The empire of Austria arose from the smallest beginnings at the end
of the eighth century. In 796 a Margraviate, called the Eastern Mark
(i. e. “March” or frontier-land), was founded as an outpost of the
empire of Charlemagne, in the country between the Enns and the Raab.
The name Oesterreich appears first in 996.
=Rise Under the Hapsburgs.=--In 1156 the mark was raised to a duchy; and
after coming into the possession of the House of Hapsburg in 1282, it
began its period of growth toward a powerful state. The princes of that
house extended their dominion by marriage, by purchase, and otherwise,
over a number of other states, including the crowns of Bohemia and
Hungary; and from 1438 down to the nineteenth century they held almost
without interruption the throne of the German empire (nominally “the
Holy Roman Empire”)--the emperor being the most conspicuous, if not
always the most powerful personage among the crowned heads of Europe.
=Hapsburg Power Through Marriage.=--The most pronounced rise of Austria
and of the House of Hapsburg to historical eminence may be said to date
from the reign of Maximilian I. (1493-1519). By marrying Mary, daughter
of Charles the Bold (1477), he acquired possession of the Netherlands.
Through the marriage of their son Philip with Joanna of Spain, the
Houses of Austria and Spain were united.
=Passes to Charles V. of Germany.=--As Philip died in 1506, his elder
son, the celebrated Charles V., became heir to the united monarchies,
and was elected emperor of Germany in 1519. Thus, by a succession of
fortunate marriages, the House of Hapsburg became the most powerful
dynasty in the world.
Charles V., however, resigned all his German territories to his younger
brother, Ferdinand I., who was thus the continuation of the Austrian
branch of the line. Under Ferdinand the power of Austria greatly
increased.
=Division of the Empire.=--In the partition of the inheritance that took
place among Ferdinand’s three sons, the eldest, Maximilian II., received
the imperial crown along with Austria, Hungary and Bohemia; the second,
Ferdinand, Tyrol and Upper Austria; the third, Charles, got Styria,
Carinthia, etc. Maximilian II. was fond of peace, tolerant in religion,
and a just ruler. He died in 1576; and of his five sons, the eldest,
Rudolf II., became emperor.
Rudolf II. was negligent, leaving everything to his ministers and the
Jesuits. His war with the Porte and Transylvania brought him little
credit; and the Protestants of Bohemia, oppressed by the Jesuits,
extorted from him a charter of religious liberty. In 1608 he was obliged
to cede Hungary, and in 1611 Bohemia and Austria, to his brother
Matthias.
Matthias, who became emperor in 1612, ceded Bohemia and Hungary to his
cousin Ferdinand, son of the Archduke Charles of Styria, third son of
Maximilian II. Matthias lived to see the outbreak of the Thirty Years’
war, and died in 1619.
=Ferdinand II. and the Thirty Years’ War.=--Bohemia refused to
acknowledge his successor, Ferdinand II., to whom all the Austrian
possessions had again reverted, and chose the Elector Palatine,
Frederick V., the head of the Protestant Union, as king. This election
gave the signal for the Thirty Years’ war, in which the House of Austria
took the lead, both as the champion of Catholicism, and the head of a
power which aimed at universal domination in Germany and in the
Christian world. The battle of Prague (1620) subjected Bohemia to
Ferdinand, who formally set about rooting out Protestantism in that
country and in Moravia. The emperor also succeeded in extorting
acknowledgment of his sovereignty from the states of Austria; and here,
too, Protestantism, which had made great progress since the time of
Luther, was mercilessly suppressed.
Under Ferdinand’s successor, the Emperor Ferdinand III. (1637-1657),
Austria continued to be a theater of war; and at the peace of Westphalia
(1648) had to cede Alsace to France.
=Leopold I. and the War of the Spanish Succession.=--Ferdinand III.’s
son and successor, Leopold I., provoked the Hungarians to rebellion by
his severity. The struggle between Leopold and Louis XIV. of France for
the heirship to the king of Spain led to the War of the Spanish
Succession, during which Leopold died, in 1705.
His eldest son and successor, the enlightened Joseph I., continued the
war. He died childless in 1711, and was succeeded by his brother,
Charles VI.
=Hapsburg-Lorraine Line of Rulers.=--With the death of Charles VI., in
1740, the male line of the Hapsburgs became extinct, and his daughter,
Maria Theresa, who was married to the duke of Lorraine, assumed the
government. For many years it had been the aim of Charles to secure the
adhesion of the European powers to the Pragmatic Sanction, by which the
possessions of the Austrian crown should pass to Maria Theresa. Those
powers during his lifetime had promised to second his wishes, but he was
no sooner in his grave than nearly all of them sought to profit by the
accession of a female sovereign.
=War of the Austrian Succession.=--A great war arose, in which England
alone sided with Maria. Frederick II. of Prussia conquered Silesia. The
Elector of Bavaria was crowned king of Bohemia, and elected emperor as
Charles VII. in 1742. The Hungarians, however, stood by their heroic
queen, who was soon able to wage a fairly successful war against her
numerous foes. At the death of the empress in 1780, the monarchy had an
extent of two hundred and thirty-four thousand square miles, with a
population of twenty-four millions. The administration of Maria Theresa
was distinguished by unwonted unity and vigor, both in home and foreign
affairs.
Her successor, Joseph II., was an active reformer in the spirit of the
enlightened despotism of the times, though often rash and violent in his
mode of proceeding. He was succeeded in the government by his brother,
the grandduke of Tuscany--as German emperor, Leopold II.--who succeeded
in pacifying the Netherlands and Hungary.
=Austria and the French Revolution.=--At the outbreak of the revolution
in France the fate of Leopold’s sister, Marie Antoinette, and her
husband, Louis XVI. of France, led him to an alliance with Prussia
against France; but he died in 1792 before the war broke out. War was
declared by France on his son, Francis II., the same year, and by the
treaty of Campo Formio, 1797, Austria lost Lombardy and the Netherlands,
receiving in lieu the Venetian territory.
In 1795, at the second partition of Poland, it had been augmented by
western Galicia.
Francis, in alliance with Russia, renewed the war with France in 1799,
which was ended by the peace of Lunéville. It is needless to follow all
the alterations of boundary that the Austrian dominions underwent during
these wars. The most serious was at the peace of Vienna (1809), which
cost Austria forty-two thousand square miles of territory. It was in
1804, when Napoleon had been proclaimed emperor of France, that Francis
declared himself hereditary emperor of Austria as Francis I. On the
establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine, he laid down the
dignity of German emperor, which his family had held for nearly four
hundred years.
The humiliating peace of Vienna was followed (1809) by the marriage of
Napoleon with the Archduchess Maria Louisa, and in 1812 Austria figured
as the ally of Napoleon in his great campaign against Russia, but she
did not give much active assistance. In August of the following year
Austria joined the grand alliance against France and the Austrian
general, Schwarzenberg, was entrusted with the chief command of the
allied forces, which at the battle of Leipzig and in the campaign of
1814 broke the power of Napoleon.
=Congress of Vienna and Subsequent Period of Metternich.=--The
sacrifices and great services rendered by Austria in the gigantic
struggle received full consideration at the treaty of Vienna (1815). As
recompense for the loss of the Netherlands she received Venice and
Dalmatia, which afforded an outlet for her foreign trade.
After that time Austria, under the diplomatic guidance of Prince
Metternich, exerted a powerful influence in European politics generally,
and more especially in the German Confederation, of which her emperor
was president. The death of Francis I. in 1835 made little alteration in
the policy of Austria; Ferdinand I. trod in his father’s footsteps. The
political alliance with Russia and Prussia was drawn closer by a
personal conference of the emperor with Nicholas I. and
Frederick-William III. at Teplitz in 1835.
=Revolution of 1848.=--In Austria, after the fall of Metternich from
power, the revolutionary period of 1848-1849 was one of exceptional
severity, the movement for constitutional freedom being complicated by
the revival of the national spirit in Hungary, Italy and Bohemia. The
time was everywhere ripe for revolt, when the fall of Louis-Philippe of
France (February 24, 1848), gave the signal for the outbreak of the
revolutionary elements all over Europe. Nowhere was the spirit of change
stronger than in Vienna, which for many months became a scene of
confusion.
The leaders of the popular movement in Vienna were in sympathy with
Hungary, and when the imperial troops were ordered to suppress the
national rising there, the citizens again rose in insurrection. In the
meantime the military forces had withdrawn from the capital in order to
prevent the Hungarians coming to the aid of the Viennese. Vienna was now
besieged, and surrendered at the end of October, after a resistance of
eight days.
=Francis Joseph Emperor.=--The reaction was triumphant, and the leaders
of revolt severely punished; but as Ferdinand had not shown sufficient
vigor in the great crisis, he was persuaded to abdicate, and Francis
Joseph was declared emperor at the age of eighteen. Thus restored, the
central authority had now to assert itself in Hungary and to complete
the reconquest of northern Italy. With the surrender of Venice, which
took place in August, the subjugation of Italy was complete.
=Conquest of Hungary.=--In Hungary, the Magyars, though the Germans and
Slavs within the country itself were hostile to them, began the campaign
of 1849 with decided success. But the government had already solicited
the aid of Russia, whose armies, entering Transylvania and Hungary,
added to the imperial cause the irresistible weight of numbers.
Surrounded on every side by superior forces, the Hungarians were
completely beaten. It was in vain that Kossuth transferred the
dictatorship to General Görgei. Görgei, whether from treachery, as the
other Magyar leaders maintained, or from necessity, as he himself
averred, laid down his arms to the Russians at Vilagos (August 13). The
surrender of Komorn, in September, completed the subjugation of Hungary,
which was treated as a conquered country.
