified state ==