How did the Holy Roman Empire Work? (Short Animated Documentary)

one of the most interesting states throughout European history has always been the Holy Roman Empire made up of who knows how many smaller principalities kingdoms and bishoprics the question is how did the Holy Roman Empire work how did such a massive collection of states with differing interests managed to stay United for nearly a thousand years given that the Holy Roman Empire existed for so long its administration obviously changed a great deal thus will pick the late 18th century to look at because some of the old ways of doing things were still around and the politics was generally much more interesting to so wise of the late 18th century the Holy Roman Empire was divided like this the arch Duchy of Austria was the most important of these lands and was home to the Hapsburg imperial family roughly 1/3 of the Empire's lands was controlled by the Hapsburgs with another 20% being part of Prussia and the rest being ruled by the others as of 1765 the head of the Habsburgs was joseph ii who held several imperial titles the most important of these was obviously that of holy roman emperor which was an elected position elections weren't open to the public or anything that would be silly in during elections there were only nine eligible voters these voters were the sovereign rulers of these lands and included people like Maria to raise a Joseph's mother King George the 3rd of the United Kingdom who was also the king of Hanover and frederick ii of prussia better known as frederick the great so how exactly did this emperor run his empire well in a word barely whilst the numerous rulers whose rooms made up the empire did promise to remain loyal to the emperor in reality those promises were worth sweet nothing many states within the empire known formally his estates fought wars against each other sided with foreign powers against the emperor and generally just did as they pleased there was no fixed capital in the administration of the empire was mostly done from wherever the Emperor was at the time which at this point was mostly Vienna the Empire was formally subdivided into what are called Imperial circles for the purposes of administration and for the collection of taxes so the Emperor was the embodiment of the executive arm of government but his authority over the rest of the Empire could be pretty weak at times obviously the sole meant that the HRE had an extremely weak central authority that largely relied on the big scary austrian army in a fear of outside invasion to keep it all together that said there were arms of government which could and did act with authority across the empire the first was the legislative arm personified in the Imperial diet which was based in Regensburg this was the primary means of representation for the individual estates and their rulers the diet was made up of three actions called colleges college number one was the electoral college made up of the electors of the Empire whose task it was as previously said to be bribed by the hapsburgs into electing them as Emperor college number two was the college of princes basically the rest of the nobility whose job it was to stop the electors and Emperor from stomping on them College number three was the College of Cities made up of representatives of the Free Cities of the Empire and this was by far the least important section of the diet so the way it legislated was that the Emperor's representative most often the Archbishop of maine's would bring a proposition to the diet to be voted into law the electors read one vote each would decide whether or not they would support this Lauren if a majority supported it it would be brought to the princes the princes also got one vote each with some exceptions in which certain lands were grouped together in what are called benches benches had one collective vote and because of dynastic politics some Prince's got several also some of these princes like the electors were heads of foreign states and so for an interest led to a lot of gridlock anyway if a majority of the princes agreed to a proposal then it would become law and if not then things would be negotiated and to leave there it did or until everybody went home the college of free cities also got a vote but it was only advisory and thus everybody ignored it alongside the diet there were two high courts the imperial chamber council based in FETs LA and the owlet council based in vienna both courts a jurisdiction across the entire empire but only the outlet council could deal with criminal cases and importantly feudal ones ie it dealt with cases of people disobeying their superiors in rank something of particular interest to the Holy Roman Emperor all of this led to an often divided Empire whose estate seldom agreed on anything and would undermine their rivals in the Emperor whenever it suited them at the religious divide the rise of Prussia is a counterbalance to the hapsburgs and the ability for foreign rulers to interfere in its internal processes and its long-term weakness isn't all too surprising I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching with extra thanks to my patrons that you see on screen now and a special thanks to James Bissonnette as ARCA flash mark H party-boy Co David archaeologist Rob Waterhouse Chris wicker Michael Reynolds Gustav Swann onion duck David Silverman Paul Maggie packs Kowski Winston K wood vasily era vedas christian check' anthony Beckett Skye Chappell Adam Harvey and Ike

Channel: History Matters

Views: 2,232,586

Keywords: History, Matters, Holy, Roman, Empire, HRE, Emperor, Austria, Prussia, Government, Council, Lords, Bishops, how, work, run

Id: C8Fd7RSNK0s

Length: 4min 25sec (265 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 25 2019