Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire

On August 6, 1806, Francis II, the Habsburg ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, announced that he was giving up the imperial crown and releasing all the empire's states and officials from their duties. With a single proclamation, an institution that dated back to Otto I's coronation in 962 disappeared after about 844 years. Few people in Europe mourned loudly, because the empire had long been weak, but it had been the main political frame for Germans and Central Europeans for most of the Middle Ages and early modern period.¹³

The empire had been fading for centuries. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, its hundreds of princes, cities and bishoprics acted almost like independent states. The French Revolution and Napoleon's wars delivered the final blows. In 1803 many small church and city states were abolished and handed to larger ones. After Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804, Francis created the new title of Emperor of Austria for himself to keep his rank equal. In December 1805 Napoleon crushed Austria and Russia at Austerlitz, and in July 1806 sixteen German states left the empire to form the Confederation of the Rhine under French protection.²³⁴

Napoleon then demanded that Francis recognize the new order and warned that he would no longer treat the empire as existing. Francis, having no army able to resist, abdicated rather than let Napoleon or a rival claim the title. He stayed on as Emperor Francis I of Austria. The dissolution cleared away the old tangle of ministates and opened the way for the German Confederation of 1815 and, later, for the rivalry between Austria and Prussia that decided how Germany would be united. Voltaire's old joke, that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, had finally become hard to argue with.¹³