GERMANY THE AGGRESSOR
Switzerland. Napoleon seems to have been content
with vague assurances, because he regarded himself
as master of the situation. He calculated that a war
between Prussia and Austria would be a long one;
that it would be evenly contested; that before it
was over both sides would be exhausted; that
Prussia would get the worst of it; and that in the
end France would be able to intervene with decisive
effect, dictating the terms of peace, and taking such
* compensations' as she might desire. Dis aliter visum*
Meantime Bismarck, having got Austria isolated
and in the operating-theatre, had merely with the
help of his Italian assistant to get her of her own
motion to mount the table, under the illusion that
she was the surgeon and they the patients. The
story of the devices by which he, in conjunction
with Italy, aggravated her beyond the limit of en-
durance, is a record of diabolically clever but entirely
unscrupulous craft. By refusing to admit her to the
Zollverein; by concluding a favourable commercial
treaty with France; by ostentatiously encouraging
Italy in her demand for Venetia; by supporting
Russia in her subjugation of Poland—in these and
many other ways he showed a persistent hostility to
Austria. But the two things that ultimately achieved
his purpose and precipitated the Austro-Prussian War
were (i) his interference with Austria's administra-
tion of Holstein, and (2) his presentation of a scheme
for the reorganisation of the German Confederation
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