The Holy Roman Empire-A Confusing Concept of Craziness

The Holy Roman Empire is a confusing mess of feudalism and statehood, so I tried my best to explain it.

List of states in the HRE:

[DAGroupEducation]

If I got anything wrong or misrepresented any information, please correct me.

[captainpalegg]

I don’t know what’s more baffling: that the HRE was able to last almost as long as the original Roman civilization, or that it even existed.

[PPandaPete]

R E V O K E T H E P R I V I L E G I A

[AmadoDom]

i come here trying to know how to win more imperial authority to pass all the reforms, i am dissapointed

[WizedexReal]

HRE, the father of o’ mighty and powerful Ulm!

[randomcommenter]

6:16 our lord and savior Ulm makes an appearance




btw if u dont play eu4 then u wont get the joke

[gamesmile]

0:10 I really like how the Bohemian Kingdom is just sitting there trying to get into the talk but they aren't listening

[blobdragon]

I have played eu4 on VH and formed hre...so I know pretty much everything I need to know.

[diamondinthesky]

Middle Ages - Holy Roman Empire
Present Day - Secular European Union

[thomassugg]

Also my Maternal Great Great Great grandmother was born in the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1860. She moved to England in 1882. Her Mother and father were also born in Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1830. And both of her grandparents were born in the Imperial Electorate of Hesse before Napoleon.

[thomassugg]

My Paternal five times great grandfather who’s name was Heinrich Otto Von Ehren was born in the Holy Roman Empire in the Free Imperial City of Hamburg in 1800.

[KaiserFranzJosefI]

All these Intellectuals mindlessly quoting Voltaire like parrots.

[blobdragon]

Btw you said you were not gonna cover the history...but you did.

[RandolphCrane]

I just want to add that Austria itself didn't become an Empire until 1804. 1806, the Holy Roman Empire officially ended with the The Emperor of the HRE of course wanted to stay Emperor, thus he created the Empire of Austria (Kaisertum Österreich). Austria was the main dominion of the Emperor anyways. Before that, Austria was a Duchy, and then Arch-Duchy. Prussia, on the other hand, was much earlier a kingdom (since Friedrich III/I in 1701).

[jam-_-]

This video was more a general history than an explanation of the structure of the Empire, which itself is time period depended and would need a video 10 times as long as this one. Also, the Treaty of Westphalia only gave the princes the legal right to negotiate with foreign powers, they were still compelled by the rulings of the Emperor, though at this point this was rarely performed by the Emperor himself but one of the Empire's two supreme courts.

[wwtt]

Very funny and good video a like from me!
However, there are some of your points that i would like to object to.

1 Carolingian and Ottonian Empire: The treaty of Verdun didn't actually slit the empire into independent countries. All kings still considered themselves a part of a common empire, and even met for common policies. The civil wars were about securing personal power in what was considered an already structured whole. The imperial crown had only been vacant since 925, as the Pope didn't want to give away his trumf card against growing powerful Italian kings. So Otto, didn't make a new empire or revived the empire, but simply continued it. It would be more correct to say he revived imperial authority, even if the western Franks left it after Otto claimed the title.

2 Elected emperor: The emperor was always elected since the crown became based in Germany. The election was initially a German tradition which was in fact a vote on the German king, but after Otto 1, it was established that the German king would be emperor (since he was the only worthy of the title) The electorial college came after the title became more associated with germany itself, and the emperor eventually no longer needed the Pope to coronate him.

3 Holy, Roman and Empire:
The name contributed to the empire had more concrete and legitimate reasons to be associated with the empire than what you express in the video (It is, of course, difficult and practically impossible to cover it in such a short video, so no blame from me) The Holy aspect was very much attributed for the Empire being an idealized order, and papal protector, as such the empire itself served as the temporal arm side to the papacy (best described by the two swords doctrine) the Roman title very much depended on translatio, not so much having Rome itself under it. By Charlemagne's day, the new empress of Byzantium was disputed by enemies who declared the throne vacant. This gave the pope the excuse to translate the imperial title to Charlemagne in 800. So it isn't much about having Rome itself, but continuing the tradition of the Caesars in an unbroken line, since the bible predicted that Rome would be the last of a line of great empires. And Empire, because the emperor was a king of kings in that the emperor would be king of Germany, Alres and Lombardy, while also having the Kingdom of Bohemia in it.

4 Fragmentation and style of governance: I think it is important to distinguish the increase of territories with imperial immediacy with what could be described as lords with power over the emperor and de facto countries (what could be described as fragmentation) The Empire was very much about consensus between king and lords even by the time of the Ottonians. Decentralisation was far from always a ploy by the lords, but often made by the emperor himself, to make the empire more coherent. The empire only had a sort of comand style governance under the Salians, and it was fervently rejected, and replaced by the mixed monarchial system that the Stauffers created. However the Empire was never weaker because of this, nor were the Emperor ever made a mere figurehead that only had control over his own immediate lands. The Empire never suffered the same kind of territorial crisis or were ever seriously threatened by invasions like France, England, Spain and others until the thirty years war, and remained the preeminent monarchy throughout the middle ages as well as early modernity.

5 Thirty years war: I would strongly contend the fact that the 30 years war ended in imperial defeat. The treaty of Westphalia never made any of the states clearly independent, with perhaps exceptions like the Netherlands, whom would only be released from imperial jurisdiction formally later with Switzerland. The Empire itself only changed a little in fine-tuning the already existing imperial constitution in which the emperor still enjoyed powers over his vassals. The Empires coherence were only seriously threatened in 1740 onwards because of Prussian Austrian dualism which occoured when Frederick 2 became very anti-imperial. The point that Francis himself personally dissolwed the empire in 1806 in order to prevent Napoleon to usurp the title, speak for itself the value it still held even in it's final hour.

Otherwise good video. i was entertained for sure :)

[joshuaherbert]

The HRE needed Secularisation and Absolutism before the thirty years war to become one big mighty state

[Nunavuter]

Many fairy tales originate from places that were once part of the HRE. In the stories you have princes from tiny feudal domains that seem to consist of a castle dominating one town. When the stories were written, such places actually existed. Two leftover bits of the HRE that remain today are Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. Such microstates once numbered in the hundreds.

[milanmajster]

I like the music between the topics :)

[wilsonelder]

Just want to point out that were plenty of instances of rulers besides the Habsburgs (Archdukes of Austria, Kings of Hungary and Bohemia, etc.) and the Hohenzollerns (Margraves of Brandenburg and Kings of Prussia) becoming kings and rulers of lands outside the HRE. For example,
►The Duke of Hanover, who was also the king of Great Britain
►The Duke of Saxony, who was also the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
►The Duke of Savoy, who was also the king of Sardinia (and later on the king of a united Italy)
►The Duke of Holstein, who was also the king of Denmark