This principality was very small, containing about 60,000 inhabitants, but it enjoyed independent and sovereign rights.

During the disturbed years which followed the French Revolution, its affairs became terribly involved.

The Duke was extravagant, and kept open house for the swarms of refugees, who fled eastward over Germany as the French power advanced.

Among these was the Prince of Leiningen, an elderly beau, whose domains on the Moselle had been seized by the French, but who was granted in compensation the territory of Amorbach in Lower Franconia.

In 1803 he married the Princess Victoria, at that time seventeen years of age.