1742 imperial election
election in the Holy Roman Empire
The imperial election of 1742 was an imperial election held to select the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It took place in Frankfurt on 24 January. The result was the election of Charles Albert of Bavaria, the first non-Habsburg emperor in three hundred years.
Background
War of the Spanish Succession
On 3 October 1700, weeks before his death, the childless and severely disabled Charles II of Spain named Philip V of Spain, his sister's grandson and the grandson of the French king Louis XIV of France, heir to the entire Spanish Empire. The possession by the House of Bourbon of the French and Spanish thrones threatened the balance of power in Europe. England, Austria and the Dutch Republic, fearing this threat, resurrected the Grand Alliance in support of the claim of Archduke Charles, then a young man of fifteen. Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor had married another sister of Charles II in 1666, and in 1685 their daughter surrendered her right to the Spanish throne to Archduke Charles, Leopold's son from a later marriage. The first hostilities of the War of the Spanish Succession broke out in June 1701. The Grand Alliance declared war on France in May 1702.
That same year, Maximilian II Emanuel, the elector of Bavaria, and his brother Joseph Clemens of Bavaria, the elector of Cologne, joined France in support of Philip's claim to the Spanish succession.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1742 imperial election” as election in the Holy Roman Empire. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as election in the Holy Roman Empire. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48841718. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1742, 1700, 1666 and 1685.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1742 imperial election”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1742 imperial election primary sources, 1742 imperial election archive and imperial research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1742 imperial election”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1742 imperial election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.