The Habsburg monarchy enacts a major redistribution of territorial sovereignty within the Holy Roman Empire via an act known as the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss.

Sometimes referred to in English as the Final Recess or the Imperial Recess of 1803, the resolution, passed by the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) of the Holy Roman Empire on March 24, 1803, is ratified by the Emperor Francis II and becomes law on April 27.

It will prove to be the last significant law enacted by the Empire before its dissolution in 1806.

The resolution, approved by an Imperial Delegation (Reichsdeputation) on February 25 and submitted to the Reichstag for acceptance, is based on a plan agreed in June 1802 between France and Russia, and broad principles outlined in the Treaty of Lunéville of 1801.

The law secularizes nearly seventy ecclesiastical states and abolishes forty-five imperial cities to compensate numerous German princes for territories to the west of the Rhine that had been annexed by France as a result of the French Revolutionary Wars.