In 1866 there was strictly speaking no Germany. That part of the world which during the past forty-five years has been known as Germany consisted of a large number of small states and principalities, speaking the same language and having in a general way the same customs and ideals. All attempts to find some basis for their political unification, however, miscarried. Whenever Prussia, which beyond doubt was the biggest and most powerful of all the German-speaking states, attempted to take the lead it was opposed by powerful Austria as well as by a varying number of smaller states. The latter, much as they desired in certain ways to bring about a united Germany in order to be better protected against their much more powerful neighbors, Russia and France, feared these hardly more than a Germany under the control of Prussia. It gradually became clear that unification of Germany would never be realized as long as Austria and Prussia were contending for leadership. How utterly impossible it was for these two countries to achieve any lasting success as long as they made a common cause of anything had been proven only two years earlier, when both went to war with Denmark about the succession to the throne of the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. For no sooner had they succeeded through their combined efforts in defeating Denmark and thereby forced the northern kingdom to relinquish its claims on Schleswig-Holstein than they found it next to impossible to settle among themselves the division of the newly acquired territory.