Regensburg standstill

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Regensburg standstill of August 15, 1684 was an armistice limited to twenty years as a result of the Reunion War of 1683/84 between France's King Louis XIV , Emperor Leopold I and the Holy Roman Empire .

prehistory

French acquisitions in the west of the Holy Roman Empire

As part of its reunion policy, France had claimed a number of areas belonging to the empire, including most of Alsace , and occupied them militarily. Louis XIV relied on feudal arguments. Without such an at least rudimentary legal basis, the French king also occupied Strasbourg in 1681 . In order to have the acquisitions sanctioned under imperial law, negotiations took place in Frankfurt am Main in 1682 . Although Louis XIV exerted considerable pressure on the imperial estates , they were not prepared to recognize the reunions.

In 1683, Louis XIV took advantage of the Ottoman invasion of Austria ( Second Turkish Siege of Vienna ) and the associated concentration of imperial troops in the southeast to further expand his position in the west of the Holy Roman Empire. During the Reunion War, he conquered Luxembourg . During this time he was allied with, among others, the Elector of Brandenburg Friedrich Wilhelm . The Spanish Netherlands had already withdrawn from the conflict by means of an armistice; William III. also made peace with France for the Republic of the Seven United Provinces .

The Reunion War, together with worrying developments in Imperial Italy , such as the French occupation of Casale Monferrato , showed that Louis XIV was still expanding at the expense of the empire. The emperor saw himself threatened by a multi-front war in the west, against the Ottomans and possibly in Italy. After the success at Vienna, Leopold I initially concentrated imperial policy on the Turkish War and in Southeast Europe. This, as well as the lack of possible allies against France, also meant that the emperor was also ready for an armistice.

The negotiations on this took place in Regensburg . On the imperial side, the deputy principal commissioner Gottlieb Amadeus von Windisch-Graetz and the Austrian Reichstag envoy Theodor Heinrich von Strattmann were involved. The imperial estates were not involved in the negotiations. Because they, in particular the electoral council , showed their approval of the recognition of the reunion policy in advance, the emperor did not include them in the negotiations. However, the Reichstag envoys were kept informed of the progress of the negotiations.

content

The imperial negotiators succeeded in preventing final recognition of the reunions and the loss of Strasbourg. The empire left the territories and Strasbourg occupied until August 1, 1681 as part of the reunification policy to France. It was possible to negotiate the duration of this waiver from thirty to twenty years.

Louis XIV received sovereignty rights for these areas. Luxembourg was not part of the agreement. This had already been lost after the French agreements with Spain. However, the imperial negotiators succeeded in bringing Spain into the standstill.

In return, Louis XIV promised that the Protestants living in the acquired areas would remain free to practice their religion. In addition, Louis XIV should refrain from further encroachments on imperial territory. As a legal basis, the imperial negotiators enforced that the treaty was concluded on the basis of the Westphalian and the peace of Nijmegen . This excluded further reunions. The Reichstag ratified the agreement on September 9, 1684.

meaning

In terms of the actual text of the treaty, the Regensburg standstill was actually only a temporary agreement, without sanctioning any permanent territorial change. In fact, the concept of the armistice was a means of upholding the fiction that the empire had never given up rights. It was clear to those involved that this agreement already anticipated the content of a future peace treaty and thus the final renunciation of the occupied territories. This is supported by the fact that a joint commission should clarify the borderline. At the time, this was a time-consuming and therefore costly procedure, which speaks in favor of the intention of defining permanent limits. Despite the emphasis on provisionality, this indicates that the Reich no longer seriously expected to get the lost territories back. Things looked somewhat different with the endeavors to restore the imperial city of Strasbourg. This issue remained on the political agenda.

consequences

If emperors and imperial estates hoped that the Regensburg standstill would end the French expansion policy at the expense of the empire, it soon became clear that this was not the case. Already after the death of the childless Palatine Elector Karl II. In 1685, Louis XIV raised a claim to the allodial property of the Elector in favor of his sister-in-law Liselotte von der Pfalz . He also called for the armistice to be converted into a peace treaty. This was one of the reasons for the Palatinate War of Succession ; When it broke out in 1688, the armistice lapsed only four years after its conclusion.

literature