Habsburg Monarchy

Origins and expansion

The Habsburg family originated with the Habsburg Castle in modern Switzerland, and after 1279 came to rule in Austria ("the Habsburg Hereditary Lands"). The Habsburg family grew to European prominence with the marriage and adoption treaty by Emperor Maximilian I at the First Congress of Vienna in 1515, and the subsequent death of adopted Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia in 1526.

Following the death of Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia in the Battle of Mohács against the Turks, his brother-in-law Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was elected the next King of Bohemia and Hungary

Terminology

Names of the territory that (with some exceptions) finally became Austria-Hungary:

Habsburg monarchy or Austrian monarchy (1526–1867): This was an unofficial, but very frequent name – even at that time. The entity had no official name.

Austrian Empire (1804–1867): This was the official name. Note that the German version is Kaisertum Österreich, i.e. the English translation empire refers to a territory ruled by an emperor, not just to a "widespreading domain".

Austria-Hungary (1867–1918): This was the official name. An unofficial popular name was the Danubian Monarchy (German: Donaumonarchie) also often used was the term Doppel-Monarchie ("Double Monarchy") meaning two states under one crowned ruler.

Crownlands or crown lands (Kronländer) (1849–1918): This is the name of all the individual parts of the Austrian Empire (1849-1867), and then of Austria-Hungary from 1867 on. The Kingdom of Hungary (more exactly the Lands of the Hungarian Crown) was not considered a "crownland" after the establishment of Austria-Hungary 1867, so that the "crownlands" became identical with what was called the Kingdoms and Lands represented in the Imperial Council (Die im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreiche und Länder).

The Hungarian parts of the Empire were called "Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen" or "Lands of Holy (St.) Stephen's Crown" (Länder der Heiligen Stephans Krone). The Bohemian (Czech) Lands were called "Lands of the St. Wenceslaus' Crown" (Länder der Wenzels-Krone).

Names of some smaller territories:

Austrian lands (Österreichische Länder) or "Archduchies of Austria" (Erzherzogtümer von Österreich) - Lands up and below the Enns (ober und unter der Enns) (996–1918): This is the historical name of the parts of the Archduchy of Austria that became the present-day Republic of Austria (Republik Österreich) on 12 November 1918 (after Emperor Charles I had abdicated the throne). Modern day Austria is a semi-federal republic of nine states (Bundesländer) that are: Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Tyrol, Styria, Salzburg, Carinthia, Vorarlberg and Burgenland and the Capital of Vienna that is a state of its own. Burgenland came to Austria in 1921 from Hungary. Salzburg finally became Austrian in 1816 after the Napoleonic Wars (before it was ruled by prince-archbishops of Salzburg as a sovereign territory).

Vienna, Austria's capital became a state January 1, 1922, after being residence and capital of the Austrian Empire (Reichshaupt und Residenzstadt Wien) for the Habsburg monarchs for centuries. Upper and Lower Austria, historically, were split into "Austria above the Enns" and "Austria below the Enns" (the Enns river is the state-border between Upper- and Lower Austria). Upper Austria was enlarged after the Treaty of Teschen (1779) following the "War of the Bavarian Succession" by the so-called Innviertel ("Inn Quarter"), formerly part of Bavaria.

Hereditary Lands (Erblande or Erbländer; mostly used Österreichische Erblande) or German Hereditary Lands (in the Austrian monarchy) or Austrian Hereditary Lands (Middle Ages – 1849/1918): In a narrower sense these were the "original" Habsburg Austrian territories, i.e. basically the Austrian lands and Carniola (not Galicia, Italian territories or the Austrian Netherlands).
In a wider sense the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were also included in (from 1526; definitely from 1620/27) the Hereditary lands. The term was replaced by the term "Crownlands" (see above) in the 1849 March Constitution, but it was also used afterwards.
The Erblande also included lots of small and smallest territories that were principalities, duchies or counties etc. some of them can namely be found in the reigning titles of the Habsburg monarchs like Graf (Earl/Count of) von Tyrol etc.

