and imperial peasant republics the incredibly complex Holy Roman Empire was. It's a pre-modern political structure you can't call a state and can read a dozen books on before you start to—barely ...

Having assumed the imperial purple himself, Napoleon would soon create a series of German satellite states, further undercutting what remained of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Francis II ...

We expect empires to have a clear and stable core inhabited by an imperial people that imposes its will on peripheral regions. But the Holy Roman Empire had no core, because it never possessed a ...

When Ferdinand III, the Habsburg monarch of the Holy Roman Empire ... the free imperial cities. Then the haggling started. The empire faced the same problem as today’s EU, only worse.

And in the late 700s AD it was the capital of Europe, of the Holy Roman Empire founded by the Emperor ... all that remains of Charles's imperial palace and containing the rough-hewn stone throne ...