'' However upon the invasion of Prussia by Napoleon, Fichte withdrew from these beliefs and went through an intellectual opposition toward any form of occupation from a foreign power and rather urged Germans to create a strong unification within Germany and unite on a common national identity (Benner 2013, p. 45). His views which were posed in his Addresses to the German Nation in 1808, indicate that were was a growing sense of nationalism which was significantly affected by post French revolution, and such tensions also illustrate the growing fears of occupation and being stripped of any form of autonomy which could result in some form of republican nation state. Thus, this is a reflection of some of the attitudes to the tension of the idea of nation state, which forms as one of the various implications of the tensions and interdependence regarding ideas of empire. .
One of the tensions between the ideas of empire and the nation state in 19th century Europe was the advocacy of the division of Europe into nation states, partly accounting for the failure of any permanent concept and practicality of the empire. Ernest Renan states – ''western Europe appears to us as divided into nations, some of which, at certain periods, tried to establish a hegemony over others, without ever achieving any permanent success'' (Renan 1995, p. 143). A division was seen not only in ideology, but also geo-politically, where the divide of nation states accounted for the national difference. Renan mentions that resulting from the end of the Roman Empire and the subsequent failures of prominent historical European figures such as Napoleon I, Charles V and Louis XIV in maintaining an empire, there resulted a low chance of an empire emerging again, since Europe was too divided nationalistically (p. 143). The tension with the ideas of empire and the nation state is, as Renan states – ''an attempt at universal domination would immediately produce a coalition that would compel the ambitious nation to retire within its natural limits'' (p.
