When the Peace of Westphalia was signed on 24 October 1648 and the warring parties finally laid down their arms, a settlement was reached which, in its essential features, was to last until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. For a century and longer civil war had been endemic in Germany, and there were to be many minor upheavals in the future; but until 1740, when Frederick II of Prussia chose to invade Silesia and to break the peace of the Empire, that peace was not disturbed by any major internal war. Yet, while the conditions of the Empire were settled by the peace of 1648, the same did not apply to the conditions of Europe. Wars continued in the west and in the east, against France and against the Turks; and Louis XIV found it easy to find allies among the German princes and to use them against the Empire which he was fighting. Internally, however, an equilibrium was reached between the Emperor and the princes, between Protestants and Catholics, between the centrifugal forces and those aiming at more centralisation. A compromise solution was found which, by its very durability, proved that it was not unsatisfactory.

In practice the Empire now consisted of Germany and the Habsburg hereditary lands: its frontiers had contracted; but Switzerland and the Netherlands had long ceased to be parts of the Empire, and the official recognition of this fact was an advantage, and not a loss. It was much more important that parts of Alsace were ceded to France, and western Pomerania with Stettin, Wismar and the duchies of Bremen and Verden to Sweden.