Our survey in the last section has carried us down to the beginning of the changes which led to the break-up of the old German Kingdom. Germany is the only land in history which has changed from a kingdom to a confederation. ♦Sketch of the process, 1806-1815.♦ The tie which bound the vassal princes to the king became so lax that it was at last thrown off altogether. In this process foreign invasion largely helped. Between the two processes of foreign war and domestic disintegration, a chaotic time followed, in which boundaries were ever shifting and new states were ever rising and falling. ♦The German Bund, 1815.♦ In the end, nearly all the lands which had formed the old kingdom came together again, with new names and boundaries, as members of a lax Confederation. ♦The new Confederation and Empire, 1866-1871.♦ The latest events of all have driven the former chief of the Confederation beyond its boundaries; they have joined its other members together by a much closer tie; they have raised the second member of the former Confederation to the post of perpetual chief of the new Confederation, and they have further clothed him with the Imperial title. ♦The new Empire still federal.♦ But it must be remembered that the modern Empire of Germany is still a Federal state. Its chief bears the title of Emperor; still the relation is federal and not feudal. The lesser members of the Empire are not vassals of the Emperor, as they were in the days of the old kingdom. They are states bound to him and to one another by a tie which is purely federal. That the state whose prince holds Imperial rank far surpasses any of its other members in extent and power is an important political fact; but it does not touch the federal position of all the states of the Empire, great and small. Reuss-Schleiz is not a vassal of Prussia; it is a member of a league in which the voice of Prussia naturally goes for more than the voice of Reuss-Schleiz. ♦Wars of the French Revolution, 1793-1814.♦ The dissolution of the German kingdom, and with it the wiping out of the last tradition of the Roman Empire, cannot be separated from the history of wars of the French Revolution which went before it, and which indeed led to it. For our purely geographical purpose, we must distinguish the changes which directly affected the German kingdom from those which affected the Austrian states, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, lands which have now a separate historic being from Germany. ♦War between France and the Empire, 1793-1801.♦ The last war which the Empire as such waged with France was the eight years’ war which was ended by the Peace of Luneville. ♦The left bank of the Rhine ceded by the Peace of Luneville, 1801.♦ By that peace, all Germany on the left bank on the Rhine was ceded to France. What a sacrifice this was we at once see, when we bear in mind that it took in the three metropolitan cities of Köln, Mainz, and Trier, the royal city of Aachen, and the famous bishoprics of Worms and Speyer. ♦The Reichs­deputations­haupt­schluss, 1803.♦ A number of princes thus lost all or part of their dominions, and it was presently agreed that they should compensate themselves within the lands which remained to the kingdom at the expense of the free cities and the ecclesiastical princes. ♦End of the Ecclesiastical principalities.♦ The great German hierarchy of princely bishops and abbots now came to an end, with a solitary exception. ♦The Prince-Primate of Regensburg.♦ As the ancient metropolis of Mainz had passed to France, the see of its archbishop was removed to Regensburg, where, under the title of Prince-Primate, he remained an Elector and Arch-Chancellor of the Empire. ♦Salzburg a secular electorate.♦ Salzburg became a secular electorate. ♦The Free Cities.♦ The other ecclesiastical states were annexed by the neighbouring princes, and of the free cities six only were left. These were the Hanseatic towns of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the inland towns of Frankfurt, Nürnberg, and Augsburg. ♦New Electorates.♦ Besides Salzburg, three new Electorates arose, Württemberg, Baden, and Hessen-Cassel. None of these new Electors ever chose any King or Emperor. ♦Peace of Pressburg, 1805.
Kingdom of Württemberg and Bavaria.♦ The next war led to the Peace of Pressburg, in which the Electors of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden appear as allies of France, and by which those of Bavaria and Württemberg are acknowledged as Kings. ♦They divide the western lands of Austria.♦ Austria was now wholly cut off from south-western Germany. Württemberg and Baden divided her Swabian possessions, while Tyrol, Trent, Brixen, together with the free city of Augsburg, fell to the lot of Bavaria. ♦Grand Duchy of Würzburg.♦ Austria received Salzburg; its prince removed himself and his electorate to Würzburg, and a Grand Duchy of Würzburg was formed to compensate its Elector.

