The downfall of Prussia left Austria the sole hope of Germany and of Europe. Gentz, who from the winter of 1806 onwards divided his time between Prague and the Bohemian watering places, seemed to devote himself wholly to the pleasures of society, his fascinating personality gaining him a ready reception in those exalted circles that were to prove of use to him later on in Vienna. However, though he published nothing, his pen was not idle, and he was occupied with a series of essays on the future of Austria and the best means of liberating Germany and redressing the balance of Europe, but he himself confessed to his friend Müller (4 August 1806) that in the miserable circumstances of the time, his essay on the principles of a general pacification must be taken as a political poem.