With what admiration and jealousy must they have looked on Bismarck, but there was none of them who had done for his Prince what Bismarck had for the King of Prussia.
Perhaps it was his intention at once to press forward the struggle with Austria for supremacy in Germany.

If so, he was to be disappointed.

A new difficulty was now appearing in the diplomatic world: the Schleswig-Holstein question, which had been so long slumbering, broke out into open fire, and nearly three years were to pass before Bismarck was able to resume the policy on which he had determined.

Men often speak as though he were responsible for the outbreak of this difficulty and the war which followed; that was far from being the case; it interrupted his plans as much as did the Polish question.

We shall have to see with what ingenuity he gained for his country an advantage from what appeared at first to be a most inconvenient situation.
We must shortly explain the origin of this question, the most complicated that has ever occupied European diplomacy.
The Duchy of Holstein had been part of the German Empire; for many hundreds of years the Duke of Holstein had also been King of Denmark; the connection at first had been a purely personal union; it was, however, complicated by the existence of the Duchy of Schleswig.
Schleswig was outside the Confederation, as it had been outside the German Empire, and had in old days been a fief of the Kingdom of Denmark.