Austrian

“ The work, however, is going on, and if the war which has come and passed has not swallowed everything appertaining to Austria into its maw, the ugly remnants of destruction will be soon carted away, and the old glacis{4} will be made bright with broad pavements, and gilded railings, and well-built lofty mansions, and gardens beautiful with shrubs, and beautiful with turf also, if Austrian patience can make turf to grow beneath an Austrian sky. ”

“ Born and bred in Austria, allied to the Imperial family by the closest ties of blood—his mother was an archduchess—trained in Austrian etiquette, an officer in the Austrian army, beholden to Austria for many past favours—and keenly alive to the fact that for any favours which might yet be to come he must look exclusively to the Court of Vienna—in his leanings and prepossessions he was entirely Austrian. ”

“ In consequence of this love of order the Austrians are remarkably neat in their dress, so that you seldom see among them, as in other countries, wretches in rags by the side of elegance and luxury. There is not an Austrian peasant but possesses a decent suit of clothes, boots, and a furred great coat for winter. Enter their habitations and you will find the same neatness and cleanliness which are conspicuous in their habiliments. ”

“ But in the few pieces of silver which the Englishman refuses and which the Austrian pays there lies concealed more than one would think, of England and Austria; there lie concealed centuries of their political development and of their social life. ”

“ The Austrian always shows great delicacy of feeling. He is not far behind the Frenchman in this. The German does not know the significance of the word. His dealings with Austrian officials, who were suddenly superseded by Germans, were on the mailed-fist principle. “The Prussian could not behave decently, even if he tried!” “Trample upon the weak; fling the incapable into the street!” These were the bitter remarks heard on all sides.
The most imposing but saddest sight of all during the mobilisation was the arrival of the aged Emperor and his heir in Vienna. ”

“ There is no such thing, there has never been any such thing as Austrian culture. What there was, and still remains of culture properly so-called in Austria, is not Austrian, but Latin or Slavonic, and therefore friendly, and certain to make common cause with us as soon as it has been freed from the grip of the dynastic constabulary of the Hapsburgs. ”

“ By an odd turning about of meanings, Austria, once really the Oesterreich, the Eastern land, of Germany, has become in truth the Western land, the Neustria, of the new arrangement. With the Hungarian kingdom are grouped the principality of Transsilvania and the kingdoms of Slavonia and Croatia. The Austrian state is made up of Austria itself—the archduchy with the addition of Salzburg—the duchy of Styria, the county of Tyrol, the kingdoms of Bohemia, Galicia and Lodomeria, Illyria, and Dalmatia with Ragusa and Cattaro. ”

“ But the union of the Austrian Empire is more precarious. Austria at one time was the master of Italy, the rival of France, and the head of the United Austria.confederation of German races. But ever since the time of Frederick the Great, the house of Austria has had less and less influence with the German states, until in our time all such influence was finally extinguished in the field of Sadowa. Italy too with the help of France has thrown off the Austrian yoke, and modern Austria is very unlike Austria of the Middle Ages. ”

“ The growth of the Austrian House will therefore be properly dealt with in a separate section. ♦Extent of its German lands.♦ It is enough to say here that the Austrian dominion in Germany gradually took in, besides the original duchy, the south-eastern duchies of Steiermark or Styria, Kärnthen or Carinthia, and Krain or Carniola, with the Italian borderlands of Görz, Aquileia, and part of Istria. ”

“ The present occurrences in Austria are of the utmost importance to the world. They show that the time has passed when kings can rule as absolute monarchs, and that the voice of the people must be listened to.
We told you of the anger of the Austrian people against Count Badeni and his Government, and how the Emperor approved of him and his work, and was determined to uphold him in spite of the opposition. ”

“ It is possible to conceive a complete disruption of the Austrian Empire,—the Germans merging in Germany, the Slavs combining with the Russian and Turkish Slavs, and the Magayr Hungarians forming a little Switzerland of Hungary, guarding their independence like a tiger at bay, by a struggle to death. ”

“ For a hundred years the honor you have conferred upon him will be the wonder of our neighborhood, and never will the people of Vitry forget the condescension of your majesty in sitting among us as an equal and a guest. My son is a Frenchman at heart he shall also be a German, like our own beautiful queen, who is both Austrian and French. God bless and preserve you both! Long live our queen, Marie Antoinette, and long live her noble brother, the Emperor of Austria! ”

“ But, though the young may have looked with scorn, the more thoughtful amongst us have looked with complacency on the social repose and general comfort—on the absence of continual jostling and struggling in all the roads of life—produced by a system, unsuited to our national tastes and tempers, no doubt, but which, till a few months ago, appeared to be in perfect harmony with the character of the Austrian German. ”

“ We know how deceptive were all appearances in regard to Austrian strength; but it was in the power of Austrian statesmen to convert what was simply apparent into a solid reality. Had they been wise men, they would, during the long peace that followed 1815, have made of Austria a state as powerful in fact as the world believed her to be. Nothing could have been easier, as her undeveloped resources ever have been vast ”

