Our survey in the last section has carried us down to the beginning of the changes which led to the break-up of the old German Kingdom. Germany is the only land in history which has changed from a kingdom to a confederation. ♦Sketch of the process, 1806-1815.♦ The tie which bound the vassal princes to the king became so lax that it was at last thrown off altogether. In this process foreign invasion largely helped. Between the two processes of foreign war and domestic disintegration, a chaotic time followed, in which boundaries were ever shifting and new states were ever rising and falling. ♦The German _Bund_, 1815.♦ In the end, nearly all the lands which had formed the old kingdom came together again, with new names and boundaries, as members of a lax Confederation. ♦The new Confederation and Empire, 1866-1871.♦ The latest events of all have driven the former chief of the Confederation beyond its boundaries; they have joined its other members together by a much closer tie; they have raised the second member of the former Confederation to the post of perpetual chief of the new Confederation, and they have further clothed him with the Imperial title. ♦The new Empire still federal.♦ But it must be remembered that the modern Empire of Germany is still a Federal state. Its chief bears the title of Emperor; still the relation is federal and not feudal. The lesser members of the Empire are not vassals of the Emperor, as they were in the days of the old kingdom. They are states bound to him and to one another by a tie which is purely federal. That the state whose prince holds Imperial rank far surpasses any of its other members in extent and power is an important political fact; but it does not touch the federal position of all the states of the Empire, great and small. Reuss-Schleiz is not a vassal of Prussia; it is a member of a league in which the voice of Prussia naturally goes for more than the voice of Reuss-Schleiz. ♦Wars of the French Revolution, 1793-1814.♦ The dissolution of the German kingdom, and with it the wiping out of the last tradition of the Roman Empire, cannot be separated from the history of wars of the French Revolution which went before it, and which indeed led to it. For our purely geographical purpose, we must distinguish the changes which directly affected the German kingdom from those which affected the Austrian states, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, lands which have now a separate historic being from Germany. ♦War between France and the Empire, 1793-1801.♦ The last war which the Empire as such waged with France was the eight years’ war which was ended by the Peace of Luneville. ♦The left bank of the Rhine ceded by the Peace of Luneville, 1801.♦ By that peace, all Germany on the left bank on the Rhine was ceded to France. What a sacrifice this was we at once see, when we bear in mind that it took in the three metropolitan cities of Köln, Mainz, and Trier, the