The Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Part IX: The Confederation of the Rhine.

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Baden, Battle of Austerlitz, Bavaria, Berg, Cleves, Confederation of the Rhine, Emperor of the French, Hesse, Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon Bonaparte, President of the College of Kings, Württemberg

From the Emperor’s Desk: although I dealt with the Confederation of the Rhine in yesterday’s post, I thought today I would dig a little deeper.

After the Battle of 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. At the insistence of his court, especially his wife Queen Louise, Friedrich Wilhelm III decided to challenge the French domination of Central Europe by going to war.

The founding members of the confederation were German princes of the Holy Roman Empire. They were later joined by 19 others, altogether ruling a total of over 15 million subjects. This granted a significant strategic advantage to the French Empire on its eastern frontier by providing a buffer between France and the two largest German states, Prussia and Austria (which also controlled substantial non-German lands).

Formation

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.

On July 12, 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 états confédérés du Rhinelande, with a precursor in the League of the Rhine).

The “Protector of the Confederation” was the hereditary office of the Emperor of the French, Napoleon. On August 1, the members of the confederation formally seceded from the Holy Roman Empire,

According to the treaty, the confederation was to be run by common constitutional bodies, but the individual states (in particular the larger ones) wanted unlimited sovereignty. Instead of a monarchical head of state, as the Holy Roman Empire had had, its highest office was held by Karl Theodor von Dalberg, the former Arch Chancellor, who now bore the title of a Prince-Primate of the confederation.

As such, he was President of the College of Kings and presided over the Diet of the Confederation, designed to be a parliament-like body although it never actually assembled. The President of the Council of the Princes was the Prince of Nassau-Usingen.

Napoleon I, Emperor of the French

In return for their support of Napoleon, some rulers were given higher statuses: Baden, Hesse, Cleves, and Berg were made into grand duchies, and Württemberg and Bavaria became kingdoms. Several member states were also enlarged with the absorption of the territories of Imperial counts and knights who were mediatized at that time.

They had to pay a very high price for their new status, however. The Confederation was above all a military alliance; the member states had to maintain substantial armies for mutual defense and supply France with large numbers of military personnel. 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.

The rest of the history of the Confederation of the Rhine goes beyond the scope of the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire so I’ll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say, the Confederation of the Rhine collapsed in 1813, in the aftermath of Napoleon’s failed invasion of the Russian Empire. Many of its members changed sides after the Battle of Leipzig, when it became apparent Napoleon would lose the War of the Sixth Coalition.

The Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Part VIII: Peace of Pressburg

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Austria, Baden, Battle of Austerlitz, Bavaria, Confederation of the Rhine, France, Napoleon Bonaparte, Peace of Pressburg, The Holy Roman Empire, The War of the Third Coalition, Württemberg

Peace of Pressburg

The War of the Third Coalition came too soon for Austria, which moved against France in September 1805. Defeated at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805, Austria had to accept terms dictated by Napoleon in the Peace of Pressburg (December 26).

These created deliberate ambiguities in the imperial constitution. Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg were granted plénitude de la souveraineté (full sovereignty) while remaining a part of the Conféderation Germanique (Germanic Confederation), a novel name for the Holy Roman Empire.

Likewise, it was left deliberately unclear whether the Duchy of Cleves, the Duchy of Berg and the County of Mark—imperial territories transferred to Joachim Murat—were to remain imperial fiefs or become part of the French Empire. As late as March 1806, Napoleon was uncertain whether they should remain nominally within the Empire.

The Free Imperial Knights, who had survived the attack on their rights in the Rittersturm of 1803–04, were subject to a second attack and a spate of annexations by those states allied to Napoleon in November–December 1805.

In response, the knights’ corporation (corpus equestre) dissolved itself on January 20, 1806. With the dissolution of the Empire, the knights ceased to be either free or imperial and were at the mercy of the newly sovereign states.

Contemporaries saw the defeat at Austerlitz as a turning point of world-historical significance. The Peace of Pressburg, too, was perceived as radical shift. It did not affirm previous treaties in the usual way and its wording seemed to raise Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg into equals of the empire while downgrading the latter to a merely German confederation.

Nevertheless, Bavaria and Württemberg reaffirmed to the Reichstag that they were subject to imperial law. Some commentators argued that plénitude de la souveraineté was just a French translation of Landeshoheit (the quasi-sovereignty possessed by imperial estates) and the treaty had not altered the relationship between the members and the empire.

Formation of the Confederation of the Rhine

Throughout the first half of 1806, Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg attempted to steer an independent course between the demands of the empire and Napoleon. In April 1806, Napoleon sought a treaty whereby the three states would ally themselves to France in perpetuity while forswearing participation in future Reichskriege (imperial war efforts) and submitting to a commission de méditation under his presidency to resolve their disputes. Despite all of this, they were to remain members of the empire. Württemberg ultimately refused to sign.

In June 1806, Napoleon began pressuring Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg for the creation of confédération de la haute Allemagne (Upper German confederation) outside the empire. On July 12, 1806, these three states and thirteen other minor German princes formed the Confederation of the Rhine, effectively a French satellite state.

On August 1, the Reichstag was informed by a French envoy that Napoleon no longer recognized the existence of the Holy Roman Empire and on the same day, nine of the princes who had formed the Confederation of the Rhine issued a proclamation in which they justified their actions by claiming that the Holy Roman Empire had already collapsed and ceased to function due to the defeat in the Battle of Austerlitz.

March 30, 1830: Death of Grand Duke Ludwig I of Baden and the History of Baden and the Succession

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Baden, Charles of Baden, Charles-Friedrich of Baden, Emperor Napoleon, Grand Duchy of Baden, Hereditary Prince Charles Ludwig of Baden, House of Zähringen, Ludwig of Baden, Stéphanie de Beauharnais

Ludwig I (February 9, 1763 – March 30, 1830) succeeded as Grand Duke of Baden on December 8, 1818. Ludwig was the third surviving son of Grand Duke Charles Friedrich of Baden and Langravine Caroline Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Baden came into existence in the 12th century as the Margraviate of Baden and subsequently split into various smaller territories that were unified in 1771.

In 1803 Baden was raised to Electoral dignity within the Holy Roman Empire. Upon the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Baden became the much-enlarged Grand Duchy of Baden.

Charles Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden

In 1815 it joined the German Confederation. During the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, Baden was a centre of revolutionist activities. In 1849, in the course of the Baden Revolution, it was the only German state that became a republic for a short while, under the leadership of Lorenzo Brentano. The revolution in Baden was suppressed mainly by Prussian troops.

The Grand Duchy of Baden remained a sovereign country until it joined the German Empire in 1871. After the revolution of 1918, Baden became part of the Weimar Republic as the Republic of Baden.

Ludwig’s father, Charles Friedrich of Baden, succeeded his grandfather Charles III Wilhelm as Margrave of Baden-Durlach in 1738 and ruled personally from 1746 until 1771, when he inherited Baden-Baden from the Catholic line of his family. This made him the Protestant ruler of a state that was overwhelmingly Catholic. In 1803, Charles Friedrich became Elector of Baden, and in 1806 the first Grand Duke of Baden with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.

Grand Duke Charles Friedrich died in 1811 and his eldest son, Charles Ludwig, Hereditary Prince of Baden died in 1801 and therefore it was his son, Charles, who succeeded his grandfather as Grand Duke upon the latter’s death in 1811.

Incidentally, Charles Ludwig, Hereditary Prince of Baden was an ancestor of Franz Joseph I of Austria, Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, Nicholas II of Russia and his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse), Lord Mountbatten and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, among others.

Charles, Grand Duke of Baden

Charles, Grand Duke of Baden, due to the strong influence of France on the court of Baden, was forced to marry Emperor Napoléon I’s adopted daughter, Stéphanie de Beauharnais, in Paris on April 8, 1806, this despite his own protests and those of his mother and sisters. Charles apparently preferred the hand of his cousin Princess Augusta of Bavaria. It would be five years before the couple would produce an heir.

