How the fuck did this work? How much power did the emperor have? Was he an absolute monarch...

How the fuck did this work? How much power did the emperor have? Was he an absolute monarch? Why could separate entities go to war with each other and not have the emperor come down on them? How could places like Prussia just be in open conflict with Austria?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=h8QmUR8Z4Zg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vlaardingen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friso-Hollandic_Wars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Flemish_Succession
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Limburg_Succession
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_War_of_the_Guelderian_Succession
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Frisian_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_and_Cod_wars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friso-Drentic_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Utrecht_Civil_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Utrecht_Civil_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Germanic_law
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsenspiegel
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>Holy

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What the fuck am I looking at?

Keep looking, user

youtube.com/watch?v=h8QmUR8Z4Zg

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if you havent learned european medieval history you wont understand

its not a country or a kingdom ruled by an emperor, it was a long process of pope vs emperor that resulted in the emperor losing more and more power to the point the whole thing turned into a pseudo germanic confederation where germans would LARP going to war against eachother, apart from the 30years war, when they actually butchered eachother

by the time prussia emerged, the empire became even less significant, since austria alone became its own empire

What I want to know is why the fuck would anyone want to be the emperor, especially in the 18th century?

keeping smaller duchies and cities away from france and prussia, possible gains through marriage and good relations, plus it sounds great

>Roman

>Empire

>How the fuck did this work

It didn't.

>What I want to know is why the fuck would anyone want to be the emperor, especially in the 18th century?

You'd be a Hapsburg emperor, one of the most powerful people in the world, owning large parts of southern Germany, Bohemia, Austria etc. You'd have extensive ties to your Spanish Hapsburg allies and could politically maneuver independent states into keeping other players, like France, Sweden, Prussia or the Commonwealth. Honestly, besides a possible mild case of incest, why wouldn't you want to be Kaiser?

Bullshit. These lands were never united state besides stupid myths.
HRE was kinda UN of Central Europe which was including France, England and Russia. Germans hadnt reason for common state while their neibhours were weak, but they missed rising of France and Russia in 18 century which started to prevent unification. Empire of Prussia was inspired and supported by Britain, but later events showd that Prussia + Austria were too strong to unite before WWI.

>HRE was kinda UN of Central Europe

american education

Many of the states inside the Empire had been fighting since the 11th century if not earlier. Even under the best emperors it was still a shitfest.

Argumentation of euro-retard.

>How the fuck did this work?
Like a decentralized confederation. Everybody was doing his thing and more often than not in resulted in superior living conditions for the general populace and well developed trade and manufacturing industries.

>How much power did the emperor have?
That depends on the time, the HRE existed or about 1000 years. Early emperors where usually much stronger than late ones.

>Was he an absolute monarch?
See above. Also germanic ideas of monarchy are a little different, people would believe an emperor is graced by god himself and a single touch of his hand can cure sickness, yet they still wouldn't pay his damn taxes and occasionally fight his soldiers.

>Why could separate entities go to war with each other and not have the emperor come down on them?
This very rarely happened, especially not without sanctions. And if they did they had to hold to a code of war and accept mediators and stuff.
It is a germanic thing again, there is something called Landfriede or constitutio pacis, whic his the right of an entity (City, Nobelman, Tribe) to use weapons/violence to defend themselves and execute power and justice over their lands. This is an ancient right and was much needed in the early days, later on it became a source of many funny Feuds.

>How could places like Prussia just be in open conflict with Austria?
That was 70 years before the HRE finally ended. The HRE was not a modern construction but a deeply medieval one, largely based on germanic migration age laws, customs and culture. It couldn't make the transition into the modern period and hence it was virtually defunct for quite some time.

>Many of the states inside the Empire had been fighting since the 11th century if not earlier.
Please post examples then. All in all, the HRE, especially the german part was likely more peaceful over the centuries than most other parts of Europe during the medieval period.

the only tard here is you, comparing apples to oranges since you lack any sort of education on the topic

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vlaardingen

It was kinda like an empire, but it just decentralised constantly for a few hundred years.

>trips n dubs
Thats great, a single battle with 3000 dead. Live must have been hell back then. I thought you gonna post some examples of widespread and long going civil war within the HRE?

Comparing is in your mind. HRE was never single state as UN is not single state. They both were consultative organisation, HRE was gradually centralising but was powerless even in 1790.
I can imagine how retards like you will be talking in 2500 without invention of computers:
"Secretary of UN was powerfull head of Earth, decided to stop Syrian war in 2015, but some local leaders rose against him - for example Russian and Iranian".

Oh its more that most statelets in it constantly fought each other. The Netherlands alone spent most of the high middle ages fighting each other. The habsburg Swiss conflicts also come to mind and Bohemia wasn't the most peaceful place either.

To give some examples from the Low Countries, some don't have wikipedia pages though.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friso-Hollandic_Wars 1256–1289, 1296–1299, and 1345–1422

>Fighting over the Scheld (three centuries of conflict between Holland, Zeeland and Flanders)

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_War

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Flemish_Succession

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Limburg_Succession

>Second Loon War 1336 – 1366

>Brabatine succession war 1355-1357

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_War_of_the_Guelderian_Succession 1371-1379

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Frisian_War

>Second Guelderian succession war 1423 - 1448

>Guelderian independence war 1477 – 1482, 1494 – 1499

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_and_Cod_wars 1350-1490

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friso-Drentic_War 1230–1233

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Utrecht_Civil_War

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Utrecht_Civil_War

And that is not even mentioning the wars which a country like Holland fought against the Bishop of Utrecht over a 400 year period.

I recall reading that close to 50% of major nobles died in battle during the High Middle Ages in this part of the Holy Roman Empire. As I see it the Emperor had exactly zero power to end the conflict among his vassals.

i never said in my post at any time it was a state but you cant read as cool amerisharts usually cant, then this modern age exampled because you obviously know fuck all about medieval europe, shart yourself out

This is the ramblings of a defeated man

Was there a common law across everything?

IIRC they used a mixture of custom law, Roman law and ecclesiastical law.

A central court was founded in 1495

Anyone have a good general history book of the HRE? Or a book that comes highly recommended about the empire.

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>tfw you will never be an imperial knight in the service of Barbrossa
>tfw swabian
>tfw northern germans ruined germany

>implying incest is bad
Faggots out

It wasn't that different in the restof Europe... at some point. Look at the UK that anachronically pretends to be several countries in one even today. Problem is that Habsburgs were even worst than Brits at not ditching stupid old rules, and had a way bigger land to rule.

It also helps that France bullied them every time they tried to modernize a bit.

Lets say every tribe had it's own codex, with Salic and Saxon laws being dominant. However, they had a common legal tradition.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Germanic_law

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsenspiegel

Why didn't France become the Empire?

They never fucked up so much at remaining united that they had to go and try to recreate Charlemagne's empire to re-unify themselves.

I meant, why didn't the French King try to take the mantle of "protector of Christendom"?

>H

France was too fucking busy dealing with England's shit to worry about the German Princes.

You think?

How the fuck did this work? How much power did the President have? Was he an absolute monarch? Why could separate entities go to war with each other and not have the Federal Government come down on them? How could places like Ohio just be in open conflict with Michigan?

Only the French could stumble into victory like that

thanks frendo

>underage sharting noises

any good books on the HRE and how it worked?

Joan of Arc and King Charles were no accident, it was destiny

>How the fuck did this work

It didn't, really.

they were too busy being allied to saracens and turks to protect christianity

Heart of Europe by Peter Wilson for the history.

However, more fascinating than simple politics and who was in power is social and economic history, especially of the free Cities. There is ton of primary sources from the archives that gives unique insight in the society, its different classes and how things worked and how people perceived their world.

What said. I just finished reading and it's pretty good. It gets out into the weeds sometimes, but it goes very in depth in how the whole thing worked. Check out

It lasted a thousand years