AHC: Disuinted HRE Stays Strong

The HRE was, in the words of Voltaire, "Not Holy, Nor Roman, Nor an Empire". It would grow weaker and weaker until Napoleon's armies dismantled it in 1806. Such was the death of the first and true Thousand (and Six) Year Reich.

Your challenge is this, keep the HRE a powerhouse in Europe without all of it being one nation.
 
Gut reaction is to somehow remove French intervention in the 30 Years War; the Habsburgs had crushed most of their opposition in Germany, and were preparing to return Protestant land stolen from the Church to its original owner instead of to themselves.
 
First, I really dislike your phrasing of "one nation." The denizens of the HRE viewed themselves as members of a German nation, with a growing standardized language from the 16c onward. Austrian Catholics who rejected everything about Martin Luther still wrote in Standard German rather than in Bavarian German.

Second, assuming what you mean is "one state," are you asking how the HRE could be a strong power while remaining decentralized? That's like asking if it could've come up with a federal structure, like Switzerland or the Netherlands with less Hollandic domination. The answer is pretty clearly yes, and it was even moving in that direction slowly until the Catholic-Protestant wars started.
 
Since Germany still has a federal structure which is in some ways a natural evolution, it isn't that hard to imagine.
 
The answer is pretty clearly yes, and it was even moving in that direction slowly until the Catholic-Protestant wars started.

I think it was moving in that direction even prior to the rise of Prussia. The armies that drove Louis XIV back across the Rhine? Imperial, yo.
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
So, are we looking at a confederation of German States? Under the guise of the HRE?

I think the best way would be to united many of the princes, with roughly two in each major region, but crucially, prevent the rise of any single dominant player (say a no-inheritance rule, son cannot stand just after the father?) and then create a genuine Imperial Territory that is essentially ruled by Bureaucrats that serve the Empire rather than any single Empire.

Two rather large changes - but with fewer, stronger princes, no single state can easily dominate, and no inheritance means no situations where the Imperial Territory is constantly used to fund the same dynastic territories development.

The only issue is going to be border states, if they can expand outside of the Empire, without the Emperor reigning them in/confiscating territory, then they have no way to control the expansion. Perhaps if external wars are made illegal without Imperial involvement/decree?

i.e. Yes Brandenburg, you may conquer Polish territory, but you will give the territory to your 3rd son to rule afterwards, have 10,000 men.

TL;DR - you need to limit the number, and strength of personalities involved, and ensure that no single state can ever dominate - the problem with this is fundamentally that the HRE allowed internal warfare - and without that, the HRE stops being the HRE post-Golden-Bulle, and starts become a giant german feudal state.
 
TL;DR - you need to limit the number, and strength of personalities involved, and ensure that no single state can ever dominate - the problem with this is fundamentally that the HRE allowed internal warfare - and without that, the HRE stops being the HRE post-Golden-Bulle, and starts become a giant german feudal state.
I think one thing to keep in mind is that the OP is for a strong HRE, not necessarily an interventionist one.

As others have noted, until the rise of Prussia, this was essentially the route that the HRE was going. Yes, it was likely to lose certain parts around the edges, but the core German lands might have stayed intact.

I also don't think a hard and fast reform outlawing internal warring is a requirement to be strong. What we need is a de facto situation where the majority of wars that the Empire deals with are dealing with outside targets: either as an aggressor or defender. Think more of a massive Switzerland pre-Sonderbund War: there are clear and distinct blocs of power and internal conflicts that occasionally flare into open, internal war, but there are also safety valves that make the average power-holder think "I hate my neighbor, but I hate the outsiders a ton more."

Obviously, it's not perfect. Switzerland had a truly massive mercenary industry relative to its actual population to help alleviate social stress and control interaction with the outside world, which the HRE does not have on a similar relative scale. Plus, as you say, as long as the Hapsburgs are too far beyond everyone else, there's going to be a tendency to oppose them more than is strictly necessary. I don't think hugely weakening them is necessary, but splitting the Hapsburgs factionally would do a lot to change the dynamic of internal coalition building.

I think eventually you would see the Emperor (probably the Hapsburgs) enforcing a hard de jure rule against internal warring and the beginning of a true confederal state, but that can go a long time before happening and outlawing internal warring doesn't necessarily make it a very united state.
 
GdwnsnHo's proposal is what my happens in my TL. The alt-Thirty Years' War ends differently, with a Protestant victory, and Austria turned over to a Protestant general who needed lands. Hungary was conquered by the Ottomans in the ensuing mayhem. This alt-HRE now has no powerful hegemon the way Austria was in OTL in the 17c and 18c, so it (eventually) turned the office of emperor into an elective monarchy. To avoid being like the Catholic church, the electors' offices remained hereditary, with more states getting electorate status.

As Jord839 says, there needs to be a common enemy to hate more. In this case, it's France to the west, and Poland and the Ottoman Empire to the east. The POD for this TL is a dynastic marriage between England and France (don't criticize, it came from a LARP), which has knock-on effects making all European states bigger: the union of Spain and the HRE under Charles V remains until the alt-Thirty Years' War, Italy unifies in the 16c before being dismembered again by France and the HRE, Denmark and Sweden later unify to resist the Protestant HRE's attempts to annex Scandinavia.
 
Top