Habsburg Empire

“ Yet, in spite of internal 792 dissensions arising out of questions fundamentally insoluble, and in spite of the constant threat of external complications that may lead to war, the Habsburg monarchy as the result of the changes in the 19th and 20th centuries is seemingly stronger than ever. The shadow of universal claims to empire and sonorous but empty titles have vanished, but so have the manifold rivalries and entanglements which accompanied the Habsburg rule in Italy and the Netherlands and Habsburg preponderance in Germany. The monarchy is stronger because its sphere is more defined ”

“ It had, moreover, by the compact with Hungary of 1867, ceased even fully to represent the relation of the emperor to all his dominions; and the title which had been devised to cover the whole of the Habsburg monarchy sank into the official style of the sovereign of but a half; while even within the Austrian empire proper it is resented by those peoples which, like the Bohemians, wish to obtain the same recognition of their national independence as was conceded to Hungary. ”

“ The treaty with Prussia, signed at Prague on the 23rd of August 1866, excluded from Germany all lands ruled by the house of Habsburg. As a natural consequence German influence declined in the Austrian empire, and in Bohemia in particular. While Hungary now obtained complete independence, the new constitution of 1867, which applied only to the German and Slavic parts of the Habsburg empire, maintained the system of centralization and attempted to maintain the waning German influence. The Bohemians energetically opposed this new constitution and refused to send representatives to Vienna. ”

“ A large proportion of the Habsburg hereditary lands, including Tyrol and the scattered Swabian estates, were ruled by a rival branch of the ruling house represented by the Archduke Sigismund, while Austria itself fell into the hands of Matthias Corvinus. Yet in his cautious and slow-minded fashion Frederick was by no means lacking in ability and foresight. If he were indifferent to the Empire, he looked beyond the present distress of his house to a time when politic marriages and cunningly devised treaties of eventual succession would make Austria a real ruler of the world. ”

“ In this, indeed, as in other cases, it may be said that the emperor was guided less by any abstract principles than by a common-sense appreciation of the needs and possibilities of the moment. Whatever his natural prejudices or natural resentments, he never allowed these to influence his policy. The German empire and the Italian kingdom had been built up out of the ruins of immemorial Habsburg ambitions; yet he refused to be drawn into an alliance with France in 1869 and 1870, and became the mainstay of the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy. ”

“ The decline in the fortunes of the family, however, was The emperor Maximilian I. to be arrested by Frederick's son, Maximilian, afterwards the emperor Maximilian I., who was the second founder of the greatness of the house of Habsburg. Like his ancestor, Rudolph, he had to conquer the lands over which his descendants were destined to rule, and by arranging a treaty of succession to the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, he pointed the way to power and empire in eastern Europe. ”

“ Though the power of the strongest of the German princes was thus limited, yet it was in regions under the influence of such great feudatories that the nearest approach to order prevailed. Habsburg rule in the south-east, Burgundian rule in the north-west, were establishing settled States, though rather at the expense of Germany as a whole than by way of contributing to its general peace. In a similar fashion Bavaria and the north-eastern Marchland between Elbe and Oder attained comparative prosperity under Wittelsbachs, Wettins, and Hohenzollerns. ”

“ The united Germany which he was prepared to champion was not the democratic state which the theorists of the Frankfort national parliament were evolving on paper with interminable debate, but the old Holy Roman Empire, the heritage of the house of Habsburg, of which he was prepared to constitute himself the guardian so long as its lawful possessors should not have mastered the forces of disorder by which they were held captive. ”

“ The empire of Austria, as the official designation of the The title "Emperor of Austria." territories ruled by the Habsburg monarchy, dates back only to 1804, when Francis II., the last of the Holy Roman emperors, proclaimed himself emperor of Austria as Francis I. His motive in doing so was to guard against the great house of Habsburg being relegated to a position inferior to the parvenus Bonapartes, in the event of the final collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, or of the possible election of Napoleon as his own successor on the throne of Charlemagne. ”

“ Since the development of the constitution has been consistently in a democratic direction and the Slavs are in a great majority, the tendency has been for the German element—strong in its social status and tradition of predominance—to be swamped by what it regards as an inferior race; and a considerable number of Austrian “Germans” have learned to look not to their Habsburg rulers, but to the power of the German empire for political salvation. The tendency eastwards of the monarchy was increased when in 1878 the congress of Berlin placed Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austrian rule. ”

“ Maximilian soon ceased to take much interest in reforming the Empire by royal prerogative. But he continued to busy himself with schemes for strengthening and unifying the administration of his hereditary dominions. He had long ago chased away the Hungarian conquerors of Vienna, and put an end to the division of the Austrian lands between two rival branches of the Habsburg House. The Aulic Council and the Innsbruck Chamber had a less direct bearing on the Empire than on the hereditary dominions, for the whole of which the Chamber might well have been the source of a single financial system. ”

“ As the object of the Habsburgs was to join the Waldstätten to their Austrian possessions, their policy was naturally to oppose the freedom of the district. It was a fact highly favourable to Swiss interests that the German monarchy was elective; for the princes and prince-electors, with their personal and selfish aims, shut out the mighty Habsburg dynasty, whenever candidates presented themselves whom they considered more likely to favour their views. ”

“ Austrian culture, in their opinion, is so different from that of the new States that you cannot compare them. And when they talk of the Habsburg dynasty it is after the fashion of old Francis Joseph who, in 1891, when the four hundredth anniversary of the great Czech teacher Comenius was being officially celebrated in all the schools of Prussia, commanded that nothing of the sort was to be done in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, because his attention had been drawn by Archbishop Schwarzenberg of Prague to a Latin letter in which the great man uttered some sharp words concerning the dynasty. ”

