The Final Recess was the next to last act in the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. The end came three years later. In 1805 Austria joined the third coalition of Great Powers determined to reduce the preponderance of France (resulting in the War of the Third Coalition, 1805–07). The outcome of this war was even more disastrous than those of the wars of the first and second coalitions. Napoleon forced the main Habsburg army in Germany to surrender at Ulm (October 17, 1805); then he descended on Vienna, occupying the proud capital of his enemy; and finally he inflicted a crushing defeat (December 2, 1805) on the combined Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz in Moravia (now in the Czech Republic). Before the year was out, Francis II was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Pressburg (December 26), which ended the dominant role his dynasty had played in the affairs of Germany. He had to surrender his possessions in western Germany to Württemberg and Baden, and the province of Tirol to Bavaria. Napoleon’s strategy of playing princely against imperial ambitions had proved a brilliant success. The rulers of the secondary states in the south had supported him in the war against Austria, and in the peace that ensued they were richly rewarded. Not only did they share in the booty seized from the Habsburgs, but they also were permitted to absorb the remaining free cities, petty principalities, and ecclesiastical territories. Finally, asserting the rights of full sovereignty, the rulers of Bavaria and Württemberg assumed the title of king, while the rulers of Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt contented themselves with the more modest rank of grand duke. The last vestiges of the imperial constitution had now been destroyed, and Germany was ready for a new form of political organization reflecting power relationships created by the force of arms.
In the summer of 1806, 16 of the secondary states, encouraged and prodded by Paris, announced that they were forming a separate association to be known as the Confederation of the Rhine. Archbishop Karl Theodor von Dalberg was to preside over the new union as the “prince primate,” while future deliberations among the members were to establish a college of kings and a college of princes as common legislative bodies. There was even talk of a “fundamental statute” that would serve as the constitution of a rejuvenated Germany. Yet all these brave plans were never more than a facade for the harsh reality of alien hegemony in Germany. Napoleon was proclaimed the “protector” of the Confederation of the Rhine, and a permanent alliance between the member states and the French Empire obliged the former to maintain substantial military forces for the purpose of mutual defense. There could be no doubt whose interests these troops would serve. The secondary rulers of Germany were expected to pay a handsome tribute to Paris for their newly acquired sham sovereignty. On August 1 the confederated states proclaimed their secession from the empire, and a week later, on August 6, 1806, Francis II announced that he was laying down the imperial crown. The Holy Roman Empire thus came officially to an end after a history of a thousand years. Period of French hegemony in Germany
The long conflict between emperors and princes in Germany had concluded with the triumph of the latter. Yet the victors soon discovered that, instead of achieving independence, they had merely exchanged one master for another. Indeed, they were more subordinate now to the wishes of Paris than they had been to those of Vienna. Napoleon gradually induced or forced all the states of Germany except Austria and Prussia, 36 states in all, to join the confederation. The inclusion of the two leading powers of central Europe might have proved troublesome for him or even dangerous. The participation of the secondary states, on the other hand, provided him with reliable mercenaries who owed him too much and feared him too much to oppose his wishes. He was free to do as he liked in the region between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers. In order to enforce his embargo on Continental trade with England, he annexed the entire coastline along the North Sea, including much of the electorate of Hanover, a dependency of Britain, Napoleon’s archenemy. When that was not enough, he added Lübeck on the Baltic to the French Empire. He carved out the kingdom of Westphalia, consisting mainly of the remainder of Hanover and conquered Prussian territory, for his brother Jérôme and the grand duchy of Berg, incorporating additional Prussian territories, for his brother-in-law Joachim Murat. He was the undisputed master of all of western Germany.
After the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, there was only one state in central Europe that had not yet been forced to submit to France. But the leaders of Prussia hesitated and wavered in their policy until they lost the opportunity of profiting from the War of the Third Coalition. Had they joined Austria and Russia against Napoleon, they might have kept him from gaining hegemony over Germany. Or had they become the allies of Napoleon, they might have established a sphere of influence in the region north of the Main River. As it was, they waited until they fell between two stools. They finally declared war against the French in October 1806, after Austria had been forced to surrender, Russia had decided to retreat, and the secondary states had become the vassals of Paris. Yet public opinion in the Prussian capital remained confident that the army of Frederick the Great would prove a match for the conqueror of Europe. The result of such self-deception was a military disaster of unparalleled magnitude. In the two simultaneous battles of Jena and Auerstädt (October 14, 1806), the Prussian armies were completely routed, and the road to Berlin lay open before the French invaders. The city was occupied on October 27.
More disastrous than the military defeat, however, was the moral collapse of a state that had taught its citizens that obedience to authority was the supreme political virtue. The civilian population never thought of offering resistance to the advancing enemy. Even many army officers were so disheartened by Napoleon’s success that they surrendered one fortified position after another without a fight. Frederick William III had to pay a terrible price for the policy of his ancestors, who had built efficient government at the expense of civic initiative. He tried to hold out in East Prussia, hoping that the Russian armies, which were still at war with Napoleon, would help him regain the rest of his kingdom. But when in July 1807 Alexander I concluded peace with France at Tilsit, the unfortunate Frederick William had no choice but to follow suit. The treaty that he was forced to sign was a catastrophe. Prussia lost almost half its territory and population, including most of the Polish possessions in the east as well as all the territories west of the Elbe River. Subsequent agreements, moreover, imposed a heavy indemnity, a military occupation, and a reduction in the size of the army. The proud monarchy of Frederick the Great had been reduced to a secondary state in Germany.