Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/637

 Europe ajber the Congress of Vienna 481 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 forma- tion of a new German empire under her headship. 851. German Confederation a Union of Rulers. The Ger- man Confederation established by the Congress of Vienna was not a union of the various countries involved, but of " the Sover- eign Princes and Free Towns of Germany," including the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia for such of their possessions as were formerly included in the German empire, the king of Denmark for Holstein," and the king of the Netherlands for the grand duchy of Luxemburg. The union thus included two sover- eigns who were out-and-out foreigners, and did not comprise all the possessions of its two most important members. 1 The diet which met at Frankfort was composed not of repre- sentatives of the people, but of the rulers who were members of the confederation. The members reserved to themselves the right of forming alliances of all kinds, but pledged themselves to make no agreement endangering the safety of the union or of any of its members, nor to make war upon any member of the confedera- tion on any pretense whatsoever. The constitution could not be amended without the approval of all the governments concerned. In spite of its obvious weaknesses the confederation of 1815 lasted for half a century until Prussia finally expelled Austria from the union by arms and incorporated the rest of Germany in the German Empire. 852. Disappointment of the Liberals. The liberals in Ger- many were sadly disappointed that the Congress of Vienna had failed to weld Germany into a modern national state ; they were also troubled because the king of Prussia broke his promise to give Prussia a constitution. But Frederick William III was a weak monarch and had lived through such a period of revolution- ary disorder that he was quite willing to listen to the advice of the Austrian chief minister Metternich, who hated progress in any 1 Observe the boundary of the German Confederation as indicated on the map, P-476.