Cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France and the results for Germany.
244. In the treaty signed by Austria at Lunéville in February, 1801, the emperor agreed, on his own part and on the part of the Holy Roman Empire, that the French republic should thereafter possess in full sovereignty the territories lying on the left bank of the Rhine which belonged to the empire, and that thereafter the Rhine should form the boundary of France from the point where it left Switzerland to where it flowed into Dutch territory. As a natural consequence of this cession, various princes and states of the empire found themselves dispossessed, either wholly or in part, of their lands. The empire bound itself to furnish the hereditary princes who had lost possessions on the left bank of the Rhine with "an indemnity within the empire."
Secularization of church lands.
This provision implied a veritable territorial metamorphosis of the old Holy Roman Empire, which, except for the development of Prussia, was still in pretty much the same condition as in Luther's time.[417] There was no unoccupied land to give the dispossessed princes; but there were two classes of states in the empire that did not belong to hereditary princes, namely, the ecclesiastical states and the free towns. As the churchmen,—archbishops, bishops, and abbots,—who ruled over the ecclesiastical states, were forbidden by the rules of the church to marry, they could of course have no lawful heirs. Should an ecclesiastical ruler be deprived of his realms, he might, therefore, be indemnified by a pension for life, with no fear of any injustice to heirs, since there could be none. The transfer of the lands of an ecclesiastical prince to a lay, i.e., hereditary, prince was called secularization. The towns, once so powerful and important, had lost their former influence, and seemed as much of an anomaly in the German Confederation as the ecclesiastical states.
Decree of the German diet redistributing German territory, 1803.
Disappearance of the imperial cities.
Fate of the knights.
Reichsdeputationshauptschluss was the high-sounding German name of the great decree issued by the imperial diet in 1803, redistributing the territory so as to indemnify the hereditary princes dispossessed by the cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France. All the ecclesiastical states, except the electorate of Mayence, were turned over to lay rulers. Of the forty-eight imperial cities, only six were left. Three of these still exist as republican members of the present German federation; namely, the Hanseatic towns,—Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. Bavaria received the bishoprics of Würzburg, Bamberg, Augsburg, Freising, and a number of the imperial cities. Baden received the bishoprics of Constance, Basel, Speyer, etc. The knights who had lost their possessions on the left bank were not indemnified, and those on the right bank were deprived of their political rights within the next two or three years, by the several states within whose boundaries they lay.[418]
Importance of the extinction of the smaller German states.