Holy Roman Empire

• 1. The Crown In 800

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  On Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne emperor in Rome. This event revived a title that had lapsed more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The ceremony marked a symbolic shift as the Latin Church turned away from the declining Byzantine Empire toward the new power of Carolingian Francia. Charlemagne adopted the formula "renewal of the Roman Empire" to justify his rule. His successors would carry this legacy forward for nearly a millennium.

  After Charlemagne died in 814, the imperial crown passed to his son Louis the Pious. Upon Louis' death in 840, it went to Lothair, who had been his co-ruler. By this point, the territory of Charlemagne was divided into several territories through treaties like Verdun and Meerssen. Over the course of the later 9th century, the title of emperor was disputed by the Carolingian rulers of West Francia and East Francia. Charles the Bald and Charles the Fat briefly reunited the Empire before its final collapse in 888.

  Post-Carolingian Eastern Frankish Kingdom saw autonomous stem duchies reemerge around 900. These included Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, and Lotharingia. After King Louis the Child died without issue in 911, East Francia did not turn to the Carolingian ruler of West Francia. Instead, they elected Conrad of Franconia as king. On his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to Henry the Fowler of Saxony, who was elected at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919.

• 2. The Battle Of Lechfeld

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  Henry the Fowler reached a truce with raiding Magyars and won a first victory against them in the Battle of Riade in 933. He died in 936, but his descendants, the Liudolfing or Ottonian dynasty, continued to rule the Eastern kingdom for roughly a century. Otto, his son and designated successor, was elected king in Aachen in 936. He overcame revolts from a younger brother and several dukes.

  In 951, Otto came to the aid of Queen Adelaide of Italy, defeating her enemies and marrying her. This move gave him control over Italy. In 955, Otto won a decisive victory over the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld. The victory secured the eastern borders and established German dominance in Central Europe. In 962, Otto was crowned emperor by Pope John XII, thus intertwining the affairs of the German kingdom with those of Italy and the Papacy.

  Otto's coronation as emperor marked the German kings as successors to the empire of Charlemagne. Through the concept of translatio imperii, they considered themselves successors to Ancient Rome. The flowering of arts beginning with Otto the Great's reign is known as the Ottonian Renaissance. It centered in Germany but also happened in Northern Italy and France. Otto created the imperial church system, which tied great imperial churches to imperial service.

• 3. The Walk To Canossa

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  Kings often employed bishops in administrative affairs and determined who would be appointed to ecclesiastical offices. The reform-minded Pope Gregory VII opposed such practices, leading to the Investiture Controversy with King Henry IV. Henry IV repudiated the pope's interference and persuaded his bishops to excommunicate the pope. He famously addressed the pontiff by his birth name "Hildebrand" rather than his papal name "Gregory".

  The pope excommunicated the king, declared him deposed, and dissolved oaths of loyalty made to Henry. The king found himself with almost no political support and was forced to make the famous Walk to Canossa in 1077. This journey achieved a lifting of the excommunication at the price of humiliation. Meanwhile, German princes had elected another king, Rudolf of Swabia.

  Henry managed to defeat Rudolf but faced more uprisings and renewed excommunication. After his death, his second son Henry V reached an agreement with the Pope and bishops in the 1122 Concordat of Worms. The political power of the Empire was maintained, but the conflict demonstrated limits on the ruler's power regarding the Church. It robbed the king of the sacral status he had previously enjoyed.

• 4. The Golden Bull Of 1356

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  The difficulties in electing the king eventually led to the emergence of a fixed college of prince-electors. Their composition and procedures were set forth in the Golden Bull of 1356, issued by Charles IV. This document remained valid until 1806. The emperor now was to be elected by a majority rather than by consent of all seven electors.

  For electors, the title became hereditary, and they gained the right to mint coins and exercise jurisdiction. It was recommended that their sons learn imperial languages including German, Latin, Italian, and Czech. Thomas Brady Jr. opines that Charles IV's intention was to end contested royal elections. At the same time, he built up Bohemia as the Luxembourghs' core land of the Empire.

  The shift in power away from the emperor is revealed in how post-Hohenstaufen kings sustained their power. Earlier, the Empire's strength relied on Reichsgut, lands belonging to the king. After the 13th century, the relevance of Reichsgut faded. Kings increasingly relied on lands of their own dynasties to support their power. Rudolf I lent Austria and Styria to his sons in 1282.

• 5. The Diet Of Worms

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  Major measures for Imperial Reform were launched at the 1495 Reichstag at Worms. A new organ called the Reichskammergericht was introduced to be largely independent from the Emperor. A new tax named Gemeine Pfennig was launched to finance it. To create a rival for the Reichskammergericht, Maximilian established the Reichshofrat in 1497 with its seat in Vienna.

  At the 1495 Diet of Worms, the Reception of Roman Law was accelerated and formalized. The Roman Law became binding in German courts except when contrary to local statutes. It became the basic law throughout Germany, displacing Germanic local law to a large extent. Other than legal unity, adoption highlighted continuity between the Ancient Roman empire and the Holy Roman Empire.

  Maximilian frequently intervened personally in matters of local legal issues, overriding local charters and customs. This practice met with irony and scorn from local councils who wanted to protect local codes. The legal reform seriously weakened the ancient Vehmic court, though it would not be abolished completely until 1811.

• 6. The Thirty Years War

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  When Bohemians rebelled against the Emperor, the immediate result was the series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years' War spanning 1618 to 1648. Foreign powers including France and Sweden intervened in the conflict and strengthened those fighting Imperial power. They also seized considerable territory for themselves.

  Accordingly, the empire could never return to its former glory. Voltaire later made his infamous quip that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Still, its actual end did not come for two centuries. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 allowed Calvinism but Anabaptists and other Protestant communities continued to lack support.

  Habsburg emperors focused on consolidating their own estates in Austria and elsewhere. At the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Army of the Holy Roman Empire defeated a large Turkish army. The army consisted of one third forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and two thirds forces of the Holy Roman Empire.

• 7. Abdication In 1806

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  From 1792 onward, revolutionary France was at war with various parts of the Empire intermittently. The German mediatization occurred between 1795 and 1814 during the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. Mediatization involved annexing lands of one imperial estate to another. Secularization abolished temporal power of ecclesiastical rulers like bishops or abbots.

  The empire dissolved on the 6th of August 1806 when Francis II abdicated following a military defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. Napoleon reorganized much of the Empire into the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite. Francis declared that the tie binding him to the body politic of the German Reich was broken.

  Francis' House of Habsburg-Lorraine survived the demise of the empire, continuing to reign as Emperors of Austria until 1918. The Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine was replaced by the German Confederation in 1815. It lasted until 1866 when Prussia founded the North German Confederation, a forerunner of modern Germany.