Formation
On 12 July 1806, on signing the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (German: Rheinbundakte), 16 states in present-day Germany joined together in a confederation (the treaty called it the états confédérés du Rhin, with a precursor in the League of the Rhine). Napoleon was its "protector". On 1 August, the members of the confederation formally seceded from the Holy Roman Empire, and on 6 August, following an ultimatum by Napoleon, Francis II declared the Holy Roman Empire dissolved. Francis's Habsburg dynasty would rule the remainder of the empire as Austria.
According to the treaty, the confederation was to be run by common constitutional bodies, but the individual states (in particular the larger ones) wanted unlimited sovereignty.
Instead of a monarchical head of state, as the Holy Roman Emperor had been, its highest office was held by Karl Theodor von Dalberg, the former Arch Chancellor, who now bore the title of a Prince-Primate of the confederation. As such, he was President of the College of Kings and presided over the Diet of the Confederation, designed to be a parliament-like body though it never actually assembled. The President of the Council of the Princes was the Prince of Nassau-Usingen.
The Confederation was above all a military alliance: the members had to maintain substantial armies for mutual defense and supply France with large numbers of military personnel. In return for their cooperation some state rulers were given higher statuses: Baden, Hesse, Cleves, and Berg were made into grand duchies, and Württemberg and Bavaria became kingdoms. States were also made larger by incorporating the many smaller "Kleinstaaten", or small former imperial member states. As events played out, however, the members of the confederation found themselves more subordinated to Napoleon than they had been to the Habsburgs.
After Prussia lost to France in 1806, Napoleon cajoled most of the secondary states of Germany into the Rheinbund. Eventually, an additional 23 German states joined the Confederation. It was at its largest in 1808, when it included 36 states-- four kingdoms, five grand duchies, 13 duchies, seventeen principalities, and the Free Hansa towns of Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen. Only Austria, Prussia, Danish Holstein, and Swedish Pomerania stayed outside, not counting the west bank of the Rhine and Principality of Erfurt, which were annexed by the French empire.
In 1810 large parts of northwest Germany were quickly annexed to France in order to better monitor the trade embargo with Great Britain, the Continental System.
The Confederation of the Rhine collapsed in 1813, with the aftermath of Napoleon's failed campaign against the Russian Empire. Many of its members changed sides after the Battle of Leipzig, when it became apparent Napoleon would lose the War of the Sixth Coalition.
Read more about this topic: Confederation Of The Rhine
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