Border changes within the Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the French Revolution: the fall of the Treaty of France-Liège of 1772

The aim of this paper is to show the methodological pitfalls associated with the mass of documentation useful for analysing sovereignty and border changes. The choice, classification and specific needs of each portfolio are both necessary and constraining variables. In addition, the Principality of Liège as a case study makes the work even more complex, both because the exercise of sovereignty within the Holy Roman Empire raises questions for many researchers, and because the Principality is an ecclesiastical state governed by a unique legal system. So unique, in fact, that in 1772, France, the asserted protector of the Principality of Liège, proposed to Prince-Bishop François-Charles de Velbrück a territorial and commercial arrangement designed to re-establish a semblance of equality in the balance of trade between Liège and Austria. As well as allowing the construction of new communication routes and authorising the transfer of whole sections of landlocked territory from one power to another, with the sole aim of rationalising the delineation of borders, the 1772 agreement also had the express purpose of placing the Principality of Liège, a State of the Holy Roman Empire, in the fold of France.