It should also be noted that the overriding consideration of the major states of the Confederation was to maintain their independence as a state.

Do you have any contemporary sources that validate that assertion? For example, any correspondence by leaders or statesmen from the Confederation states specifically stating that their reason for joining the Confederation was - as you assert - "to maintain their independence as a state" and be protected from Prussia?

That is another assertion you frequently make, but I have never seen any primary source to back it up.

Nor does it bear much scrutiny with the historical evidence: many Confederation members were not given the choice to join. And their "independence" under Napoleon was theoretical at best. In most cases the French dominated or directly controlled their trade policy, their military policy, their censorship policy, their foreign policy, and even their police policy. Napoleon micro-managed them on several levels. Alex Stavropolous' recent work on the French domination of Bavaria, for example, is enlightening. He notes Napoleonic control of things as minute as divorce law and local (internal) trade policy. German scholars have recently done similar studies of the G.D. of Berg.

And then of course we have the German regions that France annexed and/or those states that Napoleon simply erased from the map, such as the Hanse cities, Hannover, Brunswick, and Hessen-Kassel. I suspect one would be hard-pressed to find their inhabitants arguing that the creation of the Confederation was to "maintain their independence."

So: do you have any contemporary sources from the relevant German states that validate your assertion that their joining the Confederation was "to maintain their independence as a state" and be protected from Prussia?