The Rhenish confederation shared the advantages of French influence to the same degree in which it, in common with the old states on the left bank of the Rhine, was subject to ecclesiastical corruption or to the upstart vanity incidental to petty states. Wherever enlightenment and liberty had formerly existed, as in Protestant and constitutional Würtemberg, the violation of the ancient rights of the people was deeply felt, and the new aristocracy, modelled on that of France, appeared as unbearable to the older inhabitants of Würtemberg as did the loss of their ancient independence to the mediatized princes and lordlings. King Frederick, notwithstanding his refusal to send troops into Spain, was compelled to furnish an enormous contingent for the wars in eastern Europe; the conscription and taxes were heavily felt, and the peasant was vexed by the great hunts, celebrated by Matthisson, the court-poet, as festivals of Diana.[8] In Bavaria, the administration of Maximilian Joseph and of his minister, Montgelas, although arbitrary in its measures, promoted, like that of Frederick II. and Joseph II., the advance of enlightenment and true liberty. The monasteries were closed, the punishment of the rack was abolished, unity was introduced in the administration of the state; the schools, the police, and the roads were improved, toleration was established; in a word, the dreams of the Illuminati, thirty years before this period, were, in almost every respect, realized. But, on the other hand, patriotism was here more unknown than in any other part of Germany. Christopher von Aretin set himself up as an apparitor to the French police, and, in 1810, published a work against the few German patriots still remaining, whom he denounced, in the fourteenth number of the Literary Gazette of Upper Germany, as "Preachers of Germanism, criminals and traitors, by whom the Rhenish confederation was polluted." The crown prince of Bavaria, who deeply lamented the rule of France and the miseries of Germany, offers a contrary example. A constitution, naturally a mere tool in the hand of the ministry, was bestowed, in 1808, upon Bavaria.