ABSTRACT
The Prussian army at the time of the War of Liberation was organized on the Landwehr basis introduced by Scharnhorst early in the half a century. The collapse of Prussia under Napoleon’s onslaught had proved the insufficiency of the standing army and its Frederician traditions. While the federal controversy still dragged on, there occurred in Prussia a constitutional struggle which for a time threw a shadow upon other domestic questions. Prussia was in the throes of the constitutional conflict and her Government was in bad repute throughout Germany. Negotiations for the renewal of the Customs Union were duly opened in 1863. In the meantime Herr von Bismarck had become the Prussian Minister-President, and he was a hard as well as a shrewd bargainer. With the conclusion of the general treaty of May 16, 1865, Austria was again and permanently excluded from the Customs Union of the German peoples, while Prussia’s economic predominance in Germany was not merely confirmed but strengthened.