These were the last changes which took place while any shadow of the old Kingdom and Empire lasted. ♦Title of ‘Emperor of Austria.’♦ The reigning King of Germany and Emperor-elect, Francis King of Hungary and Bohemia and Archduke of Austria, had already begun to call himself ‘Hereditary Emperor of Austria.’ In the treaty of Pressburg he is described by the strange title, unheard of before or after, of ‘Emperor of Germany and Austria,’ and the Empire itself is spoken of as a ‘Germanic Confederation.’ These formulæ were prophetic. ♦The Confederation of the Rhine, July 12, 1806.♦ The next year a crowd of princes renounced their allegiance, and formed themselves into the Confederation of the Rhine under the protectorate of France. ♦Dissolution of the Empire, August 6, 1806.♦ The formal dissolution of the Empire followed at once. The succession which had gone on from Augustus ended; the work of Charles the Great was undone. Instead of the Frank ruling over Gaul, the Frenchman ruled over Germany. ♦Repeated changes, 1806-1811.♦ A time of confusion followed, in which boundaries were constantly shifting, states were constantly rising and falling, and new portions of German ground were being constantly added to France. ♦Germany in 1811-1813.♦ At the time of the greatest extent of French dominion, the political state of Germany was on this wise. ♦Territories of Denmark and Sweden.♦ The dissolution of the Empire had released all its members from their allegiance, and the German possessions of the Kings of Denmark and Sweden had been incorporated with their several kingdoms. ♦Losses of Prussia and Austria.♦ Hannover was wholly lost to its island sovereign; seized and lost again more than once by Prussia and by France, it passed at last wholly into the hands of the foreign power. Prussia had lost, not only its momentary possession of Hannover, but also everything west of the Elbe. Austria had yielded Salzburg to Bavaria, and part of her own south-western territory in Krain and Kärnthen had passed to France under the name of the Illyrian Provinces. ♦Annexations to France.♦ France too, beside all the lands west of the Rhine, had incorporated East Friesland, Oldenburg, part of Hannover, and the three Hanseatic cities. ♦Confederation of the Rhine.♦ The remaining states of Germany formed the Confederation of the Rhine. The chief among these were the four Kingdoms of Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, and Westfalia. ♦Kingdoms of Saxony and Westfalia.♦ Saxony had become a kingdom under its own Elector presently after the dissolution of the Empire: the new-made kingdom of Westfalia had a French king in Jerome Buonaparte. ♦Grand Duchy of Frankfurt.♦ Besides Mecklenburg, Baden—now a Grand Duchy—Berg, Nassau, Hessen, and other smaller states, there were now among its members the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, and also a Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, the possession of the Prince Primate, once of Mainz, afterwards of Regensburg. ♦Germany wiped out.♦ We may say with truth that during this time Germany had ceased to exist; its very name had vanished from the map of Europe.

Prussia was a power so thoroughly German that the fate even of its non-German possessions cannot well be separated from German geography. ♦The Kingdom of Prussia cut short, 1807.♦ The same blow which cut short the old electorate of Brandenburg no less cut short the kingdom of Prussia in its Polish acquisitions. ♦Commonwealth of Danzig.♦ West-Prussia only was left, and even here Danzig was cut off to form a separate republic. ♦Duchy of Warsaw, 1806-1814.♦ The other Polish territories of Prussia formed the Duchy of Warsaw, which was held by the new King of Saxony. ♦Position of Silesia.♦ Silesia thus fell back again on its half-isolated position, all the more so as it lay between the German and the Polish possessions of the Saxon king. The territory left to Prussia was now wholly continuous, without any outlying possessions; but the length of its frontier and the strange irregularity of its shape on the map were now more striking than ever.

