page_title: Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire
section_title: Reaction to Napoleon's imperial coronation
hierarchical_section_title: Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire / Wars with France and Napoleon / Reaction to Napoleon's imperial coronation
caption_attribution_description: Joséphine kneels before Napoléon during his coronation at Notre Dame. Behind him sits pope Pius VII.
context_page_description: The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire occurred de facto on 6 August 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, abdicated his title and released all imperial states and officials from their oaths and obligations to the empire. Since the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire had been recognized by Western Europeans as the legitimate continuation of the ancient Roman Empire due to its emperors having been proclaimed as Roman emperors by the papacy. Through this Roman legacy, the Holy Roman Emperors claimed to be universal monarchs whose jurisdiction extended beyond their empire's formal borders to all of Christian Europe and beyond. The decline of the Holy Roman Empire was a long and drawn-out process lasting centuries. The formation of the first modern sovereign territorial states in the 16th and 17th centuries, which brought with it the idea that jurisdiction corresponded to actual territory governed, threatened the universal nature of the Holy Roman Empire.
context_section_description: The head of the French republic, Napoleon, assumed the title "Emperor of the French" in 1804. Among others, one of the important figures attending the coronation was Pope Pius VII, probably fearing that Napoleon planned to conquer the Papal States. Pius VII was aware that Napoleon symbolically linked his imperial coronation with the imperial coronation of Charlemagne and would most likely have caught the similarity between Napoleon's title and Emperor of the Romans, the title used by Francis II and all Holy Roman emperors before him. Through his presence at the ceremony, Pius VII symbolically approved of the transfer of imperial power (translatio imperii) from the Romans (and thus the Franks and Germans) to the French.
  Napoleon's coronation received a mixed reaction in the Holy Roman Empire. Although a return to monarchy in France was welcomed (though unfortunate in so far that the monarch was Napoleon), the imperial title (instead of a royal one) was not. In the empire, Napoleon's title raised fears that it might inspire the Russian Emperor to insist that he was equal to the Holy Roman Emperor and might encourage other monarchs, such as George III of the United Kingdom, to also proclaim themselves emperors. Relations between the Habsburgs and George III were complicated; in diplomacy, the court at Vienna had for many years refused to refer to the British king as "His Majesty" since he was only a king, not an emperor. The Habsburg diplomat Ludwig von Cobenzl, fearing the consequences of Napoleon's coronation, is quoted as having advised Holy Roman Emperor Francis II that "‘as Roman Emperor, Your Majesty has enjoyed till now precedence ahead of all European potentates, including the Russian emperor".
  Though Napoleon's imperial title was viewed with distaste, Austrian officials immediately realized that if they were to refuse to accept him as an emperor, war with France would be renewed. Instead, the focus became on how to accept Napoleon as an emperor while still maintaining the pre-eminence of their own emperor and empire. France had officially accepted parity with Austria as a distinct state in 1757, 1797 and 1801 and in the same settlements accepted that the Holy Roman Empire outranked both Austria and France. Thus, it was decided that Austria would be raised to the rank of an empire in order to maintain the parity between Austria and France while still preserving the Roman imperial title as pre-eminent, outranking both.
caption: The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David (1807)
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