Rhinea

Rhinea officially the Republic of Rhinea (German: Republik Rhinea) is a country in Western Europe. It has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With about 94 million inhabitants, Rhinea is the most populous country in Europe after Russia, Cologne is the capital and largest city in the country.

Rhinea was inhabited by Germanic Tribes. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south, east and west, coming into contact with Celtic tribes in Gaul as well as Iranian, Baltic and Slavic tribes in Central and Eastern Europe. Under August Rome began to invade Germania. In 9 AD, three legions led by Varus were defeated. By 100 AD, when Tacitus wrote Germania, Germanic tribes had settled along the Rhine and the Danube. The tribes were occupying most of the area of modern Rhinea. In the 3rd century a number of large West Germanic tribes emerged: Alemanni, Franks, Chatti, Saxons, Frisii, Sicambri and Thuringii. After the invasion of the Huns in 375, and with the decline of Rome from 395, Germanic tribes moved farther southwest. Simultaneously several large tribes formed in what is now Rhinea and displaced or absorbed smaller Germanic tribes. Large areas known since the Merovingian period as Austrasia, Neustria and Aquitaine were conquered by the Franks who established the Frankish Kingdom, and pushed farther east to subjugate Saxony and Bavaria. Areas of what is today the eastern part of Rhinea were inhabited by Western Slavic tribes of Sorbs and Veleti. In 800, the Frankish king Charlemagne was crowned emperor and founded the Carolingian Empire, which was later devided in 843 among his heirs. After the break up Rhinea was for 900 years part of the Holy Roman Empire, which subsequently emerged from the eastern portion of Charlemagne's original empire. The territory initially known as East Francia stretched from the Rhine in the west to the Elbe River in the east and from the North Sea to the Alps. Population declined in the first half of the 14th century, starting with the Great Famine in 1315, followed by the Black Death of 1348–50.Despite the decline, however, German artists, engineers, and scientists developed a wide array of techniques similar to those used by the Italian artists and designers of the time who flourished in such merchant city-states as Venice, Florencce and Genoa.

In 1517, the Wittenberg monk Martin Luther publicised The Ninety-Five Theses, challenging the Roman Catholic Church and initiating the Protesant Reformation. In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg established Lutheranism as an acceptable alternative to Catholicism. The agreement at Augsburg failed to address other religious creed: for example, the Reformed faith was still considered a heresy and the principle did not address the possible conversion of an ecclesiastic ruler, such as happened in Electorate of Cologne in 1583. From the Cologne War until the end of the Thirty Years' Wars (1618–1648), religious conflict devastated German lands. undefined The latter reduced the overall population of the German states by about 30 per cent, and in some places, up to 80 per cent.The Peace of Westphalia ended religious warfare among the German states. German rulers were able to choose either Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism or the Reformed faith as their official religion after 1648.

In the 18th century, the Holy Roman Empire consisted of approximately 1,800 territories.The elaborate legal system initiated by a series of  Imperial Reforms (approximately 1450–1555) created the Imperial Estates and provided for considerable local autonomy among ecclesiastical, secular, and hereditary states, reflected in Imperial Diet. The House of Habsburg held the imperial crown from 1438 until the death of Charles VI in 1740. Having no male heirs, he had convinced the Electors to retain Habsburg hegemony in the office of the emperor by agreeing to the Pragmatic Sanction. This was finally settled through the War of Austrian Succession; in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Charles VI's daughter Maria Theresa ruled the Empire as Empress Consort when her husband,Francis I, became Holy Roman Emperor. From 1740, the dualism between the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia dominated the Rhinean history.

In 1772, then again in 1793 and 1795, the two dominant German states of Prussia and Austria, along with the Russian Empire, agreed to thePartitions of Poland; dividing among themselves the lands of the Polish-Lithianian Commonwealth. As a result of the partitions, millions of Polish speaking inhabitants fell under the rule of the two German monarchies. However, the annexed territories though incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Realm, were not legally considered as a part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the period of the Frnech Revolutionary War, along with the arrival of the Napeleonic era and the subsequent final meeting of the Imperial Diet most of the secular Free Imperial Cities were annexed by dynastic territories; the ecclesiastical territories were secularised and annexed. In 1806 the Imperium was dissolved; German states, particularly the Rhineland states fell under the influence of France. Until 1815, France, Russia, Prussia and the Habsburgs competed for hegemony in the German states during the Napoleonic Wars.

Following the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna (convened in 1814) founded the Rhine Confederation (Rheinische Bund), a loose league of 39 sovereign states. The appointment of the Emperor of Austria as the permanent president of the Confederation reflected the Congress' failure to accept Prussia's influence among the German states and acerbated the long-standing competition between the Hohenzollern and Habsburg interests. Disagreement within restoratiion politics partly led to the rise of liberal movements, followed by new measures of repression by Austrian statesman Metternich. The Zollverein, a tariff union, furthered economic unity in the German states. Liberal ideals of the French Revolution gained increasing support among many, especially young, Germans. The Hambach Festival in May 1832 was a main event in support of German unity, freedom and democracy. In the light of a series of revolutionary movements in Europe, which established a republic in France, intellectuals and commoners started the Revolution of 1848 in the German states. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was offered the title of Emperor, but with a loss of power; he rejected the crown and the proposed constitution, leading to a temporary setback for the movement.

King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the new Minister President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck successfully concluded war on Denmark in 1864, which promoted German over Danish interests in the Jutland peninsula. The subsequent Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 enabled him to create the North German Confederation (Norddeutscher Bund) whuch excluded Austria from the federation's affairs.

King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the new Minister President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck successfully concluded war on Denmark in 1864, which promoted German over Danish interests in the Jutland peninsula. The subsequent (and decisive) Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 enabled him to create the North German Confederation (Norddeutscher Bund) which excluded Austria from the federation's affairs. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the German princes proclaimed the founding of the German Empire in 1871 at Versailles, uniting all scattered parts of Germany except Austria. Prussia was the dominant constituent state of the new empire; the Hohenzollern King of Prussia ruled as its concurrent Emperor, and Berlin became its capital.[40 ]