Among the most reactionary of the Junker party in the Prussian Parliament of 1848 was one Count Otto Bismarck von Schoenhausen, subsequently known to history as Prince Bismarck (1815-98). This man strenuously opposed the acceptance of the Imperial dignity by the King of Prussia at the hands of the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849, on the ground that it was unworthy of the King of Prussia to accept any office at the hands of the people rather than at those of his peers, the princes of Germany. In 1851 Count von Bismarck was appointed a Prussian representative in the revived princely and aristocratic Federal Assembly. Here he energetically fought the hegemony hitherto exercised by Austria. He continued some years in this capacity, and subsequently served as Prussian Minister in St. Petersburg and again in Paris. In the autumn of 1862 the new King of Prussia, Wilhelm I, who had succeeded to the throne the previous year, called him back to take over the portfolio of Foreign Affairs and the leadership of the Cabinet. Shortly after his accession to power he arbitrarily closed the Chambers for refusing to sanction his Army Bill. His army scheme was then forced through by the royal fiat alone. On the reopening of the Schleswig-Holstein question, owing to the death of the King of Denmark, German nationalist sentiment was aroused, which Bismarck knew how to use for the aggrandisement of Prussia. The Danish war, in which the two leading German States collaborated and which ended in their favour, had as its result a disagreement of a serious nature between these rival, though mutually victorious, Powers. In all these events the hand of Bismarck was to be seen. He it was who dominated completely Prussian policy from 1862 onwards. Full of his schemes for the aggrandisement of Prussia at the expense of Austria, he stirred up and worked this quarrel for all it was worth, the upshot being the Prusso-Austrian War (the so-called Seven Weeks' War) of the summer of 1866. The war was brought about by the arbitrary dissolution of the German Confederation--i.e. the Federal Assembly--in which, owing to the alarm created by Prussian insolence and aggression, Austria had the backing of the majority of the States. This step was followed by Bismarck's dispatching an ultimatum to Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse Cassel respectively, all of which had voted against Prussia in the Federal Assembly, followed, on its non-acceptance, by the dispatch of Prussian troops to occupy the States in question. Hard on this act of brutal violence came the declaration of war with Austria.