Baron vom Stein labors in vain for a unitary German empire and the restoration of the imperial knights.

The congress reduces the approximately three hundred states of eighteenth-century Germany to the thirty-eight members of the loose German Confederation.

The ethnic Germans of Switzerland choose not to join; the Germans living in the French provinces of Alsace-Lorraine and the Danish Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein have no opportunity to choose.

Within the newly-formed German Confederation’s borders are three of Austria’s Slavic provinces: Carniola, the Slovenian homeland, and Czech-speaking Bohemia and Moravia.