Disappearance of most of the little states.
259. The chief effects of the Napoleonic occupation of Germany were three in number. First, the consolidation of territory that followed the cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France had, as has been explained, done away with the anomalous ecclesiastical states, the territories of knights, and most of the free towns. Only thirty-eight German states, including four towns, were left when the Congress of Vienna took up the question of forming a confederation to replace the defunct Holy Roman Empire.
Advantageous position of Prussia.
Second, the external and internal conditions of Prussia had been so changed as to open the way for it to replace Austria as the controlling power in Germany. A great part of the Slavic possessions gained in the last two partitions of Poland had been lost, but as an indemnity Prussia had received half of the kingdom of Saxony, in the very center of Germany, and also the Rhine provinces, where the people were thoroughly imbued with the revolutionary doctrines that had prevailed in France. Prussia now embraced all the various types of people included in the German nation and was comparatively free from the presence of non-German races. In this respect it offered a marked contrast to the heterogeneous and mongrel population of its great rival Austria.
The internal changes were no less remarkable. The reforms carried out after Jena by the distinguished minister Stein and his successor, Hardenberg, had done for Prussia somewhat the same that the first National Assembly had done for France. The abolition of the feudal social castes, and the liberation of the serfs made the economic development of the country possible. The reorganization of the whole military system prepared the way for Prussia's great victories in 1866 and 1870, which led to the formation of a new German empire under her headship.
Demand for constitutional government.
Third, the agitations of the Napoleonic period had aroused the national spirit. The appeal to the people to aid in the freeing of their country from foreign oppression, and the idea of their participation in a government based upon a written constitution, had produced widespread discontent with the old absolute monarchy.
The German Confederation of 1815.
When the form of union for the German states came up for discussion at the Congress of Vienna, two different plans were advocated. Prussia's representatives submitted a scheme for a firm union like that of the United States, in which the central government should control the individual states in all matters of general interest. This idea was successfully opposed by Austria, supported by the other German rulers. Austria realized that her possessions, as a whole, could never be included in any real German union, for even in the western portion of her territory there were many Slavs, while in Hungary and the southern provinces there were practically no Germans at all. On the other hand, she felt that she might be the leader in a very loose union in which all the members should be left practically independent. Her ideal of an international union of sovereign princes under her own headship was almost completely realized in the constitution adopted.
Character of the German constitution.