Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/600

 456 General History oj Europe Wurzburg, Bamberg, Augsburg, Freising, and a number of the imperial cities. Baden received the bishoprics of Constance, Basel, Speyer, etc. The knights who had lost their possessions on the left bank were not indemnified, and those on the right bank were deprived of their political rights within the next two or three years by the several states within whose boundaries they lay. 798. Partial Unification of Germany. The final distribution was preceded by a bitter and undignified scramble among the princes for additional bits of territory. All turned to Paris for favors, since the First Consul, and not the German diet, was really the arbiter in the matter. Germany never sank to a lower degree of national degradation than at this period. But this amalgama- tion was, nevertheless, the beginning of her political regeneration ; for without the consolidation of the hundreds of practically independent little states into a few well-organized monarchies, such a union as the later German Empire would have been im- possible, and the country must have remained indefinitely in its traditional impotency. Thus Germany owes to a French ruler, not to any oj its emperors or to Prussia, the first measures which re- sulted in the German Empire ! 799. Extension of French Influence. The treaties of 1801 left France in possession of the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine, to which increase of territory Piedmont was soon added. Holland became the Batavian Republic and, with the Italian (originally the Cisalpine) Republic, came under French control and contributed money and troops for the forward- ing of French interests. III. BONAPARTE RESTORES ORDER AND PROSPERITY IN FRANCE 800. The Demoralized Condition of France. The activity of the extraordinary man who had placed himself at the head of the French Republic was by no means confined to the important alterations of the map of Europe described above. He was in- defatigable in carrying out a series of internal reforms second