Austrian Empire

“ The Austrian aristocrats behaved as senselessly in 1866 as the Prussian aristocrats in 1806, but with less excuse than the latter had. By their action they caused their country's degradation. From the rank of a first-rate power that country has been compelled to descend, not so much through loss of territory and population as through loss of position. For centuries the house of Austria has been very powerful in Europe, though the Austrian empire can count but sixty years. ”

“ Sound statesmanship required that the Austrian Empire, the existence of which was necessary for Europe, should not be reduced to a mere wreck; that it should be made a friend, and, as a friend, not too powerless; that what Prussia had gone to war for, was the leadership in Germany, and that this leadership in Germany would not have been fortified, but rather weakened, by the acquisition from Austria of populations which would not have fitted into the Prussian scheme. ”

“ The consequence was, that the house of Austria became the first of reigning families; and at one time it seemed about to grasp the sceptre of the world. When the Empire ceased to exist, the Austrian empire, though of later creation than the French empire of Napoleon I., had that appearance of antique grandeur which has so great an effect on men's minds. It was looked upon as ancient because the imperial family really was ancient, and could trace itself back through almost twelve hundred years, to the sixth century, though in places the tracing was of the most shadowy character. ”

“ While the Austrian military position, in spite of the desire of the emperor for military reform, is still weak, I cannot find words too strong to praise the political ability with which the Austrian empire is being kept at peace and kept together. ”

“ What is certain is that the heterogeneous constitution of what is called the Austrian Empire makes her weak alike for attack and for defence; and as local and race-patriotism grows more and more among the Hungarians and the Slavs, as it is doing year by year, the continued unity of the Austrian Empire will be more and more difficult. ”

“ It is affecting to observe in the history of Germany, through what woes humanity has passed in attaining even its present position of civilization. It is to be hoped that the human family may never again suffer what it has already endured. We shall be indeed insane if we do not gain some wisdom from the struggles and the calamities of those who have gone before us. The narrative of the career of the Austrian Empire, must, by contrast, excite emotions of gratitude in every American bosom. ”

“ All proposals to restore the Empire were rejected, chiefly because Francis, who had taken the style of Emperor of Austria, did not desire to resume his old title. Germany emerged from the Revolution divided into thirty-nine different States; Austria was one of the largest and most populous monarchies in Europe, but more than half the Austrian Empire consisted of Italian, Slavonic, and Hungarian provinces. The Emperor of Austria ruled over about 20,000,000 Germans. The next State in size and importance was Prussia. ”

“ This, having been suppressed, Austria, in conjunction with the other two powers which had dismembered Poland, deter mined to lay hold on Cracow, and thus extinguish the last remnant of Polish independence. This step being contrary to the treaty of Vienna, was strongly remonstrated against both by England and France; but these remonstrances were unheeded, and the republic was incorporated in the Austrian empire. The French revolution of 1848, which convulsed almost the whole of continental Europe, caused the Austrian empire to totter to its foundations. ”

“ But the shadow of the Holy Empire, immemorially associated with the house of Habsburg, still darkened the counsels of German statesmen. The Austrian archduke John had been appointed regent, pending the election of an emperor; and the political leaders could neither break loose from the tradition of Austrian hegemony, nor reconcile themselves with the idea of a mutilated Germany, till it was too late, and Austria was once more in a position to re-establish the system devised by her diplomacy at the congress of Vienna. ”

“ Let us then examine the resources of both parties, and see what was the preponderance on the side of Austria, 706 which would justify her in undertaking so hazardous an enterprise, on the supposition that she relied solely on her own resources.
The Austrian empire contains a population of 36,000,000; of these about 7,000,000 are Germans—about 15,500,000 are Sclaves,—nearly 8,000,000 are of Italian and Dacian races, and about 5,600,000 of Asiatic races, including 5,000,000 of Majjars. ”

“ During the wars with Napoleon Austria lost forty-five thousand square miles, and about three and a half millions of inhabitants. But when at length the combined monarchs of Europe triumphed over Napoleon, the monarch of the people's choice, and, in the carnage of Waterloo, swept constitutional liberty from the continent, Austria received again nearly all she had lost.
This powerful empire, as at present constituted, embraces:
Thus the whole Austrian monarchy contains 256,399 square miles, and a population which now probably exceeds forty millions. ”

“ The Germans were but a small minority of the emperor's subjects, but the imperial government, the growth of their soil, reflected their mind; and it does not appear to have entered the Austrian mind to conceive that a more intimate union could be accomplished in any other way than by extending the institutions of the Hereditary States to all parts of the empire, and thus ultimately converting the Italians, the Majjars, and the Sclaves, into Austrian Germans. ”

“ The whole force of Austria was now turned against France. The French were speedily driven from Bavaria; and Munich, the capital, fell into the hands of the Austrians. The emperor, in extreme dejection, unable to present any front of resistance, sent to the queen entreating a treaty of neutrality, offering to withdraw all claims to the {445} Austrian succession, and consenting to leave his Bavarian realm in the hands of Maria Theresa until a general peace. The emperor, thus humiliated and stripped of all his territories, retired to Frankfort. ”

“ Still further learning wisdom from her conquerors, Austria has entered upon a general system of education, modelled upon that of Prussia, which in the course of another generation will transform the heterogeneous populations spread over the vast provinces, extending from Italy and Germany to Turkey, which make up the thirty-four millions of the Austrian Empire. ”

“ He was created a count on the emperor’s 79th birthday in 1909. ↑ It is impossible to avoid using the word “Austria” to designate these territories, though it is probably incorrect. Officially the word “Austria” is not found, and though the sovereign is emperor of Austria, an Austrian empire appears not to exist; the territories are spoken of in official documents as “the kingdoms and lands represented in the Reichsrath.” The Hungarians and the German party in Austria have expressed their desire that the word Austria should be used, but it has not been gratified. ”

“ You are all desirous to be free; neither the princes nor the States render to him what is due. He has no revenue, no treasure. Hence you are involved in endless contests and daily wars. Hence also rapine, murder, conflagrations, and a thousand evils which arise from divided authority."
Upon the death of Ladislaus there was a great rush and grasping for the vacant thrones of Bohemia and Hungary, and for possession of the rich dukedoms of Austria. After a long conflict the Austrian estates were divided into three portions. Frederic, the emperor, took Upper Austria ”

“ As a matter of geography, the power of the Austrian house has for some centuries largely rested on the possession of dominions beyond the boundaries of the Carolingian Empire, while it has been only for a moment, and that chiefly by the annexation of territory from Austria itself, that France has ever held any European possessions beyond the Carolingian frontier. ”

“ We also absolve all our German provinces and states of the empire from their reciprocal duties toward the German empire; and we desire, in incorporating them with our Austrian states as Emperor of Austria, and in preserving them in those amicable relations subsisting with the neighbouring powers and states, that they should attain that height of prosperity and happiness which is the end of all our desires, and the object of our dearest wishes. ”

“ See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1672-1714 (page 209) ; the empire and individual warlike princes were left to protect themselves. What an entirely different display of power did Austria make when it was a question of fighting for its own dynastic interests!" H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert (translated from the German) , volume 1, pages 21-33. "As in the wars so in the diplomatic negotiations the separation of the Austrian dynastic interests from the advantage and needs of the German empire often enough came to light. ”

“ No State, during the long war with France, received so many deadly blows as Austria; yet all those blows were firmly sustained, and those reverses nobly retrieved, by the steady and gallant loyalty of its subjects. It was the practical freedom and good government enjoyed by the Austria peoples which prevented the sundering of an empire above all others most liable to be split up under the effects of great reverses, and which rallied the noble races of the Tyrol and Hungary around the throne of their sovereign in the gloomiest hours of the empire. ”

“ The difference can be most shortly stated by saying that Austria did, in some blundering and barbaric way, care for Europe; but Prussia cared for nothing but Prussia. Austria is not a nation; you cannot really find Austria on the map. But Austria is a kind of Empire; a Holy Roman Empire that never came, an expanding and contracting-dream. It does feel itself, in a vague patriarchal way, the leader, not of a nation, but of nations. ”

“ It was the plan of France to rob Maria Theresa of all her possessions excepting Hungary, to which distant kingdom she was to be driven, and where she was to be left undisturbed to defend herself as she best could against the Turks. Thus the confederates would have, to divide among themselves, the States of the Netherlands, the kingdom of Bohemia, the Tyrol, the duchies of Austria, Silesia, Moravia, Carinthia, Servia and various other duchies opulent and populous, over which the vast empire of Austria had extended its sway. ”

“ Frederic, the emperor, Duke of Styria, was now the oldest lineal descendant of Rhodolph of Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria. The imperial dignity had now degenerated into almost an empty title. The Germanic empire consisted of a few large sovereignties and a conglomeration of petty dukedoms, principalities, and States of various names, very loosely held together, in their heterogeneous and independent rulers and governments, by one nominal sovereign upon whom the jealous States were willing to confer but little real power. ”

“ Yet against this reliance on her luck by Austria must be placed the wonderful changes that have come over the world since those times when it was in the power of a government like the Austrian to exert a great influence on the course of events. Down to the time of the French Revolution, Austrian contests were carried on against nations, governments, and dynasties, and not against peoples. ”

“ It was most advanced in civilization and wealth, although inferior in numbers. But the Slavs, the Magyars and the Italians, stimulated by the revolutionary movements of 1848, were striving for national autonomy, and although Austria had held the foremost place in the later periods of the ancient German empire and then after the Napoleonic wars in the German Confederacy, it seemed problematic whether her large non-German interests would permit her to play a leading part now in the political unification of Germany under a constitutional government. ”

“ Napoleon entertained the same plan with his confederation of the Rhine; but all such systems are ephemeral when power is centralized, and the minor states are looked upon as instruments, and not as principals. Austria is the only empire on record that has succeeded under those circumstances. The cabinet of Austria, when it seeks the solution of any internal question, invariably reverses the positions, and hypothetically puts itself in the position of the provincial interest under consideration. That is the secret of the prosperity of Austria. ”

“ Austria is not one of the “inevitable” countries, like England and Spain, bound to have a separate existence under some form of government or other because of their geographical situation and the national characteristics of their inhabitants. There is no Austrian nation: only a medley of races which detest each other, bound (but by no means welded) together for the supposed convenience of the rest of Europe, and unified only by the fact that its component parts all appertain to the dominions of the House of Habsburg. ”

“ Statesmen who knew the age, and who were aware of the change that has come over Europe in half a century, would have told the Emperor that to rely on "something turning up," after the ancient Austrian custom, would not answer in 1866, and that peoples as well as princes had much to do with the ordering of every nation's policy; and with every people Austria is unpopular. ”

“ When in a fit of rage—such as attacks all the Habsburgs who are epileptic—nothing was sacred. A man who was not able to control himself could not be trusted with secrets that might imperil Austria’s relations with Germany. Thus things drifted. Germany obtained increasing power in Austrian councils; the only man who could lay a restraining hand upon his heir was old and weary and unwilling for anything that spelt change or unrest. ”