The first plan of campaign drawn up at Paris aimed at driving a solid wedge of French troops between the two Confederations and inducing or compelling the South to join France; it was hoped that Saxony would follow.

As a matter of fact, very many of the South Germans and Saxons disliked Prussian supremacy; Catholic Bavaria looked askance at the growing power of Protestant Prussia.
Wuertemberg was Protestant, but far too democratic to wish for the control of the cast-iron bureaucrats of Berlin.

The same was even more true of Saxony, where hostility to Prussia was a deep-rooted tradition; some of the Saxon troops on leaving their towns even shouted _Napoleon soll leben_[37].

It is therefore quite possible that, had France struck quickly at the valleys of the Neckar and Main, she might have reduced the South German States to neutrality.

Alliance perhaps was out of the question save under overwhelming compulsion; for France had alienated the Bavarian and Hessian Governments by her claims in 1866, and the South German people by her recent offensive treatment of the Hohenzollern candidature.