"Three wars fundamentally altered the balance of power in nineteenth-century Europe: the Schleswig-Holstein conflict of 1864; the 'Six Weeks War' of 1866; and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. They marked the establishment of Prussian hegemony in central Europe, the creation of the Bismarckian Reich in 1871, and, as by products, the reduction of Habsburg influence and the collapse of Napoleon III's Second Empire." Dennis Showalter gives a full account of the international context as well as of the wars themselves and their consequences. Some of his arguments shed new light on the history of the period. He suggests, for instance, that in 1870 the contending armies were better matched than most historians concede: that the second Reich was thus founded in uncertainty - an uncertainty that shaped and characterized it throughout its existence.