of Austria and Prussia in asserting the German claim by force of arms. But, as in the case of Poland, protests were not followed by action; Napoleon in the end contented himself with proposing his favourite “Napoleonic idea” of a plebiscite, to discover the wishes of the populations concerned; Palmerston, who realized some of the important issues involved, allowed his warlike attitude, under exalted influences, to evaporate in words. Thus Great Britain earned the lasting resentment of Germans, without succeeding in preventing the establishment of German sea-power in the Baltic. For the Prussian war-harbour of Kiel and the Kiel Canal were in Bismarck’s mind from the outset. Throughout Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Prussia supreme in Germany. he intended to make the duchies a part of Prussia and to use the whole question as a means for the solution of that of Germany. The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 grew inevitably out of the Dano-German War of 1864; and the treaty of Prague (Aug. 23, 1866), which excluded Austria from Germany and established the North German Confederation under the headship of Prussia, not only absorbed into Prussia the North German states which had sided with Austria, but by the annexation to her of Schleswig and Holstein laid the foundations of German power in the North Sea, and of German rivalry with England in the future.
More immediate were the effects of the campaign of Königgrätz on France. The rapid and overwhelming victory of Prussia overthrew all the calculations of Napoleon, who had looked to intervening as arbiter between exhausted combatants. The sudden menace of the new German Napoleon and Prussia. power alarmed him, and he sought to secure the Rhine frontier for France, by negotiations with Prussia, in the form of “compensations” at the expense of the South German states. He succeeded only in placing a fresh weapon in Bismarck’s hands. The communication of the French overtures to the South German courts was enough to throw them into the arms of Prussia; and treaties of offensive and defensive alliance were signed in August 1866 between Prussia and Württemberg (3rd), Baden (17th), and Bavaria (22nd), by which the king of Prussia was to receive the supreme command of the allied armies in time of war. In vain Napoleon tried to retrieve his damaged prestige by securing compensation elsewhere. His proposal that the grand-duchy of Luxemburg, which had not been included in the new German Confederation, should fall to France by agreement with Prussia was no more successful than his other demands for “compensation.” Luxemburg was declared a neutral state by the convention of London in 1867 (see Luxemburg), and the French proposal, published by Bismarck in The Times at the outset of the war of 1870, only damaged the French emperor’s cause in the eyes of Europe.
Meanwhile public feeling in France had become seriously excited by this sudden menace of a hostile power on her eastern frontier, and this excitement was raised to fever heat when it became known that the vacant throne of Spain had been offered to and accepted by a prince of the house of Hohenzollern. Napoleon’s policy had become hopelessly discredited by the successive fiascos in Poland, Mexico and Germany, and even the establishment of a liberal constitution in 1869 could not avail to restore confidence in him. He knew the risk he ran in challenging a conflict with a power whose military efficiency had been so strikingly displayed; but by refusing to do so, in the excited state of public feeling, he would have risked his throne. He reckoned on the traditional jealously of the South German states for Prussia and their traditional friendship with France; he was assured, too, of the support of Austria, in the event of a victorious opening of the campaign. On the other hand Bismarck was bent on war, which, in accordance with his policy of “blood and iron,” he believed to be the sole effective means of binding the heterogeneous elements of Germany into a coherent whole. The device of the “Ems telegrams” (see Bismarck) was sufficient to end the hesitations of Napoleon by giving an irresistible volume to the cry of the war party in France; and on the 19th of July the French emperor’s declaration of war was handed in at Berlin.
The story of the struggle that followed is told elsewhere (see Franco-German War). The hopes that Napoleon had based on the action of the South German courts was belied; and the first crushing German victories (Weissenburg, August 4, and Wörth, August 6) not only removed all The Franco-German War, 1870–1871. chance of Austrian co-operation but brought down with a crash the imposing facade of the Second Empire. On the 2nd of September Napoleon surrendered, with his army, at Sedan; and two days later the Empire was overthrown and a provisional republican government set up at Paris. On the 19th Paris itself was invested and, after a heroic defence, capitulated on the 28th of January 1871. On the 18th of January, at the palace of Versailles, William I., king of Prussia, was proclaimed The new German Empire. German emperor. On the 26th of February were signed the preliminaries of peace, by which France agreed to cede to the German empire Alsace (except Belfort and its territory) and German Lorraine, with Metz and Thionville (Diedenhofen), and to pay a war indemnity of five milliards of francs (£200,000,000) in three years, to be secured by the occupation of French territory. The definitive treaty was signed at Frankfort-on-Main on the 10th of May 1871.
The most important outcome of the events which culminated in the Franco-German War and its result was the establishment of a powerful German empire, which was destined to dominate the continent for years to come, and the expansive ambitions of which remain pregnant with menace for the future. So great an overturn, however, involved other changes in the territorial system, which may be briefly summarized. The most notable of these was the reconstruction of the Austrian monarchy as a result of the war of 1866. By the treaty of Vienna (October 3, 1866) between Austria and Italy, Austria recognized the Italian kingdom and ceded to it the city and territory of Venice, thus surrendering the traditional claim of the Habsburgs to domination in Italy. This was followed in 1867 by the establishment of Dual system in Austria-Hungary. the Dual Monarchy in the Habsburg dominions under the auspices of Bismarck’s rival, Count Beust,—Francis Joseph being crowned king of Hungary, and a separate constitution being established for Hungary and the Cis-Leithan dominions of the Austrian emperor (see Austria: History). In Italy, meanwhile, the unification of the kingdom had continued after the conclusion of the war of 1859 by the treaty of Zürich. In 1860 Tuscany, Parma and Modena were united to the monarchy of Victor Emmanuel, at the cost of the cession of Nice and Savoy to Napoleon. In May of the same year Garibaldi and his “Thousand” landed in Sicily, which he reduced by the end of June; in August he crossed to the mainland, and the capitulation of Francis II. of the Two Sicilies at Gaeta on the 13th of February 1861 ended the Bourbon kingdom Union of Italy. in southern Italy. On the 17th of March Victor Emmanuel II. was proclaimed king of United Italy. This title, as mentioned above, was recognized by Austria in 1866, when Italy was increased by the cession of Venice. Finally, Rome, which had been preserved to the papacy by Napoleon’s troops, was on their withdrawal occupied by the Italians on the 20th of September 1870. Thus the temporal power of the popes came to an end; and the unification of Italy was completed (see Italy: History).
Another significant outcome of the collapse of France was the denunciation by Russia of the “Black Sea” clauses of the treaty of Paris of 1856, an action rendered possible by the entente between the governments of Berlin and St Petersburg. In the note addressed to the signatory powers announcing that Russia no longer felt herself bound by the clauses of the treaty limiting her sovereign rights in the Black Sea, Prince Gorchakov wrote: “It would be difficult to affirm that the written law founded on the respect for treaties, as the basis of public right and rule of the relations of states, has preserved the same moral sanction as in former times.” The action of Russia was, in fact, a practical illustration of Bismarck’s dicta that “rebus sic stantibus is involved in all treaties that require performance” (Mem. ii. 280), and that “ultro posse nemo obligatur holds good in spite of all treaty obligations whatsoever, nor can any treaty guarantee
