But at the same time the curse of Prussia--militarism--was riveted on the people through the reorganization of the Prussian army by those two able military bureaucrats, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. In 1813 Prussia concluded at Kalicsh an alliance with Russia, which Austria joined. In the war which followed Prussia was severely strained by losses in men and money. But at the Congress of Vienna the Prussian kingdom received back nearly, but not quite, all it lost in 1807. The acquirement, however, of new and valuable territories in Westphalia and along the Rhine, besides Thuringia and the province of Saxony, more than compensated for the loss of certain Slav districts in the east, as thereby the way was prepared for the ultimate despotism of the Prussian King over all Germany. The success of Prussian diplomacy in enslaving these erstwhile independent German lands in 1815 was crucial for the subsequent direction of Prussian policy. It is time now to return once more to the internal conditions in the Prussian State now dominant over a large part of Northern Germany. A Constitution had been more than once talked of, but the despotism with its bureaucratic machinery had remained. Now, after the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars and the re-drawing of the Prussian frontier lines by the peace of 1815, the matter assumed an urgency it had not had before. Following upon proclamations and promises, a patent was addressed to the new Saxon provinces granting a national _Landtag_, or Diet, for the whole country. The drawing up of the Constitution thus proclaimed in principle gave rise to heated conflicts. There was, as yet, no proletariat proper in Prussia, and for that matter hardly any in the rest of Germany. The handicraft system of production, and even the mediaeval guild system, slightly modified, prevailed throughout the country. The middle class proper was small and unimportant, and hence Liberalism, the theoretical expression of that class, only found articulate utterance through men of the professions.