289 Sentences With "Confederation of the Rhine"

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Article 25 of the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbundakte) sanctioned unilateral action by territorial states.
To ensure the neutrality, Prussian observation troops of there were stationed in Lippe. In 1806 Napoleon initiated the so-called Confederation of the Rhine. Prussia responded with the North German Confederation and solicited members. Pauline saw that Lippe's independence was threatened and sought to join the Confederation of the Rhine.
The new Napoleonic written constitutions of many of the member states of the Confederation of the Rhine were influenced by Koch.
A map of the Confederation of the Rhine. After having narrowly escaped mediatization to Bavaria in 1806,Liechtenstein was on the list of principalities and counties Maximilian I of Bavaria wanted to mediatize as his price for joining the Confederation of the Rhine but Napoleon refused in the case of Liechtenstein because he had appreciated the personal qualities of Johann von Liechtenstein, Austria's plenipotentiary during the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Pressburg. Jean d'Arenberg, Les Princes du Saint-Empire à l'époque napoléonienne, Louvain, 1951, p. 115. Liechtenstein became a sovereign state later that year when it joined Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine upon the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.
On 15 December 1806, Saxe- Coburg-Saalfeld, along with the other Ernestine duchies, entered the Confederation of the Rhine as the Duke and his ministers planned.
The German princes render homage to the protector Napoleon, shortly after the ratification of the Confederation Treaty. This lithograph by Charles Motte was possibly made in the 1820s. The depiction should not be read literally; some princes were represented by envoys. Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine was the title held by Napoleon, Emperor of the French, in his function as leader of the Confederation of the Rhine (1806-1813).
The Confederation of the Rhine (; French: officially ' (Confederated States of the Rhine), but in practice ') was a confederation of client states of the First French Empire. It was formed initially from sixteen German states by Napoleon after he defeated Austria and Russia at the Battle of Austerlitz. The Treaty of Pressburg, in effect, led to the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which lasted from 1806 to 1813.Hans A. Schmitt.
O'Donnell managed to slip past the garrisons of Barcelona, Hostalric, and Girona. The British naval expedition struck first on 10 September when they rowed ashore and captured 50 men and a coastal artillery emplacement at Begur. In response, Schwarz alerted his coastal units to harden their defenses. His understrength brigade included two battalions each of the 5th Confederation of the Rhine (Anhalt-Lippe) and 6th Confederation of the Rhine (Schwartzburg-Waldeck-Reuss) Regiments.
Arenberg joined Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine, although that did not prevent it from being mediatised in 1810, with France annexing Dülmen and Meppen, and the duchy of Berg annexing Recklinghausen.
Priesendorf belonged to the Barons Münster at Lisberg and was part of the knightly estate of Lisberg. With the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the community passed to Bavaria.
After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Dalberg together with other princes joined the Confederation of the Rhine. He formally resigned the office of Arch-Chancellor in a letter to Emperor Francis II, and was appointed prince-primate of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon. At that point, the ' of Frankfurt was included among his territories. Not long after, Dalberg appointed Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, coadjutor in his archdiocese (a move for which he had no canonical rights).
Sensing this and urged on by Prussian nationalists and Russian commanders, German nationalists revolted in the Confederation of the Rhine and Prussia. The decisive German campaign might not have occurred without the defeat in Russia.
Through the treaty that formed the Confederation of the Rhine, Rheinbundakte, Lußheim became a part of the newly formed grand duchy of Baden. In 1821 the settlement Neulußheim became independent. To avoid confusion Lußheim was renamed Altlußheim.
Only Austria, Prussia, Danish , Swedish Pomerania, and the French-occupied Principality of Erfurt stayed outside the Confederation of the Rhine. The War of the Sixth Coalition from 1812 to winter 1814 saw the defeat of Napoleon and the liberation of Germany. In June 1814, the famous German patriot Heinrich vom Stein created the Central Managing Authority for Germany (Zentralverwaltungsbehörde) in Frankfurt to replace the defunct Confederation of the Rhine. However, plenipotentiaries gathered at the Congress of Vienna were determined to create a weaker union of German states than envisaged by Stein.
The Spanish force immediately moved against Manresa and began skirmishing with its defenders. These were two battalions each of the 3rd Confederation of the Rhine (1st Nassau) and the 4th Confederation of the Rhine (Ducal Saxon) Regiments. On 2 April, Caro was wounded and replaced by Luis González Torres de Navarra, Marquess of Campoverde.Smith (1998), 341 On 5 April in the Battle of Manresa, Campoverde mounted a full-scale attack and flushed Schwarz's troops out of the town with losses of 30 officers and 800 rank and file.
Eine Dokumentensammlung nebst Einführungen. Volume 1: Gesamtdeutschland, Anhaltische Staaten und Baden, Springer, Berlin et al. 2006, p. 21. For Napoleon, the Confederation of the Rhine was an instrument to secure the military support of the Rhenish states when necessary.
His Imperial and Royal Majesty Napoleon I, By the Grace of God and the Constitution of the Republic, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation and Co-Prince of Andorra.
The principality was divided 1805, Pyrmont was given to George, and his brother Friedrich Karl August stayed with Waldeck. In 1807, Waldeck joined the Confederation of the Rhine. After the death of his brother in 1812, George took over the government in Waldeck.
In 1806 Napoleon incorporated Liechtenstein in the Confederation of the Rhine and made it a sovereign state. At the Vienna Congress the sovereignty of Liechtenstein was approved. Liechtenstein became a member of the German Confederation in 1815. This membership confirmed Liechtenstein’s sovereignty.
Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg (8 February 1744 – 10 February 1817) was Prince-Archbishop of Regensburg, Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, Bishop of Constance and Worms, prince-primate of the Confederation of the Rhine and Grand Duke of Frankfurt.
After Napoleon's defeat in 1814 and the dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine, the former Arenberg territories were divided between the kingdom of Prussia and the kingdom of Hanover. In both Prussia and Hanover, the dukes became local peers subordinate to the king.
Germany Without Prussia: A Closer Look at the Confederation of the Rhine. German Studies Review 6, No. 4 (1983), pp 9-39. The members of the confederation were German princes (') formerly within the Holy Roman Empire. They were later joined by 19 others, altogether ruling a total of over 15 million subjects providing a significant strategic advantage to the French Empire on its eastern frontier by providing a separation between France and the two largest German states, Prussia and Austria (which also controlled substantial non-German lands to its north, east and south), to the east, which were not members of the Confederation of the Rhine.
The west bank of the Rhine and the Principality of Erfurt had been annexed outright by the French Empire. Thus, as either emperor of the French or protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Napoleon was now the overlord of all of Germany except Austria, Prussia, Danish Holstein, and Swedish Pomerania, plus previously independent Switzerland, which were not included in the Confederation. In 1810 large parts of what is now northwest Germany were quickly annexed to France in order to better monitor the trade embargo with Great Britain, the Continental System. The Confederation of the Rhine collapsed in 1813, in the aftermath of Napoleon's failed campaign against the Russian Empire.
According to the Confederation of the Rhine Act, agreed upon between Napoleon I of France and the Confederation of the Rhine princes, the Principality of Thurn and Taxis lost its independence and was mediatised in 1806. Since then, the Princes of Thurn and Taxis and hence Karl Alexander, depending on the territory, were subjects of either the King of Württemberg, or the Princes of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. In return, the House of Thurn and Taxis received the Imperial Abbey of St. Emmeram and associated territories in Regensburg. Karl Alexander also received as the family head of the House of Thurn and Taxis, Prussian possessions in the Grand Duchy of Poland.
Following the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806, George travelled to Paris, where he negotiated the entry of Mecklenburg- Strelitz into the Confederation of the Rhine. He also attended the Congress of Vienna in 1814, where Mecklenburg-Strelitz was raised to the status of a grand duchy.
During the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the principality of Fürstenberg was mediatised and the other four municipalities were also annexed by Baden. The 6 municipalities were separate communes until 1 January 1972 when they were united to form the larger conglomerate Deggenhausertal.
On 13 December 1813 he resigned from the Confederation of the Rhine and sent his troops with his allies in 1814 and 1815 to Belgium and France. On 8 June 1815 he joined the German Confederation. Duke Alexius Frederick Christian died at Ballenstedt on 24 March 1834.
Residence of the Prince-Primate von Dalberg in Regensburg The Principality of Regensburg () was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire created in 1803; following the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, it was part of the Confederation of the Rhine until 1810. Its capital was Regensburg.
Schaumburg-Lippe joined the Confederation of the Rhine on 15 December 1807 and was raised to a principality: Georg Wilhelm became the first Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe. In 1815 Schaumburg-Lippe joined the German Confederation. Georg Wilhelm died at Bückeburg and was succeeded as Prince by his son Adolf.
The ' or 'Confederation of the Rhine' was founded in 1806, when several German states seceded from the Holy Roman Empire and allied themselves with Emperor Napoleon of France, who assumed the position of the Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine. Its highest office was held by , first Archbishop of Mainz and then of Regensburg. He had been the first among the princes of the Holy Roman Empire and styled its Archchancellor, and as such was given the first rank among the princes of the new Confederation and the title of ', 'Prince Primate'. As such he presided over the College of Kings and the of the Confederation, a senate-like assembly which never actually assembled.
Viereth belonged to the Michelsberg Monastery, which in turn belonged to the High Monastery at Bamberg. Since the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803, the community has belonged to Bavaria. Trunstadt belonged to the Counts Voit von Rieneck and only passed to Bavaria with the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806.
In 1806, Baden joined the Confederation of the Rhine. Together with his architect, Friedrich Weinbrenner, Charles Frederick was responsible for the construction of the handsome suite of classical buildings that distinguish Karlsruhe. He died there in 1811, and was one of the few German rulers to die during the Napoleonic era.
According to its terms, Saxony was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine and to surrender parts of Thuringia to the recently organized Kingdom of Westphalia. As compensation, Saxony was given the area around Cottbus and was raised to the status of a kingdom alongside the Confederation states of Bavaria and Württemberg.
The Lords of Schlüsselberg, who had their first documentary mention in 1304, were resident in Buttenheim and until 1762 held an estate, the court and lordship over the village. These, however, later belonged to the Barons of Seefried. By the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the community passed to Bavaria.
Several different principalities of the House of Reuss which had previously existed had by the time of the formation of the German Confederation become part of the two remaining lines (the Elder and the Younger lines). Before then, they had been part first of the Holy Roman Empire, and then the Confederation of the Rhine.
For the first time, foreign troops had played a role in a major battle, and done so with distinction. During the War of the Fifth Coalition, as many as one-third of the Grande Armée, were from the Confederation of the Rhine,Elting, John R. Swords Around A Throne. Da Capo Press, 1997. P. 387.
His organization of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 promoted a feeling of nationalism. Nationalists sought to encompass masculinity in their quest for strength and unity.Karen Hagemann, "Of 'manly valor' and 'German Honor': nation, war, and masculinity in the age of the Prussian uprising against Napoleon." Central European History 30#2 (1997): 187–220.
On 1 January 1806, Duke Frederick III was given the title of King of Württemberg, whereupon he became King Frederick I of Württemberg. King Frederick I abrogated the constitution and united Old and New Württemberg. Subsequently, he placed church property under state control. He also joined the Confederation of the Rhine and received further territory.
Before 1800, Altfrauhofen was ruled by the "Baron of Fraunhofen." However, the imperial immediacy of Fraunhofen was not recognized by the Bavarian elector-princes. When Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the city became part of Bavaria. The town was transferred to its current district during the Bavarian administrative reforms of 1818.
This was to completely replace the old palace. Due to lack of money, however, only two wings were completed by 1726. These were to remain the last major structural changes to the castle. When Hessen-Darmstadt joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the castle became the seat of the Grand Dukes of Darmstadt.
The defeat meant the end of the old Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon's satellite states in southern and Western Germany seceded from the Empire in the summer of 1806, forming the Confederation of the Rhine, and a few days later Francis proclaimed the Empire dissolved, and renounced the old imperial crown on 6 August 1806.
Reuss-Ebersdorf was a county and from 1806 a principality located in Germany. The Counts of Reuss-Ebersdorf belonged to the Reuss Junior Line. Reuss was successively a part of the Holy Roman Empire, Confederation of the Rhine, German Confederation, North German Confederation, German Empire and Weimar Republic before becoming a part of Thuringia in 1920.
After Napoleon's military fiasco in Russia in 1812, Prussia allied with Russia in the Sixth Coalition. A series of battles followed and Austria joined the alliance. Napoleon was decisively defeated in the Battle of Leipzig in late 1813. The German states of the Confederation of the Rhine defected to the Coalition against Napoleon, who rejected any peace terms.
For example, his organization of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 promoted a feeling of nationalism. Nationalists sought to encompass masculinity in their quest for strength and unity.Karen Hagemann, "Of 'manly valor' and 'German Honor': nation, war, and masculinity in the age of the Prussian uprising against Napoleon." Central European History 30#2 (1997): 187–220.
In the Confederation of the Rhine he was made Minister of the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt 1810. Albini was a member of the Conference of Ministers administrating Frankfurt 30 September - 23 December 1813, then Presidential Envoy to the Federal Parliament of the German Confederation in Frankfurt 5 October - 16 December 1815. He died in 1816 in Dieburg.
The new Main Synagogue, c. 1860. The Börneplatz Synagogue, c. 1890. Following the end of the Confederation of the Rhine and reestablishment of the Free City of Frankfurt in 1816, the Senate agreed upon a series of articles to the Constitution. Acknowledging the desires of the Christian majority, the rights of the Jews were again curtailed.
Lippe was occupied by the Prussians, who regarded it as a hostile country and as Pauline as a collaborator. As a result, Lippe resigned from the Confederation of the Rhine. Counsellor Preuss signed treaties of alliance with Austria and Russia on 29 November 1813. A Lippe volunteer corps was formed and was equipped by donations from Lippe citizens.
As ruler, Charles encouraged new agricultural trends, established a new police force, and implemented compulsory education. In 1806, his duchy joined the Confederation of the Rhine. Following the Congress of Vienna, he was elevated to the rank of grand duke on 28 June 1815. In the summer of 1816 Charles went on a tour of Rebberg, Schwalbach and Hildburghausen.
The Treaty of Fulda was signed on November 2, 1813 at Fulda, Hesse, in Germany. It was signed by King Frederick I of Württemberg and Austrian foreign minister Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich after the Battle of Leipzig. Based on the terms of the treaty, Württemberg was no longer a member of the Confederation of the Rhine.
In turn, Prussia gained territory in north-western Germany. The Holy Roman Empire was formally dissolved on 6 August 1806 when the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (from 1804, Emperor Francis I of Austria) resigned. Francis II's family continued to be called Austrian emperors until 1918. In 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was established under Napoleon's protection.
The Confederation of the Rhine had increased prosperity in Silesia and in the city. The removal of fortifications opened room for the city to grow beyond its former limits. Breslau became an important railway hub and industrial centre, notably for linen and cotton manufacture and the metal industry. The reconstructed university served as a major centre of science.
During the course of the German mediatisation and the dissolution of Wiblingen Abbey, the village became part of the Electorate of Bavaria in 1805, and following the establishing of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Württemberg. On 1 January 1975 Stetten was incorporated into the municipality of Achstetten.
Through the elimination of territories ruled by prince-bishops (secularisation) and through the consolidation of neighbouring principalities, enclaves and exclaves, Napoleon reduced several hundred states into a relative concentration of a little over two dozen states in the Confederation of the Rhine. This confederation did not survive Napoleon's military defeat at the hands of the allies, but the previous principalities were not entirely restored. Prussia and the Austrian Empire—the successor state to the Habsburg Monarchy—were the only major German powers, and neither had been part of the Confederation of the Rhine. The victorious allies, including Prussia and Austria, decided at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) on widespread dynastic restorations, although some of Napoleon's consolidations were maintained, and Austria and Prussia helped themselves to some formerly independent territories.
Waldenburg in 1930 of Waldenburg dates from 1253. By 1330 it was a free city. Plague and war reduced the population during the Thirty Years' War. The Confederation of the Rhine of 1806 annexed Waldenburg into the Kingdom of Württemberg under the process of "mediatisation", and the town has been part of the Federal Republic of Germany state of Baden-Württemberg since 1952.
Following the French Revolution, Frankfurt was occupied or bombarded several times by French troops. It remained a free city until the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1805/6. In 1806, it became part of the principality of Aschaffenburg under the Fürstprimas (Prince-Primate), Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg. This meant that Frankfurt was incorporated into the confederation of the Rhine.
Duff Cooper: Talleyrand, Frankfurt 1982. Talleyrand was opposed to the harsh treatment of Austria in the 1805 Treaty of Pressburg and of Prussia in the Peace of Tilsit in 1807. In 1806, after Pressburg, he profited greatly from the reorganization of the German lands, this time into the Confederation of the Rhine. But Talleyrand was shut out completely from the negotiations at Tilsit.
According to republicans, this demonstrated his personal greed and lack of any real devotion to the Dutch people. Moreover, when Napoleon discovered that his vassal William Frederick was secretly plotting with Prussia and refused to join the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, he took Fulda from him again, after which William Frederick went into Prussian and later Austrian military service instead.
