best territory and 3,500,000 of its people; while the princes
were indemnified by the plunder of their peers. But the
hardest task, the satisfactory distribution of this plunder,
remained. While the Diet at Regensburg, after much complaint
and management, assigned the arrangement of these affairs to a
committee, the princely bargainers were in Paris, employing
the most disgraceful means to obtain the favor of Talleyrand
and other influential diplomatists. On the 25th of February,
1803, the final decision of the delegation or committee of the
empire was adopted by the Diet, and promulgated with the approval
of the emperor, Francis II., and of Prussia and Bavaria. It
confiscated all the spiritual principalities in Germany,
except that the Elector of Mayence, Charles Theodore of
Dalberg, received Regensburg, Aschaffenburg, and Wetzlar, as
an indemnity, and retained a seat and a voice in the imperial
Diet. Of the 48 free cities of the empire, six only
remained--Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Frankfort, Nuremburg, and
Augsburg. Austria obtained the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen;
Prussia, as a compensation for the loss of 1,018 square miles
with 122,000 inhabitants west of the Rhine, received 4,875
square miles, with 580,000 inhabitants, including the
endowments of the religious houses of Hildesheim and
Paderborn, and most of Münster; also Erfurt and Eichsfeld, and
the free cities of Nordhausen, Mülhausen, and Goslar; Hanover
obtained Osnabruck; to Bavaria, in exchange for the
Palatinate, were assigned Würzburg, Bamberg, Freisingen,
Augsburg, and Passau, besides a number of cities of the
empire, in all about 6,150 square miles, to compensate for
4,240, vastly increasing its political importance. Wirtemberg,
too, was richly compensated for the loss of the Mömpelgard by
the confiscation of monastery endowments and free cities in
Suabia. But Baden made the best bargain of all, receiving
about 1,270 square miles of land, formerly belonging to
bishops or to the Palatinate, in exchange for 170. After this
acquisition, Baden extended, though in patches, from the
Neckar to the Swiss border. By building up these three South
German states, Napoleon sought to erect a barrier for himself
against Austria and Prussia. With the same design,
Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau were much enlarged. There were
multitudes of smaller changes, under the name of
'compensations and indemnities.' Four new lay electorates were
established in the place of the three secularized prelacies,
and were given to Baden, Wirtemberg, Hesse-Cassel, and
Salzburg. But they never had occasion to take part in the
election of an emperor."
_C. T. Lewis,
History of Germany,
chapter 25, sections 26-27._
ALSO IN:
_A. Thiers,
History of the Consulate and the Empire,
books 7 and 15 (volume 1)._
_J. R. Seeley,
Life and Times of Stein,
part 1, chapter 4 (volume 1)._
GERMANY: A. D. 1803.
Bonaparte's seizure of Hanover in his war with England.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1802-1803.
GERMANY: A. D. 1805 (January-April).
The third Coalition against France.
Prussian Neutrality.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (JANUARY-APRIL).
GERMANY: A. D. 1805 (September-December).
Napoleon's overwhelming campaign.
The catastrophes at Ulm and Austerlitz.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (MARCH-DECEMBER).
GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1806.
The Peace of Presburg.
Territorial losses of Austria.
Aggrandizement of Bavaria and Würtemberg, which become
kingdoms, and Baden a grand duchy.
The Confederation of the Rhine.
End of the Holy Roman Empire.
