In 1866 Prussia answered “The German Question” by invading the Austrian Empire and forcing their 36
year-old Emperor, Franz Josef , to renounce the Presidency of the German confederation which was
dissolved shortly afterwards. The Prussians went on to unite Germany into the powerful
German Empire which at least for the next few decades had a bright future ahead of it, but in
Austria things were quite a bit more dire. Their defeat to the Prussians and their Italian allies,
who took Austria’s most valuable province (the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia) pushed
the Austrian Empire into a state of economic and social chaos that it hadn’t seen since the
Hungarian revolution of 1848, which had forced Franz Josef’s uncle, Ferdinand I, to abdicate.
The Hungarian rebels in 1848 had fought for, and very nearly won,
complete independence from the Austrian empire, but with the help of some 200,000
Russian soldiers they were put down by the end of 1849 and Hungary was placed under an Austrian
military dictatorship. (Before the revolution they had enjoyed some privileges within the
empire recorded in the pragmatic sanction of 1723 and Hungary’s centuries-old constitution).
But with Austria weakened, thanks to the Prussians, Hungarian leaders saw an
opportunity to re-establish their sovereignty - this time though, through peaceful means.
The future Prime Minister of Hungary Count Gyula Andrássy, who had previously been exiled for his
participation in the revolution, met with Franz Josef at the end of the Austro-Prussian War,
after it had become clear that the Austrian Empire had lost.
Andrássy formally recommended that the Emperor restore the old Hungarian constitution as well
as grant Hungary complete internal independence from the Austrian Empire. Both of those would be
formalized in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, signed in May 1867. The key word though was
“internal” as Hungary and Austria kept a joint foreign policy and continued to support each other
militarily. Also, Franz Josef remained Emperor of Austria and was crowned King of Hungary,
maintaining the power that his dynasty, the house of Habsburg and it’s cadet branch the house of
Habsburg-Lorraine, had held in central Europe since the 15th century. The new state was named
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria-Hungary, or less formally, the Dual Monarchy.
The Empire lasted from 1867 until it’s collapse at the end of the first world war in 1918 and was the
last iteration of a series of states which today are grouped together as the Habsburg Monarchy.
In 1914 the now very elderly Franz Josef’s nephew and heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist as he was visiting Sarajevo, the capital of
the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina which had been annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908.
His death was the most immediate cause of WWI, but that very easily might not have been the case. You
see, Franz Ferdinand became his Uncle’s heir in 1896 after his father, Franz Josef’s brother,
died of Typhoid fever. The Emperor had actually had a son of his own before that, Crown Prince
Rudolf, but he committed suicide in 1889 leaving Franz Ferdinand to eventually become heir.
Besides being assasinated, the Archduke is most well-known for sponsoring a 1906 proposal:
“The United States of Greater Austria” which was a theoretical solution to the
biggest problem that Austria-Hungary faced for its entire existence and ultimately the issue
that doomed it to dissolution: despite the fact that the Empire was named for the Austrians and
Hungarians they only made up about 44% of its population. The rest of Austria-Hungary was
inhabited by 9 other major ethnic groups, none of whom were particularly thrilled about being
ruled by Vienna and Budapest. Franz Ferdinand’s plan would have federalized Austria-Hungary
into 15 equally-powerful states, ensuring that every ethnic group within the Union would have
been represented. Which does make it a bit ironic that he was killed by a nationalist.
Anyway, Franz Ferdinand’s death caused outrage in Vienna and across the world but as his assassin,
Gavrilo Princip, had been a Serb, it also presented the Empire with an excuse to use
military force against Serbia, which had been promoting pan-slavic nationalism among Slovene,
Croatian and Serbian subjects of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans.
Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum of ten demands to the Serbian government which,
if they had been accepted, would have turned Serbia, effectively,
into an Austro-Hungarian satellite state. And that was intentional. The higher ups in
Austria-Hungary’s military were actively searching for any opportunity to go to war with Serbia.