Until the end, Pauline believed in that Napoleon would win the war. The news of Napoleon's defeat in Russia could not change their beliefs. She was opposed to Lippe seceding from the Confederation of the Rhine and Lippe prosecuted soldiers who had deserted from Napoleon's army. The Prussian lieutenant Haxthausen, who worked as a Russian diplomat, had behaved unduly toward her.
Within months of the signing of the treaty and after a new entity, the Confederation of the Rhine, had been created by Napoleon, Francis II renounced his title as Holy Roman Emperor and became Emperor of the Austrian Empire with the title of Francis I of Austria. An indemnity of 40 million francs to France was also provided for in the treaty.
Location of the Kingdom of Westphalia within the Confederation of the Rhine in 1808 The Kingdom of Westphalia was created in 1807 by merging territories ceded by the Kingdom of Prussia in the Peace of Tilsit, among them the region of the Duchy of Magdeburg west of the Elbe River, the Brunswick-Lüneburg territories of Hanover and Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and the Electorate of Hesse. Hesse's capital Cassel (modern spelling Kassel) then fulfilled the same function for Westphalia, and the king kept the court at the palace of Wilhelmshöhe, renamed Napoleonshöhe. The state was a member of the Confederation of the Rhine. Since it was intended as a Napoleonic "model state", a constitution was written and enacted by King Jérôme on 7 December 1807, the day after he had arrived in Cassel, making Westphalia the first monarchy in Germany with a modern-style constitution.
The constituent community of Ernsdorf was first mentioned in a document as "Erinstorff" in 1417-1419. During the time of the Confederation of the Rhine, Ernsdorf was the local mayor's seat. Krombach Protestant Church The name that the town now bears first cropped up in 1826 in the baptismal register of the community of Ferndorf. Development in the town was sparked by the railway.
Only small remnants of the invading army returned from Russia. On the Spanish front the French armies were defeated and evacuated Spain.Michael Adams, Napoleon and Russia (2006) Since France had been defeated on these two fronts, states it previously conquered and controlled struck back. The Sixth Coalition was formed, and the German states of the Confederation of the Rhine switched sides, finally opposing Napoleon.
"Germany Without Prussia: A Closer Look at the Confederation of the Rhine." German Studies Review 6, No. 4 (1983), pp 9-39. The Duchy of Westphalia, which Hesse- Darmstadt had received in 1803, was ceded to the Kingdom of Prussia during the Congress of Vienna. However, Hesse-Darmstadt was compensated with some territory on the western bank of the Rhine, including the important federal fortress at Mainz.
With the effective end of imperial governance following the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805, the violence done unto the knights and counts was extended to these defenseless princes, resulting in a second great mediatisation in 1806. The formal mediatisation of the imperial knights and counts was legalized by Article 25 of the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbundakte), which sanctioned unilateral action by territorial states.
In 1806, Frederick joined the Confederation of the Rhine and received further territory with 160,000 inhabitants. Later, by the Peace of Vienna of October 1809, about 110,000 more people came under his rule. In return for these favours, Frederick joined French Emperor Napoleon in his campaigns against Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Of the 16,000 of his subjects who marched to Moscow, only a few hundred returned.
With the Treaty of Ried of 8 October 1813 Bavaria left the Confederation of the Rhine and agreed to join the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon in exchange for a guarantee of her continued sovereign and independent status. On 14 October, Bavaria made a formal declaration of war against Napoleonic France. The treaty was passionately backed by Crown Prince Ludwig and by Marshal von Wrede.
At the Peace of Basel in 1795, the whole of the left bank of the Rhine was taken by France. The population was about 1.6 million in numerous small states. In 1806, the Rhenish princes all joined the Confederation of the Rhine, a puppet of Napoleon. France took direct control of the Rhineland until 1814 and radically and permanently liberalized the government, society and economy.
Waldeck contributed 1,225 men to the war, and lost 720. The principality was divided 1805, his brother George was given Pyrmont, and Friedrich Karl August stayed with Waldeck. In 1807, he joined with the Confederation of the Rhine and was given a seat in the College of Princes of the Federal Assembly. After his death in 1812, his brother George took over the government in Waldeck.
"Secularization" was the abolition of the temporal power of an ecclesiastical ruler such as a bishop or an abbot and the annexation of the secularized territory to a secular territory. The empire was 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 at Austerlitz (see Treaty of Pressburg). Napoleon reorganized 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 in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I. The Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine was replaced by a new union, the German Confederation, in 1815, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
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 reorganized 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 in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I. The Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine was replaced by a new union, the German Confederation, in 1815, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It lasted until 1866 when Prussia founded the North German Confederation, a forerunner of the German Empire which united the German-speaking territories outside of Austria and Switzerland under Prussian leadership in 1871.
With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, it was annexed by the Grand Duchy of Baden. The annexation was ordered by the Confederation of the Rhine, a group of imperial estates that had banded together to leave the empire, on 12 June 1806 just prior to the imperial dissolution. The last prince-prior, Ignaz Balthasar Rinck von Baldenstein, died almost exactly one year later, on 13 June 1807.
The palatial residence (Schloss) in the outlying centre of Trabelsdorf was acquired in 1664 by the Marshals of Ostheim and in 1700 it was newly built. It now houses the administrative community (Verwaltungsgemeinschaft) of Lisberg (whose member communities are Lisberg and Priesendorf) and a medical practice. With the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the Barons of Münster- Lisberg saw their overlordship pass to Bavaria.
Murat's arms combined the red lion of Berg with the Cleves arms. The anchor and the batons came to the party due to Murat's position as Grand Admiral and as Marshal of the Empire. As the husband of Napoleon's sister, he also had the right to use the imperial eagle. On 12 July 1806, Murat joined the Confederation of the Rhine and assumed the title of a grand duke.
Austrian claims on those German states were renounced without exception. On 12 July 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was established, comprising 16 sovereigns and countries. This confederation, under French influence, put an end to the Holy Roman Empire. On 6 August 1806, even Francis recognized the new state of things and proclaimed the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, as he did not want Napoleon to succeed him.
The County joined the Rhine Confederation as a founding member on July 12, 1806. Article V. of the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine raised Count Philip Francis to a Prince, and his realm became known as the Principality of Leyen. The same treaty declared Leyen separated forevermore from the Holy Roman Empire, as per Article III. The Empire itself was declared at an end on August 6, 1806.
Chandler Campaigns, 447 Napoleon began to remake the face of Europe. He created the Confederation of the Rhine on 25 July. He named his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte king of the newly conquered Kingdom of Naples, brother Louis Napoleon ruler over the Kingdom of Holland, and stepson Eugène de Beauharnais viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy. Then he offered Hanover to Britain in exchange for peace, which infuriated Prussia.
A few months later, on 15 December 1806, it, along with the other Ernestine duchies, entered the Confederation of the Rhine. In 1815, it joined the German Confederation. In 1818, it was one of the first German states to receive a constitution. At the City Hall of Hildburghausen, two coats of arms are presented – for the Duchy of Saxe-Hilburghausen on the left and the City of Hildburghausen on the right.
On 27 December 1808, Princess Pauline issued a decree to abolish serfdom in Lippe, against the will of the Estates, who had been side-lined since 1805. The decree came into force on 1 January 1809. She followed the example of most other states from the Confederation of the Rhine. In the era after the French Revolution, serfdom was widely seen as a "relic of the Middle Ages", and firmly rejected.
The Royal Saxon Army () was the military force of the Electorate (1682–1807) and later the Kingdom of Saxony (1807–1918). A regular Saxon army was first established in 1682 and it continued to exist until the abolition of the German monarchies in 1918. With the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon the Royal Saxon Army joined the French "Grande Armée" along with 37 other German states.
New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved October 20, 2013 Fulda Cathedral (the former abbey) today The secular territory of Fulda was joined the Principality of Orange-Nassau along with several other mediatized lands to form the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda. Prince William Frederick refused to join the Confederation of the Rhine and, following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in August 1806, fled to Berlin. Fulda was taken over by the French.
The tented camp on the shores of the Baltic Sea was erected by two companies of Hesse-Darmstadt troops in a wood. The troops belonged to those states in the Confederation of the Rhine that were allied to Napoleonic France. Strategically, the camp had the aim of preventing the landing of British troops on Rügen. There was an encampment laid out for 100 men and a dugout, which was covered with straw and branches.
The remainder of imperial forces came mostly from the Confederation of the Rhine, especially Saxony and Bavaria. In addition, to the south, Murat's Kingdom of Naples and Eugène de Beauharnais's Kingdom of Italy had 100,000 armed men. In Spain, another 150,000 to 200,000 French troops steadily retreated before Anglo-Portuguese forces numbering around 100,000. Thus around 900,000 Frenchmen in all theatres faced around 1,800,000 coalition soldiers (including the strategic reserve under formation in Germany).
The Holy Roman Empire, Heraldica.org. The power of the emperor was limited, and while the various princes, lords, bishops, and cities of the empire were vassals who owed the emperor their allegiance, they also possessed an extent of privileges that gave them de facto independence within their territories. Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire on 6 August 1806 following the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Emperor Napoleon I the month before.
Karl Alexander, 5th Prince of Thurn and Taxis After the end of the Holy Roman Empire, the Thurn and Taxis postal system continued to survive as a private company. Since 1806, Karl Alexander headed a private postal company, the Thurn-und-Taxis-Post. It existed first as a feud of some of the Confederation of the Rhine members, such as Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg. Bavaria, however, nationalized the postal system two years later.
Then, in 1806 the Abbey was closed.Bad Säckingen tourism website accessed 7 May 2010 On 12 June 1806, representatives of twelve German princes met with Napoleon to form the Confederation of the Rhine. As part of the agreement, the Abbey was closed and all the Abbey's property was transferred to the Grand Duke of Baden.History of Bad Säckingen accessed 3 July 2010 the buildings are used by the Caritas Catholic charity as a community center.
Ferdinand's state was briefly known as the Electorate of Würzburg (Kurfürstentum Würzburg), but it was elevated to the status of a Grand Duchy after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire on 6 August 1806. It joined the Confederation of the Rhine on 30 September 1806. In 1810 it acquired Schweinfurt. After Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig, Ferdinand dissolved his alliance with the First French Empire on 26 October 1813.
Realising its weakness, the city asked to be incorporated into Prussia but Frederick William II refused, fearing to offend Austria, Russia and France. At the Imperial diet in 1803, the independence of Nuremberg was affirmed, but on the signing of the Confederation of the Rhine on 12 July 1806, it was agreed to hand the city over to Bavaria from 8 September, with Bavaria guaranteeing the amortisation of the city's 12.5 million guilder public debt.
The 6,000-man Prussian garrison conducted such an effective defense that Mortier abandoned the siege on 2 July. Franco-Allied losses were 102 officers and 5,000 rank and file killed, wounded or died of sickness while Prussian casualties numbered 55 officers and 3,000 men. In November 1807 Grandjean supervised a division of Confederation of the Rhine troops in Pommerania. In April 1808 he was sent to Bayonne to lead a division headed for Spain.
In 1826 he joined the German Zollverein and in 1829 created a civil fund for orphans, widows, and servants. The Emperor Francis II elevated him to the rank of Duke in 1807. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, Alexius Frederick Christian, with his kinsmans the Dukes of Anhalt-Dessau and Anhalt-Köthen, joined the Confederation of the Rhine. Some of his troops fought for Napoleon in Tyrol, Spain, Russia, Gdańsk, and Kulm.
The Duchy of Nassau (German: Herzogtum Nassau) was an independent state between 1806 and 1866, located in what is now the German states of Rhineland- Palatinate and Hesse. It was a member of the Confederation of the Rhine and later of the German Confederation. Its ruling dynasty, now extinct, was the House of Nassau. The duchy was named for its historical core city, Nassau, although Wiesbaden rather than Nassau was its capital.
After Austerlitz, Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806. A collection of German states intended to serve as a buffer zone between France and Central Europe, the creation of the Confederation spelled the end of the Holy Roman Empire and significantly alarmed the Prussians. The brazen reorganization of German territory by the French risked threatening Prussian influence in the region, if not eliminating it outright. War fever in Berlin rose steadily throughout the summer of 1806.
The allies opposing Napoleon dissolved the Confederation of the Rhine on 4 November 1813. After its demise, the only attempt at political coordination in Germany until the creation on 8 June 1815 of the German Confederation was a body called the Central Administration Council (); its President was Heinrich Friedrich Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein (1757–1831). It was dissolved on 20 June 1815. On 30 May 1814 the Treaty of Paris declared the German states independent.
Hesse-Darmstadt was a member of Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine during the Napoleonic Wars. Rapidly expanding during the mediatizations, Hesse- Darmstadt became an amalgamation of smaller German states, such as the Electorate of Cologne. The legal patchwork of the state culminated in a decree issued on 1 October 1806 by Louis I. The old territorial estates were abolished, which altered Hesse-Darmstadt "from a mosaic of patrimonial fragments into a centralized, absolute monarchy."Hans A. Schmitt.
In 1806, he joined the Confederation of the Rhine and received further additions of territory containing 160,000 inhabitants. A little later, by the peace of Vienna in October 1809, about 110,000 more persons came under his rule. In return for these favors, Frederick joined Napoleon Bonaparte in his campaigns against Prussia, Austria and Russia. Some 16,000 of his subjects marched as soldiers with the French invasion of Russia to take Moscow; only a few hundred survived to return.
In 1610 the Wild- and Rhinegraviate of Salm was split off Salm-Neuweiler. It was elevated to the Principality of Salm in 1623. In 1803, when the Bishopric of Münster was secularized, part of it was given to the princes of Salm-Salm who by then already were in possession of the Lordship of Anholt. This new Principality of Salm, covering the area around Borken, Ahaus and Bocholt, was a member of the Confederation of the Rhine.
The initial stages of the Industrial Revolution had much to do with larger military forces—it became easy to mass-produce weapons and thus to equip larger forces. Britain was the largest single manufacturer of armaments in this period. It supplied most of the weapons used by the coalition powers throughout the conflicts. France produced the second-largest total of armaments, equipping its own huge forces as well as those of the Confederation of the Rhine and other allies.
A Second Coalition of Britain, Russia, and Austria then attacked France but failed. Napoleon established direct or indirect control over most of western Europe, including the German states apart from Prussia and Austria. The old Holy Roman Empire was little more than a farce; Napoleon simply abolished it in 1806 while forming new countries under his control. In Germany Napoleon set up the "Confederation of the Rhine," comprising most of the German states except Prussia and Austria.
During the Napoleonic Era, efforts in the Rhineland toward economic unity had mixed success. The Confederation of the Rhine, and the other satellite creations of Napoleonic France, sought to establish economic autarky in European trade. By 1806, as Napoleon I sought to secure his hegemony in Europe, the Continental System offered a semblance of unified effort toward a widespread domestic market for European goods. However, the main purpose of the Continental System was military, not economic.
The Elector declared himself to be king on 1 January 1806, officially changing the Electorate of Bavaria to being the Kingdom of Bavaria. On 15 March 1806 he ceded the Duchy of Berg to Napoleon. Shortly thereafter, the Confederation of the Rhine was formed and Maximilian, with the other princes who joined that body, announced his secession from the Holy Roman Empire. The King still served as an Elector until Bavaria left the Holy Roman Empire (1 August 1806).
This was a political move to impair the legitimacy of the Confederation of the Rhine. Two years earlier, as a reaction to Napoleon making himself an Emperor of the French, Francis had raised Austria to the status of an empire. Hence, after 1806, he reigned as Francis I, Emperor of Austria. This move meant that the naval forces under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire were now reconstituted as solely being a part of the Austrian Navy.
While the Imperial Reichspost and the office of Postmaster General ceased to exist, Karl Alexander's wife Therese, Princess of Thurn and Taxis was instrumental in negotiating postal agreements with the Confederation of the Rhine and Napoleon, thus preserving the House of Thurn and Taxis postal monopoly as a private company. Members of the Rothschild banking dynasty were involved in funding parts of the system in the last years of the Napoleonic Wars and the immediate years that followed.
The ' (Song of the Fatherland) is a patriotic poem written by Ernst Moritz Arndt in 1812. It is also known by its first lines ' (The God who made iron grow, did not want slaves). The song was written to denounce the fact that several German states fought on the side of Napoleon to the detriment of their own nation. In 1812, the armies of the Confederation of the Rhine, Austria and Prussia participated in the French invasion of Russia.
During the course of the German mediatisation and the dissolution of Wiblingen Abbey, the village became part of the Electorate of Bavaria in 1805, and following the establishing of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Württemberg. With the opening of the Laupheim–Schwendi railway line in 1904, Bronnen was connected by public transport to Schwendi and Laupheim. On 1 November 1972 Bronnen was joined with the municipality of Achstetten.
In 1805 he changed sides and fought for Napoleon. As a result, later in 1805, when the Peace of Pressburg occurred, he obtained Breisgau and other territories at the expense of the Austrian Empire (see Further Austria). In 1806, the Electorate of Baden signed the Rheinbundakte, joining the Confederation of the Rhine. Upon the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles Frederick declared sovereignty and thus created the Grand Duchy of Baden, receiving other territorial additions as well.
