WI: Francis doesn't dissolve the Holy Roman Empire

In a world where the Napoleonic Wars go roughly the same, with the major exception being that the HRE is never dissolved, is it plausible that the institution is used as a vehicle for German nationalism by Bismarck (or an equivalent savvy politician) in the same way that the various historical successor organizations, such as the German Confederation and North German Confederation, were historically? Would there be an opportunity for the HRE to federalize?

I suspect that would be the case, yes.
 
Incidentally, when the Frankfurters offered FW4 the Crown, was it to be hereditary? After all, if Germany had an elected Emperor already, wouldn't that have seemed like a backward step?
 
Prussia tried to annex/conquer protestant territory? What about Silesia? Frederich went to war for it 3 times while complaining that it was catholic. The 3 partition of Poland got them a huge number of catholic polish populace. If they didnt loose most of it... Anyway as I see it they tried to expand in any possible way and didnt really care if the territory conqered was protestant or not. Or even german.

Also the whole idea that the Hohenzollern would choose they religion so that they were in opposition to the emperor is wrong. First of all as it was pointed out they were calvinist and not protestant. However what wasnt mentioned yet is that they converted to calvinism from protestantism - thats the main reason most of prussian populace ended up protestant. Switching religion at that point wasnt a really political move. Please consider that many of these people were actual believers and didnt simply choose religion with political interest in mind.
 
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