 During the so-called "Kleinstaaterei" period when this emigration occurred, the Middle Rhine region was a patchwork of secular and ecclesiastical principalities, duchies and counties.No more than half of the so-called German Palatines originated in the namesake Electoral Palatinate, with others coming from the surrounding imperial states of Palatinate-Zweibrücken and Nassau-Saarbrücken, the Margraviate of Baden, the Hessian Landgraviates of Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Homburg, Hesse-Kassel, the Archbishoprics of Trier and Mainz, and various minor counties of Nassau, Sayn, Solms, Wied, and Isenburg.What triggered the mass emigration in 1709 of mostly impoverished people to England was the Crown's promise of free land in the American Colonies.