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The death of the Danish king led Bismarck into war and, together with Austria, took German from them. The French declared war. Bismarck’s Prussia won and King Wilhelm was crowned Emperor Wilhelm, with the unification of Germany finally achieved.

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How Otto von Bismarck Reshaped Europe | Tooky History

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Realism

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Otto von Bismarck: He masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871 and served as the first Chancellor of the German Empire until 1890. He knew how to use balance and power to maintain Germany. He was expressed to be strong willed, outspoken, but could also be nice and charming. Bismarck is now praised by Germany as a visionary.

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24.4.4: Otto von Bismarck and the Franco-Prussian War

In the 1860s, Otto von Bismarck, then Minister President of Prussia, provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, aligning the smaller German states behind Prussia in its defeat of France. In 1871 he unified Germany into a nation-state, forming the German Empire.

Learning Objective

Clarify Bismarck's intentions with respect to the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War

Key Points

King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the new Minister President of Prussia in 1862.

The Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 enabled him to create the North German Confederation which excluded Austria from the federation's affairs and ended the previous German Confederation.

After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the German princes proclaimed the founding of the German Empire in 1871 at Versailles, uniting all scattered parts of Germany except Austria.

Victory in the Franco-Prussian War proved the capstone of the nationalist issue, rallying the other German states into unity.

Some historians argue that Bismarck deliberately provoked a French attack to draw the southern German states-Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, and Hesse-Darmstadt-into an alliance with the North German Confederation dominated by Prussia, while others contend that Bismarck did not plan anything and merely exploited the circumstances as they unfolded.

Juggling a very complex interlocking series of conferences, negotiations, and alliances, Bismarck used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany's position and used the balance of power to keep Europe at peace in the 1870s and 1880s.

Key Terms

Kulturkampf

Refers to power struggles between emerging constitutional and democratic nation states and the Roman Catholic Church over the place and role of religion in modern polity, usually in connection with secularization campaigns.

Junker

A noble honorific, meaning "young nobleman." The term became popularly used as a reference for the landed nobility (particularly of the east) that controlled almost all of the land and government, or by extension the Prussian estate owners regardless of noble status. With the formation of the German Empire in 1871, this dominated the central German government and the Prussian military. The term is often contrasted with the elites of the western and southern states in Germany, such as the city-republic of Hamburg, which had no nobility.

North German Confederation

A confederation of 22 previously independent states of northern Germany with nearly 30 million inhabitants, formed after Prussia left the German Confederation with allies. It was the first modern German nation state and the basis for the later German Empire (1871-1918) when several south German states such as Bavaria joined.

realpolitik

Politics or diplomacy based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. The term is sometimes used pejoratively to imply politics that are coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian.

Otto von Bismarck was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890. In the 1860s he engineered a series of wars that unified the German states, significantly and deliberately excluding Austria, into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership. With that accomplished by 1871, he skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany's position in a Europe which, despite many disputes and war scares, remained at peace.

In 1862, King Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck as Minister President of Prussia, a position he would hold until 1890 (except for a short break in 1873). He provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, aligning the smaller German states behind Prussia in its defeat of France. In 1871 he formed the German Empire with himself as Chancellor while retaining control of Prussia. His diplomacy of realpolitik and powerful rule at home gained him the nickname the "Iron Chancellor." German unification and its rapid economic growth was the foundation to his foreign policy. He disliked colonialism but reluctantly built an overseas empire when it was demanded by both elite and mass opinion. Juggling a very complex interlocking series of conferences, negotiations, and alliances, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany's position and used the balance of power to keep Europe at peace in the 1870s and 1880s.

A master of complex politics at home, Bismarck created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working-class support that might otherwise have gone to his Socialist enemies. In the 1870s he allied himself with the Liberals (who were low-tariff and anti-Catholic) and fought the Catholic Church in what was called the Kulturkampf ("culture struggle"). He lost that battle as the Catholics responded by forming a powerful Centre party and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck then reversed himself, ended the Kulturkampf, broke with the Liberals, imposed protective tariffs, and formed a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists.

