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Growth of French influence

To the west of the HRE was France, a country that grew steadily, first by ejecting the English from their territories in continental Europe and then by assimilating other smaller states. As France spread east so it started to come into conflict with the Empire. The first parts of Lorraine (the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun) were annexed in 1552 but the main turning point came during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). While this was in essence a religious struggle for power between catholic and protestant elements within the HRE, many neighbouring states, including France, were drawn into the conflict. In 1641 the French captured the whole of Lorraine, only to withdraw again in 1648 under the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the war. This treaty also confirmed French rule over the three bishoprics, which then became the French province of les Trois-Évêchés.

The French returned in 1670, during the reign of Louis XIV, this time going on to invade Trier and the Rhineland too. They withdrew again in 1697. During this period of French control the Duke of Lorraine, Charles V, sought refuge in Austria, where his son Leopold was brought up in the Habsburg court. Return to full independence was short-lived. In 1736, at the end of the war of the Polish Succession, Francis Stephen, who had succeeded his father Leopold as Duke, was deposed and replaced by a French-nominated successor. This was Stanislas, former king of Poland, whose daughter was married to Louis XV, and who commissioned the beautiful palaces and squares that make up the centre of Nancy. Incidentally, Francis Stephen did not do too badly out of this arrangement: created Duke of Tuscany by the Habsburgs, he went on to marry Maria Theresa, become Archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor! During Stanislas’s rule, French influence over Lorraine steadily grew and, on his death in 1766, control passed directly to the French crown. Shortly after, during the French Revolutionary Wars (1789–1799), Lorraine was reorganised into four French départements (counties) of Moselle (north), Meurthe (centre), Meuse (west) and Vosges (south).