[p. 561]
The third system is chiefly the system of Bavaria, Baden and Saxony, who – in political connection neither with Austria nor with Prussia nor with the Empire – have acted according to their particular interest with regard to war or peace or neutrality.
The fourth system comprises the estates of northern Germany, which, through the mediation of Prussia, concluded a treaty of neutrality with France and placed themselves under the protection of Prussia, which has undertaken the guarantee of the tranquillity of northern Germany.
After Prussia had made peace with France, several northern states adhered to this treaty of peace, and in terror at the French good fortune in arms in the campaign of ’94 more than half of Germany united in this neutrality. When in the year ’96 the French penetrated as far as Bavaria, the city of Nuremberg wished not merely to join this neutrality but to make itself entirely a Prussian territorial town, and it was occupied by Prussian troops, after a couple of years earlier Prussia [had] declared a part of its territory to belong to it on account of old claims and took it into its power, just as it also abolished the immediacy of many knights of the Empire in Franconia; and from the German Empire Nuremberg, like the knighthood, has therefore been unable to obtain any help.
The estates of northern Germany did not themselves undertake the guarantee of their neutrality in the form of the circle associations otherwise customary, and Prussia is not one of the members of this union but the head and the guarantor, and the estates contribute to the costs of the demarcation corps. No permanent federal council, however, is assembled; it assembled only at certain times, in order to deliberate and [to] resolve on the regulation and continuation of this measure and on the contributions to the costs.
The true political relation of the estates, however, came to light precisely
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