This time the King of Prussia received the Imperial crown at the hands of the kings, princes, and other hereditary rulers of the various German States.

Bismarck was graciously pleased to bestow unity and internal peace--a Prussian peace--upon Germany on condition of its abasement before the Prussian corporal's stick and police-truncheon.

Such was the united Germany of Bismarck.

Germany meant for Bismarck and his followers Prussia, and Prussia meant their own Junker and military caste, under the titular headship of the Hohenzollern.
Yet, strange to say, the peoples of Germany willingly consented, under the influence of the intoxication of a successful war, to have their independence bartered away to Prussia by their rulers.

In this united Germany of Bismarck--a Germany united under Prussian despotism--they naively saw the realization of the dream of their thinkers and poets since the time of the Napoleonic wars--which had become more than ever an inspiration from 1848 onwards--of an ideal unity of all German-speaking peoples as a national whole.