"The Rhineland under the French (1794 - 1813)" Topic

"The "Rhineland" only emerged as a united political entity in the first half of the 19th century. Before 1794 the area on both sides of the Rhine, between the river Moselle and the Dutch border, comprised a patchwork "rag-rug", made up of many different territories and princedoms. Not only secular rulers, like the Dukes of Jülich, Klewe and Berg, but also religious leaders, such as the Archbishops of Trier and Cologne, governed the areas later known as the Prussian Rhine Province. Accordingly, the inhabitants did not describe themselves as "Rhinelanders", but rather as "Jülicher", "Klever" or "Kölner" and did not form a cross-territorial identity. Although they lived in an empire, namely the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation", which disintegrated in 1806 with the abdication of the Kaiser, the territorial and regional laws and circumstances characterized and determined their lives…."
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