CONFEDERATION. 



391 



CONFEDERATION, GERMAN. See Germany. 



CONFEDERATION OF THE PRINCES (of 

 Germany; in German, Furstenbund). The occasion 

 of the confederation of the German princes was the 

 extinction of the male line of the family of the elec- 

 tor of Bavaria, by the death of the elector Maximi- 

 lian Joseph, Dec. 30, 1777. After his death his 

 territories fell to the nearest collateral relation, 

 Charles Theodore, elector of the Palatinate. This 

 prince being without children, had yielded to the 

 propositions of the house of Austria, and obliged 

 himself, by the convention of Vienna, Jan. 3, 1778, 

 to renounce all claim to the inheritance. This con- 

 vention was opposed by the presumptive heir of the 

 Palatinate, the duke of Deux-Ponts, and also by the 

 elector oi Saxony, nephew to the deceased elector of 

 Bavaria. Both princes sought the intercession of 

 Frederic the Great of Prussia, who, after fruitless ne- 

 gotiations on the subject with Austria, took up arms. 

 At the peace of Teschen, May 13, 1779, which end- 

 ed this short war for the Bavarian succession, the 

 convention of Vienna was annulled. Austria obtain- 

 ed of Bavaria merely the Innviertel, with Braunau, 

 and Charles Theodore received possession of the rest 

 of the territories. France and Russia, the allies of 

 Prussia, guaranteed the peace. Some years after, 

 the emperor Joseph II. again thought of enlarging 

 and strengthening the Austrian monarchy by the 

 addition of the state of Bavaria, and the empress of 

 Russia proposed an exchange of the Austrian Nether- 

 lands for Bavaria. The elector Charles Theodore 

 was to have the Austrian Netherlands, with the ex- 

 ception of Luxemburg and Namur, with the title of 

 king of Burgundy. The elector was induced to 

 ;igree to this by the Austrian ambassador, Von Lehr- 

 bach ; the duke of Deux-Ponts, the presumptive 

 heir, by count Romanzoflf, the Russian ambassador ; 

 and both were promised, in addition to what they re- 

 ceived by exchange, the sum of 3000 florins from the 

 Austrian coffers. At the same time, the duke was 

 told that the consent of the elector had been secured, 

 and that the exchange would take place, even with- 

 out his concurrence. But the duke aftenyards re- 

 fused his consent to the exchange of the land of his 

 forefathers, and again had recourse to Frederic. This 

 monarch supported with zeal the remonstrance sent 

 by the duke to the empress Catharine of Russia, and 

 received a communication from the empress, that 

 she thought the exchange advantageous to both par- 

 ties, but that it ought not to take place without their 

 mutual consent. Although Louis XVI., who had 

 guaranteed the peace of Teschen, and would not con- 

 sent to the exchange, now caused the king of Prussia 

 to be assured that Joseph II., his ally, had given up 

 the plan, on account of the opposition of the duke of 

 Deux-Ponts, the court of Vienna still refused to make 

 satisfactory arrangements. Frederic II. therefore, 

 in March, 1785, induced the electors of Saxony and 

 Hanover to form a league, and, in spite of the oppo- 

 sition of Austria, the terms of union were signed in 

 Berlin, July 23, 1785, by Brandenburg, Saxony, and 

 Hanover, for the support and defence of the German 

 constitution, agreeably to the terms of the peace of 

 Westphalia and the treaties which followed, of the 

 electoral capitulations, and of the other laws of the 

 empire. The measures to be taken against the ex- 

 change of Bavaria were provided for by a secret ar- 

 ticle. In a few months, this league was joined by 

 the elector of Mentz and his coadjutor, Dalberg the 

 elector of Treves, the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. the 

 margraves of Anspach and Baden, and the dukes 

 of Deux-Ponts, of Brunswick, of Mecklenburg', of 

 Weimar and Gotha, with the prince of Anhalt-Des- 

 sau. The views of Austria were frustrated by this 

 open act of the king of Prussia, and both Austria and 



Russia entirely relinquished their project. (See Von 

 Dohm, Ueber den Deutschen Furstenbund on the 

 Confederation of the German Princes, Berlin, 1785; 

 John Muller's Description of the Confederation of 

 the German Princes ; and Reuss's Deutsche Staats- 

 kanzlei, vol. 13). This confederation is to be consi- 

 dered as one of the many proofs of the utter insuffi- 

 ciency of tlie German empire for the purposes of a 

 general government. 



CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE. In the 

 war of 1805, which turned out so unfortunately for 

 Austria, several of the princes of the south of Germany 

 were obliged to ally themselves to France, or did it 

 voluntarily. The peace of Presburg (Dec. 20, 1805) 

 gave the first impulse to the entire dissolution of the 

 German empire, by conferring crowns on the electors 

 of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, and on both, as well as 

 on Baden, complete sovereignty, such as had been al- 

 ready exercised by the other great German states. 

 Soon after (May 28, 1806), the first German elector, 

 arch-chancellor of the empire, announced to the diet 

 that he had appointed cardinal Fesch, uncle of Na- 

 poleon, his coadjutor and successor, an act incon- 

 sistent with the constitution of the empire. Ulti- 

 mately, sixteen German princes made a formal de- 

 claration of their separation from the emperor and 

 the empire, in the act of confederation signed at Paris, 

 July 12, 1806, by the kings of Bavaria and Wurtem- 

 berg, the elector arch-chancellor of the empire, the 

 elector of Baden, the new duke of Cleves and Berg 

 (Joachim Mural), the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, 

 the princes of Nassau-Usingen and Nassau-Weilburg, 

 Hohenzollern-Hechingen, and Hohenzollern-Sigmar- 

 ingen, of Salm-Salm, and Salm-Kyrburg, the duke of 

 Ahremberg, the princes of Isenburg-Birstein and of 

 Liechtenstein, and the count Von der Leyen. This 

 was communicated to the diet Aug. 1, 1806. They 

 assigned, as the reason for this separation, the defi- 

 ciencies of the constitution of the German empire, and 

 invited the other members of the empire to join their 

 confederation. The French ambassador, Bacher, an- 

 nounced, on the same day, that his sovereign would 

 no longer acknowledge a German empire. (See 

 Germany.) The emperor Francis II. resigned his 

 dignity as head of the German empire, A ug. 6, being 

 induced to take this step, according to his declara- 

 tion, by the demands contained in several articles of 

 the peace of Presburg, and the new confederation of 

 the German states, which he considered inconsistent 

 with his rank as head of the empire. After the sign- 

 ing of the act of confederation, to which the name of 

 the prince of Liechtenstein was attached without his 

 knowledge, the elector or arch-chancellor received 

 the title of prince primate ; the elector of Baden, the 

 landgrave of l-J esse-Darmstadt, and the duke of Berg, 

 received each the title of grand-duke, with royal pri- 

 vileges and rights ; Nassau-Usingen was raised to a 

 duchy, and Von der Leyen to a principality. The 

 emperor of France adopted the title ol protector of 

 the confederation of the Rhine. By the establishment 

 of this confederation, the following states lost their 

 political independence: the imperial free city of 

 Nuremberg, which was ceded to Bavaria ; Frankfort, 

 to the prince-primate; the principality of Heiters- 

 heim, belonging to the order of the knights of St 

 Jolin, which became subject to Baden ; and the burg- 

 gravate of Friedberg, to Hesse-Darmstadt. Further- 

 more, by mediaiisation, the princes of Nassau and 

 Orange-Fulda, of Hohenlohe, Schwarzenberg, and 

 many others ; the landgrave of Hesse-Homberg, the 

 dukes of Corswarem-Looz and of Croy, many counts 

 of the empire, and all the former knights of the em- 

 pire, were subjected to the princes of the confedera 

 tion of the Rhine. These mediatised members of the 

 empire only kept possession of their patrimonial 



