[quote=solamelike]
And now that France and Prussia are buddies..
[/quote]

Actually... that is a major point. Bismarck used tensions with France to convince the southern states to join the rest of the Prussian-dominated states. He used some trickery to provoke a French attack (and it worked, since the French declared war and suddenly the France-Prussian war happened). Without France as a big-scary-bad-guy, it's going to be difficult to convince the southern states to unify.