Monarch of the decline era. How Franz Joseph “closed” the Austrian Empire. Franz Joseph I and his family Discord in the family

The imperial couple, Franz Joseph I and Elizabeth of Bavaria (Sissi), were loved by their subjects more than other rulers. The life story of this married couple still inspires admiration.

The imperial couple, Franz Josef I and Elizabeth of Bavaria (Sissi) were loved by their subjects more than other rulers. The life story of this married couple still inspires admiration.

According to the agreement between the august families, Franz Joseph I was supposed to marry Helen, Elizabeth's elder sister. But when he saw his younger sister, fifteen-year-old Elizabeth, he fell in love at first sight and forever. Their wedding in the Vienna Augustinkirche was accompanied by two sad events: firstly, Franz Joseph I, loosening his sword belt, caught his saber and almost fell, and secondly, when the bride got out of the carriage, her tiara got stuck in the curtains of the carriage for a second. However, despite the fact that the Emperor almost lost his sword and power, and the Empress could have worn a spiked crown full of mourning and grief, their life together was happy and worthy of emulation.

Franz Joseph

One of the longest reigns in history, Franz Joseph I was accompanied by the slow but steady decline of the Habsburg dynasty. Franz Joseph I ascended the throne in 1848, a few months after the March Revolution that nearly brought down the Habsburg monarchy. And yet, the emperor managed to return the country to an absolute monarchy: he created a centralized state and surrounded himself with trusted people.

Elizabeth of Bavaria

Sissi was never suited to the life and ceremonies of the Viennese court. There were periods in her life when she was absent even at the most crucial moments of public life. The conflict between her love for her husband and children (there were four of them) and the desire for independence led her to loneliness, which was deepened by her husband’s complete absorption in state and political problems. Her main hobbies were poetry (she wrote poetry herself) and traveling around Europe. The Empress died on Lake Geneva in September 1898 at the hands of an Italian anarchist.

Franz Joseph I died in 1916. He played a huge role in the development of Vienna. Thanks to him, today we can admire the Votivkirche, the New Town Hall, the Palace of Parliament, the Museum of Art History and Natural History, the Vienna State Opera, and the Museum of Applied Arts. In addition, an important event in the improvement of Vienna was the order of Franz Joseph I to demolish the fortress wall in order to build the Ring ring road, which separated the historical center from the Cathedral of St. Stefan and Hofburg from the surrounding areas.

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The head of the dual state of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Emperor of the Austrian Empire and the King of Bohemia, Franz Joseph 1, during the years of his reign was not distinguished by any particular greatness of affairs, but took an honorable place in European history due to... his long reign - he was on the throne for 68 years! The Russian island of Franz Josef Land, discovered in 1873 by an Austrian polar expedition, is named in honor of the emperor in the Arctic Ocean.

The conservative emperor had a habit of going to bed early and getting up early, for which the common people nicknamed him “the early bird.” Over the long years of his reign, this habit of his was well adopted by the Hungarians, Czechs and Austrians. The Germans adopted it from the latter. For which everyone was grateful to him - active life in cities begins early and ends early, leaving more free time for family and personal life. This habit has continued to this day.

The emperor was a pedant in everything: in clothes, ceremonies, etiquette. He was stingy and conservative, did not want a telephone to be brought into his palace, and had difficulty agreeing to electricity. He knew his weaknesses and called himself "the last monarch of the old school." Franz Joseph loved the army, parades, and uniforms. You will love our Japanese tea sets of various colors and configurations. And in everything he tried to maintain strict order and subordination, but by nature he was cheerful and sociable among those closest to him.

Franz Joseph was a decent, intelligent and educated man. Since childhood, he showed excellent abilities for languages, he was fluent in French, English, spoke Hungarian, Polish, Czech and Italian...

Franz Joseph I began to rule in 1848. During the Austrian revolution, his uncle abdicated the throne and his father renounced his rights of inheritance, and 18-year-old Franz Joseph 1 found himself at the head of the multinational Habsburg power. At this time, there was turmoil in Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and neighboring countries, including, first of all, Italy. Somewhere social revolutions were brewing, somewhere the people, as in Italy, were trying to get rid of the alien conquerors of the Austrians.