The principality became part of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1810 Napoleon granted Dalberg's Principality of Regensburg to the Kingdom of Bavaria and compensated him with Hanau and Fulda. Dalberg merged his remaining territories of Aschaffenburg, Frankfurt, Wetzlar, Hanau, and Fulda into the new Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, with the Principality of Aschaffenburg becoming a department of the new grand duchy. The city of Aschaffenburg remained the residence of Dalberg, however.
Emmerich Joseph Wolfgang Heribert von Dalberg was born in Mainz, then capital of the Electorate of Mainz, on 31 May 1773. His father was Wolfgang Heribert von Dalberg, a statesman of Baden. Emmerich was the nephew of Karl Theodor von Dalberg, arch-chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, Prince primate of the Confederation of the Rhine and Grand- Duke of Frankfurt. His family meant him to pursue a clerical career, and he studied at the University of Göttingen in Lower Saxony.
The Bourbon dynasty was restored to France and Spain as well as a return of other legitimate rulers to the Italian states. And, to contain the Russian empire, Poland was divided up between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Austria and Prussia were allowed to keep some of their Polish territories while a new, nominally independent Polish kingdom was established with the Romanov dynasty of Russia as its hereditary monarchs. Also, the German Confederation was created to replace the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine.
In 1814–1815, the Congress of Vienna redrew the continent's political map. Napoleonic creations such as the huge Kingdom of Westphalia, the Grand Duchy of Berg and the Duchy of Würzburg were abolished; suppressed states, including Hanover, the Brunswick duchies, Hesse-Kassel and Oldenburg, were reinstated. On the other hand, most members of the Confederation of the Rhine located in central and southern Germany survived with minor border changes. They, along with the reinstated states, Prussia, and Austria, formed the German Confederation.
As of the 14th century, Pommersfelden was owned by the Truchseß von Nainsdorf und Pommersfelden family. After the family had died out in 1710, ownership passed to Lothar Franz von Schönborn, Elector of Mainz and Prince- Bishop of Bamberg. With the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the Counts of Schönborn saw their overlordship pass to Bavaria. In the course of administrative reform in Bavaria, today’s community came into being under the Gemeindeedikt (“Community Edict”) of 1818.
The Russian army was allowed to withdraw to home territory and the French ensconced themselves in Southern Germany. The Holy Roman Empire was effectively wiped out, 1806 being seen as its final year. Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine, a string of German states meant to serve as a buffer between France and Prussia. Prussia saw these and other moves as an affront to its status as the main power of Central Europe and it went to war with France in 1806.
During the 1815 Congress of Vienna the 39 former states of the Confederation of the Rhine joined the German Confederation, a loose agreement for mutual defense. Attempts of economic integration and customs coordination were frustrated by repressive anti- national policies. Great Britain approved of the union, convinced that a stable, peaceful entity in central Europe could discourage aggressive moves by France or Russia. Most historians, however, concluded, that the Confederation was weak and ineffective and an obstacle to German nationalism.
It was planned in the long run to make the Lahn navigable as far as Marburg and from there to construct a canal to Fulda to connect it with the Weser. This would create a waterway from France to North Sea via the states of the Confederation of the Rhine. Upstream of Limburg, however, the work was slow, partly because the population pressed into emergency service only reluctantly cooperated. Large parts of the shore were only secured with fascines, which rotted shortly thereafter.
Die Hexenverfolgung in Idstein nassau-info.de In 1721, Idstein passed to Nassau-Ottweiler, and in 1728 to Nassau-Usingen, thereby losing its status as a residence town, although it became the seat of the Nassau Archives and of an Oberamt. Nassau-Usingen was united with Nassau-Weilburg in 1806 into the Duchy of Nassau, becoming a member of the Confederation of the Rhine. After the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, Prussia annexed the Duchy as the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau.
Between December 1802 and September 1803, the wealth monasteries and religious communities were disbanded. The closures of monasteries without possessions continued until 1817 since the state had to provide pensions to monks and converses after disbanding their communities. Between October 1803 and February 1804, the territories of many Imperial Knights and other possessors of Imperial immediacy were occupied and annexed. Only in August/September 1806 were these acquisitions confirmed by edict, affirmed by the treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine.
Napoleon confirmed Lippe's affiliation with the Confederation on 18 April 1807 with a certificate, and Pauline traveled to Paris to negotiate some special arrangements for Lippe. She was known as an admirer of Napoleon, an attitude that earned her much criticism later. In justifying her decision, she stated that she preferred to submit to a distant France than to neighboring Hesse or Prussia. The inclusion in the Confederation of the Rhine had the consequence that Lippe had to provide troops for Napoleon's army.
Schaumburg was a medieval county, which was founded at the beginning of the 12th century. Shortly after, the Holy Roman Emperor appointed the counts of Schaumburg to become counts of Holstein as well. During the Thirty Years' War the House of Schaumburg had no male heir, and the county was divided into Schaumburg (which became part of Hesse-Kassel) and the County of Schaumburg- Lippe (1640). As a member of the Confederation of the Rhine, Schaumburg-Lippe raised itself to a principality.
48 and the last foothold on the Italian peninsula fell to the conquerors on 23 July.Schneid, 55 On 25 July, Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite in Germany.Chandler, 449 In the face of these French aggressions, the pro-war faction at the Prussian court, centered around Queen Louise, soon gained the upper hand. The pacific Haugwitz was dismissed as chief minister and on 7 August 1806 King Frederick William determined to go to war against Napoleon.
Repeated French efforts to annex the Left Bank of the Rhine began with the devastating wars of King Louis XIV. French forces carried out massive scorched earth campaigns in the German south-west. This policy was fully implemented during the Napoleonic Wars with the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806–1813. In the two centuries from the Thirty Years' War to the final defeat of Napoleon I, the German inhabitants of lands by the Rhine suffered from repeated French invasions.
The term in French was Protecteur de la Confédération, in German Protector des rheinischen Bundes. The title was created by the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine, which was an international treaty between the emperor and some German princes. The treaty text mentions the emperor only once explicitly: > Art. 12. His Majesty the Emperor of the French will be called Protector of > the Rhenish Confederation, and in this virtue the same will appoint the > successor of the prince-primate after every departure.
In 1797 Nassau-Usingen inherited Nassau-Saarbrücken. On July 17, 1806, the counties of Nassau-Usingen and Nassau-Weilburg joined the Confederation of the Rhine. Under pressure from Napoleon both counties merged to become the Duchy of Nassau on August 30, 1806, under joint rule of Prince Frederick August of Nassau-Usingen and his younger cousin Prince Frederick William of Nassau-Weilburg. As Frederick August had no heirs, he agreed that Frederick William should become sole ruler after his death.
Bavaria in the 19th century and beyond When Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire, Bavaria became a kingdom in 1806 due, in part, to the Confederation of the Rhine. Its area doubled after the Duchy of Jülich was ceded to France, as the Electoral Palatinate was divided between France and the Grand Duchy of Baden. The Duchy of Berg was given to Jerome Bonaparte. Tyrol and Salzburg were temporarily reunited with Bavaria but finally ceded to Austria by the Congress of Vienna.
Under the terms of this treaty, Francis II recognized the royal titles of the kings of Bavaria and Württemberg, and ceded to Napoleon's allies in Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden substantial Austrian territories in Germany. He also ceded some Austrian land south of the Alps to Italy, a client of Napoleon. On July 12, 1806, Baden, Bavaria, Berg, Hesse, Regensburg and Württemberg established the Confederation of the Rhine, with Napoleon as its protector. On August 1, they seceded from the Holy Roman Empire.
They made the mistake of keeping their units intact rather than mixing them up. Whole Saxon units deserted. At the end of the Seven Years' War, Saxony once again became an independent state. When in 1806 Napoleon I's French Empire began a war with Prussia, Saxony at first allied itself to Prussia, but afterwards joined Napoleon and entered the Confederation of the Rhine and the electorate became the Kingdom of Saxony with Elector Frederick Augustus III becoming King Frederick Augustus I.
Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806. Within months of the collapse of the Third Coalition, the Fourth Coalition (1806–07) against France was formed by Britain, Prussia, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden. In July 1806, Napoleon formed the Confederation of the Rhine out of the many tiny German states which constituted the Rhineland and most other western parts of Germany. He amalgamated many of the smaller states into larger electorates, duchies, and kingdoms to make the governance of non-Prussian Germany smoother.
Napoleon easily defeated the Prussian army at the Battle of Jena and occupied Berlin. Prussia lost its recently acquired territories in western Germany, its army was reduced to 42,000 men, no trade with Britain was allowed and Berlin had to pay Paris high reparations and fund the French army of occupation. Saxony changed sides to support Napoleon and joined the Confederation of the Rhine. Ruler Frederick Augustus I was rewarded with the title of king and given a slice of Poland taken from Prussia.
The Treaty of Ried of 8 October 1813 was a treaty that was signed between the Kingdom of Bavaria and Austrian Empire. By this treaty, Bavaria left the Confederation of the Rhine which was allied with Napoleon, and agreed to join the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon in exchange for a guarantee of her continued sovereign and independent status. On 14 October, Bavaria made a formal declaration of war against Napoleonic France. The treaty was passionately backed by the Crown Prince Louis and by Marshal von Wrede.
Gambling was later outlawed by Prussian authorities in 1872. As a result of Napoleon's victory over Austria in the Battle of Austerlitz, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1805. On July 12, 1806, 16 states in present-day Germany, including the remaining counties of Nassau- Usingen and Nassau-Weilburg, formally left the Holy Roman Empire and joined together in the Confederation of the Rhine. Napoleon was its "protector". Under pressure from Napoleon, both counties merged to form the Duchy of Nassau on August 30, 1806.
The Principality of Salm was ruled jointly by the princes of Salm-Kyrburg and Salm-Salm, Frederick IV, Prince of Salm- Kyrburg, and Constantine Alexander, Prince of Salm-Salm; each line had equal sovereign rights, but neither had a separate territory. Salm became independent and joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806. It was annexed by France in 1811. Its territory was given to Prussia by the Congress of Vienna in 1815; it became the westernmost part of the Prussian Province of Westphalia.
In 1806, the Rhenish princes all joined the Confederation of the Rhine, a puppet of Napoleon. France took direct control of the Rhineland until 1814 and radically and permanently liberalized the government, society and economy. The coalition of France's enemies made repeated efforts to retake the region, but France repelled all the attempts.T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland 1792-1802 (1983) The French swept away centuries worth of outmoded restrictions and introduced unprecedented levels of efficiency.
After this, dissatisfied with the attitude of the powers, he resigned, but rejoined on the accession of his friend King Frederick William III to the Prussian throne. The disastrous campaign of Jena (1806) followed. On 14 October, the day after the battle, Weimar was sacked, and Karl August, to prevent the confiscation of his territories, was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine. From this time till after the Moscow campaign of 1812 his contingent fought on the French side in all Napoleon's wars.
In exchange for providing France with a large auxiliary force, Napoleon recognized the Elector as King of Württemberg on 26 December 1805. Electress Charlotte became queen when her husband formally ascended the throne on 1 January 1806 and was crowned as such on the same day at Stuttgart, Germany. Württemberg seceded from the Holy Roman Empire and joined Napoleon's short- lived Confederation of the Rhine. However, the newly elevated king's alliance with France technically made him the enemy of his father-in-law, George III.
The Principality of Erfurt (; ) was a small state in modern Thuringia, Germany, that existed from 1807 to 1814, comprising the modern city of Erfurt and the surrounding land. It was subordinate directly to Napoleon, the Emperor of the French, rather than being a part of the Confederation of the Rhine. After nearly 3 months of siege, the city fell to Prussian, Austrian and Russian forces. Having mainly been Prussian territory before the Napoleonic Wars, most of the lands were restored to Prussia by the Congress of Vienna.
He was a businesslike, vigilant patriarch who managed to enjoy one last high point of princely absolutism. The Confederation of the Rhine Acts rescued the independent existence of the Hechinger Princes, however he was in no way given an extension of power, neither based on landowner nor on rights of sovereignty. He perceived this as an affront and as discrimination against him, the eldest line of his House. Deeply afflicted by the humiliation of Prussia and Austria, Prince Hermann Friedrich Otto died on 2 November 1810.
David Gates, The Napoleonic Wars 1803–1815 (1997) Napoleon at the battle of Austerlitz, by François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard King Frederick William III of Prussia viewed the Confederation of the Rhine as a threat to Prussian interests and allied against Napoleon. At this time the reputation of the Prussian army remained high from the period of the Seven Years' War. Unfortunately they retained the tactics of that period and still relied heavily on foreign mercenaries. The lack of military reforms would prove disastrous.
The cultural flowering of Nuremberg, in the 15th and 16th centuries, made it the center of the German Renaissance. Increased trade routes elsewhere and the ravages of the major European wars of the 17th and 18th centuries caused the city to decline and incur sizeable debts, resulting in the city's absorption into the new Kingdom of Bavaria on the signing of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, becoming one of the many territorial casualties of the Napoleonic Wars in a period known as the German mediatisation.
Leopold was one of the last princes to join the Confederation of the Rhine on 18 April 1807. On the other hand, despite his differences with the Prussian crown, he offered the Prussian official Ferdinand von Schill an honorable reception in Dessau in 1809. Leopold was elevated to the rank of duke in 1807. As the head of the senior Anhalt branch, he could not earlier by etiquette receive his kinsmen, the Princes of Anhalt-Köthen and Anhalt-Bernburg, who were raised to that rank before him.
In Germany Napoleon set up the "Confederation of the Rhine," comprising most of the German states except Prussia and Austria.Diethher Raff, History of Germany from the Medieval Empire to the Present, (1988), pp. 34–55, 202–206 Prussia tried to remain neutral while imposing tight controls on dissent, but with German nationalism sharply on the rise, the small nation blundered by going to war with Napoleon in 1806. Its economy was weak, its leadership poor, and the once mighty Prussian army was a hollow shell.
Napoleon easily crushed it at the Battle of Jena (1806). Napoleon occupied Berlin, and Prussia paid dearly. Prussia lost its recently acquired territories in western Germany, its army was reduced to 42,000 men, no trade with Britain was allowed, and Berlin had to pay Paris heavy reparations and fund the French army of occupation. Saxony changed sides to support Napoleon and join his Confederation of the Rhine; its elector was rewarded with the title of king and given a slice of Poland taken from Prussia.
The German states of the Confederation of the Rhine switched sides, finally opposing Napoleon. Napoleon was largely defeated in the Battle of the Nations outside Leipzig in October 1813, his forces heavily outnumbered by the Allied coalition armies and was overwhelmed by much larger armies during the Six Days Campaign (February 1814), although, the Six Days Campaign is often considered a tactical masterpiece because the allies suffered much higher casualties. Napoleon abdicated on 6 April 1814, and was exiled to Elba.Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (2014) pp.
It was not until 1806 that there was a state called simply "Isenburg". When the Holy Roman Empire was defeated by Napoleon I of France in that year, the empire was abolished and the Confederation of the Rhine was established amongst the various German states. As an incentive to join the Confederation, it was stated that any state which joined could mediatise their neighbours. Prince Charles of Isenburg-Birstein joined the Confederation and was granted the mediatized Isenburgian Countships of Isenburg-Büdingen, Isenburg-Meerholz, Isenburg-Philippseich, and Isenburg-Wächtersbach.
The Principality of Aschaffenburg () was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire created in 1803 and, following the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, of the Confederation of the Rhine, which existed from 1806 to 1810. Its capital was Aschaffenburg. With the secularization of the Archbishopric of Mainz in 1803, Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg was compensated by receiving the newly created principalities of Aschaffenburg and Regensburg and the County of Wetzlar. Along with the city of Aschaffenburg, the Principality of Aschaffenburg also consisted of Klingenberg, Lohr, Aufenau, Stadtprozelten, Orb, and Aura.
As events played out, the members of the confederation found themselves more subordinated to Napoleon than they had been to the Habsburgs when they were within the Holy Roman Empire.Germany at Encyclopædia Britannica After Prussia lost to France in 1806, Napoleon cajoled most of the secondary states of Germany into the Confederation of the Rhine. Eventually, an additional 23 German states joined the Confederation. It was at its largest in 1808, when it included 36 states—four kingdoms, five grand duchies, 13 duchies, seventeen principalities, and the Free Hansa towns of Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen.
In 1806 he joined Napoleon's new Confederation of the Rhine, not only receiving other additions of territory, but also declaring himself a sovereign prince and taking the title of Grand Duke. The Baden contingent continued to assist France, and by the Peace of Vienna in 1809 the new Grand Duke of Baden was rewarded with accessions of territory at the expense of the kingdom of Württemberg. With Napoleon's support, Karl Friedrich had expanded Baden from 3,600 square kilometers with about 175,000 inhabitants in 1803 to 15,000 square kilometers and almost a million inhabitants.
Critically, victory at Austerlitz permitted the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states intended as a buffer zone between France and Central Europe. The Confederation rendered the Holy Roman Empire virtually useless, so the latter collapsed in 1806 after Francis abdicated the imperial throne, keeping Francis I of Austria as his only official title. These achievements, however, did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Prussian worries about growing French influence in Central Europe sparked the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.
