ion, which had agitated Germany for
centuries, whether the balance of power should belong to the North or
the South. Bismarck also saw that the time was nearly ripe for settling
this matter once for all in favour of Prussia; but he had hard work even
to persuade his own sovereign; while the Prussian Parliament, as well as
public opinion throughout Germany, was violently hostile to his schemes
and favoured the claims of the young Duke of Augustenburg to the
Duchies--claims that had much show of right. Matters were patched up for
a time between the two German States, by the Convention of Gastein
(August 1865), while in reality each prepared for war and sought to
gain allies.

Here again Bismarck was successful. After vainly seeking to _buy_
Venetia from the Austrian Court, Italy agreed to side with Prussia
against that Power in order to wrest by force a province which she could
not hope to gain peaceably. Russia, too, was friendly to the Court of
Berlin, owing to the help which the latter had given her in crushing the
formidable revolt of the Poles in 1863. It remained to keep France
quiet. In this Bismarck thought he had succeeded by means of interviews
which he held with Napoleon III. at Biarritz (Nov. 1865). What there
occurred is not clearly known. That Bismarck played on the Emperor's
foible for oppressed nationalities, in the case of Italy, is fairly
certain; that he fed him with hopes of gaining Belgium, or a slice of
German land, is highly probable, and none the less so because he later
on indignantly denied in the Reichstag that he ever "held out the
prospect to anybody of ceding a single German village, or even as much
as a clover-field." In any case Napoleon seems to have promised to
observe neutrality--not because he loved Prussia, but because he
expected the German Powers to wear one another out and thus leave him
master of the situation. In common with most of the wiseacres of those
days he believed that Prussia and Italy would ultimately fall before the
combined weight of Austria and of the German States, which closely
followed her in the Confederation; whereupon he could step in and
dictate his own terms[3].

[3] Busch, _Our Chancellor_, vol. ii. p. 17 (Eng. edit.); Debidour,
_Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe (1814-1878)_, vol ii. pp. 291-293.
Lord Loftus in his _Diplomatic Reminiscences_ (vol. ii. p. 280) says:
"So satisfied was Bismarck that he could count on the neutrality of
France, that no defensiv