Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a joined union of smaller kingdoms which held power in western and central Europe between A.D. 962 and 1806. In this way, it was a model for the United States of America with regards to a more "decentralized" form of rule. It was ruled by a Monarchical Christian leader who oversaw local regions controlled by a variety of kings, dukes, nobility and other officials. The Holy Roman Empire was an attempt to resurrect Fascist Rome, often receiving the title of "Third Rome", though without success.
Common misconceptions
Many people confuse the Holy Roman Empire with the Roman Empire that existed during the New Testament period. However, these two empires were different in both time period and location. The Roman Empire (27 B.C. - A.D. 476) was based in Rome (and, later, Constantinople) and controlled nations around the Mediterranean rim, including Palestine. The Holy Roman Empire came into existence sometime after the Roman Empire had collapsed. The emperors, usually Germanic kings, ruled from their homelands like the independent States within the United States.
History
In fourth century Rome, Christianity was embraced by the Caesar and was pronounced the official religion of the Roman Empire. This blending of religion and government led to an uneasy but powerful mix of doctrine and politics. Eventually, power was consolidated in a centralized Roman Catholic Church, the major social institution throughout the Middle Ages. ...and then Ancient Rome fell.
In A.D. 1054, the Eastern Orthodox Church separated from the Western (Roman) Church, in part due to Rome’s centralized leadership under the Pope.
Pope Leo III laid the foundation for the Holy Roman Empire in A.D. 800 when he crowned Charlemagne as emperor. This act set a precedent for the next 700 years, as the Popes claimed the right to select and install the most powerful rulers on the continent. The Holy Roman Empire officially began in 962 when Pope John XII crowned King Otto I of Germany and gave him the title of Emperor. In the Holy Roman Empire, civil authority and church authority clashed at times, but the church usually won. This was the time when the Catholic Popes wielded the most influence, and the papacy’s power reached its zenith. This was also the time whenjewsbegan to infiltrate the church.
Due to this infiltration, during the Middle Ages, a wide variety of new church traditions became official doctrine of the Roman Church. Further, the church-state engaged in many military conflicts, including the Crusades, which were essentially wars againstjewsenemies.
Late in the period of the Holy Roman Empire, a growing number of Christians grew uneasy with the dominance, teaching, andjewscorruption of the Roman Catholic Church. In the 1500s, Martin Luther got fed up, and launched the Protestant Reformation, creating the Lutheran Church. John Calvin became a Reformation leader based in Geneva, Switzerland, starting Calvanism, and others, including Ulrich Zwingli and a large Anabaptist movement, all initiated Catholic reformations.
Seeds of Demise
The Holy Roman Empire continued to hold power after the Reformation, but the seeds of its demise had been sown; after the Reformation, the Church’s imperial influence waned and the authority of the Pope was curtailed. Europe was emerging from the Middle Ages.
The Holy Roman Empire itself was afasciststate, and served as the government over much of Europe for the majority of medieval history. But it held little power on its own, and the various feifdoms and kindoms were basically independent. The Roman Catholic Church, melded in a church-state alliance with the emperor, was the major religious entity. The Church encountered numerous changes even as it amassed land and political clout. Late in this period, Martin Luther and other Reformers transformed the way religion was practiced in central Europe. While the Holy Roman Empire influenced much of the world we live in today[cn].
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The Holy Roman Empire (HRE;, Latin:, Italian:) was the successor to the Western Roman Empire and for about eight hundred years a realm in Europe under a Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the Emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes. In its last centuries its character became quite close to a federation of German states. The first Emperor of the realm, which was later called Holy Roman Empire who was not member of the Carolingian dynasty, was Otto I (House of Otto), crowned in 962.[1] The last was Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, who, under Napoleonic pressure abdicated and dissolved the Empire on 6 August 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. In a decree following the 1512 Diet of Cologne, the name was officially changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (, Latin:) [2].
