DUEL OF EAGLES

Germany in the 18th century was a divided land. Though the Holy Roman Empire embraced much of it, they were not one and the same. By 1700, two royal houses were dominant within imperial confines: the Catholic House of Habsburg, seated in Vienna, Austria, and the Protestant House of Hohenzollern, ensconced in Berlin, Prussia. Wise and fortunate enough to marry well, the Habsburgs had completely dominated the elective monarchy of the empire since the early 15th century. The Habsburgs also controlled many large territories outside of Germany, such as Italy, Bohemia, the Netherlands and Burgundy, and so while they were an immensely powerful presence in Germany, their dynastic interests were far more widespread.

The Holy Roman Empire, often referred to simply as Austria, was not a nation-state in the sense that Britain or France were. The Habsburg dynasty stood at the apex of a vast feudal pyramid. The empire, with a population of some 22 million, was thus a massive, diffuse, polyglot, multinational structure that