Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Part VI: War With France

Tags

Austrian Netherlands, Duke Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick, French Revolution, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, Holy Roman Empire, Louis XVI of France and Navarre, Protestant Electors, Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, War of the First Coalition

The War of the First Coalition was a set of wars that several European powers fought between 1792 and 1797 initially against the constitutional Kingdom of France and then the French Republic that succeeded it. They were only loosely allied and fought without much apparent coordination or agreement; each power had its eye on a different part of France it wanted to appropriate after a French defeat, which never occurred.

As part of the War of the First Coalition the forces of the French First Republic overran and occupied the Austrian Netherlands in 1792.

Foreign minister Charles François Dumouriez, who sought a war which might restore some popularity and authority to the King. Dumouriez prepared the invasion of the Austrian Netherlands, where he expected the local population to rise against Austrian rule. However, the revolution had thoroughly disorganized the French army, which had insufficient forces for the invasion. Its soldiers fled at the first sign of battle, deserting en masse, in one case murdering General Théobald Dillon.

While the revolutionary government frantically raised fresh troops and reorganized its armies, an allied army under Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick assembled at Koblenz on the Rhine.

The invasion commenced in July 1792. The Duke then issued a declaration on July 25, 1792, which had been written by the brothers of Louis XVI, that declared his [Brunswick’s] intent to restore the King of France to his full powers, and to treat any person or town who opposed him as rebels to be condemned to death by martial law.

This motivated the revolutionary army and government to oppose the Prussian invaders by any means necessary, and led almost immediately to the overthrow of the King by a crowd which stormed the Tuileries Palace.

The Holy Roman Empire was defending itself quite well until Prussia abandoned the war effort to focus its attention on its Polish territories (overseeing the Second and Third Partitions of Poland), taking the resources and military strength of northern Germany with it.

Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick

Despite the empire’s mounting difficulties in the face of the wars with France, there was no large-scale popular unrest within its borders. Instead, the explanation for the end of the Holy Roman Empire lies in the realm of high politics.

The empire’s defeat in the Revolutionary Wars was the most decisive step in the gradual undermining of the empire. The conflict between France and the Holy Roman Empire had begun with the French declaring war on the newly crowned Emperor Franz II of the Habsburg dynasty only in his capacity as the
e King of Hungary.

The fact that much of the wider empire (including influential figures such as the King of Prussia and the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz), however unwilling, joined the conflict on the side of the Habsburgs proves that imperial ideals were still alive by the late 18th century.

The key point in which fortunes shifted was Prussia’s abandonment of the war effort. Prussia had been the only true counterweight to Austria’s influence in the institutions of the empire. Though the western parts of Prussia, such as Brandenburg, remained formal parts of the Holy Roman Empire and the Prussians continued to be represented in the Reichstag, Prussia ceased to compete for influence in imperial affairs.

Austria stood alone as the protector of the states in southern Germany, many of which began considering making their own separate peaces with France. When the Austrians learnt that Württemberg and Baden had opened formal negotiations with France, the armies sent by these two states were disbanded and disarmed in 1796, causing resentment against the emperor and, combined with losses to France, suggesting that the Habsburg emperor was no longer capable of protecting his traditional vassals in Germany.

Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor

In the wake of the wars with France, there was a substantial reorganization of Imperial territory (the so-called Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, supported by Prussia), with the Habsburg monarchy meaning to compensate those princes who had lost territory in the French wars and effectivize the empire’s current semi-feudal structure.

Although there were huge territorial changes, notably the almost complete abolition of any church territory and significant territorial gains for Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau, the most important changes were in the empire’s electoral college.

Salzburg was added as a fourth Catholic elector, while Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Cassel became the fourth, fifth and sixth Protestant electors, giving the Protestants a majority for the first time in history and raising doubts whether Emperor Franz II would be able to work together with his Reichstag.

Although the Austrian regime spent much time and resources attempting to make the new arrangement work, the general verdict at the time was that the reorganization had essentially killed the empire.

What makes a Kingdom?

Tags

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.