by proclaiming a new charter for the Empire based on unlimited, centralized absolutism, that, with a stroke of the pen, wiped out everything his people — and peoples — had gained in two revolutions. The Emperor, by this virtual coup d’etat, not only assumed for himself the whole weight and power of government, but abolished all the rights that had existed from time immemorial between the monarch and his vassal kingdoms or territories. Metternich himself had never dared to go so far.
