Sarah Paine

Then there's the Austro-Prussian War.

And then there's the Franco-Prussian War.

In the Danish War, it's about a couple of provinces in the far south of Denmark that Bismarck covets because he wants to reunify, well, unify for the first time all these Germanic states.

And he trounces Denmark in that war.

Does he go for regime change in Copenhagen?

No way.

He just says, see this place that you shouldn't have had anyway because it's got a bunch of Germans in it.

And so if you think about, this is another concept, value of the object.

How much is victory worth to you versus the other guy?

For Denmark, of just making Bismarck go away, and this little state, the value of the object's lower to them, because they aren't thinking in terms of creating a greater Germany, which Bismarck is.

So you have two things going on.

You're giving the Danes, given how much the Prussians trounced them, a generous piece.

You're saying, just get rid of this Germanic part that you don't really much care about.

So he gets away with that one.

Then in the Austrian...

the war against Austria, he just slams them.

He's got this railway system that allows them to deploy where the Austrians can't.

And there are all these little Germanic states watching all this going on, and they're starting to confederate sort of with Prussia because they're scared of all of this.

And so...

Instead of doing regime change in Vienna, it's just saying, hey, let's cede a few more of these things to Germany.