Some difficulties stood in the way of peace between Prussia and her late enemies in the German Confederation, especially Bavaria.  These last were removed when Bismarck privately disclosed to the Bavarian Foreign Minister the secret demand made by France for the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate.  In the month of August, the South German States, Bavaria, Wuertemberg and Baden, accepted Prussia’s terms; whereby they paid small war indemnities and recognised the new constitution of Germany.  Outwardly they formed a South German Confederation; but this had a very shadowy existence; and the three States by secret treaties with Prussia agreed to place their armies and all military arrangements, in case of war, under the control of the King of Prussia.  Thus within a month from the close of “the Seven Weeks’ War,” the whole of Germany was quietly but firmly bound to common action in military matters; and the actions of France left little doubt as to the need of these timely precautions.

On those German States which stood in the way of Prussia’s territorial development and had shown marked hostility, Bismarck bore hard.  The Kingdom of Hanover, Electoral Hesse (Hesse-Cassel), the Duchy of Nassau, and the Free City of Frankfurt were annexed outright, Prussia thereby gaining direct contact with her Westphalian and Rhenish Provinces.  The absorption of Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and the formation of a new league, the North German Confederation, swept away all the old federal machinery, and marked out Berlin, not Vienna or Frankfurt, as the future governing centre of the Fatherland.  It was doubtless a perception of the vast gains to the national cause which prompted the Prussian Parliament to pass a Bill of Indemnity exonerating the King’s Ministers for the illegal acts committed by them during the “Conflict Time” (1861-66)—­acts which saved Prussia in spite of her Parliament.

Constitutional freedom likewise benefited largely by the results of the war.  The new North German Confederation was based avowedly on manhood suffrage, not because either King William or Bismarck loved democracy, but because after lately pledging themselves to it as the groundwork of reform of the old Confederation, they could not draw back in the hour of triumph.  As Bismarck afterwards confessed to his Secretary, Dr. Busch, “I accepted universal suffrage, but with reluctance, as a Frankfurt tradition” (i.e. of the democratic Parliament of Frankfurt in 1848)[6].  All the lands, therefore, between the Niemen and the Main were bound together in a Confederation based on constitutional principles, though the governing powers of the King and his Ministers continued to be far larger than is the case in Great Britain.  To this matter we shall recur when we treat of the German Empire, formed by the union of the North and South German Confederations of 1866.

[6] Busch, Our Chancellor, vol. ii. p. 196 (English edit.).