Long before the issue of the War of Liberation had been finally decided, diplomacy had been at work in an endeavour to settle the future constitution of Germany. In this matter, as in others, the weakness of the Prussian government played into the hands of Austria. Metternich had been allowed to take the initiative in negotiating with the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, and the price of their adhesion to the cause of the allies had been the guarantee by Austria of their independent sovereignty. The guarantee had been willingly given; for Metternich had no desire to see the creation of a powerful unified German empire, but aimed at the establishment of a loose confederation of weak states over which Austria, by reason of her ancient imperial prestige and her vast non-German power, would exercise a dominant influence. This, then, was the view that prevailed, and by the treaty of Chaumont (March 1, 1814) it was decided that Germany should consist of a confederation of sovereign states. The German confederation. The new constitution of Germany, as embodied in the Final Act of the congress of Vienna (June 9, 1815) was based on this principle. It was the work of a special committee of the congress, presided over by Metternich; and, owing to the panic created by Napoleon's return from Elba (March 5), it remained a mere sketch, the hasty output of a few hurried sessions, of which the elaboration was reserved for the future. In spite of the clamour of the mediatized princes for the restoration of their "liberties," no attempt was made to reverse the essential changes in the territorial disposition of Germany made during the revolutionary epoch. Of the 300 odd territorial sovereignties under the Holy Empire only 39 survived, and these were readjusted on the traditional principles of "compensations," "rectification of frontiers" and "balance of power." The most fateful arrangements were naturally those that affected the two leading powers, Austria and Prussia. The latter had made strenuous efforts, supported by Alexander I. of Russia, to obtain the annexation of the whole of Saxony, a project which was defeated by the opposition of Great Britain, Austria and France, an opposition which resulted in the secret treaty of the 3rd of January 1815 for eventual armed intervention. She received, however, the northern part of Saxony, Swedish Pomerania, Posen and those territories--formerly part of the kingdom of Westphalia--which constitute her Rhine provinces. While Prussia was thus established on the Rhine, Austria, by exchanging the Netherlands for Lombardo-Venetia and abandoning her claims to the former Habsburg possessions in Swabia, definitively resigned to Prussia the task of defending the western frontier of Germany, while she strengthened her power in the south-east by recovering from Bavaria, Salzburg, Vorarlberg and Tirol. Bavaria, in her turn, received back the greater part of the Palatinate on the left