Bismarck-a Junker himself-was strong-willed, outspoken, and sometimes judged overbearing, but he could also be polite, charming, and witty. Occasionally he displayed a violent temper, and he kept his power by melodramatically threatening resignation time and again, which cowed Wilhelm I. He possessed not only a long-term national and international vision but also the short-term ability to juggle complex developments. As the leader of what historians call "revolutionary conservatism," Bismarck became a hero to German nationalists; they built many monuments honoring the founder of the new Reich. Many historians praise him as a visionary who was instrumental in uniting Germany and, once that had been accomplished, kept the peace in Europe through adroit diplomacy.

Prussia's victory over Austria in 1866, a war that ended the German Confederation and resulted in the creation of the North German Confederation, increased already existing tensions with France. The Emperor of France, Napoleon III, tried to gain territory for France (in Belgium and on the left bank of the Rhine) as compensation for not joining the war against Prussia and was disappointed by the surprisingly quick outcome of the war. The conflict was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. Some historians argue that Bismarck deliberately provoked a French attack to draw the southern German states-Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt-into an alliance with the North German Confederation dominated by Prussia, while others contend that Bismarck did not plan anything and merely exploited the circumstances as they unfolded.

A suitable pretext for war arose in 1870 when the German Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was offered the Spanish throne, vacant since a revolution in 1868. France pressured Leopold into withdrawing his candidacy. Not content with this, Paris demanded that Wilhelm, as head of the House of Hohenzollern, assure that no Hohenzollern would ever seek the Spanish crown again. To provoke France into declaring war with Prussia, Bismarck published the Ems Dispatch, a carefully edited version of a conversation between King Wilhelm and the French ambassador to Prussia, Count Benedetti. This conversation had been edited so that each nation felt its ambassador had been slighted and ridiculed, thus inflaming popular sentiment on both sides in favor of war.

France mobilized and declared war on July 19. The German states saw France as the aggressor, and-swept up by nationalism and patriotic zeal-they rallied to Prussia's side and provided troops. A series of swift Prussian and German victories in eastern France, culminating in the Siege of Metz and the Battle of Sedan, saw Napoleon III captured and the army of the Second Empire decisively defeated. A Government of National Defense declared the Third Republic in Paris on September 4 and continued the war for another five months; the German forces fought and defeated new French armies in northern France. Following the Siege of Paris, the capital fell on January 28, 1871, and then a revolutionary uprising called the Paris Commune seized power in the capital and held it for two months until it was bloodily suppressed by the regular French army at the end of May 1871.

Bismarck acted immediately to secure the unification of Germany. He negotiated with representatives of the southern German states, offering special concessions if they agreed to unification. The negotiations succeeded; patriotic sentiment overwhelmed what opposition remained. While the war was in its final phase, Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor on January 18, 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors in the Château de Versailles. The new German Empire was a federation; each of its 25 constituent states (kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities, and free cities) retained some autonomy. The King of Prussia, as German Emperor, was not sovereign over the entirety of Germany; he was only primus inter pares, or first among equals.

Victory in the Franco-Prussian War proved the capstone of the nationalist issue. In the first half of the 1860s, Austria and Prussia both contended to speak for the German states; both maintained they could support German interests abroad and protect German interests at home. After the victory over Austria in 1866, Prussia began internally asserting its authority to speak for the German states and defend German interests, while Austria began directing more of its attention to possessions in the Balkans. The victory over France in 1871 expanded Prussian hegemony in the German states to the international level. With the proclamation of Wilhelm as Kaiser, Prussia assumed the leadership of the new empire. The southern states became officially incorporated into a unified Germany at the Treaty of Versailles of 1871 (signed February 26, 1871; later ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt of May 10, 1871), which formally ended the war.

Under the Treaty of Frankfurt, France relinquished most of its traditionally German regions (Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine); paid an indemnity, calculated (on the basis of population) as the precise equivalent of the indemnity that Napoleon Bonaparte imposed on Prussia in 1807; and accepted German administration of Paris and most of northern France, with "German troops to be withdrawn stage by stage with each installment of the indemnity payment."

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In the 1860s, Otto von Bismarck, then Minister President of Prussia, provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, aligning the smaller German states behind Prussia in its defeat of France. In 1871 he unified Germany into a nation-state, forming the German Empire.

