AHC: The Holy Roman Empire survives

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

What if the Holy Roman Empire survived?
How could this happen if the French Revolution still happened?
And how would the HRE evolve in the 19th and 20th centuries?

 

[SlyDessertFox]

Well killing off Napoleon would be a good start.

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

But will that be enough?

 

[Lalli]

But will that be enough?

No. You need even earlier POD than just different/no French Revolution. Probably you need Medieval POD. HRE was very decentralised country and collapsing was probably just question of time. I don't know then is there any way how you get centralised HRE.

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

Sorry, but one of the conditions of this AHC is that the French Revolution still happens, thus the PoD is somewhen between 1789 and 1806.

 

[Elfwine]

No. You need even earlier POD than just different/no French Revolution. Probably you need Medieval POD. HRE was very decentralised country and collapsing was probably just question of time. I don't know then is there any way how you get centralised HRE.

I'm not sure why it would collapse just because it was decentralized. UNlike say, Poland, it does have military strength - via Austria and Prussia being powers in their own right, but nonetheless strength is strength.

 

[MrHaakwood]

A different end of the thirty years wars would be a start. In my opinion, it was a zombie from 1648. Changing some of the outcomes of the war seems not so hard.

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

A different end of the thirty years wars would be a start. In my opinion, it was a zombie from 1648. Changing some of the outcomes of the war seems not so hard.

And again much too early for my AHC!

BTW I did not say that the HRE has to be fully functional. It simply has to survive. Any necessary reforms that could turn the HRE from the loose confederation it was at the beginning of the 18th century into a constutional or parliamentary monarchy can happen later.

 

[Sian]

the main issue is that HRE for all intends and purposes died in the 16xx after several wars being waged (by proxy) on German soil ... only problem was that noone told the titulary ruler (Austria-Hungarian Habsburg line) that they shouldn't call themselves Emperor of HRE

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

That's not entirely true.
It lost most of its power in the Thirty Years' War but is was NOT dead.
Remember that the HRE fought against France during the Nine Years' War. And the Imperial Diet was in session from 1663 until the end.
The only problem was that some members of the HRE did follow policies of their own.

 

[Space Oddity]

Let me blunt--the entire 'the HRE was dead after the Thirty Years War' was largely a propaganda spin cooked up by Prussian historians to make signing up on the Second Reich look better. This time, they were insisting, things would work, because this was a PROPER nation, not a strange hodge-podge confederation, but a real centralized nation. The way all nations should be.

The HRE came out of the Thirty Year Wars with quite a few of its odder quirks inscribed in stone. But it came out of it, and was a going concern. The Ottomans lost wars to it--France regularly had to fight it--and Prussia and Bavaria both largely sought to aggrandize themselves WITHIN the Imperial framework.​

 

[Albeques]

Even if we just go with the obvious, "kill of Napoléon" this only extends the HRE for a little bit, what would probably happen next is a civil war between Prussia and Austria as each tries to assert dominance, which would probably lead to one of three options.

1. A fracturing of the HRE so that it doesn't exist anymore
2. A centralized Prussian state that controls most what used to be the HRE
3. A centralized Austrian state that controls most of what used to be the HRE

 

[lambert]

if the HRE survives the Napoleonic Wars as an an almost irrelevant title is it possible that German nationalists of TTL's 1848 equivalent to attempt to create a German nation by giving the HRE a constitution appropriate to a nation state (rather than by attempting to create an entirely new country)?

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

if such a revolution would happen it will not lead to a disolution of the HRE, but to a reformation.

 

[JCVocke]

I think an alt 1848 analogue with a surviving HRE could either try to reform it or destroy it, depending on how the reigning Emperor reacts to their revolution.

Providing a PoD at or after the French Revolution, the Reigning Emperor is going to be an Austrian. If the PoD leads to a less Reactionary Hapsburg Emperor, which is extremely likely in my estimation as a surviving HRE suggests that Napoleon's Conquests were either vastly less or prevented outright, then they might be more willing to work with the Revolutionaries. Technically, even in our Time Line the Austrians did issue a constitution, they just later rescinded it.

A Surviving HRE's biggest impact would likely be that the Revolutionaries will look more favorably on a Multi-National State, thus they wouldn't mind the Austrians ruling over Hungary as well. Historically the Multi-National nature of the Austrian Empire was what prompted the German Revolutionaries to try for Prussia, in this scenario there's every reason to try for Austria, and no real incentive for Prussia except possibly from hard-line Protestants. But even then, Austria has ruled a relatively religiously free HRE for a while now, so moderates will probably be cool with Austria provided their religious freedom is preserved, which will probably be written into the new HRE Constitution.

Of Course, all of this is dependent on how the Ruling Emperor and the Electors handle the Revolutionaries. If the Emperor opposes them outright, and all of the electors do too, then they might radicalize and decide to go for a Germany Instead.

 

[Westphalian]

One important reason why Francis II dissolved the HRE was his fear that Napoleon might somehow force new imperial elections and with help of the French-allied electors, gain the prestigious title himself. So dissolving the HRE looked like a prudent measure.

IOW, if you manage to cancel the coup of 18 Brumaire VIII as we know it (by killing Bonaparte anytime before 1799), this will go a long way in keeping the HRE atound, at least in name. Perhaps it will be reformed to look a lot like OTL's German Confederation, but Prussia might be relatively weaker than after 1815 in OTL.

 

[Elfwine]

Let me blunt--the entire 'the HRE was dead after the Thirty Years War' was largely a propaganda spin cooked up by Prussian historians to make signing up on the Second Reich look better. This time, they were insisting, things would work, because this was a PROPER nation, not a strange hodge-podge confederation, but a real centralized nation. The way all nations should be.
​

Well, it has to be said that if one's definition of success is based around "being a 'real centralized nation'", the HRE had failed pretty badly.

Whether that's a good definition or not, the history of France and the Ottoman Empire can probably answer.

But while it worked fairly well as a confederation (more so in times of peace than war, in my understanding) - its strength abroad would have been considerably less if Austria (picked as the place that provided almost all the post-1648 emperors) was not a power in its own right.

But this seems like a pretty workable situation in terms of survival IF the states involved are content to leave it at that - outside things like Bavaria's preference for Louis XIV in the War of Spanish Succession, it wasn't facing the kind of civil war that had resulted from imperial attempts to make it a monarchical (as opposed to polyarchical) structure.

 

[Emperor Constantine]

So the idea is, if Napoleon is killed off in say the Italian wars or Egypt, we could see the HRE limp on into the 19th century, with a possible revival in 1848/ATL's equivalent. Am I right?

Anyway, there's several things we're glossing over here. First, what happens to France? Does it survive as a Republic or do the Allies eventually beat the Revolutionaries and restore the Bourbon Monarchy? My money is on the Allies. I can't see a long-term survival of a Republic in one of the most powerful European states during the reactionary era of the early 19th century. Next, When does this defeat happen? Before or after the end of the First Coalition war? If after than France would have the Austrian Netherlands and the Rhineland. What would happen to these territories and for that matter, the German Mediatization? Would the clock be turned back to before 1789 or would the Ecclesiastical states and Imperial free cities lose their status and be annexed into larger states? And what about the various Rhineland states? Would they be restored to their former rulers or given to a larger state, like Prussia or Austria or Bavaria? And finally, without a drawn out Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars, would the HRE reform into an ATL version of the German Confederation or no?

Basically, what would change internally between the death of Napoleon and the ATL 1848?