Part 17

When Charles V. abdicated he was succeeded as emperor, not by his son Philip, but by his brother Ferdinand. Philip became king of Spain, ruling also the Netherlands, Franche-Comté, Naples, Sicily, Milan and Sardinia, and the family was definitely divided into the Spanish and Austrian branches. For Spain and the Spanish Habsburgs the 17th century was a period of loss and decay, the seeds of which were sown during the reign of Philip II. The northern provinces of the Netherlands were lost practically in 1609 and definitely by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648; Roussillon and Artois were annexed to France by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, while Franche-Comté and a number of towns in the Spanish Netherlands suffered a similar fate by the treaty of Nijmwegen in 1678. Finally Charles II., the last Habsburg king of Spain, died childless in November 1700, and his lands were the prize of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Austrian Habsburgs fought long and valiantly for the kingdom of their kinsman, but Louis XIV. was too strong for them, and by the peace of Rastatt Spain passed from the Habsburgs to the Bourbons. However, the Austrian branch of the family received in 1714 the Italian possessions of Charles II., except Sicily, which was given to the duke of Savoy, and also the southern Netherlands, which are thus often referred to as the Austrian Netherlands; and retained the duchy of Mantua, which it had seized in 1708.

Ferdinand I., the founder of the line of the Austrian Habsburgs, arranged a division of his lands among his three sons before his death in 1564. The eldest, Maximilian II., received Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, and succeeded his father as emperor; he married Maria, a daughter of Charles V., and though he had a large family his male line became extinct in 1619. The younger sons were Ferdinand, ruler of Tirol, and Charles, archduke of Styria. The emperor Maximilian II. left five sons, two of whom, Rudolph and Matthias, succeeded in turn to the imperial throne, but, as all the brothers were without male issue, the family was early in the 17th century threatened with a serious crisis. Rudolph died in 1612, the reigning emperor Matthias was old and ill, and the question of the succession to the Empire, to the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, and to the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs became acute. Turning to the collateral branches of the family, the sons of the archduke Ferdinand were debarred from the succession owing to their father's morganatic marriage with Philippine Welser, and the only hope of the house was in the sons of Charles of Styria. To prevent the Habsburg monarchy from falling to pieces the emperor's two surviving brothers renounced their rights, and it was decided that Ferdinand, a son of Charles of Styria, should succeed his cousin Matthias. The difficulties which impeded the completion of this scheme were gradually overcome, and the result was that when Matthias died in 1619 the whole of the lands of the Austrian Habsburgs was united under the rule of the emperor Ferdinand II. Tirol, indeed, a few years later was separated from the rest of the monarchy and given to the emperor's brother, the archduke Leopold, but this separation was ended when Leopold's son died in 1665.

The arbitrary measures which followed Ferdinand's acquisition of the Bohemian crown contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, but in a short time the Bohemians were subdued, and in 1627, following a precedent set in 1547, the emperor declared the throne hereditary in the house of Habsburg. The treaty of Westphalia which ended this war took comparatively little from the Habsburgs, though they ceded Alsace to France; but the Empire was greatly weakened, and its ruler was more than ever compelled to make his hereditary lands in the east of Europe the base of his authority, finding that he derived more strength from his position as archduke of Austria than from that of emperor. Ferdinand III. succeeded his father Ferdinand II., and during the long reign of the former's son, Leopold I., the Austrian, like the Spanish, Habsburgs were on the defensive against the aggressive policy of Louis XIV., and in addition they had to withstand the assaults of the Turks. In two ways they sought to strengthen their position. The unity of the Austrian lands was strictly maintained, and several marriages kept up a close and friendly connexion with Spain. A series of victories over the sultan during the later part of the 17th century rolled back the tide of the Turkish advance, and the peace of Karlowitz made in 1699 gave nearly the whole of Hungary to the Habsburgs. Against France Austria was less successful, and a number of humiliations culminated in 1714 in the failure to secure Spain, to which reference has already been made.

