... Bismarck had engineered Denmark's defeat and driven Austria out of Germany. After Königgrätz and Sedowa Bismarck with lightning speed annexed 1,300 square miles and incorporated seven million Germans into the Prussian state.4 Unsatisfied with "ploughing the same disputed acre"5, by the time it came to the final Franco-Prussian contest following the July crisis of 1870, France was facing the overwhelming industrial might of unified Germany and the geo-strategic implications of Charles V's Empire reincarnated. Bismarck had engineered a change in the balance of power so overwhelmingly in favour of Prussia, that the Second Republic felt challenged in its existence. In the context of the seemingly unstoppable drive towards nationalism, it is impossible to charge Bismarck with personal responsibility for the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. In the path leading up to 1870 Bismarck very much followed in the footsteps of the Piedmontese Prime Minister Count Cavour. Imitating Cavour, who had ...

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