The War of the Third Coalition lasted from about 1803 to 1806. Following defeat at the Battle of by the French under Napoleon in December 1805, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicated, and the Empire was dissolved on 6 August 1806. The resulting Treaty of established the Confederation of the Rhine in July 1806, joining together sixteen of France's allies among the German states (including Bavaria and ). After the Battle of of October 1806 in the War of the Fourth Coalition, various other German states, including Saxony and Westphalia, also joined the Confederation.
Between 1806 and 1815, Napoleon organized the German states, aside from Prussia and Austria, into the Confederation of the Rhine, but this collapsed after his defeats in 1812 to 1815. The German Confederation had roughly the same boundaries as the Empire at the time of the French Revolution (less what is now Belgium). It also kept intact most of Confederation's reconstituted member states and their boundaries. The member states, drastically reduced to 39 from more than 300 (see ) under the Holy Roman Empire, were recognized as fully sovereign.
The Confederation of the Rhine, a union of client states of the First French Empire (1806 to 1813) The delegates of the Congress of Vienna German reaction to the French Revolution was mixed at first. German intellectuals celebrated the outbreak, hoping to see the triumph of Reason and The Enlightenment. The royal courts in Vienna and Berlin denounced the overthrow of the king and the threatened spread of notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. By 1793, the execution of the French king and the onset of the Terror disillusioned the Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle classes).
The monument commemorates the defeat of Napoleon's French army at Leipzig, a crucial step towards the end of hostilities in the War of the Sixth Coalition. The coalition armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden were led by Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg. There were Germans fighting on both sides, as Napoleon's troops also included conscripted Germans from the left bank of the Rhine annexed by France, as well as troops from his German allies of the Confederation of the Rhine. The structure is tall.
In France they were abolished by the decisions of the National Assembly on 4 and 5 August 1789. In Germany, the dissolution of feudal associations (Lehnsverband) was a long process. Legally, it was abolished inter alia by the Confederation of the Rhine acts, in the Final Recess of the Reichsdeputation and the Frankfurt Constitution of 1849. One of the last fiefs was awarded in 1835, when the ailing Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Schlitz, known as Görtz, was enfeoffed with the spring at Salzschlirf and began to excavate it again.
The legal basis for mediatisation was the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803, which had become necessary under pressure from France. The Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine of 1806 continued the process of mediatisation. The constitution of the German Confederation of 1815 confirmed the mediatisation, but preserved certain rights for the mediatised princes within their former realms, now ranked as state countries, such as first instance jurisdiction, supervision of religion and foundations. Mediatised sovereign houses rank higher than other houses of nominally equal (or higher) rank, but who never ruled a state.
Napoleon was retreating from his failed invasion of Russia in 1812. With the Russian armies following up victory, the Sixth Coalition was formed with Russia, Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Sweden, Spain and other nations hostile to the French Empire. Even though the French were victorious in the initial battles during their campaign in Germany, the Coalition armies eventually joined together and defeated them at the Battle of Leipzig in the autumn of 1813. After the battle, the Pro-French German Confederation of the Rhine collapsed, thereby loosening Napoleon's hold on Germany east of the Rhine.
In return, he received a few territories like the Free Imperial City of Dortmund, Corvey Abbey and Diocese of Fulda from First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte of the French Republic (Treaty of Amiens), which was established as the Principality of Nassau-Orange- Fulda.He acquired Fulda, Corvey, Weingarten and Dortmund. He lost the possessions again after changing sides from France to Prussia in 1806 when he refused to join the Confederation of the Rhine. Cf. J. and A. Romein 'Erflaters van onze beschaving', Querido, 1979 William V died in 1806.
The order was founded during the reign of Alexander Ferdinand, 3rd Prince of Thurn and Taxis as the supreme order of the princely house. Karl Anselm, 4th Prince of Thurn and Taxis then reformed the order and was able to formally transmit it to descendants to this day. With the abolition of the principalities of the Confederation of the Rhine by the acts of 12 July 1806, the order's value became related to the dynasty, and is to be given to members who have turned 18 years of age.
Kronenthaler of Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, 1825. Louis was the son of Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, and succeeded his father in 1790. He presided over a significant increase in territory for Hesse-Darmstadt during the imperial reorganizations of 1801-1803, most notably the Duchy of Westphalia, hitherto subject to the Archbishop of Cologne. Allied to Napoleon, Louis in 1806 was elevated to the title of a Grand Duke of Hesse and joined the Confederation of the Rhine, leading to the dissolution of the Empire.
The Battle of Manresa and Battle of Vilafranca from 21 March to 5 April 1810 saw a Spanish division led by Juan Caro and Luis González Torres de Navarra, Marquess of Campoverde attack an Imperial French brigade commanded by François Xavier de Schwarz. Caro's division first surprised the town of Vilafranca del Penedès in March and captured its 800-man garrison made up of troops from the Confederation of the Rhine. Vilafranca is located west of Barcelona. The Spanish troops remained at large and fell upon the town of Manresa at the beginning of April.
Frederick Augustus also did not participate in the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which led to the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. With respect to the Prussian idea of a north German empire, within which Saxony was supposed to be raised to a kingdom, he appeared reserved. However, after September 1806, in response to the Berlin Ultimatum, which demanded the withdrawal of French troops from the left bank of the Rhine, Napoleon advanced as far as Thuringia. At that point, Frederick Augustus joined with Prussia.
Meanwhile, one and a half battalions were dropped off at Vilafranca del Penedes while a brigade of Rouyer's division under Schwarz occupied Manresa as a flank guard. On 27 March 1810, the French demanded that Tarragona surrender, but Henry O'Donnell who commanded its 6,000-man garrison refused. Meanwhile, O'Donnell sent Juan Caro to attack the French lines of communication.Oman (1996), III, 294–295 6th Confederation of the Rhine Regiment The first blow fell at daybreak on 30 March when Caro seized Vilafranca and captured the 800 Imperial troops posted there.
Initially, Austria remained loyal to France, and foreign minister Metternich aimed to mediate in good faith a peace between France and its continental enemies, but it became apparent that the price was to be the dismantling of the Confederation of the Rhine, the Napoleon-controlled union of all German states aside from Prussia and Austria, and the return to France's pre-Revolutionary borders. Napoleon was not interested in any such compromise that would in effect end his empire, so Austria joined the allies and declared war on France in August 1813.
From the 13th century they held much of their territory immediate from the Holy Roman Emperor and were elevated to Princes of the Holy Roman Empire in 1504. Following defeat by Napoleon in 1805, the Austrian Empire was forced to cede the northern part of Tyrol to the Kingdom of Bavaria in the Peace of Pressburg. It became a member of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806. Tyrol remained split between Bavaria and the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy until it was returned to Austria by the Congress of Vienna in 1814.
The second count of Stolberg-Gedern, Frederick Charles, bought promotion to the status of an imperial prince from Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor on 18 February 1742. The Princes of Stolberg-Gedern became extinct in the male line in 1804 and so the lordship of Gedern was passed back to the main Stolberg-Wernigerode line. However, with the adoption of the sovereignty rights outlined in the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine, that line had to cede it to Hesse-Darmstadt. In 1816, Gedern and the Stolberg-Wernigerode line also briefly fell under Isenburg.
It also gave the duchy some protection during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars. Though at first an ally of Prussia in the Napoleonic War of the Fourth Coalition, Duke Charles Augustus escaped his deposition by joining the Confederation of the Rhine on 15 December 1806. After the official merger in 1809, the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach consisted of the separate districts around the capital Weimar in the north and Eisenach in the west. Thanks to their Russian connection, the duchy gained substantially from the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
The amalgamation of Nassau-Usingen with Nassau- Weilburg in 1806 represented an effective triumph for Marschall von Bieberstein, and incorporation of the territory into the French sponsored Confederation of the Rhine created a buffer state which suited French strategic objectives. For the newly enlarged Duchy of Nassau, there was a measure of security achieved through "French acknowledgement" of the duchy's (qualified) sovereignty. After The creation of the enlarged Duchy of Nassau in 1806, Marschall von Bieberstein and Hans Christoph Ernst von Gagern headed up the government jointly. There were in effect two "Regierungspräsidenten".
In contrast to most of the other states of the Confederation of the Rhine, Saxony had remained loyal to Napoleon during the German Campaign of 1813. Prussia wanted to incorporate the state as a part of Prussia. The complete removal of the Saxon state was prevented at the Congress of Vienna by Austrian state Chancellor Metternich, but Prussia was able to annex three- fifths of Saxony territory. Saxony lost, among other things, the Wittenberg district, the former Duchy of Saxony, next to Torgau, Lower Lusatia, half of Upper Lusatia and all the regions in Thuriniga.
The Fourth Coalition fought against Napoleon's French Empire and were defeated in a war spanning 1806–1807. The main coalition partners were Prussia and Russia with Saxony, Sweden, and Great Britain also contributing. Excluding Prussia, some members of the coalition had previously been fighting France as part of the Third Coalition, and there was no intervening period of general peace. On 9 October 1806, Prussia joined a renewed coalition, fearing the rise in French power after the defeat of Austria and establishment of the French- sponsored Confederation of the Rhine.
The Confederation of the Rhine, a confederation of client states of the First French Empire, existed from 1806 to 1813. German reaction to the French Revolution was mixed at first. German intellectuals celebrated the outbreak, hoping to see the triumph of Reason and The Enlightenment. The royal courts in Vienna and Berlin denounced the overthrow of the king and the threatened spread of notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. By 1793, the execution of the French king and the onset of the Terror disillusioned the Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle classes).
When Philipp died in 1479, the male line of the Katzenelnbogens became extinct. The Obergrafschaft was passed to the Landgraves of Hesse by virtue of the 1458 marriage of Henry III of Upper Hesse to Count Philipp's daughter Anna of Katzenelnbogen. Thereafter, the Landgraves of Hesse added to their title "Count of Katzenelnbogen". With the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the County of Katzenelnbogen was annexed to the French Empire as the first of its trans-Rhine territories, and this was held until the overthrow of Emperor Napoleon I in 1814.
Crown of the Kingdom of Württemberg. In exchange for providing France with a large auxiliary force, Napoleon allowed Frederick to raise Württemberg to a kingdom on 26 December 1805. Friedrick was formally crowned king at Stuttgart on 1 January 1806, and took the regnal name of King Frederick I. Soon after, Württemberg seceded from the Holy Roman Empire and joined Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine. Once again, the assumption of a new title also meant territorial expansion, as the territories of various nearby princes were mediatized and annexed by Württemberg.
Wood 2007, p. 55 Dieter Langewiesche described the code as a "revolutionary project" which spurred the development of bourgeois society in Germany by the extension of the right to own property and an acceleration towards the end of feudalism. Napoleon reorganized what had been the Holy Roman Empire, made up of more than a thousand entities, into a more streamlined forty-state Confederation of the Rhine; this helped promote the German Confederation and the unification of Germany in 1871.Scheck 2008, Chapter: The Road to National Unification The movement toward national unification in Italy was similarly precipitated by Napoleonic rule.
On 12 July 1806, on signing the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine () in Paris, 16 German states joined together in a confederation (the treaty called it the ', with a precursor in the League of the Rhine).For the treaty (in French), see here The "Protector of the Confederation" was a hereditary office of the Emperor of the French, Napoleon. On 1 August, the members of the confederation formally seceded from the Holy Roman Empire, and on 6 August, following an ultimatum by Napoleon, Francis II declared the Holy Roman Empire dissolved. Francis and his Habsburg dynasty continued as emperors of Austria.
As William I, Elector of Hesse refused to join the French supporting Confederation of the Rhine at its formation in 1806, he is threatened by Napoleon. In Frankfurt, he asks his agent Mayer Amschel Rothschild to convey bonds worth £600,000 he has received from Britain to subsidise his army to safety in England. Rothschild however uses the money for his own ends, with the help of his sons, Nathan Rothschild in London and James Rothschild in Paris. They first use the money to finance Wellington's army in Spain's war against Napoleon, at advantageous terms of interest.
Patrick Colquhoun was appointed as Resident Minister and Consul general to Britain by the Hanseatic cities Hamburg in 1804, and Bremen and Lübeck shortly after in the following as the successor of Henry Heymann, who was also master of the Steelyard (In German: Stalhofmeister). Colquhoun was valuable to those cities through the time of their occupation by the French until 1814 since he also provided the indirect communication between Northern Germany and Whitehall,G. D. Yeats, Biographical Sketch..., 44-45. especially in 1808, when the three cities considered their membership in the Confederation of the Rhine.
The Rheinbundakte, the treaty of July 12, 1806, that created the Confederation of the Rhine, mediatised Nassau-Siegen and placed it under the sovereignty of the newly created Grand Duchy of Berg. In 1808, Prince William VI of Orange-Nassau lost his remaining German possessions, as a punishment for his opposition to Napoleon. In 1813, after the Battle of Leipzig, he regained his territories. In a treaty signed on May 31, 1815, he ceded his German possessions to Prussia, in return for Prussia supporting the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, where he ruled as King William I.
The House of Hohenlohe () is a German princely dynasty. It ruled an immediate territory within the Holy Roman Empire which was divided between several branches. The Hohenlohes became imperial counts in 1450. The county was divided numerous times and split into several principalities in the 18th century. In 1806 the Princes of Hohenlohe lost their independence through mediatisation initialized by Napoleon, and their lands became parts of the kingdoms of Bavaria and of Württemberg by the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine (12 July 1806), a confederation of client states of the First French Empire.Hölzle.
From 1806 the Hatterter Grund belonged to the Duchy of Nassau through the founding of the Confederation of the Rhine. In 1817 came the amalgamation of Niederhattert and Laad into one community. The same was done with Mittelhattert and Hütte, with the resulting bigger community swelling further in 1818 with the addition of the Sophiental Estate to its municipal area. In 1866, the Duchy of Nassau was annexed by Prussia in the wake of the Austro-Prussian War, soon after which – indeed the next year – the communities in the Hatterter Grund were assigned to the Oberwesterwaldkreis (district), whose seat was in Marienberg.
The French forces commanded by Teuliè, composed primarily of troops from Italy, succeeded in encircling Kolberg by mid-March. Napoleon put the siege force under the command of Loison; Frederick William III entrusted Gneisenau with the defense. In early April, the siege forces were for a short time commanded by Mortier, who had marched a large force from besieged Swedish Stralsund to Kolberg but was ordered to return when Stralsund's defenders gained ground. Other reinforcements came from states of the Confederation of the Rhine (Kingdom of Württemberg, Saxon duchies and the Duchy of Nassau), the Kingdom of Holland, and France.
Jakob Walter was born in the town of Rosenberg in 1788, near Kaiya's land in the German state of Württemberg, which was part of the short-lived Confederation of the Rhine founded by Napoleon and was considered a French vassal state. By trade, Walter was a stonemason. He was a Roman Catholic and seems to have been intermittently devout; in his book, he condemns the Brandenburgian peasants for not attending Mass, and at one point tells how he destroyed a book he considered heretical; on the other hand, he admits that he deceived a nun by pretending to be a Capuchin monk.
The Holy Roman Empire came to an end during the Napoleonic Wars in the 1790s and 1800s, Austria and Prussia allied with each other but fought unsuccessfully against the French Empire. In 1804, Francis II, the Holy Roman Emperor, proclaimed the Austrian Empire, as the remaining German States had become clients of Napoleon's French Empire under the Confederation of the Rhine. After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, Austria created the German Confederation as a new organisation among the German States, in which Prussia and Austria became reunited. It was during this period that the ideology of Pan-Germanism started to rise.
The Confederation of the Rhine in 1808 French Emperor Napoleon I Next to Pauline's for social reform, the preservation of the Lippe's independence was her greatest foreign policy success. She felt obliged, as guardian, to act in her son's best interest and to keep his rights intact as far as possible. The small country was wedged between the warring powers France, Prussia and Hesse and under threat of being occupied by one or the other of its neighbors. At the beginning of her reign, Lippe was part of a neutral protection zone established by treaty, which all the warring parties respected.
Everything changed with the French invasion in 1803 and the establishment, formally in 1805, of the Confederation of the Rhine, sponsored by France. Representing the Osnabrück regional administration, von Bar became a member of the standing deputation of the Kingdom of Westphalia, which in 1807 travelled to Fontainbleu and Paris in order to provide advice on a constitution for the puppet kingdom. A year later he was appointed president of the Court of First Instance in Osnabrück. He was also the special liquidator in respect of the national debt of the former Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück.
Andreas Hofer led the Tyrolean Rebellion 1809 against the invading Napoleon I Following defeat by Napoleon in 1805, Austria was forced to cede Tyrol to the Kingdom of Bavaria in the Peace of Pressburg. Tyrol, as a part of Bavaria, became a member of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806. Consequently, King Maximilian I of Bavaria introduced far reaching economic, religious and administrative reforms. When in 1808 a new constitution for the Kingdom of Bavaria was introduced, Tyrol was integrated into South Bavaria, and divided into three districts, losing its special status in the kingdom.
Each wing was composed of a cavalry division and two infantry battalions filled with German troops from the Confederation of the Rhine. Apparently, Victor's intentions were to keep withdrawing his flanks closer and closer to the center until a powerful counter-attack could shatter the Spanish lines. Victor's reserve was an infantry division under General François Ruffin, which would not take part in the battle. Victor's innovative scheme can be sharply contrasted with Cuesta's mistakes: Cuesta maintained no reserve and extended just 23,000 men, deployed in four ranks, into a four-mile arc from Guadiana to Hortiga.
