The Austro-Prussian War and the North German Confederation

Date

June–August 1866 (Battle of Königgrätz, 3 July 1866)

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Central Europe (Bohemia, German states)

Era

Modern

Significance

The Austro-Prussian or 'Seven Weeks' War of 1866 resolved the long-standing contest over whether a unified Germany would be led by Habsburg Austria or Hohenzollern Prussia.

Engineered by the Prussian minister-president Otto von Bismarck, who first secured an alliance with the new Kingdom of Italy, the war pitted Prussia against Austria and most of the smaller German states. The conflict was decided with stunning speed at the Battle of Königgrätz (Sadowa) on 3 July 1866, where Helmuth von Moltke's Prussian armies, equipped with breech-loading needle-guns and coordinated by railways and telegraph, shattered the Austrian army. The Peace of Prague excluded Austria permanently from German affairs and dissolved the old German Confederation. Prussia annexed Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau and Frankfurt, joining its eastern and western territories, and organised the states north of the Main into the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation in 1867. The war marked the triumph of Bismarck's strategy of unifying Germany through Prussian power, demonstrated the revolutionary impact of industrial-age military technology and logistics, and left only the southern German states and a wary France standing between Prussia and full German unification — a gap closed by the Franco-Prussian War four years later.

Empires active in June–August 1866 (Battle of Königgrätz, 3 July 1866)

• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE – 1962 CE
• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE – 1912 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE

Related military & conflict events

• The Franco-Prussian War, German unification and the Paris Commune
  19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871; German Empire proclaimed 18 January 1871
• American Civil War and the abolition of slavery
  1861–1865 (Emancipation Proclamation 1 January 1863; 13th Amendment ratified 6 December 1865)
• The Taiping Rebellion
  1850–1864
• First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking
  1839–1842 (Treaty of Nanking, 29 August 1842)
• Russo-Japanese War and Japan's Rise as a Great Power
  1904–1905
• Assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I
  28 June – 4 August 1914

Further reading

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

The wider story

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

Roger Crowley

Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.

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