She had already found her brutal, if humorous, embodiment in Bismarck; and he began with a scheme full of brutality and not without humour.

He took up, or rather pretended to take up, the claim of the Prince of Augustenberg to duchies which were a quite lawful part of the land of Denmark.

In support of this small pretender he enlisted two large things, the Germanic body called the Bund and the Austrian Empire.
It is possibly needless to say that after he had seized the disputed provinces by pure Prussian violence, he kicked out the Prince of Augustenberg, kicked out the German Bund, and finally kicked out the Austrian Empire too, in the sudden campaign of Sadowa.

He was a good husband and a good father; he did not paint in water colours; and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

But the symbolic intensity of the incident was this.