The
Kingdom of Westphalia was a historical state that existed from 1807-1813 in parts of present-day
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
. While formally independent, it was a
vassalA vassal in the terminology that both preceded and accompanied the feudalism of medieval Europe, is one who enters into mutual obligations with a monarch, usually of military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain guarantees, which came to include the terrain held as a fief. By...
state of the
First French EmpireThe French Empire
, also known as the Greater French Empire or First French Empire, but more commonly known as the Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I in France...
, ruled by
NapoléonNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
's brother
Jérôme BonaparteJérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte, French Prince, King of Westphalia, 1st Prince of Montfort was the youngest brother of Napoleon, who made him king of Westphalia...
. It was named after
WestphaliaWestphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Bochum, Detmold, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Minden and Münster and included in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia....
, but had little territory in common with that area.
The arms reflect the incorporated territories. The first quarter shows the silver horse of Westphalia, the second the lion of Hesse over the counties of Diez, Nidda and
KatzenelnbogenThe County of Katzenelnbogen was an Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Rhine area, which existed between 1095 and 1479.-History:...
, the third was newly designed for non specified territories around Magdeburg and the fourth combined Brunswick, Diepholz, Lüneburg and Lauterburg.
The
Kingdom of Westphalia was a historical state that existed from 1807-1813 in parts of present-day
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
. While formally independent, it was a
vassalA vassal in the terminology that both preceded and accompanied the feudalism of medieval Europe, is one who enters into mutual obligations with a monarch, usually of military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain guarantees, which came to include the terrain held as a fief. By...
state of the
First French EmpireThe French Empire
, also known as the Greater French Empire or First French Empire, but more commonly known as the Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I in France...
, ruled by
NapoléonNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
's brother
Jérôme BonaparteJérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte, French Prince, King of Westphalia, 1st Prince of Montfort was the youngest brother of Napoleon, who made him king of Westphalia...
. It was named after
WestphaliaWestphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Bochum, Detmold, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Minden and Münster and included in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia....
, but had little territory in common with that area.
Coat of arms
The arms reflect the incorporated territories. The first quarter shows the silver horse of Westphalia, the second the lion of Hesse over the counties of Diez, Nidda and
KatzenelnbogenThe County of Katzenelnbogen was an Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Rhine area, which existed between 1095 and 1479.-History:...
, the third was newly designed for non specified territories around Magdeburg and the fourth combined Brunswick, Diepholz, Lüneburg and Lauterburg. Around the shield are the Order of the Crown of Westphalia and the French ‘Grand Aigle’. Above is Napoleons star. Typical for Napoleonic heraldry are the crossed sceptres.
History
The Kingdom of Westphalia was created in 1807 by merging territories ceded by the
Kingdom of PrussiaThe Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918, until the defeat of Germany in World War I, was the leading state of the German Empire, comprising almost two-thirds of the area of the empire...
in the Peace of Tilsit, among them the
Duchy of MagdeburgThe Duchy of Magdeburg was a province of Brandenburg-Prussia from 1680–1807. It replaced the Archbishopric of Magdeburg after its secularization by Brandenburg. The duchy's capitals were Magdeburg and Halle, while Burg was another important town...
, the
Brunswick-LuneburgBrunswick-Lüneburg was a historical ducal state during the period from the late Middle Ages until the late Early Modern era within the North-Western domains of the Holy Roman Empire....
ian former
Electorate of HanoverThe Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg became the ninth Electorate of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation...
, the Brunswick-Lunenburgian Principality of Wolfenbüttel, and the Electorate of Hesse. The latter's capital
KasselKassel Kassel Kassel and of the district (Kreis) of the same name...
then fulfilled the same function for Westphalia, and the king kept court at the palace of
WilhelmshöheSchloss Wilhelmshöhe is a palace located in the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, Germany. As King of Westphalia, Jérôme Bonaparte renamed it Napoleonshöhe and appointed his Head Chamberlain Heinrich von Blumenthal as its governor, with instructions to supervise extensive renovations.After the...
, re-named Napoleonshöhe. The state was a member of the
Confederation of the RhineThe Confederation of the Rhine or Rhine Confederation was a client state of the First French Empire. It was formed initially from 16 German states by Napoleon after he defeated Austria's Francis II and Russia's Alexander I in the Battle of Austerlitz. The Treaty of Pressburg, in effect, led to the...