Franz Joseph was not a strategist, although he studied military science. But it was necessary to find a place for Austria among European states, create military alliances, enter into conflicts, and achieve victories for their subjects. He didn't do any of this. He saw his main enemy... in the Russian Empire. This was his big mistake. Neither France nor Prussia became his reliable allies. He lost previously conquered territories, in particular Lombardy in Italy. The Habsburg monarchy was in danger of collapse.

The bitter experience of war and uprising in Hungary and the Czech Republic forced him to make liberal concessions; Franz Joseph declared freedom of religion, began to become more active in the economy, build railways, and contributed to the education of the population. In 1878, at the Congress of Berlin, Austria-Hungary received a substantial increase - Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It is quite possible that Franz Joseph would have achieved more significant results during his reign if not for family troubles. He had a young and beautiful wife, the Bavarian Princess Elizabeth - Sissi, whom the Austrians adored, but the spouses lost interest in each other. In 1867, his younger brother, Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, was shot and killed in Mexico. In 1872, his mother Sophia of Bavaria, whom he revered very much, died, and six years later his father Franz Karl died. In 1889, his only son and heir Rudolph shot himself, having previously killed his bride. In 1898, an Italian anarchist murdered his wife, Elisabeth. And in 19N, the new heir to the throne, Franz Joseph’s nephew, Franz Ferdinand, was shot dead in Sarajevo, which was the reason for the First World War. These were heavy losses for the emperor. They ruined his health. Two years later, Franz Joseph died at the age of 86.

The last Holy Roman Emperor and first Austrian Emperor, Franz I, was born on February 12, 1768 in Florence. He was the son of Archduke Leopold, the future Emperor Leopold II, and the great-nephew of Empress Maria Theresa, who during almost her entire reign was forced to repel enemy attacks on Austria.
Franz was third in line to the throne after his uncle Archduke Joseph (the future Joseph II) and his father Archduke Leopold. He could take the throne only if his uncle died childless, which ultimately happened.
In 1780, Maria Theresa died and Joseph II, Franz’s uncle, ascended the throne. He called his nephew to Vienna and began raising him. According to the Emperor, Franz was incapable and lazy and was very poorly suited to the role of the future sovereign.
In 1788 he married Elisabeth Princess of Württemberg, who died two years later and their first marriage was childless.
In 1789, at the age of 21, Franz, then holding the title of Archduke, was the nominal commander in chief in the war with Turkey, where Austria was fighting in alliance with Russia. The actual commander-in-chief at that time was Field Marshal Loudon.
In 1790, after the death of Elizabeth of Württemberg, Franz remarried. His second wife was Maria Theresa of Sicily from the Neapolitan Bourbon family. She bore him 13 children, including the future heir to the throne and Emperor Ferdinand I and Napoleon's future second wife, Empress Marie-Louise.
Also in 1790, the unexpected happened. Emperor Joseph II, Franz's uncle, died childless. Franz's father, Emperor Leopold II, ascended the throne, and Franz unexpectedly became the heir to the throne.
In 1791, Franz, as heir, attended the congress of monarchs in Pillnitz, where the first coalition against France took shape. Its main participants were Austria and Prussia, and England and Russia promised financial support.
On March 1, 1792, Franz's father Leopold II died and Franz assumed the throne of Austria, which he held for 43 years.
Already the first year of his reign was marked by the beginning of the war with revolutionary France.
Franz, despite the many defeats of his army, fought this war with enviable persistence. Even the defeats of Valmy, Jemappe and Fleurus and the execution of the royal family of France, one of the reasons for which was the contemptuous attitude of the Austrians towards the revolutionaries, did not stop him.
Prussia’s withdrawal from the war in 1795, when it concluded the Basel Peace Treaty with France, did not stop him.
Franz's military aspirations temporarily subsided after the lightning victories of General Bonaparte (the future Emperor Napoleon) in Italy in 1796-1797.
Within a year, Bonaparte managed to destroy the best Austrian armies, capture all of northern and central Italy and invade the Tyrol, threatening Vienna.
As a result, Franz was forced to sign peace in Campo Formio in 1797, where he ceded all of northern and central Italy, except Venice.
But this peace turned out to be only a short truce, for Austria was eager to get even for the defeat.
And in 1799, when Bonaparte was in Egypt, the Russian army of the great A.V. Suvorov, in alliance with the Austrians, invaded Italy. The main fighting force was the Russian troops, who defeated the French and cleared of them the entire territory of Italy, conquered by Bonaparte. The Austrians behaved treacherously towards their allies. So they did not provide any assistance to the corps of General Rimsky-Korsakov, which was defeated in Switzerland near Zurich, which led Suvorov to the need to leave Italy.
Nevertheless, Italy, cleared of the French by Russian hands, was firmly captured by the Austrians. The only Italian fortress that did not surrender was Genoa.
But, as it turned out, it didn't last long.
In 1800, Bonaparte, who returned from Egypt and became the first Consul, invaded Italy and on June 14, 1800, at Marengo, he again defeated the Austrians. All of northern and central Italy once again fell firmly into French hands.
But Austria again did not reconcile and thirsted for revenge. Its leading role in the German world was shaken, because the French ruled there as if they were at home. The same thing happened in Italy, from where Austria seemed to be removed forever.
This became especially noticeable in 1804-1805, when Bonaparte became Emperor Napoleon, he placed his relatives and marshals on the thrones of the German principalities, completely ignoring the influence of Austria.
And in 1805, Austria entered the third coalition, hoping that, as in 1799, it could win with Russian hands.
But soon hopes were dashed to dust. Napoleon's Grand Army encircled and destroyed General Mack's best army at Ulm.
Then the French, steadily advancing, took Vienna. The commander of the Russian army, M.I. Kutuzov, miraculously avoided the fate of Macca, took the army to Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), where he met with the Russian guard, led by Emperor Alexander the First himself.
And on December 2, 1805, the battle of three Emperors, Napoleon, Franz and Alexander, took place at Austerlitz. Kutuzov was against this battle and offered to go even to Galicia (now western Ukraine), which Austria received after the divisions of Poland, but Franz and Alexander insisted on the battle and it was miserably lost due to the stupid organization.
For Napoleon, the sun of Austerlitz rose, and Franz was forced to put up with and lose his provinces again.
In 1806, Franz declared the end of the Holy Roman Empire, since Napoleon reigned supreme in Germany.
Franz remained only Emperor of Austria. At the same time, the great Joseph Haydn wrote the Austrian anthem, which began with the words, “God save the Emperor Franz.” Interestingly, the melody of this anthem, but with different words, is now the anthem of Germany.
But, despite another failure, Austria was still waiting for the moment for revenge.
And this moment, according to Franz, came in 1809, when Napoleon, mired in a people's war in Spain, could act at half-heartedness.
In addition, Alexander, who concluded an alliance with Napoleon in Tilsit in 1807, already in 1808 in Erfurt made it clear to the Austrian ambassador Vincent that he was not going to be a zealous and loyal ally of Napoleon.
In turn, the Austrians pinned their hopes on Archduke Charles, who was considered a talented commander.
And then in 1809 war broke out. Even half of Napoleon’s strength was enough to re-enter Vienna. But beyond Vienna, the battle of Essling awaited him, where he was almost defeated and buried one of his bravest marshals, Lannes.
But soon after Essling at Wagram, all the hopes of the Austrians crumbled. Napoleon won again. Austria again lost provinces.
At the same time, Franz also renounced his partisans, who were operating in Tyrol against Napoleon under the leadership of the peasant Andrei Gofer. Gopher was shot, and Tyrol fell under the rule of Napoleon.
It would seem that the end has come for Austria.
But suddenly hope for deliverance came from the same Napoleon.
He asked for the hand of Franz's daughter, Archduchess Marie Louise, and the delighted Franz agreed.
He was inspired to do this by the new chancellor Clementius Metternich, who believed that in a close alliance with Napoleon, Austria would be able to rise after humiliation, and over time, subjugate Napoleon.
In 1811, Franz gave birth to a grandson, Napoleon's heir - the future Duke of Reichstadt, Karl Napoleon Franz.
And in 1812, Franz allocated the corps of Prince Schwarzenberg to the Napoleonic “great army” that went to Russia. This corps operated on the flanks, but Napoleon even gave Schwarzenberg the title of French marshal. But he gave in vain, because after the defeat in Russia in the winter of 1813, Austria withdrew from the war, signing a truce with Russia.
After the formation of the sixth coalition, Austria did not enter the war until August 1813. Metternich and Franz tried to persuade Napoleon to make peace through small concessions. A congress was even convened for this purpose in Prague. But Napoleon did not make any concessions, and in August 1813 Austria joined the war, sending Schwarzenberg’s corps to the Allied army.
After the defeat at Dresden and a series of private battles, the allies defeated Napoleon near Leipzig on October 16-19, 1813 and by mid-November 1813 cleared almost all of Germany from the French.
Then Metternich and Franz tried again to persuade Napoleon to make peace by sending him a proposal that if he agreed to peace, northern and central Italy, Holland and Belgium and West Germany would remain in his power, i.e. he will remain the owner of a first-class power, which, according to Franz, will be an ally of Austria.
Napoleon agreed for the sake of appearance, but again gathered troops and in the winter of 1814 the campaign in France began.
In February 1814, Austria offered Napoleon peace for the last time, leaving him the borders of France proper. Peace negotiations began in Chatillon, but they led nowhere. Napoleon did not want to give in.
Meanwhile, on March 31, 1814, the Allies occupied Paris, and on April 6, 1814, Napoleon abdicated the throne and went to the island of Elba for his first exile.
His wife and son returned to Vienna, where Emperor Franz bestowed the title of Duke of Reichstadt on Napoleon's heir and his grandson and raised him in the Austrian spirit.
However, Napoleon's son knew well about his father and was his ardent admirer.
After the overthrow of Napoleon, a congress of the victorious powers met in Vienna, which was supposed to decide the fate of the former “great empire” of Napoleon. Prince Talleyrand was also present at the congress, representing the restored Bourbons, who had returned to power in France.
By the beginning of spring 1815, the winners quarreled. War was approaching between Austria, England and Royal France on the one hand and Russia and Prussia on the other. Disagreement was caused by questions regarding Saxony and Poland.
But unexpectedly Napoleon reconciled everyone, who began his legendary “Hundred Days”.
Austria took almost no part in the events of the Hundred Days. So in the spring of 1815, Franz rejected Napoleon’s demand to return his wife and son to him. At the same time, on behalf of the victorious countries, he declared that the allies would not put up with Napoleon as the “enemy of humanity.”
Everything was decided by the disaster of Napoleon's army at Waterloo, his second abdication and the Allied occupation of France, in which the Austrians took part.
At the same time, the Austrians tried to save some figures from Napoleonic times, for example, Marshal Murat, but to no avail.
In 1815, the Congress of Vienna ended. Germany and Italy fell completely under Austrian rule. The Holy Alliance of Monarchs was formed, in which Russia and Austria played the leading role.
In 1816, Franz's third wife, Maria Louis of Modena, died, whom he married in 1807 after the death of Maria Theresa of Sicily, the mother of his children.
And in 1817, the Emperor married for the fourth time the daughter of King Maximilian of Bavaria, Caroline Augusta, who outlived her husband by more than 38 years and died in 1873.
The post-war period in Austria was distinguished by conservatism, which Franz, Metternich and other victorious sovereigns instilled throughout Europe.
On May 5, 1821, Franz's son-in-law Emperor Napoleon died on the island of St. Helena. On this occasion, Franz wrote a short letter to his daughter, the former Empress and now the Duchess of Parma, with words of sympathy. Here is a quote: “... He died as a Christian. I deeply sympathize with your grief..” To this, Maria Louise responded with a letter that completely reveals her attitude towards Napoleon: “You are mistaken, father. I never loved him.. I I didn’t wish him harm, much less death.. Let him live happily ever after, but away from me..”

