And then, constant in the furtherance of his purposes, Wilhelm deliberately invented Bismarck. He had steadfastly taken note of the man whom he chose to be his minister from the big Landwehr lieutenant's first commission to the Frankfort Diet in 1851; probably, indeed, earlier, when Bismarck was a rare but forcible speaker in Frederick Wilhelm's "quasi-Parliament." In Bismarck Wilhelm saw precisely the man he wanted--the complement of himself; arbitrary as he was, unscrupulous as he was, but bolder and at the same time more wise. Knowing where he himself was lacking, he recognised the man who, when he himself should have the impulse to balk and hesitate, was of that hardier nature--"grit" the Americans call it--to take him hard by the head and force him over the fence which all the while he had been longing to be on the other side of. To a monarch of this character Bismarck was simply the ideal guide and support--the man to urge him on when hesitating, to restrain him when over-ardent. Wilhelm had all along thoroughly realised that war with Austria was among the inevitables between him and the accomplishment of his aims, and had accepted it as such when it was yet afar off; but when confronted full with it his nerve failed him, and Bismarck--engaged among other things for just such an emergency--had to act as the spur to prick the side of his master's intent. The spur having done its work Wilhelm was himself again; he really enjoyed Königgrätz and would fain have dictated peace to Austria from the Hofburg of Vienna. In his zeal for promoting German unity at Prussia's bayonet point he lost his head a little, and on Bismarck devolved, in his own words, "the ungrateful duty of diluting the wine of victory with the water of moderation." One of the beads on the surface of the former fluid was certainly thus early the Imperial idea; but the time for its fulfilment Bismarck wisely judged not yet ripe. As it approached four years later, the diary of the Crown Prince depicts with unconscious humour the amusing progress of the "weakening" of Wilhelm's opposition to the Kaisership; it weakened in good time quite out of the sort of existence it had ever had, and Wilhelm was ready for the Kaisership before the Kaisership was ready for him.