Habsburg Monarchy

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Habsburg Monarchy[1]
Habsburgermonarchie
Part of the Holy Roman Empire
(partly)
15261804

Flag

Imperial Coat of arms

(current Leopold II and
Francis II)

Motto
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus
"Let justice be done, though the world perish"

Anthem
Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser
"God Save Emperor Francis"

The Habsburg Monarchy in 1789.

Vienna
(15261583)

Capital

Prague
(15831611)

Vienna
(16111804)

Languages

Official languages:
Latin, Germanb
Other languages:

Religion

Government
Monarch
15261564
17921804
State Chancellor
17531793

Hungarian, Czech,
Croatian, Romanian,
Slovak, Slovene,
Dutch, Italian, Polish,
Ruthenian, Bosnian,
Serbian, French
Official religion:
Roman Catholic
Recognized religions:
Calvinism,
Lutheranism,
Orthodox
Christianity, Judaism,
Utraquisma
Feudal Monarchy
Ferdinand I (first)
Francis II (last)

Wenzel Anton
Early
Historical era
modern/Napoleonic
Battle of Mohcs 29 August 1526
Battle of Vienna 14 July 1683
War of Succession 17401748
AustroTurkish

War
17871791
Treaty of Sistova 4 August 1791
Empire

proclaimed
11 August 1804
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Archduchy of
Austrian
Austria
Empire
Kingdom of
Hungary
Kingdom of
Bohemia
Kingdom of Croatia
Principality of
Transylvania
Today part of

Austria
Belgium
BosniaHerzegovina
Croatia
Czech Republic
France

Germany
Hungary
Italy
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Poland
Romania
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Switzerland
Ukraine
^a Main Czech Church, in the Kingdom of Bohemia
recognized until 1627 when it was forbidden.
^b German replaced Latin as the official language of
the Empire in 1784.[2]
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The Habsburg Monarchy (German: Habsburgermonarchie) or Empire, occasionally also

styled as the Danubian Monarchy (Donaumonarchie), is an unofficial appellation among
historians for the countries and provinces that were ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the
House of Habsburg until 1780 and then by the successor branch of Habsburg-Lorraine until
1918. The Monarchy was a composite state composed of territories within and outside the
Holy Roman Empire, united only in the person of the monarch. The dynastic capital was
Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611,[3] when it was moved to Prague. From 1804 to 1867 the
Habsburg Monarchy was formally unified as the Austrian Empire, and from 1867 to 1918 as
the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[4][5]
The head of the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg was often elected Holy Roman
Emperor until the Empire's dissolution in 1806; from 1415 until the empire's dissolution in
1806 only Charles VII of Bavaria was not a Habsburg ruler of Austria.[6][7] The two entities
were never coterminous, as the Habsburg Monarchy covered many lands beyond the Holy
Roman Empire, and most of the Empire was ruled by other dynasties. The Habsburg
Monarchy did not usually include all the territories ruled by the Habsburgs. The senior branch
ruled Spain until 1700, but it is not usually included in the definition of "Habsburg
Monarchy" after the reign of Charles V, who divided the dynasty between its Austrian and
Spanish branches upon his abdication in 1556.

Contents

1 Origins and expansion

2 Terminology

3 Territories

4 Characteristics

5 Habsburg territories outside the Habsburg Monarchy

6 History

7 Rulers of the Habsburg Monarchy, 15211918

o

7.1 Habsburg

7.2 Habsburg-Lorraine

7.3 Family tree

8 In literature

9 Notes

10 Further reading

11 External links

Origins and expansion

The Habsburg family originated with the Habsburg Castle in modern Switzerland, and after
1279 came to rule in Austria ("the Habsburg Hereditary Lands"). The Habsburg family grew
to European prominence with the marriage and adoption treaty by Emperor Maximilian I at
the First Congress of Vienna in 1515, and the subsequent death of adopted Louis II of
Hungary and Bohemia in 1526.[3]
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the younger brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V,
was elected the next King of Bohemia and Hungary[8] following the death of Louis II of
Hungary and Bohemia in the Battle of Mohcs against the Turks.

Terminology
Names of the territory that (with some exceptions) finally became Austria-Hungary:

Habsburg monarchy or Austrian monarchy (15261867): This was an unofficial, but

very frequent name even at that time. The entity had no official name.
Austrian Empire (18041867): This was the official name. Note that the German
version is Kaisertum sterreich, i.e. the English translation empire refers to a territory
ruled by an emperor, not just to a "widespreading domain".