“ Cultivating a fertile soil, and not having, like the Styrians and the Tyrolese, to struggle incessantly against an inclement climate, they are happy in their geographical position; and they are in general deserving of it by the excellence of their disposition. Harbouring none but the milder sentiments, they have more gentleness than energy, and more good nature than elevation. The Austrians are a simple and a hospitable nation; and the same observation applies to their nobles, who never assume the German or rather the Austrian pride, unless when they would enforce the prerogatives of birth. ”

“ AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY.
We have been so much accustomed to regard the Austrian empire as one German nation, that we sometimes forget of how many separate kingdoms and principalities it consists, and of how many different and disunited races its population is composed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The cradle of Austria was the Eastern march, established by Charlemagne on the Danube, beyond Bavaria, at the very gate through which have passed so many invaders from the Orient. ... The cradle of Prussia was the march of Brandenburg, between the Elbe and the Oder, in the region of the exterminated Slavs." E. Lavisse, General View of the Political History of Europe, chapter 3, section 13. AUSTRIA: The Singularity of Austrian history. A power which is not a national power. ”

“ At home, in his own country, every one understands him, and no one lightly ventures to overreach him. Place an Austrian of the same social position and the same means in the place of the Englishman—how would he act? ”

“ In one primer the sentence, “The lion is the king of the animal world” was changed into “Austria is my fatherland” [the lion is the national emblem of Bohemia] . The sentence “The Czechs are Slavs” was changed into “The Czechs are Austrians.” These are but two instances taken at random from the Austrian press to show that the old methods of the Police State still prevail in what some would have us believe is a “new Austria.” ”

“ I have had an Austrian fire made for you, and have actually nearly succeeded in warming the entire salon. We Austrians require a higher degree of heat than these crazy Frenchmen; they always maintain they are never cold; they are quite satisfied if they can see a little picturesque blaze in the chimney, and they sit down close to it and thrust their hands and feet and heads into it, thereby giving themselves chilblains, neuralgia, rheumatism, and heaven knows what else ”

“ Every one is weary of the inquisition of the Court of Vienna, of its cavilling, of its continual encroachments and of its little plots to unite the peoples which detest the Austrian yoke into a confederation against France. ”

“ Far more serious are the difficulties with the Germans. The government of German Austria—or simply Austria, as one ought to call it now, since there is no other Austria any more—still assumes that the biased Austrian census of 1910 should be accepted as valid and that nearly a third of the territory of the Bohemian lands should go to Austria, and that means to Germany. ”

“ Very different was it in the other territories where the majority of the population was not German—and where there was a lively recollection of the time when they were not Austrian. With Palacky, they said, “We existed before Austria; we shall continue to exist after it is gone.” Especially was this The Slavonic Lands.the case in Bohemia. ”

“ People fancy that the inhabitants of those dominions have a common being, a common interest, like that of the people of England, France, or Italy. ... There is no Austrian language, no Austrian nation; therefore there can be no such thing as 'Austrian national honour.' Nor can there be an 'Austrian policy' in the same sense in which there is an English or a French policy, that is, a policy in which the English or French government carries out the will of the English or French nation. ”

“ The Slavic peoples are predominant in numbers; the Germans are scarcely more than one-fourth of the whole; and yet, until recent years, the Austrian power figured chiefly as a German power in European politics, and took leadership in Germany itself. This position accrued to it through the persisting, potent influence of the Imperial title which the Archdukes of Austria bore, with mediæval fictions from Rome and from Germany woven together and clinging around it ”

“ The ambition of Maria Theresa was now greatly roused. She resolved to retain the whole of Bavaria which she had taken from the elector. The duchy of Lorraine, which had been wrested from her husband, was immediately to be invaded and restored to the empire. The dominions which had been torn from her father in Italy were to be reannexed to the Austrian crown, and Alsace upon the Rhine was to be reclaimed. Thus, far from being now satisfied with the possessions she had inherited from her father, her whole soul was roused, in these hours of triumph, to conquer vast accessions for her domains. ”

“ The Germans are in a relative majority over the other peoples in the empire, their language is the vehicle of communication between all the other peoples both in official life and in the press; they are in a relatively more advanced state of culture, and they are spread over every part of the empire. Historically they have contributed most to the foundation and to the development of the Austrian monarchy, and think that for all the above-mentioned reasons they are entitled to the principal position amongst the various nationalities of Austria. ”

“ Education is better than elsewhere in Austria; there is a university at Prague, the capital. In the 16th century the crown was united with the Austrian, but in 1608 religious questions led to the election of the Protestant Frederick V. This was followed by the Thirty Years' War, the extermination of the Protestants, and the restoration of the Austrian House. ”

“ The Hungarian troops pressed forward in defense of the queen. Wide leagues of country were desolated by war, as all over Germany the hostile battalions swept to and fro. The Duke of Lorraine hastened from Moravia for the defense of Vienna, while detached portions of the Austrian army were on the rapid march, in all directions, to join him. On the 16th of May, 1742, the Austrian army, under the Duke of Lorraine, and the Prussian army under Frederic, encountered each other, in about equal numbers, at Chazleau. Equal in numbers, equal in skill, equal in bravery, they fought with equal success. ”

“ 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. ”