In the history of Germany, (, "small-state-ery") is a German word used, often pejoratively, to denote the territorial fragmentation 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 19th century. It refers to the large number of nearly sovereign small and medium-sized secular and ecclesiastical principalities and free imperial cities, some of which were little larger than a single town or the surrounding grounds of the monastery of an Imperial abbey. Estimates of the total number of German states at any given time during the 18th century vary, ranging from 294 to 348 or more; however, the number of states rapidly decreased with the onset of German mediatisation in the early 19th century. Territorial fragmentation was compounded by the fact that, due to the haphazard territorial formation of many states or the partition of dynastic states through inheritance, a very large number of Holy Roman Empire states were constituted of non-contiguous parts, which resulted in countless enclaves or exclaves. An example of the territorial fragmentation is the story of how a young Wilhelm von Humboldt and his friends traveled from Brunswick, capital of the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, to France in the summer of 1789. In order to observe the revolutionary events unfolding in Paris, Humboldt's party entered and exited six duchies, four bishoprics and one free imperial city (Aachen) before reaching the French border. History The powerful and autonomous German stem duchies, that already existed before the demise of the Carolingian Empire and the formation of East Francia during the 9th century, shaped the federal character of the Holy Roman Empire. Unlike in other European kingdoms, a college of the Imperial princes elected the king from among the territorial dukes after the Carolingian line had died out around the year 898. This system prevented the development of a strong centralized monarchy as local rulers, who sought to promote their own interests and autonomy, often rebelled against the sovereign ruler and conflicts had to be solved on the battlefield. The imperial interregna between 1245 and 1312 and between 1378 and 1433 increased political instability and strengthened the communal movements, such as the Swabian League of Cities, the Hanseatic League and the Swiss Confederacy. Feuding among the lesser territorial nobility, who received their fief from the territorial princes, led to conflicts such as the Thuringian Counts'