"On the 6th of December, hostilities ceased, and the Russians
retired by way of Galicia, but in accordance with the terms of
the armistice, the French troops continued to occupy all the
lands they had invaded, Austria, Tyrol, Venetia, Carniola,
Carinthia, and Styria; within Bohemia they were to have the
circle of Tabor, together with Brno and Znoymo in Moravia and
Pozsony (Pressburg) in Hungary. The Morava (March) and the
Hungarian frontier formed the line of demarcation between the
two armies. A definitive peace was signed at Pressburg on the
26th of December, 1805. Austria recognized the conquests of
France in Holland and Switzerland and the annexation of Genoa,
and ceded to the kingdom of Italy Friuli, Istria, Dalmatia with
its islands, and the Bocche di Cattaro. A little later, by the
explanatory Act of Fontainebleau, she lost the last of her
possessions to the west of the Isonzo, when she exchanged
those portions of the counties of Gorico and Gradisca which
are situated on the right bank of that river for the county of
Montefalcone in Istria. The new kingdoms of Bavaria and
Würtemberg [brought into existence by this treaty, through the
recognition of them by the Emperor Francis] were aggrandized
at the expense of Austria. Bavaria obtained Vorarlberg, the
county of Hohenembs, the town of Lindau, and the whole of
Tyrol, with Brixen and Trent. Austrian Suabia was given to
Würtemberg, while Breisgau and the Ortenau were bestowed on
the new grand duke of Baden. One compensation alone, the duchy
of Salzburg, fell to Austria for all her sacrifices, and this
has remained in her possession ever since. The old bishopric
of Würzburg was created an electorate and granted to Ferdinand
III. of Tuscany and Salzburg. Altogether the monarchy lost
about 25,400 square miles and nearly 3,000,000 of inhabitants.
She lost Tyrol with its brave and loyal inhabitants and the
Vörlande which had assured Austrian influence in Germany;
every possession on the Rhine, in the Black Forest, and on the
Lower Danube; she no longer touched either Switzerland or
Italy, and she ceased to be a maritime power. Besides all
this, she had to pay forty millions for the expenses of the
war, while she was exhausted by contributions and
requisitions. Vienna had suffered much, and the French army
had carried off the 2,000 cannons and the 100,000 guns which
had been contained in her arsenals. On the 16th of January,
1806, the emperor Francis returned to his capital.
{1507}
He was enthusiastically received, and the Viennese returned to
the luxurious and easy way of life which has always
characterized them. ... Austria seemed no longer to have any
part to play in German politics. Bavaria, Würtemberg and Baden
had been formed into a separate league--the Confederation of
the Rhine--under French protection. On the 1st of August,
1806, these states announced to the Reichstag at Ratisbon that
they looked upon the empire as at an end, and on the 6th,
Francis II. formally resigned the empire altogether, and
released all the Imperial officials from their engagements to
him. Thus the sceptre of Charlemagne fell from the hands of
the dynasty which had held it without interruption from 1438."
_L. Leger,
History of Austro-Hungary,
chapter 25._
"Every bond of union was dissolved with the diet of the empire
and with the imperial chamber. The barons and counts of the
empire and the petty princes were mediatised; the princes of
Hohenlohe, Oettingen, Schwarzenberg, Thurn, and Taxis, the
Truchsess von Waldburg, Fürstenberg, Fugger, Leiningen,
Löwenstein, Solms, Hesse-Homburg, Wied-Runkel, and
Orange-Fulda, became subject to the neighbouring Rhenish
confederated princes. Of the remaining six imperial free
cities, Augsburg and Nuremberg fell to Bavaria; Frankfurt,
under the title of grand-duchy, to the ancient elector of
Mayence, who was again transferred thither from Ratisbon. The
ancient Hanse-towns, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen, alone
retained their freedom."
_W. Menzel,
History of Germany,
chapter 253 (volume 3)._
"A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still
preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as
sovereign of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of
the old Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed
his new title when he began to mark a distinction between 'la
France' and 'l'Empire Française.' France had, since A. D.
1792, advanced to the Rhine, and, by the annexation of
Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French Empire
included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent
states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and many German
principalities, the allies of France in the same sense in
which the 'socii populi Romani' were allies of Rome. When the
last of Pitt's coalitions had been destroyed at Austerlitz,
and Austria had made her submission by the peace of Presburg,
the conqueror felt that his hour was come. He had now overcome
two Emperors, those of Austria and Russia, claiming to
represent the old and new Rome respectively, and had in
eighteen months created more kings than the occupants of the
Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought,
to sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole
inheritance of that Western Empire, of which the titles and
ceremonies of his court presented a grotesque imitation. The
task was an easy one after what had been already accomplished.
