Everything about Confederation Of The Rhine totally explained
The Confederation of the Rhine or Rhine Confederation (; ) lasted from
1806 to
1813 and was formed initially from 16
German states by
Napoleon after he defeated Austria's
Francis II and Russia's
Alexander I in the
Battle of Austerlitz. The
Treaty of Pressburg, in effect, led to the creation of the Confederation of the
Rhine.
The members of the confederation were German princes (
Fürsten) from the
Holy Roman Empire, and so technically not heads of state of their states as such. They were later joined by 19 others, all together ruling a total of over 15 million subjects providing a significant strategic advantage to the
French Empire on its eastern front.
Formation
On
12 July 1806, on signing the
Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine, 16 states in present-day Germany formally left the Holy Roman Empire and joined together in a
confederation (the treaty called it the, with a precursor in the
League of the Rhine). Napoleon was its "protector." On
6 August, following an ultimatum by Napoleon,
Francis II gave up his title of Emperor and declared the
Holy Roman Empire dissolved. In the years that followed, 23 more German states joined the Confederation; Francis's
Habsburg dynasty would rule the remainder of the empire as Austria. Only
Austria,
Prussia, Danish
Holstein, and Swedish
Pomerania stayed outside, not counting the west bank of the Rhine and
Erfurt, which were annexed by the French 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 Emperor had been, 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, a parliamentlike body that, however, never assembled.
The Confederation was above all a military alliance: the members had to supply
France with large numbers of military personnel. In return for their cooperation some state rulers were given higher statuses:
Baden,
Hesse,
Cleves, and
Berg were made into
grand duchies, and
Württemberg and
Bavaria became kingdoms. States could also be made larger by incorporating the many smaller "
Kleinstaaten," or small former imperial member states.
After Prussia lost to France in 1806, many medium-sized and small states joined the Rheinbund. It was at its largest in
1808, including four kingdoms, five grand duchies, 13
duchies, seventeen
principalities, and the Free
Hansa towns of
Hamburg,
Lübeck, and
Bremen.
In
1810 large parts of northwest Germany were quickly incorporated into the
Napoleonic Empire in order to better monitor the
trade embargo with
Great Britain, the
Continental System.
In
1814, when Napoleon's campaign in the
Russian Empire failed and some of its members changed sides, the Confederation of the Rhine collapsed.
Member monarchies (alphabetically)
Aftermath
After the dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine, the only attempt at political coordination in Germany until the creation on
21 October 1813 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.
In
1815 the
Congress of Vienna redrew the continent's political map. In fact, only minor changes were made to inner-German borders, and the resulting
German Confederation consisted more or less of the same members as the Confederation of the Rhine.
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