Francis II and I was the last Holy Roman Emperor as Francis II from 1792 to 1806, and the first Emperor of Austria as Francis I from 1804 to 1835. He was also King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, and served as the first president of the German Confederation following its establishment in 1815.
The prince-electors, pl. Kurfürsten, Czech: Kurfiřt, Latin: Princeps Elector) were the members of the electoral college that elected the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Electoral Palatinate or the Palatinate, officially the Electorate of the Palatinate, was a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire. The electorate had its origins under the rulership of the Counts Palatine of Lotharingia in 915; it was then restructured under the Counts Palatine of the Rhine in 1085. From 1214 until the Electoral Palatinate was merged into the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1805, the House of Wittelsbach provided the Counts Palatine or Electors. These counts palatine of the Rhine would serve as prince-electors from "time immemorial", and were noted as such in a papal letter of 1261; they were confirmed as electors by the Golden Bull of 1356.
The House of Wittelsbach is a former Bavarian dynasty, with branches that have ruled over territories including the Electorate of Bavaria, the Electoral Palatinate, the Electorate of Cologne, Holland, Zeeland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Hungary, Bohemia, and Greece. Their ancestral lands of Bavaria and the Palatinate were prince-electorates, and the family had three of its members elected emperors and kings of the Holy Roman Empire. They ruled over the Kingdom of Bavaria which was created in 1805 and continued to exist until 1918.
Frederick Augustus I was a member of the House of Wettin who reigned as the last Elector of Saxony from 1763 to 1806 and as the first King of Saxony from 1806 to 1827. He was also Duke of Warsaw from 1807 to 1815, a short-lived disputed Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1812, and a legitimate candidate to the Polish throne.
The Treaty of Lunéville was signed in the Treaty House of Lunéville on 9 February 1801. The signatory parties were the French Republic and Emperor Francis II, who signed on his own behalf as ruler of the hereditary domains of the House of Austria and on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire. The signatories were Joseph Bonaparte and Count Ludwig von Cobenzl, the Austrian foreign minister. The treaty formally ended Austrian and Imperial participation in the War of the Second Coalition and the French Revolutionary Wars, as well as the Imperial Kingdom of Italy.
Ferdinand III was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1790 to 1801 and, after a period of disenfranchisement, again from 1814 to 1824. He was also the Prince-elector and Grand Duke of Salzburg (1803–1805) and Duke and Elector of Würzburg (1805–1814).
The Austrian Empire, officially known as the Empire of Austria, was a multinational European great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence, it was the third most populous monarchy in Europe after the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom, while geographically, it was the third-largest empire in Europe after the Russian Empire and the First French Empire.
The Confederated States of the Rhine, simply known as the Confederation of the Rhine or Rhine Confederation, was a confederation of German client states established at the behest of Napoleon some months after he defeated Austria and Russia at the Battle of Austerlitz. Its creation brought about the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire shortly afterward. The Confederation of the Rhine lasted for only seven years, from 1806 to 1813, dissolving after Napoleon's defeat in the War of the Sixth Coalition.
The Treaty of Schönbrunn, sometimes known as the Peace of Schönbrunn or the Treaty of Vienna, was signed between France and Austria at Schönbrunn Palace near Vienna on 14 October 1809. The treaty ended the Fifth Coalition during the Napoleonic Wars, after Austria had been defeated at the decisive Battle of Wagram on 5–6 July.
German mediatisation was the major redistribution and reshaping of territorial holdings that took place between 1802 and 1814 in Germany by means of the subsumption and secularisation of a large number of Imperial Estates, prefiguring, precipitating, and continuing after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Most ecclesiastical principalities, free imperial cities, secular principalities, and other minor self-ruling entities of the Holy Roman Empire lost their independent status and were absorbed by the remaining states. By the end of the mediatisation process, the number of German states had been reduced from almost 300 to 39.
The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1806 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German Empire in 1871, the kingdom became a federated state of the new empire and was second in size, power, and wealth only to the leading state, the Kingdom of Prussia.
The (Princely) County of Tyrol was an estate of the Holy Roman Empire established about 1140. After 1253, it was ruled by the House of Gorizia and from 1363 by the House of Habsburg. In 1804, the County of Tyrol, unified with the secularised prince-bishoprics of Trent and Brixen, became a crown land of the Austrian Empire. From 1867, it was a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary.
The Electorate of Bavaria was a quasi-independent hereditary electorate of the Holy Roman Empire from 1623 to 1806, when it was succeeded by the Kingdom of Bavaria.
The Electorate of Baden was a State of the Holy Roman Empire from 1803 to 1806. In 1803, the Imperial diet bestowed the office of Prince-elector to Charles Frederick, but in 1806, Francis II dissolved the Empire. Baden then achieved sovereignty, and Charles Frederick became Grand Duke.
The Electorate of Württemberg was a short-lived state of the Holy Roman Empire on the right bank of the Rhine. In 1803, the Imperial diet raised the Duchy of Württemberg to an Electorate, the highest form of a princedom in the Holy Roman Empire. However, soon afterward, on 1 January 1806, the last Elector assumed the title of King of Württemberg. Later, the last Emperor, Francis II, abolished de facto the empire on 6 August 1806.
The Electorate of Salzburg, occasionally known as the Grand Duchy of Salzburg, was an electoral principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1803–05, the short-lived successor state of the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg.
The Venetian Province was the name of the territory of the former Republic of Venice ceded by the French First Republic to the Habsburg monarchy under the terms of the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio that ended the War of the First Coalition. The province's capital was Venice.
The Thurn-und-Taxis Post was a private postal service and the successor to the Imperial Reichspost of the Holy Roman Empire. The Thurn-und-Taxis Post was operated by the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis between 1806 and 1867. The company was headquartered in Regensburg from its creation in 1806 until 1810 when it relocated to Frankfurt am Main where it remained until 1867.
The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire occurred on 6 August 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, abdicated his title and released all Imperial states and officials from their oaths and obligations to the empire. Since the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire had been recognized by Western Europeans as the legitimate continuation of the ancient Roman Empire due to its emperors having been proclaimed as Roman emperors by the papacy. Through this Roman legacy, the Holy Roman Emperors claimed to be universal monarchs whose jurisdiction extended beyond their empire's formal borders to all of Christian Europe and beyond. The decline of the Holy Roman Empire was a long and drawn-out process lasting centuries. The formation of the first modern sovereign territorial states in the 16th and 17th centuries, which brought with it the idea that jurisdiction corresponded to actual territory governed, threatened the universal nature of the Holy Roman Empire.
