Habsburgs

“ And that, of course, is the reason why the Habsburgs have been at once so interesting and so troublesome to the Head of their House. When they have sinned, as he would account it—offended, at all events, against the ancient traditions of the House—they have not been contented to go out and sin quietly. ”

“ The well-drilled Austrian army had remained faithful to their war-lord. The hangman was given plenty of work and the Habsburgs, after the nature of that strangely cat-like family, once more landed upon their feet and rapidly strengthened their position as the masters of eastern and western Europe. They played the game of politics very adroitly and used the jealousies of the other German states to prevent the elevation of the Prussian king to the Imperial dignity. Their long train-ing in the art of suffering defeat had taught them the value of patience. ”

“ All the Habsburgs are eminently dignified, and Kaiser Wilhelm always seemed something of a royal mountebank to them, with his strange longings after artistic fame, his childish wish for popularity—a matter of the most complete indifference to his brother monarch in Vienna. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Habsburgs, both from having worn the imperial dignity for ages, and because their countless enclaves brought them into incessant conflicts with nearly all the Powers of Europe, had by long and patient study learned the priceless value of a sound and sustained foreign policy. ”

“ The world knows the justice of our claims, which the Habsburgs themselves dared not deny. Francis Joseph, in the most solemn manner repeatedly recognized the sovereign rights of our nation. The Germans and Magyars opposed this recognition, and Austria-Hungary, bowing before the Pan-Germans, became a colony of Germany, and, as her vanguard to the East, provoked the last Balkan conflict,as well as the present world-war, which was begun by the Habsburgs alone without the consent of the representatives of the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Against its nations Austria sets the dynasty by the grace of God and the army, against democracy it sets its aristocracy, an aristocracy peculiarly selfish and narrow-minded, as has been said, a kind of an East Indian exploiting company. The Habsburgs, who have been for centuries German Emperors, appropriated to their use the mediæval imperialistic idea, and still employ it, even though they have given up formally the German Imperial crown. ”

“ We can trace the Bourbon dynasty, the most ancient and sacred of all the royal houses of Europe, to Hugh Capet, a rebellious landed proprietor, whom some believe to be its founder, or to Robert le Fort, a butcher's assistant in Paris, if we believe the traditions of the people. The Habsburgs of Austria, in whose veins by the way, now very few drops of the blood of the original stock, are the descendants of a poverty stricken Frankish nobleman who served various masters, first in the employ of a bishop, then of a city, like a hired prize-fighter or police-man. ”

“ It is her last marriage, and nothing but death will dissolve it.” . . .
“Too long have we consented in thought and policy to the delusion that Europe outside the west was the natural inheritance of three autocratic royal houses, the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, the Romanoffs. One of these lies prostrate, flung down by the people’s mere breath. It will be a happy day when the older dynasties of Austria and Brandenburg fall beside it.” ”

“ But there is not one word about the political rights of the Habsburgs as counts of the Zürichgau and Aargau. This distinction gives the key to the whole history of the relations between the Confederates and Habsburgs; the rights of the latter as landowners are fully allowed, and till 1801 they possessed estates within the Confederation; it is their political rights which were always contested by the Swiss, who desired to rule themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ Under these conditions, the dynasty ought to have taken the side of the Slavs, but she did nothing of the sort, a it was against all her past traditions and policy. The government hesitated, its actions were inconsistent and indecisive. But, faithful to their former ideal of a Greater Germany with Austria at the head, and supported by the Southern Catholic states, the Habsburgs decided to participate at any cost in the formation of the new Germany, in order to secure precedence for themselves over their Prussian rivals. ”

“ In 1314 Albert’s son, Frederick, was chosen German king in opposition to Louis IV., duke of Upper Bavaria, afterwards the emperor Louis IV., and Austria was weakened by the efforts of the Habsburgs to sustain Frederick in his contest with Louis, and also by the struggle carried on between another brother, Leopold, and the Swiss. A series of deaths among the Habsburgs during the first half of the 14th century left Duke Albert II. and his four sons as the only representatives of the family. ”

“ Maximilian has been called the second founder of the house of Habsburg, and certainly by bringing about marriages between Charles and Joanna and between his grandson Ferdinand and Anna, daughter of Ladislaus, king of Hungary and Bohemia, he paved the way for the vast empire of Charles V. and for the influence of the Habsburgs in eastern Europe. But he had many qualities less desirable. He was reckless and unstable, resorting often to lying and deceit, and never pausing to count the cost of an enterprise or troubling to adapt means to ends. ”

