# data[].attributes.body
Juan Jose Flores was the President of Ecuador. He helped gain independence for Ecuador but it turns out that it might have not been the best idea.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Other articles where Juan José Flores is discussed: Ecuador: Rivalry between Flores and Rocafuerte (1830-45): ...from the wars of independence-Juan José Flores and Vicente Rocafuerte-struggled for power; Flores found much of his support in Quito, Rocafuerte in Guayaquil. Hostility was not constant, and for a few years the rivals agreed to alternate in the presidency.

# data[].attributes.body
The Ecuadorian Independence began on August 10th, 1809 when they had there first taste of Independence. That night a group of creoles got together to decide what else they needed to do for better Independence.

# data[].attributes.body
Otto von Bismarck was the prime minister of Germany and wanted to cooperate with Austria and some other surrounding territories to unify for more power.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
born:

April 1, 1815, Schönhausen, Altmark, Prussia [Germany]

...(Show more)

died:

July 30, 1898, Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg (aged 83)

...(Show more)

Early years

Bismarck was born at Schönhausen, in the Kingdom of Prussia. His father, Ferdinand von Bismarck-Schönhausen, was a Junker squire descended from a Swabian family that had ultimately settled as estate owners in Pomerania. Ferdinand was a typical member of the Prussian landowning elite. The family's economic circumstances were modest-Ferdinand's farming skills being perhaps less than average-and Bismarck was not to know real wealth until the rewards flowed in after the achievement of German unification. His mother, Wilhelmine Mencken, came from an educated bourgeois family that had produced a number of higher civil servants and academics. She had been married to Ferdinand von Bismarck at age 16 and found provincial life confining. When her son Otto was seven, she enrolled him in the progressive Plamann Institute in Berlin and moved to the capital to be near him. The young Bismarck resented exchanging an easy life in the country for a more circumscribed life in a large city, where in school he was pitted against the sons of Berlin's best-educated families. He spent five years at the school and went on to the Frederick William gymnasium for three years. He took his university entrance examination ( Abitur) in 1832.

With his mother's encouragement, he took up the study of law at the University of Göttingen in the kingdom of Hanover. Evidently Bismarck was a mediocre student who spent much of his time drinking with his comrades in an aristocratic fraternity. After a brief stint at the university in Berlin, he entered the Prussian civil service, where he was plagued by boredom and an inability to adhere to the hierarchical principles of the bureaucracy. His mother's death in 1839 gave him the opportunity of resigning in order to come to the assistance of his father, who was experiencing financial difficulties in the management of his estate. From 1839 to 1847 Bismarck lived the ordinary life of a Prussian country squire. Subsequently he romanticized these years on the land and wondered why he had abandoned an idyllic existence for the insecurities of a life in politics. This frequently expressed nostalgia may have been more guise than reality.

During this period he met and married Johanna von Puttkamer, the daughter of a conservative aristocratic family famed for its devout pietism. While courting Johanna, Bismarck experienced a religious conversion that was to give him inner strength and security. A subsequent critic was to remark that Bismarck believed in a God who invariably agreed with him on all issues. There is no question that the marriage was a very happy one. In fact, Bismarck's last words before dying in 1898 expressed the wish that he would once again see Johanna, who had passed away some years earlier.

His politics during the 1840s did not diverge substantially from those of a typical country squire. If anything, his politics were more conservative. He believed in a Christian state that received its sanction ultimately from the deity. The existing social and political order was to be defended in order to prevent a Hobbesian chaos of all against all. Given his views, Bismarck was welcomed as a member of the religious conservative circle around the brothers von Gerlach, who were stout defenders of the noble estate against the encroachments of bureaucratic centralization. Bismarck had nothing but sarcasm for aristocratic liberals who viewed England as a model for Prussia. In 1847 he attended the Prussian United Diet, where his speeches against Jewish emancipation and contemporary liberalism gained him the reputation of a backwoods conservative, out of touch with the dynamic forces of his age.

Bismarck's response to the liberal revolution that swept through Europe in 1848 confirmed his image as a reactionary. He opposed any concessions to the liberals and expressed contempt for the king's willingness to bargain with the revolutionaries. He even considered marching his peasants to Berlin to free Frederick William IV from the baneful influence of the rebels. With other archconservatives, including Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, he began contributing to the Kreuzzeitung newspaper (1848) as an organ of antirevolutionary sentiment.

