Abstract
After the recapture of Mainz from the French in 1689, several thousand Imperial troops under Count Thüngen garrisoned the town, which was the southernmost crossing of the Rhine still controlled by the Allies.1 The cautious Elector, Anselm Franz, however, did not return to his Rhenish capital; instead, he remained in Aschaffenburg and precipitated a row in the Diet by his loyalty to the Emperor in the matter of the creation of a ninth, Protestant electorate. The other Catholic electors were so incensed over the conduct of Anselm Franz that they refused, for a time, to acknowledge the time-honored position of the Elector of Mainz (or, rather, his representative) as Director of the Diet.2 Anselm Franz, who left the financial affairs of the Electorate in a tangle, had also succeeded, by his excessive loyalty to the Emperor over the creation of a ninth electorate, in putting Lothar Franz in an uncomfortable position when he became Elector. Before 1695, the Bishop of Bamberg had been among the opponents of the ninth electorate; but he had avoided conflict with the Emperor over the matter and declared himself to be satisfied with the assurance given by Leopold that the formal introduction of Hanover into the College of Electors would be postponed.3
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Hans Karl, Freiherr (later Graf) von Thüngen (1648–1709), an energetic and popular commander, cheerfully burned captured French arsonists alive, insulted Palatine generals while in his cups and punctuated his sentences with the phrase “So wahr ich Hans Karl heisse.” He was Protestant, an able soldier and became a General-Field Marshal in the Mainz and Imperial services in 1696. Lothar Franz despised Thüngen, whom he found altogether too hearty. Aloys Schulte, Markgraf Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden und der Reichskrieg gegen Frankreich, 1693–1697 (Vol. I; Karlsruhe: J. Bielefeld, 1892), p. 50, n. 3.
Schulte, op. cit. I, p. 166. One of the strongest opponents of the conversion of Protestant Hanover into a ninth electorate, until 1698, when his loyalty to the Emperor caused him to change his views, was John William, Elector Palatine. Cf. A. Hilsenbeck, “Johann Wilhelm, Kurfürst von der Pfalz, vom Ryswicker Frieden bis zum spanischen Erbfolgekrieg,” Forschungen zur Geschichte Bayerns, XIII (1905), p. 147.
Katharina Dommayer, “Die Politik des Kurfürsten von Mainz während der Friedensverhandlungen von Rijswick 1696–1697,” Vienna dissertation, 1941, p. 6. The Emperor’s purpose in offering to set up a ninth electorate was to secure the loyalty of Hanover, which possessed a powerful army, during the conflict with France.
Ibid., p. 6.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 6. Lothar Franz was raising two new regiments and improving the fortifications of his towns. Wild, op. cit., p. 98.
Lothar Franz to Gudenus and Boyneburg, Instructions, August 7, 1695, M.E.A., Korrespondenz, fasc. 58.
Dommayer, op. cit. ,p. 7.
Lothar Gross, Die Geschichte der deutschen Reichshofkanzlei von 1559 bis 1806 (Vienna: Selbstverlag des Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, 1933), pp. 60–61. Philip Wilhelm was, in fact, a year younger than Lothar Franz.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 7.
John William, Elector Palatine, was also a supporter of Kaunitz. Heinrich Ritter von Srbik, Wien und Versailles 1672–1697 (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1944), p. 235.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 8.
A. Schulte, Frankreich und der linke Rheinufer (Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1918), pp. 179–180.
H. H. Hofmann, “Reichskreis und Kreisassoziation,” Zeitschrift für bayerischen Landesgeschichte, XXV (1962), 399, nevertheless, regards the Reichsmatrikel of 1681 as the genesis of an effective policy of association for self-defense and notes that with the conclusion of the Laxenburg Alliance in 1682, between the Emperor and the Franconian and Upper Rhenish Circles, the Imperial Kreise appeared for the first time as “equal treaty partners” of the Emperor. Four years later in the League of Augsburg, the Circles stood by the Kaiser and the armed states as European powers of a sort. See Hartung, op. cit., pp. 151–159.
Wild, op. cit.,p. 99.
Wild, op. cit., p. 100.
Schulte, op. cit., II, p. 204.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 10.
Ibid., p. 11.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 11.
Ibid.
op. cit., p. 101.
Wild, op. cit., p. 102.
R. Fester, “Die armirten Stände und die Reichskriegsverfassung, 1681–1697,” (diss. Strassburg, 1886), pp. 136–138.
Wild, op. cit., pp. 102–103.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 12.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 13.
Ibid.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 13.
Wild, op. cit., p. 105.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 15.
Hofmann, op. cit., p. 401.
Hartung, op. cit., pp. 155–156.
Ibid., pp. 156–157; Wild, op. cit., p. 103.
Wild, op. cit., p. 104.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 15.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 17.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 17.
Schulte, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 348.
Dommayer, op. cit., p.18; Schulte, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 343.
S. B. Baxter, William III (London: Longmans, 1966), p. 341.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 19.
Ibid.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 20.
Ibid.
Hofmann, op. cit., pp. 400–401. Hesse-Kassel was important to Lothar Franz because it was a member of both the Upper Rhenish and the Franconian Circles; its territories linked the two.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 22.
G. F. Preuss, “König Wilhelm III, Bayern und die Grosse Allianz, 1701,” Hist. Zeitschrift, LVII (1904), pp. 227–228. As late as September, 1702, Max Emanuel still entertained hopes of winning over the South German states and making himself the commander of the forces of the revived Association.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 23.
Hofmann, op. cit., p. 401.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 24.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 25.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 26.
Hofmann, op. cit., p. 398. This arrangement had originated in 1554–55 for cooperation in police and currency matters.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 26.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 27.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 28.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 29.
Arnold Berney, König Friedrich I. und das Haus Habsburg (1701–1707) (Munich and Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1927), pp. 232–243. Friedrich III had designs on the Franconian state of Brandenburg — Kulmbach, which, a few years later, were to be thwarted by Lothar Franz and his nephew Friedrich Karl.
Dommayer, op. cit., pp. 30–31.
Hofmann, op. cit., p. 401.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 32.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 32.
Ibid., p. 33.
Ibid.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 34. With inadequate forces the Margrave had taken the offensive unsuccessfully in 1694.
Ibid.
Römermonate, literally Roman months, originally meant the time spent by the vassals of the Emperor in accompanying their liege lord to Rome to be crowned. Under the Emperor Maximilian I, who would not or could not be crowned by the Pope, the obligation was commuted to a money payment to be rendered to the Kaiser by the estates of the realm. Roman months became, in effect, a supplementary war tax and remained in force until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. See Friedrich Heer, Das Heilige Römische Reich (Munich: Scherz Verlag, 1967), p. 175.
Dommayer, op. cit., p. 35.
Ibid.
Schulte, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 359.
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Thompson, R.H. (1973). Lothar Franz, the Association and the Peace Negotiations, 1695–1696. In: Lothar Franz von Schönborn and the Diplomacy of the Electorate of Mainz. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idees / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2389-4_3
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