In the Seven Years' War Prussia broke away from Catholic Austria and the Empire, and confronted France and Russia as an independent Protestant State.
But yet another dark hour was in store for Germany, as she once more slowly struggled upwards.

In France the Monarchy has exhausted the resources of the nation for its own selfish ends.

The motto of the monarchy, _L'etat c'est moi,_ carried to an extreme, provoked a tremendous revulsion of ideas, which culminated in the stupendous revolution of 1789, and everywhere in Europe, and more specially in Germany, shattered and swept away the obsolete remnants of medievalism.
The German Empire as such disappeared; only fragmentary States survived, among which Prussia alone showed any real power.

France once again under Napoleon was fired with the conception of the universal imperium, and bore her victorious eagles to Italy, Egypt, Syria, Germany, and Spain, and even to the inhospitable plains of Russia, which by a gradual political absorption of the Slavonic East, and a slow expansion of power in wars with Poland, Sweden, Turkey, and Prussia, had risen to an important place among the European nations.

Austria, which had become more and more a congeries of different nationalities, fell before the mighty Corsican.