at least as remote as that of Napoleon.

Germany in 1814 was still disunited and comparatively backward, but it
was by no means the Germany of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The transformations wrought to the east of the Rhine during
the period of the Napoleonic ascendancy were three-fold. In the first
place, after more than a thousand years of existence, the Holy Roman
Empire was, in 1806, brought to an end, and Germany, never theretofore
since the days of barbarism entirely devoid of political unity, was
left without even the semblance or name of nationality. In the second
place, there was within the period a far-reaching readjustment of the
political structure of the German world, involving (1) the reducing of
the total number of German states--kingdoms, duchies, principalities,
ecclesiastical dominions, and knights' holdings--from above three
hundred to two score; (2) the augmenting of the importance of Austria
by the acquisition of a separate imperial title,[275] and the (p. 194)
raising of Saxony, Bavaria, and Wuerttemberg from duchies to kingdoms;
and (3) the bringing into existence of certain new and more or less
artificial political aggregates, namely, the kingdom of Westphalia,
the grand-duchy of Warsaw, and the Confederation of the Rhine, for the
purpose of facilitating the Napoleonic dominance of north-central
Europe. Finally, in several of the states, notably Prussia, the
overturn occasioned by the Napoleonic conquests prompted systematic
attempts at reform, with the consequence of a revolutionizing
modernization of social and economic conditions altogether comparable
with that which within the generation had been achieved in France.

[Footnote 275: In anticipation of the prospective
abolition of the dignity of Emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire, the Emperor Francis II., in 1804,
assumed the title of Emperor of Austria, under the
name Francis I.]

The simple reduction of the German states in number, noteworthy though
it was, did not mean necessarily the realization of a larger measure
of national unity, for the rivalries of the states which survived
tended but to be accentuated. But if the vertical cleavages by which
the country was divided were deepened, those of a horizontal
character, arising from social and economic privilege, were in this
period largely done away. Serfdom was abolished; the kn