The liberation of Germany and the fall of Buonaparte brought with it a complete reconstruction of the German territory. ♦The German Confederation, 1815.♦ Germany again arose, no longer as an Empire or Kingdom, but as a lax Confederation. Austria, the duchy whose princes had been so often chosen Emperors, became its presiding state. The boundaries of the new Confederation differed but slightly from those of the old Kingdom; but the internal divisions had greatly changed. ♦Princes holding lands both within the Confederation and out of it.♦ Once more a number of princes held lands both in Germany and out of it. The so-called ‘Emperor’ of Austria, the Kings of Prussia, Denmark, and the Netherlands, became members of the Confederation for those parts of their dominions which had formerly been states of the Empire. In the like sort, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, having recovered his continental dominions, entered the Confederation by the title of King of Hannover. ♦Kingdom of Hannover, 1815-1866.♦ This new kingdom was made up of the former electorate with some additions, including East-Friesland. ♦Increase of the Prussian territory.
Dismemberment of Saxony.♦ In other parts the Prussian territories were largely increased. Magdeburg and Halberstadt were recovered. Swedish Pomerania was added to the rest of the ancient duchy; and, more important than this, a large part of the kingdom of Saxony, including the greater part of Lausitz and the formerly outlying-land of Cottbus, was incorporated with Prussia. This change, which made the Saxon kingdom far smaller than the old electorate, altogether put an end to the peninsular position of Silesia, even as regarded the strictly German possessions of Prussia. ♦Posen.♦ The kingdom was at the same time rendered more compact by the recovery of part of its Polish possessions under the name of the Grand Duchy of Posen. In western Germany again Prussia now made great acquisitions. ♦Rhenish and Westfalian territory.♦ Its old outlying Rhenish and Westfalian possessions grew into a large and tolerably compact territory, though lying isolated from the great body of the monarchy. The greater part of the territory west of the Rhine which had been ceded to France now became Prussian, including the cities of Köln, no longer a metropolitan see, Trier, Münster, and Paderborn. The main part of the Prussian possessions thus consisted of two detached masses, of very unequal size, but which seemed to crave for a closer geographical union. ♦Neufchâtel.♦ The Principality of Neufchâtel, which made the Prussian king a member of the Swiss Confederation, will be mentioned elsewhere.

♦Territory recovered by Austria.♦

Of the other powers which entered the Confederation for the German parts of their dominions, but which also had territories beyond the Confederation, Austria recovered Salzburg, Tyrol, Trent, and Brixen, together with the south-eastern lands which had passed to France. Thus the territory of the Confederation, like that of the old Kingdom, again reached to the Hadriatic. ♦Possession of Denmark.
Holstein and Lauenburg.♦ Denmark entered the Confederation for Holstein, and for a new possession, that of Lauenburg, the duchy which in a manner represented ancient Saxony. ♦Luxemburg.♦ The King of the Netherlands entered the Confederation for the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, part of which however was cut off to be added to the Rhenish possessions of Prussia. ♦Sweden gives up Pomerania.♦ Sweden, by the cession of its last remnant of Pomerania, ceased altogether to be a German power.

There were thus five powers whose dominions lay partly within the Confederation, partly out of it. ♦Prussia the greatest German Power.♦ In the case of one of these, that of Prussia, the division of German and non-German territory was purely formal. Prussia was practically a purely German power, and the greatest of purely German powers. ♦Austria.♦ Her rival Austria stood higher in formal rank in the Confederation, and ruled over a much greater continuous territory; but here the distinction between German and non-German lands was really practical, as later events have shown. ♦Comparison of the position of Austria and Prussia.♦ It has been found possible to shut out Austria from Germany. To shut out Prussia would have been to abolish Germany altogether. ♦Hannover.♦ Hannover, though under a common sovereign with Great Britain, was so completely cut off from Great Britain, and had so little influence on British politics, that it was practically as much a purely German state before its separation from Great Britain as it was afterwards. ♦Holstein and Luxemburg.♦ In the cases of Denmark and the Netherlands, princes the greater part of whose territories lay out of Germany held adjoining territories in Germany. Here then were materials for political questions and difficulties; and in the case of Denmark, these questions and difficulties became of the highest importance.

