army, of which
Bluecher was one of its greatest generals, had been raised by the _levee
en masse_,--a conscription, indeed, not of peasants alone, obliged to
serve for twenty years, but of the whole nation, for three years of
active service; and a series of administrative reforms had been
introduced and extended to every department of the State, by which
greater economy and a more complete system were inaugurated, favoritism
abolished, and the finances improved so as to support the government and
furnish the sinews of war; while alliances were made with great Powers
who hitherto had been enemies or doubtful friends.

These alliances resulted in what is called the German Confederation, or
Bund,--a strict union of all the various States for defensive purposes,
and also to maintain a general system to suppress revolutionary and
internal dissensions. Most of the German States entered into this
Confederacy, at the head of which was Austria. It was determined in
June, 1815, at Vienna, that the Confederacy should be managed by a
general assembly, called a Diet, the seat of which was located at
Frankfort. In this Diet the various independent States, thirty-nine in
number, had votes in proportion to their population, and were bound to
contribute troops of one soldier to every hundred inhabitants, amounting
to three hundred thousand in all, of which Austria and Prussia and
Bavaria furnished more than half. This arrangement virtually gave to
Austria and Prussia a preponderance in the Diet; and as the States were
impoverished by the late war, and the people generally detested war, a
long peace of forty years (with a short interval of a year) was secured
to Germany, during which prosperity returned and the population nearly
doubled. The Germans turned their swords into pruning-hooks, and all
kinds of industry were developed, especially manufactures. The cities
were adorned with magnificent works of art, and libraries, schools, and
universities covered the land. No nation ever made a more signal
progress in material prosperity than did the German States during this
period of forty years,--especially Prussia, which became in addition
intellectually the most cultivated country in Europe, with twenty-one
thousand primary schools, and one thousand academies, or gymnasia, in
which mathematics and the learned languages were taught by accomplished
scholars; to say nothing of the universities, which drew students from
all Christian and civi