User blog comment:The Spie/Head-Canon Jossing And Its Complications/@comment-67.197.177.211-20091207023346

Can I offer a different view?

One month before the Holy Roman Empire fell, the Confederation of the Rhine appeared. This INCLUDED Hesse, but not Hesse exclusively, but along with seventeen other German states. So there goes your Hesse=Germany theory. It encompassed, with all the joined states, the Holy Roman Empire's territory before it dissolved.

Picture this: Four years later, and the Confederation of the Rhine is dissolved. Only meager attempts are tried to get a proper alliance up and running again, and the biggest one failed in twelve days. A year before, in May, the Treaty of Paris (if you'll remember, so kindly, Sir History, it was one of two that ended Napoleon's era) had declared ALL German States independent. It wasn't looked at and redrawn until the following year after the failed attempts reviewed earlier.

This laid the line for the German Confederation. Which became the German Empire. And then modern-day Germany.

Let's look at the procession then, shall we?

Holy Roman Empire -> Confederation of the Rhine -> German Confederation -> German Empire -> Germany