The Hapsburgs: To Rule The World. Rady - B

     "The Hapsburgs were the first rulers whose power encompassed the world."  Indeed, at their peak, the sun never set upon their lands. They ruled the Holy Roman Empire intermittently from 1273 and continually from 1438. They sat upon the Spanish throne for two centuries. Upon the HRE's demise at the hands of Napoleon in 1806, they ruled the Austrian Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918.  They had "a vision of a world united under the ethereal sway of a single sovereign, who was dedicated to the service of religion, peace among Christians, and war against the unbeliever." Uniquely, they recognized that the many and varied component parts were not homogenous and they seldom attempted to manage them in a unitary system.

     They can be traced back to the 10th century in what is now the Aargau region of Switzerland. By inheritance, luck and survival, a Hapsburg count became the most powerful man in mid-13th century Swabia. Going forward, the family's ability to produce sons was one of its strongest suits. Rudolf I maneuvered into the crown, but since it was elective, was unable to keep it in the family. Because they were lords over many diverse territories, primogeniture did not work and in the century after Rudolf, their position diminished. In the mid-15th century, Albert, and then Frederick III, were elected HRE in addition to being dukes of Austria and kings of Bohemia and Hungary. Frederick's forty-five year reign established the family's role in central Europe and fortuitously acquired the Low Countries by virtue of his daughter's marriage, and his son-in-law's subsequent death. His marriage of his daughter to the Spanish heir assured that his grandson, Charles V, was both HRE and king of Spain, which had just begnu its conquests in America. The Philippines were soon added.

       He was 'Lord of the World' and 'King of Kings'. Notwithstanding the reach of his empire, Charles' revenue was half of France's king and a quarter of the Ottoman's emperor. Nonetheless, he was an excellent ruler: he conquered Tunis and recovered lands held by the infidel Muslims, he commissioned the first map of Germany, he attempted to reform the church and reduce the attractions of Protestantism, and he married his far- flung family to every royal house from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. He abdicated in 1555 and turned Spain over to his son and the empire to his brother. 

     In the east, Ferdinand I was faced with the twin challenges of the Ottomans and the Reformation. The Turks would occupy portions of Hungary for the next century-and-a-half. Although he was devoted  to the church and considered Luther a heretic, there was nothing Ferdinand could do to stop the spread of Lutheranism throughout Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and even Austria. In Spain, Phillip succeeded to Spain itself, along with the New World, the Low Countries, Burgundy, Sicily, Naples and Sardinia. He was fully committed to maintaining the supremacy of the church. The northern provinces of the Low Countries, the Netherlands, committed to Protestantism and fought a long,  successful campaign for freedom. Phillip's naval adventure, the famous Armada, failed against England, but he sponsored a Christian fleet that defeated the Turks at Lepanto. Although the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 established that people were to follow the religious beliefs of their princes, religious conflict spread throughout the empire, and by the early decades of the next century, Protestantism dominated the empire. Catholicism prevailed in Bavaria, Lorraine, Tyrol and inner Austria only. 

     A devoted, if not fanatical, Catholic, Ferdinand II became emperor in 1618. He faced opposition in Bohemia, where the Diet deposed him. The Spanish Hapsburgs rallied to the Catholic cause and the Thirty-Years War had begun. It proved to be the most destruction Europe would see for three hundred years. It encompassed the entire continent and drew in Africa, America and Asia as well. Five million people, 20% of the empire's population died. Germany, in particular, was devastated. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia settled the war and allowed (within reason) people to practice the faith of their choice. Leopold I was HRE, from 1658-1705, consolidated power and presided over the defense of Europe from one of the greatest outside threats it ever faced. In the spring of 1683, the Ottomans headed north. A hundred thousand men marched into Hungary and Austria and encircled Vienna. King John Sobieski of Poland and Charles of Lorraine lifted the siege and sent the Ottomans in retreat. Three years later, they liberated Hungary and threatened Ottoman rule in the Balkans. "By perseverance and the work of his generals, Leopold had renewed the connection between the Hapsburgs and the imperial office that sustained the dynasty's claim to greatness." However in Spain, the death in 1700 of Charles II without heirs ended the Hapsburg line there and led to the War of the Spanish Succession. 

     The 18th century saw the Hapsburgs complete the re-conquest of Hungary and extend their control as far south as Belgrade. Under Maria Theresa (1740-80) and her son Joseph II (1765 as co-emperor and sole until 1790) the Hapsburgs achieved breathtaking accomplishments in military and fiscal reform, systematizing the government, controlling the nobles, educating the populace and even converting serfs into yeoman farmers. They greatly expanded Vienna's role as a cultural capital as the Enlightenment unfolded in Europe. Joseph reformed the church, authorized limited freedom of worship, and is believed to have met with a million of his subjects. He closed hundreds of monasteries and religious houses that served no public purpose. Francis II (1792-1835)was emperor when the wars of the French Revolution threw Europe into two decades of ceaseless violence. At the Congress of Vienna, 1814-15, Austria retained its central European core, acquired Trieste, the provinces around the northern Adriatic and the presidency of a new German Confederation. The focus of Metternich, the Prussians and the Russians was the maintenance of the status quo and it would be for decades. Indeed, the world they re-established lasted, more or less intact for a century.

     The year 1848 saw revolution spread throughout Europe. It appeared as if the empire would be dissolved, with the German provinces joining a new country, Bohemia, as the basis of a Slav state, with Lombardy-Venetia and Hungary independent. The forces of reaction militarily held the empire together. The twenty-one year old Franz Joseph became emperor. Hungary had declared its independence and it was violently returned to the fold. Franz Joseph ruled as an absolute monarch in a changing world. He lost all say in Germany after the Prussians won the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. By the Settlement of 1867, Franz Joseph acceded to Hungary's partial independence, allowing it local rule and representation, and provided a constitution for both halves of the empire, now known as the Austro-Hungarian. The dual monarchy was "inseparable and indivisible." The empire adopted a policy of 'muddling through', as the process of governing a state spread over vast distances, with varying economies, dozens of languages, many religions, multiple political parties and raging nationalism was beyond the skill set of Franz Joseph and the institutions surrounding him. Yet, his religious faith, steadfastness, commitment to his people,  strength in the face of his son's and his wife's tragic deaths and sheer longevity held the far-flung empire together. The final chapter, of course,  began with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Indicative of the empire's many challenges, the posters announcing the mobilization were printed in 15 languages. With the help of the Germans, the much-depleted army held on, but the home front collapsed. As the new emperor, Karl (1916-18), quickly gave up his desire for a separate peace and aligned with Germany, the Allies adopted the dissolution of the empire as a goal. The tottering dynasty could not hold together the disparate nations together and the empire disappeared at war's end. Ironically, Karl's son, Otto, lived 99 years and was an important European-wide visionary who might have been a very good emperor. Central Europe may have been better off.                                                                      I became intrigued by the Hapsburgs while on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Austria, in 1987. I was reading a book in which an English author made the case that, notwithstanding the importance of nationalism and the many failures of the old man of Europe, as the tottering 19th-century empire was known,  central Europe was much better off then than it was in the 20th century. From a multi-cultural tolerant society, the nations were soaked in blood under the Nazis and imprisoned by the communists.