The hostility of Austria and France, or rather of Habsburg and Bourbon, outlived the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1717 Spain conquered Sardinia, which was soon exchanged by Austria for Sicily; other struggles and other groupings of the European powers followed, and in 1735, by the treaty of Vienna, Austria gave up Naples and Sicily and received the duchies of Parma and Piacenza. These surrenders were doubtless inevitable, but they shook the position of the house of Habsburg in Italy. However, a domestic crisis was approaching which threw Italian affairs into the shade. Charles VI., who had succeeded his brother, Joseph I., as emperor in 1711, was without sons, and his prime object in life was to secure the succession of his elder daughter, Maria Theresa, to the whole of his lands and dignities. But in 1713, four years before the birth of Maria Theresa, he had first issued the famous _Pragmatic Sanction_, which declared that the Habsburg monarchy was indivisible and that in default of male heirs a female could succeed to it. Then after the death of his only son and the birth of Maria Theresa the emperor bent all his energies to securing the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction. Promulgated anew in 1724, it was formally accepted by the estates of the different Habsburg lands; in 1731 it was guaranteed by the imperial diet. By subordinating every other interest to this, Charles at length procured the assent of the various powers of Europe to the proposed arrangement; he married the young princess to Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine, afterwards grand-duke of Tuscany, and when he died on the 20th of October 1740 he appeared to have realized his great ambition. With the emperor's death the house of Habsburg, strictly speaking, became extinct, its place being taken by the house of Habsburg-Lorraine, which sprang from the union of Maria Theresa and Francis Stephen; and it is interesting to note that the present Habsburgs are only descended in the female line from Rudolph I. and Maximilian I.

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE HOUSE OF HABSBURG-LORRAINE.

Maria Theresa (1717-1780) = Francis I., emperor (1708-1765). | +-------------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | Joseph II., emperor Leopold II., emperor Maximilian, elector of Cologne | (1741-1790). (1747-1792). (1756-1801). | | +--------------------+--------------------+--------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+-------------+--------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | Francis II., emperor Ferdinand III., Charles Leopold Joseph Antony John Rainer Louis Rudolph | (1768-1835). grand-duke of Tuscany (1771-1847). (1772-1795). (1776-1847). (1780-1835). (1782-1859). (1783-1853). (1784-1864). (1788-1831). | | (1769-1824). | | | | | (see below.) | | +-------------+------------+-+------------+-----------+ | | | | | | | | | | +----+-----------------+ | Joseph Leopold Ernest Sigismund Rainer Henry | | | | (1833-1905). (1823-1898). (1824-1899). (1826-1891). (b. 1827). (1828-1891). | Ferdinand I. Francis Charles | | | emperor of Austria (1802-1878). | | | (1793-1875). | +-------------------+ Joseph Augustus +-----------------+ | | (b. 1872). | +------------------+---+---------------+--------------+ | | | | | | | | +--+--------------+ | Francis Joseph, Maximilian, Charles Louis Louis Victor | | | | emperor of Austria emperor of Mexico (1833-1896). (b. 1842). | Joseph Francis Ladislaus Ferdinand, duke of Modena (b. 1830). (1832-1867). | | (b. 1895). (b. 1901). (1754-1806). | | | | Rudolph +-----------------+------+--------+ +--+----------------+---------------+ +---------------+-----------+ (1858-1889). | | | | | | | | | Francis Ferdinand Otto Ferdinand Albert, Charles Ferdinand William Francis IV. Maximilian Ferdinand (b. 1863). (1865-1906). Charles Louis duke of Teschen (1818-1874). (1827-1894). duke of Modena Joseph (1781-1850). | (b. 1868). (1817-1895). | (1779-1846). (1782-1863). | | | +----------+-----------+ | | | | | | Charles Francis Joseph Maximilian Eugene +------------------+-+-----------+ +--+-----------+ (b. 1887). (b. 1895). | | | | | Frederick Charles Stephen Eugene Francis V., Ferdinand duke of Teschen (b. 1860). (b. 1863). duke of Modena (1821-1849). (b. 1856). | (1819-1875). | | | +-----+---------+------------+ | | | | Albert Charles Albert Leo Charles William (b. 1897). (b. 1888). (b. 1893). (b. 1895).

TUSCANY.

