ducate his people to work out
their own political and social salvation, the object of education being
in his view, as he explained later to the dismay of Metternich and his
school, to help men to "independence of judgment." To this end Herder
was summoned to Weimar to reform the educational system; and it is
little wonder that, under a patron so enlightened, the university of
Jena attained the zenith of its fame, and Weimar became the intellectual
centre of Germany.

Meanwhile, in the affairs of Germany and of Europe the character of Karl
August gave him an influence out of all proportion to his position as a
sovereign prince. He had early faced the problem presented by the decay
of the Empire, and began to work for the unity of Germany. The plans of
the emperor Joseph II., which threatened to absorb a great part of
Germany into the heterogeneous Habsburg monarchy, threw him into the
arms of Prussia, and he was the prime mover in the establishment of the
league of princes (_Furstenbund_) in 1785, by which, under the
leadership of Frederick the Great, Joseph's intrigues were frustrated.
He was, however, under no illusion as to the power of Austria, and he
wisely refused the offer of the Hungarian crown, made to him in 1787 by
Prussia at the instance of the Magyar malcontents, with the dry remark
that he had no desire to be another "Winter King." In 1788 Karl August
took service in the Prussian army as major-general in active command of
a regiment. As such he was present, with Goethe, at the cannonade of
Valmy in 1792, and in 1794 at the siege of Mainz and the battles of
Pirmasenz (September 14) and Kaiserslautern (October 28-30). After this,
dissatisfied with the attitude of the powers, he resigned; but rejoined
on the accession of his friend King Frederick William III. to the
Prussian throne. The disastrous campaign of Jena (1806) followed; on the
14th of October, the day after the battle, Weimar was sacked; and Karl
August, to prevent the confiscation of his territories, was forced to
join the Confederation of the Rhine. From this time till after the
Moscow campaign of 1812 his contingent fought under the French flag in
all Napoleon's wars. In 1813, however, he joined the Grand Alliance, and
at the beginning of 1814 took the command of a corps of 30,000 men
operating in the Netherlands.

At the congress of Vienna Karl August was present in person, and
protested vainly against the narrow policy of the powers in confini