Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/536

 498 Readings in European History France by the Treaty of Luneville (1801) brought with it a complete reconstruction of the remainder of Ger- many, since the dispossessed princes were to be indem- nified with lands within the empire. Accordingly the ecclesiastical states and the free imperial towns, once so important among the German states, were, with a few exceptions, incorporated into the territories of neighbor- ing secular princes by the great Imperial Recess of 1803. The little holdings of the knights were quietly absorbed by the new "sovereigns" within whose terri- tories they happened to lie. The map of Germany was thus much simplified, and the ancient and hopeless sub- division of Germany greatly diminished. Napoleon had no desire to unify Germany, but wished to have several independent states, or groups of states, which he could conveniently bring under his control. Consequently, when it came to arranging the Treaty of Pressburg after his great victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon forced the defeated emperor to recognize the rulers of Wiirtemberg and Bavaria as " kings " and the elector of Baden as enjoying " the plenitude of sovereignty." In short, he proposed that the three most important princes of southern Germany should be as independent as the king of Prussia or the emperor himself, and that, more- over, they should owe their elevation to him. He then formed a union of these new sovereigns and of other Ger- man rulers, which was called the Confederation of the Rhine. In the rather insolent message given below he informs the diet of the empire that the new union, of which he is to be the protector, will be incompatible with the continued existence of the venerable Holy Roman Empire.