He had indeed gone there full of friendly dispositions towards Austria; he was instructed to take up again the policy which had been pursued before 1848, when all questions of importance had been discussed by the two great Powers before they were laid before the Diet.

Bismarck, however, quickly found that this was no longer the intention of Austria; the Austria which he had so chivalrously defended at Berlin did not exist; he had expected to find a warm and faithful friend--he found a cunning and arrogant enemy.
Schwarzenberg had spared Prussia but he intended to humble her; he wished to use the Diet as a means of permanently asserting the supremacy of Austria, and he would not be content until Prussia had been forced like Saxony or Bavaria to acquiesce in the position of a vassal State.

The task might not seem impossible, for Prussia appeared to be on the downward path.
Of course the Diet of Frankfort was the place where the plan had to be carried out; it seemed an admirable opportunity that Prussia was represented there by a young and untried man.

Count Thun and his successors used every means to make it appear as though Prussia was a State not of equal rank with Austria.

They carried the war into society and, as diplomatists always will, used the outward forms of social intercourse as a means for obtaining political ends.