All the South German Governments, with the single exception of Baden, appealed to the Emperor Napoleon for assistance in the negotiations they had opened at Berlin. But at the very moment when this request was made and granted Napoleon was himself demanding from Bismarck the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate and of the Hessian districts west of the Rhine. Bismarck had only to acquaint the King of Bavaria and the South German ministers with the designs of their French protector in order to reconcile them to his own chastening but not unfriendly hand. The grandeur of a united "Fatherland" flashed upon minds hitherto impenetrable by any national ideal, when it became known that Napoleon was bargaining for Oppenheim and Kaiserslautern. Not only were the insignificant questions as to the war indemnities to be paid to Prussia and the frontier villages to be exchanged promptly settled, but by a series of secret treaties all the South German States entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with the Prussian King, and engaged in case of war to place their entire forces at his disposal and under his command.
The diplomacy of Napoleon III had in the end effected for Bismarck almost more than his earlier intervention had frustrated, for it had made the South German courts the allies of Prussia, not through conquest or mere compulsion, but out of regard for their own interests. It was said by the opponents of the Imperial Government in France, and scarcely with exaggeration, that every error which it was possible to commit had, in the course of the year 1866, been committed by Napoleon M. One crime, one act of madness, remained open to the Emperor's critics, to lash him and France into a conflict with the power whose union he had not been able to prevent.
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
– Romans 8:38-39