Editing Austro-Prussian War (section)

==== Rival military systems ====
In 1862, von Roon had implemented several army reforms that ensured that all Prussian citizens were liable to conscription. Before this date, the size of the army had been fixed by earlier laws that had not taken population growth into account, making conscription inequitable and unpopular for this reason. While some Prussian men remained in the army or the reserves until they were forty years old, about one man in three (or even more in some regions where the population had expanded greatly as a result of industrialisation) was assigned minimal service in the {{lang|de|[[Landwehr]]}}, the home guard.{{Sfn|McElwee|1974|page=60}}

Introducing universal conscription for three years increased the size of the active duty army and provided Prussia with a reserve army equal in size to that which Moltke deployed against Austria. Had France under Napoleon III attempted to intervene against the Prussians, they could have faced him with equal or superior numbers of troops.{{Sfn|McElwee|1974|pages=63–64}}

Prussian conscript service was one of continuous training and drill, in contrast to the Austrian army where some commanders routinely dismissed infantry conscripts to their homes on permanent leave soon after their induction into the army, retaining only a cadre of long-term soldiers for formal parades and routine duties.{{Sfn|McElwee|1974|page=52}} Austrian conscripts had to be trained almost from scratch when they were recalled to their units on the outbreak of war. The Prussian army was thus better trained and disciplined than their enemy's one, particularly in the infantry. While the Habsburg Empire's cavalry and artillery were as well trained as their Prussian counterparts, with Austria possessing two elite divisions of heavy cavalry, weapons and tactics had advanced since the [[Napoleonic Wars]] and cavalry charges had been rendered obsolete.{{Citation needed|date=August 2018}}