This was not enough; it was necessary besides to isolate France.  There were many men in Europe who would have wished to bring about a new coalition of the armies by whose defeat Germany had been built up—­France and Austria, Denmark and the Poles; then it was always to be expected that Russia, who had done so much for Germany in the past, would cease to regard with complacency the success of her protege; after all, the influence of the Czar in Europe had depended upon the divisions of Germany as much as had that of France.  How soon would the Russian nation wake up, as the French had done, to the fact that the sympathies of their Emperor had created a great barrier to Russian ambition and Russian diplomacy?  It was especially the Clerical party who wished to bring about some coalition; for them the chief object was the overthrow of Italy, and the world still seemed to centre in Rome; they could not gain the assistance of Germany in this work, and they therefore looked on the great Protestant Empire as an enemy.  They would have liked by monarchical reaction to gain control of France; by the success of the Carlist movement to obtain that of Spain, and then, assisted by Austria, to overthrow the new order in Europe.  Against this Bismarck’s chief energies were directed; we shall see how he fought the Ultramontanes at home.  With regard to France, he was inclined to support the Republic, and refused all attempts which were made by some German statesmen, and especially by Count Arnim, the Ambassador at Paris, to win German sympathy and support to the monarchical party.  In Spain his support and sympathy were given to the Government, which with difficulty maintained itself against the Carlists; a visit of Victor Emmanuel to Berlin confirmed the friendship with Italy, over which the action of Garibaldi in 1870 had thrown a cloud.  The greatest triumph of Bismarck’s policy was, however, the reconciliation with Austria.  One of the most intimate of his councillors, when asked which of Bismarck’s actions he admired most, specified this.  It was peculiarly his own; he had long worked for it; even while the war of 1866 was still being waged, he had foreseen that a day would come when Germany and Austria, now that they were separated, might become, as they never had been when joined by an unnatural union, honest allies.  It was probably to a great extent brought about by the strong regard and confidence which the Austrian Emperor reposed in the German Chancellor.  The beginnings of an approximation were laid by the dismissal of Beust, who himself now was to become a personal friend of the statesman against whom he had for so long and with such ingenuity waged an unequal conflict.  The union was sealed when, in December, 1872, the Czar of Russia and Francis Joseph came to Berlin as guests of the Emperor.  There was no signed contract, no written alliance, but the old union of the Eastern monarchies under which a generation before Europe had groaned, was now restored, and on the Continent there was no place to which France could look for help or sympathy.