El Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico

From its founding with Charlemagne to its destruction, a millennium later, at the hands of Napoleon, the Holy Roman Empire, a vast and ever-expanding entity, as ancient as it was unique, formed the heart of Europe. Engine of inventions and ideas, it was at the origin of many of the modern European states, from Germany to the Czech Republic, and its relations with Italy, France and Poland dictated the course of countless wars. European history would be meaningless without it. In this surprisingly ambitious book, Peter H. Wilson tackles the daunting task of explaining the functioning of the Empire not from a chronological point of view, but in a titanic expository exercise in which he demonstrates its momentous importance, and how the Empire mutated throughout weather. The result is a tour de force, a book that raises countless questions about the nature of its political and military power, about diplomacy and the essence of European civilization, and about the legacy of the Holy Roman Empire, which for generations has persecuted and obsessed with its offspring, from imperial and National Socialist Germany to the European Union.