To follow the vicissitudes and fluctuations of fortune throughout Central Europe during these years lies outside our 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.