Napoleon was ready with his answer. Let the strong help themselves to the territories of the weak. At Rastadt, Napoleon had remarked to Marten, “Does not public law nowadays consist simply in the right of the stronger?” Evidently it did, as it does yet, and ever has done. Upon this theory the German complication was worked out. There were fifty so-called Free Cities which, being weak and in debt, might be forcibly absorbed. There were a number of ecclesiastical princes, ruling wretchedly over wide and rich domains, whose tempting wealth might be confiscated. There were hundreds of knights of the German Empire, decayed relics of mediævalism, each holding as private property a snug territory, whose people the knight taxed, judged, and outraged at his own good pleasure. The Congress of Rastadt had been laboring upon this German problem at the time Austria murdered the French envoys (1798). The task was now resumed (1801) nominally by the Congress at Ratisbon, but really by French diplomats in Paris. Talleyrand, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, had a magnificent opportunity to feather his nest with bribes, and he made the most of it. German diplomatists posted to Paris, paid court to the corrupt minister, laughed at all his good sayings, fondled his poodle, petted his supposed bastard, and lavished their gold upon him to win his influence. When the process of reorganization was completed, Germany had been revolutionized. Most of the Free Cities were no longer free, but were incorporated with the territory of the government in which they were located. The ecclesiastical princes were reduced to the condition of salaried priests, their domains confiscated to the governments. Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, were given large increase of territory; Prussia was not left unrewarded; France got all she was entitled to; and Austria, the defeated nation, lost almost nothing. The happy combination of France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, to settle their differences at the expense of the Free Cities and the Princes of the German Catholic Church, had been blessed with brilliant success. Following the redistribution of German lands came changes yet more vital. The wretched little feudal sovereignties disappeared. The imperial knights lost their out-of-date principalities. The leaven of the French Revolution penetrated far beyond the Rhine. Offices ceased to be bought, sold, and inherited. Regular systems of taxation, police, and legal procedure came into use. The trades and professions were thrown open to all: caste was breached, the peasant freed from some of his heaviest burdens. Education, in some parts of Germany, was taken out of the hands of the Church, and the clergy made amenable to the law.