The Empire's territorial extent varied over its history, but at its peak it encompassed the German Kingdom, the Kingdoms of Lombardy, Burgundy, Bohemia and Poland; and for much of its history the Empire consisted of hundreds of smaller sub-units, principalities, duchies, counties, Free Imperial Cities, as well as other domains. Despite its name, for most of its history the Empire did not include Rome (which lay inside the sovereign Papal States) within its borders.
The territories and dominion of the Holy Roman Empire in terms of present-day states comprised Germany (except Southern Schleswig), Austria (except Burgenland), the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Great Poland and Slovenia (except Prekmurje), besides significant parts of eastern France (mainly Artois, Alsace, Franche-Comté, Savoy and Lorraine, northern Italy (mainly Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, and South Tyrol), and Silesia (held by Bohemia then Prussia), Pomerania, and the Neumark (held by the Teutonic Order.
History
The leader of the Franks Charlemagne (more correctly Karl de Gross) was crowned Emperor of the West in 800 AD and was the forerunner of the Holy Roman Empire,[3][4][5] largely because he had inaugurated the tradition of Imperial coronation by the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, which continued as a significant institution in the Holy Roman Empire until the 16th century or later.[6] Charlemagne's policy of "renovatio Romanorum imperii" (reviving the Roman Empire) remained at least in theory as the official position of the Empire until its end in 1806.
Name
Although the Empire of the Germans (Teutsches Reich) already existed, the name “Holy Empire” only appeared in 1157. The addition “Roman” only followed 100 years later. The addition “German Nation” for the confederation of member states was only added in the 15th century, becoming official in 1512. Historically, the empire is often simply called the (First) German Empire, the Holy German Empire or the Roman(-)German Empire.
Formation
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The Carolingian Imperial crown was initially disputed among the Carolingian rulers of the Western and Eastern Franks, who were a German Rhineland people, with first the western king being Charles 'the Bald' and the eastern Charles 'the Fat'. However, after the death of Charles in 888 the empire broke asunder, never to be restored. According to Regino of Prüm, each part of the realm elected a "kinglet" from its own "bowels". After the death of Charles those who were crowned Emperors by the Pope controlled only territories in Italy. The last of such Emperors was Berengar I of Italy who died in 924.
The Dukes of Alemannia, the Duchy of Bavaria, the Duchy of Franconia and the Duchy of Saxony elected Conrad I of Franconia of the Franks (not a Carolingian), as their leader in 911. His successor, Henry (Heinrich) I the Fowler (r. 919–936), a Saxon was elected at the Reichstag of Fritzlar in 919, achieved the acceptance of a separate Eastern Empire by the West Franks (still ruled by the Carolingians) in 921, calling himself Rex Francorum Orientalum (King of the East Franks). He founded the Ottonian dynasty.
Henry designated his son Otto, who was elected King in Aachen in 936, to be his successor. A marriage alliance with the widowed queen of Italy gave Otto control over that nation as well. His later crowning as Emperor Otto I (later called "the Great") in 962 would mark an important step, since from then on the Eastern-Frankish realm – and not the West-Frankish kingdom that was the other remainder of the Frankish kingdoms – would have the blessing of the Pope. Otto had gained much of his power earlier, when, in 955, the Magyars were defeated in the Battle of Lechfeld.
In contemporary and later writings, this crowning would also be referred to as translatio imperii, the transfer of the Empire from the Romans to a new Empire. The German Emperors thus thought of themselves as being in direct succession of those of the Roman Empire; this is why they initially called themselves Augustus. Still, they did not call themselves "Roman" Emperors at first, probably in order not to provoke conflict with the Roman Emperor in Constantinople. The term imperator Romanorum only became common under Conrad II (later than his crowning in 1027, thus in the early-middle 11th century) after the Great Schism.
High Middle Ages
In the early 11th century, the eastern kingdom was not "German" but a "confederation" of the old Germanic tribes of the Bavarians, Alemanns, Franks and Saxons. The Empire as a political union probably only survived because of the strong personal influence of King Henry the Saxon and his son, Otto. Although formally elected by the leaders of the Germanic tribes, they were actually able to designate their successors.