Austria-Hungary (18671918): This was the official name.[9][10][11] An unofficial

popular name was the Danubian Monarchy (German: Donaumonarchie) also often
used was the term Doppel-Monarchie ("Double Monarchy") meaning two states under
one crowned ruler.

Crownlands or crown lands (Kronlnder) (18491918): This is the name of all the
individual parts of the Austrian Empire (1849-1867), and then of Austria-Hungary
from 1867 on. The Kingdom of Hungary (more exactly the Lands of the Hungarian
Crown) was not considered a "crownland" after the establishment of Austria-Hungary
1867, so that the "crownlands" became identical with what was called the Kingdoms
and Lands represented in the Imperial Council (Die im Reichsrate vertretenen
Knigreiche und Lnder).

The Hungarian parts of the Empire were called "Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint
Stephen" or "Lands of Holy (St.) Stephen's Crown" (Lnder der Heiligen Stephans Krone).
The Bohemian (Czech) Lands were called "Lands of the St. Wenceslaus' Crown" (Lnder der
Wenzels-Krone).
Names of some smaller territories:

Austrian lands (sterreichische Lnder) or "Archduchies of Austria"

(Erzherzogtmer von sterreich) - Lands up and below the Enns (ober und unter der
Enns) (9961918): This is the historical name of the parts of the Archduchy of Austria
that became the present-day Republic of Austria (Republik sterreich) on 12

November 1918 (after Emperor Charles I had abdicated the throne). Modern day
Austria is a semi-federal republic of nine states (Bundeslnder) that are: Lower
Austria, Upper Austria, Tyrol, Styria, Salzburg, Carinthia, Vorarlberg and Burgenland
and the Capital of Vienna that is a state of its own. Burgenland came to Austria in
1921 from Hungary. Salzburg finally became Austrian in 1816 after the Napoleonic
wars (before it was ruled by prince-archbishops of Salzburg as a sovereign territory).

Vienna, Austria's capital became a state January 1, 1922, after being residence and
capital of the Austrian Empire (Reichshaupt und Residenzstadt Wien) for the
Habsburg monarchs for centuries. Upper and Lower Austria, historically, were split
into "Austria above the Enns" and "Austria below the Enns" (the Enns river is the
state-border between Upper- and Lower Austria). Upper Austria was enlarged after
the Treaty of Teschen (1779) following the "War of the Bavarian Succession" by the
so-called Innviertel ("Inn Quarter"), formerly part of Bavaria.
Hereditary Lands (Erblande or Erblnder; mostly used sterreichische Erblande) or
German Hereditary Lands (in the Austrian monarchy) or Austrian Hereditary Lands
(Middle Ages 1849/1918): In a narrower sense these were the "original" Habsburg
Austrian territories, i.e. basically the Austrian lands and Carniola (not Galicia, Italian
territories or the Austrian Netherlands).
In a wider sense the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were also included in (from 1526;
definitely from 1620/27) the Hereditary lands. The term was replaced by the term
"Crownlands" (see above) in the 1849 March Constitution, but it was also used
afterwards.
The Erblande also included lots of small and smallest territories that were
principalities, duchies or counties etc. some of them can namely be found in the
reigning titles of the Habsburg monarchs like Graf (Earl/Count of) von Tyrol etc.

Territories

Growth of the Habsburg Monarchy

The territories ruled by the branch changed over the centuries, but the core always consisted
of four blocs:

The Hereditary Lands, which covered most of the modern states of Austria and
Slovenia, as well as territories in northeastern Italy and (before 1797) southwestern
Germany. To these were added in 1779 the Inn Quarter of Bavaria; and in 1803 the
Bishoprics of Trent and Brixen. The Napoleonic Wars caused disruptions where many
parts of the Hereditary lands were lost, but all these, along with the former
Archbishopric of Salzburg, which had previously been temporarily annexed between
1805 and 1809, were recovered at the peace in 1815, with the exception of the
Vorlande. The Hereditary provinces included:
o Archduchy of Austria (Upper Austria);
o

Archduchy of Austria (Lower Austria);

Duchy of Styria;

Duchy of Carinthia;

Duchy of Carniola;

The Adriatic port of Trieste;

Istria (although much of Istria was Venetian territory until 1797);

Gorizia and Gradisca;

The County of Tyrol (although the Bishoprics of Trent and Brixen dominated
what would become the South Tyrol before 1803);

The Vorarlberg (actually a collection of provinces, only united in the 19th

century);

The Vorlande, a group of territories in Breisgau and elsewhere in southwestern

Germany lost in 1801 (although the Alsatian territories (Sundgau) which had
formed a part of it had been lost as early as 1648);

These lands (38) were often grouped together as Inner Austria.