“ The leading Catholic opponent of the Habsburgs, Duke William III of Bavaria, who ruled the whole duchy since the death of his younger brother Ludwig, was won over to something more than benevolent neutrality by the alliance between Pope and Emperor, by the marriage of his son with Ferdinand's eldest daughter, and a promise of the throne of Bohemia for their descendants if Ferdinand's male issue failed, and by the offer of the coveted hat of the Elector Palatine, if the latter sided openly with Charles' enemies. ”

“ One may also, with the conclusions of science to back one, regard the eccentricities of the more eccentric Habsburgs, if not as the best proofs of sanity that they are capable of giving, then as instinctive and desperate, if not always very intelligent, endeavours to escape from the imminent fate which the eugenists have foretold for them. ”

“ What others may do counts for nothing in comparison with what the Habsburgs are; and that though a simple-minded seeker after truth who should ask what they are, could be told little in reply except that they are the Habsburgs. Gold similarly is esteemed a nobler metal than iron, though it cannot be fashioned into such effective swords or ploughshares. ”

“ These were highly favourable to the Habsburgs. In eastern and central Europe Austria regained her former position, the lands ceded to Bavaria and also eastern Galicia, which had been in the hands of Russia since 1809, being restored; she gave up the Austrian Netherlands, soon to be known as Belgium, to the new kingdom of the Netherlands, and acquiesced in the arrangement which had taken from her the Breisgau and the remnant of the Habsburg lands upon the Rhine. ”

“ Quite recently, for instance—at a date subsequent to several remarkable concessions of which we shall be speaking in a moment—Europe heard of the morganatic principle being discountenanced with such severe success that seven Habsburgs (though [287] they were no longer entitled to call themselves Habsburgs) came, as we say in England, “on the rates.” This is how a Viennese correspondent chronicles the incident ”

“ Once again the Habsburgs were passed over, and Henry VII. became King of Germany. To him Unterwalden owes its charter, which placed the three small states on an equal footing politically. However, he died in Italy when going to receive the imperial crown—it is thought by poison. On his decease the opposing parties elected two sovereigns, Louis of Bavaria, and Frederick the Handsome, of Austria, son of Albrecht. During a short interregnum, which occurred after the death of Henry VII., Schwyz began hostilities against the Abbey of Einsiedeln, of which the Habsburgs were stewards. ”

“ For more than a century after Frederick’s death in 1330 the Habsburgs were exiles from the German throne. But they were not inactive. In 1335 his two surviving brothers, Albert and Otto, inherited Carinthia and part of Carniola by right of their mother, Elizabeth; in 1363 Albert’s son Rudolph received Tirol; and during the same century part of Istria, Trieste and other districts were acquired. All King Albert’s six sons had died without leaving male issue save Otto, whose family became extinct in 1344, and Albert, the ancestor of all the later Habsburgs. ”

“ Austria and Hungary might be forced to attach themselves to the German Empire. As a consequence of the War, Germany might be far stronger than she has been hitherto. The Allies have pledged themselves to set free the subject nationalities of the Dual Monarchy. The Habsburgs, who at one time were supreme in Germany, and who gave to the Hohenzollerns the Brandenburg Electorate and raised them to royal rank, have suffered grievously at the hands of their former vassals. Brandenburg-Prussia has grown great at Austria's cost. ”

“ His successor had labored with much credit in the second half of the seventeenth century to repair the wounds caused by the war, encouraging agriculture and industries, building or restoring numerous churches and monasteries. But the Bavarian electors in the first half of the eighteenth century sacrificed a sound, vigorous policy of internal reform to a far-reaching ambition in international politics. Despite the bond of a common religion which united them to Austria, they felt that their proximity to their powerful neighbor made the Habsburgs their natural enemies. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In ancient statutes signify armor, harness, utensils, etc., without which it is supposed there can be no ability to maintain a war.
Habsburg, or Hapsburg, House of. An ancient sovereign family of Austria, which derives its name from the castle of Habsburg, in Switzerland. The first member of the family who acquired great celebrity was Rudolph of Habsburg, born in 1218, and elected emperor in 1273. He obtained Austria and other provinces by conquest, and founded the dynasty which now reigns over the Austrian empire, and which, since 1736, has been styled the house of Habsburg-Lorraine. ”

“ 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. ”