Paradoxically, nobody did more for the emergence of Germany in the 18th and 19th century then Napoléon. At first he was welcomed as a liberator and modernizer, replacing feudal privileges and traditions with more rational administration, but as his continuous wars exacted a high price on the people in blood and taxes he became hated as a foreign oppressor. He defeated Prussia and Austria, who lost territory, annexed the left bank of the Rhine and reorganized the bulk of Germany into fewer and larger, solely secular states, confederated in the Rheinbund. After the annihilation of Napoleon's -conscripted, in part German- Grande Armée by the Russian Winter and ultimate defeats in the Battle of the Peoples near Leipzig and Waterloo (1815), the Vienna Congress partially restored the old order. However, the Holy Roman Empire remained abolished and the new German Federation was founded on a national feeling which re-emerged during the resistance against Napoleon, championed by Prussia, where Freiherr vom Stein (from Nassau), had also introduced significant reforms.