Imperial estate in the context of "Duchy of Carniola"

The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire occurred on 6 August 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, abdicated his title and released all Imperial states and officials from their oaths and obligations to the empire. Since the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire had been recognized by Western Europeans as the legitimate continuation of the ancient Roman Empire due to its emperors having been proclaimed as Roman emperors by the papacy. Through this Roman legacy, the Holy Roman Emperors claimed to be universal monarchs whose jurisdiction extended beyond their empire's formal borders to all of Christian Europe and beyond. The decline of the Holy Roman Empire was a long and drawn-out process lasting centuries. The formation of the first modern sovereign territorial states in the 16th and 17th centuries, which brought with it the idea that jurisdiction corresponded to actual territory governed, threatened the universal nature of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Holy Roman Empire by the time of the 18th century was widely regarded by contemporaries, both inside and outside the empire, as a highly "irregular" monarchy and "sick," having an "unusual" form of government. The empire lacked both a central standing army and a central treasury and its monarchs, formally elective rather than hereditary, could not exercise effective central control. Even then, most contemporaries believed that the empire could be revived and modernized. For example, the Reichstag passed the Imperial Recess as late as 1803.

In the Holy Roman Empire, Landeshoheit (German pronunciation: [ˈlandəsˌhoːhaɪt]) or superioritas territorialis (translated as territorial superiority, territorial supremacy or territorial sovereignty) was the authority possessed by the immediate lords within their own territories. It was possessed by all imperial estates and imperial knights. It has often been conflated with the concept of sovereignty, but, while it "carried with it nearly all the ingredients or attributes of true sovereignty, [it] was legally distinct from it, and was everywhere in Germany admitted to be so."

The Peace of Westphalia has frequently been portrayed as conferring full sovereignty on at least the imperial princes. In fact, the princes' powers were not expanded, but the right of their aristocratic subjects (mediate lords) to maintain military forces was removed. The princes' rights to make treaties and to enter into alliances and thus to engage in foreign relations was not affected but remained "constrained by the obligation not to harm the emperor or Empire". Their authority in their own territories remained "circumscribed by imperial law and by the emperor's formal position as their feudal overlord".

The Duchy of Limburg or Limbourg was an imperial estate of the Holy Roman Empire. Much of the area of the duchy is today located within Liège Province of Belgium, with a small portion in the municipality of Voeren, an exclave of the neighbouring Limburg Province. Its chief town was Limbourg-sur-Vesdre, in today's Liège Province.

The duchy evolved from a county which was first assembled under the lordship of a junior member of the House of Ardenne–Luxembourg, Frederick. He and his successors built and apparently named the fortified town which the county, and later the duchy, were named after. Despite being a younger son, Frederick had a successful career and also became duke of Lower Lotharingia in 1046. Lordship of this county was not originally automatically linked with possession of a ducal title (Herzog in German, Hertog in Dutch), and the same title was also eventually contested by the counts of Brabant, leading to the invention of two new ducal titles: Brabant and Limbourg.

The Prince-Bishopric of Basel (German: Hochstift Basel, Fürstbistum Basel, Bistum Basel) was an ecclesiastical principality within the Holy Roman Empire, ruled from 1032 by prince-bishops with their seat at Basel, and from 1528 until 1792 at Porrentruy, and thereafter at Schliengen. As an imperial estate, the prince-bishop had a seat and voting rights at the Imperial Diet. The final dissolution of the state occurred in 1803 as part of the German Mediatisation.

The Prince-Bishopric comprised territories now in the Swiss cantons of Basel-Landschaft, Jura, Solothurn and Bern, besides minor territories in nearby portions of southern Germany and eastern France. The city of Basel ceased to be part of the Prince-Bishopric after it joined the Swiss Confederacy in 1501.

The Abbey of Fulda (German: Kloster Fulda; Latin: Abbatia Fuldensis), from 1221 the Princely Abbey of Fulda (Fürstabtei Fulda) and from 1752 the Prince-Bishopric of Fulda (Fürstbistum Fulda), was a Benedictine abbey and ecclesiastical principality centered on Fulda, in the present-day German state of Hesse.

The monastery was founded in 744 by Saint Sturm, a disciple of Saint Boniface. After Boniface was buried at Fulda, it became a prominent center of learning and culture in Germany, and a site of religious significance and pilgrimage through the 8th and 9th centuries. The Annals of Fulda, one of the most important sources for the history of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century, were written there. In 1221 the abbey was granted an imperial estate to rule and the abbots were thereafter princes of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1356, Emperor Charles IV bestowed the title "Archchancellor of the Empress" (Erzkanzler der Kaiserin) on the prince-abbot. The growth in population around Fulda resulted in its elevation to a prince-bishopric in the second half of the 18th century.