not yet made sure of the neutrality of France, whose hopes of expansion in Belgium and Luxemburg he artfully fed; of the friendship of Russia, which had obtained from Prussia a convention for common action against the Poles, and had even suggested a league against Austria and France; of the alliance with Italy, eager to strike from her limbs the last of the Austrian shackles.

In the spring of 1866 Bismarck presented his scheme of reforms for the Germanic Confederation, which was nothing but an ultimatum, an anticipation of the fruits of victory. To substitute for the old Confederation a North German Confederation and a South German Confederation and to exclude Austria from German councils altogether was a solution in which neither she nor her German allies could be expected to acquiesce except by force of arms. On the eve of the war Bismarck had to fight for his own position, threatened by court intrigues, the "feminine undercurrents," which he complained of as embittering his existence and endangering his work on various occasions. The English Crown Princess and the Queen both sought to stay King Wilhelm's hand until the minister carried the day by presenting the alternative of war with him at the helm or peace without him. On June 14, 1866, Austria passed in the Frankfort Diet a motion to mobilize the forces of the Confederation against Prussia.

From the beginning of the Schleswig-Holstein entanglement the Hapsburg Government had floundered helplessly in the toils, while Bismarck, every wire in hand, had planned the political dénouement to coincide exactly with the Prussian military preparations. In two days Prussian forces occupied Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony; in three weeks the Prussian army confronted the main Austrian army in Bohemia. The King and Bismarck left Berlin for the seat of war on June 23, and on July 3 they watched the timely arrival of the Crown Prince's troops and the final rout of the brave Austrians at Sadowa.

The North German Confederation thus came into being by blood and iron, and Bismarck, who had received the title of Graf after the Danish campaign, became its Chancellor. He was tenderly considerate of the feelings of the vanquished Austrians and Saxons, forgiving and solicitous toward the South German States, but to Hanover, HesseCassel, Nassau, and the free city of Frankfort, which, with Schleswig-Holstein, were annexed to Prussia, he was relentlessly severe and inexorable. In the Reichstag of the North German Confederation, which came together in the spring of 1867, the Chancellor broke away from all his earlier political associations to seek the support of the popular National Liberal party, first stipulating that he should have liberty to keep up the strength of the army. He was even willing to compromise on this point, and accepted a vote for five years instead

of ten.

The Austrian war was only the first skirmish in the action which Bismarck had foreseen and prearranged, the issue of which was to be the consolidation of the German nation. A victorious war with France he regarded as even more essential, and at one time he had proposed that Austria and Prussia should compose their differences and join together in wresting Alsace from France so as to make it, as of old, the outpost of the German Empire. After the Austrian campaign it was the French Emperor who was restless and disturbed, and who demanded compensation for the aggrandizement of Prussia. To secure his neutrality Bismarck had promised him the duchy of Luxemburg, probably knowing that Germany would never acquiesce in this arrangement. Every year the

growth of the Prussian army made him more uneasy. And all the time while the army was being augmented, organized, trained, and armed Graf Bismarck was playing his diplomatic game to ensnare France as he had Austria, to place her in the wrong, to catch her when his plans were ripe without allies, without friends or sympathizers. He made secret treaties of alliance with the South German states, fostered friendly relations with Russia, made sure of the neutrality of Austria, cemented the understanding with Italy, and held back for publication at the right moment Napoleon's secret agreement with the King of Holland for the partition of Belgium, which would be sure to alienate the sympathies of England. The casus belli, the candidature of a German prince, a Hohenzollern, for the Spanish throne, he held in hand, so that he could draw from France the provocation and the declaration of war as well. When the affair came to a head King Wilhelm almost defeated his scheme. By the Chancellor's advice he had induced the Hohenzollern to withdraw his candidature, but had declined to sign a letter undertaking that it should never be renewed. Then of his own motion he had given some reassuring explanations to Count Benedetti, the French envoy, but refused to discuss matters further in the absence of his minister. A telegram was sent, first telling how the King had declined to pledge himself that the Hohenzollern candidacy should not be revived, then recounting the audiences and explanations that Benedetti thankfully accepted for the consideration of his Government, and last the denial of a further interview. Bismarck asked Moltke if the army was strong enough, and on receiving the answer that Prussia never had a better instrument, he struck out of the dispatch all the account of interviews, explanations, and pacificatory assurances, leaving only the head and the tail, that the King refused to give a pledge and that he declined to receive the French envoy again and had him informed through an adjutant that he had nothing further to communicate to him. The publication of this dispatch stung the people of Paris to madness and drew from France an immediate declaration of war.

The German armies had crossed the Rhine before the Cabinets of Europe had time to deliberate on the situation. The victorious advance was so rapid that there was no opportunity for a European coalition against Germany to be arranged. The Chancellor, in his Jäger uniform, accompanied the King to the field, directed the Government from the moving camp, and finally established himself in the palace of Versailles, where on Jan. 18, 1871, the German Empire was proclaimed, and where he dictated to Thiers the hard terms of peace, obdurate to the intercession of the neutral powers.

The imperial union of North and South Germany was an idea of the Crown Prince, but the Crown Prince was not allowed to have anything to do with it. All was Bismarck's work-the negotiations, the terms and conditions, the political constitution. The French republic was also in a sense his work, for he nursed and encouraged this form of Government as repellent to monarchical powers, and hence the least dangerous to. Germany. He was astounded and disappointed at witnessing the economic and military recovery of France after the payment of the indemnity of five milliards. Count Arnim, who intrigued with the Clericals and Royalists of France and sought behind Bismarck's back to enlist the sympathies of the Berlin court for the Bourbon cause, the Iron Chancellor crushed without compunction. The founder of the German Empire was made its Chancellor, all-powerful in external and internal affairs. He also received the