The Franco-German War of 1870–1 completed the political movement which had aimed at bringing the unity of a national state to both Italians and Germans. In both cases the state had had to gain control over a national revolutionary movement which had come to grief when it opposed the states in 1848. In Italy this movement had done more than in Germany towards consolidating the nation into a whole; but in Germany too, led politically by middle-class liberals, it had supplied the chief stimulus in the great cause, even though representatives of the liberal movement had been denied any appreciable share in the actual foundation of the empire. At decisive moments in his trial of strength with Austria even Bismarck had not hesitated to employ national revolution as a political means; in 1866, if arms had not brought quick results, he would have mobilised it with a call to the Germans—as also to the Czechs, Magyars and other nationalities—within the Habsburg monarchy. But the rapid and complete victory of Königgrätz meant that diplomatic and military activity largely obscured the share that national revolution had had in the founding of the empire. This had been precisely Bismarck's design: he meant to make use of liberal and democratic leanings only in so far as they helped him to overcome the conservative and particularist forces opposing him in Germany. The less Bismarck needed popular support, the more he could and indeed had to consider the principalities which in Germany, unlike in Italy, remained a constituent element of the national state.