Vorarlberg and the Vorlande were often grouped together as Further

Austria and mostly ruled jointly with Tyrol.

Grand Duchy of Salzburg (only after 1805);

The Lands of the Bohemian Crown initially consisting of the five lands: Kingdom
of Bohemia, March of Moravia, Silesia, and Upper and Lower Lusatia. Bohemian
Diet (Czech: zemsk snm) elected Ferdinand, later Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand
I, as king in 1526.
o

Lusatia was ceded to Saxony in 1635.

Most of Silesia was conquered by Prussia in 17401742 and the remnants

which stayed under Habsburg sovereignty were ruled as Duchy of Upper and
Lower Silesia (Austrian Silesia).

The Kingdom of Hungary two thirds of the former territory that was administered
by the medieval Kingdom of Hungary was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and the
Princes of vassal Ottoman Transylvania, while the Habsburg administration was
restricted to the western and northern territories of the former kingdom, which
remained to be officially referred as the Kingdom of Hungary. In 1699, at the end of
the Ottoman-Habsburg wars, one part of the territories that were administered by the
former medieval Kingdom of Hungary came under Habsburg administration, with
some other areas being picked up in 1718 (some of the territories that were part of
medieval kingdom, notably those in the south of the Sava and Danube rivers,
remained under Ottoman administration).

Europa regina, symbolizing a Habsburg-dominated Europe.

Soldiers of the Military Frontier against the incursions of the Ottoman Turks, 1756
Over the course of its history, other lands were, at times, under Austrian Habsburg rule (some
of these territories were secundogenitures, i.e. ruled by other lines of Habsburg dynasty):

The Kingdom of Croatia (15271868);

The Kingdom of Slavonia (16991868);

The Grand Principality of Transylvania, between 1699 (Treaty of Karlowitz) and 1867
(Ausgleich)

The Austrian Netherlands, consisting of most of modern Belgium and Luxembourg

(17131792);

The Duchy of Milan (17131797);

The Kingdom of Naples (17131735);

The Kingdom of Sardinia (17131720);

The Kingdom of Serbia (17181739);

The Banat of Temeswar (17181778);

Oltenia (17181739, de facto, 1737), as Grand-Voivodate (sometimes designated as

Valachia Caesarea);

The Kingdom of Sicily (17201735);

The Duchy of Parma (17351748);

The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in modern Poland and Ukraine (17721918)

Duchy of Bukovina (17741918);

New Galicia, the Polish lands, including Krakw, taken in the Third Partition (1795
1809);

Venetia (17971805);

Kingdom of Dalmatia (17971805, 18141918);

Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia (18141859);

Krakw, which was incorporated into Galicia (18461918);

The Serbian Vojvodina (18481849); de facto entity, officially unrecognized

The Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar (18491860);

The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (18681918);

Sanjak of Novi Pazar occupation (18781913);

Bosnia and Herzegovina (18781918).

The boundaries of some of these territories varied over the period indicated, and others were
ruled by a subordinate (secundogeniture) Habsburg line. The Habsburgs also held the title of
Holy Roman Emperor between 1438 and 1740, and again from 1745 to 1806.