Territories

The territories ruled by the branch changed over the centuries, but the core always consisted of four blocs:

The Hereditary Lands, which covered most of the modern states of Austria and Slovenia, as well as territories in northeastern Italy and (before 1797) southwestern Germany. To these were added in 1779 the Inn Quarter of Bavaria; and in 1803 the Bishoprics of Trent and Brixen. The Napoleonic Wars caused disruptions where many parts of the Hereditary lands were lost, but all these, along with the former Archbishopric of Salzburg, which had previously been temporarily annexed between 1805 and 1809, were recovered at the peace in 1815, with the exception of the Vorlande. The Hereditary provinces included:

Archduchy of Austria (Upper Austria);

Archduchy of Austria (Lower Austria);

Duchy of Styria;

Duchy of Carinthia;

Duchy of Carniola;

The Adriatic port of Trieste;

Istria (although much of Istria was Venetian territory until 1797);

Gorizia and Gradisca;

These lands (3–8) were often grouped together as Inner Austria.

The County of Tyrol (although the Bishoprics of Trent and Brixen dominated what would become the South Tyrol before 1803);

The Vorarlberg (actually a collection of provinces, only united in the 19th century);

The Vorlande, a group of territories in Breisgau and elsewhere in southwestern Germany lost in 1801 (although the Alsatian territories (Sundgau) which had formed a part of it had been lost as early as 1648);

Vorarlberg and the Vorlande were often grouped together as Further Austria and mostly ruled jointly with Tyrol.

Grand Duchy of Salzburg (only after 1805);

The Lands of the Bohemian Crown – initially consisting of the five lands: Kingdom of Bohemia, March of Moravia, Silesia, and Upper and Lower Lusatia. Bohemian Diet (Czech: zemský sněm) elected Ferdinand, later Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, as king in 1526.

Lusatia was ceded to Saxony in 1635.

Most of Silesia was conquered by Prussia in 1740–1742 and the remnants which stayed under Habsburg sovereignty were ruled as Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia (Austrian Silesia).

The Kingdom of Hungary – two thirds of the former territory that was administered by the medieval Kingdom of Hungary was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and the Princes of vassal Ottoman Transylvania, while the Habsburg administration was restricted to the western and northern territories of the former kingdom, which remained to be officially referred as the Kingdom of Hungary. In 1699, at the end of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars, one part of the territories that were administered by the former medieval Kingdom of Hungary came under Habsburg administration, with some other areas being picked up in 1718 (some of the territories that were part of medieval kingdom, notably those in the south of the Sava and Danube rivers, remained under Ottoman administration).

Over the course of its history, other lands were, at times, under Austrian Habsburg rule (some of these territories were secundogenitures, i.e. ruled by other lines of Habsburg dynasty):

The Kingdom of Croatia (1527–1868);

The Kingdom of Slavonia (1699–1868);

The Grand Principality of Transylvania, between 1699 (Treaty of Karlowitz) and 1867 (Ausgleich)

The Austrian Netherlands, consisting of most of modern Belgium and Luxembourg (1713–1792);

The Duchy of Milan (1713–1797);

The Kingdom of Naples (1713–1735);

The Kingdom of Sardinia (1713–1720);

The Kingdom of Serbia (1718–1739);

The Banat of Temeswar (1718–1778);

Oltenia (1718–1739, de facto, 1737), as Grand-Voivodate (sometimes designated as Valachia Caesarea);

The Kingdom of Sicily (1720–1735);

The Duchy of Parma (1735–1748);

The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in modern Poland and Ukraine (1772–1918)

Duchy of Bukovina (1774–1918);

New Galicia, the Polish lands, including Kraków, taken in the Third Partition (1795–1809);

Venetia (1797–1805);

Kingdom of Dalmatia (1797–1805, 1814–1918);

Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia (1814–1859);

Kraków, which was incorporated into Galicia (1846–1918);

The Serbian Vojvodina (1848–1849); de facto entity, officially unrecognized

The Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar (1849–1860);

The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (1868–1918);

Sanjak of Novi Pazar occupation (1878–1913);

Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878–1918).

The boundaries of some of these territories varied over the period indicated, and others were ruled by a subordinate (secundogeniture) Habsburg line. The Habsburgs also held the title of Holy Roman Emperor between 1438 and 1740, and again from 1745 to 1806.