Previous wars and treaties had so redistributed the
territories and changed the constitution of the Germanic
Empire that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but
name. ... The Emperor Francis, partly foreboding the events
that were at hand, partly in order to meet Napoleon's
assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name of its
peculiar meaning, began in A. D. 1805 to style himself
'Hereditary Emperor of Austria,' while retaining at the same
time his former title. The next act of the drama was one in
which we may more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign
conqueror than the traitorous selfishness of the German
princes, who broke every tie of ancient friendship and duty to
grovel at his throne. By the Act of the Confederation of the
Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806, Bavaria, Würtemberg,
Baden, and several other states, sixteen in all, withdrew from
the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on
August 1st the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the
Diet that his master, who had consented to become Protector of
the Confederate princes, no longer recognized the existence of
the Empire. Francis II. resolved at once to anticipate this
new Odoacer, and by a declaration, dated August 6th, 1806,
resigned the imperial dignity. His deed states that finding it
impossible, in the altered state of things, to fulfil the
obligations imposed by his capitulation, he considers as
dissolved the bonds which attached him to the Germanic body,
releases from their allegiance the states who formed it, and
retires to the government of his hereditary dominions under
the title of 'Emperor of Austria.' Throughout, the term
'German Empire' (Deutsches Reich) is employed. But it was the
crown of Augustus, of Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian,
that Francis of Hapsburg laid down, and a new era in the
world's history was marked by the fall of its most venerable
institution. One thousand and six years after Leo the Pope had
crowned the Frankish king, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight
years after Cæsar had conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy Roman
Empire came to its end."
_J. Bryce,
The Holy Roman Empire,
chapter 20._
GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (January-August).
The Confederation of the Rhine.
Cession of Hanover to Prussia.
Double dealing and weakness of the latter.
Her submission to Napoleon's insults and wrongs.
Final goading of the nation to war.
"The object at which all French politicians had aimed since
the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the exclusion of both
Austria and Prussia from influence in Western Germany, was now
completely attained. The triumph of French statesmanship, the
consummation of two centuries of German discord, was seen in
the Act of Federation subscribed by the Western German
Sovereigns in the summer of 1806. By this Act the Kings of
Bavaria and Würtemberg, the Elector of Baden, and 13 minor
princes, united themselves, in the League known as the Rhenish
Confederacy, under the protection of the French Emperor, and
undertook to furnish contingents, amounting to 63,000 men, in
all wars in which the French Empire should engage. Their
connection with the ancient Germanic Body was completely
severed; the very town in which the Diet of the Empire had
held its meetings was annexed by one of the members of the
Confederacy. The Confederacy itself, with a population of
8,000,000, became for all purposes of war and foreign policy a
part of France. Its armies were organised by French officers;
its frontiers were fortified by French engineers; its treaties
were made for it at Paris. In the domestic changes which took
place within these States the work of consolidation begun in
1801 was carried forward with increased vigour. Scores of tiny
principalities which had escaped dissolution in the earlier
movement were now absorbed by their stronger neighbours. ...
{1508}
With the establishment of the Rhenish Confederacy and the
conquest of Naples, Napoleon's empire reached, but did not
overpass, the limits within which the sovereignty of France
might probably have been long maintained. ... If we may judge
from the feeling with which Napoleon was regarded in Germany
down to the middle of the year 1806, and in Italy down to a
much later date, the Empire then founded might have been
permanently upheld, if Napoleon had abstained from attacking
other States." During the winter of 1806, Count Haugwitz, the
Prussian minister, had visited Paris "for the purpose of
obtaining some modification in the treaty which he had signed
[at the palace of Schönbrunn, near Vienna] on behalf of
Prussia after the battle of Austerlitz. The principal feature
in that treaty had been the grant of Hanover to Prussia by the
French Emperor in return for its alliance. This was the point
which above all others excited King Frederick William's fears
and scruples; He desired to acquire Hanover, but he also
desired to derive his title rather from its English owner
[King George III., who was also Elector of Hanover] than from
its French invader. It was the object of Haugwitz' visit to
Paris to obtain an alteration in the terms of the treaty which
should make the Prussian occupation of Hanover appear to be
merely provisional, and reserve to the King of England at
least a nominal voice in its ultimate transfer. In full
confidence that Napoleon would agree to such a change, the
King of Prussia, on taking possession of Hanover in January,
1806, concealed the fact of its cession to himself by
Napoleon, and published an untruthful proclamation. ... The
bitter truth that the treaty between France and Prussia
contained no single word reserving the rights of the Elector,
and that the very idea of qualifying the absolute cession of
Hanover was an afterthought, lay hidden in the conscience of
the Prussian Government. Never had a Government more
completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy.
