The Seven Weeks’ War had made Bismarck a hero in Prussia. Even the Liberals in the Landtag had changed their opinion of him. At the request of King Wilhelm I, they enthusiastically declared that everything Bismarck had done against the Prussian constitution had been legal. Many of the Liberals even discovered that they cared more about Prussian glory than Liberalism. They formed a new National Liberal Party that would in coming years work closely with Bismarck.
Bismarck, however, was not content with these past glories. He wanted to bring the southern German states into a union with Prussia and the northern confederation, but he knew that great obstacles stood in his way. The southern Germans distrusted and disliked Prussia, for various reasons. Some wanted to keep their local independence, and the Liberals among them thought Prussia’s government too oppressive. Most of Germany’s Catholics lived in the south, and they feared living under a Protestant power. They remembered that Prussia had imprisoned Catholic bishops who dared to stand up in support of the Church’s marriage laws.
