mediatize

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To annex (a lesser state) to a greater state as a means of permitting the ruler of the lesser state to retain title and partial authority.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To make mediate; reduce from an immediate or direct to a mediate or indirect relation through the interposition of a secondary superior or controlling agency. Applied specifically to the process of converting one of the minor German states or princely families of the old empire from the semi-independent condition of having a direct share in the imperial government, and responsibility to it, to that of subordination to an intervening power, by being annexed to it while retaining all local possessory and governmental rights. By this process, especially under the Westphalian treaties of 1648, and the changes leading to the dissolution of the old empire and the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the number of mediatized states and princely families became very large. The same peace [that of Lunéville] declared that all the secular princes who had lost territory by this cession were to be indemnified by the Empire. This was done at Regensburg in 1803. The indemnifying material was obtained by mediatizing all the free cities but six, and all the spiritual estates but two. Lowe, Bismarck, Int., p. vi.
2. To mediate.

Wiktionary

1. v. To annex a country while allowing the ruler of the country to retain certain rights
2. v. To mediate
3. v. obsolete To be mediatized by the Roman Empire

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To cause to act through an agent or to hold a subordinate position; to annex; -- specifically applied to the annexation during the former German empire of a smaller German state to a larger, while allowing it a nominal sovereignty, and its prince his rank.