These alliances resulted in what is called the German Confederation, or Bund,—­a strict union of all the various States for defensive purposes, and also to maintain a general system to suppress revolutionary and internal dissensions.  Most of the German States entered into this Confederacy, at the head of which was Austria.  It was determined in June, 1815, at Vienna, that the Confederacy should be managed by a general assembly, called a Diet, the seat of which was located at Frankfort.  In this Diet the various independent States, thirty-nine in number, had votes in proportion to their population, and were bound to contribute troops of one soldier to every hundred inhabitants, amounting to three hundred thousand in all, of which Austria and Prussia and Bavaria furnished more than half.  This arrangement virtually gave to Austria and Prussia a preponderance in the Diet; and as the States were impoverished by the late war, and the people generally detested war, a long peace of forty years (with a short interval of a year) was secured to Germany, during which prosperity returned and the population nearly doubled.  The Germans turned their swords into pruning-hooks, and all kinds of industry were developed, especially manufactures.  The cities were adorned with magnificent works of art, and libraries, schools, and universities covered the land.  No nation ever made a more signal progress in material prosperity than did the German States during this period of forty years,—­especially Prussia, which became in addition intellectually the most cultivated country in Europe, with twenty-one thousand primary schools, and one thousand academies, or gymnasia, in which mathematics and the learned languages were taught by accomplished scholars; to say nothing of the universities, which drew students from all Christian and civilized countries in both hemispheres.

The rapid advance in learning, however, especially in the universities and the gymnasia, led to the discussion of innumerable subjects, including endless theories of government and the rights of man, by which discontent was engendered and virtue was not advanced.  Strange to say, even crime increased.  The universities became hot-beds of political excitement, duels, beer-drinking, private quarrels, and infidel discussion, causing great alarm to conservative governments and to peaceful citizens generally.  At last the Diet began to interfere, for it claimed the general oversight of all internal affairs in the various States.  An army of three hundred thousand men which obeyed the dictation of the Diet was not to be resisted; and as this Diet was controlled by Austria and Prussia, it became every year more despotic and anti-democratic.  In consequence, the Press was gradually fettered, the universities were closely watched, and all revolutionary movements in cities were suppressed.  Discontent and popular agitations, as usual, went hand in hand.

As early as 1818 the great reaction against all liberal sentiments in political matters had fairly set in.  The king of Prussia neglected, and finally refused, to grant the constitutional government which he had promised in the day of his adversity before the battle of Waterloo; while Austria, guided by Metternich, stamped her iron heel on everything which looked like intellectual or national independence.