| From: | Doctor Doom <JCH8169@*****.TAMU.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Doctor Doom does Deutschland (Part II) |
| Date: | Tue, 7 Dec 1993 18:36:24 -0600 |
>Germany is a series of city states now:
>Yeah, at least as described in the Harlequin module. Germany is more like
>it was in the 18th an 19th (pre-Kaiser) centuries.
In which case, the situation would be more accurately described as feuding
baronies or princedoms, rather than city-states, given the description in
Harlequin.
Germany's rather sorry political state (meaning its being an almost patchwork
of differing territories) was the direct result of the thirteenth century
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II's attempt to garner support for his various
endeavors (e.g., the establishment of a strong southern Italian state,
comprising Naples and Sicily and his little "disagreement" with the Pope),
which was to grant grant political autonomy to the various local potentates in
their territories, meaning the Free Cities, bishops, abbots, and secular
princes. This had the direct result of immediately making the Emperor an
office only in name.
It would take more than six centuries before a truly unified German state would
rise again--of course, the Thirty Year's War did not nothing to ameliorate the
situation. In that time, there was some consolidation of the motley collection
of petty princedoms, which in all began as approximately one hundred states and
over thirty Imperial Cities. Some of this was due to intermarriages betwixt
the nobles; more yet was accomplished by Napoleon Bonaparte, who dissolved the
Holy Roman Empire in 1806--replacing it with the Confederation of the Rhein.
It would take Bismark to finally bring it all together:
Upon the Proclamation of the Empire on 18 January 1871, the Second Empire of
the German Nation was composed of four kingdoms, six grand dukedoms, five
dukedoms, seven princedoms, three Free Cities, plus the annexed territory of
Elsafs-Lothringen (also known as: Alsace-Lorraine). Quite a bit fewer than
with which they began.
Hence, I claim that the designation "city-states" would be more appropriately
applied to the various chenanigans that the Italian situation and that of
classical Greece.
Colonel Count von Hohenzollern und von Doom, DMSc, DSc, PhD.
Doom Technologies & Weapon Systems -- Dark Thought Publications
>>> Working on solutions best left in the dark.
<<<
[ Doctor Doom : jch8169@********.tamu.edu ]
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"If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned fool
thing in the Balkans." -- Chancellor Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen
