r present purpose. We are here chiefly concerned with
the political development from the Treaty of Vienna, as signed on June
9, 1815, onward. The Treaty of Vienna completed the work begun by
Napoleon--represented by the extinction of the mediaeval "Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation" in 1806--in making an end of the
political configuration of the German peoples which had grown up
during the Middle Ages and survived, in a more or less decayed
condition, since the Peace of Westphalia, which concluded the Thirty
Years' War. The three hundred separate States of which Germany had
originally consisted were now reduced to thirty-nine, a number which,
by the extinction of sundry minor governing lines, was before long
further reduced to thirty-five. These States constituted themselves
into a new German Confederation, with a Federal Assembly, meeting at
Frankfurt-on-the-Main. The new Federal Council, or Assembly, however,
soon revealed itself as but the tool of the princes and a bulwark of
reaction.

The revolution of 1848 was throughout Germany an expression of popular
discontent and of democratic and even, to a large extent, of
republican aspirations. The princely authorities endeavoured to stem
the wave of popular indignation and revolutionary enthusiasm by
recognizing a provisional self-constituted body, and sanctioning the
election of a national representative Parliament at Frankfurt in place
of the effete Federal Council. The Archduke of Austria, who was
elected head of the new, hastily organized National Government, was
not slow to use his newly acquired power in the interests of reaction,
thereby exciting the hostility of all the progressive elements in the
Parliament of Frankfurt. When after some months it became obvious that
the anti-Progressive parties had gained the upper hand alike in
Austria and Prussia, the friction between the Democratic and
Constitutional parties became increasingly bitter.

The Prussian Government meanwhile took advantage of the state of
affairs to stir up the Schleswig-Holstein question, so-called, driving
the Danes out of Schleswig, an insurrectionary movement in Holstein
having been already suppressed by the Danish King. Prussia, alarmed
by the attitude of the Powers, agreed to withdraw her troops from the
occupied territories without consulting the Frankfurt Parliament, an
act which involved Friedrich Wilhelm in conflict with the latter. The
issues arising out of this dispute made it p