Starting from this personal standpoint, he went on to maintain that all which was useful in the movement of 1813 came directly from the King; that enterprises like that by which Schill endeavoured to rouse the Prussians to a really popular struggle against the French were an entire mistake; that the political unions did nothing to stir up the people; that the alliance between Prussia and France in 1812 had saved Europe; and that it was not till the King gave the word in February, 1813, that the German people had shown any wish to throw off the yoke of Napoleon.
This pamphlet at once called forth a storm of indignation. Niebuhr and Schleiermacher both wrote answers to it, and the remaining popularity of the King received a heavy blow when it was found that he was checking the opposition, and had even singled out Schmalz for special honour. The great centre of discontent was in the newly-acquired Rhine province. The King of Prussia, indeed, had hoped that by founding a University at Bonn, by appointing Arndt Professor of History, and Görres, the former editor of the "Rhenish Mercury," Director of Public Instruction, he might have secured the popular feeling in the province to his side.
But Arndt and Görres were not men to be silenced by favour, any more than by fear. Görres remonstrated with the King for giving a decoration to Schmalz, and organized petitions for enforcing the clause in the Treaty of Vienna which enabled the Bund to summon the Stände of the different provinces. Arndt renewed his demand for the abolition of serfdom in his own province of Rügen, advocated peasant proprietorship, and, above all, Parliamentary Government for Germany.
The feeling of discontent, which these pamphlets helped to keep alive, was further strengthened in the Rhine Province by a growing feeling that Frederick William was trying to crush out local traditions and local independence by the help of Prussian officials.
So bitter was the anti-Prussian feeling produced by this conduct, that a temporary liking was excited for the Emperor of Austria, as an opponent of the Prussianizing of Germany; and Metternich, travelling in 1817 through this province, remarked that it is "no doubt the part of Europe where the Emperor is most loved, more even than in our own country."
But it was but a passing satisfaction that the ruler of Europe could derive from this accidental result of German discontent. He had already begun to perceive that his opposition to the unity of Germany, and his consequent attempt to pose as the champion of the separate States, had not tended to secure the despotic system which his soul loved.
Stein had opposed the admission of the smaller German States to the Vienna Congress, no doubt holding that the unity of Germany would be better accomplished in this manner, and very likely distrusting Bavaria and Würtemberg, as former allies of Napoleon. Metternich, by the help of Talleyrand, had defeated this attempt at exclusion, and had secured the admission of Bavaria and Würtemberg to the Congress. But he now found that these very States were thorns in his side.
They resented the attempts of Metternich to dictate to them in their internal affairs; and, though the King of Bavaria might confine himself to vague phrases about liberty, the King of Würtemberg actually went the length of granting a Constitution. Had this King lived much longer, Metternich might have been able to revive against him the remembrance of his former alliance with Napoleon. But when, after his death in 1816, the new King of Würtemberg, a genuine German patriot, continued, in defiance of his nobles, to uphold his father's Constitution, this hope was taken away, and the South German States remained to the last, with more or less consistency, a hindrance to the completeness of Metternich's system.
But the summary of Metternich's difficulties in Germany is not yet complete. The ruler of another small principality, the Duke of Weimar, had taken advantage, like the King of Würtemberg, of the permission to grant a Constitution to his people; and had been more prominent than even the King of Würtemberg in encouraging freedom of discussion in his dominions. This love of freedom, in Weimar as in most countries of Europe, connected itself with University life, and thus found its centre in the celebrated University of Jena; and on June 18th, 1816, the students of the University met to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig. There, to the great alarm of the authorities, they publicly burnt the pamphlet of Schmalz, and another written by the play-writer Kotzebue, who was believed to have turned away Alexander of Russia from the cause of liberty, and now to be acting as his tool and spy.