Mint) were erected in the decades of reconstruction which started in 1698.
After the town had been occupied by Austrian troops, it was taken by French revolutionary forces in 1792 and remained under French suzerainty as a district capital in the department of Mont Tonn�rre (Donnersberg).
With the Napoleonic occupation of large parts of Germany, the achievements of the French Revolution were also granted to the citizens of Speyer. Also, in 1804, the Napoleonic code (Code Civil) was introduced in all German areas to the west of the Rhine annexed by France. Even after the fall of Napoleon and the return of the Palatinate to Germany, the code stayed in place until the introduction of the unified German Civil Code (BGB) in 1900.
The Wars of Liberation against Napoleon and the restructuring of the European states at the Vienna Congress in 1815 again changed the structures of power in the Palatinate and Speyer. Once again it stood in the limelight of �big politics� when Tsar Alexander I of Russia, Emperor Francis I of Austria, and King Frederick William III of Prussia met in Speyer at the allied headquarters on 27 June 1815.
In 1816 Speyer became capital of the district of the Palatinate. The area had been given to the Kingdom of Bavaria after the Congress of Vienna as compensation for Salzburg, which had been ceded to Austria. It was only on 1 January 1838 that the name �Pfalz� (Palatinate) was officially introduced for the area.
This growth in administrative importance brought numerous authorities and thus people into the plagued town which had suffered from depopulation during the occupations. In the first half of the 19th century the population doubled. A number of construction projects brought business and prosperity and the first residential quarters appeared outside the ancient city walls. The Rhine harbour was extended by 1837 and by 1847 Speyer had been linked to the railway network. There were social and charitable
