Germany, a political entity of hundreds of little territories, half of them "Orthodox" Lutheran Protestant half of them Catholic, which all together hardly ever united under the rule of the Roman Catholic Emperor, was only a third option. Some of the more liberal places like Hamburg (Altona harboured sectarians and clandestine bookshops) and the university cities Halle, Leipzig and Jena offered freedoms to critical intellectuals, yet only a few states like Brandenburg-Prussia openly sympathised with the reformed branch of Protestantism to which France's Huguenots belonged. Germany was a choice with disadvantages. Cologne, however, was of all the options Germany granted the worst, which was to become apparent at the beginning of the 18th century when most of Germany's territories joined the Dutch Republic and Great Britain against France in the Great Alliance of the War of the Spanish Succession. The two Wittelsbach-ruled countries — Cologne and Bavaria — were the only important western European territories that supported Louis XIV.