North German Confederation

A state that existed for less than four years and is the reason Germany exists at all. Prussia defeated Austria at Koniggratz in 1866 in a war of seven weeks, dissolved the German Confederation, annexed Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau and Frankfurt outright, and organised everything north of the Main into a federation under its own permanent presidency. Austria was excluded from Germany for good - the decision between a greater Germany including the Habsburg lands and a smaller one led by Prussia, argued over since 1848, was settled by artillery. Bismarck wrote the constitution himself, and it is the important part: a federal council of state governments weighted towards Prussia, a chancellor responsible to the king of Prussia rather than to parliament, and an elected Reichstag chosen by universal male suffrage, which was more democratic than Britain at the time and was intended to outflank middle-class liberals by appealing to conservative rural voters. That constitution was carried over almost unchanged into the German Empire in 1871, so the federation's real life was 44 years under a different name. The southern states stayed out but signed military conventions. The confederation adopted the black, white and red flag. Its legal code and currency work laid the basis for unification. War with France in 1870 brought the southern states in. The empire was proclaimed at Versailles in January 1871. The federation existed from 1867 to 1871 and covered Germany north of the river Main. Berlin was its capital and the king of Prussia its president. It held around 30 million people. Bismarck served as its federal chancellor.

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