Rastatt Congress
The Rastatt Congress , which met from 1797 to 1799 , was supposed to implement the resolutions of the Peace of Campo Formio , namely the cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France.
prehistory
After the defeat in the First Coalition War, Emperor Franz II acted in his capacity as King of Hungary and Archduke of Austria and ceded territories of his hereditary lands to revolutionary France. In an additional treaty, however, he had also promised to campaign for the cession of the territories on the left bank of the Rhine that belonged to the Holy Roman Empire .
As compensation for the territories to be ceded, the secular rulers should be compensated at the expense of ecclesiastical territories. These should be secularized .
negotiations
These questions should be negotiated at the Rastatt Congress and the Reich as a whole should also make peace with France. To this end, the posted Reichstag a Reichsdeputationshauptschluss . In view of the paradoxical situation that the two largest and most powerful imperial estates had already made peace with Prussia and Austria, the Reich Deputation was forced to agree to the cession and compensation plan. Their task was only to decide which secular princes should be compensated and which spiritual territories should serve as disposal assets.
When the Second Coalition War broke out against France, the Rastatt Congress was broken off in 1799 and a legally binding peace was never reached.