The County of Waldeck (later the Principality of Waldeck and Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont) was a state of the Holy Roman Empire and its successors from the late 12th century until 1929. In 1349 the county gained Imperial immediacy and in 1712 was raised to the rank of Principality. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 it was a constituent state of its successors: the Confederation of the Rhine, the German Confederation, the North German Confederation, the German Empire and, until 1929, the Weimar Republic. It comprised territories in present-day Hesse and Lower Saxony (Germany).
In exchange, according to the Treaty of Lunéville, Frederick II was named an Elector-prince and given of Right Bank territory. Frederick II, now Elector Frederick I, tasked his court architect Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret with renovating the palace in the Neoclassical style. Thouret started in the Ahengalerie and the Ordensbau, working there from 1803 to 1806. For two days in October 1805, Napoleon visited Ludwigsburg to coerce Frederick I into joining the Confederation of the Rhine and thus becoming his ally, compensating Württemberg with neighboring territories in the Holy Roman Empire and Frederick I with the title of King.
Karl Joachim fled to his Heiligenberg Castle, leaving government of the principality to his confident Kleiser. He pulled back the first squadron of the landsturm to advance and opposed a decision by the Swabian Reichkreis to make Donaueschingen a rendezvous point for the troops of the kreis. Karl Joachim was generally sympathetic to the French Republic and it is thought that he would have joined the Confederation of the Rhine had he lived until its foundation.s. Fickler S. 295 Even so, the principality suffered under French occupation and from the passage of French and Austrian troops.
As Austria and Prussia escaped the French 'exporting the revolution', and Napoleon was happy to maintain satellite monarchies in most German territories under his control (members of the Confederation of the Rhine), the more democratic principles of the Enlightenment would have less effect in the German-speaking lands, or only much later. In 1815 the German Confederation ("Deutscher Bund") was founded as successor of the Holy Roman Empire. § 13 of the "Bundesakte" (the constitution of the German Confederation) forced the German states to pass constitutions and implement parliaments called Landstände or Landtag. The first constitution was passed in Nassau in 1814.
Charles was only seven years old when he succeeded, so his mother and Landgraf Joachim Egon von Fürstenberg, a distant uncle from the Moravian line, became his guardians and regents, though most of the actual governing was done by Joseph von Laßberg. Volker Schupp: Joseph von Laßberg, die Fürstlich-Fürstenbergische Handschriftensammlung und Johann Leonhard Hug, Professor an der Universität Freiburg, in: Freiburger Universitätsblätter 131 (1996), S. 97. In 1806 the princedom of Fürstenberg was abolished by the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine. Elisabeth and Laßberg tried in vain to get this reversed at the 1814 Congress of Vienna.
Entry of Prince Jérôme Bonaparte into Breslau, 7 January 1807 During the Napoleonic Wars, it was occupied by the Confederation of the Rhine army. The fortifications of the city were levelled and monasteries and cloisters were seized. The Protestant Viadrina European University of Frankfurt (Oder) was relocated to Breslau in 1811, and united with the local Jesuit University to create the new Silesian Frederick-William University (Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, now the University of Wrocław). The city became a centre of the German Liberation movement against Napoleon, and a gathering place for volunteers from all over Germany.
In his journal Germania Crome had acknowledge to be supporter of the Confederation of the Rhine, whom he praised as a rational creation. Due to his behavior in the year 1813 he became subject to severe attacks. On request of the French headquarters, he had written the essay, entitled "Deutschlands Crise und Errettung im April und May 1813" (Crises in Germany and salvation in April and May 1813), which was released from draft. He advocated peace with France, warned for a revolutionary war in Germany and the destruction of the German- Franconian culture by a Russian-Asian coalition.
In 1806, Charles Frederick joined the Confederation of the Rhine, declared himself a sovereign prince, became a grand duke, and received additional territory. The Baden contingent continued to assist France, and by the Peace of Vienna in 1809, Charles Frederick was rewarded with accessions of territory at the expense of the Kingdom of Württemberg. Having quadrupled the area of Baden, Charles Frederick died in June 1811, and was succeeded by his grandson, Charles, Grand Duke of Baden, who was married to Stéphanie de Beauharnais (1789–1860), a cousin of Empress Josephine's first husband who had been adopted by Napoleon I.
Dalberg received the electoral dignity previously accorded to the Electorate of Mainz; his new principality has thus been known in German as ' ("Electorate of Regensburg"). Because the archiepiscopal status of Mainz had also been transferred to the Regensburg diocese, the principality has also been known in English as the Archbishopric of Regensburg. Because of Bavarian claims on Regensburg, Dalberg was not installed as archbishop until 1 February 1805. The principality lost its status as an electorate in 1806 with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and became part of the Confederation of the Rhine later that year.
The Holy Roman Empire would dissolve on 6 August 1806, after the French Revolution and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon. Byzantine Empire (yellow), and Holy Roman Empire at greatest extent and tied states (pink, green, purple, orange) in AD 1261, after the restoration of the Byzantine emperor. Decline of the Byzantine Empire (13th–15th centuries) began with the Latin Christian Fourth Crusade in AD 1202–04, considered to be one of the most important events, solidifying the schism between the Christian churches of Greek Byzantine Rite and Latin Roman Rite. An anti-Western riot in 1182 broke out in Constantinople targeting Latins.
The Holy Roman Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763–1806, Indiana University Press, 1980, p. 279–280.Five days later, Francis bowed to the inevitable and, without mentioning the ultimatum, affirmed that since the Peace of Pressburg he has tried his best to fulfil his duties as emperor but that circumstances had convinced him that he could no longer rule according to his oath of office, the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine making that impossible. He added that "we hereby decree that we regard the bond which until now tied us to the states of the Empire as dissolved"Whalley, vol. II, p. 643–644.
Upon his death in 1755, Prince Augustus Louis was succeeded by his second-born son Karl George Leberecht. During the Seven Years' War, Karl George tried to ease the impact on his principality; in 1751 he joined the Prussian Army and became a general in the Habsburg Imperial Army in 1789; soon after he was killed in the Siege of Belgrade. He was succeeded by his son Augustus Christian, who received parts of the extinct Principality of Anhalt-Zerbst in 1793 and was elevated to a duke (Herzog) by Napoleon in 1806. Anhalt-Köthen became a member of the German Confederation of the Rhine in 1807.
Changing sides in 1805, he fought for Napoleon, with the result that, by the peace of Pressburg in that year, he obtained the Breisgau and other territories at the expense of the Habsburgs (see Further Austria). In 1806, the Baden margrave joined the Confederation of the Rhine, declared himself a sovereign prince, became a grand duke, and received additional territory. On 1 January 1806, Duke Frederick II assumed the title of King Frederick I, abrogated the constitution, and united old and new Württemberg. Subsequently, he placed church lands under the control of the state and received some formerly self- governing areas under the "mediatisation" process.
On 17 May 1803, he succeeded as the Prince of Nassau- Usingen when his elder brother, Charles William, died without male heirs. On 6 July 1806, he joined the Confederation of the Rhine in order to prevent Napoleon from annexing the principality. Shortly thereafter, on 30 August 1806, he agreed with his cousin Friedrich Wilhelm of Nassau-Weilburg that their territories should be united into a single Duchy of Nassau with Frederick Augustus as the first duke and Frederick William as co-ruler. Since Friedrich August's sons had died young, it was also agreed that the combined duchy and sole rulership would pass to the heir of the Nassau-Weilburg line.
Its architecture is typical German in style with several plastered and timbered structures. thumbnail ;Johann Gottlob II (1787-1841): Corporal under Napoleon Bonaparte in the Confederation of the Rhine from 1806–1813. He served twelve years and four months with the Royal Saxon Army and seven months with the Royal Prussian Replacement Battalion Nr.VIII as an NCO, during this time he was in the field 1806, 1809, 1812, 1813 and took part in thirteen major battles and 45 minor skirmishes. He lived in Dobritz from 1813-1831 and from this time until his death as the owner of an estate in Kolba (Saale-Orla- Kreis).
With the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, many of its dukes and princes joined the Confederation of the Rhine, a confederation of Napoleonic client states. These states preferred to use their own flags. The confederation had no flag of its own; instead it used the blue-white-red flag of France and the Imperial Standard of its protector, Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the German struggle against the occupying French forces was significantly symbolised by the colours of black, red, and gold, which became popular after their use in the uniforms of the Lützow Free Corps, a volunteer unit of the Prussian Army.
The name Hohenlohisch comes from the aristocratic Hohenlohe dynasty, which divided into a number of branches, and the name of their Imperial State. Two branches of the family were raised to the rank of principalities of the Holy Roman Empire in 1744 and 1764 respectively; in 1806 they lost their independence and their lands became part of the Kingdoms of Bavaria ((Hohenlohe- Schillingsfürst)) and of Württemberg. At the time of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the area of Hohenlohe was 1 760 km² and its estimated population was 108,000.Online map showing Hohenlohe in 1789 In the course of time the dialect came to be called Hohenlohisch.
Frederick succeeded his father Duke of Saxe- Hildburghausen in 1780, when only seventeen years old; because of this, his great grand uncle, the prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen, assumed the regency on his behalf, this regency only ended in 1787 at the death of Prince Joseph. Until 1806 he was subject to the restrictions of the imperial debit commission, which had placed the duchy of Saxe-Hildburghausen under official administration, because of his predecessors' dissolute financial policy. In 1806 Frederick joined the Confederation of the Rhine, and in 1815 the German Confederation, under whose guarantee he gave 1818 the duchy a new basic condition.
After the Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved, the Estates demanded their old rights be reinstated and it came to a bitter dispute with the Princely House. Draft constitution, handwritten by Princess Pauline in 1819 In the Vienna Final Act, the final document of the Congress of Vienna, paragraph 13 states: In all German states will a Constitution of the Estates will be established [...]. Pauline had a Constitution for Lippe drafted along the lines of some southern German states; she wrote the final version personally. This Constitution was adopted by the Government on 8 June 1819 and subsequently published under cheers of the population.
The death toll increased the anti-Napoleonic mood in the German lands, but, in Prussia, Freikorps were raised against the Napoleonic rule. In 1813, Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden, at the Battle of Leipzig, had the Baden mercenaries fighting on Napoleon's side fight within his framework of obligations in the Confederation of the Rhine. It is not surprising that the Baden coat of arms was demolished in Freiburg, formerly ruled by the Habsburgs, from the local government building and an imperial double eagle replaced it. Graffiti made by a presumed German-speaking drummer of the Napoleonic army in 1810 on the outside of the Minster.
He was an ardent humanist, was president of the Sodalitas Celtica founded by the poet Konrad Celtes, and corresponded with many of the leading scholars of his day, to whom he showed himself a veritable Maecenas. He was employed also on various diplomatic missions by the emperor and the elector. # Marianne von der Leyen # Wolfgang von Dalberg (1538–1601), archbishop-elector of Mainz from 1582 to 1601. # Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg (1744–1817), archbishop- elector of Mainz, arch-chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, and afterwards the only ever prince-primate of the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine and grand-duke of Frankfurt.
With the attachment of the Saxe-Weimar territory of Blankenhain, the city became part of the First French Empire in 1806 as the Principality of Erfurt, directly subordinate to Napoleon as an "imperial state domain" (), separate from the Confederation of the Rhine, which the surrounding Thuringian states had joined. Erfurt was administered by a civilian and military Senate (') under a French governor, based in the , previously the seat of city's governor under the Electorate. Napoleon first visited the principality on 23 July 1807, inspecting the citadels and fortifications. In 1808, the Congress of Erfurt was held with Napoleon and Alexander I of Russia visiting the city.
When her husband died on 24 December 1803, she took over as regent of the duchy for their son Bernhard II. She ruled with energy, courage, and good sense during the Napoleonic Wars, which for the next decade ravaged the Saxon states.Koller, p. 30. The duchy was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine during these Wars and provide it with troops; afterwards the duchy was struck with famine, which Luise sought to prevent by importing wheat. Despite the fact that French and later Russian armies marched back and forth across the country, Luise refused to flee; she stayed with her infant son and two daughters inside their castle.
Germany was ruled by monarchs from the beginning of division of the Frankish Empire in August 843 to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in August 1806. During most of 19th century, independent German principalities were organized into various confederations, such as the Confederation of the Rhine dominated by Napoleon (1806-1913) and the German Confederation created by the Congress of Vienna (1814-1866). The Prussian-led North German Confederation (1866-1871) subsequently morphed into a modern nation state, the German Reich, which was ruled by emperors from 1871 to the collapse of all German monarchies in 1918. The President of Germany replaced the monarch in 1919.
Up to 1803 two thirds of the village belonged to the Spital from Biberach and one third to Gutenzell Abbey. During the course of the German mediatisation and the dissolution of Gutenzell Abbey, the part of the village belonging to the abbey became property of the Bavarian counts of Törring whereas the Spital property within the village was handed over to the Margraviate of Baden in 1803. Following the establishing of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 the whole of the village of Oberholzheim was incorporated into the Kingdom of Württemberg. On 1 March 1972 Oberholzheim was incorporated into the municipality of Achstetten.
On 22 June, in face of the worsening situation in Saxony and northern Bavaria, Napoleon's brother Jérôme, who was also King of Westphalia, left Kassel with a force of 15,000 men including his Royal Guard Division. On the same day the Austrian forces had occupied Leipzig but were quickly forced to retreat by the arrival of Jérôme's troops. By 26 June, Jérôme had retaken the city and two days later the Westphalians clashed with the Austrians and Brunswickers for the first time. In addition, General Junot had arrived in Frankfurt and took command of the Corps of Observation of the Elbe, an army hastily assembled to guard the Confederation of the Rhine.
Painting of three famous Free Corps members in 1815: Heinrich Hartmann, Theodor Körner, and Friedrich Friesen Freikorps in the modern sense emerged in Germany during the course of the Napoleonic Wars. They fought not so much for money but rather out of patriotic motives, seeking to shake off the French Confederation of the Rhine. After the French under Emperor Napoleon had either conquered the German states or forced them to collaborate, remnants of the defeated armies continued to fight on in this fashion. Famous formations included the King's German Legion, who had fought for Britain in French-occupied Spain and mainly were recruited from Hanoverians, the Lützow Free Corps and the Black Brunswickers.
Federal states of Germany Germany and the European Union present the only examples of federalism in the world where members of the federal "upper houses" (the German Bundesrat, i.e. the Federal Council; and the European Council) are neither elected nor appointed but comprise members or delegates of the governments of their constituents. The United States had a similar system until 1913, where prior to the 17th Amendment, Senators were delegates of the state elected by the state legislatures rather than the citizens. Already the Holy Roman Empire, the Confederation of the Rhine, the German Confederation, the North German Confederation, the German Empire and the Weimar Republic were federal complexes of territories of different political structures.
Other allies abandoned the orbit of the Holy Roman Empire to join Napoleon's nominally independent Confederation of the Rhine. The elevation of these vassals to the title of grand duke was usually accompanied by an expansion of their realms with additional territory gathered at the expense of subdued powers such as Prussia. Though Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and most of his newly created satellite states abolished, the Congress of Vienna restored some of the previous sovereign duchies and principalities, while recognizing others as grand duchies. As a result, the 19th century saw the creation of a new group of grand duchies in central Europe, such as the grand duchies of Hesse, Baden and Oldenburg.
Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, and Queen Catharina Napoleon made his brother King of Westphalia, a short-lived realm (1807–13) created by Napoleon from several states and principalities in northwestern Germany (in the former thousand-year old Holy Roman Empire, which was reorganized by Napoleon into the Confederation of the Rhine). After Napoleon's subsequent defeat, the Allies reorganized the German states into a German Confederation with Austrian leadership, largely overriding prior claim of lesser states. The Napoleonic realm of Westphalia had its capital in Kassel (then: Cassel). Jérôme was married, as arranged by Napoleon before he was divorced with Elizabeth, to Princess Catharina of Württemberg, the daughter of Frederick I, King of Württemberg.
With the Treaty of Ried of 8 October 1813 Bavaria left the Confederation of the Rhine and agreed to join the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon in exchange for a guarantee of her continued sovereign and independent status. On 14 October, Bavaria made a formal declaration of war against Napoleonic France. The treaty was passionately backed by the Crown Prince Ludwig and by Marshal von Wrede. With the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813 ended the German Campaign with the Coalition nations as the victors, in a complete failure for the French, although they achieved a minor victory when an army of Kingdom of Bavaria attempted to block the retreat of the French Grande Armée at Hanau.
In 1806, Andre Duvalier, a French soldier lost in the Confederation of the Rhine, is saved by Helene, a young woman who bears a resemblance to Ilsa von Leppe, the wife of Baron von Leppe who died 20 years before. Andre sets out to investigate Helene's true identity and, in doing so, learns the Baron's darkest secret: after he found Ilsa with another man, the Baron killed his wife while his servant killed her lover. Over the last two years, the Baron has been tormented by Ilsa's ghost, who has beseeched him to kill himself so that they can be together forever. After much hesitation, the Baron decides to do so and atone for his crimes.
