By 1808 Europe had undergone radical changes. The defeat of Austria by the French at Ulm in October 1805 and then especially at the major battle of Austerlitz on December 2 of that year led to the abdication of Francis II as ruler of the Holy Roman Empire on August 6, 1806, and to the dissolution of that institution, which had been in existence since Christmas day 800 CE, when Charlemagne was crowned by Pope Leo III. (From the late fifteenth century on, the suffix “Deutscher Nation” was routinely added to “Heiliges Römisches Reich” to indicate its principal constituencies and the fact that its emperors had long been Habsburgs.) As a consequence, Beethoven's Vienna was now occupied by the French. Only two months later the decisive defeat of the Prussians at the battle of Jena-Austerlitz on October 14, 1806, forced King Friedrich Wilhelm III to flee into exile in the eastern marches. Although the kingdom of Prussia was reduced to half its size and power, a series of liberal reforms—notably the liberation of the serfs and reduction of power of the guilds—was undertaken with ministerial authority by Karl von Stein and his successor, Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg. On May 2, 1808, Madrid rebelled against the French occupation in the uprising depicted vividly in Goya's two paintings of 1814: The Second of May (also known as The Charge of the Mamelukes) and the renowned Thee Third of May, which commemorates the French reprisals when they executed hundreds of Spanish rebels. The uprising led to the Spanish War of Independence, which England and Portugal joined in the Peninsular War.

The fall of the Holy Roman Empire and the collapse of Prussia were symptoms rather than causes. Several factors contributed to the sense of new beginnings that began to permeate European thought in those years. Most conspicuous, of course, was the French Revolution, which shook the political foundation of Europe and prompted intellectuals to reexamine many assumptions that had dominated the preceding century. Another factor was the Industrial Revolution that produced social transformations such as urbanization and commercialization.