For Bismarck's future role, it is important to understand his analysis of the revolution. He identified the forces of change as confined solely to the educated and propertied middle class. The vast majority of Prussians, however, were peasants and artisans, who, in Bismarck's view, were loyal monarchists. The task of the forces of order was to confirm the loyalty of these two groups by means of material concessions. The economic policies of the urban middle-class radicals were rooted in pure self-interest, he maintained. The radicals would spur industrial growth at the expense of the lower middle class and the farm population. Ultimately, even the middle class itself might be won over by tactical concessions and success in foreign policy. This strategic and opportunist thinking distanced Bismarck from the ideological conservatives, who were wedded to traditional concepts of authority. His vision of a manipulative state that sustained its power by rewarding obedient groups remained with him throughout his political career.

Early career

In 1849 he was elected to the Prussian Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber of the Prussian Diet) and moved his family to Berlin. At this stage he was far from a German nationalist. He told one of his fellow conservatives, "We are Prussians, and Prussians we shall remain.... We do not wish to see the Kingdom of Prussia obliterated in the putrid brew of cosy south German sentimentality." In 1851 Frederick William IV appointed Bismarck as the Prussian representative to the federal Diet in Frankfurt, a clear reward for his loyalty to the monarchy.

With the defeat of the revolution in central Europe, Austria had reasserted its supremacy in the German Confederation, and Bismarck, being an archconservative, was assumed to support the status quo, which included Austrian hegemony. He lived in Frankfurt for eight years, where he experienced a commercial and cultural environment quite different from that of a Prussian estate.

It was in Frankfurt that Bismarck began to reassess his view of German nationalism and the goals of Prussian foreign policy. Not only did he find the constant deference to the Austrians in Frankfurt demeaning, but he also realized that the status quo meant acceptance of Prussia as a second-rate power in central Europe. In 1854 he opposed close cooperation with Austria, arguing that it entailed "binding our spruce and seaworthy frigate to the wormy old warship of Austria." Gradually he began to consider the options that would make Prussia the undisputed power in Germany. A vision of a Prussian-dominated northern Europe and a redirection of Austrian power to the Slavic areas in the south took shape in his mind. If necessary, a war with Austria to destroy its hegemony was not to be excluded. Implementation of such a policy would be anything but conservative because it would entail radical changes in the map of Europe as it had been drawn by the conservative powers at Vienna, Austria, in 1815.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Otto von Bismarck | Biography, Significance, Accomplishments, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Otto von Bismarck, prime minister of Prussia (1862-73, 1873-90) and founder and first chancellor (1871-90) of the German Empire whose time in office took Prussia from the weakest of the five European powers to, as the unified German Empire, the foremost military and industrial power on the Continent.

# data[].attributes.body
Italy was divided by different nationalities that caused little wars between the couple. They realized that enough was enough and decided it would be best to combine with each other and figure out what they could all agree on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How did Italy Become a Country? | Animated History

# data[].attributes.body
Giuseppe Garibaldi was one of the main leaders with an impact of Italian unification. He was known as the "Sword of Unification".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Info Print

Cite

Feedback

Share

There Garibaldi found himself surrounded and decided to disband his men. Soon afterward, he was pursued by the Austrians as he tried to escape. Although Anita died, Garibaldi successfully crossed the Apennines to the Tuscan coast. The retreat through central Italy, coming after the defense of Rome, made Garibaldi a well-known figure. From then on he was the "hero of two worlds." Some criticized his military skill in this campaign, but his qualities as a leader had proved to be extraordinary, and his courage and determination not to surrender were a lesson in patriotism for his fellow countrymen.

The Piedmontese monarchy, however, was too frightened to let this rebel return to his mother and children, and soon he was in exile again, first in Tangier, then on Staten Island, and finally in Peru, where he returned to his original trade as a ship's captain. Only in 1854 was he allowed to return to Italy. The conte di Cavour, the prime minister of Piedmont, believed that by permitting Garibaldi's repatriation he could pry him away from the republican Mazzini. In the following year, Garibaldi bought part of the island of Caprera off the Sardinian coast, which remained his home for the rest of his life. In 1856 he tried to lead an expedition to release political prisoners held by the Bourbon kings of Naples, but it came to nothing. In 1858 he received an invitation from Cavour to help prepare for another war against Austria. His task was to lead an army of volunteers from other Italian provinces, and he was given the rank of major general in the Piedmontese army. When war broke out in April 1859, he led his Cacciatori delle Alpi (Alpine Huntsmen) in the capture of Varese and Como and reached the frontier of the south Tirol. This war ended with the acquisition of Lombardy by Piedmont.