The ten years which followed on the revolutionary troubles of 1848 were
a period of reaction and of absolutism. A constitution which had been
granted in 1849 was soon annulled. The policy pursued was one of strong
centralization under a bureaucratic government, by which the claims of
nationality and of freedom were alike disregarded. Liberty of the press
and trial by jury were set aside. A rigorous system of police was
maintained. The aim was to Germanize the whole empire and to crush the
aspirations of both Slavs and Hungarians. The Church pronounced against
national freedom, and supported the central authority and received great
privileges by the Concordat of 1855. The result of all these proceedings
was only to irritate the national feeling in Hungary, Italy and Bohemia.
=Struggle Between Austria and Prussia.=--On the confused arena of German
politics, the struggle for ascendancy was kept up between Austria and
Prussia. In 1850 the two powers were armed and ready to come to blows
with reference to the affairs of Hesse-Cassel; but the bold and
determined policy of Schwarzenberg prevailed, and by the humiliating
arrangement of Olmütz, Prussia gave way. For a few years longer the
preponderance of Austria in the German Confederation was secured.
The rule of Austria in Italy had always been unsatisfactory. From her
own provinces in Venice and Lombardy she controlled the policy of the
courts of central and southern Italy, and her influence tended
invariably towards the suppression of national feeling and popular
liberty.
=Loss of Italian Possessions.=--Sardinia was the only state that
worthily represented the spirit of the Italian people. In the spring of
1859 it began to arm against Austrian supremacy. Austria demanded
immediate disarmament, on pain of war; but Sardinia refused. Austria
accordingly commenced hostilities by crossing the Ticino at the end of
April, 1859. Sardinia having secured the aid of France, the Austrians
were defeated at Magenta, Solferino and elsewhere, and their emperor was
fain to seek an armistice from Napoleon. On July 11 the two potentates
met at Villafranca, and concluded a peace, ceding Lombardy to Sardinia.
Venice was all that still remained of the Italian possessions of
Austria.
=Austro-Prussian War.=--The rivalry of Prussia and Austria for influence
in the Germanic body of states dated from the rise of Prussia to be a
leading power. The arrangement of Olmütz in 1850 had left a painful
feeling of humiliation in the minds of the Prussian statesmen. The long
rivalry was now to be brought to a decisive issue. In 1864 the combined
Prussian and Austrian forces drove the Danes out of Sleswick-Holstein,
but the two victors quarreled about the subsequent arrangements. War was
declared, and in 1866 the Austrian armies in Bohemia were completely
beaten by the Prussians, in a campaign of seven days, which closed with
the great defeat of Königgrätz or Sadowa.
=Period of Reforms.=--After the great war of 1866 the history of Austria
has been concerned chiefly with two important interests. In the first
place, the government had to attempt an arrangement of the conflicting
claims and rights of the peoples constituting the empire; in the second
place, it has had to establish working relations with the great
neighboring powers, Germany and Russia, and especially with the latter,
on the Eastern Question.
=Union of Austria and Hungary.=--Hungary’s claims to be recognized as a
separate and distinct country were now, with great advantage, pressed
forward. In 1867 its political rights were successful in being regarded
as justified. This agreement was the famous Ausgleich, which has since
been in force, and which has to a sufficient degree justified its
adoption.
At the end of 1867 the first parliamentary ministry was formed. The
Concordat was set aside. Education was freed from the control of the
Church. Marriage was placed under the jurisdiction of the civil power.
The press laws were relaxed. Finally, the Prussian system of military
organization was introduced.
In the foreign affairs of Austria the chief aim was to arrive at a
satisfactory understanding with Germany and Russia. After 1871 Bismarck
arranged as between Germany, Austria and Russia a “Three Emperors’
Alliance,” which after the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 was superseded
by an alliance between Germany and Austria. This, by the inclusion of
Italy, in 1882, became the Triple Alliance, which remained in full force
down to the great European war of 1914.
During the Turkish revolution of 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed the
Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the Treaty of Berlin
had placed under Austro-Hungarian administration and military occupation
in 1878.
=Racial Difficulties Bearing Upon the European War, 1914-1917.=--The
multiplicity of races and their mutual jealousies rendered the task of
the central government in Austria-Hungary both delicate and difficult.
(See Peoples and Races.) Russia, as a Slav nation and a great power, had
long exercised a predominant influence in the Balkans. Acting under this
influence, Servia secretly fostered aspirations in the direction of a
Pan-Slavic propaganda with the apparent object of not only lessening
Austrian influence in the Balkans but of breaking up, through internal
defections, the Austrian Empire; from the accomplishment of this Servia
hoped to profit.
The Slavs are closely allied with Russia. The spread of Pan-Slavism
constituted a menace to the very existence of the Dual Monarchy. The
growth of German and Russian aspirations directed at expansion through
the Balkan States had, therefore, a direct connection with the racial
element of which Pan-Slavism was but one manifestation. As an evidence
of the spread of the doctrine of “Pan-Slavic Unity” and of the
bitterness of the racial antipathy which it engendered, the Austrian
Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, were
assassinated on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo, the capital of the Austrian
province of Bosnia. This act led directly to a declaration of war
against Servia on July 28th, followed by an Austrian invasion on July
30th. (Further causes and details of the war will be found under the
European War.)