Electors, The

Electors, The, or Kurfürsts, of Germany, German princes who enjoyed the privilege of disposing of the imperial crown, ranked next the emperor, and were originally six in number, but grew to eight and finally nine; three were ecclesiastical—the Archbishops of Mayence, Cologne, and Trèves, and three secular—the Electors of Saxony, the Palatinate, and Bohemia, to which were added at successive periods the Electors of Brandenburg, of Bavaria, and Hanover. “There never was a tenth; and the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called, which was a grand object once, but had gone about in a superannuated and plainly crazy state some centuries, was at last put out of pain by Napoleon, August 6, 1806, and allowed to cease from the world.”

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)