This also made it necessary to hold Evangelical church services in part at the castle then belonging to the Lord. The events in those days have had their effect down to today, and even now, the proportion of Walsdorf’s population who follow the Evangelical faith is far greater – almost 40% – than in the overwhelmingly Catholic communities elsewhere in the district. The autonomous knightly estate of the Barons of Crailsheim passed with the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 to Bavaria. These lords, however, remained the local landowners until their overlordship was finally dissolved in 1848, and also remained the patron lords until the patronage, too, was dissolved in 1964.
Der große Schritt nach vorne Bayerischer Rundfunk, published: 27 April 2015, accessed: 20 October 2015 The treaty was drafted by Klemens von Metternich who assembled the German partners in the Sixth Coalition. By separating Bavaria from the Confederation of the Rhine, Metternich checked the ambitions of German nationalists such as Baron von Stein, who had been aiming to use the fall of Napoleon to create a pan-German state. Metternich, a conservative Austrian, desired to avoid a pan-German state which would dissolve local sovereignty and engender liberalism, and also desired to avoid the Prussian ambition of bifurcating Germany between Prussia and Austria. The secret articles in the treaty guaranteed full sovereignty to Bavaria under its existing borders.
Over time the title of Imperial Knight became a title of nobility rather than occupation. Many Imperial Knights even as early as the 16th century are more famous for their scholarly, artistic, or diplomatic work than their military achievements. During the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1803, the Knights' estates, which were generally enclaves, were seized by the great territorial states like Bavaria and Württemberg in the so-called Rittersturm. In 1806, the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine gave the great states unilateral powers and the Imperial Knights' possessions, hitherto completely independent under the Emperor, formally became part of the territories of the higher rulers, by whose territory they were surrounded.
The Italian republics were transformed into the Kingdom of Italy under Napoleon's direct rule in the north, and the Kingdom of Naples in the south, first under Joseph Bonaparte's rule and later under Marshal Joachim Murat. A third state was created in the Italian Peninsula, the Kingdom of Etruria. The Batavian Republic was replaced by the Kingdom of Holland, ruled by Napoleon's third brother, Louis Bonaparte. A total of 35 German states, all of them allies of France, seceded from the Holy Roman Empire to create the Confederation of the Rhine, a client state created to provide a buffer between France and its two largest enemies to the east, Prussia and Austria.
His next appointment was as Envoy Extraordinary to the Elector Palatine and the Perpetual Diet at Regensburg in 1798, followed by Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary first at Naples in 1800 and then at Vienna the following year. He remained at Vienna until 1806, being nicknamed "The Emperor" on account of his extravagance. A dispatch in 1802, following Napoleon's creation of the Confederation of the Rhine predicted the hegemony of Prussia within Germany. He was materially responsible for the creation of the Third Coalition, and reported its collapse following the Battle of Austerlitz (2 December 1805), a dispatch that is said to have hastened the death of William Pitt the Younger (23 January 1806).
Metternich was unwilling to sign anything, but he gave his word that Austria approved of a Russo-Prussian truce. On 4 February, in a sign of the desperation felt in Berlin, Friedrich Ancillon, Frederick William's counsellor, proposed that Prussia mediate between France and Russia, in return for which the former would receive control of the Confederation of the Rhine and the latter would be ceded East Prussia. On 21 January, Frederick William fled Berlin for Breslau, arriving four days later. This did not dampen Napoleon's hopes that the Prussians would uphold their treaty and defend their border from Russia, although there were signs that the Prussian army was increasingly controlled by rebels.
At the death of his father on 28 June 1800, he succeeded as the Prince Reuss of Greiz. After the devastation of Greiz by a fire in 1802, he ordered to rebuild the city in a neoclassical style, and he moved his residence from the Oberes Schloss (Upper Castle) to the Unteres Schloss (Lower Castle), to be more in contact with the people and social life of the Principality. Henry also distinguished himself in his military service to Austria as a field marshal, to the point of being considered one of the best friends of the Emperor Joseph II . Henry XIII joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1807 and later was a member of the German Confederation.
This process encountered considerable resistance, led by the Imperial Knights, but this resistance had no serious consequences and ultimately failed since the Nassau princes' seizures were enforced by French officials and soldiers. On 17 July 1806, Prince Frederick Augustus of Nassau- Usingen and his cousin Prince Frederick William of Nassau-Weilburg joined the Confederation of the Rhine. Prince Frederick Augustus, the senior member of the House of Nassau received the title of Sovereign Duke of Nassau, while Frederick William was granted the title of Sovereign Prince of Nassau. Under pressure from Napoleon I both counties merged to form the Duchy of Nassau on 30 August 1806, under the joint rule of Frederick Augustus and Frederick William.
The French Revolution intervened; the German Church went down in the storm; and in 1803 the secularizations carried out by order of the First Consul put an end to the temporal ambitions of its prelates. Febronianism indeed, survived. Karl Theodor von Dalberg, prince primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, upheld its principles throughout the Napoleonic epoch and hoped to establish them in the new Germany to be created by the Congress of Vienna. He sent to this assembly, as representative of the German Church, Bishop Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg, who in his Bishopric of Constance had not hesitated to apply Febronian principles in reforming, on his own authority, the services and discipline of the Church.
The first Austrian Emperor was the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. In the face of aggressions by Napoleon, Francis feared for the future of the Holy Roman Empire. He wished to maintain his and his family's Imperial status in the event that the Holy Roman Empire should be dissolved, as it indeed was in 1806 when an Austrian-led army suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz. After which, the victorious Napoleon proceeded to dismantle the old Reich by severing a good portion from the empire and turning it into a separate Confederation of the Rhine. With the size of his imperial realm significantly reduced, Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor became Francis I, Emperor of Austria.
Already in 1734, though, the Reformed line had died out, too, with Friedrich Wilhelm's death, leading Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor to transfer power in the territory to the Prince of Orange and the Prince of Nassau-Diez. Under their leadership, mining, the main source of wealth, blossomed, along with agriculture and silviculture. When Prince William of Orange refused to join the Confederation of the Rhine, founded by Napoleon, he found himself unseated by the French leader and the Siegerland passed to the Grand Duchy of Berg. After Napoleon's downfall in 1813, however, William I regained his former German inheritances, but in 1815 he ceded them to the Kingdom of Prussia for the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
The Napoleonic era ended the Holy Roman Empire and created new German-speaking states that would eventually form modern Germany. Napoleon I of France reorganized many of the smaller German-speaking states into the Confederation of the Rhine following the battle of Austerlitz in 1805.Robert P. Goetz, 1805: Austerlitz: Napoleon And The Destruction Of The Third Coalition (2005) Essentially this enlarged the more powerful states of the region by absorbing the smaller ones, creating a set of buffer states for France and a source of army conscripts. Neither of the two largest German- speaking states were part of this confederation: the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire remained outside it.
The French emperor, Napoleon, forced the Emperor of Austria to step down as Holy Roman Emperor in 1806. Some of the German countries were then collected into the Confederation of the Rhine, which remained a military alliance under the "protection" of Napoleon, rather than consolidating into an actual confederation. After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, these states created a German Confederation with the Emperor of Austria as president. Some member states, such as Prussia and Austria, included only a part of their territories within the confederation, while other member states brought territories to the alliance that included people, like the Poles and the Czechs, who did not speak German as their native tongue.
However, the Dutch patriots returned in 1795 with support from the French, and William fled to his ally, his cousin George III of England. During their exile, the couple lived in Kew until 1802, and subsequently went to Germany, where they lived in Nassau and Braunschweig (where William died in 1806). Thereafter, Wilhelmina and her daughter – both having been widowed in 1806 – lived together at various places in the Confederation of the Rhine, Weimar, Oranienburg and Berlin. William, the son of William V and Wilhelmina, went with them into exile, but returned to the Netherlands in 1813 to become King William I of the Netherlands, the founder of the present Dutch monarchy.
In 1736, the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt inherited the estates of the extinct Counts of Hanau-Lichtenberg, again contested by their Kassel cousins. Hesse-Darmstadt gained a great deal of territory by the secularizations and mediatizations authorized by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803. Most notable was the acquisition of the Duchy of Westphalia, formerly owned by the Prince-Archbishop of Cologne, as well as territories from the Prince-Archbishop of Mainz and the Prince-Bishop of Worms. In 1806, upon the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the dispossession of his cousin, Elector William I of Hesse-Kassel, Landgrave Louis X joined the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine and took the title of Grand Duke of Hesse.
As a consequence, the Nuremberg Castle lost practically all of its importance and was left undisturbed by outside forces. In 1806, during Napoleon's restructuring of central Europe, French troops occupied Nuremberg and, according to the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbundakte), handed it over to Bavaria, then raised to a kingdom. In line with the Romantic Period's revived interest for medieval art and architecture, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, in 1833, ordered Carl Alexander Heideloff to execute restoration work, but the king was not pleased with his neo-Gothic style and stopped the work. His son Maximilian II later commissioned August von Voit to continue the refurbishment between 1852 and 1858 in a more moderate style.
Würzburg, with its capital city, was a short-lived electorate and, from 1806, formed the Grand Duchy of Wurzburg under Ferdinand III of Tuscany, which as a member of the Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) – like Bavaria – was one of Napoleon's allies. Bavaria in turn exchanged the Würzburg area at the Congress of Vienna for the Habsburg territories right of the River Inn. At the Congress of Vienna, Bavaria was also originally promised the Fulda and Electoral Mainz territories of Bad Brückenau and Aschaffenburg together with their surrounding areas that had historically belonged to the Upper Rhenish and Electoral Rhenish Circles and thus had never been part of Franconia (in the sense of the Franconian Circle).
In the War of the Third Coalition, Napoleon swept away the remnants of the old Holy Roman Empire and created in southern Germany the vassal states of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse- Darmstadt and Saxony, which were reorganized into the Confederation of the Rhine. The Treaty of Pressburg, signed on 26 December 1805, extracted extensive territorial concessions from Austria, on top of a large financial indemnity. Napoleon's creation of the Kingdom of Italy, the occupation of Ancona, and his annexation of Venetia and its former Adriatic territories marked a new stage in the French Empire's progress. The Battle of Austerlitz, 2nd December 1805, by François Gérard To create satellite states, Napoleon installed his relatives as rulers of many European states.
The House of Nassau-Weilburg, a branch of the House of Nassau, ruled a division of the County of Nassau, which was a state in what is now Germany, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1344 to 1806. On July 17, 1806, on the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the counties of Nassau-Usingen and Nassau-Weilburg both joined the Confederation of the Rhine. Under pressure from Napoleon, both counties merged to become the Duchy of Nassau on August 30, 1806, under the joint rule of Prince Frederick August of Nassau-Usingen and his younger cousin, Prince Frederick William of Nassau-Weilburg. As Frederick August had no heirs, he agreed that Frederick William should become the sole ruler after his death.
Frederick Augustus III, last Elector of Saxony and first King of the Kingdom of Saxony In 1756, during the Third Silesian War between Prussia and Austria (part of the Seven Years' War), Saxony was invaded and overrun by the forces of King Frederick II of Prussia, who took Dresden and after the Siege of Pirna forced the Saxon army to surrender and join his Prussian Army. Many later deserted, and a force of Saxon troops fought to restore their independence. The Treaty of Hubertusburg in 1763 eventually restored Saxony as an entity. When in 1806 Napoleon began a war with Prussia, Saxony at first allied itself with his long-time rival, but afterwards joined Napoleon and entered the Confederation of the Rhine.
It continued to operate down to at least 1820 (after the Empire's demise) and its archives are today kept in the German Federal Archives. The principle that allies of Napoleon could expect to make gains in both territory and status was also established, and was to be repeated on a number of occasions, above all in 1806 when, at the time of the establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine, over 80 small and mid-size secular states (such as principalities and imperial counties) were mediatized and annexed to some of the member states of the new Confederation. These massive territorial and institutional upheavals were to bring about the dissolution of the Empire in the course of the same year.
Marienberg now became just a military structure. Work on the last tower to be built (Maschikuliturm) began in 1724. The fortress saw repeated action during the wars of 1795-1815. In 1796, during the War of the First Coalition, the well-stocked fortress was handed over by its garrison to the French. In 1800/01, however, it was successfully defended against a new French attack by Imperial General Dall'Aglio during the War of the Second Coalition. In 1803, the fortress was occupied by troops of the Electorate of Bavaria after the Bishopric of Würzburg was secularized. From 1805-1814, Marienberg was a fortress of the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, part of the Confederation of the Rhine, the puppet state of the First French Empire.
The Estates were made up of representatives of the knighthood and the cities and convened each year at a Landtag in order to discuss the affairs of Lippe and to make decisions. With the membership of Lippe in the Confederation of the Rhine, these rights were suspended and the Princess was appointed to Sovereign. Pauline took her new authority to the mean that she would no longer need the consent of the Estates now: Pauline did not resolved the Estates but largely ruled without them, like the absolutist Frederick Adolph a century earlier. Her relationship to the Estates had already been tarnished when the Estates refused the duty on spirits that she had proposed in 1805 to finance the asylum for the insane she was planning.
In 1790/91, the Bavarian elector, Charles Theodore, appropriated part of the land obtained by the city during the Landshut War of succession, to which Bavaria had maintained its claim; Prussia claimed and occupied part of the territory in 1796. Realising its weakness, the city asked to be incorporated into Prussia but Frederick William II refused, fearing to offend Austria, Russia and France. At the Imperial diet in 1803, the independence of Nuremberg was affirmed, but on the signing of the Confederation of the Rhine on 12 July 1806, it was agreed to hand the city over to Bavaria from 8 September; its population was then 25,200 and its public debt totalled 12.5 million guilder, with Bavaria guaranteeing their amortisation.
Napoleon's overthrow of the Empire in favor of his puppet Confederation of the Rhine was a deep moral blow to many Germans. The cringing attitude of the princes and their avaricious behavior during the mediatizations embarrassed the people and, however much they despised the Empire's weakness, it was still a great and old symbol of Germany. Such symbolism was revived in 1848, when the so-called Provisional Central Power of Germany chose 6 August 1848, the 42nd anniversary of the end of the Empire, as the day the soldiers of Germany should swear oaths of loyalty to the new situation (see Military Parade of August 6th), as well as the German Empire of 1871 referred to as The Second Reich.
By March 1809, war between Austria and France was imminent and the Habsburg army, 200,000 men strong, massed in the northwestern province of Bohemia, near the frontier with the Confederation of the Rhine, the French-dominated confederacy of German states. Austria hoped that Prussia would join the war and, by massing its main army in Bohemia, it signalled its intent to join up with the Prussians. However, by early April 1809, it became obvious that Prussia was not ready to commit, and the Austrians were forced to move their main army southwards, in a bid to launch their westward offensive along the Danube. Strategically, the decision was sound, since an offensive along the river valley allowed better protection for the Austrian capital.
In total, Napoleon and the Grande Armée had taken only 19 days from the commencement of the invasion of Prussia until essentially knocking it out of the war with the capture of Berlin and the destruction of its principal armies at Jena and Auerstedt. Most of the shattered remnants of the Prussian army (and the displaced royal family) escaped to refuge in Eastern Prussia near Königsberg, eventually to link up with the approaching Russians and continue the fight. Meanwhile, Saxony was elevated to a kingdom on 11 December 1806 upon allying with France and joining the Confederation of the Rhine, thereby leaving the Allied Coalition. In Berlin, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree on 21 November 1806 to bring into effect the Continental System.
He then rejoined the main French army and served in the cavalry corps in the Prussian and Austrian campaigns of Napoleon. In the year 1806, when the Irish legion was based at Boulogne-sur-Mer prior to their departure for the Spanish campaign, Blackwell was advancing on Warsaw in an effort to crush what remained of Prussian resistance. In 1810 we find him styled "Major General in the Grand Army, 7th Corps, Officer of the Légion d'honneur, Chevalier of the Empire, Chief of Squadron." On 29 January 1812, Blackwell in an Order headed "Napoleon, Emperor of France, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Mediator of the Swiss Confederation" was confirmed in the rank of Chef de bataillon.
The House > of France must be referred to as in the [French] Imperial Almanac; there > must be no further mention of the Comte de Lille, nor of any German prince > other than those retained by the Articles of Confederation of the Rhine. You > are to insist that the article be transmitted to you prior to publication. > If other almanacs are printed in my allies' realms with inappropriate > references to the Bourbons and the House of France, instruct my ministers to > make it known that you have taken note, and that this is to be changed by > next year. The response of the publishers was to humour Napoleon by producing two editions: one for France, with the recently ennobled, and another which included dynasties deposed since abolition of the Holy Roman Empire.
Francis II (; 12 February 1768 – 2 March 1835) was the last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, ruling from 1792 until 6 August 1806, when he abdicated soon after the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon. On 11 August 1804, as a response to the coronation of Napoleon as emperor of the French earlier that year, he announced that he would henceforth assume the title of hereditary emperor of Austria, ruling from 1804 to 1835 as Francis I. He was also king of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia. He also served as the first president of the German Confederation following its establishment in 1815. Francis II continued his leading role as an opponent of Napoleonic France in the Napoleonic Wars, and suffered several more defeats after Austerlitz.