.
Intended as a Napoleonic "model state", a constitution was written and enacted by King Jérôme on 7 December 1807, the day after he had arrived in Kassel, making Westphalia the first monarchy in Germany with a modern-style constitution. The constitution made all male residents citizens of equal rights. Thus serfs were liberated and
Jews emancipatedJewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late eighteenth century and the early twentieth century...
, soccage was abolished. The
Napoleonic codeThe Napoleonic Code, or Code Napoléon is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified...
was enacted, doing away with
gildsA guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade.The earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel and a secret society...
and providing for the right of free enterprise. A
metric systemThe metric system is an international decimalised system of measurement, first adopted by France in 1791, that is the common system of measuring units used by most of the world. It exists in several variations, with different choices of fundamental units, though the choice of base units does not...
of weights and measures was introduced. Just as before the conquest, freedom of expression remained curtailed and
censorshipCensorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.-Rationale:...
was instituted. In 1810 the coastal and northern départements
North (capital:
StadeStade is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany and part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region . It is the seat of the district named after it...
) and
Lower Elbe (capital:
LunenburgLüneburg, also known as Lueneburg and Lunenburg in English, is a town in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is located about 45 km — a thirty-minute train ride — southeast of fellow Hanseatic city Hamburg. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, and one of Hamburg's inner...
) had to be ceded to the French Empire.
Following the French example
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish congregations were reorganised and a
ConsistoryIn Jewish usage, a consistory is a body governing the Jewish congregations of a province or of a country; also the district administered by the consistory...
supervising them was established. The former Brunswick-Wolfenbüttelian merchant and man of letters,
Israel JacobsonIsrael Jacobson was a German philanthropist and, according to Borowitz and Patz in Explaining Reform Judaism , is considered the "father" of the Reform movement in Judaism.-Origins:...
, became its consistorial president, assisted by a board of officers. Jacobson did his best to exercise a reforming influence upon the various congregations of the country. He opened a house of prayer in Kassel, with a ritual similar to that introduced in
SeesenSeesen is a town and a municipality in the district of Goslar, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the northwestern edge of the Harz, approx. 20 km west of Goslar. It is twinned with the English town of Wantage, Oxfordshire.-See also:...
. Napoléon's inglorious so-called
décret infâme, restricting again the rights of many French Jews, did not apply in Westphalia.
A significant burden on the kingdom was the requirement to supply troops and financial support for the
Napoleonic warsThe Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts declared against Napoleon's French Empire and changing sets of European allies by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played...
. Large numbers of Westphalian troops perished in the Russian campaign of 1812; the Westphalian Guards heroically but unsuccessfully charged the Raevski Redoubt during the
Battle of BorodinoThe Battle of Borodino , fought on September 7, 1812, was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the French invasion of Russia, involving more than 250,000 troops and resulting in at least 70,000 casualties...
.
In September 1813 Russian
cossackCossacks were originally members of military communities in the uninhabited borderland areas in the steppe that lies North of Black Sea...
s surrounded Kassel, defeated the French completely and retook the city. By October 1 the cossacks had conquered the whole Kingdom, but three days later Jérôme returned with French soldiers and managed to recapture Kassel. The
ElectorThe Prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire were the members of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire, having the function of electing the Holy Roman Emperors....
of
Hesse-KasselThe Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel or Hesse-Cassel was a reichsfreie principality of the Holy Roman Empire that came into existence when the Landgraviate of Hesse was divided in 1567 upon the death of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. His eldest son William IV inherited the northern half and the...
(or Hesse-Cassel) arrived soon after and the cossacks besieged the city again. After France lost the
Battle of the NationsThe Battle of Leipzig or Battle of the Nations, fought on 16–19 October 1813, was one of the most decisive defeats suffered by Napoleon Bonaparte. The battle was fought on German soil and involved German troops on both sides, as a large proportion of Napoleon's troops actually came from the German...
on 19 October 1813, the Russians dissolved the Kingdom and restored the status quo of 1806 (although Kaunitz-Rietberg and
Stolberg-WernigerodeThe Principality of Stolberg-Wernigerode was a county of the Holy Roman Empire located in the Harz region around Wernigerode, now part of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.-History:...
were not recreated).
External links