rewarded with an extension of territory and the title of grand duke (), but his liberal attitude had already made him suspect, and his subsequent action brought him still further into confrontation with the reactionary powers. He was the first of the German princes to grant a liberal constitution to his state under Article XIII of the Act of Confederation (5 May 1816) and his concession of liberty to the press made Weimar for a while the focus of journalistic agitation against the existing order. Metternich dubbed him contemptuously for his patronage of the revolutionary , and the celebrated festival held at the Wartburg by his permission in 1817, though in effect the mildest of political demonstrations, brought down upon him the wrath of the great powers. The grand duke was compelled to yield to the remonstrances of Prussia, Austria and Russia. The liberty of the press was again restricted in the grand duchy, but, thanks to the good understanding between the grand duke and his people, the regime of the Carlsbad Decrees pressed less heavily upon Weimar than upon other German states. Karl August died at Graditz, near Torgau, in 1828. Karl von Dalberg, the prince-primate, who owed the co-adjutorship of Mainz to the duke's friendship, said that he had never met a prince with so much understanding, character, frankness and true-heartedness; the Milanese, when he visited their city, called him the , and Goethe himself said of him that "he had the gift of discriminating intellects and characters and setting each one in his place. He was inspired by the noblest good-will, the purest humanity, and with his whole soul desired only what was best. There was in him something of the divine. He would gladly have wrought the happiness of all mankind. And finally, he was greater than his surroundings. ... Everywhere he himself saw and judged, and in all circumstances his surest foundation was in himself." Karl August's correspondence with Goethe was published in 2 volumes at Weimar in 1863. He left two surviving sons: Karl Frederick, by whom he was succeeded, and Karl Bernhard, a soldier, who, after the Congress of Vienna, became colonel of a regiment in the service of the King of the Netherlands, served as commander of the Dutch troops in the Belgian campaign of 1830 (the Ten Days' Campaign), and from 1847 to 1850 held the command of the forces in