The feeling of discontent, which these pamphlets helped to keep alive, was further strengthened in the Rhine Province by a growing feeling that Frederick William was trying to crush out local traditions and local independence by the help of Prussian officials. So bitter was the anti-Prussian feeling produced by this conduct, that a temporary liking was excited for the Emperor of Austria, as an opponent of the Prussianizing of Germany; and Metternich, travelling in 1817 through this province, remarked that it is "no doubt the part of Europe where the Emperor is most loved, _more even than in our own country_." But it was but a passing satisfaction that the ruler of Europe could derive from this accidental result of German discontent. He had already begun to perceive that his opposition to the unity of Germany, and his consequent attempt to pose as the champion of the separate States, had not tended to secure the despotic system which his soul loved. Stein had opposed the admission of the smaller German States to the Vienna Congress, no doubt holding that the unity of Germany would be better accomplished in this manner, and very likely distrusting Bavaria and Würtemberg, as former allies of Napoleon. Metternich, by the help of Talleyrand, had defeated this attempt at exclusion, and had secured the admission of Bavaria and Würtemberg to the Congress. But he now found that these very States were thorns in his side. They resented the attempts of Metternich to dictate to them in their internal affairs; and, though the King of Bavaria might confine himself to vague phrases about liberty, the King of Würtemberg actually went the length of granting a Constitution. Had this King lived much longer, Metternich might have been able to revive against him the remembrance of his former alliance with Napoleon. But when, after his death in 1816, the new King of Würtemberg, a genuine German patriot, continued, in defiance of his nobles, to uphold his father's Constitution, this hope was taken away, and the South German States remained to the last, with more or less consistency, a hindrance to the completeness of Metternich's system.