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War with France
All that remained for Bismarck was to draw the south German states into the new
Confederation. But the south (which was predominantly Catholic and liberal) feared being
absorbed by the Protestant and authoritarian Prussians. Bismarck concluded that only one
thing would compel the south Germans to accept Prussian leadership: a war with a power-
ful foreign enemy. So he set about engineering one.
The opportunity came when both France and Prussia got involved in a dispute over the
vacant throne in Spain. Bismarck, with the support of the Prussian military leadership, edited
a communication between Napoleon III and William I (a communication now known as the
Ems Telegram) to make it seem as though they had insulted one another, which Bismarck
then released to the press. Tempers flared, and France declared war. The south German states
rallied to aid Prussia. Combined German forces quickly routed the French troops, capturing
Napoleon III and taking Paris in January 1871.
The Second Reich
On January 18, 1871, the unification of Germany was completed. The heads of all the
German states gathered in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles outside Paris and
proclaimed William I kaiser (emperor) of the German Empire (formally the Second Reich,
honoring the old Holy Roman Empire as the First Reich). The new empire took the prov-
inces of Alsace and Lorraine from France and billed the French 5 billion francs as a war
indemnity.
Mass Politics and Nationalism in the Hapsburg Empire
In the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, mass politics continued to mean competition
between nationalities for greater autonomy and relative supremacy within the empire. In
an age of nation-building, the Hapsburg Empire, with its Austrian minority dominating an
empire consisting of Hungarians (also known as Magyars), Czechs, Serbs, Romanians, and
other ethnic groups, was an anachronism. The forces of nationalism, therefore, worked to
tear the empire apart. After Austria’s defeat by Prussia in 1866, the Austrian Emperor Franz
Joseph attempted to deal with what has come to be called “the nationalities problem.” By
agreeing to the Compromise of 1867, he set up the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
Franz Joseph served as the ruler of both Austria and Hungary, each of which had its own
parliament. This arrangement essentially set up an alliance between the Austrians and the
Hungarians against the other ethnic groups in the empire. The introduction of universal
manhood suffrage in 1907 made Austria-Hungary so difficult to govern that the emperor
and his advisors began bypassing the parliament and ruling by decree.Mass Politics and Nationalism in France
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte had originally been elected president of the Second Republic in- When the National Assembly refused to amend the constitution to allow him to run
for a second term, he staged a coup d’état on December 2, 1851. The public overwhelm-
ing sided with Louis-Napoleon, who granted them universal manhood suffrage. They
responded, in two plebiscites, by voting to establish a Second Empire and to make Louis-
Napoleon hereditary emperor.
Like his namesake, Louis-Napoleon attempted to increase his popularity by expand-
ing the Empire, but soon his foreign adventures began to erode his popularity. By 1870,
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