Moreover, in giving up the simpler Conservative policy of his younger years, he became an opportunist; he would introduce important measures in order to secure the support of a party, even though he might thereby be sacrificing the interests of his country to a temporary emergency.

He really applied to home affairs the habits he had learned in diplomacy; there every alliance is temporary; when the occasion of it has passed by, it ceases, and leaves no permanent effect.

He tried to govern Germany by a series of political alliances; but the alliance of the Government with a party can never be barren; the laws to which it gives birth remain.

Bismarck sometimes thought more of the advantage of the alliance than of the permanent effect of the laws.
Even after this there was still delay; there were the usual abortive attempts at a congress, which, as in 1859, broke down through the refusal of Austria to give way.

There were dark intrigues of Napoleon, who even at the last moment attempted to divert the Italians from their Prussian alliance.