Reichskrieg

A Reichskrieg ("Imperial War", pl. Reichskriege) was a war fought by the Holy Roman Empire as a whole against a common enemy. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a Reichskrieg was a formal state of war that could only be declared by the Imperial Diet.[1][2][3]

There were two kinds of Reichskrieg with two different legal bases. The first was a Reichsexekutionskrieg, a military action of the empire against one of its own Imperial Estates (Reichstände). This could only be done after one of the empire's two supreme courts, the Imperial Chamber Court or the Imperial Aulic Council, had found the offending estate to be in breach of the peace, and the estate was too powerful to be subdued by the Imperial Circle to which it belonged. The second kind of Reichskrieg was that against another sovereign state that had violated the empire's rights or frontiers. After 1519, the emperors were bound to get the support of the Imperial Electors prior to declaring war on another state. From 1648, they required the approval of the diet for both kinds of war.[4]

The only state against which a formal Reichskrieg was ever declared was France. The diet declared war on France in 1689, 1702, 1734, 1793 and 1799. The declaration created a state of war, but it was still necessary for the emperor by a series of orders to begin the decentralised process of forming the Reichsarmee (Imperial Army) out of the Imperial Circles' troops. What each estate owed in both money and men was determined by the Imperial Military Constitution.[5] Following the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss (1803), the six imperial cities that remained were pledged to perpetual neutrality even during a Reichskrieg.[6]

  1. ^ Hochedlinger 2013, p. xviii: "official state of war declared by the Imperial Diet and binding for the Reich as a whole".
  2. ^ Whaley 2012, p. 654: "A war formally declared by the Reichstag. Austria and other German powers could engage in wars that were not Reichskriege; even the supply of troops by other territories did not, however, make such a campaign into a Reichskrieg."
  3. ^ Düwel 2016, vol. 1, p. 12, n. 9, quotes the definition of Johann Jacob Mascov (1689–1761): Bellum imperii solenne est publica armora contentio, ab imperio Romano-Germanico contra gentes exteras, aut status imperii, officio non satisfacientes, suscepta (A solemn imperial war is a public armed conflict of the Roman–German empire taken up against a foreign people or an imperial estate that refused to obey).
  4. ^ Gagliardo 1980, p. 309, n. 13.
  5. ^ Wilson 2016, pp. 172–174.
  6. ^ Gagliardo 1980, p. 194.