Now came the difficult task of reconstruction and redistribution of territory. In what form should they arise out of this chaos? The dream of the people, like that of Hermann eighteen hundred years before, was of a German UNITY; not a renewal of the empire, but a great and new national life, in some firmer and truer form than it had yet known. But these were only dreams, vague and without any practical ideas as to their realization. In the meantime men well versed in the arts and tricks of governing were deciding how all should be arranged. The plan proposed by Metternich, that master of diplomacy, who was minister to the Emperor of Austria, was the one adopted. There was to be a confederation of thirty-nine German states. The _Act of Union_, by which this was effected, had a pleasant sound to the ear of the German people. But the Union existed only in a mutual defense against foreign foes, and a mutual aid in keeping the people of Germany well in check! The one outward and visible expression of this _Unity_ was in a _General Diet_, to be held at Frankfort, under the presidency of Austria! And this was what the _people_ who had liberated their country were to receive as their reward! They were in no way recognized; were to possess no political power; the right of suffrage was not bestowed, and the Diet was prohibited from making any change in this form of confederation, except by a _unanimous_ (_!_) vote. The German people were practically effaced and lost sight of in an autocratic confederation of states, with the Austrian Empire at its head. That empire had received back its Italian possessions. Prussia had recovered Westphalia and her territory on the Rhine, and given up her Polish territory to Russia. Belgium and Holland had been merged into a kingdom of the Netherlands. Saxony, Wurtemberg, and Bavaria, which states had been made kingdoms by Napoleon, were permitted to remain such. Switzerland was a republic; and by the successful diplomacy of Talleyrand, Alsace and Lorraine, those insecure possessions, passed to France. Such were some of the territorial adjustments. That the rulers of these kingdoms were reactionary in their purposes soon became apparent. One of the first acts of the King of Wurtemberg was to court-martial and cashier the general who had gone over to the German side at the battle of Leipzig! If none had gone over to the German side, where would have been the kingdom of Wurtemberg? In Mecklenburg the people were openly declared serfs. The Elector of Hesse-Cassel gave evidence that he was looking backward by putting his soldiers into the dress of the last century and powdered queues, and almost without exception the sovereigns were trying to construe the provisions of the _Act of Union_ in a way to give the least liberty to the German people.