“ By the treaty of Vienna (October 3, 1866) between Austria and Italy, Austria recognized the Italian kingdom and ceded to it the city and territory of Venice, thus surrendering the traditional claim of the Habsburgs to domination in Italy. This was followed in 1867 by the establishment of Dual system in Austria-Hungary. the Dual Monarchy in the Habsburg dominions under the auspices of Bismarck’s rival, Count Beust,—Francis Joseph being crowned king of Hungary, and a separate constitution being established for Hungary and the Cis-Leithan dominions of the Austrian emperor (see Austria: History) . ”

“ But neither can Austria tolerate the normal independent development of Servia or profit from it by normal commercial relations. For the Habsburg monarchy is not the political expression of a capitalist state, but a loose syndicate of a few parasitic cliques, striving to grasp everything within reach, utilizing the political powers of the nation so long as this weak edifice still stands. ”

“ The realisation of Bohemian constitutional law should take effect, subject to a guarantee of the national liberty and autonomy of the Germans in our fatherland. Their autonomy and national honour should remain unimpaired and free from danger for all time. Our aim, then, is to transform the Habsburg Monarchy into a community of free and equal States, which would exercise a natural force of attraction both upon the Balkan Slavs and the great Polish State to the north, whose resurrection upon the ruins of yesterday’s worn-out diplomatic morality will soon be accomplished. ”

“ The hereditary Austrian lands have for a long time been in the hands of the Habsburgs, who exercised absolute power over them. This power, in fact, was almost unlimited by any rights or privileges of the Estates; the governmental functions were exclusively reserved to the sovereign, whose will was law. It was through these hereditary lands alone that Austria formed a part of the German Empire.
In Hungary the situation under the first of the Habsburgs was very different. On one side this country was harassed by war with the Turks, who occupied the greater part of the land ”

“ With the princes was almost invariably allied any European monarch who had anything to gain from dividing Germany or weakening Habsburg influence. In case of a civil war, the Habsburgs might reasonably expect to find enemies in Denmark, Sweden, and France. ”

“ His vast estates were not confiscated by the Austrian Government, and he was allowed to remain in the dominions of the House of Habsburg. He was even tacitly, though by no means officially, granted yet further privileges; he was allowed to afford at least temporary shelter to some of the clergymen of his Church, whom one of the first decrees of the victors had expelled from Bohemia. ”

“ Apparently, indeed, it is only as a linguist and a figure-head—the sublime figure-head of the Habsburgs who need a figure-head so badly—that he possesses genius; in other respects he seems to have been, as Herr Wulfling was, at a later date, to the Princess Louisa of Tuscany, “a very ordinary man.” In any case, he proved himself a very ordinary general, whom very ordinary generals were able to defeat—partly, perhaps, because his Hungarian soldiers showed great alacrity in deserting him; but he sulked, with characteristic Habsburg sullenness, over the terms of peace. ”

“ France, Bavaria, Spain, Saxony and Sardinia. Nor was the peril wholly external. Apart from the perennial discontents of Magyars and Slavs, the confusion and corruption of the administration, and the misery caused by the ruin of the finances, had made the Habsburg dynasty unpopular even in its German states, and in Vienna itself a large section of public opinion was loudly in favour of the claims of Charles of Bavaria. Yet the war, if it revealed the weakness of the Austrian monarchy, revealed also unexpected sources of strength. ”

“ The leading statesmen realised towards the year 1912 that they were faced by the choice of war or revolution in Austria-Hungary. The huge sums needed to pay off the debts already incurred by the costs connected with two mobilisations, and the ever-increasing military and naval needs were landing the country in an impasse from which there were only two roads of escape. If the House of Habsburg wished to maintain its proud position some action must be taken. The politicians round the throne thought that a successful war with Italy would be the most desirable event. ”

“ Here is one from the celebrated oath of the Rüti, in 1307: ‘Every man must protect the innocent and oppressed people in his valley, and preserve to them their old rights and freedom. On the other hand, we do not wish to deprive the Counts of Habsburg of the smallest portion of their property, of their rights, or of their vassals. ”

“ Should Austria-Hungary, and her open and occult partisans, succeed in persuading the Allied Governments that the leopard can change his spots, there might still be a chance that the adoption of a formula like "the federalisation of Austria would save Germany from the full consequences of her crime by preserving in a new disguise the old Habsburg State which has been, is, and must remain a principal asset in German political calculations. ”

“ If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian "kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. ”

“ Shortly after his reconciliation with the Pope, the Emperor, who had for some time been at war with Duke Rudolph IV of Austria and Louis, King of Hungary, concluded a treaty (1364) with the former prince by which the succession to the Bohemian crown was—in the case of the extinction of the reigning family—assured to the house of Austria, whilst the Austrian duke assured the succession to his lands to the Bohemian kings should the dynasty of Habsburg become extinct. ”

“ The best Spanish foot was probably better; good Germans equally good. Moreover religious differences were beginning to paralyse the Confederation, and the Reformers discouraged foreign service. Savoy and Piedmont were the highway of the French armies, exposed on the other hand to the incursions and requisitions of the imperialists, when they had for the moment the upper hand in Milan. German assistance in men was more than might have been expected, considering the difficulties with which Ferdinand had to contend in the hereditary Habsburg lands. ”