Ferdinand III., grand-duke of Tuscany (1769-1824). | Leopold II., grand-duke of Tuscany (1797-1870). | +------------------------+--------------------+----------+--------------------+ | | | | Ferdinand IV. Louis Salvator Charles Salvator John Nepomuck Salvator grand-duke of Tuscany (b. 1847). (1839-1892). (1852-1891). (b. 1835). | | +--------+-------------+----------------+ +--------------------+---+--------------+-----------------+ | | | | | | | Leopold Salvator Francis Salvator Albert Salvator Leopold Ferdinand Joseph Ferdinand Peter Ferdinand Henry Ferdinand (b. 1863). (b. 1866). (1871-1896). (b. 1872). (b. 1874). (b. 1878). | | | | +----------+-+--------+-----------+ +-------+----+ | | | | | | | | Francis Charles Hubert Theodore Clement Godfrey George | Salvator Salvator Salvator Salvator (b. 1902). (b. 1905). | (b. 1893). (b. 1894). (b. 1899). (b. 1904). | +--------------+-----------+--------------+ | | | | Rainer Charles Leopold Antony Francis Joseph (b. 1895). (b. 1897). (b. 1901). (b. 1905).

Immediately after the death of Charles the Pragmatic Sanction was forgotten. A crowd of claimants called for various parts of the Habsburg lands; Frederick the Great, talking less but acting more, invaded and conquered Silesia, and it seemed likely that the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy would at no long interval follow the extinction of the Habsburg race. A Wittelsbach prince, Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, the emperor Charles VII., and not Francis Stephen, was chosen emperor in January 1742, and by the treaty of Breslau, made later in the same year, nearly all Silesia was formally surrendered to Prussia. But the worst was now over, and when in 1748 the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which practically confirmed the treaty of Breslau, had cleared away the dust of war, Maria Theresa and her consort were found to occupy a strong position in Europe. In the first place, in September 1745, Francis had been chosen emperor; then the imperial pair ruled Hungary and Bohemia, although the latter kingdom was shorn of Silesia; in spite of French conquests the Austrian Netherlands remained in their hands; and in Italy Francis had added Tuscany to his wife's heritage, although Parma and Piacenza had been surrendered to Spain and part of Milan to the king of Sardinia. The diplomatic _volte-face_ and the futile attempts of Maria Theresa to recover Silesia which followed this treaty belong to the general history of Europe.

The emperor Francis I. died in 1765 and was succeeded by his son Joseph II., an ambitious and able prince, whose aim was to restore the Habsburgs and the Empire to their former great positions in Europe, and whose pride did not prevent him from learning from Frederick the Great, the despoiler of his house. His projects, however, including one of uniting Bavaria with Austria, which was especially cherished, failed completely, and when he died in February 1790 he left his lands in a state of turbulence which reflected the general condition of Europe. The Netherlands had risen against the Austrians, and in January 1790 had declared themselves independent; Hungary, angered by Joseph's despotic measures, was in revolt, and the other parts of the monarchy were hardly more contented. But the 18th century saw a few successes for the Habsburgs. In 1718 a successful war with Turkey was ended by the peace of Passarowitz, which advanced the Austrian boundary very considerably to the east, and although by the treaty of Belgrade, signed twenty-one years later, a large part of this territory was surrendered, yet a residuum, the banate of Temesvar, was permanently incorporated with Hungary. The struggle over the succession to Bavaria, which was concluded in 1779 by the treaty of Teschen, was responsible for adding Innviertel, or the quarter of the Inn, to Austria; the first partition of Poland brought eastern Galicia and Lodomeria, and in 1777 the sultan ceded Bukovina. Joseph II. was followed by his brother, Leopold II., who restored the Austrian authority in the Netherlands, and the latter by his son Francis II., who resigned the crown of the Holy Roman Empire in August 1806, having two years before taken the title of emperor of Austria as Francis I.

Before the abdication of the emperor Francis in 1806 Austria had met and suffered from the fury of revolutionary France, but the cessions of territory made by her at the treaties of Campo Formio (1797), of Lunéville (1801) and of Pressburg (1805) were of no enduring importance. This, however, cannot be said for the treaties of Paris and of Vienna, which in 1814 and 1815 arranged the map of Europe upon the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. These were highly favourable to the Habsburgs. In eastern and central Europe Austria regained her former position, the lands ceded to Bavaria and also eastern Galicia, which had been in the hands of Russia since 1809, being restored; she gave up the Austrian Netherlands, soon to be known as Belgium, to the new kingdom of the Netherlands, and acquiesced in the arrangement which had taken from her the Breisgau and the remnant of the Habsburg lands upon the Rhine. In return for these losses Austria became the dominant power In Italy. A mass of northern Italy, including her former possessions in Milan and the neighbourhood, and also the lands recently forming the republic of Venice, was made into the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, and this owned the emperor of Austria as king. Across the Adriatic Dalmatia was added to the Habsburg monarchy, the population of which, it has been estimated, was increased at this time by over four millions.

