List of states in the Holy Roman Empire in the context of "Reichskammergericht"

The Catholic League (Latin: Liga Catholica, German: Katholische Liga) was a coalition of Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire formed 10 July 1609. While initially formed as a confederation to act politically to negotiate issues vis-à-vis the Protestant Union (formed 1608), modelled on the more intransigent ultra-Catholic French Catholic League (1576), it was subsequently concluded as a military alliance "for the defence of the Catholic religion and peace within the Empire".

Notwithstanding the league's founding, as had the founding of the Protestant Union, it further exacerbated long standing tensions between the Protestant reformers and the adherents of the Catholic Church which thereafter began to get worse with ever more frequent episodes of civil disobedience, repression, and retaliation that would eventually ignite into the first phase of the Thirty Years' War roughly a decade later with the act of rebellion and calculated insult known as the Third Defenestration of Prague on 23 May 1618.

The County of Rietberg (German: Grafschaft Rietberg) was a state of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the present-day German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was situated on the upper Ems in Westphalia, between the Prince-Bishopric of Paderborn and the Prince-Bishopric of Münster. It existed as an independent territory from 1237 to 1807, when it was mediatised to the Kingdom of Westphalia.

Generalfeldmarschall (German: [ɡenəʁaːlˈfɛltmaʁʃal] ; from Old High German marahscalc, "marshal, stable master, groom"; English: general field marshal, field marshal general, or field marshal; often abbreviated to Feldmarschall) was a rank in the armies of several German states and the Holy Roman Empire, (Reichsgeneralfeldmarschall); in the Habsburg monarchy, the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, the rank Feldmarschall was used. The rank was the equivalent to Großadmiral (English: Grand Admiral) in the Kaiserliche Marine and Kriegsmarine, a five-star rank, comparable to OF-10 in today's NATO naval forces.

The Ernestine duchies (German: Ernestinische Herzogtümer), also known as the Saxon duchies (Sächsische Herzogtümer, although the Albertine appanage duchies of Weissenfels, Merseburg and Zeitz were also "Saxon duchies" and adjacent to several Ernestine ones), were a group of small states whose number varied, which were largely located in the present-day German state of Thuringia and governed by dukes of the Ernestine line of the House of Wettin.

In 1800, there were seven such duchies (two held in personal unions with others) that collectively totaled 7,693 square kilometers of territory and were populated by 445,000 inhabitants.

Kleinstaaterei (German: [ˌklaɪnʃtaːtəˈʁaɪ], lit. 'small-state-ery') is a pejorative term coined in the early nineteenth century to denote the territorial fragmentation of Germany. While the term referred primarily to the territorial fragmentation of the German Confederation, it is also applied by extension to the even more extreme territorial fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire. In this period, Germany was split into a great number of nearly sovereign small and medium-sized secular and ecclesiastical principalities and free imperial cities, some of which were little larger than a single town or the surrounding grounds of the monastery of an Imperial abbey. Estimates of the total number of German states at any time during the 18th century vary, ranging from 294 to 348, or more. However, the number of states rapidly decreased with the onset of German mediatisation in the early 19th century.

Territorial fragmentation was compounded by the fact that, due to the haphazard territorial formation of many states or the partition of dynastic states through inheritance, a very large number of Holy Roman Empire states were constituted of non-contiguous parts, which resulted in many enclaves and exclaves.

Palatines (Palatine German: Pälzer) were the citizens and princes of the Palatinates, Holy Roman States that served as capitals for the Holy Roman Emperor. After the fall of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the nationality referred more specifically to residents of the Rhenish Palatinate, known simply as "the Palatinate".

American Palatines, including the Pennsylvania Dutch, have maintained a presence in the United States as early as 1632 and are collectively known as "Palatine Dutch" (Palatine German: Pälzisch Deitsche). The earliest Palatines settled in the Maryland Palatinate, an American palatinate established by the Calvert family as a haven for Catholic refugees.

The history of Estonia forms a part of the history of Europe. Human settlement in what is now Estonia became possible 13,000–11,000 years ago, after the ice from the last glacial era had melted, and signs of the first permanent population in the region date from around 9000 BC.

The medieval indigenous population of Estonia was one of the last pagan civilisations in Europe to adopt Christianity following the Northern Crusades in the 13th century. After the crusaders had conquered the area by 1227, Estonia was first ruled by the King of Denmark in the north (until 1345), and then until 1559 by the Teutonic Order, and by the ecclesiastical states of the Holy Roman Empire, which from 1418 to 1562 covered the whole of Estonia, forming a part of the Livonian Confederation. After 1559, Estonia became part of the Kingdom of Sweden until 1710, when the Tsardom of Russia (Muscovy) conquered the entire area during the Great Northern War of 1700–1721. Throughout this period the local German-speaking nobility enjoyed significant autonomy, and High German (earlier also Low German and Latin) served as the main language of administration and education.