Francis Joseph I of Austria

“ He first secured French neutrality at a famous interview at Biarritz; and then he proceeded to negotiate with Italy.
Here again we see an instructive example of Habsburg pride preceding a Habsburg fall. Italy had recently proposed to buy Venetia from Austria. Francis Joseph, knowing that the Venetians loathed him to a man, had nevertheless replied, in a scornful communication, that Austria’s military honour and dignity as a first-class Power required him to retain them as his subjects:—
“She would be unaffected by an offer of money or by any kind of moral pressure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Victor Emmanuel liked fighting, had promised to fight, and fought.
We all know what happened: how the defeat of the Italians at Custozza by the Archduke Albert was more than counterbalanced by the defeat of the Austrians at Sadowa; and how Austria had to accept her humiliation, submit to be turned out of the German Federation, and surrender Venetia to Italy, after a plébiscite had been taken to ascertain those “wishes of the population” which Francis Joseph had so haughtily refused to recognise. The figures give eloquent evidence of the feelings of alien races towards Austrian rule. ”

“ Up to 1866 its ambition was to be the head of the entire German nation, of which the Hapsburg territories were to form an integral part. When the Prussian kings supplanted the rulers of Austria in the leadership of Germany, Francis Joseph hesitated for a while and was on the verge of making his empire a federal structure with equal rights for all races, but instead of that he put into effect a compromise by means of which he pacified the Magyars and sacrificed all the rest. He divided his empire into two parts. ”

“ It took an army of 200,000 men, with 480 guns, to pacify that little strip of land; and the occupation, and the subsequent events in the peninsula, [159] have brought Austria up against another problem, uncommonly like the old one which disturbed the beginning of Francis Joseph’s reign. For the inhabitants of Bosnia are of Servian race; and there are many other Servians in other parts of the Austrian dominions; and there is a Kingdom of Servia, full of fiercely patriotic men, from whom the cry of Servia Irredenta is going up. Austria once despised them, as she once despised the Italians ”

“ The postulate which bids the progeny of an Emperor who married for love take a lower seat than the son and grandsons of the family scapegrace will assuredly be questioned by the next Emperor of Austria; and it will be found that it has nothing to say for itself. It may die fighting; but it will die; and the whole of the Habsburg superstition will die with it. What will happen then lies in the lap of the Gods.
It is, however, precisely because of its gradual approach to such problems as these that one finds the reign of Francis Joseph such an intensely interesting [350] period of history. ”

“ It simply comprised the possessions of the House of Habsburg, which had, for generations, added field to field by means of prosperous marriages, [2] or accepted territory as the recompense of services rendered in war. The Emperor of Austria was also King of Hungary, King of Lombardy, King of Bohemia, etc., etc.: the head, as it were, of an ancient firm formed to carry on the general purposes of government in central Europe, and regarding men and women merely as material to be governed. ”

“ His reputation as a consistent moderating influence in European policy and one of the chief guarantors of European peace was indeed rudely shaken in October 1908, the year in which he celebrated his 944 sixty years’ jubilee as emperor, by the issue of the imperial recript annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Habsburg dominions, in violation of the terms of the treaty of Berlin. But his opportunism was again justified by the result. Europe lost an ideal; but Austria gained two provinces. ”

“ There exists no life of Francis Joseph, and no History of Austria, in which the personal and political aspects of the subject are considered in their relation to each other. The assumption of writers who have previously treated the theme has been that tittle-tattle is tittle-tattle, and that history is history, and that the two can never meet. ”

“ He now made Beust, Bismarck’s Saxon antagonist, the head of his government, as the result of whose negotiations with Deák the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 was agreed upon. A law was passed by the Hungarian diet regularizing the abdication of Ferdinand; at the beginning of June Francis Joseph signed the inaugural diploma and took the oath in Magyar to observe the constitution; on the 8th he was solemnly crowned king of Hungary. The traditional coronation gift of 100,000 florins he assigned to the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in the war against Austria in 1849. ”

“ It seemed to the Archduchess Sophia as right and reasonable as anything could be that the House of Bavaria and the House of Habsburg should intermarry yet again.
She talked the matter over with her cousin, Maximilian, Duke in Bavaria. He had a daughter, Princess Helen, of a suitable age—a very beautiful and charming girl; and it was settled between them that Princess Helen should become Empress of Austria. She was trained for that position as carefully as Francis Joseph was trained for the position of Emperor ”

“ He succeeded to the Austrian dominions and the empire on the death of his father on the 1st of March 1792. The position was a trying one for a young prince twenty-four years of age. The dominions of the house of Austria, widely scattered in the Low Countries, Germany and Italy, were exposed to the attacks of the French revolutionary governments and of Napoleon. He was dragged into all the coalitions against France, and in the early days of his reign he had to guard against the ambition of Prussia, and the aggressions of Russia in Poland and Turkey. ”

“ At its head was Prince Felix Schwarzenberg (q.v.) , the "army-diplomat," a statesman at once strong and unscrupulous. On the 27th of November a proclamation announced that the continuation of Austria as a united state was necessary both for Germany and for Europe. Accession of Francis Joseph, 1848 On the 2nd of December the emperor Ferdinand, bound by too many personal obligations to the revolutionary parties to serve as a useful instrument for the new policy, abdicated, and his nephew Francis Joseph ascended the throne. ”

“ For a brief moment in 1848 the Parliament of Kremsier laid down the fundamental law, “All power proceeds from the people,” and the Czech leader Dr. Rieger expounded this theme in one of his best speeches. But ever since this short-lived child of the revolution was dismissed and its home occupied by Austrian soldiers, each successive constitution in Austria has been not a democratic achievement, but the personal gift of Francis Joseph, designed as a cloak for theocratic monarchism, which claims to possess superhuman and divine rights. ”

“ At the same time, and in order to paralyze any desire on the part of Francis Joseph to come to the aid of France, he mobilized both the Hungarian Government and the Austrian Liberals to compel Francis Joseph to dismiss his anti-Prussian Austrian Premier, Count Hohenwart, to break his promises to the Bohemians, and to surrender himself for the rest of his reign to the joint control of the Magyar minority in Hungary and the German minority in Austria. ”

“ The foreign policy of this period brought about the complete isolation of Austria, and the “ingratitude” towards Russia, as shown during the period of the Crimean War, which has become proverbial, caused a permanent estrangement between the two great Eastern empires and the imperial families. The system led inevitably to bankruptcy and ruin; the war of 1859, by bringing it to an end, saved the monarchy. After the first defeat Francis Joseph hastened to Italy ”

“ If Francis Joseph could be induced to part with Venetia by way of sale, and to govern his Empire, especially Hungary, in a constitutional way, what a glorious future might still lie before the Hapsburgs! As the great Danubian Power, Austria would be a far more important member of the European Confederation than she has ever yet been: and destinies might yet await her in the East, which would place her in a position which she could never have achieved as the unreasoning task-mistress of unfortunate Italy. ”

“ The subjects of Francis Joseph would number sixty millions, while those of Napoleon III. would remain at thirty-six millions. The sinews of war have never been much at the command of Austria, but possession of Italy would render her wealthy, and enable her to command that gold which moves armies and renders them effective. Her commerce would be increased to an incalculable extent, and she would have naval populations from which to conscribe the crews for fleets that she would be prompt to build. Her voice would be potential in the East, and that of France would there cease to be heard. ”

“ The present emperor, Francis Joseph, appears to the eye of the close observer a man bent beneath the hopeless task of reconciliation. He is called upon to bear the accumulated evils of centuries of misrule.
Vienna is a faithful reflex in miniature of Austria in general. The heedless or untrained tourist, misled by names and language and the outward forms of intercourse, may pronounce the city a most delightful German capital: he may congratulate himself upon the opportunity it gives him of reviving his reminiscences of the old German emperors and contrasting their times with the present. ”

“ It is interesting from the personal point of view as the story of Nemesis overtaking the oppressor; the story which we have presented symbolically as the story of the fulfilment of Countess Karolyi’s curse. Philosophically it is interesting as the age of transition from mediæval to modern ideas: the age in which both nationalities and individuals have stormily asserted their right to live their own lives in their own way. In both these matters we see, in Austria more clearly than anywhere else, the hungry generations treading down the past. ”

“ The events of those years gradually made it clear that the future of Austria was not in Italy, nor in Germany, but in the Balkans: that the real rival of Austria was Russia, and that the real contest would be for the hegemony, not of Germany, but of the Slav subjects of the Sultan of Turkey. Thenceforward the central principle of Austrian foreign policy was that, for every step which Russia took towards Constantinople, Austria should take a corresponding step towards Salonica ”

“ The Habsburgs of Austria, numerous though the representatives of the House are at the present time, will end by disappearing in their turn as an historic family, if they persist in their errors,—that is to say, in their marriages with blood relations. ”

“ The strong hand in Austria is a bloody hand, and the slaughter once begun is so tempting that our rulers cannot think of leaving off. The whole of the civilised world protests against the present doings in Hungary. Schwarzenberg and his fellows cause public opinion to extend its imprecation to a greater person—to the Emperor whom the people ought not to be taught to [59] associate with cruelties and deeds of blood, violence, and vengeance. Under the absolute government of former times, the people of Austria were fond of their Emperor ”

“ Bereft of his beautiful wife, the son he idolized, the brother he himself unknowingly sent to his destruction, Francis Joseph of Austria is at once the most solitary and indomitable personality among the rulers of the world today. Never, through all his misfortunes, has his iron pride given way to complaint or regret ”

“ From this we learn that "on account of its gallant conduct" (attended apparently by disastrous results) the Emperor Francis Joseph has granted it permission to serve outside Austria. This is a gracious concession which will no doubt be very highly appreciated by the Landsturm; but one trifling difficulty seems to stand in the way. To be frank, we do not quite see how they are going to get outside. At least it would be well for them to take steps before it is too late. ”

“ Otto von Seefried zu Buttenheim was a Protestant; and the Houses of Wittelsbach and Habsburg resemble each other, not only in their liability to mental derangement, but also in the soundness of their Catholic principles.
Still the case was one in which excuses and allowances could be made. Princess Elizabeth, though a granddaughter, was not an Archduchess; the disgrace, if disgrace there was, would fall not on Austria, but on Bavaria. Moreover, Otto von Seefried zu Buttenheim, though a subaltern, was a baron ”

“ Thus, Austria's action constituted a serious challenge to the Powers in general, especially to Russia, Servia, and to regenerated Turkey [524] . So daring a coup had not been dealt by Austria since 1848, when Francis Joseph ascended the throne; it is believed that he desired to have the provinces as a jubilee gift, a set off to the loss of Lombardy and Venetia in 1859 and 1866. Certainly Austria had carried out great improvements in Bosnia; but an occupier who improves a farm does not gain the right to possess it except by agreement with others who have joint claims. ”