The illiberal and oppressive character of the Austrian rule in Italy made it very unpopular; it was hardly less so in Hungary and Bohemia, and the advent of the year 1848 found the subject kingdoms eager to throw off the Habsburg yoke. The whole monarchy was quickly in a state of revolution, in the midst of which the emperor Ferdinand, who had succeeded his father Francis in 1835, abdicated, and his place was taken by his young nephew Francis Joseph. The position of the Habsburg monarchy now seemed desperate. But it was strong in its immemorial tradition, which was enough to make the efforts of the Frankfort parliament to establish German unity under Prussian hegemony abortive; it was strong also in the general loyalty to the throne of the imperial army; and its counsels were directed by statesmen who knew well how to exploit in the interests of the central power the national rivalries within the monarchy. With the crushing of the Hungarian revolt by the emperor Nicholas I. of Russia in 1849 the monarchy was freed from the most formidable of its internal troubles; in 1850 the convention of Olmütz restored its influence in Germany.

Though the _status quo_ was thus outwardly re-established, the revolutions of 1848 had really unchained forces which made its maintenance impossible. In Germany Prussia was steadily preparing for the inevitable struggle with Austria for the mastery; in France Napoleon III. was preparing to pose as the champion of the oppressed nationalities which had once more settled down sullenly under the Habsburg yoke. The alliance of the French emperor and the king of Sardinia, and the Italian war of 1859 ended in the loss of Lombardy to the Habsburgs. Seven years later the crushing defeat of Königgrätz not only ended their long rule in Italy, based on the tradition of the medieval empire, by leading to the cession of Venetia to the new Italian kingdom, but led to their final exclusion from the German confederation, soon to become, under the headship of Prussia, the German empire.

By the loss of the predominance in Germany conceded to it by the treaties of Vienna, and by the shifting of its "centre of gravity" eastward, the Habsburg monarchy, however, perhaps gained more than it lost. One necessary result, indeed, was the composition (_Ausgleich_) with Hungary in 1867, by which the latter became an independent state (Francis Joseph being crowned king at Pest in June 1867) bound to the rest of the monarchy only by the machinery necessary for the carrying out of a common policy in matters of common interest. This at least restored the loyalty of the Hungarians to the Habsburg dynasty; it is too soon yet to say that it secured permanently the essential unity of the Habsburg monarchy. By the system of the Dual Monarchy the rest of the Austrian emperor's dominions (Cis-Leithan) were consolidated under a single central government, the history of which has been mainly that of the rival races within the empire struggling for political predominance. Since the development of the constitution has been consistently in a democratic direction and the Slavs are in a great majority, the tendency has been for the German element--strong in its social status and tradition of predominance--to be swamped by what it regards as an inferior race; and a considerable number of Austrian "Germans" have learned to look not to their Habsburg rulers, but to the power of the German empire for political salvation. The tendency eastwards of the monarchy was increased when in 1878 the congress of Berlin placed Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austrian rule. Old ambitions were now revived at the expense of the Ottoman empire, the goal of which was the port of Salonica; and not the least menacing aspect of the question of the near East has been that the rivalry of Italy and the Habsburg monarchy has been transferred to the Balkan peninsula. Yet, in spite of internal dissensions arising out of questions fundamentally insoluble, and in spite of the constant threat of external complications that may lead to war, the Habsburg monarchy as the result of the changes in the 19th and 20th centuries is seemingly stronger than ever. The shadow of universal claims to empire and sonorous but empty titles have vanished, but so have the manifold rivalries and entanglements which accompanied the Habsburg rule in Italy and the Netherlands and Habsburg preponderance in Germany. The monarchy is stronger because its sphere is more defined; because as preserving the _pax Romana_ among the jostling races of eastern Europe, it is more than ever recognized as an essential element in the maintenance of European peace, and is recognized as necessary and beneficial even by the ambitious and restless nationalities that chafe under its rule.