Characteristics

Within the Habsburg Monarchy, each province was governed according to its own particular customs. Until the mid 17th century, not all of the provinces were even necessarily ruled by the same person—junior members of the family often ruled portions of the Hereditary Lands as private apanages. Serious attempts at centralization began under Maria Theresa and especially her son Joseph II in the mid to late 18th century, but many of these were abandoned following large scale resistance to Joseph's more radical reform attempts, although a more cautious policy of centralization continued during the revolutionary period and the long Metternichian period which followed.

An even greater attempt at centralization began in 1849 following the suppression of the various revolutions of 1848. For the first time, ministers tried to transform the monarchy into a centralized bureaucratic state ruled from Vienna. The Kingdom of Hungary, in particular, ceased to exist as a separate entity, being divided into a series of districts. Following the Habsburg defeats in the Wars of 1859 and 1866, this policy was abandoned, and after several years of experimentation in the early 1860s, the famous Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 was arrived at, by which the so-called Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was set up. In this system, the Kingdom of Hungary was given sovereignty and a parliament, with only a personal union and a joint foreign and military policy connecting it to the other Habsburg lands. Although the non-Hungarian Habsburg lands, often, but erroneously, referred to as "Austria," received their own central parliament (the Reichsrat, or Imperial Council) and ministries, as their official name – the "Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council" – shows that they remained something less than a genuine unitary state. When Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed (after a long period of occupation and administration), it was not incorporated into either half of the monarchy. Instead, it was governed by the joint Ministry of Finance.

Austria-Hungary collapsed under the weight of the various unsolved ethnic problems that came to a head with its defeat in World War I. In the peace settlement that followed, significant territories were ceded to Romania and Italy, new republics of Austria (the German-Austrian territories of the Hereditary lands) and Hungary (the Magyar core of the old kingdom) were created, and the remainder of the monarchy's territory was shared out among the new states of Poland, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and Czechoslovakia.

Habsburg territories outside the Habsburg Monarchy

The Habsburg monarchy should not be confused with various other territories ruled at different times by members of the Habsburg dynasty. The senior Spanish line of the Habsburgs ruled over Habsburg Spain and various other territories from 1516 until it became extinct in 1700. A junior line ruled over Tuscany between 1765 and 1801, and again from 1814 to 1859. While exiled from Tuscany, this line ruled at Salzburg from 1803 to 1805, and in Würzburg from 1805 to 1814. Another line ruled the Duchy of Modena from 1814 to 1859, while Empress Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife and the daughter of Austrian Emperor Francis, ruled over the Duchy of Parma between 1814 and 1847. Also, the Second Mexican Empire, from 1863 to 1867, was headed by Maximilian I of Mexico, the brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria.

History

For a historical account, see:

History of Austria in the Habsburg Monarchy

History of Hungary under the Habsburg Monarchy

Kingdom of Bohemia: 1526–1648, 1648–1867, 1867–1918.

Kingdom of Croatia (Habsburg); Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia; Kingdom of Dalmatia

Kingdom of Hungary (1538-1867)

Kingdom of Serbia: 1718–1739, 1788-1791

History of Slovakia within the Habsburg Monarchy

Economy of the Habsburg Monarchy

History of the Balkans

Habsburg

Ferdinand I 1521–1564

Maximilian II 1564–1576

Rudolf II 1576–1612

Matthias 1612–1619

Ferdinand II 1619–1637

Ferdinand III 1637–1657

Leopold I 1657–1705

Joseph I 1705–1711

Charles VI 1711–1740 "Karl VI."

Maria Theresa 1740–1780 correctly written "Maria Theresia"

Habsburg-Lorraine

Joseph II 1780–1790 known as "the great Reformer"

Leopold II 1790–1792 from 1765 to 1790 "Grandduke of Tuscany"

Francis II 1792–1835 correctly written "Franz" (became Emperor Francis I of Austria in 1804, at which point numbering starts anew)

Ferdinand I 1835–1848 known as "Ferdinand the Good" German: "Ferdinand der Gütige"

Francis Joseph I 1848–1916 Brother of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (ruled 1864–1867)

Charles I 1916–1918 last reigning Monarch of Austria-Hungary

Otto von Habsburg-Lothringen or sometimes called Otto von Österreich Crown Prince of Austria to be found as Otto von Habsburg

Family tree

Habsburg family tree

In literature

The most famous memoir on the decline of the Habsburg Empire is Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday.