Confederation of the Rhine

July 12, 1806

Sixteen German princes, bribed and bullied by Napoleon, formally left the Holy Roman Empire and joined a French-protected Confederation. Three weeks later Francis II laid down the thousand-year imperial crown. The map of central Europe was a blank slate awaiting whatever Paris chose to draw. The empire that Charlemagne had founded and Voltaire had mocked as neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, was finally dead.