Count Haugwitz, on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon
with a storm of indignation and contempt. Napoleon declared
that the ill-faith of Prussia had made an end even of that
miserable pact which had been extorted after Austerlitz, and
insisted that Prussia should openly defy Great Britain by
closing the ports of Northern Germany to British vessels, and
by declaring itself endowed by Napoleon with Hanover in virtue
of Napoleon's own right of conquest. Haugwitz signed a second
and more humiliating treaty [February 15] embodying these
conditions; and the Prussian Government, now brought into the
depths of contempt, but unready for immediate war, executed
the orders of its master. ... A decree was published excluding
the ships of England from the ports of Prussia and from those
of Hanover itself (March 28, 1806). It was promptly followed
by the seizure of 400 Prussian vessels in British harbours,
and by the total extinction of Prussian maritime commerce by
British privateers. Scarcely was Prussia committed to this
ruinous conflict with Great Britain when Napoleon opened
negotiations for peace with Mr. Fox's Government. The first
condition required by Great Britain was the restitution of
Hanover to King George III. It was unhesitatingly granted by
Napoleon. Thus was Prussia to be mocked of its prey, after it
had been robbed of all its honour. ... There was scarcely a
courtier in Berlin who did not feel that the yoke of the
French had become past endurance; even Haugwitz himself now
considered war as a question of time. The patriotic party in
the capital and the younger officers of the army bitterly
denounced the dishonoured Government, and urged the King to
strike for the credit of his country. ... Brunswick was
summoned to the King's council to form plans of a campaign;
and appeals for help were sent to Vienna, to St. Petersburg,
and even to the hostile Court of London. The condition of
Prussia at this critical moment was one which filled with the
deepest alarm those few patriotic statesmen who were not
blinded by national vanity or by a slavery to routine. ...
Early in the year 1806 a paper was drawn up by Stein,
exposing, in language seldom used by a statesman, the
character of the men by whom Frederick William was surrounded,
and declaring that nothing but a speedy change of system could
save the Prussian State from utter downfall and ruin. Two
measures of immediate necessity were specified by Stein, the
establishment of a responsible council of Ministers, and the
removal of Haugwitz and all his friends from power. ... The
army of Prussia ... was nothing but the army of Frederick the
Great grown twenty years older. ... All Southern Germany was
still in Napoleon's hands. The appearance of a Russian force
in Dalmatia, after that country had been ceded by Austria to
the French Emperor, had given Napoleon an excuse for
maintaining his troops in their positions beyond the Rhine. As
the probability of a war with Prussia became greater and greater,
Napoleon tightened his grasp upon the Confederate States.
Publications originating among the patriotic circles of
Austria were beginning to appeal to the German people to unite
against a foreign oppressor. An anonymous pamphlet, entitled
'Germany in its Deep Humiliation,' was sold by various
booksellers in Bavaria, among others by Palm, a citizen of
Nuremberg. There is no evidence that Palm was even acquainted
with the contents of the pamphlet; but ... Napoleon ...
required a victim to terrify those who, among the German
people, might be inclined to listen to the call of patriotism.
Palm was not too obscure for the new Charlemagne. The innocent
and unoffending man, innocent even of the honourable crime of
attempting to save his country, was dragged before a tribunal
of French soldiers, and executed within twenty-four hours of
his trial, in pursuance of the imperative orders of Napoleon
(August 26). ... Several years later, ... the story of Palm's
death was one of those that kindled the bitterest sense of
wrong; at the time, it exercised no influence upon the course
of political events. Prussia had already resolved upon war."
_C. A. Fyffe,
History of Modern Europe,
volume 1, chapters 6-7._
ALSO IN:
_Sir W. Scott,
Life of Napoleon,
chapters 51-52._
_J. R. Seeley,
Life and Times of Stein,
part 2, chapters 4-5 (volume 1)._
_P. Lanfrey,
History of Napoleon,
volume 2, chapter 15._
{1509}
GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (October).
Napoleon's sudden invasion of Prussia.
The decisive battle of Jena.
Prostration of the Prussian Kingdom.