1789    


At this point the Empire had lost much of its previous territory. In 1648 it had lost Northern Italy, The United Provinces and Switzerland. Also France had been eating away at its western parts since the later Middle Ages and had gotten a foothold in the Alsace in 1648. Later it conquered several of the Burgundian territories of the Spanish Habsburgs.

For many centuries now the position of Emperor had been almost exclusively in the hands of the Habsburg rulers of Austria and Bohemia, also Kings of Hungary.
In the North-east the Hohenzollern Electorate of Brandenburg had expanded into Pommerania and outside of the Empire itself gained the Duchy of Prussia. In 1701 all these lands were united into a Kingdom that was partly inside and partly outside the Empire. The Kingdom was named Prussia after the Baltic Province it had gained from a collateral branch in 1618. The fact that some of its territories lay outside the authority of the Emperor supposed to make the elevation of the state into a Kingdom possible in the first place, although Bohemia was a Kingdom and Kingdoms were also created in the last days of the Empire. At first the monarch bore the territorially ambivalent style of King in Prussia, rather than of Prussia.

Prussia and the Habsburg Dominions had joined Russia in the Polish division of 1777. Leaving Prussia with the lands joining Pommerania and the Duchy of Prussia and Austria with the Polish province of Galicia.

Bavaria was inherited by the branch of Palatine-Neuburg-Sülzbach in 1777. This branch had previously been ruling some of the Palatine areas in the Upper-Palatinate north of Bavaria and had gained the Rhenish Duchies of Berg and Julliers in 1614. In 1685 it had succeeded to the Electorate Palatine. Now all Wittelsbach territories were united into Palatine-Bavaria, with the exception of the Duchy of Palatine-Zweibrücken.

To the west of the Empire the French Revolution was about to break out. This would have severe consequences for Germany in the decades to come.