Was the Holy Roman Empire really that bad? Like really? Besides the >H >R >E kek giggles meme did they have a golden age? Strong military? How was life in the empire? Tell me almost all I know about the empire.
Memes are welcomed but not always appreciated. Keep the Voltaire shit out of this.
Little known fact:
All nobility in the HRE was black
Its memed on because the
>H
>R
>E
controlled largest and most populated land in Europe, yet the emperors couldn't manage the princes and would be constantly BTFOd. Charles V has Spain, the HRE, netherlands, and Austria all under his control, yet he could barely beat the schmalkaldic league and got fucked when France entered. Everyone country around the HRE and various princes inside it hated the HRE and wished to see it fail. When Napoleon dismantled the HRE is did more for german unity and centralization than the entirety of the HREs existence.
Oh joy. Memes.
I don't know, the emperor wasn't as powerful as an emperor would have been in other European entities, but does it really matter?
The HRE still existed into the 19th century. As an entity, it did very well and was extremely powerful, regardless of the emperor's power himself.
An actualy fact, the patron saint of the HRE was infact a African.
I'm a HEMA guy, the German School of Swordsmanship started in the HRE and so I like it.
Sure, but not -ALL- nobility was black. Maybe one.. or two.. at a long shot three?
All three would've been in their Ghanaian colony
en.m.wikipedia.org
It had it all. And lost it. I sometimes refer to it as a living Ancap-meme.
>HRE
>ANCAP
How many layers of irony are we on?
HRE is bigger in the sum of it's parts
as a whole it was a loose confederacy of various German people's in a constant shitstorm with the pope
but the "asshole german princes" seemed to be good a powerful rulers in their own right Bavaria, Saxony, Frankfurt, Handover, Switzerland, Austria, and of course Prussia lot of these "not-kings" affected Euro history more than the independent kingdoms.
Dank meme lad
I like this image
Litetally reddit
Catholic larpers are as cringey as ANCAPS, yes.
Look at the EU right now
A paralyzed joke with lots of infighting, yeah?
Yeah
I can't believe we let the Germans do this again
Literally retarded.
A lot of people don't understand that the Holy Roman Empire existed for a huge amount of years, starting with arguably Charlemagne, or Otto I.
Naturally the emperor hold all sorts of different degrees of power over his realm during this long history.
If I could kill one meme, I'd kill "anything I disagree with = reddit."
reddit would want that...
you're not a redditor, are you?
>killing memes
Reddit
Why did they never start speaking Latin, despite claiming to be Roman? Why not call it the Holy German Empire instead?
They quickly took to calling themselves the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, but don't tell Voltaire that.
It is also important to note that they had a concept called Translatio Imperii, that justified themselves on the idea that becoming Roman was about filling in that European Superpower status, not just as ethnic heirs (like Portugal).
To them, the Frankish Kingdom was the continuing of that Roman ideal of power and Catholic blessing.
>Was the Holy Roman Empire really that bad?
Nope.
It actually generated the same liberalism and exchange of ideas of Italy without the shitty perma-warring-states condition.
Furthermore the shitloads of tiny states ensured that the >H>R>E subject is quite literally one of the freest in Western Europe. Sure Principalities existed, but so did shitloads of Free Cities.
Which is why Napoleon was being quite funny when he was "freeing" Germans. There were places in Germany that were quite liberal as compared to French who lived in the ground zero of feudal monarchies.
> that European Superpower status
So France confirmed for real Roman empire for most of the time the HRE existed?
France was in the same shit as the HRE was during the Medieval Ages.
In fact it was more pathetic: HRE acknowledged the liberties of the constituent states. France had de Facto independent fiefdoms while the King struggled to keep up the image of a united monarchy.
Speaking of the middle ages, one of my favorite things is the Romance poetry that France invented, but the Germans did it too and eventually it became about parodying the French Romances, like Parzival.
The Holy Roman Empire was too good for it's world. A loose confederacy of aristocratic estates and free cities that guaranteed more liberty and freedom for its inhabitants than any other European state at the time.
It's courts protected the weak against the strong to a level not seen in Europe again until the 20th century, it contained within it models for both statist authoritarianism, as in Prussia, libertarian individualism, as in Imperial Free Knights, and even anarcho-communism, in peasant republics like the Dithmarschen.
Pic related is a good book about it.
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is not a parody though. Have you even read it? There are some pretty good English translations of it. Not to mention that there are plenty of other works of note, for example the Frauendienst of Ulrich von Liechtenstein. They give quite a bit of insight into the mindset of high medieval knights, but also in regards to matters of warfare.
no?
This. Memes aside it was an interesting entity.
But France was never King of The Romans® (Trademarked Roman Catholic Church and Papal See Inc®)
It probably would have been fine had the Reformation not come to pass and sent the Empire into a state of near constant war with itself until its death.
That and Prussia. Fuck Prussia.
I meant more that Germans took it a little bit more lightly, Parzival is very light hearted at times where von Eschenbach does make deliberate jokes making fun of previous poets/authors in the Arthurian tradition by claiming to be illiterate and what not.
I mean, it's not like they didn't fight each other all the time anyways
The only super bad war was the Thirty Years War, and that was because it eventually became total war. All of the other wars were very restrained and gentlemanly.
The empire fell because it was made of restraint and fighting against a democratic/nationalistic state of no restraint. Literally no crown was capable of fielding the massive army of Revolutionary France simply because there were too many protections in place stopping that sort of conscription.