Charles’s son and heir, Hereditary Grand Duke Alexander of Baden (May 1, 1816 – May 8, 1816) died shortly after birth. As Grand Duke Charles did not have any surviving male children, upon his death in Rastatt, he was succeeded by his uncle Ludwig.

Since Ludwig was the uncle of his predecessor Grand Duke Karl, his death marked the end of the Zähringen line of the House of Baden.

Ludwig secured the continued existence of the University of Freiburg in 1820, after which the university was called the Albert-Ludwig University. He also founded the Polytechnic Hochschule Karlsruhe in 1825. The Hochschule is the oldest technical school in Germany.

Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden

Ludwig’s death in 1830 led to many rumors. His death also meant the extinction of his line of the Baden family. The succession then went to the children of the morganatic second marriage of Grand Duke Charles and Louise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg, who was created Countess of Hochberg in the Austrian nobility at the personal request of Grand Duke Charles.

After Ludwig’s death, there was much discussion about a mysterious seventeen-year-old man named Kaspar Hauser, who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere in 1828.

Seventeen years previously, the first son of the future Grand Duke Charles and his French wife Stéphanie de Beauharnais died under what were later portrayed as mysterious circumstances. There was at the time and still is today (in 2007) speculation that Hauser, who died (perhaps murdered) in 1833, was that child.

Working together with architect Friedrich Weinbrenner, Ludwig is responsible for most of the classical revival buildings in the city center and for building the pyramid.

Ludwig had one surviving illegitimate daughter by his mistress Katharina Werner (created Countess of Langenstein and Gondelsheim in 1818), Countess Louise von Langenstein und Gondelsheim (1825-1900) who married in 1848 Swedish aristocrat Carl Israel, Count Douglas (1824-1898).

Survival of Monarchies: Prussia, Part VI

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Baden, Bavaria, Frederick III, Frederick III of Germany, German Empire, Hesse, Kingdom of Prussia, North German Confederation, Otto von Bismark, South German Confederation, Württemberg, Wilhelm I of Germany

On January 18, 1871 the Prussian army occupied the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles Palace and King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor. The title “German Emperor” was carefully chosen by Bismarck after heated discussions even up to and after the day of the proclamation. Wilhelm I grudgingly accepted this title grudgingly but he would have preferred “Emperor of Germany” which, however, was unacceptable to the federated monarchs, and would also have signaled a claim to lands outside his realm (Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg etc.) and also superiority over the other monarchs within the Empire. The title “Emperor of the Germans”, as proposed in 1848, was ruled out as he considered himself chosen “by the grace of God”, not by the people as in a republic. Wilhelm I also viewed his Kingship of Prussia as much more important than the title of German Emperor. He complained to his son, Crown Prince Friedrich about having to exchange “the radiant Prussian crown for this filth-crown.”

With this ceremony, the North German Confederation united with the South German Confederation and was transformed into the German Empire (“Kaiserreich”, 1871–1918). This Empire was a federal state; the emperor was head of state and president (primus inter pares – first among equals) of the federated monarchs (the kings of Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, the grand dukes , Mecklenburg, Hesse, Baden, as well as other principalities, duchies and the senates of the free cities of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen).

Bismarck describes Wilhelm I as an old-fashioned, courteous, infallibly polite gentleman and a genuine Prussian officer, whose good common sense was occasionally undermined by “female influences”. This was a reference to Wilhelm’s wife, (Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach 1811-1890. the second daughter of Carl-Friedrich, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Maria Pavlovna of Russia, a daughter of Emperor Paul I of Russia and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg) who had been educated by, among others Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and was intellectually superior to her husband. She was also at times very outspoken in her opposition to official policies as she was a liberal. Wilhelm however, had long been strongly opposed to liberal ideas. Despite possessing considerable power as Kaiser, Wilhelm I left the task of governing mostly to his chancellor and limited himself to representation, embodying the dignity of the state and approving Bismarck’s policies.

Here we have, in the relationship between Kaiser and Chancellor, the seeds of a limited Constitutional Monarchy. Yes, the German Empire did have a Constitution but it gave the monarch considerable power. Wilhelm I was content to allow Bismark to rule in his name. When Wilhelm won the Imperial Crown he was 74 years old an advanced age for the 19th century. He would continue to rule until 1888 when he died at the age of 91. With the precedent of allowing the Chancellor to wield the power, and the Crown Prince Friedrich being Liberal, things looked promising for the Empire to evolve into a similar system to that of Great Britain.

Sadly, it was not meant to be. In 1888 when Kaiser Wilhelm I was nearing the end of his life, his son the Crown Prince, was also near the end of his as he was dying from throat cancer. When Kaider Wilhelm I died in March of 1888 the new Emperor, Friedrich III, ruled for only 99 days and kept Bismark on and was not able to implement any of his liberal policies. The premature demise of Friedrich III is considered a potential turning point in German history; and whether or not he would have made the Empire more liberal if he had lived longer is still discussed.

Friedrich III was succeeded by his very conservative and bombastic son, as Kaiser Wilhelm II, and he would lead the German Empire to its downfall.

Survival of Monarchies: Prussia part III

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Baden, Bavaria, Confederation of the Rhine, Congress of Vienna, German Confederation, Germany, Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon, Prussia

After the fall of the Holy Roman Empire the question of German unity became inevitable. But how to unify such a patchwork quilt of nation states? Prior to the end of the empire some states within its boundaries were elevated in rank. Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg became Kingdoms under the influence of Napoleon. Baden became a Grand Duchy and after the Napoleonic wars, Hanover also became a kingdom. The real question was would it be Prussia or Austria to gain the upper hand and unit Germany under their authority?

From 1806 until 1813 the German States formed the Confederation of the Rhine without the inclusion of Austria and Prussia. The Confederation was to be run by common constitutional bodies, but the individual states wanted unlimited sovereignty. This loose confederation suffered some of the same problems the old Holy Roman Empire suffered from and that is there was not a strong central government.

The Holy Roman Emperor had at its head an Emperor. The Confederation, since it was not considered an empire was ruled by Karl Theodor von Dalberg, the former Arch Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire and he carried the of a Prince-Primate of the confederation. This made him President of the College of Kings and presided over the Diet of the Confederation, designed to be a parliament-like body though it never actually assembled. The President of the Council of the Princes was held the Prince oef Nassau-e. At its heart the Confederation was a conservative minded military alliance. As mentioned, this body was under the influence of Napoleon who elevated many of the states to Kingdom status. During its short existence the members of the confederation found themselves more subordinated to Napoleon than they had been to the Habsburgs.

The Confederation of the Rhine collapsed in 1813, with the aftermath of Napoleon’s failed campaign against the Russian Empire. Many of its members changed sides after the Battle of Leipzig, when it became apparent Napoleon would lose the War of the Sixth Coalition. In 1814 the major European powers gathered in Vienna for the Congress of Vienna which redrew the map of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. German unity did not come at this juncture but instead we saw the creation of the German Confederation with both Austria and Prussia included. The Habsburg Emperor of Austria was its nominal head, holding the title of President of the Confederation.

This Confederation, which was basically the old Holy Roman Empire in all but name, lasted until 1866 when Prussia began to consolidate its power among the German states and began the path of unification without Austria. Prior to that, in 1848, there was an attempt to create a more liberal unified German Empire. That is what we will look at in depth next week.

What makes a Kingdom?

