[9] Michael Hughes notes that in regards to Germany, "nationalism was a minority movement, deeply divided and with only a marginal impact on German political life".

[11] According to John Breuilly, any sense of a common German identity "was weakly developed and confined to particular groups" and "there was very little demand, certainly at popular level, for unification".

[13] One of the strongest social forces in Germany at the time was religion, which provided Germans with common confessional values and identities that transcended national boundaries.

[11] The minor nations of Germany valued their independence and believed that their ability to remain sovereign depended on Austro-Prussian dualism, with neither side allowed to become too powerful.

Bismarck maintained that he orchestrated the conflict in order to bring about the North German Confederation, the Franco-Prussian War and the eventual unification of Germany.

Before this date, the size of the army had been fixed by earlier laws that had not taken population growth into account, making conscription inequitable and unpopular for this reason.

While some Prussian men remained in the army or the reserves until they were forty years old, about one man in three (or even more in some regions where the population had expanded greatly as a result of industrialisation) was assigned minimal service in the Landwehr, the home guard.

Moltke, reviewing his plans to Roon stated, "We have the inestimable advantage of being able to carry our Field Army of 285,000 men over five railway lines and of virtually concentrating them in twenty-five days.

By the time the Austrians were fully assembled, they would be unable to concentrate against one Prussian army without having the other two instantly attack their flank and rear, threatening their lines of communication.

In the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, French troops took advantage of poorly trained enemies who did not readjust their gunsights as they got closer – thus firing too high at close range.

However, due to tactical reluctance on the part of Prussian high command to utilise relatively unfamiliar technology, and doctrinal stagnation in the Artillery Corps, the modern Krupp guns were either sent to reserve units or used in tandem and to the same effect as their smooth bore counterparts, something that massively throttled their effectiveness in the war, and many of the guns that saw combat were the old smooth bore muzzle loaders.

The Austro-Prussian War ended quickly and was fought mainly with existing weapons and munitions, which reduced the influence of economic and industrial power relative to politics and military culture.

The proposition grievously offended Frederick William's "legitimist sensibilities" and the monarch joined the Austrians, despite the Hessian Landtag voting for neutrality.

[27] King George V of Hanover during the spring of 1866 was contacted by Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph about establishing a coalition against the Prussians, but his success took some time.

French Emperor Napoleon III, a friend of Italian risorgimento who expected a Prussian defeat, chose to retain the unmobilized army, upholding his influence to suit Florence while endangering his negotiating position for territory along the Rhine.

In his speech to the Reichstag on 2 May 1871, Bismarck said: It is known that even on 6 August 1866, I was in the position to observe the French ambassador make his appearance to see me in order, to put it succinctly, to present an ultimatum: to relinquish Mainz, or to expect an immediate declaration of war.

There, the Prussian armies, led nominally by King William I, converged, and the two sides met at the Battle of Königgrätz (Hradec Králové) on 3 July.

However, Italy's "Hunters of the Alps" led by Garibaldi defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Bezzecca on 21 July, conquered the lower part of Trentino, and moved towards Trento.

While the temporary Alpine conquest missed political support by allies, a redeployment of Austrian troops in order to hold the Danube facilitated an Italian march through the Venetian coastal plain, resulting in the armistice of Cormons on 12 August.

In order to prevent "unnecessary bitterness of feeling or desire for revenge" and forestall intervention by France or Russia, Bismarck pushed King William I of Prussia to make peace with the Austrians rapidly, rather than continue the war in hopes of further gains.

Bismarck chose not to seek Austrian territory, and this made it possible for Berlin to gain an alternative to its emerging Russian alliance in the future, when Austria would feel threatened more by Italian and Pan-Slavic irredentism than by Prussia.

The vanishing authorities protested against their annexation to the Hohenzollern monarchy, and both the dethroned rulers and the local population lamented the loss of their respective nation's sovereignty.

[32] Anti-Prussian and separatist sentiment in newly annexed kingdoms continued into 1871, as local Prussian authorities complained about "a not insignificant number" of deserters from Hanover and Schleswig, and the population reacted to the Franco-Prussian War with "recurrent acts of sabotage on telegraph lines, latent French sympathies, and a widespread disinterest in the establishment of armed home guards".

Local resistance and regional loyalty led Hans von Hardenberg, the civil commissioner who oversaw the integration of Hanover into Prussia, to remark that "As a whole the Hanoverians are a tougher, less accommodating tribe than the Saxons.

[38] In addition to war reparations, the following territorial changes took place: Those former German Confederation member states who remained neutral or passive during the conflict took different actions after the Prague treaty: Having lost his position as minister-president of Saxony over his Prussian counterpart's unwillingness to negotiate the peace with him, the new Austrian leader Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust was "impatient to take his revenge on Bismarck for Sadowa".

Napoleon III was not strictly opposed to this (in response to a French minister of State's declaration that Italy would never lay its hands on Rome, the Emperor had commented "You know, in politics, one should never say 'never'.

He wished Austria to avenge Sadowa, either by taking part in a military action, or by preventing South Germany from making common cause with Prussia.

If he could ensure, through Austrian aid, the neutrality of the South German States in a war against Prussia, he considered himself sure of defeating the Prussian army, and thus would remain arbiter of the European situation.

But when the war suddenly broke out, before anything was concluded, the first unexpected French defeats overthrew all previsions, and raised difficulties for Austria and Italy which prevented them from making common cause with France.

[46]Another reason that Beust's supposedly desired revanche against Prussia did not materialize is seen in the fact that, in 1870, the Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy was "vigorously opposed".