Germany has experienced a period of unmitigated reaction in the 1850s.

Those who had dared to defy royal authority are forced to pay the penalty of harassment, exile, imprisonment, or even death.

Many of the political concessions made earlier, under the pressure of popular turmoil, are now restricted or abrogated.

Austria, for example, has revoked the constitution that had been promulgated in 1849, and legitimacy, centralization, and clericalism have become the guiding principles of government.

While in Prussia the constitution granted by the king remains in force, its effectiveness is reduced through the introduction of a complicated system of election by which the ballots are weighted in accordance with the income of the voters.

This results in the control of the legislature by well-to-do conservatives.

The restoration of the confederal system also serves the interests of the Habsburgs, who stand at the pinnacle of their prestige as the saviors of the established order.

In Berlin, on the other hand, the prevailing mood is one of confusion and discouragement.

The king, increasingly gloomy and withdrawn, comes under the influence of ultraconservative advisers who preach legitimism in politics and orthodoxy in religion.

The government, smarting under the humiliation suffered at the hands of Austria, is as timid in foreign as it is oppressive in domestic affairs.

The people, tired of insurrection and cowed by repression, are politically apathetic.

The German Confederation as a whole, rigid and unyielding, remains blind to the need for reform that the revolution had made clear.

As wealth continues to shift from farming to manufacturing, from the country to the city, and from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, the pressure for a redistribution of political power also gains strength.

While the reactionaries solemnly proclaim the sanctity of traditional institutions, economic change undermines the foundation of those institutions.

By the end of the decade, a new struggle between the forces of liberalism and conservatism is brewing.