Talk:Austria

In T2G
I think we're spending way too much time worrying about the Holy Roman Empire in this context. The first line opines that the HRE collapsed at some point, and then a footnote says: "How this happened is not revealed. In OTL, it was a result of the Napoleonic Wars, but the name Holy Roman Empire was already seen as something of a joke throughout Europe."

That note is contradictory in that on the one hand, it seems to argue that the HRE could only collapse thanks to the Napoleonic Wars or some other dramatic external event. But at the same time, the note also admits that the HRE was something of joke. And for good reasons: the Prussian/Austrian rivalry had been one of the defining moments of European history throughout the 18th Century, with Prussia humbling Austria thrice. Clearly the HRE had little or no power to resolve that little issue. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that from a cultural standpoint both within the German speaking world and without, the "empire" everyone was focused on was the "Austrian Empire"; while it didn't quite exist de jure, it was perceived as existing de facto well before the actual fall of the HRE.

Unless the text actually says the HRE was a dead letter, I don't think need any references to it. TR (talk) 18:07, February 24, 2016 (UTC)