One last consideration remains.  If the opportunity was unexampled, so also were the statesmanlike qualities of the man who seized it.  The more that we know concerning the narrowly Prussian feelings of King William, the centralising pedantry of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and the petty particularism of the Governments of Bavaria and Wuertemberg, the more does the figure of Bismarck stand out as that of the one great statesman of his country and era.  However censurable much of his conduct may be, his action in working up to and finally consummating German unity at the right psychological moment stands out as one of the greatest feats of statesmanship which history records.

But obviously a wedded life which had been preceded by no wooing, over whose nuptials Mars shed more influence than Venus, could not be expected to run a wholly smooth course.  In fact, this latest instance in ethnical lore of marriage by capture has on the whole led to a more harmonious result than was to be expected.  Possibly, if we could lift the veil of secrecy which is wisely kept drawn over the weightiest proceedings of the Bundesrath and its committees, the scene would appear somewhat different.  As it is, we can refer here only to some questions of outstanding importance the details of which are fairly well known.

The first of these which subjected the new Empire to any serious strain was a sharp religious struggle against the new claims of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.  Without detailing the many causes of friction that sprang up between the new Empire and the Roman Catholic Church, we may state that most of them had their roots in the activity shown by that Church among the Poles of Prussian Poland (Posen), and also in the dogma of Papal infallibility.  Decreed by the Oecumenical Council at Rome on the very eve of the outbreak of the Franco-German War, it seemed to be part and parcel of that forward Jesuit policy which was working for the overthrow of the chief Protestant States.  Many persons—­among them Bismarck[78]—­claimed that the Empress Eugenie’s hatred of Prussia and the warlike influence which she is said to have exerted on Napoleon III. on that critical day, July 14, 1870, were prompted by Jesuitical intrigues.  However that may be (and it is a matter on which no fair-minded man will dogmatise until her confidential papers see the light) there is little doubt that the Pope at Rome and the Roman hierarchy among the Catholics of Central and Eastern Europe did their best to prevent German unity and to introduce elements of discord.  The dogma of the infallibility of the Pope in matters of faith and doctrine was itself a cause of strife.  Many of the more learned and moderate of the German Catholics had protested against the new dogma, and some of these “Old Catholics”, as they were called, tried to avoid teaching it in the Universities and schools.  Their bishops, however, insisted that it should be taught, placed some recalcitrants under the lesser ban, and deprived them of their posts.