♦Kingdom of Bavaria.♦

Among those members of the Confederation, whose territory lay wholly within Germany, the Kingdom of Bavaria stood first. Its newly acquired lands to the south were given back to Austria; but it made large acquisitions to the north-east. Modern Bavaria consists of a large mass of territory, Bavarian, Swabian, and Frankish, counting within its boundaries the famous cities of Augsburg and Nürnberg and the great bishoprics of Bamberg and Würzburg. ♦Her Rhenish territory.♦ Besides this, Bavaria recovered a considerable part of the ancient Palatinate west of the Rhine, which adds Speyer to the list of Bavarian cities. ♦Württemberg.
Saxony.♦ The other states which bore the kingly title, Württemberg and the remnant of Saxony, were of much smaller extent. Saxony however kept a position in many ways out of all proportion to the narrowed extent of its geographical limits. Württemberg, increased by various additions from the Swabian lands of Austria and from other smaller principalities, had, though the smallest of kingdoms, won for itself a much higher position than had been held by its former Counts and Dukes. ♦Baden.♦ Along with them might be ranked the Grand Duchy of Baden, with its strange irregular frontier, taking in Heidelberg and Constanz. ♦Hessen.♦ Among a crowd of smaller states stand out the two Hessian principalities, the Grand Duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt, and Hessen-Cassel, whose prince still kept the title of Elector, and the Grand Duchy of Nassau. ♦Oldenburg.♦ The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg nearly divided the Kingdom of Hannover into two parts. ♦Anhalt.♦ The principalities of Anhalt stretched into the Prussian territory between Halberstadt and the newly-won Saxon lands. ♦Brunswick.♦ The Duchy of Brunswick helped to divide the two great masses of Prussian territory. ♦Mecklenburg.♦ In the north Mecklenburg remained, as before, unequally divided between the Grand Dukes of Schwerin and Strelitz. Germany was thus thoroughly mapped out afresh. Some of the old names had vanished; some had got new meanings. The greater states, with the exception of Saxony, became greater. A crowd of insignificant principalities passed away. Another crowd of them remained, especially the smaller Saxon duchies in the land which had once been Thuringian. But, if we look to two of the most characteristic features of the old Empire, we shall find that one has passed away for ever, while the other was sadly weakened. ♦No ecclesiastical principality.♦ No ecclesiastical principality revived in the new state of things. ♦Lüttich added to Belgium.♦ The territory of one of the old bishoprics, that of Lüttich, formerly absorbed by France, now passed wholly away from Germany, and became part of the new kingdom of Belgium. ♦The four Free Cities.♦ Of the free cities four did revive, but four only. The three Hanse Towns, no longer included in French departments, and Frankfurt, no longer a Grand Duchy, entered the Confederation as independent commonwealths. ♦Revival of German national life.♦ Germany, for a while utterly crushed, had come to life again; she had again reached a certain measure of national unity, which could hardly fail to become closer.[14]

The Confederation thus formed lasted, with hardly any change that concerns geography, till the war of 1866. ♦Division of Luxemburg, 1831.♦ The Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, which had, by the arrangements of 1815, been held by the King of the Netherlands as a member of the German Confederation, was, on the separation of Belgium and the Netherlands, cut into two parts. Part was added to Belgium; another part, though quite detached from the kingdom of the Netherlands, was held by its king as a member of the Confederation. In 1839 he also entered it for the Duchy of Limburg. ♦War in Sleswick and Holstein, 1848-1851.♦ The internal movements which began in 1848, and the war in Sleswick and Holstein which began in the same time, led to no lasting geographical changes. In 1849 the Swabian principalities of Hohenzollern were joined to the Prussian crown. ♦Cession of the Duchies to Austria and Prussia, 1864.♦ The last Danish war ended by the cession of Sleswick and Holstein, together with Lauenburg, to Prussia and Austria jointly, an arrangement in its own nature provisional. Austria ceded her right in Lauenburg to Prussia in the next year, and in the next year again came the Seven Weeks’ War, and the great geographical changes which followed it. ♦Abolition of the Confederation.
Exclusion of Austria.
North-German Confederation.
Cession of Sleswick and Holstein to Prussia, 1866.♦ The German Confederation was abolished; Austria was shut out from all share in German affairs, and she ceded her joint right in Sleswick and Holstein to Prussia. ♦Prussian annexations.♦ The Northern states of Germany became a distinct Confederation under the presidency of Prussia, whose immediate dominion was increased by the annexation of the kingdom of Hannover, the duchy of Nassau, the electorate of Hessen, and the city of Frankfurt. The States south of the Main, Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and the southern part of Hessen-Darmstadt, remained for a while outside of the new League. ♦All the Prussian lands admitted to the Confederation.♦ The non-German dominions of Prussia, Prussia strictly so called with the Polish duchy of Posen and the newly acquired land of Sleswick, were now incorporated with the Confederation; on the other hand, all that Austria had held within the Confederation was now shut out of it. ♦Settlement of Luxemburg, 1867.♦ Luxemburg also was not included in the new League, and, after some disputes, it was in the next year recognized as a neutral territory under its own duke the King of the Netherlands. ♦Liechtenstein.♦ The little principality of Liechtenstein was perhaps forgotten altogether; but, as not being included in the Confederation, nor yet incorporated with anything else, it must be looked on as becoming an absolutely independent state. ♦Great geographical changes, 1866.♦ Thus the geographical frontiers of Germany underwent, at a single blow, changes as great as they had undergone in the wars of the French Revolution. The geography of the presiding power of the new League was no less changed.