A few words must be said about the cadet branches of the Habsburg family. When, in 1765, Francis I. died and Joseph II. became emperor, the grand-duchy of Tuscany passed by special arrangement not to Joseph, but to his younger brother Leopold. Then in 1791, after Leopold had succeeded Joseph as emperor, he handed over the grand-duchy to his second son, Ferdinand (1769-1824). In 1801 this prince was deposed by Napoleon and Tuscany was seized by France. Restored to the Habsburgs in the person of Ferdinand in 1814, it remained under his rule, and then under that of his son Leopold (1797-1870), until the rising of 1859, when the Austrians were driven out and the grand-duchy was added to the kingdom of Sardinia. A similar fate attended the duchy of Modena, which had passed to the Habsburgs through the marriage of its heiress Mary Beatrice of Este (d. 1829) with the archduke Ferdinand (1754-1806), brother of the emperor Leopold II. From 1814 to 1846 this duchy was governed by Ferdinand's son, Duke Francis IV., and from 1846 to 1859 by his grandson, Francis V. This family became extinct on the death of Francis V. in 1875.

In addition to his successor Francis II., and to Ferdinand, grand-duke of Tuscany, the emperor Leopold II. had eight sons, five of whom, including the archduke John (1782-1859), who saw a good deal of service during the Napoleonic Wars and was chosen regent (_Reichsverweser_) of Germany in 1848, have now no living male descendants. Thus the existing branches of the family are descended from Leopold's five other sons. The descendants of Leopold, the dispossessed grand-duke of Tuscany, were in 1909 represented by his son, Ferdinand (b. 1835), who still claimed the title of grand-duke of Tuscany, and his son and grandsons; by the numerous descendants of the archduke Charles Salvator (1830-1892); and by the archduke Louis Salvator (b. 1847), a great traveller and a voluminous writer. The grand-duke's fourth son was the archduke John Nepomuck Salvator, who, after serving in the Austrian army, resigned all his rights and titles and under the name of Johann Orth took command of a sailing vessel. He is supposed to have been drowned off the coast of South America in 1891, but reports of his continued existence were circulated from time to time after that date. Of the emperor Leopold's other sons the archduke Charles, perhaps the most distinguished soldier of the family, left four sons, including Albert, duke of Teschen (1817-1895), who inherited some of his father's military ability. Charles's family was in 1909 represented by his grandsons, the sons of the archduke Charles Ferdinand (1818-1874). The archduke Joseph (1776-1847), palatine of Hungary, was represented by a grandson, Joseph Augustus (b. 1872), and the archduke Rainer (1783-1853), viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, by a son Rainer (b. 1827), and by several grandsons.

The eldest and reigning branch of the family was in 1909 represented by the emperor Francis Joseph, whose father was the archduke Francis Charles (1802-1878), and whose grandfather was the emperor Francis II. Francis Joseph's only son Rudolph died in 1889; consequently the heir to the Habsburg monarchy was the emperor's nephew Francis Ferdinand (b. 1863), the eldest of the three sons of his brother Charles Louis (1833-1896). In 1875 Francis Ferdinand inherited the wealth of the Este family and took the title of archduke of Austria-Este; in 1900 he contracted a morganatic marriage with Sophia, countess of Chotek, renouncing for his sons the succession to the monarchy. Thus after Francis Ferdinand this would pass to the sons of his brother, the archduke Otto (1865-1906). One of the emperor's three brothers was Maximilian, emperor of Mexico from 1863 to 1867.

With the exception of Charles V. the Habsburgs have produced no statesmen of great ability, while several members of the family have displayed marked traces of insanity. Nevertheless they secured, and for over 350 years they kept, the first place among the potentates of Europe; a dignity in origin and theory elective becoming in practice hereditary in their house. This position they owe to some extent to the tenacity with which they have clung to the various lands and dignities which have passed into their possession, but they owe it much more to a series of fortunate marriages and opportune deaths. The union of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Spain, of Ferdinand and Anna of Hungary and Bohemia; the death of Ottakar of Bohemia, of John, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, of Louis of Hungary and Bohemia--these are the corner-stones upon which the Habsburg monarchy has been built.