Napoleon's invasion of Germany was merely the nail into the coffin of moribund Holy Roman Empire, which had essentially been limping along since the Teaty of Westphalia gave all the statelets of the empire, no matter how small and no matter how unimportant
de facto independence from the Emperor, who was reduced to an even more powerless figure head.
My question concerns the Mediatisation (
Reichsdeputationshauptschluss if one wishes to get technical) the that occured during the years of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic invasions of Germany. Were the Mediatisations merely a product of their time, starting with the Princes who had been deprived their territories East of Rhine, or was it based on an older mechanism? The biggest portion of Mediatisation is that it removed Imperial Immediacy for a state -- states who held that coveted privilege had no liege except for the Emperor, but by the end of empire it meant even more as it granted states that held the status coveted rights, such as minting coinage, setting tolls, amongst other privileges.
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I only ask as I'm working on
The Prince of Peace again and the Holy Roman has taken a different course from OTL, with Philip the Fair living longer and actually becoming Emperor and choosing to appease the rising Protestant movement through the abolition of 'useless' church land, mostly Prince Abbacies and selling them to highest bidder, thus essentially turning them into secular Principalities. These lands in the time of Philip mostly fell into the hands of Riters and Barons irregardless of religion, and while the Emperor hoped he might rely on this new class of noble land owners to serve as a bulwark of his dynasty, it didn't come true. Many of these new landowners developed client-master relations with the larger princes closest to them, rather than the Emperor in Brussels.
Under Charles V (the OTL figure who reigned from 1519) sales of church property were ceased; no further land was secularized, but that land that already secularized basically remained in the hands of a chancellory created to deal with the sales, while Charles V opened negotiations with the Pope to restore all of these lands back into the hands of the Church in hopes to recover the great blows it had suffered in Germany as a whole. With the Diet, not to mention the new class of landowners created by Philip protesting the return of the lands back into the hands of the Church, Charles V had to back down. He was able to sale a portion of the lands back to the church for a good sum, but was forced to recognize the sales that occured and that more would probably happen in the future. The Habsburgs in the Prince of Peace are still Catholic, although Philip was greatly influenced by Erasmus while Charles V was influenced by his devout Portuguese wife. His heirs are much more pragmatic, and with the big religious wars starting to break out, beginning in France and the Emperor prepared to take sides, I see tensions rising within the empire and a new round of clerical sales and even secularizations about to begin to finance any possible war.
I guess my question is: is Mediatisation a proper term to what is happening in
Prince of Peace, or is it merely a more haphazard surpression of clerical lands as what happened in Henry VIII's England? In a way it is Mediatisation, as those lands secularized with Imperial Intermediacy retain it, transforming for spiritual estates into hereditary principalities. After all, the Emperor is not the only one getting the piece of the pie. The large territorial princes, especially those who have embraced the reformation are in on the game too within their territories, and even the Spiritual Electors and wealthier Prince-Bishops are lining their pockets through the sale of church lands within their domains.
Apologies for the rant. Haven't slept yet.
