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Article: July's anniversaries.(fall of Roman Empire)
- Article from:
- History Today
- Article date:
- July 1, 2006
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The End of the Holy Roman Empire
July 12th, 1806
IT MAY NOT HAVE BEEN HOLY OR ROMAN or an empire, as Voltaire remarked, but whatever it was, it had survived for more than a thousand years since the coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800. A motley medley of more or less independent kingdoms, lay and ecclesiastical principalities and free cities, it was finally destroyed by Napoleon and the French.
The process began when the German territories on the west bank of the Rhine were annexed to France in 1801 under the Treaty of Luneville, which the Hapsburg Emperor, Francis II, had no choice but to accept after the French victories at Marengo and ...