In 1825 (according to the official version), the inspirer of the Holy Alliance, Emperor Alexander the First, died, after which the congresses of the union, one of which at Aachen in 1818 liberated France from occupation, were no longer convened.

In 1830, the July Revolution took place in France. She overthrew the Bourbons and brought to power the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe, who was a general of the revolutionary army during the great revolution. The tricolor and many ideas from the times of the revolution and Napoleon returned to France. But the countries of the Holy Alliance did nothing to prevent this.

At the same time, there was an uprising in the Russian part of Poland and Franz moved troops to his part of Poland, but everything worked out there.

In addition, within the framework of the Holy Alliance, he participated in the suppression of uprisings in Italy and the Riego uprising in Spain, which earned him, even more than the Russian Nicholas I, the title of “all-European gendarme.”

Also in 1830, a son, Franz Joseph, was born to the second son of Franz, Archduke Franz-Karl, in Vienna. 18 years later, this man became Emperor of Austria and during his 68 years of reign he led the once great power to complete collapse.

In 1832, Napoleon's son and Franz's grandson, the Duke of Reichstadt, died in Vienna at the age of 21. He remembered his great father well and, apparently, was very worried, being in complete isolation in Vienna.

Moreover, in the last years of his life, the Duke of Reichstadt was visited by followers of his great father.

So they proposed to nominate him to the throne of independent Belgium, which was formed in 1830, but the countries of the Holy Alliance categorically refused.

Also in 1830, several Bonapartists arrived in Vienna and invited the Duke to go to Paris and come to power as the legitimate heir of his father, who, upon his abdication in 1815, handed over the throne to him. But the Duke of Reichstadt refused, saying that he was ready to come only when he was called upon by all the people, and did not want to come with bayonets and start civil strife.

Apparently, these meetings reached Franz and Metternich, and in 1832 the Duke of Reichstadt, whom the Bonapartists called Napoleon the Second, suddenly died under unclear circumstances. According to one version, he was poisoned.

The Duke's body was buried in the Habsburg tomb of the Kapuzienkirche in Vienna, and in 1940, when both Vienna and Paris were under Nazi rule, the Nazis, in order to try to win some sympathy in the eyes of the French, moved the Duke's body to Paris and buried it in the Invalides next to his great father.. This did not bring sympathy, but since then father and son have rested side by side..

Franz himself lived for three more years and died on March 2, 1835 and was also buried in the Kapucinenkirche in Vienna. He reigned for 43 years, at that time longer than all Austrian monarchs. But soon this record will be broken by his great-nephew Franz Joseph, who will reign for 68 years.

At the same time, in the 30s of the 19th century, a portrait gallery was created in St. Petersburg in the Winter Palace in memory of the heroes of the wars with Napoleon. A portrait of Franz was also placed in this gallery, who, however, personally did not take part in almost any battle, with the exception, perhaps, of the miserably lost Austerlitz.
However, his portrait, the work of the artist Kraft, can be seen in the military gallery of the Hermitage in our time.

The memory of Franz remains this portrait, several monuments in Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy and Hungary, as well as Haydn’s anthem, which became the anthem of Germany.

On August 18, 1830, Franz Joseph I, the Austrian Emperor who reigned for 68 years, was born. He found himself at the head of the multinational Habsburg power at the age of 18. During the seven decades of the reign of Franz Joseph I, the Austrian Empire came to complete collapse as a result of the First World War.

The life of the imperial family has repeatedly become the subject of gossip and scandals.

Unsuccessful marriage

In 1854, Franz Joseph I married the Bavarian Princess Elisabeth, known at home as Sisi. Her relationship with the Emperor's mother, Archduchess Sophia of Bavaria, did not work out, which soon turned into a nervous breakdown for Elizabeth. Since the 1860s, the Empress spent her time traveling, rarely seeing her husband and almost never seeing her children.

Cece mostly traveled, rarely seeing her husband and children

The Emperor's Mistresses

At least two long-term love affairs of the emperor are known: with Anna Nagowski and Katharina Schratt.

Franz Joseph I met the first by chance during a morning walk in the park of Schönbrunn Palace. Their relationship lasted 14 years. From time to time, Nagowski received an envelope tightly stuffed with money from the Emperor.

Anna Nagowski's relationship with Franz Joseph I lasted 14 years

It is believed that Franz Joseph I was the father of Nagowski's two children. Daughter Helena married composer Alban Berg. And son Franz, on the day of the emperor’s centenary, cut off the little finger of his left hand and laid it on the grave of Franz Joseph I, after which he was declared crazy and placed in a clinic.

The illegitimate son of Franz Joseph I cut off his little finger in honor of his father

The relationship between Nagowski and the Emperor was put to an end by Franz Joseph I’s acquaintance with actress Katharina Schratt at an industrialists’ ball in 1885. After a theatrical performance in honor of the Russian Tsar Alexander III, the troupe was invited to a dinner party with the monarchs. There, Katharina Schratt first met Empress Elizabeth, who decided to facilitate the actress’s communication with the emperor. Katharina Schratt and Emperor Franz Joseph I had a close and trusting relationship with some interruptions until his death in 1916.

