Both these reactionary proposals, as we all know, at a later date became the corner-stones of the new Prusso-German unity of Bismark's creation.

On this occasion, however, the Prussian King refused to accept the office at the hands of the impotent Frankfurt Assembly, which latter soon afterwards broke up and eventually "petered out." Meanwhile Prussian troops, led by the reactionary military caste, were employed in the congenial task of suppressing popular movements with the sword in Baden, Saxony, and Prussia itself.
The two rival bulwarks of reaction, Prussia and Austria, were now so alarmed at the revolutionary dangers they had passed through that, for the nonce forgetting their rivalry, they cordially joined together in reviving, in the interests of the counter-revolution, the old reactionary Federal Assembly, which had never been formally dissolved, as it ought to have been on the election of the Frankfurt Parliament.
Reaction now went on apace.

Liberties were curtailed and rights gained in 1848 were abolished in most of the smaller States.

Henceforth the Federal Assembly became the theatre of the two great rival powers of the Germanic Confederation.

Both alike strove desperately for the hegemony of Germany.