In September 1859, after peace had returned to northern Italy, Garibaldi transferred his attention to central Italy, where a revolutionary government had been established in Florence. There, on several occasions, he had private meetings with King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont-Sardinia, and it was agreed that he should prepare to invade the Papal States; the king would support his venture if it succeeded but disown him if it failed. At the last moment, however, the king realized that the undertaking was too dangerous and asked him to give up the idea. Garibaldi agreed, though reluctantly. He was ready at any moment to revive this kind of unwritten agreement with Victor Emmanuel, but it became increasingly clear that their aims were not identical. Though both men were patriots, Garibaldi was already working for the unification of Italy. The king was more prudent, concerned foremost with expanding Piedmont. Garibaldi was especially furious when, early in 1860, Cavour and Victor Emmanuel gave his hometown of Nice back to France (it had become Piedmontese in 1814), and he made one of his rare appearances in parliament to protest this violation of the national principle. In January 1860 he married Giuseppina, the daughter of the Marchese Raimondi, but abandoned her, within hours of the marriage, when he discovered she was five months pregnant, almost certainly by one of his own officers. Twenty years later, he was able to obtain the decree of nullity that enabled him to legitimize his children by Francesca Armosino, his longtime companion.

In May 1860 Garibaldi set out on the greatest venture of his life, the conquest of Sicily and Naples. This time he had no government backing, but Cavour and Victor Emmanuel did not dare to stop him, for he had become a popular hero. They stood ready to assist, but only if he proved successful, and he accepted this unwritten arrangement, confident that he could thus force Cavour to support a new move toward the unification of the Italian peninsula. Sailing from near Genoa on May 6 with about 1,000 men, he reached Marsala in Sicily on May 11 and in the name of Victor Emmanuel proclaimed himself dictator. A popular revolution in Sicily helped him considerably, for his personal charm was irresistible, and many of the peasants thought him a god intent on freeing them from slavery and feudalism. The decisive moment for his forces was a small engagement at Calatafimi, when he gave convincing proof that he could defeat the regular soldiers of the king of Naples's army. Immediately there was a great popular movement in his support, and at the end of May he captured Palermo.

The seizure of Palermo was one of Garibaldi's most remarkable military successes, and it convinced Cavour that this volunteer army should now be strongly, if still secretly, supported by Piedmont. Moving across the island, Garibaldi won the Battle of Milazzo in July, helped by reinforcements from northern Italy. In August he crossed over the Strait of Messina and landed on the mainland in Calabria. As always, his strategy was to deny the enemy a moment's pause. After a lightning campaign, he moved up through Calabria and on September 7, 1860, entered Naples, Italy's largest city, where he proclaimed himself "Dictator of the Two Sicilies" (the name of the territories of the king of Naples, comprising Sicily and most of southern Italy).

With 30,000 men under his command, he then fought the biggest battle of his career, on the Volturno River north of Naples. After his victory, he held plebiscites in Sicily and Naples, which allowed him to hand over the whole of southern Italy to King Victor Emmanuel. When the two met, Garibaldi was the first person to hail Victor Emmanuel as king of a united Italy. The king made a triumphal entry into Naples on November 7, and Garibaldi sat beside him in the royal carriage. But immediately afterward the former dictator returned to Caprera, refusing all the rewards thrust on him. He had asked for only one thing-to be allowed to continue governing Naples as the king's viceroy until conditions returned to normal; but this was refused him, for in the eyes of the conservatives he was still a dangerous radical-an anticlerical who also professed to hold advanced ideas on social reform. He was also a man who was known to want to reconquer Rome from the pope and make it into Italy's capital. This was too dangerous a scheme for Victor Emmanuel, for a French garrison defended papal temporal power in Rome. There was also another, more insidious danger: Garibaldi was more popular than the king himself. Furthermore, the regular army of Piedmont was deeply jealous of his successes and determined that he should not be permitted to score fresh ones. Finally, it was feared that Mazzini and the republicans might recapture Garibaldi's allegiance and make him desert the monarchical cause.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Giuseppe Garibaldi - Giuseppe Garibaldi - Retreat: There Garibaldi found himself surrounded and decided to disband his men. Soon afterward, he was pursued by the Austrians as he tried to escape. Although Anita died, Garibaldi successfully crossed the Apennines to the Tuscan coast.

# data[].attributes.body
The Austrian emperor wanted to start a war but after the Leaders talked they figured out that it would be better for them to unify to create a stronger power.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ten Minute History - German Unification and Empire (Short Documentary)