Katharina Schratt loved to live large and was fond of gambling, and the emperor constantly provided the actress with financial assistance to pay off her debts. The Emperor also presented her with valuable jewelry as a gift, gave her a villa on the Gloriettengasse in Vienna and the three-story Königswarter Palace on the Kärntner Ring opposite the opera house.

Shooting of brother

In the early 1860s, Franz Joseph I's younger brother Maximilian, with the support of the French Emperor Napoleon III, received the title and crown of Emperor of Mexico. Very soon, Maximilian faced opposition from the Republicans led by Benito Juarez. Maximilian wrote a letter to Juarez with a proposal to join forces in leading the country out of the crisis, but was refused. And subsequently a very strong political opponent, supported by the United States.

After Napoleon III was forced to withdraw the French Expeditionary Force from Mexico, Maximilian's fate was sealed. The military confrontation with Juarez that began ended in the latter's victory.
The emperor was captured. Despite the requests of all European monarchs, US President Andrew Johnson, G. Garibaldi and Victor Hugo, Juarez, in accordance with legal order, left Maximilian's fate in the hands of a military court, which sentenced him to death.

Brother is homosexual

Archduke Ludwig Victor Joseph Anton of Austria was the younger brother of Franz Joseph I. He abandoned claims to expand the power of the dynasty and devoted himself to collecting art and building palaces. The most famous are the Renaissance palace of Ludwig Victor on Schwarzenbergplatz in Vienna, designed by the architect Heinrich von Ferstel, and the Klesheim Palace near Salzburg. In his palace, Ludwig Victor held feasts, preferring male company.

Franz Joseph I's brother was expelled from Vienna for having relations with homosexuals

Ludwig Victor is credited with numerous extravagant antics. For his participation in a fight between homosexuals in the central baths of Vienna, Ludwig Victor was exiled by his brother-emperor to Salzburg in 1864. There, Ludwig Victor continued to build palaces and was involved in charity work and philanthropy. In the last years of his life, Ludwig Victor suffered from mental illness.

Murder of Elizabeth

Elizabeth did not care about her personal safety; she refused protection, which drove her ladies-in-waiting and police officers into despair. Fate, in the person of the anarchist Luigi Lucheni, lay in wait for her on the morning of Saturday, September 10, 1898, when Elizabeth, accompanied by one of her ladies-in-waiting, Countess Irma Sharai, walked along the Geneva embankment. The blow of the anarchist's sharpener knocked her down, but Elizabeth did not feel the wound in the heart area and did not understand the true meaning of what happened.

Deciding that the attacker simply wanted to snatch her jewelry, she stood up and tried to continue her walk. Only a few minutes later she felt acute weakness, sank to the ground and lost consciousness. Her wish, expressed after the death of her son, came true: “I, too, would like to die from a small wound in my heart through which my soul will fly away, but I want this to happen far from those I love.”

Suicide of the heir

The only son and heir of Franz Joseph I, Crown Prince Rudolf, according to one version, shot himself in 1889 at Mayerling Castle, having previously killed his beloved Baroness Maria Vechera, and according to another version, he became the victim of a carefully planned political murder.

The son of Franz Joseph I, according to one version, shot himself

After the strange death of Rudolf, the emperor's nephew Franz Ferdinand became the new heir to the throne. In 1914, the new heir to the throne was killed along with his wife in Sarajevo by the Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip. The heir to the throne was the son of Otto Franz, the younger brother of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Karl Joseph, who was Franz Ferdinand's nephew.

Age of Reign Franz Joseph, which lasted almost seven decades, became the period of decline of the great Austrian Empire.

Franz Joseph ascended to the throne of the Austrian Empire at the age of eighteen, during the period when the 1848 revolution was raging in the country. His uncle Emperor Ferdinand I, abdicated the throne, and the father, Archduke Franz Karl, renounced the rights of inheritance, which opened the way for Franz Joseph to the imperial crown.

Portrait of the family of Franz Joseph I (1861). commons.wikimedia.org

The position of the Austrian Empire during this period was critical, and only the intervention of Russian troops, who assisted in suppressing the revolution in Hungary, helped to prolong the existence of the Habsburg monarchy as a whole.

