The Holy Roman Empire - neither holy, nor Roman, nor empire.
Truly though, it seems that the Holy Roman Empire existed as no more than a weak attempt
to revive the glory of what once was.
The HRE really was pretty inadequate - relatively, at least.
So then, how did the successor of the magnificent Roman Empire turn out so incredibly bad?...
One reason that many historians often point to is the fact that the Holy Roman Emperor
was actually, for the most part, an elected official.
At the birth of the empire in the 9th century, the emperor was chosen by the Pope, beginning
with Charlemagne.
Over the next few centuries, this continued to be the case, generally speaking, although
the role was more or less hereditary for a good chunk of time between the 9th and 13th
centuries.
Then, in the 13th century, the Pope allegedly requested that the emperor instead be elected
by a group of prince-electors within the empire.
These prince-electors were split into two categories; the secular electors and spiritual
electors.
The secular electors were, of course, local rulers within the empire whose own positions
were hereditary.
The spiritual electors, on the other hand, were chosen by cathedral chapters and served
as both religious and local leaders over their own territories under the Holy Roman Emperor.
Together, these two groups would vote to elect the new monarch, and the Pope would then officially
crown the nominee as emperor for the following few centuries.
Near the end, when the Habsburg family came to power as the Holy Roman Emperors, the elections
were mostly just a formality and the title was essentially hereditary on everything other
than paper, but nonetheless, it was still officially an elected position.
This detail in itself isn’t exactly a smoking gun in the case of why the empire was so messy,
but it’s still a factor that is often cited as a contribution.
This circumstance also goes hand in hand with the next red flag that historians seem to
really focus on - the decentralization of the empire.
While decentralization itself wasn’t necessarily a sign of doom, it did contribute heavily
to the lack of authority that the emperor often actually had.
The reason people often feel that the HRE wasn’t actually an empire has a lot to do
with this detail and the fact that the emperor seemed to be the head of a confederation-like
entity more than even an empire and its vassals.
To give one example, the Holy Roman Empire didn’t even have one fixed capital city.
Instead, the empire was actually an amalgamation of dozens and eventually hundreds of individual
entities with their own local leaders who had their own authority, and whose authority
often actually restricted that of the emperor.
By the end of the Thirty Years’ War, this fact became even more apparent with the Peace
of Westphalia, which recognized the independence both religiously and politically of Holy Roman
member states.
Even before this agreement though, the decentralized state of the HRE was undoubted and often contributed
to a lack of unity and an essence of union or confederation more than an empire.
This alone makes the Holy Roman Empire appear to be a bit of a mess, but again, there’s
more that contributed to the inadequacy as a whole…
Religious discord, ironically, was another significant reason for the disordered state
of the empire.
Following the Protestant Reformation, the HRE became home to a mixture of Catholic and
Protestant states, and conflict was seemingly inevitable.
The Peace of Augsburg was consequently signed between Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire
and the Schmalkaldic League in September of 1555 in hopes of suppressing any religious
disputes within the empire.
For the most part, the treaty was successful at preventing any violent conflicts between
the Roman Catholics and German Lutherans of the empire, and it granted all member states
the freedom to choose between the two religions, but it also further damaged any image or feeling
of unity under the emperor.
The treaty wasn’t well respected by a certain emperor either.
When Ferdinand II found himself on the Holy Roman throne, he tried to enact a counter-reformation
and not-so-subtly force Roman Catholicism on his people.
This triggered the series of events that would eventually lead to the Thirty Years’ War,
which pitted the Holy Roman Emperor against many of his own people.
The war threw Europe into turmoil and truly fractured the HRE.
Even worse, the series of treaties to end the war, as previously mentioned, was the
Peace of Westphalia, which officially solidified the emperor’s existence as more or less
just a symbolic position.
By this point, the combination of drastic decentralization, the odd process of electing
emperors whether figurative or not, and now the unfixable religious disunity was deeply
weakening the Holy Roman Empire.
This proved to be fatal, then, when the great Napoleon decided to take on the crumbling
imperial state…
With the HRE barely holding itself together as any kind of united entity, Napoleon had
already begun breathing down its neck after the Treaty of Lunéville gave multiple Holy
Roman territories over to France.
Still, there had remained some, even if dwindling, sense of unity within the Holy Roman Empire
throughout the French Revolutionary Wars, which saw Prussia come to the aid of the emperor
as probably the most important player on the empire’s side.
But, when Prussia eventually withdrew its support due to more pressing priorities in
its Polish territories, the fate of the HRE became even grimmer.
As the empire scrambled to reorganize and rebuild its political and imperial prowess
while making peace with France, a new problem arose with Napoleon’s coronation as “Emperor
of the French” in 1804.
While a previous agreement had already been made which established a hierarchy where the
Holy Roman Empire was intended to remain the ultimate authority in Europe, many within
the HRE, and the Austrians in particular, felt that Napoleon taking the imperial title
was an undeniable threat.
Still, they knew that refusing to acknowledge his new status, which had already been accepted
by the Pope, would only mean a new war with the French.
In response, Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire declared himself to now also be the
Emperor of Austria.
Though reluctantly, conflict broke out yet again between Austria and France in the War
of the Third Coalition, which resulted in an even more complicated shuffle of territories
thanks to the Peace of Pressburg.
Finally, on August 1, 1806, Napoleon declared that he no longer recognized the legitimacy
of the Holy Roman Empire.
This came after a handful of German states within the HRE had formed the Confederation
of the Rhine the month prior, and those states too issued a proclamation alongside Napoleon,
stating that the Holy Roman Empire was no longer an empire anyway, and had collapsed
long ago due to the outcome of the Battle of Austerlitz.
Not even a week later, Francis II, the final emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, abdicated
his thrown and dissolved the imperial entity entirely…
As drastic as it may seem now, Francis’s decision to topple his own empire was actually
not as unpredictable as one may think.
In fact, he had already decided that, whenever it best benefitted Austria, he would do just
that.
This mindset is a good example of why the Holy Roman Empire appears to have been such
a mess and, in many ways, a defective empire.
The title of Emperor of the Romans was about prestige more than anything else, which is
why the layout of the empire as a confederation-type was tolerable.
This, though, as mentioned at the beginning, played a significant role in the disunity
and ultimate demise of the empire.
Even at the very end, it was the sovereignty of the territories within the empire that
allowed the German states to negotiate with and eventually align with Napoleon.
Additionally, the religious conflict brought about by the Protestant reformation was poorly
addressed by the often absentee emperors and truly gives irony to the “Holy” part of
the Holy Roman Empire.
Really the only thing holy or even Roman about it was the role of the Pope in confirming
the election of each emperor, but this didn’t even last through the entire existence of
the HRE.
In reality, this barely holy and scarcely Roman self-proclaimed empire was more often
than not just a symbol, or a shadow, of the glorious Roman Empire that once was.
The combination of decentralization, religious conflict, internal and external disputes,
and other oddities all contributed to why the Holy Roman Empire was as disordered as
it was.
The reason why it was so bad, especially near the end, to the point of betrayal by member
states and the emperor himself, was due to a simple lack of care.
Since the title was mostly honorary, it served the imperial rulers, such as Francis II, better
to prioritize their other territories and kingdoms.
There wasn’t much motivation to risk Napoleon declaring war or attempting to seize the Holy
Roman crown to defend an empire that really only existed as such in name.