A painting by Russian A.I. Zauerweid, depicting the Battle of the Nations Following the French Revolution, France had waged a number of wars against its European neighbours. Napoleon Bonaparte had taken control of the country, first as Consul from 1799, and reigned as Emperor of the French under the title Napoleon I since 1804. Over the course of the hostilities, the Holy Roman Empire had ceased to exist following the abdication of Emperor Francis II, bowing to Napoleon's pressure, including the foundation of the Confederation of the Rhine from various former members of the Empire. The War of the Fifth Coalition in 1809 had ended with another defeat for the joint forces of the Austrian Empire, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal against the French and their German allies.
Prussia and the central and southwestern states of Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt, Württemberg, Baden, and Bavaria were leaders in the modernization of the toll system within the German states. In the Prussian case, the experience of the Confederation of the Rhine in removing customs barriers offered an example of how it could be done, and Hans, Count von Bülow, who until 1811 had been the Finance Minister in Westphalia, and who had accepted this position in 1813 in Prussia, modeled the Prussian customs statutes on those of the former states of the Confederation. The addition of territory to the existing Prussian state made elimination of customs barriers a powerful factor in Prussian politics. The significant differences between "old" Prussia and the newly acquired territories complicated the debate.
The Continental System led Napoleon to directly incorporate German-speaking areas such as Hamburg into his First French Empire. Napoleon reshaped the map of Germany by the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which included vassal States ruled directly by members of the Bonaparte family (such as the Kingdom of Westphalia, and the Grand Duchy of Berg) and allied States who took advantage of the French protectorate to increase their territory and power (such as the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Saxony). The Napoleonic Wars, often fought in Germany and with Germans on both sides, as in the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, also marked the beginning of what was explicitly called French–German hereditary enmity. Modern German nationalism was born in opposition to French domination under Napoleon.
Francis I of Austria and Frederick William III of Prussia meeting after the Battle of Leipzig, 1813 With the Russian army following up victory over Napoleon in 1812, the Sixth Coalition was formed with Russia, Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Sweden, Spain, and other nations. Although the French were victorious in the initial battles during the campaign in Germany, they were eventually defeated at the Battle of Leipzig in the autumn of 1813, which proved to be a decisive victory. Following the battle, the Pro-French Confederation of the Rhine collapsed, thereby losing Napoleon's hold on territory east of the Rhine. Alexander, being the supreme commander of the Coalition forces in the theatre and the paramount monarch among the three main Coalition monarchs, ordered all Coalition forces in Germany to cross the Rhine and invade France.
The Privy Council of Hanover maintained its own separate diplomatic service, which maintained links with countries such as Austria and Prussia, with whom the United Kingdom itself was technically at war. The Hanoverian army was dissolved, but many of the officers and soldiers went to England, where they formed the King's German Legion. The Legion was the only German army to fight continually all through the Napoleonic wars against the French. French control lasted until October 1813, when the territory was overrun by Russian troops, and the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig later the same month spelled the definitive end to the Napoleonic client state of Westphalia, as well as the entire Confederation of the Rhine, after which the rule of the House of Hanover was restored.
Due to the political upheavals during the reign of Napoleon I, and being an ally of Napoleon, Württemberg became a part of the Confederation of the Rhine, Duke Frederick II was made Elector in May 1803, he collected and received secularized and mediated dominions, which greatly enlarged his country in territorial extension. In January 1806 he was made King of Württemberg. In 1828 King William I adopted a new house law, the rights and obligations of the ruling family have been established, including the exclusive primogeniture in the male line as well as marriage restrictions on coequal level. In 1867 the House created the Royal Dukedom of Urach for a younger cousin, Prince Wilhelm, 1st Duke of Urach, whose parents had married morganatically in 1800, whereby their sons were excluded from ruling the kingdom.
Prussia first set foot on the Rhine in 1609 by the occupation of the Duchy of Cleves and about a century later Upper Guelders and Moers also became Prussian. At the peace of Basel in 1795 the whole of the left bank of the Rhine was resigned to France, and in 1806 the Rhenish princes all joined the Confederation of the Rhine. The congress of Vienna assigned the whole of the lower Rhenish districts to Prussia, which had the tact to leave them in undisturbed possession of the liberal institutions they had become accustomed to under the republican rule of the French. In 1920, the Saar was separated from the Rhine Province and administered by the League of Nations until a plebiscite in 1935, when the region was returned to the German Reich.
German nationalism emerged as a strong force after 1807, as Napoleon conquered much of Germany and brought in the new ideals of the French Revolution. The French mass conscription for the Revolutionary Wars and the beginning formation of nation states in Europe made war increasingly a conflict between peoples rather than a conflict between authorities carried out on the backs of their subjects. Napoleon put an end to the millennium-old Holy Roman Empire in 1806, forming his own Confederation of the Rhine, and reshaped the political map of the German states, which were still divided. The wars, often fought in Germany and with Germans on both sides as in the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, also marked the beginning of what was explicitly called French–German hereditary enmity.
Relations between France and Prussia quickly soured when Prussia eventually discovered that Napoleon had secretly promised to return sovereignty of Hanover back to Britain during his abortive peace negotiations with the British. This duplicity by the French would be one of the main causes for Prussia declaring war that autumn. Another cause was Napoleon's formation in July 1806 of the Confederation of the Rhine out of the various German states which constituted the Rhineland and other parts of western Germany. A virtual satellite of the French Empire with Napoleon as its "Protector", the Confederation was intended to act as a buffer state from any future aggressions from Austria, Russia or Prussia against France (a policy that was an heir of the French revolutionary doctrine of maintaining France's "natural frontiers").
Westphalia is known for the 1648 Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years' War, as the two treaties were signed in Münster and Osnabrück. It is one of the regions that were part of all incarnations of the German state since the Early Middle Ages: the Holy Roman Empire, the Confederation of the Rhine, the German Confederation, the North German Confederation, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and National Socialist Germany. After World War II it was a part of the British occupation zone which merged with the American zone to become the Bizone in 1947 and again merged with the French zone to become the Trizone in 1948. The current Federal Republic of Germany was founded on these territories making Westphalia a part of West Germany.
By contrast, Karl Alexander was granted the postal system in the Kingdom of Bavaria as a fiefdom of the House of Thurn and Taxis on 24 February 1806. On 2 May 1806, an agreement was signed between Karl Alexander and the Grand Duchy of Baden, also instituting its postal system as a fiefdom of the House of Thurn and Taxis. The creation of the Confederation of the Rhine on 12 July 1806 virtually meant the end of the Holy Roman Empire and thus the end of the Imperial Reichspost and the hereditary office of Postmaster General held by the House of Thurn and Taxis. On 6 August 1806, Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor dissolved the empire after the disastrous defeat of the Third Coalition by Napoleon I of France at the Battle of Austerlitz.
Alongside six other circles, the Electoral Circle was formed, with its capital at Wittenberg. The Circle originated in the former Askanian estates, which comprised the ' (districts) of Annaburg, Belzig, Gräfenhainichen, Liebenwerda, Pretzsch / Elbe, Seyda and Wittenberg; the old County of Brehna with its districts of Bitterfeld (1738), Schlieben and Schweinitz; the Burgraviate of Magdeburg with the Gommern districts of Gommern, Elbenau, Ranies, Glinde, Plötzky; and the County of Barby. After Elector Frederick Augustus I of Saxony joined the Confederation of the Rhine in the Treaty of Posen, the Electoral Circle was renamed on 30 January 1807 to the Wittenberg Circle. That year the districts in the Burgraviate of Magdeburg and County of Barby were reassigned to the King of Westphalia, who annexed them to the Department of the Elbe.
The French army achieved a resounding victory at Ulm (16–19 October 1805), where an entire Austrian army was captured.Robert P. Goetz, 1805: Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Destruction of the Third Coalition, (2005) A Franco-Spanish fleet was defeated at Trafalgar (21 October 1805) and all plans to invade Britain were then made impossible. Despite this naval defeat, it was on the ground that this war would be won; Napoleon inflicted on the Austrian and Russian Empires one of their greatest defeats at Austerlitz (also known as the "Battle of the Three Emperors" on 2 December 1805), destroying the Third Coalition. Peace was settled in the Treaty of Pressburg; the Austrian Empire lost the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the Confederation of the Rhine was created by Napoleon over former Austrian territories.
There were enemies as well, as the royal courts in Vienna and Berlin denounced the overthrow of the king and the threatened spread of notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. By 1793, the execution of the French king and the onset of the Terror disillusioned the "Bildungsbürgertum" (educated middle classes). Reformers said the solution was to have faith in the ability of Germans to reform their laws and institutions in peaceful fashion.James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (1993), pp. 207–322.Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution 2:425-58Blanning Blanning, "The French Revolution and the Modernization of Germany", in Central European History (1989) 22#2, pp 109–29. The Confederation of the Rhine, composed of client states under Napoleon's control, 1806 to 1813; most German states belonged except Prussia (in the northeast) and Austria (in the southeast).
Reuss-Lobenstein was recreated in 1647 again as a lordship which it remained until 1673 when the title of lord was upgraded to count. Following the death of Count Heinrich X in 1671, Reuss- Lobenstein was ruled jointly by his three sons Heinrich III, Heinrich VIII and Heinrich X. In 1678 Reuss-Lobenstein was partitioned with Heinrich III remaining Count of Reuss-Lobenstein, Heinrich VIII becoming Count of Reuss- Hirschberg and Heinrich X becoming the Count of Reuss-Ebersdorf. Reuss- Lobenstein was partitioned for a second time in 1710 following the death of Heinrich III with Reuss-Selbitz being created for a younger son Heinrich XXVI while his eldest son Heinrich XV succeeded him as count of Reuss-Lobenstein. Reuss-Lobenstein was raised to a principality in 1790 and joined the Confederation of the Rhine on 15 December 1806.
Liechtenstein formally came into existence on 23 January 1719, when Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor decreed the lordship of Schellenberg and the countship of Vaduz united and raised to the dignity of a principality. Liechtenstein was a part of the Holy Roman Empire until the Treaty of Pressburg was signed on 26 December 1805; this marked Liechtenstein's formal independence, though it was a member of the Confederation of the Rhine and the German Confederation afterwards. While Liechtenstein was still closely aligned with Austria-Hungary until World War I, it realigned its politics and its customs and monetary institutions with Switzerland instead. Having been a constitutional monarchy since 1921, Hans- Adam II demanded more influence in Liechtenstein's politics in the early 21st century, which he was granted in a referendum held on 16 March 2003, effectively making Liechtenstein a semi-constitutional monarchy again.
As Grand Marshal of the Palace, he was responsible for the measures taken to secure Napoleon's personal safety, whether in France or on his campaigns, and he directed the minutest details of the imperial household. After the Battle of Austerlitz, where he commanded the grenadiers in the absence of General Oudinot, he was employed in a series of important negotiations with Frederick William III of Prussia, with the elector of Saxony (December 1806), in the incorporation of certain states in the Confederation of the Rhine, and in the conclusion of the armistice of Znaim (July 1809). In 1808, he was created duc de Frioul: his duchy was made duché grand-fief for his widow in 1813, a rare - but nominal - hereditary honor (extinguished in 1829), created in Napoleon's own Kingdom of Italy. After the Russian campaign, he became senator (1813).
The treaties of Lunéville (1801) and the Mediatization of 1803 secularized the ecclesiastical principalities and abolished most free imperial cities and these territories along with their inhabitants were absorbed by dynastic states. This transfer particularly enhanced the territories of Württemberg and Baden. In 1806, after a successful invasion of Prussia and the defeat of Prussia and Russia at the joint battles of Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon dictated the Treaty of Pressburg and presided over the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which, inter alia, provided for the mediatization of over a hundred petty princes and counts and the absorption of their territories, as well as those of hundreds of imperial knights, by the Confederation's member-states.John G. Gagliardo, Reich and Nation. The Holy Roman Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763–1806, Indiana University Press, l980, p. 278–279.
Before 1806, Saxony was part of the Holy Roman Empire, a thousand-year-old entity that had become highly decentralised over the centuries. The rulers of the Electorate of Saxony of the House of Wettin had held the title of elector for several centuries. When the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in August 1806 following the defeat of Emperor Francis II by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz, the electorate was raised to the status of an independent kingdom with the support of the First French Empire, then the dominant power in Central Europe. The last elector of Saxony became King Frederick Augustus I. Following the defeat of Saxony's ally Prussia at the Battle of Jena in 1806, Saxony joined the Confederation of the Rhine, and remained within the Confederation until its dissolution in 1813 with Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig.
In 1766 the Duchy of Lorraine and most of the surrounding smaller states were annexed by France, leaving the County of Salm and a few exclaves of other HRE states as the only territory within the modern region of Lorraine under Imperial rule. In 1793 Salm was annexed, followed in 1794 by the Southern Netherlands (including Luxembourg and Wallonia). Over the course of the Napoleonic wars, the remainder of the region west of the Rhine (plus Katzenelnbogen, which lies to the east of the Rhine) was annexed to the newly formed French Empire; the rest of modern Rhineland-Palatinate east of the Rhine became part of the Duchy of Nassau (formed from the merger of Nassau- Usingen and Nassau-Weilburg lands), which was a member of Napoleon's puppet Confederation of the Rhine. The wars also saw an end to the Holy Roman Empire.
As well as the French Empire, Napoleon controlled the Swiss Confederation, the Confederation of the Rhine, the Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Italy. Territories allied with the French included: the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Westphalia, the Kingdom of Naples, the Principality of Lucca and Piombino, and Napoleon's former enemies, Prussia and Austria. Denmark–Norway also allied with France in opposition to Great Britain and Sweden in the Gunboat War. Charles Minard's graph showing the diminishing strength of the Grande Armée during the French invasion of Russia in 1812 The French invasion of Russia of 1812 was a turning point, which reduced the French and allied invasion forces (the Grande Armée) to a tiny fraction of their initial strength and triggered a major shift in European politics, as it dramatically weakened the previously dominant French position on the continent.
Prussia first set foot on the Rhine in 1609 by the occupation of the Duchy of Cleves and about a century later Upper Guelders and Moers also became Prussian. At the peace of Basel in 1795, the whole of the left bank of the Rhine was resigned to France, and in 1806, the Rhenish princes all joined the Confederation of the Rhine. After the Congress of Vienna, Prussia was awarded the entire Rhineland, which included the Grand Duchy of Berg, the ecclesiastic electorates of Trier and Cologne, the free cities of Aachen and Cologne, and nearly a hundred small lordships and abbeys. The Prussian Rhine province was formed in 1822 and Prussia had the tact to leave them in undisturbed possession of the liberal institutions to which they had become accustomed under the republican rule of the French.
In 1805, an Austrian-led army suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz and the victorious Napoleon proceeded to dismantle the old Reich (which at this time was only a powerless confederation) by motivating or pressuring several German princes to enter the separate Confederation of the Rhine with their lands in July. This led Francis II/I on 6 August 1806 to declare the Reich dissolved and to lay down the Imperial Crown created in the second half of the 10th century (today displayed at the Treasury of Hofburg Palace in Vienna).Erklärung des Kaisers Franz II. über die Niederlegung der deutschen Kaiserkrone, in: Quellensammlung zur Geschichte der Deutschen Reichsverfassung in Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Collection of Sources to the History of the Constitution of the German Reich), edited by Karl Zeumer, p. 538–539 (full text on Wikisource) From 1806 onwards, Francis was Emperor of Austria only.
Louis de Bignon was born at La Mailleraye-sur-Seine, Seine-Maritime, the son of a dyer. Although he had received a good education, he served throughout the early part of the French Revolutionary Wars without rising above the rank of private. In 1797, however, the attention of Talleyrand, then minister of foreign affairs, was called to his exceptional abilities by General Huet, and he was attached to the diplomatic service. After serving in the legations in Switzerland and the Cisalpine Republic, he was appointed in 1799 attach to the French legation at Berlin, of which three years later he became chargé d'affaires. As minister-plenipotentiary at Cassel, between the years 1804 and 1806, he took a prominent share in the formation of the confederation of the Rhine; and after the battle of Jena he returned to Prussia as administrator of the public domains and finances.
When Francis II dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick refused to join the Confederation of the Rhine and so in 1806 Hesse-Homburg was annexed to Hesse-Darmstadt as part of the German mediatization, despite Frederick's pleas to Napoleon himself. Its administration was relocated to Gießen and Frederick retreated to landscaping his "Tempe" gardens at the foot of the Taunus, seeking a cure in the Schlangenbad baths and staying in a suite of rooms at the 'Stadt Ulm' hotel in Frankfurt am Main. After the fall of Napoleon, Hesse-Homburg was one of a few mediatised states which regained their former status, even winning total independence from Hesse-Darmstadt for the first time. This was thanks to his youngest daughter Marianne (who had married into the Prussian royal family in 1810), his six sons' military service with Prussia and his (albeit minor) family connection to the House of Hesse.
