Otto von Bismarck

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince von Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, Count von Bismarck-Schönhausen (April 1, 1815 – July 30, 1898) was born to a noble family west of Berlin.

In 1847 Bismarck was appointed to the Prussian legislature, and after the 1849 constitution he was elected to the lower house of the new Prussian Parliament, the Landtag. While there he opposed the German reunification movement because Austria-Hungary was poised to be its new leader (the major proposals at the time called for unification via the Austo-Hungarian dominated German Confederation of which Prussia was a member.) As a result Bismarck was elected by the Landtag to represent Prussia at the Erfurt Parliament to vigorously  oppose the reunification movement.

           In 1852, as thanks from the King of Prussia, Bismarck was sent to the German Confederation as the Prussian representative. Here he became slightly more moderate, and accepted that while Germany needed to be unified under Prussia, Prussia couldn't do it alone, and needed allies in the other German states. In 1858 the King of Prussia suffered a stroke and became mentally incapacitated and his brother, Wilhelm, took over as regent. Wilhelm, recognizing Bismarck's ability, appointed him to ambassador to the Russian court, at the same time Wilhelm also appointed Von Moltke to the head of the Prussian Army and Albrecht Von Roon to head the war ministry, both were very talented men and were also close friends of Bismarck and would aide each others cause, an Von Roon helped to keep Bismarck in touch with Prussian internal politics while he was at the Russian court.

           Four years later, in 1862, Liberals were able to gain control of the Landtag and clashed with Wilhelm (now king) over Wilhelm's budget and military spending. The Prussian Parliament, like most other parliaments, power lay in its control of the allocation of the Prussian treasury, and threatened to not pass the budget, and thus not give any money to the government, unless Wilhelm reduced military spending. Von Roon, and other Prussian politicians, said that the only man who was skilled enough to resolve the situation was Bismarck. Bismarck, however, said he'd only take over if he was given complete control over both domestic and foreign affairs, and Wilhelm balked at this. However in late 1862 the Landtag resoundingly rejected a proposed compromise from Wilhelm, so Wilhelm appointed Bismarck both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Bismarck came in, and said that because the constitution didn't cover the situation of what would happen if the Landtag refused to approve a budget (it lacked the power to propose a budget) then the budget from the previous year would legally come into effect. Legally this was a very fuzzy issue, and Bismarck wasn't clearly in the right, but wasn't necessarily wrong either. Nonetheless the Landtag protested to the king, and when this didn't work (and taxes were collected under the 1861 Budget) they passed a resolution that it could never work with Bismarck, and told Wilhelm to appoint a new prime. Wilhelm, in response, told the Landtag that, with the budget issue cleared up, he had no further use for them and dissolved the Landtag. To silence the liberal protests to this Bismarck passed a number of edicts restricting the freedom of the press, but despite this he was still an unpopular leader and over two/thirds of the seats in the Landtag went to liberals in the next election, however the King stuck with Bismarck throughout the storm of criticism.

           In 1863, the King of Denmark died. This was an issue because two duchies, Schleswig and Holstein, were claimed both by Denmark and by a German duke. The German people resoundingly demanded that the German duke get the territories, whereas Denmark was in the process of writing a new constitution that would make Schleswig officially part of Denmark. The issues lay in the facts that Holstein was both German speaking and ethnic in origin, while Schleswig was mixed between German and Danish, that Holstein was a member of the German Confederation while Schleswig was not,  that the Treaty of Ribe (dating backto the fifteenth century]) mandated that the two provinces could not be separated, and that the German Liberal Nationalists were agitating for the German duke  to take over the two provinces as one separate German nation. In response to this, seeing a ripe opportunity to gain territory and prestige, Bismarck declared openly that Prussia supported the Danish claim to the duchies, but at the same time said that Prussia would not tolerate Schleswig becoming a part of Denmark under the new constitution.  Denmark didn't budge and Prussia, with the support of Austria-Hungary, declared war and defeated the Danes in the Second War of Schleswig. In the end result Denmark ceded authority over control of the provinces, however rather than turn the issue over to the German Confederation, which voting democratically would give the provinces to the Duke who laid claim to the provinces,  Bismarck convinced the Austrian Empire to split the administration of the two provinces between them under the Gastein Convention. In this way Bismarck was able to squelch liberal nationalism while at the same time gain control of the provinces from Denmark (and appear to be the aggrieved party, and not the aggressor,) and was able to set the stage for the Austro-Prussian War.

