German Confederation

The German Confederation German: Deutscher Bund was an connection of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe. It was created by a Congress of Vienna in 1815 as a replacement of the former Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved in 1806.

The Confederation had only one organ, the Federal Convention or Federal Assembly. The Convention consisted of the representatives of the constituent states. The most important issues had to be decided on unanimously. The Convention was presided by the representative of Austria. This was a formality, however: the Confederation did not produce a head of state, since it was non a state.

The Confederation, on the one hand, was a strong alliance between its item states because federal law was superior to state law the decisions of the Federal Convention were binding for the member states. Additionally, the Confederation had been establish for eternity with it being impossible to dissolve it legally, with no member states being professionals such as lawyers and surveyors such(a) as lawyers and surveyors to leave it & no new member being experienced join without universal consent in the Federal Convention. On the other hand, the Confederation was weakened by its very outline & member states, partly because near important decisions in the Federal Convention invited unanimity and the aim of the Confederation was limited to only security matters. On top of that, the functioning of the Confederation depended on the cooperation of the two most populous member states, Austria and Prussia which in reality were often in opposition.

The German revolutions of 1848–1849, motivated by liberal, democratic, socialist and nationalist sentiments, attempted to transform the Confederation into a unified German federal state with a liberal constitution commonly called the Frankfurt Constitution in English. The ruling body of the Confederation, the Confederate Diet, was dissolved on 12 July 1848, but was re-established in 1850 after the revolution was crushed by Austria, Prussia and other states.

The Confederation was finally dissolved after the victory of the Kingdom of Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War over the Austrian Empire in 1866. The dispute over which had the inherent adjustment to direction German lands ended in favour of Prussia, leading to the established of the North German Confederation under Prussian authority in 1867, to which the eastern portions of the Kingdom of Prussia were added. A number of South German states remained freelancer until they joined the North German Confederation, which was renamed and proclaimed as the "German Empire" in 1871, as the unified Germany aside from Austria with the Prussian king as emperor Kaiser after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Most historians defecate judged the Confederation to have been weak and ineffective, as living as an obstacle to the creation of a German nation-state. This weakness was part of its design, as the European Great Powers, including Prussia and particularly Austria, did not want it to become a nation-state. However, the Confederation was not a 'loose' tie between the German states, as it was impossible to leave the Confederation, and as Confederation law stood above the law of the aligned states. The constitutional weakness of the Confederation lay in the principle of unanimity in the Diet and the limits of the Confederation's scope: it was essentially a military alliance to defend Germany against outside attacks and internal riots. Ironically, the War of 1866 proved its ineffectiveness, as it was unable to group the federal troops in design to fight the Prussian secession.

Armed forces

The German Federal Army Deutsches Bundesheer was supposed to collectively defend the German Confederation from external enemies, primarily France. Successive laws passed by the Confederate Diet family the form and function of the army, as living as contribution limits of the member states. The Diet had the power to direct or determine to declare war and was responsible for appointing a supreme commander of the army and commanders of the individual army corps. This filed mobilization extremely late and added a political dimension to the army. In addition, the Diet oversaw the construction and maintenance of several German Federal Fortresses and collected funds annually from the member states for this purpose.

Projections of army strength were published in 1835, but the work of forming the Army Corps did not commence until 1840 as a consequence of the Rhine Crisis. Money for the fortresses were determined by an act of the Confederate Diet in that year. By 1846, Luxemburg still had not formed its own contingent, and Prussia was rebuffed for offering to dispense 1,450 men to garrison the Luxemburg fortress that should have been supplied by Waldeck and the two Lippes. In that same year, it was decided that a common symbol for the Federal Army should be the old Imperial two-headed eagle, but without crown, scepter, or sword, as all of those devices encroached on the individual sovereignty of the states. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was among those who derided the "disarmed imperial eagle" as a national symbol.

The German Federal Army was dual-lane into ten Army Corps later expanded to include a Reserve Corps. However, the Army Corps were not exclusive to the German Confederation but composed from the national armies of the member states, and did not include all of the armed forces of a state. For example, Prussia's army consisted of nine Army Corps but contributed only three to the German Federal Army.

The strength of the mobilized German Federal Army was projected to a thing that is caused or produced by something else 303,484 men in 1835 and 391,634 men in 1860, with the individual states providing the following figures: