Germany in the middle of the 18th century was a country that had been drifting in the backwaters of European politics for more than a hundred years. The decisive roles in the affairs of the Continent were played by those great powers—such as France, England, and Spain—whose economic resources and commercial connections provided a solid foundation for their military might. The German states, on the other hand, floundered in a morass of provincialism and particularism. All the forces that had contributed to the rise of powerful national monarchies west of the Rhine were lacking in the east. In the Holy Roman Empire the central government was losing rather than gaining strength, the princes were enlarging their authority at the expense of the crown, and business initiative was being discouraged by the lack of political unity and by the remoteness of the major trade routes.

Political power increasingly fell to small regional governments controlled by aristocratic overlords, ecclesiastical dignitaries, or municipal oligarchs. The history of Germany between the Thirty Years’ War and the French Revolution is largely the sum total of the histories of dozens upon dozens of small political units, each enjoying virtually full rights of sovereignty. The rulers of these gingerbread principalities, copying the example of the royal court of France or Austria, built costly imitations of the palaces of Versailles and Schönbrunn, which today are the delight of tourists but which were once the curse of an impoverished peasantry. The tradition of princely authority, an instrument of national greatness in western Europe, encouraged divisiveness in Germany. The country’s petty rulers legislated at will, levied taxes, concluded alliances, and waged wars against each other and against the emperor. Policies pursued in Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden, or Darmstadt reflected policies originating in Paris, Vienna, London, or Madrid but had no goal beyond the promotion of particularistic interests.

Political institutions designed theoretically to express the will of the nation continued to function, yet they had become empty shells. The Holy Roman emperor was still elected in accordance with a time-honoured ritual that proclaimed him to be the successor of Caesar and Augustus (indeed, the German word for emperor, Kaiser, was derived from Caesar). The splendid coronation ceremony in Frankfurt am Main, however, could not disguise the fact that the office conferred on its holder little more than prestige. Since all the emperors in this period except Charles VII were Habsburgs by birth or marriage, they enjoyed an authority that had to be respected. But that authority rested not on the prerogative of the imperial crown but on the possession of hereditary lands stretching from Antwerp in the west to Debrecen in the east. The sovereigns of the Holy Roman Empire, in other words, were able to play an important role in German affairs by virtue of their non-German resources. And, since, apart from Austria, Germany was not the main source of their strength, Germany was not the main object of their concern. The emperors tended to regard the dignity bestowed upon them as a means of furthering the interests of their dynastic holdings. The Imperial Diet meeting in Regensburg had also become an instrument for the promotion of particularistic advantage rather than national welfare. It continued in theory to express the will of the estates of the realm meeting in solemn deliberation. In fact it had degenerated into a debating society without authority or influence. The princes had ceased to attend the sessions, so that only diplomatic representatives were left to discuss questions for which they were powerless to provide answers. The other central institutions of the empire, such as the imperial cameral tribunal in Wetzlar, languished in indolence. Constitutionally and politically, Germany circa 1760 resembled Poland in that a once vigorous and proud state had become weakened by internal conflict to the point that it invited the intervention of its more powerful neighbors.

What saved Germany from the fate of Poland was the ability of one of the member states to defend the empire against aggression. For 200 years Austria acted as the bulwark of central Europe against French expansion. Its possessions, forming a chain of protective bases extending between the North Sea and the Danube, had time and again borne the brunt of attacks by French armies. The frontiers of France kept moving closer to the Rhine, but the Holy Roman Empire was at least spared the tragedy of partition that befell the Polish state. It was partly in recognition of the vital role that the Habsburgs played in the defense of Germany that the electors chose them as emperors with such regularity. The Austrian monarchy, moreover, endowed with resources comparable to those of the western nations, was able to pursue a policy of political rationalization with greater success than most of the principalities. The rulers in Vienna succeeded in improving the administration, strengthening the economy, and centralizing the government. Until the middle of the 18th century, Austria remained the only Great Power east of the Rhine.