This changed after Henry II died in 1024 without any children. Conrad II, first of the Salian Dynasty, was then elected king in 1024 only after some debate. How exactly the king was chosen thus seems to be a complicated conglomeration of personal influence, tribal quarrels, inheritance, and acclamation by those leaders that would eventually become the collegiate of Electors.
Already at this time the dualism between the "territories", then those of the old tribes rooted in the Frankish lands, and the King/Emperor, became apparent. Each king preferred to spend most time in his own homelands; the Saxons, for example, spent much time in palatinates around the Harz mountains, among them Goslar. This practice had only changed under Otto III (king 983, Emperor 996–1002), who began to utilise bishoprics all over the Empire as temporary seats of government. Also, his successors, Henry II, Conrad II, and Henry III, apparently managed to appoint the dukes of the territories. It is thus no coincidence that at this time, the terminology changes and the first occurrences of a regnum Teutonicum (German Kingdom) are found.
Investiture Controversy
The glory of the Empire almost collapsed in the Investiture Controversy, in which Pope Gregory VII declared a ban on the practice of lay investiture, that is, the practice of secular leaders appointing Catholic clergy and investing them with the symbols of the bishopric. Since lay investiture allowed secular rulers a measure of control over the Church in a given area (and therefore, over the minds of a king's subjects,) Henry IV saw this action by the Pope as a form of interference with Henry's authority.Henry IV (king 1056, Emperor 1084–1106) persuaded bishops under his control to excommunicate the Pope Gregory VII whom he famously addressed as "Hildebrand...Not Pope but false monk!" The Pope however, announced that the oaths of loyalty made to Henry by his vassals were no longer binding, since he'd been excommunicated. Suddenly, the emperor found himself with almost no political support and was forced to make the famous Walk to Canossa in 1077. Because this episode demonstrated the limits of any would-be ruler's power in Christendom, it had wide-reaching implications for the rest of the Medieval Period. Meanwhile, the German dukes had elected a second king, Rudolf of Swabia, whom Henry IV could only defeat after a three-year war in 1080. The mythical roots of the Empire were permanently damaged; the German king was humiliated. Most importantly though, the church was clearly an independent player in the political system of the Empire, not subject to imperial authority.
Under the Hohenstaufen
Conrad III came to the throne in 1138. He was the first ruler of the Hohenstaufen dynasty who were to restore the glory of the Empire, albeit under the new conditions of the 1122 Concordat of Worms. It was Frederick I Barbarossa (king 1152, Emperor 1155–1190) who first called the Empire "Holy", with which he intended to address mainly law and legislation. Under Barbarossa, the idea of the "Roman-ness" of the Empire culminated again, which seemed to be an attempt to justify the Emperor's power independently of the (now strengthened) Pope. An Imperial Assembly at the fields of Roncaglia in 1158 explicitly reclaimed Imperial rights on the advice of quattuor doctores of the emerging judicial facility of the University of Bologna, citing phrases such as princeps legibus solutus ("the emperor princeps is not bound by law") from the Digestae of the Corpus Juris Civilis. That the Roman laws were created for an entirely different system and didn't fit the structure of the Empire was obviously secondary; the point here was that the court of the Emperor made an attempt to establish a legal constitution.
Imperial rights had been referred to as regalia since the Investiture Controversy, but were enumerated for the first time at Roncaglia as well. This comprehensive list included public roads, tariffs, coining, collecting punitive fees, and the investiture, the seating and unseating of office holders. These rights were now explicitly rooted in Roman Law, a far-reaching constitutional act; north of the Alps, the system was also now connected to feudal law, a change most visible in the withdrawal of the feuds of Henry the Lion in 1180 which led to his public banning. Barbarossa thus managed for a time to more closely bind the stubborn Germanic Dukes to the Empire as a whole.
Another important constitutional move at Roncaglia was the establishment of a new peace (Landfrieden) for all of the Empire, an attempt on the one hand to abolish private feuds not only between the many local Dukes, but on the other hand a means to tie the Emperor's subordinates to a legal system of jurisdiction and public prosecution of criminal acts a predecessor concept of "rule of law", in modern terms, that was, at this time, not yet universally accepted.
In order to solve the problem that the Emperor was no longer as able to use The Church as a mechanism to maintain power, the Staufer increasingly lent land to ministerialia, formerly non-free service men, which Frederick hoped would be more reliable than local Dukes. Initially used mainly for war services, this new class of people would form the basis for the later knights, another basis of Imperial power.
Another new concept of the time was the systematic foundation of new cities, both by the Emperor and the local Dukes. These were partly caused by the explosion in population, but also to concentrate economic power at strategic locations, while formerly cities only existed in the shape of either old Roman foundations or older Bishoprics. Cities that were founded in the 12th century include Freiburg, possibly the economic model for many later cities, and Munich.
The later reign of the last Staufer Emperor, Frederick II, was in many ways different from that of earlier Emperors. Still a child, he first reigned in Sicily, while in Germany, Barbarossa's second son Philip of Swabia and Henry the Lion's son Otto IV competed with him for the title of King of the Germans. After finally having been crowned Emperor in 1220, he risked conflict with the Pope when he claimed power over Rome; astonishingly to many, he managed to claim Jerusalem in the Sixth Crusade in 1228 while still under the Pope's ban.
While Frederick brought the mythical idea of the Empire to a last high point, he was also the one to initiate the major steps that led to its disintegration. On the one hand, he concentrated on establishing an innovative state in Sicily, with public services, finances, and other reforms. On the other hand, Frederick was the Emperor who granted major powers to the German Dukes in the form of two far-reaching privileges that would never be reclaimed by the central power. In the 1220 Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis, Frederick gave up a number of regalia in favour of the Bishops, among them tariffs, coining, and fortification. The 1232 Statutum in favorem principum mostly extended these privileges to the other (non-clerical) territories (Frederick II was forced to give those privileges after a rebellion of his son, Henry). Although many of these privileges had existed earlier, they were now granted globally, and once and for all, to allow the German Dukes to maintain order north of the Alps while Frederick wanted to concentrate on his homelands in Italy. The 1232 document marked the first time that the German Dukes were called domini terræ, owners of their lands, a remarkable change in terminology as well.
The Teutonic Knights were meanwhile invited to Prussia by Duke Konrad of Masovia after he and the Polish Knights of Dobrzyń had completely failed to defeat and pacify the marauding and pagan Old Prussians, in 1226. The monastic state of the Teutonic Order and its later German successor states never formally belonged to the Holy Roman Empire during its existence, despite Papal and Imperial Bulls recognition and confirmation of their State.
During the long stays of the Hohenstaufen Emperors (1138–1254) in Italy, the German princes became stronger and facilitated a successful, peaceful eastward settlement of lands previously sparsely inhabited by West Slavs or uninhabited (especially following the Tartar invasions), by German farmers, traders and other settlers. The gradual Germanization of these lands was a complex phenomenon which should not be interpreted in terms of 19th century nationalism's bias. By the eastward settlement the Empire's influence increased to eventually include Pomerania and Silesia - also due to intermarriage of the local, still mostly Slavic, rulers with German spouses.
Interregnum
After the death of Frederick II in 1250, none of the dynasties worthy of producing the king proved able to do so, and the leading dukes elected several competing kings. The time from 1246 (beginning with the election of Heinrich Raspe and William of Holland) to 1273, when Rudolph I of Habsburg was elected king, is commonly referred to as the Interregnum. During the Interregnum, much of what was left of imperial authority was lost, as the princes were given time to consolidate their holdings and become even more independent rulers.
In 1257, there occurred a double election which produced a situation that guaranteed a long interregnum. William of Holland had fallen the previous year, and Conrad of Swabia had died three years earlier. First, three electors (Palatinate, Cologne and Mainz) (being mostly of the Guelph persuasion) cast their votes for Richard of Cornwall who became the successor of William of Holland as king. After a delay, a fourth elector, Bohemia, joined this choice. However, a couple of months later, Bohemia and the three other electors Trier, Brandenburg and Saxony voted for Alfonso X of Castile, this being based on Ghibelline party. The realm now had two kings. Was the King of Bohemia entitled to change his vote, or was the election complete when four electors had chosen a king? Were the four electors together entitled to depose Richard a couple of months later, if his election had been valid?