Characteristics

The various Habsburg possessions never really formed a single countryeach province was
governed according to its own particular customs. Until the mid 17th century, all of the
provinces were not even necessarily ruled by the same personjunior members of the family
often ruled portions of the Hereditary Lands as private apanages. Serious attempts at
centralization began under Maria Theresa and especially her son Joseph II in the mid to late
18th century, but many of these were abandoned following large scale resistance to Joseph's
more radical reform attempts, although a more cautious policy of centralization continued
during the revolutionary period and the long Metternichian period which followed.
An even greater attempt at centralization began in 1849 following the suppression of the
various revolutions of 1848. For the first time, ministers tried to transform the monarchy into
a centralized bureaucratic state ruled from Vienna. The Kingdom of Hungary, in particular,
ceased to exist as a separate entity, being divided into a series of districts. Following the
Habsburg defeats in the Wars of 1859 and 1866, this policy was abandoned, and after several
years of experimentation in the early 1860s, the famous Austro-Hungarian Compromise of
1867 was arrived at, by which the so-called Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was set up.
In this system, the Kingdom of Hungary was given sovereignty and a parliament, with only a
personal union and a joint foreign and military policy connecting it to the other Habsburg
lands. Although the non-Hungarian Habsburg lands, often, but erroneously, referred to as
"Austria," received their own central parliament (the Reichsrat, or Imperial Council) and
ministries, as their official name the "Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial
Council" shows that they remained something less than a genuine unitary state. When
Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed (after a long period of occupation and administration),
they were not incorporated into either half of the monarchy. Instead, they were governed by
the joint ministry of finance.
Austria-Hungary collapsed under the weight of the various unsolved ethnic problems that
came to a head with its defeat in World War I. In the peace settlement that followed,
significant territories were ceded to Romania and Italy, new republics of Austria (the
German-Austrian territories of the Hereditary lands) and Hungary (the Magyar core of the old
kingdom) were created, and the remainder of the monarchy's territory was shared out among
the new states of Poland, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and
Czechoslovakia.

Habsburg territories outside the Habsburg Monarchy

See also: Spanish Empire

Habsburg territories in 1700. The Habsburg Monarchy is shown in yellow, while the
territories of the senior Spanish Habsburgs are shown in red.

The Habsburg monarchy should not be confused with various other territories ruled at
different times by members of the Habsburg dynasty. The senior Spanish line of the
Habsburgs ruled over Habsburg Spain and various other territories from 1516 until it became
extinct in 1700. A junior line ruled over Tuscany between 1765 and 1801, and again from
1814 to 1859. While exiled from Tuscany, this line ruled at Salzburg from 1803 to 1805, and
in Wrzburg from 1805 to 1814. Another line ruled the Duchy of Modena from 1814 to 1859,
while Empress Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife and the daughter of Austrian Emperor
Francis, ruled over the Duchy of Parma between 1814 and 1847. Also, the Second Mexican
Empire, from 1863 to 1867, was headed by Maximilian I of Mexico, the brother of Emperor
Franz Josef of Austria.

History
For a historical account, see:

History of Austria in the Habsburg Monarchy

History of Hungary under the Habsburg Monarchy

Kingdom of Bohemia: 15261648, 16481867, 18671918.

Kingdom of Croatia (Habsburg); Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia; Kingdom of Dalmatia

Kingdom of Hungary (1538-1867)

Kingdom of Serbia: 17181739, 1788-1791

History of Slovakia within the Habsburg Monarchy

Economy of the Habsburg Monarchy

History of the Balkans

Rulers of the Habsburg Monarchy, 15211918

Main article: List of rulers of Austria

Habsburg

Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor and his wife Infanta Maria of Spain with their children.
Ferdinand I 15211564
Maximilian II 15641576

Rudolf II 15761612

Matthias 16121619

Ferdinand II 16191637

Ferdinand III 16371657

Leopold I 16571705

Joseph I 17051711

Charles VI 17111740 "Karl VI."

Maria Theresa 17401780 correctly written "Maria Theresia"

Habsburg-Lorraine

Joseph II 17801790 known as "the great Reformer"

Leopold II 17901792 from 1765 to 1790 "Grandduke of Tuscany"

Francis II 17921835 correctly written "Franz" (became Emperor Francis I of Austria

in 1804, at which point numbering starts anew)

Ferdinand I 18351848 known as "Ferdinand the Good" German: "Ferdinand der

Gtige"

Francis Joseph I 18481916 Brother of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (ruled 1864

1867)

Charles I 19161918 last reigning Monarch of Austria-Hungary

Otto von Habsburg-Lothringen or sometimes called Otto von sterreich Crown

Prince of Austria to be found as Otto von Habsburg

Family tree

Habsburg family tree

In literature
The most famous memoir on the decline of the Habsburg Empire is Stefan Zweig's The
World of Yesterday.[12]