A
grand duchy is a
country or territory whose official
head of state or ruler is a
monarch bearing the title of
grand duke or
grand duchess. Relatively rare until the abolition of the
Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the term was often used in the official name of countries smaller than most continental kingdoms of modern Europe (e.g., Denmark, Spain, United Kingdom) yet larger than most of the sovereign duchies in the
Holy Roman Empire, Italy or Scandinavia (e.g.
Anhalt,
Lorraine,
Modena,
Schleswig-Holstein). During the 19th century there were as many as 14 grand duchies in Europe at once (a few of which were first created as
exclaves of the
Napoleonic empire but later re-created, usually with different borders, under another dynasty). Some of these were sovereign and nominally independent (
Baden,
Hesse and by Rhine,
Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
Mecklenburg-Strelitz,
Oldenburg,
Saxe-Weimar and
Tuscany), some sovereign but held in
personal union with larger realms by a monarch whose grand-dukedom was borne as a
subsidiary title (Finland, Luxembourg, Transylvania), some of which were
client states of a more powerful realm (
Cleves and Berg, and some whose territorial boundaries were nominal and the position purely titular (
Frankfurt).