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The Confederation of the Rhine or Rhine Confederation (; ) lasted from 1806 to 1813 and was formed initially from 16 German states by Napoleon after he defeated Austria's Francis II and Russia's Alexander I in the Battle of Austerlitz. The Treaty of Pressburg, in effect, led to the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine.
The members of the confederation were German princes (Fürsten) from the Holy Roman Empire, and technically not their states as such. They were later joined by 19 others, altogether ruling a total of over 15 million subjects providing a significant strategic advantage to France on its eastern front.
On 12 July 1806, on signing the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (), 16 states in present Germany formally left the Holy Roman Empire and joined together in a confederation (the treaty called it the ). Napoleon was its "protector". On 6 August, following an ultimatum by Napoleon, Francis II gave up his title of Emperor and declared the Holy Roman Empire dissolved. In the years that followed, 23 more German states joined the Confederation; Francis' Habsburg dynasty would rule the remainder of the empire as Austria. Only Austria, Prussia, Danish Holstein and Swedish Pomerania stayed outside, not counting the west bank of the Rhine, which was annexed by the French empire.
According to the treaty, the confederation was to be run by common constitutional bodies, but the individual states (in particular the larger ones) wanted unlimited sovereignty.
Instead of a (feudal, rather nominal) head of state, as the Holy Roman Emperor had been, its highest office was held by Karl Theodor von Dalberg, the Grand Duke of Frankfurt am Main and Napoleon's close ally. The office was called President of the College of Kings, styled Prince-Primate of the confederation, sort of a head of government. The 'Diet of the Confederation' (closest thing to a parliament) which Von Dalberg should have called together in Frankfurt am Main never met.
The Confederation was above all a military alliance; the members had to supply France with large numbers of military personnel.
In return for their cooperation some state rulers were given higher statuses: Baden, Hessen, Cleves and Berg were made into grand duchies and Württemberg and Bavaria became kingdoms; and/or states could be made larger by incorporating other — generally the many smaller, cfr. Kleinstaaterei — former imperial member states.
After Prussia lost to France in 1806, many medium-sized and small states joined the Rheinbund. It was at its largest in 1808, including four kingdoms, five grand duchies, 13 duchies, seventeen principalities and the Free Hansa towns of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen.
In 1810 large parts of northwest Germany were quickly incorporated into the Napoleonic Empire in order to better monitor the trade embargo with Great Britain, the Continental System.
In 1813, when Napoleon's campaign in the Russian Empire failed and some of its members changed sides, the Confederation of the Rhine collapsed.
After the dissolution of the Rhine Confederation, the only attempt at coordination (no actual central authority) in Germany until the creation on 21 October 1813 of the German Confederation was headed by a body called Central Administration Council (); its President was Heinrich Friedrich Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein (b. 1757 – d. 1831); it was dissolved on 20 June 1815.
On 30 May 1814 the Treaty of Paris declared the German states independent.
In 1815 the Congress of Vienna redrew the continent's political map. In fact, only minor changes were made to inner-German borders, and the resulting German Confederation consisted more or less of the same members as the Confederation of the Rhine.