Cavour and Bismarck Compared: Aim, Method, Ally, Result

The idea

Set the two ministers side by side under four heads. Aim: Cavour wanted Piedmont's power, Bismarck Prussia's, and neither began with a nation in mind. Method: both used war and diplomacy, and both used a nationalist they distrusted, Garibaldi for Cavour and popular feeling for Bismarck. Ally: Cavour needed France in eighteen fifty-nine and paid with Nice and Savoy; Bismarck needed no ally, only Austria's and France's isolation, which he arranged. Result: Italy became a constitutional monarchy with a weak king and a half-million electorate; Germany a federal empire with universal manhood suffrage and a chancellor answerable to the Kaiser. The anchor's verdict is that Bismarck was the more memorable and personally responsible for his result, while Cavour died in eighteen sixty-one with his work unfinished at Venetia and Rome.