Changes in political structure
The 13th century also saw a general structural change in how land was administered, preparing the shift of political power towards the rising bourgeoisie at the expense of aristocratic feudalism that would characterize the Late Middle Ages.
Instead of personal duties, money increasingly became the common means to represent economic value in agriculture. Peasants were increasingly required to pay tribute for their lands. The concept of "property" began to replace more ancient forms of jurisdiction, although they were still very much tied together. In the territories (not at the level of the Empire), power became increasingly bundled: Whoever owned the land had jurisdiction, from which other powers derived. It is important to note, however, that jurisdiction at this time did not include legislation, which virtually did not exist until well into the 15th century. Court practice heavily relied on traditional customs or rules described as customary.
It is during this time that the territories began to transform themselves into predecessors of modern states. The process varied greatly among the various lands and was most advanced in those territories that were most identical to the lands of the old Germanic tribes, e.g. Bavaria. It was slower in those scattered territories that were founded through imperial privileges.
Late Middle Ages
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Rise of the territories after the Staufen
The difficulties in electing the king eventually led to the emergence of a fixed college of electors, the Kurfürsten, whose composition and procedures were set forth in the Golden Bull of 1356. This development probably best symbolises the emerging duality between Kaiser und Reich, emperor and realm, which were no longer considered identical. This is also revealed in the way the post-Staufen kings attempted to sustain their power. Earlier, the Empire's strength (and finances) greatly relied on the Empire's own lands, the so-called Reichsgut, which always belonged to the respective king (and included many Imperial Cities). After the 13th century, its relevance faded (even though some parts of it did remain until the Empire's end in 1806). Instead, the Reichsgut was increasingly pawned to local dukes, sometimes to raise money for the Empire but, more frequently, to reward faithful duty or as an attempt to civilise stubborn dukes. The direct governance of the Reichsgut no longer matched the needs of either the king or the dukes.
Instead, the kings, beginning with Rudolph I of Habsburg, increasingly relied on the lands of their respective dynasties to support their power. In contrast with the Reichsgut, which was mostly scattered and difficult to administer, these territories were comparably compact and thus easier to control. In 1282, Rudolph I thus lent Austria and Styria to his own sons.
With Henry VII, the House of Luxembourg entered the stage. In 1312, he was crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor since Frederick II. After him all kings and emperors relied on the lands of their own family (Hausmacht): Louis IV of Wittelsbach (king 1314, emperor 1328–1347) relied on his lands in Bavaria; Charles IV of Luxembourg, the grandson of Henry VII, drew strength from his own lands in Bohemia. Interestingly, it was thus increasingly in the king's own interest to strengthen the power of the territories, since the king profited from such a benefit in his own lands as well.
Imperial Reform
The "constitution" of the Empire was still largely unsettled at the beginning of the 15th century. Although some procedures and institutions had been fixed, for example by the Golden Bull of 1356, the rules of how the king, the electors, and the other dukes should cooperate in the Empire much depended on the personality of the respective king. It therefore proved somewhat fatal that Sigismund of Luxemburg (king 1410, emperor 1433–1437) and Frederick III of Habsburg (king 1440, emperor 1452–1493) neglected the old core lands of the empire and mostly resided in their own lands. Without the presence of the king, the old institution of the Hoftag, the assembly of the realm's leading men, deteriorated. The Reichstag as a legislative organ of the Empire did not exist yet. Even worse, dukes often went into feuds against each other that, more often than not, escalated into local wars.
At the same time, the church was in crisis too. The conflict between several competing popes was only resolved at the Council of Constance (1414–1418); after 1419, much energy was spent on fighting the heresy of the Hussites.Template:POV-statement The medieval idea of a unified Corpus christianum, of which the papacy and the Empire were the leading institutions, began to decline.
With these drastic changes, much discussion emerged in the 15th century about the Empire itself. Rules from the past no longer adequately described the structure of the time, and a reinforcement of earlier Landfrieden was urgently called for. During this time, the concept of "reform" emerged, in the original sense of the Latin verb re-formare, to regain an earlier shape that had been lost.
