What's the latest possible time the Holy Roman Empire could have survived?
Depends on what you want, keeping a Holy Roman Empire that was just made up of Germany and Austria - which could include Trieste for your Mediterranean port via the Adriatic - with the Low Countries and Italy having broken off might be easier than it including everything. It would also nicely mirror the German Empire and Austria-Hungary alliance of the Great War. Off the top of my head the easiest way I can think of is that either Austria is knocked down enough to lose Hungary and the Transleithania to become part of a Prussian dominated Holy Roman Empire, or that Austria concentrates on dominating Germany rather than Hungary butterflying away the Transleithania and keeps the Holy Roman Empire going and modernises it instead with themselves in charge.
I'm writing a novel set in an alternate WW1 with an extended Little Ice Age as it was called. So I imagine Germany needs a southern Mediterrean port.
I'm writing a novel set in an alternate WW1 with an extended Little Ice Age as it was called. So I imagine Germany needs a southern Mediterrean port.
Well people were mostly okay with an Austrian led Holy Roman Empire and then German Confederation all the way up to the Austro-Prussian War which everyone expected Prussia to lose quite badly IIRC. If it's just what would become our timeline's German Empire with an Austria that also includes Slovenia for an Adriatic port I don't see why people would object too much.The question that comes to mind though is would France or any of Germany's other neighbors allow that to happen?
Well people were mostly okay with an Austrian led Holy Roman Empire and then German Confederation all the way up to the Austro-Prussian War which everyone expected Prussia to lose quite badly IIRC. If it's just what would become our timeline's German Empire with an Austria that also includes Slovenia for an Adriatic port I don't see why people would object too much.
I actually started a thread asking about how realistic Napoleon losing at Austerlitz might of been but didn't get any interest. If the French were absolutely routed and Napoleon killed then it's going to seriously boost the prestige of the Austrian Empire and Francis II personally, since he was there so probably takes most of the credit, both as Archduke and as Emperor. It also butterflies away the Confederation of the Rhine, opens up Italy in the dismantling of the Kingdom of Italy, deprives Prussia of her spoils from being one of the victors later, and also possibly avoids the German Mediatisation since I could see Austria wanting to restore a number of states and keep Germany a collection of smaller countries that could be more easily influenced. Most importantly of all it avoids Francis II dissolving the Empire to keep Napoleon from ever becoming Holy Roman Emperor.Maybe if Napoleon were somehow defeated at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805, with Napoleon himself killed or captured. The victorious Third Coalition allies might be interested in strengthening the HRE as a check against France in the future, and France would be in no immediate position to object.
Maybe during the Congress of Vienna ,after Napoleons fall, the German confederation instead becomes a reborn Holy Roman Empire?
Yeah, I don't understand this. Why didn't the Congress simply revive the HRE?
Well, de facto the Holy Roman Empire included a good deal of Northern Italy (in 1789), so if the HRE centralizes even at late stage, we could see it in possession with several Mediterranean ports.