Prussia’s War against Germany, 1866

On 1 August 1864, King Christian of Denmark ceded all rights to the twin duchies of Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia and Austria. They passed under a joint Austro-Prussian military occupation, pending a formal decision concerning their future by the German Confederation. All of this was formalized with the 30 October 1864 Treaty of Vienna and by all appearances it appeared a new day had dawned for Austro-Prussian relations. In the afterglow of a successful war, it seemed like the inauguration of an era of joint cooperation between the two German powers. This is what Austria desperately wanted. Bismarck however had other plans. Bismarck’s objective was to annex both duchies to Prussia and to neutralize Austrian influence in the German states once and for all. In Bismarck’s prophetic words of August 1864, “War was inevitable.” Already in 1863 Bismarck had suggested to the Russians that Prussia might soon launch a massive preemptive strike on the Habsburg Empire exactly as, “Frederick the Great had in 1756.”

As per Bismarck’s calculations, the Austrians were at an awful geopolitical disadvantage. The duchies were extremely remote from Austria, over 800 miles away. Vienna was only lukewarm about keeping a military presence in Holstein. The situation on the ground was even more tenuous with the presence of a Prussian military communication and railroad corridor running directly through Holstein to resupply the Prussian garrison in Schleswig. Bismarck knew that Austria desperately wanted a diplomatic settlement to get out of Holstein. During October of 1864 negotiations began. Vienna offered Berlin the following terms: Prussia could either recognize Schleswig-Holstein as an independent state under the Augustenburg dynasty or Prussia could annex Schleswig-Holstein and compensate Austria with land from Polish Silesia. Bismarck declared Silesia was not negotiable and adding a rather mysterious remark, Bismarck announced that, “Berlin had special rights to the twin duchies.” In February 1865 Bismarck issued a provocative declaration, designed to destabilize the negotiations. Bismarck informed Vienna that Berlin intended to regard Schleswig-Holstein as a Prussian satellite state, fully within the orbit of the Prussian sphere of influence. Vienna took the bait and it seemed war would break out in June 1865. War was avoided when the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph sent an ambassador to the Prussian King William I. The result was the Convention of Gastein of 14 August 1865 which redundantly again formalized the terms of the 30 October 1864 Treaty of Vienna.

Not withstanding the diplomatic maneuvering, Bismarck continued to turn up the heat on Austria. Bismarck’s provocations continued. In January 1866, Bismarck ordered Prussian police to arrest a pro-Austrian meeting in Schleswig and accused Austria of deliberately breaking the terms of the Gastein Convention. On 28 February 1866, Bismarck passed a resolution of the Crown Council in Berlin stating that war with Austria was inevitable and that Austria continued to treat Prussia as a rival and an enemy. Bismarck’s final provocation was to seek a military alliance with the new state of Italy. On 8 April 1866 Prussia and Italy signed an anti-Austrian treaty that stipulated each would aid the other, no matter how war broke out or who started the conflict. In return for Italy’s guarantee to open up a second front against Austria in the south, Bismarck promised the Italians Venetia should the alliance be victorious.

In a grand display of the possibilities of Realpolitik, Napoleon III began playing both sides in May 1866. In return for a pledge of neutrality, Vienna also promised France the province of Venetia. That same month Bismarck and Napoleon III discussed the conditions of French neutrality. In what has become known as the infamous “Belgium Letter” of May 1866, Bismarck finalized Napoleon’s pledge in writing. In the Belgium Letter, Napoleon III pledged French neutrality, just as he had done with the Austrians. In return, Bismarck made vague promises of, “Perhaps a possible return of some land in the Rhineland.” The pièce de résistance of the Belgium Letter, however, was Bismarck’s trickery, alluding to the fact that he might “Take a supporting position for French demands in Belgium and Luxembourg.” Bismarck literally sealed the deal with a kiss and a cigar and both parties were euphoric: France could potentially return to the traditional borders of Napoleon I: Prussia would not have to worry about a second front in the west.

Besides France and Italy, Russia was the third power whose position was critical to the success of Bismarck’s Austrian venture. Since the Crimean War, Russian military planners saw the United Kingdom and Austria as the most likely opponents in the next war. Prussia and Russia had traditionally been close allies. Austro-Russian relations were still cool. Russia had never forgiven Austria’s “rank treachery” for joining the allied coalition during the Crimean War. Since 1862, Bismarck had carefully cultivated relations with Russia. In 1863 Bismarck offered Russia Prussian troops to help crush the Polish Revolt. Russia politely declined, informing Bismarck that killing rebellious Poles was a Russian national pastime. No help was needed, but the offer was deeply appreciated. Bismarck was also well aware that Imperial Russia in 1866 was locked in a process of fundamental domestic political reform. Because of her disastrous performance in the Crimean War (1853-1856), Russian Czar Alexander II resolved to modernize the country. All of Russia’s energy and treasure was poured into bringing Russia into modernity.
Alexander II’s primary concern was the modernization of the Russian Motherland and not a second rescue of the traitorous Habsburgs.