When Frederick III needed the dukes to finance war against Hungary in 1486 and at the same time had his son, later Maximilian I elected king, he was presented with the dukes' united demand to participate in an Imperial Court. For the first time, the assembly of the electors and other dukes was now called Reichstag (to be joined by the Imperial Free Cities later). While Frederick refused, his more conciliatory son finally convened the Reichstag at Worms in 1495, after his father's death in 1493. Here, the king and the dukes agreed on four bills, commonly referred to as the Reichsreform (Imperial Reform): a set of legal acts to give the disintegrating Empire back some structure. Among others, this act produced the Imperial Circle Estates and the Reichskammergericht (Imperial Chamber Court); structures that would—to a degree—persist until the end of the Empire in 1806.
However, it took a few more decades until the new regulation was universally accepted and the new court began to actually function; only in 1512 would the Imperial Circles be finalised. The King also made sure that his own court, the Reichshofrat, continued to function in parallel to the Reichskammergericht. It is interesting to note that in this year, the Empire also received its new title, the Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation ("Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation").
Reformation and Renaissance
In 1516, the grandfather (Ferdinand II of Aragon) of the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, died. Due to a combination of (1) the traditions of dynastic succession in Aragon, which permitted maternal inheritance with no precedence for female rule; (2) the insanity of Charles's mother, Joanna of Castile; and (3) the insistence by his remaining grandfather, Maximilian I, that he take up his royal titles, Charles initiated his reign in Castile and Aragon in conjunction with his mother. This ensured for the first time that all the realms of the Iberian peninsula (save for Portugal) would be united by one monarch under one nascent Spanish crown, with the founding territories retaining their separate governance codes and laws. In 1519, already reigning as Carlos I in Spain, Charles took up the imperial title as Karl V. The balance (and imbalance) between these separate inheritances would be defining elements of his reign, and would ensure that personal union between the German and Spanish crowns would be short-lived. The former would end up going to a more junior branch of the Habsburgs in the person of Charles's brother Ferdinand, while the senior branch continued rule in Spain and in the Burgundian inheritance in the person of Charles's son, Philip.
In addition to conflicts between his German and Spanish inheritances, conflicts of religion would be another source of tension during the reign of Charles V. Before Charles even began his reign in the Holy Roman Empire, in 1517, Martin Luther initiated what would later be known as the Reformation. At this time, many local dukes saw it as a chance to oppose the hegemony of Emperor Charles V. The empire then became fatally divided along religious lines, with the North, the East, and many of the major cities—Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Nuremberg—becoming Protestant while the southern and western regions largely remained Catholic.
From 1515 to 1523, the Habsburg government in the Netherlands also had to contend with the Frisian peasant rebellion, led first by Pier Gerlofs Donia and then by his nephew Wijerd Jelckama. The rebels were initially successful, but after a series of defeats, the remaining leaders were taken and decapitated in 1523. This was a blow for the Holy Roman Empire since many major cities were sacked and as many as 132 ships sunk (once even 28 in a single battle).
Baroque period
Religious war
Charles V continued to battle the French and the Protestant princes in Germany for much of his reign. After his son Philip married Queen Mary of England, it appeared that France would be completely surrounded by Habsburg domains, but this hope proved unfounded when the marriage produced no children. In 1555, Paul IV was elected pope and took the side of France, whereupon an exhausted Charles finally gave up his hopes of a world Christian empire. He abdicated and divided his territories between Philip and Ferdinand of Austria. The Peace of Augsburg ended the war in Germany and accepted the existence of the Protestant princes, although not Calvinism, Anabaptism, or Zwingliism. Although the Holy Roman Empire would nominally exist until 1806, it effectively ceased to mean anything after 1555. Germany would enjoy relative peace for the next six decades. On the eastern front, the Turks continued to loom large as a threat, although war would mean further compromises with the Protestant princes, and so the emperor sought to avoid that. In the west, the Rhineland increasingly fell under French influence. And after the Dutch revolt against Spain erupted, the Empire remained neutral. A side effect of that conflict was the Cologne War, which ravaged much of the upper Rhine.