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Political and social movement resulting in Italy's unification. Napoleon was the first to invade and create a Kingdom. Troops were sent to British and French in hope to gain an ally. But Napoleon had come to their aid.

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Impressionism

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Giuseppe Garibaldi: He fought for Italian unity. He united Northern and Southern Italy. He also led volunteer armies and conquered many places. Garibaldi gave southern Italy to King Victor Emmanuel II who established the kingdom of Italy.

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Giuseppe Garibaldi, (born July 4, 1807, Nice, French Empire [now in France]-died June 2, 1882, Caprera, Italy), Italian patriot and soldier of the Risorgimento, a republican who, through his conquest of Sicily and Naples with his guerrilla Redshirts, contributed to the achievement of Italian unification under the royal house of Savoy.

Early life

Garibaldi's family was one of fishermen and coastal traders, and for more than 10 years he himself was a sailor. In 1832 he acquired a master's certificate as a merchant captain. By 1833-34, when he served in the navy of the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, he had come under the influence of Giuseppe Mazzini, the great prophet of Italian nationalism, and the French socialist thinker the comte de Saint-Simon. Garibaldi, in 1834, took part in a mutiny intended to provoke a republican revolution in Piedmont, but the plot failed; he escaped to France and in his absence was condemned to death by a Genoese court.

Exile in South America

From 1836 to 1848, Garibaldi lived in South America as an exile, and these years of turmoil and revolution in that continent strongly influenced his career. He volunteered as a naval captain for the Rio Grande do Sul republic during that small state's unsuccessful attempt to break free from the Brazilian Empire. Actually, he did little more than prey on Brazilian shipping. In the course of often harrowing adventures on land and sea, he managed to elope with Anna Maria Ribeiro da Silva (Anita), a married woman, who remained his companion in arms until her death. After a succession of victories by the Brazilians in 1839-40, Garibaldi finally decided to leave the service of Rio Grande. Driving a herd of cattle, he made the long trek to Montevideo with Anita and their son. There he tried his hand as commercial traveler and teacher but could not accustom himself to civilian life. In 1842 he was put in charge of the Uruguayan navy in another war of liberation-this time against Juan Manuel de Rosas, the dictator of Argentina. The following year, again in the service of Uruguay, Garibaldi took command of a newly formed Italian Legion at Montevideo, the first of the Redshirts, with whom his name became so closely associated. After he won a small but heroic engagement at the Battle of Sant'Antonio in 1846, his fame reached even to Europe, and in Italy a sword of honour, paid for by subscriptions, was donated to him.

He was in charge of the defense of Montevideo for a short time in 1847, when he first came to the attention of Alexandre Dumas père, who later did much to foster his reputation. Garibaldi also greatly impressed other foreign observers as an honest and able man. His South American experiences gave him invaluable training in the techniques of guerrilla warfare that he later used with great effect against French and Austrian armies, which had not been taught how to counter them. These first exploits in the cause of freedom cast him in the mold of a professional rebel, an indomitable individualist who all his life continued to wear the gaucho costume of the pampas and to act as if life were a perpetual battle for liberty.

War of liberation

In April 1848 Garibaldi led 60 members of his Italian Legion back to Italy to fight for the Risorgimento, or resurrection, of Italy in the war of independence against the Austrians. He first offered to fight for Pope Pius IX, then-when his offer was refused-for Charles Albert, the king of Piedmont-Sardinia. The king, too, rebuffed him, for Garibaldi's conviction as a rebel in 1834 was still remembered; moreover, the regular army despised the self-taught guerrilla leader. Therefore, Garibaldi went to the aid of the city of Milan, where Mazzini had already arrived and had given the war of liberation a more republican and radical turn. Charles Albert, after his defeat at the hands of the Austrians at Custoza, agreed to an armistice, but Garibaldi continued in the name of Milan what had become his private war and emerged creditably from two engagements with the Austrians at Luino and Morazzone. But at the end of August, heavily outnumbered, he had to retreat across the frontier to Switzerland.

