Fate of the HRE without the French Revolution?

Assuming that the French Revolution never happened in the way it did IOTL (and therefore no Napoleon), what would be the ultimate fate of the Holy Roman Empire?
 
Continued degradation until the institution is reformed in the late 1800s and into the 1900s. It would operate more like a modern union, probably with trade deals and common citizenship. The Princes would be more like independent partners in a coalition of states that recognize the Emperor as their sovereign while the defacto state remains wherein the Emperor is only ruler in his own territories.

That could happen, or the union continues to degrade, and the title becomes nothing more than a name given to the Austrian Archduke. The states that grow more powerful go the way of the Netherlands and Italy and leave the Empire with only the heartland of Germany remaining for the Austrians to impose more direct control over. With this, the Empire can centralize, but it would be more like an annexation of the remaining states into the Domain of the Emperor. Less a unification and more justified military and diplomatic action.
 
Continued degradation until the institution is reformed in the late 1800s and into the 1900s. It would operate more like a modern union, probably with trade deals and common citizenship. The Princes would be more like independent partners in a coalition of states that recognize the Emperor as their sovereign while the defacto state remains wherein the Emperor is only ruler in his own territories.

That could happen, or the union continues to degrade, and the title becomes nothing more than a name given to the Austrian Archduke. The states that grow more powerful go the way of the Netherlands and Italy and leave the Empire with only the heartland of Germany remaining for the Austrians to impose more direct control over. With this, the Empire can centralize, but it would be more like an annexation of the remaining states into the Domain of the Emperor. Less a unification and more justified military and diplomatic action.

Wouldn't Prussia's increasing prominence on the continent still threaten the power and existence of the HRE over the course of the 19th century?

I'm not sure I see it surviving into the 1900s, Napoleon or no.
 
Wouldn't Prussia's increasing prominence on the continent still threaten the power and existence of the HRE over the course of the 19th century?

I'm not sure I see it surviving into the 1900s, Napoleon or no.

Not in its late 19thC form, no. But I could definately see a surviving HRE becoming the focus of German unification movements-people who wanted a unified Germany IOTL wanting a "restored" HRE with (if they're Liberal) the Imperial Diet turned into an equivalent of the British parliament. If Prussia unifies Germany ITTL, I could see them having the Electors crown the Prussian king Holy Roman Emperor.
 
In response to the destruction of the Empire, it just won't be destroyed in the legal sense unless the pride of the Emperor is on the line, as per OTL. The title of Emperor was very prestigious, it's not like in EU3 where you can just destroy the Empire and no one cares, it was an ancient institution.
 
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In response to the destruction of the Empire, it just won't be destroyed in the legal sense unless the pride of the Emperor is on the line, as per OTL. The title of Emperor was very prestigious, it's not like in EU3 where you can just destroy the Empire and no one cares, it was an ancient institution. In fact, I don't know why it wasn't revived in the congress of vienna along with the rest of the things Napoleon broke down.

Maybe since Napoleon didn't directly destroy it, but rather was simply the catalyst for its dissolution, perhaps it was viewed as a more voluntary thing?
 
In fact, I don't know why it wasn't revived in the congress of vienna along with the rest of the things Napoleon broke down.

It wasn't revived so that countries like Prussia could now legally assert total sovereignty over their territories, without having to be (nominally) subject to the Hapsburg emperors.
 
The Austrian Emperor OTL cannot have been interested in reclaiming the title otherwise Metternich would at least have floated the idea wouldn't he?
 
Mediatization and secularization of small and clerical territories was not a new idea. They had been floated by Enlightenment writers since the mid-1700s. So that might have happened in this TL as well, once Austria and enough other big players were willing to cooperate

The results of 1803 to 1812 were influenced by the French desire to diminish the power of Austria. Under other circumstances, Austria might have gained a lot by acquiring the "right" bishoprics.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Mediatization and secularization of small and clerical territories was not a new idea. They had been floated by Enlightenment writers since the mid-1700s. So that might have happened in this TL as well, once Austria and enough other big players were willing to cooperate.

On the other hand, the Empire was still able to pull together a significant number of troops, and the Empire had quite a few supporters. I think the idea of it surviving into the 19th century, and becoming the nucleus of Germany, isn't that crazy.
 
if the 1848 revolutionary period happens in a still funcitoning HRE, would the emperor reject the "crown from the gutter" (well, figuratively speaking - he's allready the emperor)? there would be a drive towards unification - doesnt make much sens that all people in europe have nationalistic desires except the germans.
 

Anderman

Donor
if the 1848 revolutionary period happens in a still funcitoning HRE, would the emperor reject the "crown from the gutter" (well, figuratively speaking - he's allready the emperor)? there would be a drive towards unification - doesnt make much sens that all people in europe have nationalistic desires except the germans.

Well technical he already has the crown...
 
On the other hand, the Empire was still able to pull together a significant number of troops, and the Empire had quite a few supporters. I think the idea of it surviving into the 19th century, and becoming the nucleus of Germany, isn't that crazy.

What about Prussia and the Hapsburg extra-Austrian trerritories of the Empire then?
 
if the 1848 revolutionary period happens in a still funcitoning HRE, would the emperor reject the "crown from the gutter" (well, figuratively speaking - he's allready the emperor)? there would be a drive towards unification - doesnt make much sens that all people in europe have nationalistic desires except the germans.

The lack of Napoleon and a different Revolution would have enormous, Europe-wide consequences for the development of anything like modern nationalism, in Germany most of all.

A German national movement without Napoleon would have to develop in a very, very different way, and it's difficult to see anything obviously analogous to OTL's 1848 happening. Without Napoleon there's no Jena, no Addresses to the German Nation. It was Napoleon that spurred Prussia to implement many of the reforms that powered it through the early 19th century. The evaporation of the HRE -- as well as Napoleon's claim on the universal idea it represented -- was to a great extent what enabled the intellectual alternative of a national Germany to even emerge. German political thought in general would have to develop in a startlingly different way: above all it's difficult to see Hegelianism emerging in the form we know it, and that has enormous butterfly effects for the future course of world politics.

The key point is that Napoleon's invasion was absolutely foundational to the formation of OTL's German national sentiment. The echoes continued for a very long time: France always posed the counterexample against which German national thinkers in the Vormärz era defined themselves. And it's difficult to overestimate the impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars on the way in which modern politics, and especially the idea of the nation, developed -- see István Hont's seminal paper on 'The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind' as an introduction.

The problem for determining what happens ITL, of course, is that it's difficult to analyse what would happen to the HRE without a good sense of how the geopolitical cards turn up instead. The ultimate post-Revolutionary situation of -- of course -- Prussia and Austria, but also France, and to a lesser extent Britain, Russia, and so on, would be crucial in determining the concrete way in which German sentiment would end up evolving.

I'm not sure I have a good, quick answer to the OP's question because of that, but I think it's still worth pointing out the basic fact that without Napoleon German politics is simply not going to develop in a recognisable way. You won't have a 'crown from the gutter' scenario in 1848, the very idea might not even make sense -- 'nationalism' itself, if it even existed as a robust intellectual movement with the same sort of basic parameters as OTL, would find itself in a far more marginal position.

To the extent that some form of German national sentiment does exist in this Napoleon-less world I would certainly imagine that it would focus on revitalising and modernising the institutions of the Empire, and to that extent it's possible to imagine an Empire that survives to the present day.
 
What was the legal situation for states leaving or joining the Empire? Could the Habsburgs get the Kingdom of Hungary to join? Could states like Hannover choose to leave?
 
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