If Bismarck was in charge, he would have begged the king to accept the title, no matter how much it was restricted, but he could become a symbol of German unity, and then slowly gain power within by other means, which would be much faster than doing everything possible to unify bit by bit through war.

After hundreds of years of war, the German region has finally gradually coalesced into dozens of larger states to form nation-states like France and Great Britain, and if this war continues, there will be no hope of unification for several generations.

Historically, Bismarck's unified Germany can hardly be said to be a country in the pure sense, because many of them, such as the Kingdom of Bavaria, not only retained their armies, but even retained legal and diplomatic powers, and handed over to the so-called German Empire, but postal power, can this be regarded as a country? But Bismarck was able to accept it, not to mention that this time the representatives of the states gave the crown to the king of Prussia, but the king did not dare to accept it.

Bismarck saw very clearly that if Germany wanted to reunify, it would have to overcome at least a few problems, and in the present situation, Russia was a great obstacle, and it would be difficult for Prussia to smoothly annex other states without defeating Russia; The second obstacle was France, which certainly did not want to see Prussia too powerful; The third was the Austrian Empire, the German compatriot of Prussia.

To this day, Austria's influence in the German Empire is still stronger than that of Prussia, and without excluding Austria, it is difficult for Prussia to get the leadership of the entire North German Empire. This could never be resolved through peaceful negotiations, and could only be achieved by military means, because compared with Austria, Prussia was slightly inferior in terms of the appeal of the Habsburgs to Germany, as well as in terms of culture and national influence, and only the military has always been Prussia's strong point. It is unrealistic not to rely on one's most powerful weapon to try to solve problems by political means.

So the first step should be to eliminate Austrian influence in North Germany, to make Prussia the only leader in Germany, and then to fight Russia and France as a German leader. It's difficult, but it's not impossible.

Bismarck thought that his mission should have come to an end, and his investigation of Russia was not good, not that Russia was weak, but that Russia was very strong and had great potential, and time was on the side of Russia, and Prussia could not continue to wait, and the longer it dragged on, the more unfavorable it would be for Prussia.

Bismarck saw that after the reform of serfdom in Russia, their legal system, education system, and administrative system were not perfect, but they were much stronger than before, and it was qualified to keep Russia stable.

The key is their economy, although Russia refuses foreign investment, but the new generation of Russian capitalists, after receiving an adequate supply of labor, is using less advanced technology to quickly create new wealth, which in turn becomes new investment, making Russian production stronger.

Centered on the cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia was dotted with factories, and peasants from the countryside continued to flock to the cities to become workers. Moreover, Russia's trade with China is very large, after losing Siberian fur, they found new trade goods, rich mineral resources, especially a large number of high-quality iron ore, constantly transported to China by rail, although a large number of mines are mined by Chinese, but the mining capacity is Russian. The Russian metallurgical industry is also using these iron ores to continuously produce raw iron.

Bismarck also saw a difference in the way Alexander II and Speransky were governed, and Alexander II liberalized some imports, encouraged the import of machinery and equipment, and further supported the great nobility. After the failure of the policy of return of the landlords, the Tsar quickly promoted a new policy of compensating the old nobles for the loss of their property, compensating them at a discount according to the amount of land they had enthroned, and the Tsar insisted that the property rights to the land were originally owned by the serf owners, and that the management rights of the serfs were combined with their serf obligations. The tsar believed that the landlords had made a great contribution to Russia by relinquishing their power over the serfs and receiving only a part of the property compensation.

The insistence of the Tsar, the praise of the nobles and the royal literati, the desperate struggle of the entire elite class, and the fact that a strong opposition had not yet formed in parliament, a costly law of compensation was passed.

The Russian government announced that it would compensate the nobles for their losses at market price, which was tantamount to buying the entire country's arable land through the state treasury and giving the money to the nobles, and the cost would be borne by all the Russian peasants, and demanded that all Russian landowners must be paid a ransom of one-third of the land price, and then pay the money to the nobility continuously for thirty years.

This gave the nobles a continuous cash income for thirty years, and now they have lost their fixed assets, and many have entered industry and commerce, and from this point of view, the largest flow of this money to the noble landlords with the power of the state will be to industry and commerce.

In fact, the efficiency is greatly reduced. Because if the nobles are allowed to do the work of merchants, they may not do it well. It may be more profitable to release this money to the merchant class through the situation of loans.

But the question for Russia has never been whether they can surpass Europe in terms of efficiency, they just need to find the right direction, relying on their huge size, to be able to quickly surpass European countries.

So Bismarck decided that time was on the side of Russia.

Due to the last war, Russia's financial problems have not been solved until now, so the financial pressure on Russia's military expansion is extremely great, and Prussia must defeat Russia before Russia can solve its financial problems. According to Bismarck's judgment, with the development of Russian industry and commerce, they were not far from solving the financial problem.

In order to defeat such a great power as Russia, it is necessary to do several things: first, to strive to create a favorable external condition for other powers to support Prussia, or at least not to interfere; The second is to find strong foreign aid, which can greatly reduce the pressure on Prussia.

Bismarck believed that Russia's greatest enemy was not actually the West, but the powerful Eastern countries, which have been the case since ancient times, and they had not been ruled by the Eastern countries for hundreds of years, and the Eastern nations were Russia's nemesis.

As long as an alliance can be formed with China, in fact, this war will definitely be won, but this is very difficult, the Chinese strangely maintained a strange peace with Russia without signing a peace treaty with the Russian Tsar, so that Bismarck did not know for a while how to get China into the war, because what China can get from Russia, it seems that it has already gotten.

As for what China was still seeking, Bismarck thought he would have to go to China himself to find out.

Bismarck soon telegraphed home, hoping to return home to report on his work, and he would make a personal report to the Foreign Secretary to try to persuade him to support his diplomatic ideas.