Napoleon's alliance with the Prince-elector of Baden is to be secured through a marriage between the descendants of the two sovereigns, connecting the two dynasties.

The Prince-Elector is to be represented by his grandson.

Napoleon on the other hand lacks legitimate descendants of his own.

He has adopted Stéphanie de Beauharnais and named her "Princesse Française" (French Princess) with the style of Imperial Highness.

The marriage takes place in Paris on April 8, 1806.

On July 25, 1806 her new grandfather-in-law will be named Karl Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden.

Sixteen states in present-day Germany, on signing the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (German: Rheinbundakte) in Paris on July 12, 1806, join together in a confederation (the treaty calls it the états confédérés du Rhinelande, with a precursor in the League of the Rhine).

Napoleon is its "protector".

Liechtenstein is given full sovereignty, leading to the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire after eight hundred and forty-four years.

According to the treaty, the confederation is to be run by common constitutional bodies, but the individual states (in particular the larger ones) want unlimited sovereignty.

Instead of a monarchical head of state, as the Holy Roman Emperor had had, its highest office is held by Karl Theodor von Dalberg, the former Arch Chancellor, who now bears the title of a Prince-Primate of the confederation.

As such, he is President of the College of Kings and presides over the Diet of the Confederation, designed to be a parliament-like body although it will never actually assemble.

The President of the Council of the Princes is the Prince of Nassau-Usingen.

In return for their support of Napoleon, some rulers are given higher statuses: Baden, Hesse, Cleves, and Berg are made into grand duchies, and Württemberg and Bavaria become kingdoms.

States are also made larger by incorporating the many smaller "Kleinstaaten", or small former imperial member states.

They have to pay a very high price for their new status, however.

The Confederation is above all a military alliance: the members have to maintain substantial armies for mutual defense and supply France with large numbers of military personnel.

As events play out the members of the confederation will find themselves more subordinated to Napoleon than they had been to the Habsburgs.

Francis II gives up his title of Emperor and declares the Holy Roman Empire dissolved on August 6, following an ultimatum by Napoleon.

In the years that follow, twenty-three more German states will join the Confederation; Francis's Habsburg dynasty will rule the remainder of the empire as Austria.

Only Austria, Prussia, Danish Holstein, and Swedish Pomerania stay outside, not counting the west bank of the Rhine and Principality of Erfurt, which will be annexed by the French empire after the defeat of Prussia in the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt in October, while the surrounding Thuringian states join the Confederation.

According to the treaty, the confederation is to be run by common constitutional bodies, but the individual states (in particular the larger ones) want unlimited sovereignty.

Instead of a monarchical head of state, as the Holy Roman Emperor had been, its highest office is held by Karl Theodor von Dalberg, the former Arch Chancellor, who now bears the title of a Prince-Primate of the confederation.

As such, he is President of the College of Kings and presides over the Diet of the Confederation, designed to be a parliament-like body though it never actually assembles.

The President of the Council of the Princes is the Prince of Nassau-Usingen.

The Confederation is above all a military alliance: the members have to supply France with large numbers of military personnel.

In return for their cooperation, some state rulers are given higher statuses: Baden, Hesse, Cleves, and Berg are made into grand duchies, and Württemberg and Bavaria become kingdoms.

States are also made larger by incorporating the many smaller Kleinstaaten, or small former imperial member states.

The German grand duchy of Baden, a French satellite since 1796, recognizes Judaism as a tolerated religion on May 14, 1807.

Although this represents an improvement in the rights of Baden's Jews, especially the Schutzjuden (protected Jews), full emancipation is withheld.

The Draisine is the first reliable claim for a practically used precursor to the bicycle, basically the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine, nicknamed hobby-horse or dandy horse.

The term draisine is derived from German Baron Karl Christian Ludwig Drais von Sauerbronn, who invents his Laufmaschine (German for "running machine") in 1817, that  is called Draisine (German) or Draisienne (French) by the press.

Drais is a prolific inventor, but this is his most popular and widely recognized invention.

It incorporates the two-wheeler principle that is basic to the bicycle and motorcycle and is the beginning of mechanized personal transport.

This is the earliest form of a bicycle, without pedals.

His first reported ride from Mannheim to the "Schwetzinger Relaishaus" (a coaching inn, located in "Rheinau", today a district of Mannheim) takes place on June 12, 1817, using Baden's best road.

Immediately before the so-called Hep-Hep riots began in August, the Bavarian Diet had completed a debate on further emancipation of the Jews throughout the Kingdom.

Amos Elon will write in his 2002 book The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743–1933:

    In some places, attempts were made to return Jews to their old medieval status. The free city of Frankfurt reinstated parts of the medieval statute that restricted the rights of Jews. As of 1816 only twelve Jewish couples were allowed to marry each year. The 400,000 gulden the community had paid the city government in 1811 in return for its emancipation were declared forfeited. In the Rhineland, which had reverted to Prussian control, Jews lost the citizenship rights they had been granted under the French and were no longer allowed to practice certain professions. The few who had been appointed to public office before the war were summarily dismissed.

"Hep-Hep" is the perpetrators' derogatory rallying cry.

The most likely explanation is that it is based on the traditional herding cry of German shepherds.

August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue, a German dramatist and writer who also worked as a consul in Russia and Germany, is murdered in Mannheim on March 23, 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften, the associations of university students inspired by liberal and nationalistic ideas.

One of the books of August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue had been burned during the Wartburg festival, a convention of about five hundred Protestant German students, held on October 18, 1817 at the Wartburg castle near Eisenach in Thuringia.

The former refuge of reformer Martin Luther is considered a national symbol and the assembly a protest against reactionary politics and Kleinstaaterei (a word used, often pejoratively, to denote the territorial fragmentation in Germany and neighboring regions during the Holy Roman Empire (especially after the end of the Thirty Years' War) and during the German Confederation in the first half of the nineteenth century.

This murder gives Metternich the pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which will dissolve the Burschenschaften, crack down on the liberal press, and seriously restrict academic freedom in the states of the German Confederation.

In several cities, members of the bourgeoisie, students, and even university professors are among the instigators of the Hep-Hep riots.

The riots begin on August 2, 1819 in Würzburg. 

After several days troops are called in.

The Jewish population flees the city and spends several days in tents in the vicinity.

Several Jews are killed during the riots in Würzburg.