The weakness of power in the Austrian Empire forced Franz Joseph I to make political compromises, giving national regions more and more rights.

In 1866, Austria was defeated in the war with Prussia, thus losing the opportunity to become the center of unification of the German world.

In March 1867, the Austrian Empire became the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a constitutional dualist monarchy. This decision was reached as a result of a compromise with the powerful national movement in Hungary.

Franz Joseph I was extremely skeptical of parliamentarism and adhered to conservative views, but the situation forced him to make more and more concessions. The Emperor considered the most important task to be to avoid military conflicts that could completely destroy the monarchy.

Franz Joseph I (1851). commons.wikimedia.org

Time for big problems

Franz Joseph managed to achieve this goal: from 1866 until the outbreak of the First World War, Austria did not participate in military conflicts. The emperor tried to support the development of industry, science and culture, and preserved the external splendor of the ancient monarchy.

In the 1870s, Austria-Hungary entered into a military-political alliance with Germany, which allowed it to somewhat restore its influence in European politics. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, Austria-Hungary made its last territorial acquisition, first occupying and annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908.

These actions of Austria-Hungary spoiled the country's relations with Russia and especially Serbia. In the territory inhabited by the Slavic peoples of Austria-Hungary, pan-Slavic organizations supported by Serbia were active, seeking independence from Vienna.

Franz Joseph in 1855. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

An additional problem in relations with the Slavic population of the empire was that Franz Joseph I was a devout Catholic who had close relations with the papal throne, and many of his subjects professed Orthodoxy. Keeping the situation under control under these conditions was extremely difficult.

The fact that Franz Joseph had no direct heirs did not add to the stability of the monarchy. In 1889 his only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide. Died even earlier Franz Joseph's brother, Maximilian, proclaimed Emperor of Mexico.

Became heir to the throne Franz Joseph's nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The emperor treated his nephew with detachment, did not bring him closer to him and did not seek to involve him in state affairs.

Assassination attempt on Franz Joseph I (1853). Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Franz Joseph was not close to the ideas of Franz Ferdinand about transforming Austria-Hungary into the “United States of Austria-Hungary” with the expansion of the rights of the nations living within the state.

In addition, Franz Ferdinand was a categorical opponent of a military conflict with Russia, and at that time a “war party” formed around Franz Joseph, which believed that a military solution to the conflict with Serbia was possible, as well as a military clash with Serbia’s ally Russia with the help of Germany.

Craving for war

The Austrian "War Party" was headed by Chief of the General Staff of Austria-Hungary Konrad von Hetzendorff, who called for war with Serbia, despite possible Russian intervention back in 1908, immediately after the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Franz Joseph I and Hungarian Prime Minister István Tisza (1905). Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

This position was strengthened after Russia, in 1909, wanting to avoid war with Germany and Austria-Hungary, actually forced Serbia to recognize the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The smoldering Balkan crisis erupted in June 1914, when heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed at the hands of a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo.

84-year-old Franz Joseph, who outlived another of his heirs, supported the “war party,” which intended to use the murder in Sarajevo as a pretext for a military solution to the “Serbian problem.” Despite the fact that immediately after the death of Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian government and Emperor Franz Joseph personally hastened to assure Russia that they did not intend to take any military action, three weeks later Serbia was presented with an obviously impossible ultimatum. After Serbia rejected a number of his points, Franz Joseph I declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914 and began mobilizing the army.

A few days later, the ensuing chain reaction of the allies of both sides turned into the beginning of the First World War.

Thank you for not making it

Emperor Franz Joseph, formally retaining the reins of power in his hands, appointed his commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian troops brother, Archduke Frederick. According to Franz Joseph, Frederick should “not interfere” with the action of the main supporter of the war - Chief of the General Staff Konrad von Hetzendorff.

However, the first months of the war showed that the Austro-Hungarian military leaders overestimated the power of their army. For a long time, Austria-Hungary could not defeat the Serbian army, which was many times inferior in numbers, and the crushing defeat from the Russian army in the Battle of Galicia completely forced the military leaders to subsequently conduct operations only together with Germany, and not on their own.

The further the war went, the more obvious its disastrous consequences for Austria-Hungary became. However, Franz Joseph I did not see the last act of the drama of his empire. His health deteriorated, and on November 21, 1916, at the height of the war, the 86-year-old emperor died.