After Ferdinand died in 1564, his son Maximilian II became emperor, and like his father, accepted the existence of Protestantism and the need for occasional compromise with it. Maximilian was succeeded in 1576 by Rudolf II, a strange man who preferred classical Greek philosophy to Christianity and lived an isolated existence in Bohemia. He became afraid to act when the Catholic Church was forcibly reasserting control in Austria and Hungary and the Protestant princes became upset over this. Imperial power sharply deteriorated by the time of Rudolf's death in 1612. When Bohemians rebelled against the emperor, the immediate result was the series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which devastated the Empire. Foreign powers, including France and Sweden, intervened in the conflict and strengthened those fighting Imperial power, but they also seized considerable chunks of territory for themselves. The long conflict bled the Empire to such a degree that it would never recover its former strength.
At the Battle of Vienna (1683), the army of the Holy Roman Empire led by Polish King John III Sobieski decisively defeated a large Turkish army, ending the western colonial Ottoman advance and leading to the eventual dismemberment of the Ottoman empire in Europe. The HRE army was half Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth forces, mostly cavalry, and half Holy Roman Empire forces (German/Austrian), mostly infantry. The cavalry charge was the largest in the history of warfare.
The actual end of the empire came in several steps. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War, gave the territories almost complete sovereignty. The Swiss Confederation, which had already established quasi-independence in 1499, as well as the Northern Netherlands, left the empire. Although its constituent states still had some restrictions—in particular, they could not form alliances against the Emperor—the Empire from this point was a powerless entity, existing in name only. The Habsburg Emperors instead focused on consolidating their own estates in Austria and elsewhere.
Prussia and Austria
By the rise of Louis XIV, the Habsburgs were dependent on the position as Archdukes of Austria to counter the rise of Prussia, some of whose territories lay inside the Empire. Throughout the 18th century, the Habsburgs were embroiled in various European conflicts, such as the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Polish Succession and the War of the Austrian Succession. The German dualism between Austria and Prussia dominated the empire's history after 1740.
French Revolutionary Wars and final dissolution
From 1792 onwards, revolutionary France was at war with various parts of the Empire intermittently.
The German Mediatisation was the series of mediatisations and secularisations that occurred in 1795–1814, during the latter part of the era of the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Era.
Mediatisation was the process of annexing the lands of one sovereign monarchy to another, often leaving the annexed some rights. Secularisation was the redistribution to secular states of the secular lands held by an Ecclesiastical ruler such as a Bishop or an Abbot.
The Empire was formally dissolved on 6 August 1806 when the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (from 1804, Emperor Francis I of Austria) abdicated, following a military defeat by the French under Napoleon (see Treaty of Pressburg). Napoleon reorganised much of the empire into the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite. Francis' House of Habsburg-Lorraine survived the demise of the Empire, continuing to reign as Emperors of Austria and Kings of Hungary until the Habsburg empire's final dissolution at the end of 1918 in the aftermath of World War I.
Meanwhile, the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine was replaced by the German Confederation and the North German Confederation in succession, until the German-speaking territories outside of Austria and Switzerland were united under Prussian leadership in 1871, as the German Empire, the predecessor-state of modern Germany.
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars a new German union, the German Confederation, was established in 1815. It lasted until 1866 when Prussia founded the North German Confederation, which in 1871 became a part of the German Empire.
See also
References
- ↑ Martin Arbage, "Otto I," in Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2004), p. 810 online: "Otto can be considered the first ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, as such, though that term was not used until the twelfth century."
- ↑ Peter Hamish Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, 1495-1806, MacMillan Press 1999, London, page 2; The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in London website
- ↑ http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa35
- ↑ http://history-world.org/charlemagne.htm
- ↑ Pagden, Anthony (2008). World's at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West p. 147 Random House.
- ↑ Bryce, James (1838-1922), The Holy Roman Empire, 1st edition 1864, revised new edition 1906, Macmillan, London, many reprints.