Holy Roman Empire (Fidem Pacis)

Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nation
Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation
Timeline: Fidem Pacis

Flag of Holy Roman Empire
Capital	Aachen
Largest city	Hamburg
Other cities	Vienna, Prague, Munich, Cologne, Amsterdam, Copenhagen
Language   official	German
others	Czech, Danish, Polish
Demonym	German
Government	Federal elective monarchy
Empress	Sophie I
Chancellor	Angela Merkel
Area	640,857 km²
Population	108,518,072
Independence	912
Currency	Reichsmark

The Holy Roman Empire is a sovereign nation in central Europe which consists of a federation of self-governing states. It includes the Jutland Peninsula and the islands of Zealand, and is bordered to the north by the North and Baltic Seas, to the east by Lithuania, to the southeast by Hungary, to the south by Switzerland, Italy and Croatia, and to the west by France. With an area of 640,857 km², the Holy Roman Empire is the second-largest sovereign state in Europe, after Lithuania.

The Holy Roman Empire is an elective monarchy chosen by the rulers of its constituent states. The Emperor, who can be any Imperial citizen over the age of 40, reigns for life and has nominal responsibility for foreign relations, the armed forces, taxation, the Imperial Court of Justice, and the imperial legislature, or Reichstag - though in practice these duties are usually left to the democratically elected government of the time. State governments have control over most other matters, including state laws, infrastructure, healthcare, public safety and education. The states have varying forms of government, with some being republican in nature and some constitutional monarchies, but all Imperial nationals share a common citizenship and are ultimately subjects of the Emperor.

The Imperial Constitution, enacted in 1815 and last amended in 1921, sets out the relationship between the Empire and the states. Among other things, it obligates state governments to be democratic, guarantees freedom of religion and of movement, and guarantees trial by a jury of randomly-selected peers. The most recent amendment, the Equal Rights Clause, forbids any form of racial, religious or gender-based discrimination based on prejudice, either in law or in society, allowing for the election of the present Empress Sophie I as the first empress-regnant in German history.

German states

The current states of the HRE are:

• Republic of the Sixteen United Netherlands
• Republic of Brandenburg
• Duchy of Lorraine
• Kingdom of Denmark
• United Republic of Saxony
• Kingdom of Bavaria
• Kingdom of Bohemia
• Archduchy of Austria
• Republic of Baden and Württemburg
• Grand Duchy of Luxemburg
• Duchy of Pomerania
• Republic of Westphalia

There are also dozens of Free Imperial Cities, including Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Lübeck, Nuremberg and Regensburg. The imperial capital of Aachen is usually counted among their number, but technically has its own special status and fewer self-governing privileges.

The Swiss Confederation was formerly a part of the empire, but was separated in 1802 during the Aquitanian Revolutionary Wars and never rejoined afterwards.

History

The Holy Roman Empire has its origins in the Germanic Confederation, a loose alliance of Germanic tribes founded in the 7th century to help each other against the Frankish menace. Its initial members were the Danes, the Saxons, the Frisians, the Alemanni, the Thuringians and the Bavarians, and their tribal lands became the basis of some of the German states still existing today. In the early 8th century the Franks themselves were defeated and forcibly absorbed into the Confederation, which from then on began to act more as a federation of equals rather than a purely military alliance.

In 678 Karl, a descendant of the exiled Carolingian line of Frankish Majordomos, became duke of the Swabians. He quickly rose to become a powerful politician and the most successful general in the Confederation, leading campaigns against the Burgundians and the Franco-Romans of Neustria. When the other dukes grew fearful of his power and tried to have him overthrown, Karl retaliated by invading and conquering his so-called allies. The Germanic Confederation was transformed into a single kingdom ruled solely by Karl, or Charlemagne, and his heirs, which became known as the Holy Roman Empire after Charlemagne took the imperial regalia from the Visigoths and had himself crown Emperor in Rome by the Pope.

After Charlemagne's death his empire soon broke up. Italia, West Germania and East Germania were divided between different heirs, but in all three the Carolingian line soon died out. West Germania, known as Francia, chose Hugh Capet to be their new king and developed independently, East Germania, which retained the imperial title and continued to be called the Holy Roman Empire, elected Konrad of Franconia as the new Emperor, and this set a precedent for emperors to be elected by rulers of the states rather than inheriting the title. Nevertheless, the title did have a tendency to stay within the same family, as it was common for an emperor to have the Electoral College choose his own son to be successor before he actually died.

Over the centuries the states gradually splintered into more and more feudal entities, and began to act independently as imperial authority came to mean less and less. Eventually two rival dynasties came to dominate the empire - the House of Oldenburg in Denmark and the north, and the House of Habsburg in Austria and Bohemia, while the other local rulers gravitated towards one or the other of these. They fought many wars against each other, sometimes with France, Sweden, Lithuania or Wales getting involved, but somehow the empire always survived.

Islam was introduced in the 15th century from Italy and Hungary. At first the empire tried to crush it by every possible means, but as more and more converts appeared in the south it proved to be impossible to burn every single one of them. Eventually the Habsburgs themselves, who were the imperial dynasty at that time, converted, and the Habsburg-Oldenburg conflict came to take on religious overtones. The Thirty Years War, fought in the 17th century, marked the high point of religious tensions, after which some degree of religious toleration was enforced by allowing the states to make their own decisions.

By the turn of the 19th century the Empire had ceased to exist in all but name. Emperors had long ceased to hold any real authority and the states behaved as if they were sovereign in their own right. When Napoleone Buonaparte, Emperor of Aquitaine, swept through Europe there was no power in Europe that could hold him off - none save for Austria and the Emperor Franz II.

Austria weathered the Aquitainian onslaught then, when Napoleone's army was destroyed by the Lithuanian winter, took the opportunity to reunite the Empire by force. With the assistance of the Bavarian army, and even the exiled Oldenburgs, Francis defeated one by one the Aquitanian puppet governments of each of the states and drove the Aquitanian garrisons back across the Rhine. When Napoleone was finally beaten in 1815 Francis proclaimed the refounding of the Holy Roman Empire under a strong central government, using as a model the newly independent United Provinces of New France.

From then to the present day the Empire has continued to develop. True democracy was arguably put into place in 1848 during the revolutions that rocked much of Europe, but the vote was not extended to every adult citizen until the early 20th century. The Empire gained a small colonial empire in Africa around the turn of the 20th century, but never developed it significantly and granted independence to all its colonies at once in 1974. Though it was on the winning side in both the First and Second Great Wars, it sufferered greatly both from the loss of manpower and the damage to its economy, and since then has turned its efforts towards promoting peace in Europe.

The Empire today remains a powerful player on the international stage and has one of the most successful economies in the world