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Adolph of Luxembourg, Baden, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom, Luxembourg, Napoleon, Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the Netherlands, Württemberg, Willem III of the Netherlands

This entry is more about examining some unanswered questions than and observations. Throughout European history many kingdoms have come and gone. What has intrigued me is the decisions for some of these realms to be a kingdom while some held lower titles. The thing that intrigues me is that there are no hard, set-in-stone, criteria for what state or territory should be called a kingdom. Geographical size and population do not seem to matter. Here is a dictionary definition of a kingdom.

king·dom  [king-duhm]
noun
1. a state or government having a king or queen as its head.
2. anything conceived as constituting a realm or sphere of independent action or control: the kingdom of thought.
3. a realm or province of nature, especially one of the three broad divisions of natural objects: the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.
4. Biology . a taxonomic category of the highest rank, grouping together all forms of life having certain fundamental characteristics in common: in the five-kingdom classification scheme adopted by many biologists, separate kingdoms are assigned to animals (Animalia), plants (Plantae), fungi (Fungi), protozoa and eucaryotic algae (Protista), and bacteria and blue-green algae (Monera).
the spiritual sovereignty of God or Christ.

Here is the definition of a realm from Wikipedia.

A realm ( /ˈrɛlm/) is a community or territory over which a sovereign rules; it is commonly used to describe a kingdom or other monarchical or dynastic state.

The Old French word reaume, modern French royaume, was the word first adopted in English; the fixed modern spelling does not appear until the beginning of the 17th century. The word supposedly derives from medieval Latin regalimen, from regalis, of or belonging to a rex, (king).[1]
“Realm” is particularly used for those states whose name includes the word kingdom (for example, the United Kingdom), to avoid clumsy repetition of the word in a sentence (for example, “The Queen’s realm, the United Kingdom…”). It is also useful to describe those countries whose monarchs are called something other than “king” or “queen”; for example, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a realm but not a kingdom since its monarch holds the title Grand Duke rather than King.

From my research it seems who holds the title of a king or queen is pretty arbitrary. I have read that only an emperor can grant the title of king or queen. However, that doesn’t seem to be true. The Congress of Vienna created the Electorate of Hanover a kingdom in 1814 and I do not think any emperor granted that title. In 1830 Belgium became a sovereign state and decided upon a constitutional monarchy and chose Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to be their king. They could have just as easily have called Belgium a Grand Duchy although I don’t think Leopold would have been happy with a lesser title.

Speaking of separation of states and titles, in 1890, when King Willem III of the Netherlands died, he was also the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, but because Luxembourg went by the Salic Law which barred women from ruling in their own right, the throne of the Netherlands went to Willem III’s daughter, Queen Wilhelmina, while Luxembourg went to the the nearest male relative, Adolphus of Nassau-Weilburg. I always wondered, with Luxembourg now separate from the Netherlands could they have elevated their rulers title to that of king?

One of the more curious discrepancies (from my point of view) over the creations of a kingdom and its arbitrary nature is between the states of Baden and Württemberg. For a long period of their respective histories within the Holy Roman Empire both Baden and Württemberg were duchies. However, it must be noted that during that portion of their history Baden was not unified and several lines of the House of Zähringen ruled over Baden. It became unified under Duke Carl-Friedrich of Baden-Durlach after the death of August-Georg of Baden-Baden in 1771 without heirs.

In 1803 came the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss which was a redistribution and restructuring of the empire which resulted in the secularization of ecclesiastical principalities and mediatisation of numerous small secular principalities and Free Imperial Cities. This act created more imperial electors (those in charge of electing the emperor) and the rulers of both Baden and Württemberg were made electors of the empire.

However, this new reorganization of the empire was short lived for within three years the empire itself was dissolved. As the empire was dissolving in those early years of the 19th century, the rulers of Baden and Württemberg sided with Napoleon who had his carving knives out eager to incorporate former German territories into his empire. For their support of Napoleon both of their territories were expanded and titles were elevated. This is where the arbitrary nature of the what constitutes a kingdom come in. Baden became a Grand Duchy while Württemberg became a kingdom. Even though Württemberg was the larger territory, although not by much, both states had been a duchy and then briefly an electorate within the empire. The same situation existed in Saxony. It too, became a kingdom after having been an electorate and this state was even smaller than Baden. So why was Württemberg and Saxony elevated to kingdom status while Baden became only a Grand Duchy? I have never found an answer to that question. I wonder if it was ever considered to raise Baden to the kingdom?

Questions like these make history fun for me. History often talks about what happened I like to find out why things happened the way they did.