Tags
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.