So they may have been somewhat surprised when Serbia accepted, at least to some extent,
9 out of the ten demands listed in the ultimatum, everything except allowing
Austro-Hungarian police to enter Serbia. The Serbs trusted that their ally, Russia,
would defend them from any Austro-Hungarian aggression, though the Russians, as well as
Britain and France, actually encouraged Serbia to accept the ultimatum outright,
in the interest of peace. For their part, the Austro-Hungarians had been emboldened to send
the ultimatum in the first place because of a “Blank-cheque” of unconditional support
from the German Emperor, Wilhelm II. (The German and Austro-Hungarian Empires had
repaired relations in the decade following the Austro-Prussian War and became allies in 1879,
explicitly to counter Russian influence. 3 years later Italy allied with the two Empires as well,
though they didn’t join them in WW1 and actually ended up siding with the Entente).
Austria-Hungary performed pretty terribly during the war and they had to rely on their German
allies for support in practically every engagement they entered. They couldn’t even crush Serbia,
which had a population 10x smaller than Austria-Hungary’s and was the
whole point of the war in the first place, on their own. They needed significant help
from the Germans including the sending of the German 11th Army away from the Western Front
and into the Balkans and giving command of the Serbian campaign to German Field
Marshal August von Mackensen, as well as a Bulgarian invasion of Eastern Serbia.
They did fare slightly better fighting against the Russians in Galicia, a primarily Polish
and Ukrainian part of northern Austria-Hungary, and then in the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive which
invaded Russia proper, but still Germany dominated Austria-Hungary’s military policy and they acted
more like a German subordinate than an ally. They also held off the Italians who entered
the war against them in 1915 after the Entente promised them large portions of Austria-Hungary’s
coast after the war. Austria-Hungary even managed to penetrate North-Eastern
Italy in the Trentino offensive and threaten Venice. But, much like on the Western Front,
Austria-Hungary and Italy soon found themselves embroiled in trench warfare and stalemate.
The biggest reasons for Austria-Hungary’s lackluster performance in the war were
1. General of incompetence among Austria-Hungary’s corrupt Officer Corps and
2. The division of their military into Austrian-commanded and Hungarian commanded armies
But the most impactful cause of Austro-Hungarian failure, especially in the last years of the war,
was the problem that Franz Ferdinand had tried to solve back in 1906:
the differing ethnic groups of the Empire who had no real reason to see it succeed.
By 1917 and 1918 desertion rates within Austria-Hungary’s armies skyrocketed as
it became clear that the war wasn’t going to end in any way beneficial to the Empire.
It didn’t help that Austria-Hungary’s enemies refused to accept the continuation of the Dual
Monarchy after the war and one of American President Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points
called in no uncertain terms for self-government for all of Austria-Hungary’s many ethnic groups.
In a last ditch effort to save his Empire the last Habsburg Emperor, Karl l,
who had succeeded Franz Josef, his great-uncle, in 1916, called for a new imperial confederation.
Similar to Franz Ferdinand’s Greater Austria. It received little to no support. On October 17th
1918 Hungary formally dissolved the personal union with Austria. On the 28th Czechoslovakia
took over control of its territory from the now-defunct Empire as did the State of Slovenes,
Croats and Serbs on the 29th. Poland was reborn out of parts of the German and Russian Empires,
as well as Galicia. Italy received land on its border with Austria and Romania took Transylvania
and Bukovina from Hungary. The Slovenes, Croats and Bosnian Serbs later joined with
Serbia and Montenegro to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; Yugoslavia.
Emperor Karl renounced his right to participate in state affairs of both Austria and Hungary
but he never officially abdicated. Ultimately, though that didn’t matter and the Republic of
German-Austria was declared with the intention of joining Germany, though that wouldn’t materialise.
A short-lived republic in Hungary was replaced by a Kingdom under a regency, though a monarch
was never crowned. Formally, the Empire was dissolved by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
between the Entente and Austria and the Treaty of Trianon between them and Hungary. Austria and
Hungary each lost well over half of their pre-war lands. Hungary specifically lost over 70% of the
territory it held in 1914, as well as over 60% of its population. The former-Emperor Karl died
in exile in 1922, without ever having renounced his claim to both Austria and Hungary. His son
Otto von Habsburg, Austria-Hungary’s last Crown Prince, later served as a member of the European
parliament and declared himself to be a “loyal citizen of the republic of Austria” in 1961.
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as always, I’ve been James and thank you for watching Look Back History.