t the Napoleonic Wars resulted in certain international
alignments some of which, at least in part, held over until
comparatively recently. But it was only approximately at the
beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century that
international relations assumed the important position and the
fateful influence which they hold now. The short war of 1866 between
Prussia and Austria, fought primarily to determine the supremacy in
German affairs, may conveniently be considered for our purposes a
starting point of modern international history because it resulted
in changes so important that their final results had a powerful
influence over the fate of the entire civilized world. Inasmuch as
this war affected more directly Germany and Austria, we will first
consider these two countries.

CHAPTER I

GERMANY

In 1866 there was strictly speaking no Germany. That part of the
world which during the past forty-five years has been known as
Germany consisted of a large number of small states and
principalities, speaking the same language and having in a general
way the same customs and ideals. All attempts to find some basis for
their political unification, however, miscarried. Whenever Prussia,
which beyond doubt was the biggest and most powerful of all the
German-speaking states, attempted to take the lead it was opposed by
powerful Austria as well as by a varying number of smaller states.
The latter, much as they desired in certain ways to bring about a
united Germany in order to be better protected against their much
more powerful neighbors, Russia and France, feared these hardly
more than a Germany under the control of Prussia. It gradually
became clear that unification of Germany would never be realized as
long as Austria and Prussia were contending for leadership. How
utterly impossible it was for these two countries to achieve any
lasting success as long as they made a common cause of anything had
been proven only two years earlier, when both went to war with
Denmark about the succession to the throne of the duchies of
Schleswig-Holstein. For no sooner had they succeeded through their
combined efforts in defeating Denmark and thereby forced the
northern kingdom to relinquish its claims on Schleswig-Holstein than
they found it next to impossible to settle among themselves the
division of the newly acquired territory.

It was about at this time that the greatest statesman of modern
Germany, Bismarck, began