Bensheim's marketplace in 1869 (lithograph by F. Rau) Synagogue of Bensheim in 1900 By the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss in 1803, Bensheim passed to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, who joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 and was raised to Grand Duke. In 1822, there was a great fire in which 16 buildings were destroyed and 15 others were heavily damaged. Bensheim became the seat of the Landratsbezirk (an administrative region) of Bensheim in the province of Starkenburg, which in 1832 was merged with the Landratsbezirk of Heppenheim to form the district of Bensheim (Kreis Bensheim) with Bensheim as its seat. In 1918, the Grand Duke was removed and out of the Grand Duchy of Hesse the People's State of Hesse was formed. On 1 November 1938, the districts of Bensheim and Heppenheim were merged into one district, Kreis Bergstraße with Heppenheim as its seat.
When he ascended the throne in 1807, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was a member of the Confederation of the Rhine which was dissolved in 1813 with the Treaty of Paris on May 30, 1814 declaring the independence of the former Confederation states with Prince Friedrich Günther becoming the ruler of an independent principality. In 1815 the German Confederation was created and Schwarzburg- Rudolstadt along with other German monarchies joining. The last years of his reign saw the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 where Prince Friedrich Günther kept Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt neutral and following the conclusion of the war the creation of the North German Confederation. Following his death at Heidecksburg castle he was succeeded as prince by his brother Prince Albert as all of his sons by his first wife had predeceased him and his son by his second wife, Prince Sizzo of Leutenberg was born from a morganatic marriage.
Both intelligent patrons of literature and art, Anna Amalia and Charles Augustus attracted to their court the leading German scholars, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Johann Gottfried Herder, and made their residence Weimar an important cultural center in an era referred to as Weimar Classicism. In 1804 Duke Charles Augustus entered into European politics by marrying his son and heir Charles Frederick to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, sister of Emperor Alexander I of Russia. However, at the same time he joined Prussia in the War of the Fourth Coalition against the French Empire, and after the defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt was forced to accede the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine in 1806. In 1809 Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach, which had been united only in the person of the duke, were formally merged into the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.
Archduke Charles, commander of the Austrian army On the 5 and 6 July 1809, north of Vienna, took place one of the most important confrontations in human history until then, the battle of Wagram. It opposed an Austrian army led by generalissimus Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen to a Franco-Italo-German army under the command of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine. Below are presented the military units which participated at this battle. On this page are listed only the troops who were close enough to the hostilities to be able to intervene. The Austrian V Corps, left behind as a strategic reserve, and the "Army of Inner Austria", whose elements from the vanguard arrived close to the battlefield only in the afternoon of the 6th, too late to intervene, have been omitted from the article.
The king evaded compliance, but the French emperor, on entering Madrid in triumph, declared (16 December) Stein to be an enemy of France and the Confederation of the Rhine and ordered the confiscation of all his property in the Confederation. Stein saw that his life was in danger and fled from Berlin (5 January 1809). Thanks to the help of his former colleague, Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Reden, who gave him an asylum in his castle in the Riesengebirge, he succeeded in crossing the frontier into Bohemia. For three years, Stein lived in the Austrian Empire, generally at Brno, but in May 1812, in danger of being surrendered by Austria to Napoleon, he received an invitation to visit Saint Petersburg from Emperor Alexander I of Russia, who saw that Austria was certain to be on the side of France in the forthcoming Franco-Russian War.
Within the borders of modern Thuringia the Roman Catholic faith only survived in the Eichsfeld district, which was ruled by the Archbishop of Mainz, and to a small degree in Erfurt and its immediate vicinity. The modern German black-red-gold tricolour flag's first appearance anywhere in a German-ethnicity sovereign state, within what today comprises Germany, occurred in 1778 as the state flag of the Principality of Reuss- Greiz, an defunct principality in the modern state's borders. Map of the Thuringian States in 1890 Some reordering of the Thuringian states occurred during the German Mediatisation from 1795 to 1814, and the territory was included within the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine organized in 1806. The 1815 Congress of Vienna confirmed these changes and the Thuringian states' inclusion in the German Confederation; the Kingdom of Prussia also acquired some Thuringian territory and administered it within the Province of Saxony.
The Austrian Empire following the Treaty of Schönbrunn, which left Austria landlocked and without a navy On 17 March 1802, Archduke Charles of Austria, acting in his role as "Inspector General of the Navy" ordered the formation of Imperial and Royal Naval Cadet School in Venice, (German: k.u.k. Marine-Kadettenschule). This school eventually moved to Trieste in 1848 and changed its name to the "Imperial and Royal Naval Academy" (German: k.u.k. Marine-Akademie). Austria again fought against France during the Second and Third Coalitions, when after meeting a crushing defeat at Austerlitz, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II had to agree to the Treaty of Pressburg, weakening the Austrian Empire and reorganizing Germany under a Napoleonic imprint known as the Confederation of the Rhine. Believing his position as Holy Roman Emperor to be untenable, Francis abdicated the throne of the Holy Roman Empire on 6 August 1806, and declared the Holy Roman Empire to be dissolved in the same declaration.
As a journalist, Lindner showed himself to be a supporter of the new king, William I of Württemberg, even where this sometimes ran counter to the views of his newspaper's proprietor, Johann Friedrich Cotta. The most significant outcome of a collaboration between Lindner and the king was a document that appeared in 1820 entitled "Manuscript aus Süddeutschland". The document advocated some form of alliance between the three or four larger states of southern Germany, together with other significant states in the central regions, in order to provide a more effective counterweight to the might of Prussia and Austria within in the German Confederation, a pan-German political structure which had emerged in 1815 to fill the vacuum left by the termination in 1806 of the Holy Roman Empire. The proposal was seen as a move to reinvent the Confederation of the Rhine which, starting in 1805, had operated under the sponsorship of France for almost a decade.
In 1800, Bavaria reluctantly fought on Austria's side against France, but in 1805 when Austria attacked Bavaria for the third time in 100 years, they found a powerful army. The Bavarians initially retreated, but only in order to link up with Napoleon's advancing army and to prepare the counter-attack, which took place quickly, methodically and thoroughly. 30,000 Bavarian troops took part in the successful Siege of Ulm and the consequent liberation of Bavaria. At the Battle of Austerlitz, the Bavarians secured the flanks and supply lines of Napoleon's army and in 1806-7 they forced several Prussian forts to surrender. Bavaria was awarded the Austrian province of Tyrol as a reward, but unrest erupted into a full-blown rebellion under Andreas Hofer in 1809, which could only be put down with French assistance. When Austria attacked Bavaria once more in 1809, Napoleon's army was concentrated in Spain, and it was troops of the Confederation of the Rhine, predominantly Bavarian, which led the early campaigning against Austria.
Until the Napoleonic Wars, Blankenhain had been a part of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. After the Fourth Coalition's defeat at Jena and Auerstedt, Napoleon attached the Lordship of Blankenhain to the Principality of Erfurt, directly subordinate to himself as an "imperial state domain" (), separate from the Confederation of the Rhine (nominally a French protectorate set up to replace the now-defunct Holy Roman Empire), which the surrounding Thuringian states had joined. After the Congress of Vienna, Erfurt was restored to Prussia on 21 June 1815, becoming the capital of one of the three districts (') of the new Province of Saxony, but some southern and eastern parts of Erfurter lands joined Blankenhain in being transferred to the newly promoted Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach the following September. Blankenhain remained within Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach through the era of the German Empire (1871–1918) and into the Weimar Republic until it merged with 7 of the 8 other Saxon duchies to form the Free State of Thuringia ().
In 1801, the principality was removed from the Holy Roman Empire at the peace of Lunéville, and in 1806 (with Amalie signing as Frederick's guardian and regent), it became a founding member of the Confederation of the Rhine, gaining protection from Napoleon and effectively freedom of action for itself (albeit as a French satellite). In compensation for the loss of the Salm- Kyburg principality on the left bank of the Rhine, the 1803 German Mediatisation granted Salm-Kyburg lordship over a third of a part of the secularised lands of the prince bishops of Munster that had previous belonged to the amts of Bocholt and Ahaus to compensate for his loss in 1801. The other two-thirds were granted to Konstantin Alexander Joseph zu Salm-Salm in compensation for his lost lands on the Rhine. The princes of Salm-Salm and Salm-Kyrburg reigned over these aforementioned lands as a joint principality, the Principality of Salm.
Portrait of baron Tascher of the Pagerie, officier d'ordonnance of Emperor Napoléon III and Maréchal-des-logis de la Maison of the Emperor in a photographic portrait by Gustave Le Gray The title of Duc de Dalberg was created by the French Emperor Napoleon I on 14 April 1810 for Emmerich von Dalberg, the nephew of Karl Theodor von Dalberg, Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine and Grand Duke of Frankfurt. He died on 27 April 1833. His daughter and heiress married firstly Sir Richard Acton, 7th Baronet (by whom she was the mother of John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton) and secondly Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, but as the Duke had no sons, the title became extinct. However, by decree of the Emperor Napoleon III, 2 March 1859, the extinct Dalberg dukedom was revived and extended to the Emmerich de Dalberg's first cousin twice removed, Charles de Tascher de La Pagerie (who was also a second cousin once removed of Napoleon III), and redesignated as Duc de Tascher de La Pagerie.
The French siege army was reinforced by troops from Württemberg and Saxon states (Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Hildburghausen and Saxe-Weimar) as well as a Polish regiment.William Fiddian Reddaway, Cambridge History of Poland, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 1971, pg. 228 The Saxon and Württemberg regiments were part of the army of the Confederation of the Rhine, which - like the Kingdom of Italy, whose troops were already present at the siege - was a French client. The Polish regiment, led by Antoni Paweł Sułkowski, with a strength of 1,200 had been transferred from the siege of Danzig (Gdańsk) on 11 April and arrived on 20 April; it was the 1st infantry regiment of the Poznań legion raised by Jan Henryk Dąbrowski on Napoleon's behalf, after a Polish uprising against Prussian occupationHistoria Gdańska Edmund Cieślak Tom 3-page 115, Wydawnictwo Morskie 1993My z Napoleonem Andrzej Nieuważny Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1999, page 35 and French liberation of Prussian controlled Poland had resulted in the creation of Duchy of Warsaw in part of partitioned Poland.
The Mediatized Houses () were ruling princely and comital-ranked houses which were mediatized in the Holy Roman Empire during the period of 1803–15 as part of German mediatization, and were later recognised in 1825-29 by the German ruling houses as possessing considerable rights and rank. With few exceptions, these houses were those whose heads held a seat in the Imperial Diet when mediatized during the establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806–07, by France in 1810, or by the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15. The Mediatized Houses were organised into two ranks: the princely houses, entitled to the predicate Durchlaucht (Serene Highness), which previously possessed a vote on the Bench of Princes (Furstenbank); and the comital houses which were accorded the address of Erlaucht (Illustrious Highness), which previously possessed a vote in one of the four Benches of Counts (Gräfenbank). Whilst some form of mediatization occurred in other countries, such as France, Italy and Russia, only designated houses within the former Holy Roman Empire legally comprised the Mediatized Houses.
The Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, established according to the dynastic Treaty of Hamburg in 1701, adopted the corporative constitution of the sister Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin by an act of September 1755. During the Napoleonic Wars it was spared the infliction of a French occupation through the good offices of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and his minister Maximilian von Montgelas; Duke Charles II of Mecklenburg-Strelitz declared neutrality in 1806 and joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1808, however, he withdrew in 1813 on the eve of the German campaign in favor of an alliance against Napoleon. He joined the German Confederation established after the 1815 Congress of Vienna to succeed the dissolved Holy Roman Empire; he and his cousin Frederick Francis I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin both assumed the title of grand duke (Großherzog von Mecklenburg). Neustrelitz Palace in 1900 Though Grand Duke Frederick William openly rejected the Prussian annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover, the Prussian Army had been aided by soldiers from Mecklenburg-Strelitz in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.
In the wake of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Treaty of Lunéville, the Holy Roman Empire underwent a process of substantial territorial reorganisation known as the German mediatization, under which Erfurt, since the 10th century a subject of the Electorate and Archbishopric of Mainz, was transferred to the Kingdom of Prussia, to compensate for territories Prussia lost to France on the Left Bank of the Rhine. Fearing the rise in the power of Napoleon's First French Empire after their defeat of Austria and establishment of the French-sponsored Confederation of the Rhine, Prussia and Russia mobilized for a fresh campaign, and Prussian troops massed in Saxony as a part of the War of the Fourth Coalition. The twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt were fought on 14 October 1806 on the plateau west of the river Saale, between the and the forces of Frederick William III of Prussia. The decisive defeat suffered by the Prussian Army subjugated Prussia to the French Empire until the Sixth Coalition was formed in 1813.
West Germany (blue) and West Berlin (yellow) after the accession of the Saarland in 1957 and before the five from the GDR and East Berlin joined in 1990 With territories and frontiers that coincided largely with the ones of old Medieval East Francia and the 19th-century Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine, the Federal Republic of Germany, founded on 23 May 1949, under the terms of the Bonn–Paris conventions it obtained "the full authority of a sovereign state" on 5 May 1955 (although "full sovereignty" was not obtained until the Two Plus Four Agreement in 1990). The former occupying Western troops remained on the ground, now as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which West Germany joined on 9 May 1955, promising to rearm itself soon. West Germany became a focus of the Cold War with its juxtaposition to East Germany, a member of the subsequently founded Warsaw Pact. The former capital, Berlin, had been divided into four sectors, with the Western Allies joining their sectors to form West Berlin, while the Soviets held East Berlin.
Rothenberg went, as Rodenberg, in 1535, along with the villages of Ober- Hainbrunn and Unter-Finkenbach, and Vogt rights in Moosbrunn, as an Imperial fief to the Lords of Hirschhorn. After they died out in 1632, ownership passed to Otto von Kronberg, and after the Counts of Kronberg died out in 1704 to the Barons of Degenfeld-Schaumburg. Through marriage, ownership was held from 1786 to 1801 by the Counts of Erbach-Fürstenau and then lastly to the Counts of Rothberg. By the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine, Rothenberg and the other villages, but not Moosbrunn, passed along with the County of Erbach in 1806 to the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt. In 1835, Rothenberg was, with 1,098 inhabitants the third biggest village in the Landratsbezirk (roughly “administrative region”). When in the course of industrialization traffic routes were being expanded, this handicraft and market community’s high elevation, which did not favour transport, became a curse. There was no industrial development, and the community’s population figures fell. To this day, the community is strongly characterized by agriculture.
The Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbundakte) - again in 1806 - ended the independence of the city of Nuremberg and its incorporation into what was now the Kingdom of Bavaria. In 1803, in the so-called Rittersturm ("Knights' Assault"), the great territorial states of Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden also seized the little territories, often of just a few villages, belonging to the Imperial Knights and the Franconian nobility, although the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss had not mentioned them. The Rheinbundakte sanctioned these unilateral actions in Article 25. In 1810 Bavaria purchased the former Prussian Principality of Bayreuth, which had been French-owned since 1807, and thus finally drove Prussia as a major power out of the region. In 1805, in an exchange of land with Bavaria, the House of Habsburg secured for itself the territory of the former Bishopric of Würzburg as a foundation for its Tuscan side line, while Bavaria was compensated with the lands of the former Bishoprics of Eichstätt, Trient and Brixen and the County of Tyrol.
The following year he was named major-general by the Archduke Charles of Austria. Hohenlohe was promoted to the rank of Feldmarshallleutnant in 1806 and the next year saw him being appointed governor of Galicia. Napoleon offered to restore to Hohenlohe his principality of Hohenlohe-Bartenstein on condition that he adhered to the Confederation of the Rhine, but as he refused, it was united to Württemberg. During the War of the Fifth Coalition Prince Hohenlohe led an Austrian infantry division in the IV Corps under Franz Seraph of Orsini-Rosenberg at the Battle of Eckmühl on 22 April 1809. His division consisted of three battalions each of the Infantry Regiments Josef Mittrowsky Nr. 40, Bellegarde Nr. 44 and Chasteler Nr. 46, the 5th and 6th Battalions of the Archduke Karl Legion and 14 artillery pieces. At the Battle of Aspern-Essling on 21–22 May, he led Infantry Regiments Hiller Nr. 2, Czartorisky Nr. 9, Sztaray Nr. 33 and Reuss-Greitz Nr. 55. His division numbered 9,261 infantry and 16 6-pound cannons, The IV Corps was involved in the murderous struggle for the village of Essling.
As a consequence of the armistice, the French lost their initial advantage in numbers as the Austrians, and Russia's huge manpower reserves, were brought to the front.Chandler (1991) P.901. Napoleon succeeded in bringing the total imperial forces in the region up to around 650,000 (although only 250,000 were under his direct command, with another 120,000 under Nicolas Charles Oudinot and 30,000 under Davout). The Confederation of the Rhine furnished Napoleon with the bulk of the remainder of the forces, with Saxony and Bavaria as principal contributors. In addition, to the south, Murat's Kingdom of Naples and Eugène de Beauharnais's Kingdom of Italy had a combined total of 100,000 men under arms. In Spain an additional 150–200,000 French troops were being steadily beaten back by Spanish and British forces numbering around 150,000. Thus in total around 900,000 French troops were opposed in all theatres by somewhere around a million Allied troops (not including the strategic reserve being formed in Germany). During the armistice, three Allied sovereigns, Alexander of Russia, Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia, and Bernadotte of Sweden (by then Regent of the Kingdom due to his adoptive father's illness) met at Trachenberg Castle in Silesia to coordinate the war effort.

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