Before this territorial expansion, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt had around 210,000 inhabitants in its territories on the right bank of the Rhine.Franz/Fleck/Kallenberg: Großherzogtum Hessen, p. 685. After 1806, the population was around 546,000. At the same time, the Grand Duchy reached its greatest territorial extent, around 9,300 km2.Franz/Fleck/Kallenberg: Großherzogtum Hessen, p. 693 (166 square miles). Almost simultaneously, there was a radical change in the state's internal politics. With two edicts on 1 October 1806, the Grand Duke revoked the financial privileges of the landed nobility on a large scale"Erklärung des Großherzogs vom 1. Oktober 1806 zur Aufhebung aller Steuerprivilegien" in Großherzoglich Hessische Verordnungen, Heft 1 (1806–1808), Darmstadt 1811, pp. 37 f. (the landed nobility became subject to taxationThe mediatised houses were more fortunate, since they were granted a 1/3 tax deduction owing to the privileged status awarded to them in the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (Franz/Fleck/Kallenberg: Großherzogtum Hessen, pp. 709 f.)) and their Landstände (feudal estates) were abolished,Erklärung des Großherzogs vom 1. Oktober 1806 über die Abschaffung der Landstände. In: Großherzoglich Hessische Verordnungen, Heft 1 (1806–1808), Darmstadt 1811, S. 39 f. which transformed Hesse-Darmstadt "from a mosaic of patrimonial fragments into a centralized, absolute monarchy".
