The Habsburg Monarchy or Empire 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, 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.
The head of the House of Habsburg was often elected Holy Roman Emperor until the Empire's
dissolution in 1806.
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.
Origins and expansion The Habsburg family originated with the Habsburg
Castle in modern Switzerland, and after 1279 came to rule in Austria.
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.
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the younger brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles
V, was elected the next King of Bohemia and Hungary following the death of Louis II of
Hungary and Bohemia in the Battle of Mohács against the Turks.
Terminology Names of the territory that finally became
Austria-Hungary: Habsburg monarchy or Austrian monarchy: 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 centred in present-day Austria and "Austrian monarchy"
can refer to the monarchy centered in present-day Austria 1156–1867, but both terms are usually
not used this way.
Austrian Empire: 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 domain", more
accurately the "Emperordom of Austria".
Austria-Hungary or Austro-Hungarian Empire: This was the official name.
An unofficial popular name was the Danubian Monarchy also often used was the term Doppel-Monarchie
meaning two states under one crowned ruler.
Crownlands or crown lands: This is the name of all the individual parts of the Austrian
Empire and then of Austria-Hungary.
The Kingdom of Hungary 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.
The Hungarian parts of the Empire were called "Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint
Stephen" or "Lands of Holy Stephen's Crown".
The Bohemian Lands were called "Lands of the St. Wenceslaus' Crown".
Names of some smaller territories: Austrian lands or "Archduchies of Austria"
- Lands up and below the Enns: This is the historical name of the parts of the Archduchy
of Austria that became the present-day Republic of Austria on 12 November 1918.
Modern day Austria is a semi-federal republic of nine states 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 Napoleonic wars.
Vienna, Austria's capital became a state January 1, 1922, after being residence and capital
of the Austrian Empire for the Habsburg monarchs for centuries.
Upper and Lower Austria, historically, were split into "Austria above the Enns" and "Austria
below the Enns".
Upper Austria was enlarged after the Treaty of Teschen following the "War of the Bavarian
Succession" by the so-called Innviertel, formerly part of Bavaria.
Hereditary Lands or German Hereditary Lands or Austrian Hereditary Lands: In a narrower
sense these were the "original" Habsburg Austrian territories, i.e. basically the Austrian lands
and Carniola.
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" 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
von Tyrol etc.
Territories
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 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: Archduchy of Austria;
Archduchy of Austria; Duchy of Styria;
Duchy of Carinthia; Duchy of Carniola;
The Adriatic port of Trieste; Istria;
Gorizia and Gradisca; These lands were often grouped together as
Inner Austria.
The County of Tyrol; The Vorarlberg;
The Vorlande, a group of territories in Breisgau and elsewhere in southwestern Germany lost
in 1801 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 Tyrol.
Grand Duchy of Salzburg;
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 elected Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor as king in 1526.
Lusatia was ceded to Saxony in 1635.
Most of Silesia was conquered by Prussia in 1740–1742 and the remnants which stayed
under Habsburg sovereignty were ruled as Duchy of Upper and Lower 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.
Over the course of its history, other lands were, at times, under Austrian Habsburg rule:
The Kingdom of Croatia; The Kingdom of Slavonia;
The Grand Principality of Transylvania, between 1699 and 1867
The Austrian Netherlands, consisting of most of modern Belgium and Luxembourg;
The Duchy of Milan; The Kingdom of Naples;
The Kingdom of Sardinia; The Kingdom of Serbia;
The Banat of Temeswar; Oltenia, as Grand-Voivodate;
The Kingdom of Sicily; The Duchy of Parma;
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in modern Poland and Ukraine
Duchy of Bukovina; New Galicia, the Polish lands, including Kraków,
taken in the Third Partition; Venetia;
Kingdom of Dalmatia; Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia;
Kraków, which was incorporated into Galicia; The Serbian Vojvodina; de facto entity, officially
unrecognized The Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar;
The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia; Sanjak of Novi Pazar occupation;
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The boundaries of some of these territories varied over the period indicated, and others
were ruled by a subordinate 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 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 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 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, 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 and Hungary
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, and Czechoslovakia.
Habsburg territories outside the Habsburg Monarchy
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 Würzburg
from 1805 to 1814.
Another line ruled the Vorlande 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.
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: 1526–1648, 1648–1867, 1867–1918.
Kingdom of Croatia; Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia; Kingdom of Dalmatia
Kingdom of Hungary Kingdom of Serbia: 1718–1739, 1788-1791
History of Slovakia within the Habsburg Monarchy Economy of the Habsburg Monarchy
History of the Balkans Rulers of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1526–1918
Habsburg
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 "Karl VI."
Maria Theresa 1740–1780 correctly written "Maria Theresia"
Habsburg-Lorraine Joseph II 1780–1790 known as "the great
Reformer" Leopold II 1790–1792 from 1765 to 1790 "Grandduke
of Tuscany" Francis II 1792–1835 correctly written "Franz"
Ferdinand I 1835–1848 known as "Ferdinand the Good" German: "Ferdinand der Gütige"
Francis Joseph I 1848–1916 Brother of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico
Charles I 1916–1918 last reigning Monarch of Austria-Hungary
Otto von Habsburg-Lothringen or sometimes called Otto von Österreich 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.
Notes
Further reading Ingrao, Charles.
The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815 excerpt and text search
Ingrao, Charles.
In Quest and Crisis: Emperor Joseph I and the Habsburg Monarchy
Kann, Robert A.
A History of the Habsburg Empire: 1526–1918 Macartney, Carlile Aylmer The Habsburg Empire,
1790–1918, New York, Macmillan 1969.
McCagg, Jr., William O. A History of the Habsburg Jews, 1670–1918
Oakes, Elizabeth and Eric Roman.
Austria-Hungary and the Successor States: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to
the Present Robert John Weston Evans, The Making of the
Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700: An Interpretation, Oxford University Press, 1979.
ISBN 0-19-873085-3.
Sked Alan The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918, London: Longman, 1989.
Steed, Henry Wickham, et al..
A short history of Austria-Hungary and Poland.
Taylor, A.J.P.
The Habsburg monarchy, 1809–1918: a history of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary,
excerpt and text search External links
Media related to Habsburg Monarchy at Wikimedia Commons
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