Napoleonic Era

The French Revolution (1789-99) alarmed Europe's monarchs, including Joseph II of Austria and Frederick William II of Prussia. In 1792, Prussia and Austria formally declared their intention to support the French monarchy. The French revolutionary government took the declaration as a threat, and war began the same year. Prussia made peace with France in 1795. Austria, badly defeated by Napoleon in Italy, signed a peace treaty in 1797. In the meantime, two further partitions of Poland had enlarged both Prussia and Austria.

War against Napoleon broke out in the Germanies three times in the next 10 years, and each time France was victorious. Napoleon reorganized the Germanies completely, consolidating them into about 30 sovereign states known as the Confederation of the Rhine. He abolished the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and forced humiliating peace treaties on Prussia and Austria.

In 1813 Prussia allied with Russia, Britain, and Sweden to liberate Europe from French domination. Austria and other German states joined the alliance, and Napoleon was finally crushed at Waterloo. At the Congress of Vienna (1815) Prussia received territory in the Rhineland and part of Saxony. Austria gained Lombardy-Venetia and part of Poland.