With Russian and French neutrality virtually assured, Bismarck went to work. At the end of May 1866, Italian troop movements triggered Austrian mobilization. Now began a chain of troop deployments and counter-measures that resulted in full Austrian-Italian-Prussian mobilization. On 6 June 1866, Bismarck ordered Prussian troops into Holstein under the pretext of “inspecting and repairing” the railroad communication corridor. In a sudden moment of tragic insight, Austria finally understood that the trap had been baited on 30 October 1864. Prussian troops encountered no resistance and the Austrian garrison retreated south to Hanover. On 11 June 1866 the Austrian ambassador to the Frankfurt Diet of the German Confederation denounced the Prussian occupation of Holstein as illegal and in breach of the Convention of Gastein. On 14 June 1866 the Frankfurt Diet voted to mobilize German troops against Prussia. Five days later, the Italians declared war on Austria.

All of Europe expected an Austrian victory. The Habsburg Empire had a population of 35 million; Prussia, 19 million. The German Confederation, including the kingdoms of Hanover, Saxony, Bavaria and Württemberg-with combined populations of 14 million-sided with Austria. Napoleon III, who had actually fought the Austrians in the bloody campaigns of June 1859, predicted that France would be awarded Venetia in less than a month. Prussia’s performance in the Danish War had been average at best. The reality was Austrian forces had out fought, out marched and out thought their Prussian allies in virtually every aspect of the war. It might be possible to argue that the Prussian assault on Düppel on 15 May 1864 demonstrated at least some military competence. The battle however was a bloodbath. Given the staggering Prussian casualties, Düppel could also be presented as failed strategy, as well as the messy meddling of Bismarck. Either way in 1866 Prussia was hardly a military force to take seriously. For years, traditional historians have argued that Prussian military reforms 1862-1864 paid off during the Danish War. The current body of evidence suggests otherwise. It now seems that Prussia’s program of reform were far less dramatic as has often been claimed. Austria also had to respond to the Italian disaster of 1859 with reforms of her own and the evidence shows that Austria made far more progress modernizing her military than Prussia. Austrian artillery was on the cutting edge of military technology, with rifled barrels. Austrian gun crews were also superbly trained and well deployed.

It was true that Prussia enjoyed a slight superiority in numbers in the Bohemian theatre of operations (See map! Bohemia is the region north of Prague and southeast of Dresden in modern day Czech Republic) where the war would be decided: 254,000 Prussians faced 245,000 troops of Austria’s North Army. The situation would have been dramatically different of course had the Italians not committed 200,000 men to their offensive in Venetia, forcing Vienna to divert an extra 100,000 troops to the southwestern front. Habsburg Austria also enjoyed an important strategic advantage. In the diplomatic contest of 1866 most of the middling German states opted to side with Austria. Not only was Prussia facing Austria, but virtually the entire German Confederation. For this reason the Seven Weeks War of 1866 is referred in German history books as “der Brüderkrieg.” Though tradition historians label the 1866 war “The Seven Weeks War” or “The Brother’s War” or “The Austro-Prussian War,” this war should be seen as for what it was: Prussia against all of Germany.

Traditionalists argue that Prussia’s victory in the Seven Weeks War was proof for the success of the Zollverein. We have, however, proven earlier, that there is little evidence to support this. Had the Zollverein been an effective tool of Prussian policy the middling German states would not have supported Austria. Historians love Bismarck’s ‘Blood and Iron’ speech of September 1862 which seems to speak to rapid industrialization and military prowess. But as already shown, this played a lesser role in Prussia’s military victory than traditional historians have contended. The two economies were polar opposite, with the industrial advantage going to Austria. The Prussian economy appears to have been more backward than the Austrian. Whereas the Habsburg Empire had three major concentrations of industry around Vienna, Prague and Budapest, Prussia had only the industrialized Ruhr. A far larger proportion of Prussians than Austrians worked in agriculture. In fact the only industrial advantage Prussia had over Austria was in railway mileage, which was twice that of the Austrians. Further proof of the economic differences can be found in the various types of weapons employed in1866. The ones requiring the most sophisticated manufacturing processes were the Austrian field guns of the artillery, and here it was the Austrians, with their accurate rifled cannon, who clearly had the advantage. In any case the Seven Weeks War was not a war that pitted two highly industrialized economies against each other. It was a short, brutally violent, sharp fight in which both sides managed to get by on pre-stocked weaponry and munitions.

Why then did the Prussians win? The chief author of the Prussian victory of 1866 was the Prussian Chief of the General Staff, Helmut von Moltke. In Bohemia, to a much greater extent than in Denmark, Moltke was able to unfold a revolutionary strategic conception. His approach to the Austrian war was to break the Prussian forces up into groups small enough to be moved at the highest possible speed to the point to the Schwerpunkt-the point of attack. Moltke’s innovative strategy was a conception of mobilization that required sophisticated used of modern infrastructure; railways and roads in particular and of the telegraph, since the separate armies would be out of immediate contact with each other and would need to be rigorously coordinated from headquarters. The chief drawback of this approach was that it could so easily go wrong. If the Prussian armies were forced off course or became seriously out of sync, Austrian forces could destroy the smaller Prussian units piecemeal and one at a time.

Complementing this aggressive strategy was a new weapon development that made the Prussian infantryman the best in Europe. By 1866, Prussia was the only European power to be armed with a breech-loading rifle-the Dreyse needle-gun. This was essentially a rifle of the modern type that was more lethal, faster and had a greater kill-range than the traditional muzzle-loading weapons still used by all European armies. The muzzle-loading weapons of the Austrian army had a range of about 200 meters, the needle-gun 1200 meters; an Austrian soldier could fire his weapon three times a minute, a Prussian soldier twelve times a minute, or as fast as he could pull the trigger and reload; the Austrian weapon had to be reloaded standing up; the needle-gun could be fired and reloaded lying down without having to emerge from cover. Because the crème de la crème of the Austrian army was her high-tech artillery, Austria relied on ‘shock tactics’ of massed guns. The Prussians developed ‘firing tactics’ using superbly trained infantrymen to move quickly and efficiently from Schwerpunkt to Schwerpunkt, unleashing rapid and deadly volley fire into enemy ranks.

The victory of the Prussian armies cannot, of course, be ascribed solely to the needle-gun. Although the army of the German confederation put 150,000 men into the field, they were hardly a formidable fighting force. They did not properly constitute an army, since they had never trained together and did not possess a unified command structure. The armies of the middling states had no stomach to kill fellow Germans. In fact the constitution of the German Confederation forbade member states from solving problems through force. When Austria found herself at war with Prussia in June 1866, Bavaria, for example, which controlled the largest single force outside of Austria-the 65,000 men of the VII Federal Corps-informed Vienna that the Austrians could rely on Bavarian support only if the Prussians actually invaded a fellow German state. When Prussian forces came up against the armies from Hanover, the Hanoverian army retreated south, hoping to run into Bavarians or Austrians to help them. One of the greatest challenges of the Prussian army in 1866 was what to do with the tens of thousands of German Confederation prisoners who would rather surrender than shoot fellow Germans.

Prussian unit esprit de corps was also far superior than the poor morale of the Habsburg armies. The current body of evidence suggests that the Austrians suffered from lower morale by comparison with their Prussian opponents. Poles, Venetians, Hungarians, Czechs, Ukrainians and Romanian were all part of the Austrian Habsburg army in 1866. The problem was many of these ethnic groups hated their Austrian officers more than the Prussians. Prussian troops in June 1866 were surprised to come across Venetian infantry refusing to fire their weapons. At the sight of the approaching Prussians, they threw down their weapons, dropped to their knees and blew kisses at the enemy. Communication was also an enormous problem in the Austrian army. Though German was the official language of the Empire, few of the rank and file in the Austrian army spoke German. If this was not bad enough, the Austrians also failed to maintain a staff organization with the power and cohesion of Moltke’s General Staff. Command-and-Control was a major deficiency in the Austrian army. Once the chaos of battle began, confusion reigned in the Habsburg ranks.
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On 23 June 1866, von Moltke’s three Prussian armies totaling 300,000 men invaded Bohemia, north of Prague. As late as 30 June 1866, the Prussians were finding it difficult for their armies to communicate and to stay in touch. On 3 July 1866 the Prussians and the Austrians accidentally collided between the river fort of Königgratz and the Bohemian town of Sadowa, east-northeast of Prague. 500,000 men and 1500 guns fought for seventeen hours. At 3:30 in the afternoon, it seemed the Austrians were winning when Crown Prince Frederick arrived with the Prussian Second Army of 80,000 fresh men. By evening the Austrian Army was in disorderly retreat toward Vienna. In a single day, Austria’s position in Germany had been destroyed.
King William I and von Moltke wanted to pursue the Austrians south to destroy the Austrian Army. Moltke wanted to march on Vienna. Bismarck threatened to hurl himself out of the forth story window of the Nikolsburg Castle. Bismarck knew Europe would not tolerate the destruction of Habsburg Austria. By late July 1866, Bismarck threatened over and over again to kill himself unless generous peace terms were given to Vienna. Crown Prince Frederick intervened. Just as he had saved von Moltke from the jaws of defeat at Königgratz, Crown Prince Frederick saved Bismarck. By talking to his father and by convincing Moltke of the military necessity to stand down, calmer heads finally prevailed. Bismarck finally got his way. On 23 August 1866 Austria and Prussia signed the Treaty of Prague. The terms, by anyone’s standard were enormously generous. Bismarck had won the day.

The Treaty of Prague
23 August 1866

• Austria will surrender no Habsburg territory to Prussia. • Austria will pay no war indemnities to Prussia. • Austria will not suffer the indignity of a Prussian victory parade in Vienna. • Austria surrenders all political influence in the southern German States and the affairs of the Northern German Confederation. • Schleswig and Holstein will be annexed and controlled by Prussia, becoming part of the Northern German Confederation. • Austria’s ally, the German State of Hanover, will be annexed and controlled by Prussia, becoming part of the Northern German Confederation. • Austria’s ally, the Kingdom of Saxony, may retain their King but will be incorporated into the Northern German Confederation. • Austria’s allies, the southern Catholic German states of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, must pay Prussia war indemnities and agree to put their armies under Prussian military command in wartime.