Grand Duchy of Hesse

The Grand Duchy of Hesse, generally called Hesse-Darmstadt, was the west German middle state that lasted from 1806 to 1918. It was born from the landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt, one quarter of old Hesse since the division of 1567, which Napoleon promoted to a grand duchy in 1806 for joining his Confederation of the Rhine, paying with the Duchy of Westphalia and other new lands. After Napoleon's fall the grand duchy swapped Westphalia, taken by Prussia, for Rhenish Hesse on the left bank of the Rhine, and took the full name Hesse and by Rhine to distinguish itself from its Kassel neighbours. A constitution in 1820 began the slow work of welding scattered territories into one state, while conservatives and liberals fought over parliaments and press laws, erupting in the streets in 1848. The grand duchy sided with Austria in 1866 and lost, then with Prussia in 1870 and won, entering the German Empire in 1871 as a federal state. Revolution ended it in November 1918 with the other German thrones; Darmstadt's palace became a museum.