Editing Rhineland (section)

===French Revolution===
{{main|Left Bank of the Rhine}}

At the [[Peace of Basel]] in 1795, the whole of the left bank of the Rhine was taken by France. The population was about 1.6 million in numerous small states.  In 1806, the Rhenish princes all joined the [[Confederation of the Rhine]], a puppet of Napoleon.  France took direct control of the Rhineland until 1814 and radically and permanently liberalized the government, society, and economy. The Coalition of France's enemies made repeated efforts to retake the region, but France repelled all the attempts.<ref>{{cite book |isbn=978-0198225645 |last=Blanning |first=T. C. W. |title=The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland 1792-1802 |date=15 December 1983 }}</ref>  

The French swept away centuries worth of outmoded restrictions and introduced unprecedented levels of efficiency.{{citation needed|date=November 2024}}  The chaos and barriers in a land divided and subdivided among many different petty principalities gave way to a rational, simplified, centralized system controlled by Paris and run by Napoleon's relatives. The most important impact came from the abolition of all feudal privileges and historic taxes, the introduction of legal reforms of the [[Napoleonic Code]], and the reorganization of the judicial and local administrative systems.  The economic integration of the Rhineland with France increased prosperity, especially in industrial production, while business accelerated with the new efficiency and lowered trade barriers.  The Jews were liberated from the ghetto. There was limited resistance; most Germans welcomed the new regime, especially the urban elites, but one sour point was the hostility of the French officials toward the Roman Catholic Church, the choice of most of the residents.<ref>Hajo Holborn, ''A History of Modern Germany, 1648-1840'' (1964) pp 386-87 </ref> The reforms were permanent. Decades later workers and peasants in the Rhineland often appealed to Jacobinism to oppose unpopular government programs, while the intelligentsia demanded the maintenance of the Napoleonic Code (which stayed in effect for a century).<ref>Michael Rowe, "Between Empire and Home Town: Napoleonic Rule on the Rhine, 1799-1814", ''Historical Journal'' (1999) 42#2 pp. 643-674 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3020916 in JSTOR]</ref><ref>Michael Rowe, ''From Reich to state: the Rhineland in the revolutionary age, 1780-1830'' (2003)</ref>