           Bismarck still wanted to unify Germany, but Austria-Hungary and particularly the Austrian dominated "German Confederation" stood in his way. In order to unify Germany Bismarck needed a way around them, and to this effect he used the splitting of Schleswig and Holstein. Holstein (the German Duchy) went to the Austrians while Schleswig (the mixed duchy) went to the Prussians, Bismarck then used the press to agitate the people of Holstein against the Austrians, who he portrayed as foreign occupiers, and sold the story to the Prussian and North German Countries as well. Alarmed by the growing discontent in Holstein the Austrians demanded that the issue of control over Schleswig and Holstein be settled by the German Confederation, Bismarck jumped at this, and said that the Austrians had violated the Gastein Convention, and declared war. A large number of the small southern German States sided with Austria in this, while the northern German states sided with Prussia, along with Italy (who wanted to reclaim Venetia from Austria.) The Austro-Prussian war was a very short war, Moltke and Von Roon had re-organized the Prussian army and turned it into an exceptionally effective fighting machine, and defeated Austria in The Seven Weeks War. Austria was humiliated, but rather then press on Bismarck got Wilhelm to stop the war early, and forced Austria to cede all of its German possessions (Prussia could have gone for a lot more, but Bismarck didn't want to engender future disagreements over this.) The result of this was three fold, first Austria was no longer a player in Germany politics, second the German confederation was disbanded, and third Prussia was acknowledged as the new leader of Germany internationally. To solidify his successes Bismarck North German Confederation as a federation between the Northern German allies from the last war and Prussia, with Prussia at its head with King Wilhelm as President, and Bismarck as Chancellor.

           This successful war ended the domestic disturbances at home, got Bismarck's supporters elected into the Prussian Landtag, and provided support to Bismarck in the times to come. With the Liberals squelched at home, for now, Austria out of the picture, and North Germany united Bismarck just needed a way to get the southern German states under Prussian control. The only feasible way Bismarck saw to do this was to have a foreign power invade Germany and for Germany to unify to face the threat, and then for Prussia to seize the opportunity to permanently unify under that system as one nation. The chance arrived in 1870 when the throne of Spain was offered to a relative of the Hohenzollern clan (The ruling family of Prussia,) Napolean the Third announced not only that he would not stand for his candidacy for the throne, but demanded that King Wilhelm promise never to allow a member of the Hohenzollern family to ascend to the Spanish Throne. Wilhelm wrote a cordial reply to Napolean saying that while he would not remove his support from the candidate immediately he would be willing to discuss the issue with Napolean. Bismarck, however, took the telegram, edited it so as to read as an affront to Napolean and leaked it to the press in the famous Ems Dispatch. The French reacted vehemently and in a national uproar declared war. Seeing them as an aggressor the entirety of Germany rallied behind Prussia, and Prussia defeated the French invasion force, counter-invaded, and utterly defeated France, all in under a month in the Franco-Prussian war.  France was forced to pay a large indemnity to Prussia and to surrender the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine (Bismarck opposed this, saying that the territories would only cause more trouble than they were worth.) Bismarck used the opportunity to unify Germany, and through a variety of incentives got the southern German states to agree to form a German Empire with Prussia as Primus inter Pares (first among equals) and King Wilhelm as the first German Emperor (as an insult to France he was crowned in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, the royal palace of the French monarchs.)