Meanwhile, Austria, having overcome its difficulties – the fall of Metternich, the abdication of Ferdinand I, and constitutional revolts in Italy and Hungary – began a renewed active resistance against Prussia's union plan. The Saxon and Hanoverian withdrawals from their alliance with Prussia can also be attributed in part to Austrian encouragement. Vienna contemplated restoration of the German Confederation recalling the German Diet, and rallied the Prussian nobility and feudal-corporate and anti-national groups around the Prussian General Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach to increasingly successfully oppose Union policy.