What did Prussia do?
He's conflating Prussia post-1815 with pre-1815 Prussia.
The things they share is that there is an intense sort of militarism, but pre-1815 Prussia was more focused on defending the rights of other Princes, and avoiding centralization and unification while post-1815 Prussia became the Prussia of Bismarck.
Frederick the Great undermining the Imperial Crown didn't single handedly doom the empire,
It's the dumbest meme on Veeky Forums. There is no such thing as one Holy Roman Empire. During the Ottonian, Salian and Hohenstaufen dynasty HRE was the most powerful country in Europe. And this is a fact.
Of course in Voltaire's times it was a shadow of its former self. Even the Germans didn't care about the Emperor.
It wasn't bad, but it's true that there were civil wars or unrest after almost every election.
saved
examples?
Biggest election related civil war was probably the Interregnum.
Generally though civil wars came more from outside wars and differing alliances.
The empire itself had a very large legal system so lords in the empire were more likely to have really long and heated law suits as opposed to boots on the ground.
...
>No papal tiara
Shit meme
Look at Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org
Poor Henry IV is a good example.
>en.wikipedia.org
I wouldn't call that a 'civil war'. It's a couple of nobles fighting over power, which is actually necessary in order to establish the rule of the law.
The United States have been through worse, although you wouldn't call them a failed state and refer to the American Civil War as an important step in the formation of the country.
>got fucked when France entered
that's not what happened
>Charles V has Spain, the HRE, netherlands, and Austria all under his control, yet he could barely beat the schmalkaldic league and got fucked when France entered.
Lmao what
Well, pretty much. Even though Charles V defeated the schmalkaldic league and was able to finally reunited the council like he always wanted, it was already too late. France was giving a lot of money to the protestant nobles who once again attacked Charles V. The emperor was almost captured and forced to flee. In the meantime, those princes were giving to the king of France the towns of Metz, Toul and Verdun. Charles V gathered his forces to take Metz back but completly failed.
Basically, Charles V was the last emperor whose title might have meant something. In the end, his reign in the HRE was a failure. He had failed to unite the church, he had failed to take back Metz, which would lay the path for french expansion in the east. It's because he was that disgusted and depressed by his own failures that he gave up the crown.
It's becoming a problem when similar situation happens during the reign of virtually every emperor/king.
France fought Charles V. long before the shmalkaldic war under Francis I. and didn't manage to beat him (while not being defeated either though), your portrayal of the situation is a bit of an understatement of the power Charles V. wielded imo
France was defeated in Italy. But the situation in the empire itself was very different. Charles was rarely present, and even though the title held à lot of prestige, it was Castille that allowed Charles to realize his imperial ambitions. In the end, it's also at the end of his reign, in the empire that hé experienced his worst defeat. He was the most powerful prince of his time, but had had failed to unite the church, just like the HRE, which was supposed to lead all the catholics failed by becoming the first multi-religious stage.
But that wasn't the case.
Most of the time, it was a highly decentralized state ruled by the Emperor only in name and tradition.
>and most populated land in Europe
That would be France.Also, Bavaria and Bohemia don't count.
>any other European state at the time
That would be the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
>That would be France.Also, Bavaria and Bohemia don't count.
No, the blue Banana was a thing even back then, large parts of France where rural only while the HRE had the big cities.
The French countryside was profoundly well populated, even more so than big cities.
>The emperor was almost captured and forced to flee
So did Charles with Francis in Pavia, the only difference is that Charles actually captured the french king.
Charles captured Francis after a battle in which the french forces were defeated. Charles was almost captured by the people who were supposed to be his vassals. It just shows you how the reign of Charles V is a failure in the empire.
What are you refering to?
Spent a few minutes in paint.
>Imperial-Spanish victory[1]
Capitulation of Wittenberg: Schmalkaldic League dissolved, Saxon electoral dignity passed to the Albertine House of Wettin
Are you retard or something?
saying that Charles V won is like saying US won the Vietnam war. Vietnam became communist, proddies still freely dicked about in the empire.
Here you have your answer
Pre-1815 Prussia defending the rights of other Princes was a political plot to undermine the power of the Habsburgs, it wasn't based on a respect for the constitution of the HRE, which Frederick II privately despised.
I'd say the difference between the HRE and France (and England) is that while in those countries most of the population, economic activity and culture ended up concentrated in a single big city (Paris or London), in the HRE, thanks to all political descentralization, you had several mid-sized cities with their own distinct cultures.
This is a dynamic that survives until the modern day. Germany, even after reunification, still doesn't have a concentrated urban landscape. This influence is also manifested in the "Mittelstand", the plethora of small and medium sized companies that dominate German economy.
Basically, everything good about Germany comes from the HRE, everything bad comes from Prussia.
>Lutheran is outdated
Oh fuck off. Veeky Forums thirty years war when? We talk about the HRE and have constant debates about religion and the Christian sects. All we need is someone to write the 95 shit posts and cause a pro/anti HRE split on Veeky Forums
>you had several mid-sized cities with their own distinct cultures.
You still have.
Festivals varie wildly between them and while the old citytongues which differ a lot from highgerman are mostly dead its still regarded as cultivated and sympathic by the middleclass to keep some kind of citydialect.
I think HRE was beautiful, free and the pinnacle of european civilization. Nothing can compare to its magnificence.
Can someone explain to me where the reddit meme originated? It seems like it should be treated like any other social media site but Veeky Forums has a special hate for it. It's retarded sure but so is this place.