page_title: Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire
section_title: Official and international reactions
hierarchical_section_title: Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire / Aftermath / Reactions / Official and international reactions
caption_attribution_description: Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden
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: In an official capacity, Prussia's response was only formulaic expressions of regret owing to the "termination of an honourable bond hallowed by time". Prussia's representative to the Reichstag, Baron Görtz, reacted with sadness, mixed with gratitude and affection for the House of Habsburg and their former role as emperors. Görtz had taken part as an electoral emissary of the Electorate of Brandenburg (Prussia's territory within the formal imperial borders) in 1792, at the election of Francis II as Holy Roman Emperor, and exclaimed that "So the emperor whom I helped elect was the last emperor!—This step was no doubt to be expected, but that does not make its reality any less moving and crushing. It cuts off the last thread of hope to which one tried to cling". Baron von Wiessenberg, the Austrian envoy to the Electorate of Hesse-Kassel, reported that the local elector, William I, had teared up and expressed lament at the loss of "a constitution to which Germany had for so long owed its happiness and freedom".
  Internationally, the empire's demise was met with mixed or indifferent reactions. Alexander I of Russia offered no response and Christian VII of Denmark formally incorporated his German lands into his kingdoms a few months after the empire's dissolution. Gustav IV of Sweden (who notably hadn't recognized the separate imperial title of Austria yet) issued a somewhat provocative proclamation to the denizens of his German lands (Swedish Pomerania and Bremen-Verden) on 22 August 1806, stating that the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire "would not destroy the German nation" and expressed hopes that the empire might be revived.
caption: King Gustav IV of Sweden, who in 1806 issued a proclamation to his German subjects that the dissolution of the empire "would not destroy the German nation"
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