Habsburg Monarchy
The
Habsburg Monarchy included the territories ruled by the
Austrian branch of the House of
Habsburg, and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine, between
1526 and
1867/
1918. The capital was
Vienna. From 1804 to 1867 the monarchy is usually referred to as
Austrian Empire and from 1867 to 1918 as
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The monarchy developed from the Habsburg Hereditary Lands (mostly modern
Austria and
Slovenia), which the Habsburgs had accumulated since
1278. The Habsburg Monarchy grew to European prominence in
1526, when
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the younger brother of the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V, was elected King of
Bohemia and
Hungary following the death of
Louis II, the King of those two countries, in battle against the Turks at
Mohacs. From this point the Monarchy grew to a size where at times it ruled over more than half of
Europe.
Names of the territory that (with some exceptions) finally became
Austria-Hungary:
*
Habsburg monarchy or
Austrian monarchy (
1526 â€"
1867) : This was an unofficial, but very frequent name - even at that time. The entity had no
official name. Note that technically the term Habsburg monarchy can also refer to the period 1276-1918 when the Habsburgs ruled in the
monarchy centered in present-day Austria, and Austrian monarchy can refer to the monarchy centered in present-day Austria 1156 â€" 1867, but both terms are usually not used this way.
*
Austrian Empire (
1804 â€"
1867): This was the official name. Note that the German version is "Kaisertum Österreich", i.e. the English translation empire refers to a territory ruled by an
emperor, not just to a "widespreading dominion".
*
Austria-Hungary or
Austro-Hungarian Empire (
1867 â€"
1918): This was the official name. An unofficial popular name was the
Danubian Monarchy (in German:
Donaumonarchie).
*
crownlands or
crown-lands (in German
Kronländer) (
1849 â€"
1918): This is the name of all the individual parts of the Austrian Empire (since 1849) and then of Austria-Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary (more exactly the
Lands of the Hungarian crown) was not considered a "crownland" anymore 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 Königreiche und Länder").
Names of some smaller territories:
*
Austrian lands (? â€"
1918): This is the unofficial name of the part of the Austrian monarchy that ended up constituting the present-day Austria (except
Burgenland and most of the time also except
Salzburg).
*
Hereditary Lands (in German
Erblande or
Erbländer) or
German Hereditary Lands (in the Austrian monarchy) or
Austrian Hereditary Lands (
Middle Ages â€"
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 the Hereditary Lands. The term was replaced by the term crownlands (see above) in the 1849 March Constitution, but it was also used afterwards.
Although the territories ruled by the branch changed over the centuries, but the core always consisted of three 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. The Hereditary provinces included:##
Upper Austria##
Lower Austria##
Styria##
Carinthia##
Carniola##The Adriatic port of
Trieste##
Istria (although much of Istria was Venetian territory until
1797)##
Gorizia-
Gradisca##*These lands (3-8) were often grouped together as
Inner Austria##The
Tirol (although the Bishoprics of Trent and Brixen dominated what would become the South Tirol before
1803)##The
Vorarlberg (actually a collection of provinces, only united in the nineteenth century)##The Vorlande, a group of territories in southwestern Germany lost in
1797 (although the Alsatian territories which had formed a part of it had been lost as early as
1648)##*Vorarlberg and the Vorlande were often grouped together as
Further Austria and mostly ruled jointly with Tirol.##
Salzburg (only after 1805)# The
Lands of the Bohemian Crown - initially consisting of the four provinces of
Bohemia,
Moravia,
Silesia, and
Lusatia. Lusatia was ceded to
Saxony in
1620, while most of Silesia was conquered by
Prussia in
1740-
1742.# The
Kingdom of Hungary – prior to
1699, the Kingdom of Hungary, called Royal Hungary at that time, lost some two thirds of its territory to the
Ottoman Empire and its vassals the Princes of
Transylvania, while the Habsburgs were restricted to the western and northern fringes of the former kingdom, but after that date almost the whole former kingdom came under Austrian rule, with the rest being picked up in
1718. The Kingdom of Hungary, at its fullest extent, included modern
Hungary and
Slovakia, most of
Croatia, the
Vojvodina in what is now
Serbia,
Transylvania in what is now
Romania, and
Carpathian Ruthenia, a small trans-Carpathian region now in
Ukraine. Between
1718 and
1739, various other Balkan territories, including the area around
Belgrade and parts of western
Wallachia, were also attached, but were lost following an unsuccessful war with Turkey in
1739. Much of the area bordering the Ottoman Empire was separated out from Hungarian administration and formed into the
Military Frontier, which was ruled directly from Vienna.
Over the course of its history, other lands were, at times, under Austrian Habsburg rule:
#The
Austrian Netherlands, consisting of most of modern
Belgium and
Luxembourg (
1713-
1792)#The
Duchy of Milan, in
Lombardy (
1713-
1797)#The
Kingdom of Naples (
1713-
1735)#The
Kingdom of Sardinia (
1713-
1720)#The
Banat of Temeswar (
1718-
1778)#
Serbia (
1718-
1739)#
Bosnia (
1718-
1739)#
Oltenia (
1718-
1737)#The
Kingdom of Sicily (
1720-
1735)#The
Duchy of Parma (
1735-
1748)#The
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in modern Poland and Ukraine (
1772-
1918)#
Bukovina (
1774-
1918)#"
New Galicia", the Polish lands, including
Kraków, taken in the
Third Partition (
1795-
1809)#
Venetia (
1797-
1805,
1814-
1866)#
Dalmatia (
1797-
1805,
1814-
1918)#
Lombardy (
1814-
1859)#Kraków, which was incorporated into Galicia (
1846-
1918)#
Vojvodina of Serbia and Tamiš Banat (
1849-
1860)#
Bosnia and Herzegovina (
1908-
1918)
The Austrian Habsburgs also held the title of
Holy Roman Emperor between
1556 and
1740, and again from
1745 to
1806.
The various Habsburg possessions never really formed a single country - each 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 person - junior 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
Ausgleich, or 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 as a result of unsolved ethnic problems and of 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.
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
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
Würzburg from
1805 to
1814. Another line ruled the Vörlande from 1803 to 1805, and
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.
For a historical account, see:
*
History of Austria in the Habsburg Monarchy*
History of Hungary under the Habsburg Monarchy*
Croatia in the Habsburg Empire*
Czech lands: 1526-1648,
Czech lands: 1648-1867 and
Czech lands: 1867-1918.
*
History of Slovakia within the Habsburg Monarchy*
Ferdinand I 1526-1564
*
Maximilian II 1564-1576
*
Rudolf II 1576-1612
*
Matthias 1612-1619
*
Ferdinand II 1619-1637
*
Ferdinand III 1637-1657
*
Leopold I 1657-1705
*
Joseph I 1705-1711
*
Charles VI 1711-1740
*
Maria Theresa 1740-1780
*
Joseph II 1780-1790
*
Leopold II 1790-1792
*
Francis II 1792-1835 (became Emperor Francis I of Austria in
1804, at which point numbering starts anew)
*
Ferdinand I 1835-1848
*
Francis Joseph I 1848-1916
*
Charles I 1916-1918
*
Habsburg*
Austria-Hungary*
List of rulers of Austria*
History of the Balkans*histories of countries that finally arose from Austria-Hungary:
History of Austria,
History of the Czech Republic,
History of Croatia,
History of Hungary,
History of Italy,
History of Montenegro,
History of Poland,
History of Romania,
History of Serbia,
History of Slovakia,
History of Slovenia
