Let us not suppose that this letter was but a cunning device to win the consent of the King.  In these words more than in anything else we see his deepest feelings and his truest character.  Bismarck was no Napoleon; he had determined that war was necessary, but he did not go to the terrible arbitrament with a light heart.  He was not a man who from personal ambition would order thousands of men to go to their death or bring his country to ruin.  It was his strength that he never forgot that he was working, not for himself, but for others.  Behind the far-sighted plotter and the keen intriguer there always remained the primitive honesty of his younger years.  He may at times have complained of the difficulties which arose from the reluctance of the King to follow his advice, but he himself felt that it was a source of strength to him that he had to explain, justify, and recommend his policy to the King.

All anxiety was, however, removed by news which came the next day.  A report was spread throughout the papers that Italy had begun to mobilise, and that a band of Garibaldians had crossed the frontier.  The report seems to have been untrue.  How it originated we know not; when Roon heard of it he exclaimed, “Now the Italians are arming, the Austrians cannot disarm.”  He was right.  The Austrian Government sent a message to Berlin that they would withdraw part of their northern army from Bohemia, but must at once put the whole of their southern army on a war footing.  Prussia refused to accept this plea, and the order for the mobilisation of the Prussian army went out.

As soon as Austria had begun to mobilise, war was inevitable; the state of the finances of the Empire would not permit them to maintain their army on a war footing for any time.  None the less, another six weeks were to elapse before hostilities began.

We have seen how throughout these complications Bismarck had desired, if he fought Austria, to fight, not for the sake of the Duchies, but for a reform of the German Confederation.

In March he had said to the Italians that the Holstein question was not enough to warrant a declaration of war.  Prussia intended to bring forward the reform of the Confederation.  This would take several months.  He hoped that among other advantages, he would have at least Bavaria on his side; for the kind of proposal he had in his mind, though at this time he seems to have had no clear plan, was some arrangement by which the whole of the north of Germany should be closely united to Prussia, and the southern States formed in a separate union with Bavaria at the head.  He had always pointed out, even when he was at Frankfort, that Bavaria was a natural ally of Prussia.  In a great war the considerable army of Bavaria would not be unimportant.