Magdeburg concert
The Magdeburg Concert , also known as the Magdeburg Convent or Magdeburg Alliance of 1688, was an amalgamation of armed imperial estates at the beginning of the War of the Palatinate Succession . Because the Imperial Army Constitution proved too cumbersome to react quickly to the French invasion of the Reich, the allies organized an army. This contributed to the fact that the French troops had to retreat across the Rhine.
history
After the challenge of the war manifesto Louis XIV. Leopold I responded with a counter manifesto. He knew that not only would he have to wage war against the Ottomans , but that there would be war against France as well. Indeed, in September 1688, French troops marched into the empire on the Lower Rhine and the Palatinate. The newly adopted Imperial War Constitution was unsuitable for quick reactions and, moreover, was still untested. The imperial troops were essentially still tied up in the war against the Ottomans. The extended district association of the Augsburg Alliance , which was itself a reason for war, had never really worked, so that the resistance to the French advance was low.
Help came in particular from some, mostly Protestant, north German and north-east German imperial estates, some of which had in the past made pacts themselves with France against Habsburg. This was the case with the Brandenburg Elector Friedrich III. to, from which the initiative for the Magdeburg Alliance originated. Johann Georg III joined this on October 22, 1688 . von Sachsen , Ernst August von Hannover and Karl von Hessen-Kassel . Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria also participated later . These armed imperial estates provided the troops, while the non-armed imperial estates provided maintenance and quarters. This happened before the Reichstag , which was incapable of acting at the time . This could only be legitimized as an act of imperial emergency.
The partners formed an army of 22,000 men that was initially deployed on the Middle Rhine. The main army of Brandenburg operated on the Lower Rhine. The concert's army protected Frankfurt am Main from French attacks and liberated Franconia . Then they marched in the direction of the Palatinate. The French troops withdrew behind the Rhine in early 1689 before the stronger concert troops and other units.
The warfare of the concert troupes as well as that of the French, who devastated the Palatinate and neighboring areas, violated the provisions of the Peace of Westphalia . The army itself raised war contributions in the areas cleared by the French and fed on the country, which increased the suffering of the population. However, the armed imperial estates showed that they were significantly more efficient than the imperial war constitution of 1681, which was based on the imperial circles.
literature
- Karl Otmar von Aretin: The Old Empire 1648–1806. Vol.2 Imperial tradition and Austrian great power politics (1684–1745). Stuttgart, 1997 pp. 30, 54
- Hajo Holborn: German History in Modern Times Vol. 1. Munich, 1970 p. 435f.
- Michael Kotulla: German constitutional history: From the Old Reich to Weimar (1495 to 1934). Heidelberg, 2008 p. 133