On the morning of October 25, 1864, Franz had barely awakened from sleep when he was stunned by the news that the Prussian Government had declared war on the Kingdom of Denmark.
More precisely, the two countries had declared war the previous afternoon. By the time the news reached Vienna, it was already late at night, and the quick-witted staff had delayed reporting it until Franz rose.
Without any prior warning whatsoever, the two countries had suddenly gone to war. As for the Prussians' pretext of "liberating their German compatriots," Franz simply ignored it.
Any pretext would do. Historically, the Prussians had still flown the banner of safeguarding German sovereignty, but under the butterfly effect wrought by Franz, the Berlin Government no longer dared carry that banner.
As Austria revived, slogans and propaganda related to "German unification" gradually vanished from the Prussian Government's official documents.
Especially after the Paris Conference, both the Kingdom of Prussia and the newly established German Federal Empire tacitly suppressed ideas of grand unification.
No one was a fool. If they kept promoting it, they would merely be making a wedding dress for Austria.
Once the idea of grand unification took root in the people's hearts, they would become the ones to be unified. For the public, unification might be a good thing, but for the rulers, it was an entirely different matter.
The governments of the various states within the New Holy Roman Empire might possess great authority, but compared with ruling their own domains, the rulers' power had still shrunk dramatically.
Driven by their interests, the international agreement that had divided the German region at the Paris Conference became Prussia's legal basis for separating itself from the German region.
Legally speaking, the Kingdom of Prussia was an independent state, just like Belgium, the Netherlands,