But after the Concordat Bonaparte's position was so utterly changed that all the liberal Roman Catholics in Germany, and a large proportion of the rest, had little to choose between France and Austria. He was therefore able to carry out in Germany the excellent policy of entire reconstruction which he had pursued in Italy--a policy which had had the sanction of French royalism and of French republicanism. As a protector of the Church he could go only so far in the wholesome process as he was able to make the world believe to be necessary. Insisting, with this in view, that both the great German powers should be separated from the Rhine by a line of little states, he began to carve lands and transfer communities without the slightest regard to their will. Nothing proves more conclusively how entirely the balance of power had been destroyed, or how the old conceptions of international relations were crushed, than the position of the Germanic body and the disposition Bonaparte made of it. The petty states fell suppliant at Talleyrand's feet, and the venal minister spared those which paid the most; the others disappeared from the map without any protest except from their own deposed princes. Scores of the corrupt little courts which had disgraced the German name died without any to mourn their demise, and proud imperial cities were forced to bow before the semi-feudal dynasties. The process wrought havoc in the local jealousies which had prevented in Germany that wholesome national development already advanced among other European peoples.