Formation of the North German Confederation
Formed in 1867 in the wake of Prussia's victory over Austria, the North German Confederation bound the German states north of the river Main into a federal union under Prussian leadership, with the Prussian king as its hereditary president and Bismarck as its chancellor. Its constitution — universal manhood suffrage for an elected Reichstag set against a powerful executive answerable to the crown, not parliament — was essentially the template later extended to the whole German Empire. The Confederation gave Prussia control of a unified army, foreign policy and customs union across the north, while the southern states, though still nominally independent, were tied to it by military alliances. It was the decisive institutional half-step to unification: when the Franco-Prussian War rallied the southern states to the national cause in 1870–71, the new German Empire simply inherited and enlarged the machinery the Confederation had already built.
- Year: 1867 CE
- Category: Political