For a time Garibaldi settled down in Nice with Anita (whom he had married in 1842) and their three children, but his resolve to help free Italy from foreign rule was stronger than ever. He was confirmed in his purpose by his belief-which he and only a handful of others shared with Mazzini-that the many Italian states, though often engaged in internecine warfare, could nonetheless be unified into a single state. When Pius IX, threatened by liberal forces within the Papal States, fled from Rome toward the end of 1848, Garibaldi led a group of volunteers to that city. There, in February 1849, he was elected a deputy in the Roman Assembly, and it was he who proposed that Rome should become an independent republic. In April a French army arrived to restore papal government, and Garibaldi was the chief inspiration of a spirited defense that repulsed a French attack on the Janiculum Hill. In May he defeated a Neapolitan army outside Rome at Velletri, and in June he was the leading figure in the defense of Rome against a French siege. There was no chance at all of holding the city, but the gallantry of the resistance became one of the most inspiring stories of the Risorgimento. Refusing to accept defeat, Garibaldi led a few thousand men out of Rome and through central Italy in July 1849, maneuvering to avoid French and Austrian armies, until he reached the neutral republic of San Marino.

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Giuseppe Garibaldi | Biography, Redshirts, Significance, & Facts

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Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian patriot and soldier of the Risorgimento, a republican who, through his conquest of Sicily and Naples with his guerrilla Redshirts, contributed to the achievement of Italian unification under the royal house of Savoy. Learn more about Garibaldi in this article.

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The colony became independent and more peaceful. Brazil's Independence was declared and led by the Portuguese regent in Brazil. Nothing was done to it at the beginning of the 16th century, more or less sat there undisturbed. But they got very defensive when France tried to shove their way into their territory.

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Romanticism

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Pedro I: He set himself up as emperor of Brazil. He also declared Brazil independent From Portugal in 1822. Died young at 35 in 1834. He was sometimes known as Dom Pedro.

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Pedro I, (born Oct. 12, 1798, Lisbon, Port.-died Sept. 24, 1834, Lisbon), founder of the Brazilian empire and first emperor of Brazil, from Dec. 1, 1822, to April 7, 1831, also reckoned as King Pedro (Peter) IV of Portugal.

Generally known as Dom Pedro, he was the son of King John VI of Portugal. When Napoleon conquered Portugal in 1807, Pedro accompanied the royal family in its flight to Brazil. He remained there as regent when King John returned to Portugal in 1821.

Pedro surrounded himself with ministers who counseled independence. When the Portuguese Cortês (Parliament), preferring colonial status for Brazil, demanded that Pedro return to Lisbon to "complete his political education," he issued a declaration of Brazilian independence on Sept. 7, 1822. Within three months he was crowned emperor.

Pedro's initial popularity waned, and in 1823, when the Brazilian Assembly was preparing a liberal constitution, he dissolved that body and exiled the radical leader José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva. On March 25, 1824, however, Pedro accepted a somewhat less liberal constitution drafted by the Council of State at his behest.

Although adoption of that charter may have saved Pedro from deposition, it did not reestablish his popularity. His autocratic manner, his lack of enthusiasm for parliamentary government, and his continuing deep interest in Portuguese affairs antagonized his subjects, as did the failure of his military forces in a war with Argentina over what is now Uruguay. Strong opposition in the Brazilian Parliament and a series of local uprisings induced him to abdicate in 1831 in favour of his son Dom Pedro II, who was then five years old. Pedro I then returned to Portugal.

On the death of King John VI (March 10, 1826), Pedro I had become titular king of Portugal as Pedro IV. Two months later, still in Brazil, he issued a parliamentary charter for Portugal and conditionally abdicated the Portuguese throne in favour of his daughter Maria da Glória, the future Queen Maria II. He died of natural causes in Portugal while securing his daughter's claim against that of his brother, the regent Miguel.

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Pedro I | Reign of Brazil, Independence, Abolitionist

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Pedro I, founder of the Brazilian empire and first emperor of Brazil, from Dec. 1, 1822, to April 7, 1831, also reckoned as King Pedro (Peter) IV of Portugal. Generally known as Dom Pedro, he was the son of King John VI of Portugal.