GEOGRAPHY/HISTORY

 

HAPSBURG DYNASTY

Ferdinand I ruled and tolerated city states.

Ferdinand II (1619-1637) was strong willed and resolved to win back Germany to the Catholic faith.

The Thiry Years' War now ceased to be a religious struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism.

The peace of Hubertsburg, signed on the 15th of February 1763, left Germany divided between Austria and Prussia, whose rivalry for the hegemony was to last until the victory of Koniggratz (1866) definitely decided the issue in favour of the Hohenzollern monarchy.

In 1785, the opposition of the hier to the Bavarian throne, the duke of confederation of German princes for the purpose of opposing the threatened preponderance against Austrian ambition, and had at the same time become the center of an anti-Austrian alliance, which embraced Sweden, Poland and the maritime powers.

1790 Leopold II became the new ruler. He reverted to the traditional Habsburg methods; the old supremacy of the Church, regarded as the one effective bond of empire, was restored; and the "Einheitsstaat was once more resolved into its elements, with the old machiner of diets and estates, and the old abuses. It was the beginning of that policy of "stability" associated later with Metternich which was to last until the cataclysm of 1848.

 

Napoleon's Conferation of the Rhine had broken the unity of Germany, Francis formally abdicated the title and functions of Holy Roman emperor in 1806.

 

1. "Poland: The Rough Guide" by Mark Salter and Gordon McLachlan, Penguin Books Limited, London, 1996.

2. The Times Atlas of World History, Edited by Geoffrey Barraclough, Times Books Limited, London, 1979.

3. "A Concise History of Germany" by Mary Fulbrook, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 1990.