 The French socialists Saint-Simon and Augustin Thierry would in 1814 write the essay "De la réorganisation de la société européenne", already conjuring up some form of parliamentary European federation.In the conservative reaction after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the German Confederation () was established as a loose association of thirty-eight sovereign German states formed by the Congress of Vienna.Napoleon had swept away the Holy Roman Empire and simplified the map of Germany.