ABSTRACT
Viennas policy has made Germany suddenly too small for Austria and Prussia. So long as an honourable arrangement over the influence of each in Germany is not reached and executed. German dualism has for a thousand years, off and on, settled our mutual relations by internal war, and since the time of Charles V, it has done so at regular intervals once a century. In this century, too, war alone will set the time-piece of history at its right hour. Bismarck is referring to the situation after the end of the Crimean War where Franco-Russian rapprochement endangered Austrias position both in the Balkans and Italy. Every deceit would be practised, now as then, in order to prevent Prussia from reaching a higher standing in Germany and to keep her under the pressure of her geographical position and the unfavourable Federal Constitution. Bismarck to Manteuffel, Frankfurt, April 1856.
